R. W. Chapman

“ Meditation on the Word of God is the chief means of our growth in grace: without this even prayer itself will be little better than an empty form. Meditation nourishes faith, and faith and prayer are the keys which unlock the hidden treasures of the word.
We have great need to be prepared for trials of faith and patience in so great a business as reading the Scriptures with understanding heart. It is only by faith and patience, and prayerful meditation of the Word, that we are delivered from imaginations of the flesh—from sacrificing to our own net, and burning incense to our own drag. ”

“ Our reputation is the last thing we are willing to lose we cleave to it even when, in point of justification and peace with God, we have counted our own righteousness filthy rags. Let the saints take heed to their walk before God and man; but this done, so that they have in all things a conscience void of offence, let them account their reputation God’s jewel, not their own.
Knowledge often exceeds grace; but communion with God and poverty of Spirit go together: if the one decline, so will the other. ”

“ No child of Adam has a right to anything from God save the wages of sin. Justice, apart from grace in Christ’s cross, must allot to every sinner hell for his wages and portion. If the sinner is to have eternal life, he must have it as a free gift from God. Alas that thousands of sinners who hear the Gospel will not have it, because they are too proud to be saved on God’s terms of pure grace! ”

“ Begin every day with the Word of God and prayer, if you would enjoy settled blessedness. It is in the Word of God that the fulness of Christ is revealed, as the rich portion of every one who trusts in the blood of Christ.
The peace of the believer, through faith in the atoning blood of Jesus, if the soul be flourishing, flows like a river; joy in believing is the same river overflowing its banks. Let watchfulness keep pace with joy. ”

“ What love to the Thessalonians must Paul have had, who, though he so greatly delighted in his brethren’s fellowship, sent Timothy from Athens to Thessalonica, and was content to be left alone!
If a child of God pleases the flesh under colour of liberty, mistaking carnal liberty for spiritual, who can say how far he may go wrong? It is the self-denial of grace that is true liberty.
Christ measures our kindness to others, especially toward His members, not by the greatness of our gifts, but by our faith and self-denial. ”

“ We should never deal lightly with the whispers of a doubtful Conscience.
Let Christ keep the heart, and the heart shall keep the life.
Our lack of walking in the Spirit often moves others to like negligence.
How great a blessing is a tender Conscience; one that will discern and deal with a little sin—that will lead us to say, “Search me, O God!” In this state we not only grieve at an angry thought, or an outbreak of temper, but even for a thought of unbelief that may but glance across the mind. ”

“ Let us only be clear of unbelief and a guilty conscience, and we shall hide ourselves in the rock and pavilion of the Lord, sheltered beneath the wings of everlasting love till all calamities be overpast.
Faith can bear the test of death and burial, and can sing praises to God under any circumstances. ”

“ If Christ will not be satisfied with His present glory at the right hand of God without having His Church, the members of His body, with Him, how can we be content without Him in this valley of the shadow of death, this present evil world? ”

“ The children of God ought to count it their chief joy, in drawing nigh to God, that they have His ear and heart. Great is the difference between a child of God confiding in Him, and a child of God full of petitions and burdens, but doubting God until some outward deliverance be granted. The character of God and His love demand our perfect trust at all times.
The love of God is not purchased for us by the blood of Christ. That love springs up out of God’s own heart and nature. Self-moved, He sent His Son. ”

“ He who most walks in fellowship with God has the deepest and truest apprehension of Christ. Such a one will love to consider how He who was in the form of God, emptied Himself of His state of pure equality with God; how the Word made flesh, at every step of His humiliation, above all on the cross, made manifest His glory. Of all the works of God, redemption is the greatest. It is only in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ that the perfections of God are fully manifested; and of that Cross we can have no true understanding, save by the Holy Scriptures and by the Holy Spirit of God. ”

“ Our faith is greatly strengthened when we are brought to see that no arm but God’s can help; no wisdom but His can guide; and no love but His can satisfy.
The thickest cloud brings the heaviest shower of blessings.
Those very circumstances which make unbelief despond are meat and drink to faith.
Satan is employed for God’s people—for their discipline, their correction, their sifting, but not for their destruction. ”

“ Deep inwrought patience is precious fruit of suffering God’s will according to God’s mind.
If we desire that patience have her perfect work, we shall thank the only-wise God for all things whatsoever that afflict us; and whosoever they be that God uses for pruning our souls—be they unjust men or froward brethren—we shall love and pray for them, and seek to overcome their evil with good.
A child of God may be greatly afflicted, yet be far from murmuring against his heavenly Father. Sorrow sanctified obtains God’s embrace; rebellious grief spoils the soul of communion. ”

“ If God impart to us peculiar joy in the Holy Ghost, filling us with Christ and His love, causing us to keep holy Sabbath in the soul by faith of Jesus, it is for this end—that we may come down from the mount to do the work of the Lord, ready to bear all things for Jesus’ sake.
If any believer lack peace and joy, let him examine himself by the Word, and use diligence in cleansing heart and conscience by the blood of Jesus.
The joy of the Holy Ghost is a holy, solemn thing. It always humbles the soul, and keeps it low. Not so the joy of the flesh. ”

“ To reform the Church of God we should always begin with self-reform. Schisms and divisions will increase so long as we begin with reforming others. Wisdom is only with the lowly.
Every kind of self-pleasing is rebuked and put down in the 2nd of Philippians; but, alas! the Church of God in these days is more like the carnal, puffed up, schismatic Corinthians, than the lowly saints at Philippi, whose fellowship in the Spirit made glad the heart of Paul. ”

“ Fellowship with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ, and the communion of the Spirit, should be the daily household bread to our souls.
Unless the great truths of God’s eternal purpose of grace, and His electing love, occupy their due place in our hearts, we must of necessity, more or less, misapprehend all truth: we can neither fulfil our obligations to God nor even duly discern them. ”

“ It matters little what our Circumstances, if in the spirit of our mind we be before God offering up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to Him by Jesus Christ. To faith all Circumstances are opportunities of pleasing God and serving Christ.
That station of life is most desirable which has least in it to cumber the spirit, and to entice away the heart from Christ. Shall we not then rather desire to stoop with our Lord, than to rise with the men of the world? Every state in life has temptations; but these thicken upon us, and grow in seducing power, according to rise in earthly honour. ”

“ The day is at hand that will make us and our ways all manifest; and we ourselves shall then no more mistake the talk of the lips for the obedience of faith.
Circumstances
Our Circumstances are what we make them. If they be not by faith kept under our feet, they will by unbelief become our masters.
Our song of praise can never be checked unless we rejoice in Circumstances, and in things around us, more than in God Himself.
It is to our shame that we are easily wrought upon by shifting Circumstances. How good for us that we have an unchangeable God to rest in! ”

“ It is the way of the Lord to work for a season, as it were, under ground: and as the seed that dies in the earth, through dying, comes to life, so God will seem to cut off the hope of fruit of our labour; yet when we have humbled ourselves under His hand, and He has secured the glory to Himself, He will put forth His power and bring to life our buried hopes.
There may be much communion with God when there is but little comfort in the soul, and much fruitfulness when there is but little joy and gladness. ”

“ Let us begin by searching ourselves, if we would be profitable reprovers of others.
Much self-judgment makes a man slow to judge others; and the very gentleness of such an one gives a keen edge to his rebukes.
In reproving sin in others, we should remember the ways of the Holy Spirit of God towards us. He comes as the Spirit of Love; and whatever His rebukes, He wins the heart by mercy and forgiveness through Christ.
To forgive without upbraiding, even by manner or look, is a high exercise of grace—it is imitation of Christ. ”

“ Alas! man has done his work completely—the work of self-destruction. Christ has wrought a perfect work—the work of redemption for the salvation of the inexcusably guilty, the utterly lost.
God justifies the sinner believing. When God pardons, He justifies. Man may pardon; he cannot blot out. God alone can justify; and He justifies by Christ, who was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.
Had the Lord waited ere He came into this world till men knew their own sickness, then would pride and ignorance have shut Him out for ever. ”

“ The more we have of Christ in our hearts, the less room for self.
How sweetly, how pleasantly, may a Christian beguile his way to glory, by casting all his burden of sin and care upon Jesus, and walking in love and fellowship with Him all the day long! He who casts his burdens upon the Lord walks lightly and happily, as one who has no burden at all.
Communion with Christ can only be kept up by constant watchfulness. Where there is much love between friends, a cold look is matter of complaint. Let us be very jealous over ourselves for the Lord ”

“ A guilty Conscience is one of Satan’s great weapons against the children of God: faith can only be bold as the Conscience is clean.
There is no trial to the believer like guilt upon the Conscience; but it is the triumph of faith to see guilt removed by the atoning blood of Christ. A very little stain upon the Conscience makes a wide breach in our communion with God.
If we have a doubt upon our minds upon any point, we should go straight to Jesus to get it solved. Love abhors a winding course. ”

“ God regards our Sins with the heart of a father, but not with the eye of a judge; for his sin-avenging justice has no further demands: the cross made satisfaction.
The imaginations of man’s heart are only evil continually. Oh to come to close quarters with this truth! to be willing to be judged by it! There must be something more than man’s own will for this; there must be the working of the Spirit of God.
We little know the deep mysteries of the human heart: it is because of our deep sin and pride that we bear correction with so much impatience ”

“ Confidence in God and self-distrust are sure companions.
It is true humility and true holiness to judge ourselves dead and buried with Christ as children of the first Adam, whatever the flesh within us; and as children of God raised up together with Christ, and seated with Him, the last Adam, the head of the new creation. We thus discern, and subdue, and loathe the flesh, which, though crucified with Christ in the account of God and of faith, is ever struggling to regain lost dominion. Satan, taking occasion by the flesh, would cast us down in the spirit of our minds from our heavenly places. ”

“ Let us be looking continually at the blood of Christ, and watch against little trespasses, little breaches of love, suspicions, rash censures, and coldness of heart.
By the mere natural understanding men may learn much of the truth of God, but afterwards renounce and deny it. If by the Spirit’s unction we learn anything, we hold it fast. His true teaching carries with it assurance to the soul that it is God’s truth we are learning. Of this assurance Satan has his counterfeit, and only by walking humbly with God shall we detect the fraud. ”

“ To prevent our attaining to this grace, or to spoil us of it, is the aim of the powers of darkness that war against us.
It is only as we have rest in Christ, only as we have peace through faith in His atoning blood, only as we have the purged conscience, with the heart’s affections set upon Christ, that we have any strength to war against our spiritual enemies: it is whilst we are fighting against them, that strength is given equal to the need, and we experience the precious sympathy of the Captain of our salvation. ”

“ Hurry is the working of the flesh; faith, like God, works at leisure.
Angels have no envy, because they have no pride. Is God glorified? angels are happy. Let the glory of God be our delight, our meat, our drink. Love envieth not: if one member be honoured, saith love, that is my honour, my joy.
Christ must be extolled and be very high in our hearts, if the unruly flesh and its wayward cravings are to be curbed.
Self-righteousness and carnal wisdom are ringleaders of the enemies of the soul. ”

“ As we practise confession, so will be our happiness and joy; for all true confession is followed by the spirit of praise.
If in coming to God we complain against ourselves, let us thank Him that we have a heart to complain.
The Spirit of God never heals save as He wounds; and if those seeking Christ have not peace, it is because there is still in them some remnant of fancied goodness. Tell out the whole heart to God, and the conscience will be cleansed by confessing sin over the head of the scapegoat. ”