Linggo, Mayo 6, 2018

Hospice of the Pilgrim - The Great Rest-Word of Christ (John MacDuff, 1891) Part 2

Matthew 11:28

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” 

THE GATE WIDE OPEN
"Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."
"Him that comes unto Me I will in no wise cast out." John 6:37
None are so weary or heavy laden as those oppressed with doubt as to the ability and willingness of Christ to receive and save them. As "the heart knows its own bitterness," so the soul knows the pressure of its own moral burdens and impediments--specially among these the burdening memory of some heinous and presumptuous transgressions--sins against light and love; sins in defiance, and forgetfulness of privilege and responsibility; sins, it may even be, involving the loss of self-respect, and entailing the shame of remorse. Many are ready enough to own that the door of that Hospice of Pardon has been opened to countless multitudes. But, can its gates, is the despairing thought of not a few thus saddened with humbling retrospects, be unlocked to us? What of the soul "once enlightened," made a temple of the Holy Spirit, but that temple, through temptation and unwatchfulness, desecrated and defiled, some foul scar on its pure alabaster pillars, known only to Him whose eyes are as a flame of fire--the infinitely Holy One?
Yes, if sin be unrepented of; if sin be persevered in, if blot be added knowingly to blot, and scar to scar, the reins recklessly surrendered to feeble, frail, faltering wills; if the prodigal be still groveling and content to grovel amid the husks and garbage of the far country--there can be little said to hush feverish unrest, and inspire with the hope of welcome and forgiveness. But the pivot on which the words of our present meditation seem to turn is, "Him that comes unto Me." In that coming is implied self-renunciation and sin-renunciation; sorrow for the past, and the promise and purpose of new obedience. Not, let it be imagined, that in such cases of heart-felt renewed consecration we claim future impeccability; that when a "conversion," in the true sense of that often-misused and travestied word, takes place, there can be no further coming short of lofty Christian ideals--no further failures, it may even be grievous woundings, in the spiritual battle. To say so would be not only, on no Bible authority, to minimize the real and persistent character of that warfare Paul again and again describes; but it would also in the case of many close the door of hope, and tend to put despondency into earnest and sensitive though frail and fallible natures.
Blessed be God for His own balm-word for all such--"Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down; for the Lord upholds him with His hand." But this we may with confidence aver, that if there be present, honest, prayerful resolves for the future, anxiety and misgiving may be set aside. Christ's word of welcome and heart-cheer is enough. No barrier is placed by Him at the approach to the Hospice. There is the offer of unqualified forgiveness. There is a perch for the feeblest, most ruffled wing on this mighty Cedar of God.
Weary ones, your pillow of thorns is made by Him a pillow of peace. He who touched the kneeling leper, and washed the traitor's feet, shows His unwillingness to quench the smoking flax. He stands with the ineffable love of eternity in His heart. He will "in no wise cast out." There is room on His shoulders for every wandering sheep. There is room in His heart for every prodigal child. There is room in His Hospice for every storm-beaten pilgrim. He could have uttered no stronger assurance of His love for sinners and His willingness to welcome and receive the weariest, the most outcast and lost. The sin which for us is "a burden too heavy for us to bear," is not too heavy for Him. "He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities. The Lord has laid on Him the iniquities of us all." "This man receives sinners" was His distinctive characteristic.
"Turn to the seventh chapter of Hebrews and twenty-fifth verse," said the blind girl to her spiritual adviser and friend. He did so. The words are--"Wherefore He is able also to save them to the uttermost." "Lay my hand," she added, "on that verse--upon it I should like to die."
There may be sins in conscience and memory at the cognizance of which the best and kindest friends would "cast out" from Christ forever. Their crushing, despairing verdict would be--"He will by no means receive." But His ways are not as man's ways, nor His thoughts as man's thoughts. His thoughts toward us are "thoughts of peace and not of evil." He reveals Himself with the garnered treasures of redemption, ready to dispense them to the chief of sinners.
"Pardon my iniquity," cried one of old, who was no stranger to the pangs of an accusing conscience. And what was his plea? Was it, "Pardon my iniquity because of its triviality; because of inborn weakness, or fierce temptation, or some exceptionally extenuating circumstances"? No. It was the reverse. Conscious that he was in the hands of the All-Merciful--"Pardon my iniquity," he exclaims, "for it is great!" In the parable of the Prodigal Son, when the father "fell on his neck, and kissed him," the meaning in the original Greek is "kissed him much."
Lord, I am unworthy to come under Your roof! Lord, I am unworthy to gather up the crumbs from Your table! My sins at times confront me like the swords of avenging angels. But He who is All-worthy gives the free, full, gracious invitation.
At Your call I come! Blessed be Your name, let it be gladly repeated, that call is hampered with no conditions. "All you that labor and are heavy laden" takes in the wide circumference of humanity. In the freeness and sovereignty of Your redeeming grace, unbar to me the sheltering portal! And while in the sad, solemn memories of bygone apostasy I may be led at times to look with trembling apprehension to the future, let the thought of Your divine power and sympathy arm and strengthen me amid environing temptations. "Iniquities," was the wail of a stricken soul under the conscious sense of weakness, helplessness, unrest--"iniquities prevail against me," or, as that has been rendered, "are too strong for me." Here is God's gracious response and recipe--"Let him take hold of My STRENGTH, that he may make peace with Me; and he shall make peace with Me" (Ps. 65:3; Isa. 27:5).
"You know all our conflict, all the failing
Of flesh and spirit, lured by evil powers,
The sore temptations these poor hearts assailing
In our unguarded hours.
"But we shall fear no evil--living, dying,
Our souls are in Your care; You will defend
The faithful servants on Your word relying,
Even until the end."
"Lord, I believe--help my unbelief."
"This is the resting place, let the weary rest. This is the place of repose." Isaiah 28:12
A HOSPICE IN MYSTERIOUS DEALINGS
"Come unto Me all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
"This sickness is for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby." John 11:4
"Our friend Lazarus sleeps; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep." John 11:11
Deepest of all mysteries, burden of all burdens--the early death of loved ones. "To what purpose is this waste?" Life perishing in its prime--the apparent flinging to the void a garnered store of intellect, goodness, friendship, worth! We can understand the aged decaying inhabitant of the forest, that has fulfilled its appointed years, succumbing to the axe or swept down by the storm. But why touch the vigorous sapling, or the tree in the glory of its early summers?
Such were the thoughts that must have hovered over the casket of the beloved brother at Bethany, the center and brightener of a beautiful home. Many of the circumstantials, too, specially the sequel of the trial, were passing strange. When the Master was sent for at His distant place of sojourn, why the inaction? We imagine that when the messenger speeds with the tidings, "Behold, he whom You love is sick," not a moment would be lost in recrossing Jordan and hastening up the gorges of Judea to restore His friend. To delay an unanswered quest would be unlike His kind heart and customary prompt procedure.
He would teach His church in every age that there is a tarrying love which, in certain circumstances, is as true as the instantaneous intervention, the immediate response. In the present case, he lingers "two days" before support is given. The weary and heavy-laden sisters, faint with watching and waiting and weeping, expect, hour after hour, their burden to be removed. Their Lord indefinitely continues it. Two days and two nights are they subjected to a trial as bewildering as their own personal bereavement--the trial of baffled hopes and unanswered prayers. "And, behold, there arose a great tempest in the sea, insomuch that the ship was covered with the waves--but He was asleep" (Matt. 8:24). The Hospice-gate of Hope seems mysteriously barred. "Has God forgotten to be gracious?"
His people have ever been at times subjected to similar dealings--the seemingly unkind postponement in their hours of anxiety and soul-struggle--whether the prolonged, the apparently unnecessary discipline of pain, when every nerve becomes a chord of agony, or the equally acute torture of prolonged vigils by the couch of loved ones, or the anxieties and forecastings of the future.
O faithless hearts in that Judean village, to doubt for a moment in your passionate grief your Lord's unwavering love and fidelity to His promises! O faithless hearts among ourselves, that would still echo the spirit of Martha's and Mary's plaintive monotone, the unworthy reflection--"Lord, if You had been here, this our brother had not died!" If You had been here, this sore calamity would not leave befallen us!
Hush the reclaiming word! He is here. He who put the burden on keeps it on. As sure as at last He stood in the grave-yard of Bethany--shed sympathetic tears and spoke sympathetic words, gave the needed answer to prayer and the needed rest to weary souls--so will He, in the case of all, vindicate at last the wisdom and righteousness and love of His procedure. Behind the cloud-lands of life He is evolving good out of evil and order out of confusion.
He will repeat, as the reason for each mysterious dispensation--He will write, if need be, the record on every sick-bed, the epitaph on each early grave--"For the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby."
"What I do you know not now; but you shall know hereafter."
"This is the resting place, let the weary rest. This is the place of repose." Isaiah 28:12
REST IN THE CRUCIFIED
"Come unto Me all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
"Peace be unto you. And when He had so said, He showed them His hands and His side. Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord." John 20:19, 20
That was a weary and heavy-laden band gathered on the evening of the first great Easter. These disciples were like the sea driven by the wind and tossed. Hope alternately rose and fell. Tidings reached those who had partially revived their spirits, but such were conflicting and unauthenticated. "How different," would they not say one to another, "our present experiences, from the memories of three past years of tranquil peace and unbroken love, when we sat at His feet listening to His elevating teachings, or beheld the halt and the lame and the blind cured by healing word or touch; or when, on the stormy deep, we listened to His 'Peace, be still;' or when we mingled with the crowd in which many a heart, aching with deeper-seated than bodily disease, was hushed by the assuring invitation, 'Come unto Me, and I will give you rest.'"
Peace is the yearned-for boon of every weary soul. Some may recall the story of Dante, seated in contemplative mood outside the convent gate. One of the inhabitants to whom he had entrusted the manuscript of the "Inferno," observing his pensive dejection, asked what it was for which he was longing. To the twice repeated question the, reply was given--"Peace!" What was thus whispered by the lips of the great poet, Christ alone can meet and answer.
How He answers it may best be gathered from the sequence which forms the remarkable feature in the words of our present verse and narrative. There was no interval for questioning thought--the words of the recording evangelist are at once added--"And when He had so said, He showed them His hands and His side." It was the revelation of a crucified Savior. It was, in His own Person, the truth that was to be afterwards sounded forth, first by accredited apostles, and which, through the succeeding ages, was to form the central doctrine of Christianity and Christian teaching--"Jesus Christ and Him crucified."
There is a second sequence, a second act in this divine Easter drama. The affrighted disciples, who, we are told in the context, "were assembled for fear," and had in their terror locked or barred the chamber door, were reassured. At the vision of this crucified One, with the spear-thrust and nail-marks, "the death of the cross," their terror was exchanged for gladness. "THEN were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord."
Gracious Hospice! "He loved me, and gave Himself for me"--Christ, not the Example and Pattern (though that, as we know, He was conspicuously also), but "Christ crucified, the Power of God unto salvation to every one that believes."
Show me, Lord, by faith, Your wounded hands, Your riven side! The peace secured and bestowed in this Hospice is "peace through the blood of the cross."
"God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ."
"This is the resting place, let the weary rest. This is the place of repose." Isaiah 28:12

THE PILGRIM'S SECURITY
"Come unto Me all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
"Seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." Matt. 6:33
How many labor and are heavy laden because they reverse the order of their Lord's exhortation; giving priority to the things of earth, and making "the one thing needful" secondary and subordinate; allowing daily worries, cares, perplexities, trifles, to dim and obscure nobler verities! They are more concerned to rear gilded palaces on the shifting sands of the present, than first to make sure of the Hospice with its foundations drilled in the solid and enduring Rock. They allow the flare of earthly torches and the glimmer of artificial lights to blur the stars of heaven. How different existence would be were its first and chief object to live under the inspiration of doing God's will and seeking to please Him! The life of self-abnegation and self-consecration is the happy as well as the heavenly one--the life lived by those who are in the world and yet not of it, who walk and act as seeing Him who is invisible; their thoughts, interests, occupations interpenetrated with the sense of the Divine presence and love, conscious of unswerving fidelity to Truth and Righteousness.
"Come unto ME," says Christ, and seek first My kingdom. Where religion, the law of His kingdom, in the best sense of the word, as an active, living, energizing force, is our recognized guide, giving direction to character and conduct, a wealth of happiness inevitably follows. When love to God strikes the key-note, the varied harmonies of earth assume a beautiful concord and cadence; the ordinary chords of life vibrate in sweet unison. Religion intensifies the enjoyment of common mercies. Hers is the heavenly chemistry which transmutes all things into gold.
The man who walks with God is like Moses in his descent from the mount--his face shines with the reflected glory. The "rest" of Christ takes shape and form. Not infrequently it is so literally--the very outer lineaments are transfigured. We can most of us probably recall some such sunny, radiant countenance bright with the smile of a foretasted heaven--this in striking contrast with that which is scarred with selfishness, debased with vice, gloomy with the tyranny of demon-passion. "The purified righteous man," says Clement of Alexandria, "has become a coin of the Lord, and has the impress of his king stamped upon him." The soul itself becomes a Hospice, the home and haunt of peace, "filled with all joy and peace in believing."
Hear the apostle's definition and description of the heirs of the Kingdom and lovers of God's righteousness--"In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, (in other words, Let Religion sway and dominate the actions, the life, the whole being); "and the peace of God, which passes all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus."
"All these things shall be added unto you." Added! It seems like a promise of ever augmenting and augmented blessings--like the mountain streamlet, tiny and inconspicuous at first, but deepening as it hastens on its course to refresh and irrigate and beautify, at last expanding into "peace like a river"--the full flood of God.
O You gracious Rest-Giver, prevent me forfeiting Your promised peace by becoming a prey to the groveling cares or the absorbing fascinations and pleasures of a present evil world! Let me listen to the monitory voice, "The kingdom of God is not food and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit."
With this peace reigning and ruling within me, I can say with Paul– "I have all, and abound."
"This is the resting place, let the weary rest. This is the place of repose." Isaiah 28:12

THE UNKNOWN MORROW
"Come unto Me all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
"Take therefore no thought for the morrow--for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." Matt. 6:34
Who does not long for some Hospice from which to contemplate, calmly and undismayed, the veiled and shrouded morrow? The present may have its anxieties; but in the case of many, probably most, it is the unsolved riddle of the future that presses most heavily. That turning in the gorge I cannot see. Will the rushing stream be increased in volume? Are there no bridges to span its headlong course, no boulders even to afford a safe footing?
"Come unto Me," says He who was Himself the Pilgrim of pilgrims in earth's Valley of Humiliation. In the midst of these anxious forecastings, "I will give you rest," rest, first of all, in the very thought which engenders these forebodings--that the morrow is unknown; that you are mercifully spared the anticipation of trials which might otherwise project a life-long shadow on your bright present, and make the future one long experience of sadness.
Then, above all, rest in the gracious conviction that the morrow, unrevealed to you, is known to Him. He sees what you cannot see--"the end from the beginning." With Him there is no chance or contingency, no haphazard or peradventure. "Trust Me," He seems to say, "in the fulfillment of a double promise, spoken ages ago, that in this Hospice I have a store of sandals for the feet, and a pilgrim staff for the way. 'Your shoes shall be iron and brass; and as your days so shall your strength be.' These (in other words, My exceeding great and precious promises) will be adequate for all needs and difficulties, helping you over the rugged road and unbridged torrent."
Indulge, then, no needlessly anxious thoughts. Do not allow life to degenerate into a round and vortex of weary care. God gives no prevenient store of grace. He provides no program of tomorrow's evils and trials, its needs and necessities. But when the morrow comes, the promised strength comes with it, and the traveler pursues his way with the words which the great Rest-Giver whispers in his ear, "I will make My grace sufficient for you."
"Trust Him when dark doubts assail you;
Trust Him when your strength is small;
Trust Him when to simply trust Him
Seems the hardest thing of all."
Let even outer Nature, in her unfaltering laws and sublime sequences, teach the same lesson of confidence in the divine faithfulness:
"And I will trust that He who heeds
The life that hides in mead and wold,
Who hangs yon alder's crimson beads,
And stains these mosses green and gold,
Will still, as He has done, incline
His gracious care to me and mine."
Blessed Savior, on Yourself may I be enabled to cast, not some cares, or the more pressing cares, but all my cares. "Whenever I am afraid, I will trust in You."
From the windows of this Gospel Hospice I will see the future, even though somber with cloud, spanned with the bow of covenant promise, and read the lettering of "dewy gold," – "O rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him."
"This is the resting place, let the weary rest. This is the place of repose." Isaiah 28:12

HOSPICE FOUNDATION
"Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."
"God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." John 3:16
In this brief verse we have a Gospel within a Gospel, the Hospice of hospices--no fragile temporary structure, but formed, so to speak, from monoliths of primeval granite. Before the world was, that Hospice was planned--an eternal, unassailable stronghold. Love was the Rock on which it was built--"God so loved the world." How careful the great Rest-Giver is to trace all up to the sovereign love of the Father--not the tenet of a false and repellent theology, that Christ's atoning sacrifice was the cause of God's love to our world (an inversion and perversion of gospel terms), but rather that God's love was the originating and impelling cause of Christ's death. There was "a covenant of peace between them both." "It is not," says a writer, "that the atonement replenishes the wasting Fountain, but that the unwasting and unwearying Fountain makes the atonement." The measure of the Father's love (He could give no higher) was the gift of His own dear Son--His "Only Begotten."
In thus addressing Nicodemus, Christ may possibly have had an historical reference to the "only begotten" of the head of the Jewish nation, and of the surrender of the heir of covenant promise by the Father of the faithful, typical of a Greater, who willingly laid His Isaac on the altar of burnt-offering--"He that spared not His own Son" (Rom. 8:32). In the immediately preceding context there is allusion made to another memorable incident in the annals of Pilgrim-Israel, and one with which the Rabbi was equally familiar--the lifting up by Moses of the bronze serpent. The host, bitten by fiery snakes, lay gasping on the sands of the wilderness, their eyes glazed with the film of death. They looked at the strange symbol on the standard--they "looked and lived." It was to the Divine Speaker, in His memorable night-colloquy with this anxious inquirer, an emblem of Himself on the cross--a symbol of redemption for the spiritual Israel of all ages who gaze with the eye of faith on the uplifted Son of man.
These two incidents in the story of the Hebrew nation enshrine the most glorious words and message ever delivered to the world; while both events are strong in the assertion of the sacrificial element--Christ the Surety-Savior, Christ, the sufferer in our room and stead, the one only Source of pardon and acceptance and peace. "Come unto ME." "Look unto Me, and be you saved, all the ends of the earth." "God commends His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us."
Jesus, in our general motto-verse, offers and promises to His weary ones Rest. God the Father, in the verse we are immediately considering, offers and promises to the weary ones everlasting Life. The two are convertible terms--the same gift, only under different figures. The world is weary--a caravan of pilgrims staggering under their burdens--Rest is the welcome boon for such. The world is dead and dying; its millions are perishing--Life is the welcome gift for such. Take which emblem we please. "Come unto Me," says Christ, "and the reality is yours. I died to make it so." Both boons, moreover, are alike present and future--the Rest of grace here, preparatory to the Rest of glory hereafter; the gift of Life here, preparatory to the everlasting Life hereafter.
Lord, I come, weary and heavy laden, seeking rest. I need no other Hospice than this, bearing on its lintels so full and glorious a motto. I accept Your overtures of grace. Let me delight to ponder, let me be enabled in some feeble measure to grasp the wealth of meaning contained in the unfathomed and unfathomable. So loving of this doomed and dying world--the motive, the Father's Love; the resultant end, "Glory, Honor, Immortality, Eternal Life." In the contemplation of the peerless theme, we seem to be caught up into the third heavens with their infinite depths of blue, the paradise of love.
"This is the resting place, let the weary rest. This is the place of repose." Isaiah 28:12

HOSPICE OF THE MOURNER
"Come unto Me all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
"Blessed are those who mourn--for they shall be comforted." Matt. 5:4
This is a comprehensive Evangel in itself--good news for the weary, a true Hospice for every heavy-laden pilgrim. The one word "mourn" takes in the twofold burden of sin and sorrow--the double load common to the children of humanity.
The beatitude is spoken by Him whose specially foretold mission was to "comfort all that mourn" (Isa. 61:2). No wonder, therefore, it has an early place in His teaching; that it is one of the first Hospices whose gate He flings open with a "Come unto Me, and I will give you rest."
Is it sin--that burden which an old pilgrim says is "too heavy for me"--the consciousness of shortcoming--sins of omission, sins of commission; the treason of the will, the truant affections, the memories of a blurred and blotted past? Cast this burden on your Savior-God. His precious blood besprinkles the lintels and door-posts of the Hospice. That covenant-token gives Him the right to bid you welcome. The forgiveness of God in Christ is surely the most soothing of divine gospel opiates. Owen tells us that when he was brought back from the gates of death, the first text he preached from was this--"But there is forgiveness with You that You may be feared."
Is it sorrow--the burden of affliction? Is the word spoken to those enduring in its thousand shapes poverty, sickness, bereavement? None so needing shelter and rest as these. But God's comforts, like the stars of heaven, are brightest in a dark sky. As the sun requires to set before the stellar glories of the skies are visible, so with the soul. How many can testify, I never saw the surpassing comfort of the divine promises until death, in the removal of brother, or sister, or child, left my world without a sun!
"O joy that do you seek me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain
That morn shall tearless be."
It is doubtless this latter class--the afflicted--of whom the words of our verse today are mainly spoken. And how often in strange ways, in the case of such, do we find this beatitude of Christ realized and exemplified--blessedness surrounding the weary and heavy-laden pilgrim, and making him calm, restful, happy! It is one of the great compensations in the Christian life, that the mourner and sufferer are most conscious of the sweet drops that mingle in the bitter cup which their Father has prepared. Call to remembrance, in the circle of your acquaintance, some child of affliction--say of sickness and pain. Were not these the lips most lavish in acknowledgment of God's goodness and love? You would naturally expect otherwise--that the man who is seated luxuriously at life's banquet, and has nothing apparently to break the trance of outward happiness--material enjoyment--would be most profuse in his gratitude. How often is it the reverse! How often he takes the gifts with thankless, it may be peevish unconcern!
While, on the other hand, it is frequently they who gather the scattered crumbs, and must be content with the cup of cold water, who enjoy God's commonest mercies--a glimpse from their secluded couch of the blue of summer sky, and breath of summer fragrance and gush of summer song--these accepted as pledges and parables of diviner realities.
Thus does the gracious Rest-Giver fulfill the old promises spoken of Himself by the evangelical prophet--"I will restore comforts to him and to his mourners" (Isa. 57:18). "The Lord has anointed Me to bind up the brokenhearted…to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness" (Isa. 61:1, 3). The valleys of Baca and the tents of Kedar are thus often made musical with the songs of Paradise; the bed of languishing becomes as the house of God and as the gate of heaven. One of Samuel Rutherford's sayings, rendered into metre, beautiful alike for its imagery and simplicity, is on many such lips–
"With mercy and with judgment
My web of time He wove,
And aye the depths of sorrow
Were lustered with his love."
"Blessed are those who mourn!"
Then remember, He who utters this balm-word is Himself the King of sorrows, the Mourner of mourners. He knows, by the experience of His own suffering humanity, every pang that rends the heart. He was announced in the same great prophecy, hundreds of years before his incarnation, as "the Burden-Bearer." It sounds more like a gospel statement than a long antecedent prediction--"Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows." Seeing that "He has suffered being tempted," there is an elevating speciality surely for our sorrowing seasons in the words emanating from His lips--"Come unto Me, and be comforted."
Lord Jesus, impart to me a true mourning for sin, a true submission in trial. The storm-clouds may be gathering--they may have gathered, as I am holding on my darksome way; but with this Hospice in sight, I shall listen to Your own gracious invitation--"Come, my people, enter into your chambers, and shut your doors about you--hide yourself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast" (Isa. 26:20).
"Come unto Me, and rest,
You weary heart, distrest
With wasting toil, and strivings vain and endless;
Mourning from day to day
For blessings passed away;
Come unto Me; I will not leave you friendless.
"I watched your cisterns fail,
I saw you spent and pale,
With parched lips, and heart with anguish bursting,
When from the desert sod,
Your cry went up to God.
Come unto Me; I will not leave you thirsting."
-S. Doudney
"The days of your mourning shall be ended."
"This is the resting place, let the weary rest. This is the place of repose." Isaiah 28:12

VOICES OF THE GLORIFIED REST-GIVER
"Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."
"He laid His right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last--I am He that lives, and was dead--and, behold, I am alive for evermore; and have the keys of Hades and of death." Rev. 1:17-18
John was at this moment, in no ordinary sense of the word, one of the weary and burdened. He was left alone of the apostolic band. Many of his fellows and friends had died a martyr's death. Untold cruelties had stained the imperial purple; clouds brooded over the Christian cause. No sympathetic human voice was near to cheer him in his loneliness, as he wandered along the shore of that prison-island. Can we wonder if, in his solitary hours, he grouped himself among the heavy-laden? Can we wonder if these waves of the Aegean Sea were a type of his own inner feelings--so far as earth was concerned, seeking rest and finding none? His earthly home and Hospice was a desolate and terrible one.
But the Rest-Giver, He who of old permitted him in tranquil love to pillow his head on His bosom, was near with the well-known lullabies which he had heard amid the pauses of the storm on Tiberias, and at the timid gathering in the upper room on the first Easter evening--"Fear not;" "I am alive!" Among the prognostications of coming evil and disaster conveyed in vision of opened seals and emptied vials--Hades and Death specially active participators in the drama--He reveals Himself as the great Lord of life, watching, as such, the destinies of the Church--not a seal broken, not a vial outpoured, without His bidding--walking in the midst of the golden candlesticks, and alone pronounced "worthy" to open the roll of Providence.
Life and Death alternate and palpitate, strangely in this verse. DEATH, the mystery and portent of mankind; death, which lies like a cold avalanche on the heart of humanity; death, with its ghastly tapers lighting the long corridors of the past; death, the most irresistible of all natural forces, is here confronted by a Force mightier still--"I am alive for evermore;" "I have the keys of that gloomy gate, opening to the vast unknown, suspended at my belt. 'Fear not!' I Myself know death. I have felt it. I have passed through its portals. I was dead; but I have conquered it and its defiances, spoiled it of its power, and left the King of Terrors a vanquished foe. I have converted the very home of death, the grave, into a veritable Hospice, a 'cemetery,' a sleeping-place or bed of rest, preparatory to a waking up in endless life. 'Write, From henceforth blessed are the dead which die in the Lord; for they rest.'"
"There is no death--the leaves may fall,
The flowers may fade and pass away;
They only wait through wintry hours
The coming of the May!"
O weary and heavy-laden ones, who, it may be, through fear of death are all your lifetime subject to bondage, fear it not. Your Lord was dead. Fear not the chill tenets of the prophets of annihilation, who meet the yearnings of humanity with the requiem of despair– "Sleep the sleep that knows no waking."
Your Lord lives. Leave to paganism to carve on its sepulchral slabs--"The land of no return." He is alive forever more. He will come again in His advent glory to take you to Himself, and to transplant you among the ingathered company of His ransomed.
"Therefore dread I not to go
O'er the silent river.
Death, your hastening oar I know;
Bear me, you Life-giver,
Through the waters to the shore,
Where mine own have gone before!''
He gives us, meanwhile, the sublime guarantee– "Because I live, you shall live also."
"This is the resting place, let the weary rest. This is the place of repose." Isaiah 28:12

THE MEEK AND LOWLY PILGRIM
"Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."
"Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart--and you shall find rest unto your souls." Matt. 11:29).
This is the sequel to our motto-verse, the expansion of the rest-saying of the loving Rest-Giver. None who have entered into the spirit of these words, but must recognize and find in them a gracious Hospice--a chamber of the "House Beautiful."
"No man," says Luther, "if he were the gentlest and kindest in the world, could have such a gentle bearing as Christ had." He further tells of a legend regarding the Apostle Peter, that his eyes were always red with weeping and on being asked the cause; the reply was--"I weep when I recall the most sweet gentleness of Christ with His apostles." Possibly the remembrance of that sweet gentleness and forbearance towards himself was the most touching of all.
Note the Savior's special message, in the meditation of today, to His burdened and weary ones. He virtually says--"Exchange burdens. Part with your own and take Mine. Make trial of My yoke, and bear it for My sake. It will be heavy without Me; but with My grace and blessing it will be easy and light. I do not promise in the rest I confer to 'remove your shoulder from the burden,' to give you immunity from care, and trial, and exactions; but I will do better--I will impart strength and endurance to bear."
The existence of many is a pursuit after spurious and counterfeit rest, misnamed happiness--an aimless, vapid life of pleasure engrossed with objects which bring with them no sense of satisfaction or compensation--a dull, weary round in the world's monotonous tread-mill. This is not the rest Christ promises to His weary ones. Often the world's burdens, too, are weighted with unworthy accompaniments--wounded pride, injured self-love, disappointed ambition, the harboring of proud, vain-glorious thoughts. Here is a recipe for tranquillity of soul which the gospel may well claim as all its own--"For I am meek and lowly in heart." It has well been called the birth-song of Christianity--"He has put down the mighty from their seats, and has exalted the humble and meek."
It was by these principles the new creed won its way on earth--not by material agencies. The martial spirit, the greatest of the old-world forces, had its day and its collapse. The serene, gentle spirit, nurtured among the hills of Nazareth, fought a bloodless war and conquered, with the sole weapons in His armory--weapons which He Himself assayed--"meekness and lowliness." Rich and poor, master and slave, owned the magic of "this new thing on the earth;" they took His yoke upon them, and, by strange paradox, all who tried found in the bearing of it rest.
Further--gather from this gracious saying the bliss of endurance, submission, forbearance, love; lifted above the fret and fever of the world, the clash of debasing rivalries. Be not aspiring after great things, or envious of others, tempted to quarrel with outer circumstances--in other words, showing dissatisfaction with the appointments of God, making base surrender of duty to self-interest.
The quiet mountain-lake is a beautiful thing, sleeping on its shadows, no ripple to disturb the placid mirror. But what is more inspiring and invigorating is the stream which issues from it, hurrying impetuously onward, battling its way over rock and boulder, to water and fertilize the plains below. Build your Hospice in the faithful study of Christ's spotless character and example, in its humility and self-sacrifice, combined with active consecration in doing His Father's will. "I am meek--I am lowly." These are the two silver and golden bells--curfew-chimes ringing to deepest and truest rest. They together constitute the true "patent of nobility." In the possession of calm, elevated peace in Himself, as on a mount of transfiguration, the tumults of passion are hushed, and with the favored disciple on Hermon you are able to exclaim--"It is good for us to be here." Moreover, included in this is the blessed privilege, taught by the meek and lowly Master, of helping other weary ones to bear their burdens and carry their crosses.
"I know we are not here
For our own selfish ease;
The kingliest One the earth has known
Lived not Himself to please.
And they who have truly learned of Him
How a burden can give rest,
And joyfully share the great human care,
Have learned life's secret best."
Beautiful and touching is the plea of the apostle immediately following--"Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift."
"I beseech you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ."
"This is the resting place, let the weary rest. This is the place of repose." Isaiah 28:12

THE REASSURING VOICE
"Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."
"Be of good cheer; it is I--be not afraid." Matt. 14:27
It surely was an exceptional season of fear and unrest with the disciples, that night-storm on the Sea of Galilee.
The saddest feature of the moment was that faith--the strong resolute faith of other times--had now deserted their better natures. They could see nothing but perilous environment, the surging billows and the darkness--for "it was the fourth watch of the night," about three o'clock, when the gloom was deepest, and no flush of morn as yet had tinted the wild hills of Gadara. Strangely different from their experience on a former occasion! He was then with them. Though asleep on "a coil of ropes for His pillow," He was there. They had the comfort of His Presence. They could awake (as they did awake) the weary slumberer; and the voice of the God within the toil-worn man rebuked the waves and turned the storm into a calm. Now it was different--their despairing monotone rather was, "How has He left us at the moment we most needed Him?" "Surely the Lord has forsaken me, and my God has forgotten me!" No, more, when He at last appeared on the crest of the waves, instead of recognizing Him with a shout of adoring welcome, they in their superstitious fear imagined that a demon of the deep, an apparition premonitory of death, had come from the spirit-world. Their cry was a cry of trouble.
To such unworthy turbulence and misgiving truly they need not have given way. We know from the context where He had been all night--on some adjoining mountain engaged in prayer--engaged in prayer for them, watching through the darkness their tempest-tossed bark, in sympathetic touch with their palpitating hearts, and eager to speak His word of power. At last it is spoken. He who comes down from the mountain oratory to tread the waters, pronounces His gracious rest words--the reassuring "It is I" (literally, I AM). It is preceded and followed by "Fear not"--"Be not afraid." There can be no mistake. "O Lord God of hosts, who is a strong Lord like unto You? You rule the raging of the sea--when the waves thereof arise, You still them."
It is a parable of profounder spiritual realities. In the unrest of the soul, amid the swirls and eddies of life's ocean, Jesus comes to His people--most often, too, when darkness is deepest. The sensible tokens of His love and mercy seem withdrawn. In their misgiving and incredulity they wail out the plaintive cry, "Where is now my God?" He seems, in accordance with the narrative of the storm, "as if he would pass them by." "My way is hidden from the Lord, my judgment is passed over from my God."
"Be still!" Let patience have her perfect work. He will in His own time and way change the storm into a calm. We are, alas! often ourselves responsible for our unworthy despondencies. We turn our backs to the Sun of Righteousness. There is a shadow projected, but that shadow is our own. We conjure up some phantasms of unbelieving doubt. We say, like the disciples, "It is a spirit," and we "cry out for fear." Let us look away from ourselves, the surging waves and billows within us and around us, and keep the unwavering eye of faith on Him who is waiting to give rest to the weary, and peace to the troubled, and hope to the desponding. To revert to our figure, He has His Hospice built at every turn of the perilous way. He fences it with these same two buttresses--"Fear not; IT IS I; be not afraid."
"O Redeemer! Shall one perish
Who has looked to You for aid?
Let me see You, let me hear You,
Through the gloomy midnight shade,
Utter You Your voice of comfort–
'It is I; be not afraid!'"
In all time of our tribulation He will be true to His promise--"I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him." As the Hospice is most valued by the tempest-beaten traveler, so every trial is a fresh reason for resorting to "the Refuge from the storm, the Covert from the tempest." And when the last trouble of all, the hour of departure arrives, the Hospice-gates will be opened by the Divine Promiser of Rest, and the triplet-comfort fall for the last time on the ears of the weary and heavy laden– "Fear not; it is I; be not afraid."
"This is the resting place, let the weary rest. This is the place of repose." Isaiah 28:12

Isaiah 28:12

“To whom he said, This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest; and this is the refreshing: yet they would not hear.” 

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