1. 1. ROMA S 12 VERSES 12-21 COMME TARY EDITED BY GLE PEASE 12Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Barclay, We are to rejoice in hope. When Alexander the Great was setting out upon one of his eastern campaigns, he was distributing all kinds of gifts to his friends. In his generosity he had given away nearly all his possessions. "Sir," said one of his friends, "you will have nothing left for yourself." "Oh, yes, I have," said Alexander, "I have still my hopes." The Christian must be essentially an optimist. Just because God is God, the Christian is always certain that "the best is yet to be." Just because he knows of the grace that is sufficient for all things and the strength that is made perfect in weakness, the Christian knows that no task is too much for him. "There are no hopeless situations in life; there are only men who have grown hopeless about them." There can never be any such thing as a hopeless Christian. Barclay, We are to meet tribulation with triumphant fortitude. Someone once said to a gallant sufferer: "Suffering colours all life, doesn't it?" "Yes," said the gallant one, "it does, but I propose to choose the colour." When the dreadful affliction of complete deafness began to descend on Beethoven and life seemed to be one unbroken disaster, he said: "I will take life by the throat." As William Cowper had it: "Set free from present sorrow, We cheerfully can say. `Even let the unknown tomorrow Bring with it what it may, It can bring with it nothing But he will bear us through.'" When ebuchadnezzar cast Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego into the burning fiery furnace he was amazed that they took no harm. He asked if three men had not been cast into the flames. They told him it was so. He said, "But I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they are not hurt; and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods" (Dn.3:24-25). A man can meet anything when he meets it with Christ. Barclay, We are to persevere in prayer. Is it not the case that there are times in life when we let day add itself to day and week to week, and we never speak to God? When a man ceases to pray, he despoils himself of the strength of Almighty God. o man should be surprised when life collapses if he insists on living it alone. BARNES, Rejoicing in hope - That is, in the hope of eternal life and glory which the gospel produces; see the notes at Rom_5:2-3.
2. 2. Patient in tribulation - In affliction patiently enduring all that maybe appointed. Christians may be enabled to do this by the sustaining influence of their hope of future glory; of being admitted to that world where there shall be no more death, and where all tears shall be wiped away from their eyes, Rev_21:4; Rev_7:17; compare Jam_1:4. See the influence of hope in sustaining us in affliction more fully considered in the notes at Rom_8:18-28. Continuing instant in prayer - That is, be persevering in prayer; see Col_4:2; see the notes at Luk_18:1. The meaning of this direction is, that in order to discharge aright the duties of the Christian life, and especially to maintain a joyful hope, and to be sustained in the midst of afflictions, it is necessary to cherish a spirit of prayer, and to live near to God. How often a Christian should pray, the Scriptures do not inform us. Of David we are told that he prayed seven times a day Psa_119:164; of Daniel, that he was accustomed to pray three times a day Dan_6:10; of our Saviour we have repeated instances of his praying mentioned; and the same of the apostles. The following rules, perhaps, may guide us in this. (1) Every Christian should have some time allotted for this service, and some place where he may be alone with God. (2) It is not easy, perhaps not possible, to maintain a life of piety without regular habits of secret devotion. (3) The morning, when we have experienced Gods protecting care, when the mind is fresh, and the thoughts are as yet clear and unoccupied with the world, when we go forth to the duties, trials, and temptations of the day; and the evening, when we have again experienced his goodness, and are about to commit ourselves to his protecting care, and when we need his pardoning mercy for the errors and follies of the day, seem to be times which commend themselves to all as appropriate seasons for private devotion. (4) Every person will also find other times when private prayer will be needful, and when he will be inclined to it. In affliction, in perplexity, in moments of despondency, in danger, and want, and disappointment, and in the loss of friends, we shall feel the propriety of drawing near to God, and of pouring out the heart before him. (5) Besides this, every Christian is probably conscious of times when he feels especially inclined to pray; he feels just like praying; he has a spirit of supplication; and nothing but prayer will meet the instinctive desires of his bosom. We are often conscious of an earnest desire to see and converse with an absent friend, to have communion with those we love; and we value such fellowship as among the happiest moments of life. So with the Christian. He may have an earnest desire to have communion with God; his heart pants for it; and he cannot resist the propensity to seek him, and pour out his desires before him. Compare the feelings expressed by David in Psa_42:1-2, As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee O God. My soul thirsteth for God for the living God; when shall I come and appear before God; compare Psa_63:1. Such seasons should be improved; they are the spring times of our piety; and we should expand every sail, that we may be filled with all the fullness of God. They are happy, blessed moments of our life; and then devotion is sweetest and most pure; and then the soul knows what it is to have fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ, 1Jo_1:3. (6) In addition to all this, Christians may be in the habit of praying to God without the formality of retirement, God locks upon the heart; and the heart may pour forth its secret desires to Him even when in business, when conversing with a friend, when walking, when alone, and when in society. Thus, the Christian may live a life of prayer; and it shall be one of the characteristics of his life that he prays! By this he shall be known; and in this he shall learn the way to possess peace in religion: In every joy that crowns my days, In every pain I bear. My heart shall find delight in praise, Or seek relief in prayer. When gladness wings my favoud hour,
3. 3. Thy love my thoughts shall fill, Resignd when storms of sorrow lower, My soul shall meet thy will, My lifted eye, without a tear. The gathering storm shall see. My steadfast heart shall know no fear, That heart shall rest on thee. CLARKE, Rejoicing in hope - Of that glory of God that to each faithful follower of Christ shall shortly be revealed. Patient in tribulation - Remembering that what you suffer as Christians you suffer for Christs sake; and it is to his honor, and the honor of your Christian profession, that you suffer it with an even mind. Continuing instant in prayer - Making the most fervent and intense application to the throne of grace for the light and power of the Holy Spirit; without which you can neither abhor evil, do good, love the brethren, entertain a comfortable hope, nor bear up patiently under the tribulations and ills of life. GILL, Rejoicing in hope,.... Of the glory of God, than the hope of which nothing can make a believer more cheerful in this world; the saints' joy is therefore called the "rejoicing of the hope", Heb_3:6. This is placed between serving the Lord, and being patient in tribulation; for nothing tends more to animate the people of God to a cheerful serving of him, or to make them more patient under afflictions, than a hope of being for ever with the Lord: patient in tribulation; whilst the saints are in this world they must expect tribulation; their way to heaven lies through it; and it becomes them to be patient under it, not murmuring against God, on the one hand, nor reviling of men, on the other. Continuing instant in prayer: prayer is needful at all times, but especially in a time of tribulation and distress, whether inward or outward. This should be made without ceasing; saints should watch unto it with all perseverance; men should pray always, and not faint; never give out and over, or be discouraged. This advice is rightly given and placed here, to teach us that we are to go to the throne of grace continually for fresh supplies of grace, and strength to enable us to exercise the grace, and perform the duties exhorted to both in preceding and following verses. JAMISON, Rejoicing, etc. Here it is more lively to retain the order and the verbs of the original: In hope, rejoicing; in tribulation, enduring; in prayer, persevering. Each of these exercises helps the other. If our hope of glory is so assured that it is a rejoicing hope, we shall find the spirit of endurance in tribulation natural and easy; but since it is prayer which strengthens the faith that begets hope and lifts it up into an assured and joyful expectancy, and since our patience in tribulation is fed by this, it will be seen that all depends on our perseverance in prayer.
4. 4. CALVIN, 12.Rejoicing in hope, etc. Three things are here connected together, and seem in a manner to belong to the clause the time; for the person who accommodates himself best to the time, and avails himself of the opportunity of actively renewing his course, is he who derives his joy from the hope of future life, and patiently bears tribulations. However this may be, (for it matters not much whether you regard them as connected or separated,) he first; forbids us to acquiesce in present blessings, and to ground our joy on earth and on earthly things, as though our happiness were based on them; and he BIDS us to raise our minds up to heaven, that we may possess solid and full joy. If our joy is derived from the hope of future life, then patience will grow up in adversities; for no kind of sorrow will be able to overwhelm this joy. Hence these two things are closely connected together, that is, joy derived from hope, and patience in adversities. No man will indeed calmly and quietly submit to bear the cross, but he who has learnt to seek his happiness beyond this world, so as to mitigate and allay the bitterness of the cross with the consolation of hope. But as both these things are far above our strength, we must be instant in prayer, and CONTINUALLY call on God, that he may not suffer our hearts to faint and to be pressed down, or to be broken by adverse events. But Paul not only stimulates us to prayer, but expressly requires perseverance; for we have a continual warfare, and new conflicts daily arise, to sustain which, even the strongest are not equal, unless they frequently gather new rigor. That we may not then be wearied, the best remedy is diligence in prayer. PULPIT, In hope rejoicing; in tribulation enduring; in prayer CONTINUING communicating to the necessities of the saints (i.e. Christians); given to (literally, pursuing) hospitality. Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not. In Rom_12:14 the form of the admonition passes from participles to direct imperatives, a positive command of Christ being adduced. In Rom_12:15the gentler admonitory form of in the infinitive is taken up, passing to participles, as before in Rom_12:16. GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE, For the Battle Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing stedfastly in prayer.Rom_12:12. 1. Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing stedfastly in prayer. At first sight they are three separate injunctions. Let some whose lot has fallen in pleasant places rejoice; let others whose lot is dark suffer patiently; let still others devote themselves to continual prayer. Or musing on the exhortations the idea may come to us that they are a descending scale. If I have faltered more or less In my great task of happiness; If I have moved among my race And shown no glorious morning face; If beams from happy human eyes Have moved me not; if morning skies, Books, and my food, and summer rain
5. 5. Knocked on my sullen heart in vain: Lord, Thy most pointed pleasure take And stab my spirit broad awake; Or, Lord, if too obdurate I, Choose Thou, before that spirit die, A piercing pain, a killing sin, And to my dead heart run them in!1 [Note: R. L. Stevenson, Underwoods.] And if pain fails to waken my heart fully to God, let me cling humbly and continuously to prayer. Let me not fail of prayer so that at the end my spirit may be attuned to Gods, and my life be not in vain. 2. But St. Paul, when he wrote these words, addressed them to the Christians of the Roman Church for whom he foresaw persecution in the near future, even if they were not suffering from it at this very time. And he would have them practise hope and patience and prayer in their persecution, and all at the same time. The old physicians tell us of two antidotes against poison, the hot and the cold, and they dilate upon the special excellence of each of these; in like manner the Apostle Paul gives us first the warm antidote, rejoicing in hope, and then he gives us the cool antidote, patient in tribulation. Either of these, or both together, will work wonderfully for the sustaining of the spirit; but it is to be observed that neither of these remedies can be taken into the soul unless it is mixed with a draught of prayer. Joy and patience are curative essences, but they must be dropped into a glass full of supplication, and then they will be wonderfully efficient.1 [Note: C. H. Spurgeon.] 3. St. Pauls primary meaning in the word which is translated tribulation in our English version was persecution. But let us take tribulation in its usual sense of every kind of trial through which a man may have to pass. With this meaning let us see the dependence between the clauses and the possibility of the Christian following the three injunctions at the same time. (1) Rejoice in hope; be patient in tribulation. This is an utter impossibility to the man whose hope is of this world, and who looks for mere ordinary happiness. To him tribulation is the supreme obstacle to hope and joy. If he suffers he cannot be joyful; he loses his hope. But for the man who is full of Christs hope all is different. Hope, which comes to all, outwears the accidents of life, and reaches with tremulous hand beyond the grave and death. The Christians hope alters his idea of tribulation. Poverty, that is tribulation enough. But the monk embraces a life of poverty and self-denial of his own free-will.
6. 6. Nuns fret not at their convents narrow room; And hermits are contented with their cells. Poverty has lost its grimness. It wears a smiling face. But, further, though the tribulation may remain very real the Christian accepts itnay, welcomes itas helping him on his way. And because of his great abiding hope the tribulation is dwarfed. People may lay down their lives with cheerfulness in the sure expectation of a blessed immortality; but that is a different affair from giving up youth, with all its admirable pleasures, in the hope of a better quality of gruel in a more than problematical, nay, more than improbable, old age.1 [Note: R. L. Stevenson, Crabbed Age and Youth.] (2) Now let us take the last two clauses together. Continue stedfastly in prayer; be patient in tribulation. If we continue in prayer, does it follow that we shall be patient under trial? R. J. Campbell, in A Faith for To-Day, says: I well remember the curious feeling with which I once encountered a man who prayed long and earnestly for a certain academic distinctiona distinction which could fall to one and one only. He was greatly chagrined and disappointed, and inclined to reproach God, when the honour went to another instead of himself. The earnestness of his prayers was unquestionable. But not so did St. Paul conceive of prayer. His model was the Master who in His agony said, Thy will be done. So the Apostle would have these Roman Christians put themselves on Gods side in their praying. And in all things he shall yield up his own will, saying and thinking in his heart, Lord, I am as willing to be poor and without all those things of which Thou hast deprived me as I should be ready to be rich, Lord, if Thy will were so, and if in that state I might further Thy glory. It is not my natural will which must be done, but Thy will and the will of my spirit. Lord, I am thine, and I should be Thine as gladly in hell as in heaven, if in that way I could advance Thy glory. So then, O Lord, fulfil in me the good pleasure of Thy will.2 [Note: Maurice Maeterlinck, Ruysbroeck and the Mystics, 135.] And with this spirit in prayer patience under trial will not be denied. At this season the sun enters into the sign of Libra, for the day and night are equal, and light and darkness evenly balanced. Even so for the resigned soul Jesus Christ is in the sign of Libra; and whether He grants sweetness or bitterness, darkness or light, of whatever nature His gift may be, the man retains his balance, and all things are one to him, with the exception of sin, which has been driven out once for all. And the more steadfast the prayer the more will the link be strengthened which binds our soul to God, and the more grace we will receive to meet each need of life. All trouble and anguish, loss and pain, When theyve done their task appointed, Vanish and fade; it is joy that lasts.
7. 7. The seer, with vision anointed, Beholds the flash of a rising dawn, Though the midnight skies are gray Patience, poor soul, with the present pain There cometh a better day. I Rejoicing in Hope There are those who stigmatize Christianity as a religion of sorrow. They tell us that, like a bitter wind, it withers the flowers, that it says of laughter, It is mad, and of mirth, What doeth it? They contrast it, still ignorantly, with the gay and careless humanism of the ancient world. They dare to say Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from Thy breath. We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death. But this is not Christianity after the mind of the Apostle Paul. Rejoice in hope, he says to the Roman Christians. It would be difficult to find a more decided expression of optimism. The cheery tone is never absent from St. Pauls speech. The buoyant and springy movement of his life is never changed. The light never dies out of his sky. Even the grey firmament reveals more hopeful tints, and becomes significant of evolving glory. The Apostle is an optimist, rejoicing in hope, a child of light, wearing the armour of light, walking in the light, even as Christ is in the light. Nor was this Apostolic optimism a thin and fleeting sentiment begotten of a cloudless summer day. It was not born of sluggish thinking or of idle and shallow observation. The first chapter of this Epistle to the Romans contains as dark and searching an indictment of our nature as the mind of man has ever drawn. Let us rehearse the appalling catalogue, that the radiance of the Apostles optimism may appear the more abounding: Senseless hearts, fools, uncleanness, vile passions, reprobate minds, unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity, whisperers, backbiters, hateful to God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection, unmerciful. With fearless severity the Apostle leads us through the black realms of midnight and eclipse. And yet in the subsequent reaches of the great argument, of which these dark regions form the preface, there emerges the clear, calm, steady light of this optimistic text. What was the cause of this courageous and energetic optimism? What can we do to imitate it? We can choose what we will look at. We can choose our atmosphere like the people of Italy who in frosty weather will be seen sitting in the market-place by their stalls with a dish of embers, which they grasp in their hands, and so make
8. 8. themselves comfortably warm on the bitterest day. St. Paul looked at three things: 1. He fixed his eyes on the Redemption of Christ.In all the spacious reaches of the Apostles life the redemptive work of his Master is present as an atmosphere in which his thoughts and purposes and labours found their sustaining and enriching breath. Redemption was not degraded into a fine abstract argument, to which the Apostle had appended his own approval, and then, with sober satisfaction, had laid it aside, as a practical irrelevancy, in the stout chests of mental orthodoxy. It became the very spirit of his life. To him it was not a small device, an afterthought, a patched-up expedient to meet an unforeseen emergency. The redemptive purpose lay back in the abyss of the eternities; and in a spirit of reverent questioning the Apostle sent his trembling thoughts into those lone and silent fields. He emerged with whispered secrets such as these: fore-knew, fore-ordained, chosen in him before the foundation of the world, eternal life promised before times eternal, the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord. What a wonderful consciousness St. Paul has of the sweep and fulness of redemption. We know the variations of the glorious air: the unsearchable riches of Christ; riches in glory in Christ Jesus; all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ; the riches of his goodness and forbearance and long-suffering. And what is the resultant enfranchisement? Recall those wonderful sentences beginning with the words But now. It is a phrase that heralds a great deliverance. But now apart from the law a righteousness of God hath been manifested. But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God. But now are ye light in the Lord. These represent no thin abstractions. To St. Paul the realities of which they speak were more real than the firm and solid earth. And is it any wonder that a man with such a magnificent sense of the reality of the redemptive work of Christ, who felt the eternal purpose throbbing in the dark backward and abyss of time, who conceived it operating upon our race in floods of grace and glory, and who realized in his own immediate consciousness the varied wealth of the resultant emancipationis it any wonder that for this man a new day had dawned, and the birds had begun to sing and the flowers to bloom, and a sunny optimism had taken possession of his heart which found expression in an assured and rejoicing hope?1 [Note: J. H. Jowett.] 2. St. Paul fixed his mind next on the reality and greatness of his present resources.By Christ redeemedyes, but that is only the Alpha and not the Omega of the work of grace. By Christ redeemed; in Christ restored. St. Pauls mental and spiritual outlook comprehended a great army of positive forces labouring in the interests of the Kingdom of God. Look at some of his auxiliaries: Christ liveth in me. Christ liveth in me! He breathes through all my aspirations. He thinks through all my thinking. He wills through all my willing. He loves through all my loving. He travails in all my labours. He works within me to will and to do of his good pleasure. That is the primary faith of the hopeful life. But see what follows in swift and immediate succession. If Christ is in you, the spirit is life. The spirit is life! And therefore we find that in the Apostles thought dispositions are powers. They are not passive entities. They are positive forces vitalizing and energizing the common life of men. To St. Paul love expressed more than a relationship. It was an energy productive of abundant labours. Faith was more than an attitude. It was an energy creative of mighty endeavour. Hope was more than a posture. It was an energy generative of a most enduring patience. All these are dynamics, to be counted as active allies, co-operating in the ministry of the
9. 9. Kingdom. And so the Epistles abound in the recital of mystic ministries at work. The Holy Spirit worketh! Grace worketh! Faith worketh! Love worketh! Prayer worketh! And there are other allies robed in less attractive garb. Tribulation worketh! Godly sorrow worketh! St. Paul never mentions the enemy timidly. He never seeks to underestimate his strength. Nay, again and again he catalogues all possible antagonisms in a spirit of buoyant and exuberant triumph. However numerous the enemy, however towering and well-established the iniquity, however black the gathering CLOUDS , so sensitive is the Apostle to the wealthy resources of God that amidst it all he remains a sunny optimist, rejoicing in hope, labouring in the spirit of a conqueror even when the world was exulting in his supposed discomfiture and defeat. 3. And, thirdly, he fixed his thoughts on the wonder of the glory to come.Can we safely exile this thought from our moral and spiritual culture? We know that this particular contemplation is largely absent from modern religious life, and we know the nature of the recoil in which our present impoverishment began. Let us hear less about the mansions of the blest, and more about the housing of the poor! Men revolted against an effeminate contemplation which had run to seed, in favour of an active philanthropy which sought the enrichment of the common life. But we have lost immeasurably by the uprooting of this plant of heavenly contemplation. We have built on the erroneous assumption that the contemplation of future glory inevitably unfits us for the service of man. Were Richard Baxters labours thinned or impoverished by his contemplation of the saints everlasting rest? When we consider his mental output, his abundant labours as Father-confessor to a countless host, his pains and persecutions and imprisonments, we cannot but think he received some of the powers of his optimistic endurance from contemplations such as he counsels in his incomparable book. Run familiarly through the streets of the heavenly Jerusalem; visit the patriarchs and prophets, salute the apostles, and admire the armies of martyrs; lead on the heart from street to street, bring it into the palace of the great King; lead it, as it were, from chamber to chamber. Say to it, Hear must I lodge, here must I die, here must I praise, here must I love and be loved. My tears will then be wiped away, my groans be turned to another tune, my cottage of clay be changed to this palace, my prison rags to these splendid robes; for the former things are passed away. Hope, though slow she be, and late, Yet outruns swift time and fate; And aforehand loves to be With remote futurity. Hope is comfort in distress, Hope is in misfortune bliss,
10. 10. Hope in sorrow is delight, Hope is day in darkest night. Hope cast upward is to where Storms do never domineer; Trust and hope will welcome thee There to full security.1 [Note: Francis Beaumont.] Our thought of future glory must have several elements in it if it is to nourish our hope as it nourished his. (1) It must have an element of personality in it. It must be a hope which means future fulfilment to me. It must not, like Buddhism, represent the loss of personalityannihilationas the reward. It must not offer us even the stimulus of the positivists. You desire hope, they say; there is hope; we will grant immortalityan immortality of influence. The good you do shall live after you. No. There must be an immortality in the vision and communion of Him whom to serve is eternal life. (2) It must have an element of recovery in it. How we crave the recovery of lost friends! Is it all over when they leave us? The heart refuses to think so. It clings to the thought of reunion. Christ is the pledge of thatChrist the Uniter, who as on earth at the house of Jairus, at the bier of Nain, at the grave of Bethany, is the Joiner of parted hands and sundered lives, delivering divided ones to each other. We crave also the recovery of lost energies. Capacities that are checked by its ungenial conditions, aspirations that are thwarted by its narrow limits, expenditures of effort and affection that are made void by its thankless receptions, we think of them all. Has God created them only that they may be thrown away? Shall He not rather have respect to the work of His hands, and perfect that which concerneth us? Our hope is in Christ, who not only pledges their recovery, but promises that they shall be recovered by us, as the ultimate witnesses of His faithfulness, the ultimate sharers of His joy. (3) It must have an element of catholicity in it. Hope, if it is to be true and complete, must embrace in its comprehensive sweep not only good for ourselves, in the attainment of a personal immortality and the re- establishment of personal ties, but good for the whole wide creation. It must include the purifying and the rectifying of society, the evangelizing of the nations, and the transforming of nature itself. No expectation would be perfect which does not blend with its pictures of individual and mutual blessedness the picture of a regenerate world, free from the curse and crowned with the blessing, bathed in the glory of God most precious, the brightness of His perfect purity, the beauty of His finished plan.
11. 11. Lo! crowned with unutterable calm And robed in light, came up the day-star Hope, The virgin mother of the Christ of Joy. Clear were her eyes with innocence, and deep With dreams. Her lips were full with mysteries. A crystal globe she held, wherein were seen New vistas unimaginably fair. Her presence seemed a kiss of God, which all Rose up to take. In the diffused light Of her adorable simplicity Each man threw down his habit of disguise And stood before his fellows, candid, brave, Yet wearing weakness meekly, as a babe Will wear it.1 [Note: Anna Bunston, The Porch of Paradise, 12.] II Patient in Tribulation St. Paul is his own best commentary on his own counsels. His purposes were frequently broken by tumultuous shocks. His plans were destroyed by hatred and violence. His course was twisted here, diverted there, and wrenched a hundred times from its appointed goings by the mischievous plots of wicked men. The little churches he had founded were in chronic disturbance and unrest. They were often infested with puerilities, and sometimes they were honeycombed by heresies which consumed their very life. And yet how sound and noble his patience! With what fruitful tenderness he waits for his lagging pupils! His very reproofs are given, not with the blind, clumsy blows of a street mob, but with the quiet, discriminating hand of a surgeon. This man, more than most men, had proved the hygienic value of endurance, and he, more than most men, was competent to counsel his fellow-believers to discipline themselves to patience in tribulation. i. Tribulation
12. 12. What is tribulation? Tribulation is comprehensive enough. It denotes every possible loss, cross, trouble that can enter into the mind of man; whatever we passively suffer, whatever we actively endure. Let us look at tribulation, then, in some of its different aspects. Patient in tribulation? Yes. But make sure first of all that the tribulation is real, not fancied. Did we ever try to estimate the proportion in which the fanciful, the fictitious, the imaginary ills in life stand to the actual? Is it not the case that many a man makes his own sorrows, and that the things we anticipate, but which never happen, have more in them of calamity and burden than what we are forced in Providence to endure? Real tribulation we can divide into two kindsthat which comes to us from others, and that which comes from ourselves. 1. Tribulation from without.This kind of tribulation has both a positive and a negative side. Take the positive first that is, actual suffering caused us by others. This kind of tribulation was most immediately in the mind of the Apostle Paul when he wrote the words first to the little Roman Church. Dark CLOUDS were gathering, threatenings of coming trouble. Days of persecution were at hand. Nero, hardening himself in vice, would soon need some one upon whom he could charge his guilt, and wreak his spite; no suffering would be too cruel with which to afflict the Church of God. To-day persecution does not take the same form. It is not so much bodily as mental persecution. The young man of to-day who follows Christ has no fear of death, imprisonment, or injury in any way to his body, but if he be thoroughgoing he is still persecutedpersecuted by jeers and laughter and even by calumny. One of our bishops, when he was a London incumbent, was at one time deeply distressed by the persistent calumnies of a certain obnoxious parishioner. He wrote for advice to a high legal luminary, who was also a very religious man. His answer was laconic; it was a quotation: Jesus stood before the governor. And when he was accused of the chief priests and elders, he answered nothing, insomuch that the governor marvelled greatly. Dear So-and-so, let the governor marvel greatly.1 [Note: Basil Wilberforce.] There is a kind of negative tribulation which also comes from without. It is the disappointment that others cause us the things we have to do without. Some glowing purpose has been suddenly frustrated; some bit of found work has been rudely broken. We suffer profound disappointment. And disappointment is apt to kindle irritation, and when that fire begins to burn much valuable furniture is in danger of being consumed. One of the greatest crises in Principal Rainys life was when the House of Lords delivered judgment against the United Free Church. Rainy had given the strength of his life to promoting the union between his own Church and the United Presbyterian Church, and now it seemed as though he had only brought his own Church into grave trouble. He was in the House of Lords when judgment was given. After the decision he took Mr. Haldanes arm and passed out with him. He was his guest in London. Mr. Haldane says that on the way home he never spoke. When they reached home he sat down and without any bitterness or resentment spoke, and the one expression of regret that fell from his lips was that he was old. Loitering progress is tribulation of an allied kind. Things are walking, and we want them to run; or they are running, and we want them to fly. We hear one and another say: Things dont go fast enough for me; or Things are too slow for me. And we become irritated, and then irritable, and we lose our patience, and in losing our patience we
13. 13. lose the very spirit and instrument of progress. How true this is in our relationship to little children, and especially to little children who are not highly gifted, and who have the misfortune to be dull-witted and slow. How fatal is the mistake to become impatient with them. To become impatient is to deprive them of the very atmosphere they require for journeying at all; impatience never converts dull-wittedness into quick-wittedness, and the teacher or parent who becomes impatient is robbing the child of its heritage, increasing its load of disadvantage, and making its little pilgrim journey prematurely dark and hard. O comrade bold, of toil and pain! Thy trial how severe, When severd first by prisoners chain From thy loved labour-sphere! Say, did impatience first impel The heaven-sent bond to break? Or, couldst thou bear its hindrance well, Loitering for Jesus sake? O might we know! for sore we feel The languor of delay, When sickness lets our fainter zeal, Or foes block up our way. Lord! who Thy thousand years dost wait To work the thousandth part
14. 14. Of Thy vast plan, for us create With zeal a patient heart.1 [Note: J. H. Newman.] 2. Tribulation from within.Quite as much of our tribulation is internal; it is not occasioned by others. Such trouble may be physical, as St. Pauls own thorn in the flesh. Or it may be mental and spiritual. There is no one who does any thinking at all but has entered the dark, cold, chilling circle of apparently insoluble mystery. It may be the burdensome presence of immediate and palpable realities, such as the presence of suffering and pain. Or it may be those problems lying upon the borderland, or well within that mysterious realm where we seem to have neither eyes nor ears, hands nor feet: the mystery of God, the mystery of Providence, the mystery of Jesus ChristHis incarnation, His resurrection, His glorification, His relation to sin and hope and human endeavour and the veiled to- morrow; and all the great pressing problems of human birth, and human life, and human destiny. What shall we do with them? Or, what shall we not do with them? Let us make it an essential in all our assumptions that a prerequisite to all discovery is patience in tribulation. Do not let us deal with them as though they were Christmas puzzles, to be taken up at odd moments and cursorily examined, and then thrown aside again in irritation and impetuous haste. Dr. Jowett says, I am amazed to observe how hastily men and women drop these things; they cannot be bothered with them, and so they retreat into a perilous indifference or into a fruitless agnosticism. George Eliot dropped her vital faith in the course of eleven days. Robert Elsmere dropped his vital faith with almost equal celerity. I heard from one young fellow who was burning all his boats and refusing to sail these vast, mysterious, glorious seas, and all because he had read a little pamphlet of not more than fifty pages from cover to cover! O why are darkness and thick CLOUD Wrapped close for ever round the throne of God? Why is our pathway still in mystery trod? None answers, though we call aloud. The seedlet of the rose, While still beneath the ground, Think you it ever knows The mystery profound
15. 15. Of its own power of birth and bloom, Until it springs above its tomb? The caterpillar crawls Its mean life in the dust, Or hangs upon the walls A dead aurelian crust; Think you the larva ever knew Its gold-winged FLIGHT before it flew? When from the port of Spain Columbus sailed away, And down the sinking main Moved towards the setting day, Could any words have made him see The new worlds that were yet to be? The boy with laugh and play FILLS OUT his little plan, Still lisping, day by day, Of how hell be a man;
16. 16. But can you to his childish brain Make aught of coming manhood plain? Let heaven be just above us, Let God be eer so nigh, Yet howsoeer He love us, And howeer much we cry, There is no speech that can make clear The thing that doth not yet appear. Tis not that God loves mystery. The things beyond us we can never know, Until up to their lofty height we grow, And finite grasps infinity.1 [Note: Minot Hudson Savage.] ii. Patience That which passes muster for the spirit of patience is sometimes only constitutional amiability, or lymphatic indifference and stagnation. 1. Let us look first, then, at this spiritthe spirit of indolence. Perhaps its most frequent cause is a want of sensitiveness. The person is not finely developed, and so does not feel the tribulation, unless it is very material indeedor at least does not feel it to anything like the same extent as his more sensitive brother. To the superficial onlooker he seems to be bearing his trial with patience; but he makes no progress, his capacity for sympathy is still dormant. Or his apparent patience may be the result of mere idleness. Browning in The Statue and the Bust teaches the paltriness of this kind of patience. From mere indolence the Bride of the Riccardi did not leave her husband and flee to the Great Duke Ferdinand whom she loved. It was no thought that she would be committing a sin that deterred her, and so her patience was worthless. She says:
17. 17. If I spend the night with that devil twice, May his window serve as my loop of hell Whence a damned soul looks on Paradise! I fly to the Duke who loves me well, Sit at his side and laugh at sorrow Ere I count another ave-bell. Tis only the coat of a page to borrow, And tie my hair in a horse-boys trim, And I save my soulbut not to-morrow. And he on his part argues: Yet my passion must wait a night, nor cool For to-night the Envoy arrives from France, Whose heart I unlock with thyself, my tool. Be sure that each renewed the vow, No morrows sun should arise and set
18. 18. And leave them then as it left them now. But next day passed, and next day yet, With still fresh cause to wait one day more Ere each leaped over the parapet. I hear you reproach, But delay was best For their end was a crimeOh, a crime will do As well, I reply, to serve for a test, As a virtue golden through and through, Sufficient to vindicate itself And prove its worth at a moments view! The counter our lovers staked was lost As surely as if it were lawful coin: And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost Is, the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin, Though the end in sight was a vice, I say You of the virtue, (we issue join)
19. 19. How strive you? De te, fabula! 2. But there is a finer spiritthe spirit of stoicismwhich animates some. It also, however, is a spirit of stagnation. It is no more than a surrender to the inevitable. Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever Gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud, Under the bludgeonings of chance, My head is bloody but unbowed. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the MASTER OF my fate, I am the captain of my soul.1 [Note: W. E. Henley.] 3. The spirit of progress. Wherein, then, lies the difference between the Christian spirit of progress and this old pagan spirit of stoicism? (1) Take the two attitudes towards death. Seneca, like a Stoic, argues thus: Death is universal, all men have died; death is inevitable, we must die. It is no good for any man to complain about the inevitable and the universal. It is better for us simply to submit to what we cannot alter. Now here stands St. Paul, face to face with death. It is not a pleasant death, any more than it was a pleasant life. But St. Paul says, To me to die is gain. I have a wish to depart
20. 20. and be with Christ, which is far better. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness. If the earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved we have a house, builded of God, eternal in the heavens. Such was the patience of Lazarus after his resurrection when his heart and brain moved there in glory, and his feet stay here. How, beast, said I, this stolid carelessness Sufficeth thee, when Rome is on her march To stamp out like a little spark thy town, Thy tribe, thy crazy tale and thee at once? He merely looked with his large eyes on me. The man is apathetic, you deduce? Contrariwise he loves both old and young, Able and weakaffects the very brutes And birdshow say I? flowers of the field As a wise workman recognizes tools In a masters workshop, loving what they make. Thus is the man as harmless as a lamb: Only impatient, let him do his best, At ignorance and carelessness and sin An indignation which is promptly curbed.1 [Note: Browning, Epistle of Karshish.] (2) Now if we have this spirit of patience in tribulation our pilgrim journey will be furthered; for to Christian patience there are two sides, a passive but also an active. We usually think of patience as a passive virtue, resignation, calm waiting for something to happen, as in Shakespeares classic lines: She sat like patience on a monument
21. 21. Smiling at grief. But the word has an active side, even in our common speech, as in the phrase a patient investigator, implying untiring industry. It carries with it the idea of fortitude and high courage, willing to suffer, to endure, working out great ends undiscouraged, without repining or fretfulness. The rock upon which the water drops, abides amidst the flux of the tides of the water, and is firm; but the camel, patient, moving across the thirsty desert, scenting by its wondrous instinct the oasis, or the city that is afar, is patientendures. (3) And, lastly, let us note that there are stages in Christian patience. We must begin with the true perspective and the feeling towards God of children to a Father, but after that we must sedulously cultivate the grace, advancing from step to step. Trustful acceptance of the will of God as the best possible for ushow difficult it is. But there are those who have risen to a still greater height and who not only accept the tribulation with patience, but feel actual joy in it. Dr. Griffith John has told us that one day, when he was surrounded by a hostile Chinese crowd, and violence was used, he put up his hand to his smitten face, and when he withdrew it, and saw it bathed in blood, he was possessed by an extraordinary sense of exaltation, and he rejoiced that he had been counted worthy to suffer shame for his name. David Hill records a similar experience of unspeakable ecstasy, when his hand hung limp from a brutal blow. But, indeed, the witnesses are multitudinous; they can be found in every corner of the great fields of service, suffering men and women, wearing their scars like medals, feeling as though there had been conferred upon them some heavenly title and degree, and stepping out in the assured companionship of the once crucified but risen Lord. III Continuing Stedfastly in Prayer The essence of prayer consists in drawing nigh; in other words, holding communion. The simplest and best test of a good prayer is: Did we draw nigh? Did we enter Gods Presence? Were we conscious that God was very nigh? Many times we have said our prayers but have never prayed; and this because our hearts were far from God. At other times, perhaps, we said no words but we entered the Presence with longing hearts. We looked, we thirsted, we wanted, and so we very truly prayed. Prayer is intercourse; it is praise; it is congratulation; it is adoration of the Infinite Majesty; it is a colloquy in which the soul engages with the All-wise and the All-holy; it is a basking in the sunshine, varied by ejaculations of thankfulness to the Sun of Righteousness for His light and His warmth. In this larger sense, the earlier part of the Te Deum is prayer as much as the latter part; the earliest and latest clauses of the Gloria in Excelsis as truly as the central ones; the Sanctus or the Jubilate no less than the Litany; the Magnificat as certainly as the fifty-first Psalm.
22. 22. St. Paul is addressing Christians, and so he does not simply say pray. He takes it for granted that they pray. But what he fears in them is a relaxing of their efforts, a losing of their first zeal in prayer, and so his exhortation is Continue stedfastly in prayer. Do not let the strength of your prayerful spirit escape, and do not let your acts of prayer, your special seasons diminish or grow less strenuous. It is an exhortation to hold fast. Let us look at the prayerful spirit; and then at occasions of prayer. It is almost impossible to separate them, for they act and react the one on the other. 1. The prayerful spirit.We cannot fulfil the Apostles exhortation even if we keep our regular seasons of prayer unless we have the prayerful spirit, the spirit of harmony with the will of God. It is the aspiration after all good, the wish, stronger than any earthly passion or desire, to live in His service only. It is the temper of mind which says in the evening, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit; which rises up in the morning, to do thy will, O God; and which all the day regards the actions of business and of daily life as done unto the Lord and not to men Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God. The trivial employments, the meanest or lowest occupations may receive a kind of dignity when thus converted into the service of God. This is the life of prayer, or rather the life which is itself prayer, which is always raised above this world, and yet is always on a level with this world; the life which has lost the sense of consciousness of self, and is devoted to God and to mankind, which may almost be said to think the thoughts of God, as well as do His works. 2. Acts of prayer.But the prayerful spirit cannot exist unless special acts of prayer are practised. A passive desire to live in the atmosphere of prayer is dangerous, unless it finds its proper activity in definite exercises of prayer. We shall succeed in maintaining the spirit of constant prayer only when we foster it by stated periods of devotion. If a man is right, and puts the practice of praying in its right place, then his serving and giving and speaking will be fairly fragrant with the presence of God. The great people of the earth to-day are the people who pray. I do not mean those who talk about prayer; nor those who say they believe in prayer; nor yet those who can explain about prayer; but I mean those people who take time to pray. They have not time. It must be taken from something else. This something else is important. Very important, and pressing, but less important and less pressing than prayer.1[Note: S. D. Gordon, Quiet Talks on Prayer, 12.] 3. Such continuance will not be without its effects. Its effects will be twofold. (1) The effect on the man who prays.No one denies that prayer has a subjective effect. It has an intellectual effect. Thus it has been observed that persons without natural ability have, through the earnestness of their devotional habits, acquired in time powers of sustained thought, and an accuracy and delicacy of intellectual touch, which would not otherwise have belonged to them. The intellect being the instrument by which the soul handles religious truth, a real interest in religious truth will of itself often furnish an educational discipline; it alone educates an intellect which would otherwise be uneducated. It has also a moral effect. Habitual prayer constantly confers decision on the wavering, and energy on the listless, and calmness on the excitable, and disinterestedness on the selfish. It braces the moral nature by transporting it
23. 23. into a clear, invigorating, unearthly atmosphere; it builds up the moral life, insensibly but surely remedying its deficiencies, and strengthening its weak points, till there emerges a comparatively symmetrical and consistent whole, the excellence of which all must admit, though its secret is known only to those who know it by experience. It has a social effect. Prayer makes men, as members of society, different in their whole bearing from those who do not pray. It gilds social intercourse and conduct with a tenderness, an unobtrusiveness, a sincerity, a frankness, an evenness of temper, a cheerfulness, a collectedness, a constant consideration for others, united to a simple loyalty to truth and duty, which leavens and strengthens society. It is not too much to say that prayer has even physical results. The countenance of a Fra Angelico reflects his spirit no less than does his art; the bright eye, the pure elevated expression speak for themselves It was said of Keble that in his later years his face was like that of an illuminated clock; the colour and gilding had long faded away from the hands and figures, but the ravages of time were more than compensated for by the light which shone from within. (2) The effect on those prayed for.The subjective effect of prayer does not cover the whole ground. Prayer has also an objective effect. A man may say, I can quite understand the good of praying for oneself; I can quite see that, according to Gods will, these gifts of grace are to be worked for by prayer, like the gifts of God in nature; but where is the evidence that there is the slightest good in praying for others? He might even take this linehe might say, It is presumptuous for me to imagine that I can affect the destiny of another soul! It is against what I read of the struggle for existence by each individual in nature. It is unfair, for what is to happen to those for whom no one prays? And where is the evidence that intercession for others does any good at all? Gilmour of Mongolia said: Unprayed for, I feel like a diver at the bottom of a river, with no air to breathe; or like a fireman with an empty hose in a blazing building. For nearly twenty years it was the daily practice of Cardinal Vaughans mother to spend an hourfrom five to six in the afternoonin prayer before the Blessed Sacrament asking this favourthat God would call every one of her children to serve Him in the Choir or in the Sanctuary. In the event all her five daughters entered convents, and of her eight sons six became priests; even the two who have remained in the world for a time entered ecclesiastical seminaries to try their vocations.1 [Note: J. G. Snead-Cox, Life of Cardinal Vaughan, i. 11.] 4. The encouragement.Be sure that no true prayer remains unanswered, though thousands of prayers remain ungranted. He who alone knows all the things we have need of sees fit again and again to refuse the thing we ask, or to deny even the most unselfish of requests, and to delay satisfaction of the purest desires on behalf of those whose sins or sorrows we have carried to His Throne of Grace. And yet, assuredly, all such prayer enters into His ears, and all such prayer is duly answered, if not granted, by Him. Do we not sometimes discover, it may be long after, how, in ways we little dreamt of, through channels of which we knew nothing, the blessing for which we pleaded in vain was vouchsafed at last? And when there is no such discovery, where the refusal of the good we asked seems absolutely decreed and final, is it not our wisdom to leave all in the Fathers hands, and believe that what we know not now we shall know hereafter? No disclosure which awaits us behind the veil could surpass in
24. 24. interest the revelation of what has been achieved for ourselves and others by genuine yet ungranted prayer. Two brothers freely cast their lot With Davids royal Son; The cost of conquest counting not, They deem the battle won. Brothers in heart, they hope to gain An undivided joy; That man may one with man remain, As boy was one with boy. Christ heard; and willd that James should fall, First prey of Satans rage, John linger out his fellows all, And die in bloodless age. Now they join hands once more above, Before the Conquerors throne; Thus God grants prayer, but in His love Makes times and ways His own.1 [Note: J. H. Newman.]
25. 25. MACLARE , ANOTHER TRIPLET OF GRACES Rom_12:12. These three closely connected clauses occur, as you all know, in the midst of that outline of the Christian life with which the Apostle begins the practical part of this Epistle. Now, what he omits in this sketch of Christian duty seems to me quite as significant as what he inserts. It is very remarkable that in the twenty verses devoted to this subject, this is the only one which refers to the inner secrets of the Christian life. Pauls notion of deepening the spiritual life was Behave yourself better in your relation to other people. So all the rest of this chapter is devoted to inculcating our duties to one another. Conduct is all-important. An orthodox creed is valuable if it influences action, but not otherwise. Devout emotion is valuable, if it drives the wheels of life, but not otherwise. Christians should make efforts to attain to clear views and warm feelings, but the outcome and final test of both is a daily life of visible imitation of Jesus. The deepening of spiritual life should be manifested by COMPLETER , practical righteousness in the market-place and the street and the house, which non-Christians will acknowledge. But now, with regard to these three specific exhortations here, I wish to try to bring out their connection as well as the force of each of them. I. So I remark first, that the Christian life ought to be joyful because it is hopeful. Now, I do not suppose that many of us habitually recognise it as a Christian duty to be joyful. We think that it is a matter of temperament and partly a matter of circumstance. We are glad when things go well with us. If we have a sunny disposition, and are naturally light-hearted, all the better; if we have a melancholy or morose one, all the worse. But do we recognise this, that a Christian who is not joyful is not living up to his duty; and that there is no excuse, either in temperament or in circumstances, for our not being so, and always being so? Rejoice in the Lord alway, says Paul; and then, as if he thought, Some of you will be thinking that that is a very rash commandment, to aim at a condition quite impossible to make constant, he goes on-and, to convince you that I do not say it hastily, I will repeat it-and again I say, rejoice. Brethren, we shall have to alter our conceptions of what true gladness is before we can come to understand the full depth of the great thought that joy is a Christian duty. The true joy is not the kind of joy that a saying in the Old Testament compares to the crackling of thorns under a pot, but something very much calmer, with no crackle in it; and very much deeper, and very much more in alliance with whatsoever things are lovely and of good REPORT , than that foolish, short-lived, and empty mirth that burns down so soon into black ashes. To be glad is a Christian duty. Many of us have as much religion as makes us sombre, and impels us often to look upon the more solemn and awful aspects of Christian truth, but we have not enough to make us glad. I do not need to dwell upon all the sources in Christian faith and belief, of that lofty and imperatively obligatory gladness, but I confine myself to the one in my text, Rejoicing in hope.
26. 26. Now, we all know-from the boy that is expecting to go home for his holidays in a week, up to the old man to whose eye the time-veil is wearing thin-that hope, if it is certain, is a source of gladness. How lightly ones bosoms lord sits upon its throne, when a great hope comes to animate us! how everybody is pleasant, and all things are easy, and the world looks different! Hope, if it is certain, will gladden, and if our Christianity grasps, as it ought to do, the only hope that is absolutely certain, and as sure as if it were in the past and had been experienced, then our hearts, too, will sing for joy. True joy is not a matter of temperament, so much as a matter of faith. It is not a matter of circumstances. All the surface drainage may be dry, but there is a well in the courtyard deep and cool and full and exhaustless, and a Christian who rightly understands and cherishes the Christian hope is lifted above temperament, and is not dependent upon conditions for his joys. The Apostle, in an earlier part of this same letter, defines for us what that hope is, which thus is the secret of perpetual gladness, when he speaks about rejoicing in hope of the glory of God. Yes, it is that great, supreme, calm, far off, absolutely certain prospect of being gathered into the divine glory, and walking there, like the three in the fiery furnace, unconsumed and at ease; it is that hope that will triumph over temperament, and over all occasions for melancholy, and will breathe into our life a perpetual gladness. Brethren, is it not strange and sad that with such a treasure by our sides we should consent to live such poor lives as we do? But remember, although I cannot say to myself, Now I will be glad, and cannot attain to joy by a movement of the will or direct effort, although it is of no use to say to a man-which is all that the world can ever say to him-Cheer up and be glad, whilst you do not alter the facts that make him sad, there is a way by which we can bring about feelings of gladness or of gloom. It is just this-we can choose what we will look at. If you prefer to occupy your mind with the troubles, losses, disappointments, hard work, blighted hopes of this poor sin-ridden world, of course sadness will come over you often, and a general grey tone will be the usual tone of your lives, as it is of the lives of many of us, broken only by occasional bursts of foolish mirth and empty laughter. But if you choose to turn away from all these, and instead of the dim, dismal, hard present, to sun yourselves in the light of the yet unrisen sun, which you can do, then, having rightly chosen the subjects to think about, the feeling will come as a matter of course. You cannot make yourselves glad by, as it were, laying hold of yourselves and lifting yourselves into gladness, but you can rule the direction of your thoughts, and so can bring around you summer in the midst of winter, by steadily contemplating the facts-and they are present facts, though we talk about them collectively as the future-the facts on which all Christian gladness ought to be based. We can carry our own atmosphere with us; like the people in Italy, who in frosty weather will be seen sitting in the market-place by their stalls with a dish of embers, which they grasp in their hands, and so make themselves comfortably warm on the bitterest day. You can bring a reasonable degree of warmth into the coldest weather, if you will lay hold of the vessel in which the fire is, and keep it in your hand and close to your heart. Choose what you think about, and feelings will follow thoughts. But it needs very distinct and CONTINUOUS effort for a man to keep this great source of Christian joy clear before him. We are like the dwellers in some island of the sea, who, in some conditions of the atmosphere, can catch sight of the gleaming mountain-tops on the mainland across the stormy channel between. But thick days, with a heavy atmosphere and much mist, are very frequent in our latitude, and then all the distant hills are blotted out, and we see nothing but the cold grey sea, breaking on the cold, grey stones. Still, you can scatter the mist if you
27. 27. will. You can make the atmosphere bright; and it is worth an effort to bring clear before us, and to keep high above the mists that cling to the low levels, the great vision which will make us glad. Brethren, I believe that one great source of the weakness of average Christianity amongst us to-day is the dimness into which so many of us have let the hope of the glory of God pass in our hearts. So I beg you to lay to heart this first commandment, and to rejoice in hope. II. Now, secondly, here is the thought that life, if full of joyful hope, will be patient. I have been saying that the gladness of which my text speaks is independent of circumstances, and may persist and be CONTINUOUS even when externals occasion sadness. It is possible-I do not say it is easy, God knows it is hard-I do not say it is frequently attained, but I do say it is possible-to realise that wonderful ideal of the Apostles As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. The surface of the ocean may be tossed and fretted by the winds, and churned into foam, but the great central depths hear not the loud winds when they call, and are still in the midst of tempest. And we, dear brethren, ought to have an inner depth of spirit, down to the disturbance of which no surface-trouble can ever reach. That is the height of attainment of Christian faith, but it is a possible attainment for every one of us. And if there be that burning of the light under the water, like Greek fire, as it was called, which many waters could not quench-if there be that persistence of gladness beneath the surface-sorrow, as you find a running stream coming out below a glacier, then the joy and the hope, which co-exist with the sorrow, will make life patient. Now, the Apostle means by these great words, patient and patience, which are often upon his lips, something more than simple endurance. That endurance is as much as many of us can often muster up strength to exercise. It sometimes takes all our faith and all our submission simply to say, I opened not my mouth, because thou didst it; and I will bear what thine hand lays upon me. But that is not all that the idea of Christian patience includes, for it also takes in the thought of active work, and it is perseverance as much as patience. Now, if my heart is filled with a calm gladness because my eye is fixed upon a celestial hope, then both the passive and active sides of Christian patience will be realised by me. If my hope burns bright, and occupies a large space in my thoughts, then it will not be hard to take the homely consolation of good John Newtons hymn and say- Though PAINFUL at present, Twill cease before long; And then, oh, how pleasant The conquerors SONG ! A man who is sailing to America, and knows that he will be in New York in a week, does not mind, although his
28. 28. cabin is contracted, and he has a great many discomforts, and though he has a bout of sea-sickness. The disagreeables are only going to last for a day or two. So our hope will make us bear trouble, and not make much of it. And our hope will strengthen us, if it is strong, for all the work that is to be done. Persistence in the path of duty, though my heart be beating like a smiths hammer on the anvil, is what CHRISTIAN MEN should aim at, and possess. If we have within our hearts that fire of a certain hope, it will impel us to diligence in doing the humblest duty, whether circumstances be for or against us; as some great steamer is driven right on its course, through the ocean, whatever storms may blow in the teeth of its progress, because, deep down in it, there are furnaces and boilers which supply the steam that drives the engines. So a life that is joyful because it is hopeful will be full of calm endurance and strenuous work. Rejoicing in hope; patient, persevering in tribulation. III. LASTLY , our lives will be joyful, hopeful, and patient, in proportion as they are prayerful. Continuing instant-which, of course, just means steadfast-in prayer. Paul uttered a paradox when he said, Rejoice in the Lord alway, as he said long before this verse, in the very first letter that he ever wrote, or at least the first which has come down to us. There he bracketed it along with two other equally paradoxical sayings. Rejoice evermore; pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks. If you pray without ceasing you can rejoice without ceasing. But can I pray without ceasing? Not if by prayer you mean only words of supplication and petition, but if by prayer you mean also a mental attitude of devotion, and a kind of sub-conscious reference to God in all that you do, such unceasing prayer is possible. Do not let us blunt the edge of this commandment, and weaken our own consciousness of having failed to obey it, by getting entangled in the cobwebs of mere curious discussions as to whether the absolute ideal of perfectly unbroken communion with God is possible in this life. At all events it is possible to us to approximate to that ideal a great deal more closely than our consciences tell us that we ever yet have done. If we are trying to keep our hearts in the midst of daily duty in CONTACT with God, and if, ever and anon in the press of our work, we cast a thought towards Him and a prayer, then joy and hope and patience will come to us, in a degree that we do not know much about yet, but might have known all about long, long ago. There is a verse in the Old Testament which we may well lay to heart: They cried unto God in the battle, and He was entreated of them. Well, what sort of a prayer do you think that would be? Suppose that you were standing in the thick of battle with the sword of an enemy at your throat, there would not be much time for many words of prayer, would there? But the cry could go up, and the thought could go up, and as they went up, down would come the strong buckler which God puts between His servants and all evil. That is the sort of prayer that you, in the battle of business, in your shops and counting-houses and warehouses and mills, we students in our studies, and you mothers in your families and your kitchens, can send up to heaven. If thus we pray without ceasing, then we shall rejoice evermore, and our souls will be kept in patience and filled with the peace of God. BIBLICAL ILLUSTRATOR, Rejoicing in hope.
29. 29. I. What is it to rejoice? 1. Negatively-- (1) Not to have the senses pleased. (2) Nor does it consist in the imagination. 2. Positively; it consists in-- (1) The removal of sorrow from the heart (Psa_42:5). (2) The souls content and satisfaction (Luk_1:47). II. What is hope? It consists in-- (1) The belief of good things to be had (1Pe_1:13). (2) The expectation of them (Psa_42:5). (3) Making use of all lawful means for obtaining them (Heb_10:23-25; Est_4:14). III. What is it to rejoice in hope? To rest satisfied with the expectation of the good things God has promised. 1. An interest in Christ (1Pe_1:8; Rom_8:32-34). 2. The pardon of sin (Psa_32:5). 3. The love of God (Rom_5:1). 4. The working together of all things for our good (Rom_8:28). 5. Continual supplies of grace (2Co_12:9). 6. A joyful resurrection (1Co_15:19-20).
30. 30. 7. The enjoyment of God for ever (Psa_42:2). IV. What grounds have we to hope for these things, so as to rejoice in it? 1. The faithfulness of God (Tit_1:2). 2. His power (Mat_19:26). 3. The merits of Christ (2Co_1:20). Conclusion: Rejoice in hope. 1. Otherwise you dishonour God by mistrusting His promises (Rom_4:20). 2. You dishonour religion by accusing it of uncertainties. 3. You deprive yourself of happiness. 4. The more joyful in hope, the more active in duty. 5. Rejoice in hope now; in sight hereafter. (Bp. Beveridge.) Rejoicing in hope I. The source of this joy--Hope. 1. Glorious. 2. Certain. II. Its nature.
31. 31. 1. Sweet. 2. Solid. 3. Spiritual. 4. Purifying. III. Its expression. 1. Lively. 2. Practical. 3. Constant. IV. Its importance to-- 1. Ourselves. 2. The Church. 3. The world. (J. Lyth, D.D.) Rejoicing in hope 1. Hope is an instinct of the soul. Thou didst make me to hope when I was upon my mothers breasts. As an instinct-- (1) It implies the existence of a prospective good, and the possibility of coming into its possession. (2) It is one of the strongest and most operative forces in our nature. Hesiod tells us, that the miseries of all mankind were included in a great box, and that Pandoras husband took off the lid, by which means all of them came abroad, but hope remained still at the bottom,
32. 32. 2. The real worth of this instinct to man depends upon the direction it takes. (1) Wrongly directed, it is a fawning traitor of the mind. The goodly scenes it spreads out to the soul turn out to be a mere mirage. False hopes are like meteors that brighten the skies of the soul for a moment, only to leave the gloom more intense. They are mere blossoms on fruitless trees, pleasing the eye for the hour, then fading away and rotting into dust. Few things are more distressing than the loss of hope. Longfellow compares it to the setting of the sun. Solomon speaks of it as the giving up of the ghost. (2) Rightly directed, is among the chiefest of our blessings. It is that which gives sunshine to the sky, beauty to the landscape, and music to life. Such is the hope of which the apostle here speaks. Two things are essential to a joyous hope. I. A right object. 1. It must not-- (1) Be selfish. So constituted is the soul, that the hope that is directed exclusively to its own happiness never satisfies. Down deep in the soul is the feeling that man has to live for something greater and nobler than himself. (2) Be incapable of engaging all our powers. (3) Less lasting than its own existence. Man can never be fully happy whose hope is directed to the transient and the dying. 2. That which will give a joyous hope is moral goodness--assimilation to THE IMAGE of God. II. A certain foundation. Unless a man has good reason to believe that the object he hopes for is to be gained, he cannot rejoice in his hope. Three reasons for believing that a soul, guilty and depraved, can be brought into possession of true goodness, and restored to the very image of God, are-- 1. The provisions of the gospel. The life and death of Christ, the agency of the Spirit, and the disciplinary influences of human life are all divinely appointed methods to re-create the soul and to fashion it into the very image of God. 2. The biographies of sainted men. History abounds with examples of bad men becoming good. 3. The inward consciousness of moral progress. The man who has got this hope is conscious that he has made some progress, and that the steps he has taken have been the most difficult. His past efforts are aids and pledges
33. 33. to future success. (D. Thomas, D.D.) Patient in tribulation. I. what are tribulations? What-soever-- 1. Is HURTFUL to us. 2. Vexeth us. II. What is it to be patient? 1. Not to murmur against God (Exo_16:3). 2. Nor despair of deliverance (Psa_42:5). 3. Nor use unlawful means to get out of them. 4. To rest satisfied with them (1Sa_3:18). 5. To be thankful for them (Job_1:21-22; 1Th_5:18). III. Why are we to be patient? 1. They come from God (2Sa_16:10-12; Psa_39:2). 2. Are no more (Lam_3:39), but less than we deserve (Ezr_9:13). 3. Impatience does not heighten them. 4. By patience we change them into mercies as in Job, Joseph, David.
34. 34. Conclusion: Be patient. 1. No afflictions but others have borne (1Pe_4:12; 1Pe_5:9). 2. Christ has undergone more than we can (Rom_8:29; 1Pe_2:23; 1Pe_4:13). 3. God knows how to deliver us (2Pe_2:9). 4. By patience you make a virtue of necessity. 5. Will do you much good by them (Heb_12:6-8). (Bp. Beveridge.) Patient in tribulation I. Tribulation is unavoidable in this life. 1. Ordained of God. 2. For wise purposes. II. Should be borne with patience. 1. Not indifference. 2. But in silence. 3. Without repining. 4. With resignation. III. The reasons.
35. 35. 1. God is kind. 2. Life is but a probationary state. 3. Consolations are provided. 4. The results are glorious. (J. Lyth, D.D.) Patient in tribulation Some have floated on the sea, and trouble carried them on its surface, as the sea carries cork. Some have sunk at once to the bottom, as foundering ships sink. Some have run away from their own thoughts. Some have coiled themselves up in stoical indifference. Some have braved the trouble, and defied it. Some have carried it, as a tree does a wound, until by new wood it can overgrow and cover the old gash. A few in every age have known the divine art of carrying sorrow and trouble as wonderful food, as an invisible garment that clothed them with strength, as a mysterious joy, so that they suffered gladly, rejoicing in infirmity, and, holding up their heads with sacred presages whenever times were dark and troublous, let the light depart from their eyes, that they might by faith see nobler things than sight could reach. (H. W. Beecher.) Patient in tribulation All birds when they are first caught and put into the cage fly wildly up and down, and beat themselves against their little prisons; but within two or three days sit quietly on their perch, and sing their usual notes with their usual melody. So it fares with us, when God first brings us into a strait; we wildly flutter up and down, and beat and tire ourselves with striving to get free; but at length custom and experience will make our narrow confinement spacious enough for us; and though our feet should be in the stocks, yet shall we, with the apostles, be able even there to sing praises to our God. (Bp. Hopkins.) Continuing instant in prayer.-- I. What is prayer? 1. The hearty desire.
36. 36. (1) Mental (1Sa_1:13; Eph_5:10). (2) Oral (Joh_17:5). 2. Of necessary things. (1) Spiritual, for the life to come. (a) Sense of sin (Luk_13:3). (b) Faith in Christ (Luk_17:5). (c) Pardon of former transgressions (Psa_51:9). (d) Subduing present corruptions (Psa_19:12; Psa_91:13; Psa_119:133). (e) The continual influences of His grace and spirit (Psa_51:10; Luk_11:13). (2) Temporal, for this life (1Ti_4:8; Pro_30:8). 3. From God. (1) God alone is to be worshipped (Mat_4:10). (2) God alone understands our prayers (Isa_63:16). (3) He alone can answer them (Psa_65:2). (4) He commands us to call to Him (Jer_33:3; Psa_50:15). (5) Christ directs us to pray to Him (Mat_6:9). See the error of Papists, who pray to the Cross. To the Virgin Mary, etc. St. Roche for the plague. St. Apollonia for the toothache. St. Eulogius for horses. St. Anthony for hogs. St. Gallus for geese, etc. II. Why should we pray? 1. God hath commanded it (1Th_5:17).
37. 37. 2. Encouraged us with a promise (Psa_50:15; Mat_7:7). 3. Made it the condition of all promises (Eze_36:37). 4. It is part of Divine worship. 5. Hereby we give glory to God. (1) Of omnipresence (Psa_139:2-3). (2) Of omniscience (Psa_139:7). (3) Of omnipotence. 6. All blessings are sanctified by it (1Ti_4:5). 7. Only by this we acknowledge our dependence upon Him. III. How should we pray. 1. Before prayer, consider (Psa_10:17). (1) Who is it you go to pray to (Exo_34:6). (2) What you have to pray for (1Jn_5:14). (3) How unworthy you are to ask or receive (Gen_32:10). (4) That Christ is interceding for you (Eph_3:12; Heb_7:25). 2. In prayer. (1) Pray with that humility, reverence, and submission, as becomes a sinful creature (Gen_18:27; Luk_18:13; Ezr_9:6). (2) Utter nothing rashly before Him, nor mingle stories with petitions (Ecc_5:1-2). (3) Let every petition proceed from the heart (Joh_4:24).
38. 38. (4) Pray only in the name of Christ (Joh_14:13-14; Joh_16:23; Heb_7:25). (5) Let your affections and apprehensions go together (1Co_14:15). (6) Pray in faith (Mar_11:24; Jam_1:6). (7) Without wrath (1Ti_2:8; Mat_6:14-15). (8) For others as well as for yourselves (1Ti_2:1; Eph_6:18). (9) To the right end (Jam_4:3). (10) Add praise to prayers (Php_4:6; 1Ti_2:1). (a) Praising God is all that He expects for His mercies. (b) It is the best sacrifice we can offer (Psa_69:30-31). (c) It is the work of Heaven (Rev_7:9-10; Rev_19:1). 3. After prayer. (1) Consider what you have prayed for. (2) Expect it (Psa_5:3). (3) Use means for obtaining it. IV. When should we pray? Or how continue instant in prayer (Eph_6:18; 1Th_5:17). 1. Be always in a praying frame. 2. Take all occasions of praying. 3. Never faint in prayer (Luk_18:1; 2Co_12:8-9). 4. Make prayer your daily exercise.
39. 39. (1) We must serve God daily (Luk_1:75). (2) The sacrifices of the Old Testament were daily (Num_28:3; Act_3:1). (3) Christ directs us to ask our daily bread (Mat_6:11; Mat_6:33). (4) The saints in all ages prayed daily (Psa_55:17; Psa_119:164; Dan_6:10; 1Ki_8:48; Luk_2:37). (5) The heathen and the Turks do it. (6) We need daily mercies. (7) We receive them. 5. Objection. I have oft prayed, but am never heard (Job_21:15). (1) However, we are bound to serve God. (2) If we get no good it is our own fault. (a) As to the matter (1Jn_5:14). (b) Means (Jam_1:6). (c) End, of prayer (Jam_4:3). (3) Perhaps you never expected it. (4) Or have not used the right means for it. (5) You have not prayed long enough (2Co_12:9; Luk_18:1). (6) Though you have not received that required, you have other mercies (2Co_12:9). (7) You may be answered, and not know it. Conclusion: Continue instant in prayer. 1. Otherwise ye live in continued sin. 2. Prayer is the most honourable work.
40. 40. 3. The most pleasant (Psa_84:10). 4. The only way of getting real mercies (Jam_1:5). 5. Right praying is a sign of a true convert (Act_9:11). (Bp. Beveridge.) Instant in prayer Prayer is the natural duty of religion. Its observance is as natural as conversation between men. The Scriptures urge a constant and careful performance, then, not only as a duty, but a privilege. The subject suggests an inquiry as to-- I. The matter and subject of prayer. 1. Generally, it is to petition God to bestow upon us all that is good, and to deliver us from all that is evil: the pursuit of virtue, the direction of our affairs, immortal happiness. 2. Particularly, our own individual requirements, according to our particular weaknesses and difficulties, should form the groundwork of our petitions. II. The specific directions of the apostle--Continuing instant. We are not to make it a mere formal duty. It is to be the constant effort and breath of our very existence. We are hereby taught-- 1. That worldly duties are not inconsistent with heavenly thoughts. 2. That God may be worshipped at all times. 3. That religion is not a thing to be put off till we have leisure and opportunity. III. The contrast which this direction affords to all false systems. We are taught that God is worshipped by the mind and thoughts, and not by external observances. How different to heathen worship! Even the Jews religion was, to a great extent, formal. (J. Jortin, D.D.)
41. 41. Instant in prayer When a pump is frequently used, but little pains are necessary to have water; the water pours out at the first stroke, because it is high. But if the pump has not been used for a long while, the water gets low, and when you want it you must pump a long while, and the water comes only after great efforts. It is so with prayer; if we are instant in prayer, every little circumstance awakens the disposition to pray, and desires and words are always ready. But if we neglect prayer it is difficult for us to pray; for the water in the well gets low. (Felix Neff.) Instant in prayer doesnt exactly mean that we should be praying every instant, though we can be doing that also, but not if we are to think a prayer, or speak a prayer, for how could we then be getting on with other things that need all our attention at the time? But there are prayers that are not spoken or even thought of. You have seen the mariners compass. When the ship is tossing about, the compass trembles and swings to and fro, but it always comes back and points straight to the north. Thats where it wants to go to; every time it points to the north it seems to pray, Let me go there! Now why is this needle so constant about this wish to go northward? Because it has got in it a spirit that belongs to the distant Pole, and so, even while it is busy in telling the sailors how to steer, it is itself always turning to the north, because its life lies that way. So we may be very busy about other things, and need to fix all our attention upon them; but if our heart is right with Jesus, we shall be always wanting to do things for His sake, and do them right; and that big wish that is always in the heart is a continual prayer. (J. R. Howat.) Instancy in prayer I. The import of the injunction. This is indicated by the employment of the word in other Scriptures (e.g., Act_1:14; Act_2:42; Rom_13:6; Act_8:13; Act_10:7; Eph_6:18) . These show the meaning of the word; steadfastness or perseverance as a habit. In this sense the passage has many parallels (Eph_6:18; Php_4:6; 1Th_5:17). In the widest sense, therefore, the injunction lays upon us-- 1. The habitual maintenance of a prayerful spirit. 2. The embracing of opportunities for prayer.
42. 42. 3. The improvement of occasions of prayer. You will find these everywhere, in the commonest experiences of every day. 4. Watchfulness. II. Considerations by which the injunction may be commended and enforced. 1. What a mighty power of restraint would such an instancy of prayer exercise! 2. What a spiritual elevation! 3. What peace amid conflicting cares! 4. What strength! (J. M. Jarvie.) Prayer, daily As those who keep clocks wind them up daily, lest the weights should run down, and the clock stop; so we must set apart some portion of every day for meditation and prayer, lest our hearts should so far descend, through the weight of the cares of this world, that our course in godliness should be hindered and stopped. (Cawdray.) Prayer hindered, not defeated For so I have seen a lark rising from his bed of grass and soaring upwards, singing as he rises, and hopes to get to heaven, and climb above THE CLOUDS ; but the poor bird was beaten back with the loud sighings of an eastern wind, and his motion made irregular and inconstant, descending more at every breath of the tempest than it could recover by the liberation and frequent weighing of his wings, till the little creature was forced to sit down and pant, and stay till the storm was over; and then it made a prosperous flight, and did rise and sing, as if it had learned music and motion from an angel, as he passed sometimes through the air about his ministries here below. So is the prayer of a good man. (Jeremy Taylor.) Prayer, nightly
43. 43. It is said of that good old man, John Quincy Adams, that he never went to his rest at night until he had repeated the simple prayer learned in childhood--the familiar Now, I lay me down to sleep. Perpetual prayer I. What is here required? 1. Continuance in personal and secret prayer primarily. In these times Christs saying is reversed. Men seem to say, If you pray openly, the Father will reward you in secret. And if a man have a taste for prayer meetings and none for private prayer, he should give up the prayer meetings until he recover the taste for secret prayer. 2. Paul speaks of continuance in the sense of importunity and perseverance. Instant, means earnest, pressing, and urgent. The precept implies the danger of non-continuance--of a lack of earnestness and urgency. Now this danger arises from-- (1) Scepticism about prayer. Men are often tempted to ask, What profit shall we have if we pray to Him? Then we may be beset by unbelief as to Gods hearing our prayers in particular. (2) Indifference. Men do not care to pray. There is no very pressing want; no very urgent danger. The man is looking simply on the surface of his life. II. Why is this requirement made? Habitual prayer-- 1. Keeps in habitual exercise the first principles of our religious life, etc. You cannot pray without bringing into exercise faith, trust, hope, and love. Now these principles are not intended to be within us like gems in a casket, but are like muscles. Work them, and they will be strengthened; give them nothing to do, and they will shrink, and when you want them, they will not be in a state to serve you. 2. Keeps a man face to face with God. This is the right position. We never see any matter as we ought to see it, except we look God in the face about it. 3. Recognises the two great blessings of the Christian economy. And what are these? (1) The mediation of Christ. (2) The ministration of the Holy Ghost.
44. 44. 4. Is the constant use of the highest agency which Christians can employ. What has prayer done? Conquered the elements, healed the diseased, restored life, etc. Prayer moves the band which moves the world. 5. Is second only to ceaseless praise in the loftiness and in the sacredness of the habit. 6. Is in harmony with Gods present method of government. The basis of that government is atonement, i.e., an embodied supplication for mercy. (S. Martin.) Prayer unceasing Fletchers whole life was a life of prayer; and so intensely was his mind fixed upon God that he sometimes said, I would not move from my seat without lifting up my heart to God. Wherever we met, says Mr. Vaughan, if we were alone, his first salute was, Do I meet you praying? And if we were talking on any point of divinity, when we were in the depth of our discourse he would often break off abruptly and ask, Where are our hearts now? If ever the misconduct of an absent person was mentioned, his usual reply was, Let us pray for him. Constant, instant, expectant I. Instant. The Greek word means always applying strength in prayer; blessed is the man whose strength is in Thee. Brooks saith that the word is a metaphor taken from hunting dogs, which will never give up the game till they have got it. Prevalent prayer is frequently spoken of in Scripture as an agony--striving together with me in your prayers, and as wrestling. We must go with our whole soul to God or He will not accept us. We are to pray as if all depended upon our praying. How are we to attain to this urgency? 1. Let us study the value of the mercy which we are seeking at Gods hand. Whatever it is that thou art asking for, it is no trifle. If it be a doubtful thing, lay it aside: but if thou art certain that the blessing sought is good and necessary, examine it as a goldsmith inspects a jewel when he wishes to estimate its worth. 2. Meditate on thy necessities. See thy souls poverty and undeservingness. Look at what will happen to thee unless this blessing come. 3. Endeavour to get a distinct consciousness of the fact that God must give thee this blessing, or thou wilt never have it. 4. Eagerly desire the good thing. Stand not before God as one who will be content whether or no. There are times when you must say, I will not let Thee go, except Thou bless me.
45. 45. 5. Now comes the tug of war; you are to plead with all your might. Gather up all your faculties to see whether this thing be a matter of promise or no. When you have found the promise, plead it by saying, Lord, do as Thou hast said. If you do not seem to prevail with one promise seek out another and another, and then plead, For Thy names sake, for Thy truths sake, for Thy covenants sake; and then come in with the greatest plea of all, For Jesus sake. 6. Still there is one thing more wanted, and that is strong faith. You cannot be instant in prayer, nay, you cannot offer an acceptable prayer at all except as you believe in the prayer-hearin