John R. Macduff

“ And in that bosom, and that refuge, are you hiding yourself until all Earth's “calamities be overpast?” The deeper you hide yourself in the clefts of the smitten Rock, the safer you are. Oh! do you ever pause and think that there is a day coming, when this Valley of Tears “and all the works that are therein, shall be burned up?” When “God shall arise in the glory of His Majesty, to shake terribly the Earth.” When every mountain peak shall be black with tempest—and the whole valley shall be a sheet of living fire! ”

“ Jesus often makes you portionless here, to drive you to Himself, the everlasting portion. He often dries every rill and fountain of earthly bliss, that He may lead you to say, “All my springs are in Thee.” “He seems intent,” says one who could speak from experience, “to fill up every gap love has been forced to make; one of his errands from heaven was to bind up the broken-hearted.” How beautifully in one amazing verse does he conjoin the depth and tenderness of his comfort with the certainty of it—“As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you, and ye SHALL be comforted!” ”

“ What a pattern to His people, the tender compassion of Jesus! He found the world He came to save a moral Bethesda. The wail of suffering humanity was every where borne to His ear. It was His delight to walk its porches, to pity, relieve, comfort, save! The faintest cry of misery arrested His footsteps—stirred a ripple in this fountain of Infinite Love. Was it a leper,—that dreaded name which entailed a life-long exile from friendly looks and kindly words? There was One, at least, who had tones and deeds of tenderness for the outcast. ”

“ Jesus shall come again!
When a beloved brother or friend whom we love is taken from us by death, how cheered we are by the thought of rejoining him in a brighter and better world. Even in earthly separations, how cheering the prospect of those severed by oceans and continents meeting once more in the flesh—the associations of youth renewed and perpetuated—and the long-severed links of friendship welded and cemented again! What must be, to the bereft and lonely Christian, the thought of being restored, and that for ever, to his long-absent Saviour? ”

“ Hope goes to her dungeon vaults, her beds of sickness, her chambers of bereavement and sorrow. To take Faith or Hope to heaven, would be to take the Physician to the sound man, or to offer crutches to the strong, or to help to light the meridian sun with a tiny candle; Faith is then changed to sight, and Hope to full fruition. Love alone holds on her infinite mission. Faith and Hope are her two soaring pinions. She drops them as she enters the gates of glory. The watcher puts out his beacon when the sun floods the ocean—the miner puts out his lamp when he ascends to the earth. ”

“ To-morrow is not thine. “Verily, there may be but a step between thee and death.” Oh! solve the question speedily,—risk no doubts and no peradventure. Every day is proclaiming anew the lesson, “The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong.” Seek to live, so that that hour cannot come upon thee too soon, or too unexpectedly. Live a dying life! How blessed to live,—how blessed to die, with the consciousness, that there may be but a step between thee and glory!
“REMEMBER THIS WORD UNTO THY SERVANT, UPON WHICH THOU HAST CAUSED ME TO HOPE!” ”

“ Believer, be still! The dealings of thy Heavenly Father may seem dark to thee; there may seem now to be no golden fringe, no “bright light in the clouds;” but a day of disclosures is at hand. “Take it on trust a little while.” An earthly child takes on trust what his father tells him: when he reaches maturity, much that was baffling to his infant comprehension is explained. Thou art in this world in the nonage of thy being—Eternity is the soul’s immortal manhood. There, every dealing will be vindicated. It will lose all its “darkness” when bathed in the floods “of the excellent glory!” ”

“ SYMPATHY. “Jesus wept.”—John, xi. 35.
It is an affecting thing to see a Great man in tears! “Jesus wept!” It was ever His delight to tread in the footsteps of sorrow—to heal the broken-hearted—turning aside from His own path of suffering to “weep with those that weep.”
Bethany! That scene, that word, is a condensed volume of consolation for yearning and desolate hearts. What a majesty in those tears! He had just been discoursing on Himself as the Resurrection and the Life—the next moment He is a Weeping Man by a human grave, melted in anguished sorrow at a bereaved one’s side! ”

“ The Gospel takes us to the tomb, and shews us Death vanquished, and the Grave spoiled. Death truly is in itself an unwelcome messenger at our door. It is the dark event in this our earth,—the deepest of the many deep shadows of an otherwise fair creation—a cold, cheerless avalanche lying at the heart of humanity, freezing up the gushing fountains of joyous life. But the Gospel shines, and the cold iceberg melts. The Sun of Righteousness effects what philosophy, with all its boasted power, never could. Jesus is the abolisher of Death. ”

“ He gets habituated to the winning ways, and loving words, and constant companionship. He comes to regard that little life as part of himself. He does not fully realise the blessing, because he has never dreamt of the possibility of its removal. But when the startling blow comes,—when death, in an unexpected moment, has severed the tie,—when his eye lights on the empty chair or the unused toy,—when the joyous footfall and artless prattling are heard no more,—then comes he to gauge all the depth and intensity of his affection, and to feel how tenderly (too tenderly!) ”

“ Blessed Jesus! How thy presence sanctifies trial, takes loneliness from the chamber of sickness, and the sting from the chamber of death! Bright and Morning Star! precious at all times, thou art never so precious as in “the dark and cloudy day!” The bitterness of sorrow is well worth enduring to have thy promised consolations. How well qualified, thou Man of Sorrows, to be my Comforter! How well fitted to dry my tears, Thou who didst shed so many thyself! What are my tears—my sorrows—my crosses—my losses, compared with Thine, who didst shed first Thy tears, and then Thy blood for me! ”

“ His is no fitful companionship—present in prosperity, gone in adversity. He never changes. He is always the same,—in sickness and solitude, in joy and in sorrow, in life and in death. Not more faithfully did the pillar-cloud and column of fire of old precede Israel, till the last murmuring ripple of Jordan fell on their ears on the shores of Canaan, than does the presence and love of Jesus abide with His people. Has His word of promise ever proved false? Let the great cloud of witnesses now in glory testify. ”

“ Are you feelingly alive, painfully conscious that your love, like that of many, has waxed cold;—are you mourning that you have not the nearness to the Mercy-seat that once you enjoyed,—not the love of your Bibles, and ordinances, and sacraments that you once had,—that a heavy cloud mantles your spiritual horizon,—God's countenance, not what once it was, irradiated with a Father's smiles,—nor heaven what once it seemed, a second home? ”

“ Would it be to gaze like Lazarus on the face of our best friend—to see Jesus bending over us in looks of tenderness—to hear the living tones of that same voice, whose accents were last heard in the dark valley, whispering hopes full of immortality? True, we have not to wait for a Saviour’s love and presence till then. The hour of death is to the Christian the birthday of endless life. Guardian angels are hovering around his dying pillow ready to waft his spirit into Abraham’s bosom. “The souls of believers do immediately pass into glory.” ”

“ Oh! the blessedness of thus lying passive in the hands of God; saying, “Undertake thou for me!”—dwelling with holy gratitude on past mercies and interpositions—taking these as pledges of future faithfulness and love—hearing His voice behind us, amid life’s manifold perplexities, exclaiming, “This is the way, walk ye in it!” “Happy,” surely, “are every people who are in such a case!” Happy, Reader! will it be for thee, if thou canst form the resolve in a strength greater than thine own: “This God shall be my God for ever and ever; He shall be my Guide even unto death!” ”

“ And then—“your sorrow shall be turned into joy.” “The morning cometh”—that bright morning when the dew-drops collected during earth’s night of weeping shall sparkle in its beams; when in one blessed moment a life-long experience of trial will be effaced and forgotten, or remembered only by contrast, to enhance the fulness of the joys of immortality. What a revelation of gladness! The map of time disclosed, and every little rill of sorrow, every river will be seen to have been flowing heavenwards,—every rough blast to have been sending the bark nearer the haven! ”

“ Prodigal!—wanderer from God, exile from peace, roaming the forest-haunts of sin, plunging deeper and deeper into their midnight of ruin and despair—has an arrow, either from the quiver of man, or of God, wounded thy heart? Art thou, in thy agony, seeking rest and finding none,—having the gnawing feeling of dissatisfaction with all created things, and an undefined longing for a solace they cannot give? Yes! for thee, too, for thy gaping, bleeding wound there is "balm in Gilead, and a Physician there." ”

“ In the hour of death they are waiting to lend their wings to the Immortal tenant as it bursts its earthly coil. Oh, if the return of the Repentant Sinner be to them an hour of joyous jubilee;—if their songs of triumph greet the Believer justified;—what must it be to exult over the gladsome consummation—the Believer glorified; to be engaged on the Great Day as Reapers at the ingathering of the sheaves into the heavenly garner—throwing open, at the bidding of their Great Lord, the Golden Portals that the ransomed millions may enter in! ”

“ Happy reunion! it will be a meeting of the whole ransomed family—the Head with all its members—the Vine with all its branches—the Shepherd with all His flock—the Elder Brother with all His kinsmen. Oh, the joy, too, of mutual recognition among the death-divided—ties snapt asunder on earth, indissolubly renewed—severed friendships reunited—the triumph of love complete—love binding brother with brother, and friend with friend, and all to the Elder Brother! My soul! what thinkest thou of this Heaven? Remember who it is that Jesus says shall sit with Him upon His throne,—“Him that overcometh.” ”

“ Every church is a Peniel, where God meets His people, as He met the patriarch of old at the brook Jabbok. Go and see what may be effected by one lowly, humble, seeking soul—some wrestling Jacob, who, like "a Prince," has "power with God, and prevails!" The lowliest tabernacle on earth is glorified as being the House of God—the dwelling-place of Omnipotence and Love—the hallowed "home," where a loving Father waits to dispense to His children the garnered riches of His grace! The time may come when the holy and beautiful sanctuary where we worship may become a heap of ruins. ”

“ The thought that those whose smile gladdened to us every step in the wilderness, who formed our solace in sorrow, and our joy in adversity—whose words, and society, and converse were intertwined with our very being—it is solemn and saddening, as we tread that land of oblivion, to find these words and looks and tears unanswered—a gloomy silence hovering over the spot where the wrecks of worth and loveliness are laid! ”

“ Why forbid the angel of bereavement [71] to drop from his wings the balmy fragrance, "Thy Father hath done it?" How it would take the sting from many a goading trial thus to see, as Job did, nothing but the hand of God—to see that hand behind the gleaming swords of the Sabeans, the flash of the lightning, and the wings of the whirlwind—and to say like David, on the occasion of his mournful march to these very wilds of Gilead, "I was dumb, I opened not my mouth; because Thou didst it." (Psalm xxxix. 9.)
The thought of a living God forms the happiness of Heaven. It is the joy of Angels. ”

“ He alone can bring back Lazarus from his death-sleep. Martha and Mary may weep an ocean of tears, but they cannot weep him back. They may linger for days and nights in that lonely graveyard, making it resound with their bitter dirges, but their impassioned entreaties will be mocked with impressive silence. Too well do they know that spirit is fled beyond their recall—the spark of life extinguished beyond any earthly rekindling! ”

“ That cedar stood as a stately beam and pillar in nature's temple, but the glory of the latter house was greater than the glory of the former. How many of our souls are like these cedars of God! His axes of trial have stripped and bared them,—we see no reason for dealings so dark and mysterious; but He has a noble end and object in view—to set them as everlasting pillars and rafters in His heavenly temple, to make them "a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of our God!" ”

“ And you might as well try to convince the restored blind that the sunlight which has again burst on them is a wild dream of fancy, or the restored deaf that the world’s joyous melodies which have again awoke on them are the mockeries of their own brain, as convince the spiritually enlightened and awakened that He who has proved to them light and life, and joy and peace—their comfort in prosperity—their refuge in adversity—is other than the Son of God and Saviour of the world! ”

“ Have any of you ever known this acutest anguish of the human spirit,—those appalling moments of doubt, when for a moment the whole citadel of truth seems to rock to its foundations,—when the soul becomes a dungeon with grated bars, or in which the light of heaven is transmitted through distorted glass, and the finger of unbelief is pointed inwards, with the old sneer, "Where is the God you were wont to boast of in your day of prosperity? ”

“ Dense as the gloom is which hangs over the mouth of the sepulchre, it is the spot, above all others, where the Gospel, if it enters, shines and triumphs. In the busy sphere of life and health, it encounters an active antagonist—the world confronts it, aims to obscure its glories, to deny its claims, to drown its voice, to dispute its progress, to drive it from the ground it occupies. But from the mouth of the grave the world retires; it shrinks from the contest there; it leaves a clear and open space in which the Gospel can assert its claims and unveil its glories without opposition or fear. ”

“ Who has not felt, in some great crisis of their spiritual being, similar to his, when all the hopes and joys of existence rock and tremble to their foundations; when, by some sudden reverse of fortune, the pride of life becomes a shattered ruin; or, by some appalling bereavement, the hope and solace of the future is blighted and withered like grass;—who has not been conscious of a longing desire to know more of this infinite God, who holds the balances of Life and Death in His hands, and who has come forth from the inscrutable recesses of His own mysterious being, and touched us to the quick? ”

“ It is the very end and design our gracious God has in all His dealings, to lead us, as he led Mary, to the feet of Jesus.
Yes! thou poor weeping, disconsolate one, “The Master calleth for thee.” Thee individually, as if thou stoodest the alone sufferer in a vast world. He wishes to pour His oil and wine into thy wounded heart—to give thee some overwhelming proof and pledge of the love he bears thee in this thy sore trial. He has come to pour drops of comfort in the bitter cup—to ease thee of thy heavy burden, and to point thee to hopes full of immortality. ”

“ You may be as stranded vessels on the sands of despair; but the tide of His ocean-love is able to set you floating on the waters. Repair, without delay, to His mercy-seat. Cast yourselves on His free forgiveness. Every attribute of His nature which you have now armed against you, is stretching out its hand of welcome and entreaty. Each is like a branch of the tree of life, inviting you to repose under its shadow. Each is a rill from the everlasting fountain, inviting you to drink of the unfailing stream. ”