Part 7

But as the disciples regarded our Lord's face they must have been in some measure reassured. There was no embarrassment or uncertainty to be read there. He Himself knew what He would do, as His next words showed them: "Make the men sit down." Here, at least, was a plain, practical command, and cheerfully they hastened to obey.

In all our perplexities and puzzles we can usually find something to do at once, and that something leads to something else, till by degrees the way is made plain before us. The old Saxon motto, "Do the next thing," is the guide out of many a difficulty. "How are we ever to fill this box?" said one of the officers of a certain missionary auxiliary; "we have only money enough to buy half a dozen towels." "Very well, let us buy the towels," was the answer; "by the time they are hemmed we shall have more." And so it proved; and a better box never gladdened a hard-working woman than was sent to that faithful teacher.

A poor woman in England once gave a few shillings, the result of long saving, to purchase some Bibles for the poor; and out of that gift grew one of the great Bible societies which supply the Scriptures to hundreds of thousands. A few serious words, kindly spoken to a wild young man in a diligence, gave to the Moravian Church one of the most successful missionaries that ever lived. Let us use what we have. It may be not so much as the little lad brought in his basket, but the Master will accept it and use it; whether it be to the feeding of one or ten thousand does not signify, so it is to His service. Let us take the first step in obedience to His command, and the next step will be made plain. It may be but a short one, but it will be so much in advance. Like the pilgrim in the valley of the shadow of death, when we lift up our foot to go forward, we may not know where, or upon what we may set it next; but be sure the solid ground will be there to meet it, so long as we are in the way of the Celestial City.

1 Kings xvii. Acts xvii. 16.

_FOURTH TUESDAY IN LENT._

_REFRESHMENT SUNDAY—Continued._

"NOW there was much grass in the place." So the men sat down in orderly ranks or companies—an arrangement made by our Lord's own command, that they might be the more easily waited upon. The word used by St. Mark signifies parterres, or the orderly arrangement of the plants in a vineyard or garden, and the assembly, dressed in the gay colors which Orientals affect, must have looked somewhat like a great flower-garden. Doubtless, all faces were eagerly turned toward our Lord, as the people wondered what was coming next. The disciples gathered round their Master, amazed, no doubt, but ready to obey His order, whatever it might be and near Him, perhaps, stood the little lad who had brought the provision, his eyes fixed on that face which ever had an attraction for children. Jesus took in His hands the cakes of barley bread, "and when He had given thanks, He brake them, and began to distribute them to the disciples, and they to the people, and likewise of the fishes, as much as they would." (St. John vi. 11.) The original words seem to show that the provisions were multiplied in our Lord's hands. Here was a sudden end of all their perplexities. Here was enough and to spare, of palatable and wholesome food.

It must have been with glad hearts, that the twelve, aided, no doubt, by the disciples of John, passed around among the people bearing the unexpected refreshment. Doubtless the multitude shared in their joy for many of them were far from their homes; and the prospect of returning hungry, or possibly of spending the night supperless in the open air, could not have been very agreeable. It is no great wonder, perhaps, that as they partook of His bounty, the old idea of making the Lord a temporal ruler should have recurred to their minds. Surely one who could so wonderfully provide for his followers would have no difficulty in defying the power even of the Romans. It was long before the Lord's immediate and trusted disciples realized the fact that His kingdom was not of this world.

But the people had eaten all they needed. What next? The next command must also have somewhat surprised both the disciples and the people. "Gather up the fragments, that nothing be lost." Why this exact economy on the part of one who could, as they had just seen, produce food at will? However, the disciples obeyed without a question, and soon they had filled twelve of the satchels, which all strict Jews carried when on a journey (to protect their food from ceremonial uncleanness), with the fragments which remained of the loaves and fishes. And now their work was for the present finished. Jesus would be alone for a time; and he dismissed His immediate followers to go to the other side of the lake, while He Himself sent the multitude away. The disciples seemed to have been somewhat unwilling to leave their Lord alone, but His will was law, and they betook themselves to the boat which had brought them hither.

When the multitude had at last departed, doubtless with many a lingering look behind, He who had so cheerfully given up His own plan of rest and retirement for the sake of teaching and feeding them, departed into a mountain to pray. At last He was alone; and how grateful to His weary senses must have been the solemn quiet and dewy freshness of that mountain solitude! How dear to His heart the opportunity of holding undisturbed communion with His Father! Dear tired mother or teacher, or busy housekeeper, are your senses also weary and your nerves unstrung with perpetual din? Do you, too, long for solitude and silence? Remember that the Lord has been before you in this trial also. The most of His active life was passed in a crowd, almost always careless and unsympathizing, often captious and hostile; and His hours of devotion must be stolen from needed sleep.

"Each pang from irritation, turmoil, din,—"

is known to Him, and He will give needed help and relief.

Our Lord gave thanks before He distributed the bread to the disciples. This was an universal custom among the Jews, and the Lord has approved it by His example. "He who enjoys anything without a blessing, robs God," says the Talmud. Yet how many Christian families are there in which grace before meat is never heard. It looks a little, indeed, as if family religion, of any sort, were to become a thing of the past. The father hastens to his business, and the children to their school, without one word of recognition for the mercies of the night; without a single petition for help and guidance through the day. The father is, or should be, the priest of his own household, to offer up their spiritual sacrifices; but how many never think of doing so! He should be their instructor in divine things; but how many never open the Bible with their children! The boys see their father busy till the last stroke of the church bell with his Sunday papers; they see the same papers or a novel taken up on his return. Is it any wonder that they come to think religion a matter of secondary importance? Is it any wonder that they think it fit only for women, since they see its outward observance left wholly to them? Oh, how many thorns are these negligent, indifferent Christian fathers and mothers cultivating for their own pillows! It is true that a boy or girl may turn out badly, however much pains has been taken with the religious training, because in this world all must make the choice between good and evil for themselves; but at least the careful, conscientious parent has not the added bitter pang of thinking "my neglect, my selfish indulgence, has made the child what he is."

"Gather up the fragments," said our Lord. He could create at will enough to feed five thousand, yet He would not have the remainder lost. With what displeasure must He not look on the lavish wastefulness of His children. Some man takes a good religious paper, or more than one. Perhaps he finds time to glance at them, perhaps not. The expenditure of a cent a week, or the sending of a child or servant, would carry that paper to some poor man or woman—perhaps to some one shut up with illness—who would be only too glad to read it. But no one thinks of that, and what might give aid and comfort to God's afflicted or hard-worked child goes to the ragman. The partly worn hose or flannel garment share the same fate, when a little of the time given to some useless bit of fancy work would make them fit to bestow on some poor body, or to help out a hospital box. I knew a lady with a family of sons. When their socks or underwear were thrown aside, she had them carefully mended and put away in a special place; and many a poor hard-working woman was helped out of Mrs. Z.'s "give-away drawer." We have no right to waste, because all that we have, whether of time or goods or talent, is not ours, but our Lord's. We are but His stewards, and it is required of stewards that a man be found faithful.

Prov. xxxi. St. Luke xiv.

_FIFTH WEDNESDAY IN LENT._

_COMFORT._

A CERTAIN writer has said that there is no more beautiful word in the language than the word "comfort." Certainly there is none which carries with it more meanings, or one which it is harder to define. Rest from weariness, freedom from pain, security from danger, all these are comprised in the word "comfort." But these are, after all, but negative, and there is a positive side. The word often means consolation. "As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you," is God's promise to His people. (Isa. lxvi. 13.) Think of a little child waking in the dark, from some dream of terror. The darkness is all around him, with its possibilities of danger. Who knows what it may hide in those dark corners, behind those dimly seen, waving curtains? He can feel no one near him. To his excited fancy it seems as if he were alone in the universe, and he cries out in fear and anguish. But in a moment a tender arm is laid over him, a warm kiss reassures him, a well-known voice speaks his name, and he sinks to sleep again, sure that no evil thing can harm him, because his mother is there to be his defense.

So it often is with the Christian. He walks in the midst of trouble. Darkness is around and within. His purposes are broken off; his plans even for his Master's service are frustrated, and, what seems to make his trouble worst of all, he is hampered by indifference, if not by open hostility on the part of fellow-Christians and fellow-church-members. He says to himself, with David, "It is not an enemy that hath done me this dishonor; but it was even thou, my companion, my guide, and mine own familiar friend." He feels almost as if His Lord Himself had forgotten him, and he is ready to sit down in despair.

But by and by a ray of light falls athwart the darkness. It is the hour for his regular devotion, and he will not neglect it. His heart feels cold and dead, if not absolutely rebellious, but at least he can obey, and he takes up his Bible or his prayer-book, opens perhaps to the thirty-seventh Psalm, or some other like it.

He reads precious promises of help and protection, and deliverance from trouble, such as these. "Commit thy way unto the Lord, and put thy trust in Him, and He shall bring it to pass. He shall make thy righteousness as clear as the light and thy just dealing as the noon-day." (Ps. xxxvii. 5.) He is made to see that he is but tasting the edge, as it were, of that cup which his Master drained to the dregs for him. He feels that God has not forsaken him, and he is by and by able to say, "In the multitude of the sorrows that I had in my heart, Thy comforts have refreshed my soul." The assurance comes to him that the Lord will use all to His own glory and the good of His servant, and he is content to tarry the Lord's leisure.

Or take another case. The Christian is made aware that he has fallen into sin. He has spoken unadvisedly with his lips perhaps, and fears that his words may do great harm. He has given way to unjust or excessive anger, or he has been led into some worldly compliance which he now sees to have been wrong. Or, worse still, he has suddenly awakened to the fact that he has for a long time been declining in godliness, that he has been living for the world and not for his Master. He has gone out of the way into By-path meadow, and the road, which at first seemed to run close to the highway, has turned aside till he has come at least within sight of the dwelling of Giant Despair. Satan is not slow to take advantage of his fall. He tells the sinner that it is plain to be seen that he never was a true disciple. Could one who had really tasted of the grace of God so dishonor his profession? Or if he were once a child of God, is it not as plain as day that he is so no longer? Has he not come too far out of the way ever to find his path back? Will he be received even if he should return? Is this the return he has made to God for all his benefits, and can such black ingratitude ever be forgiven? Such suggestions as these drive the sinner almost to desperation. Almost, but not quite. His very agony and distress teach him how precious was that Lord from whom he has turned away, and he will not give him up without a struggle at least.

But he is not left to struggle alone. God has not forgotten His child, though that child may for a time have forgotten Him. He may leave him, or seem to leave him, to suffer for a time the penalty of his sins; for as many as the Lord loves, He rebukes and chastises. But let the sinner once accept the punishment of his iniquity (Lev. xxvi. 41); let him acknowledge that he is justly punished for his offenses, as says the collect for the day, and light begins to dawn on the night of despair. He, too, opens his Bible, and he reads such words as these, "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." (Isa. i. 18) "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (1 John i. 9.) "Him that cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out." (St. John vi. 37.) And so he casts himself at the feet of his crucified Lord, humbly bewailing his sinfulness, and asking pardon for the sake of that very love that he has outraged and grieved. Humbly he believes his prayer is accepted, trusting in God's unchanging promise, though he has for the present no evidence in his own feelings that his sins are pardoned. By and by the light grows clearer. He hears within a sweet voice, sweeter than any music of earth, whisper such precious words as these: "I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins." (Isa. xliii. 25.) Then the Sun of righteousness riseth on His soul with healing in His wings, and it is day.

Ps. xxxii. St. John xvii.

_FIFTH THURSDAY IN LENT._

_THE SOURCES OF COMFORT._

THE first source of comfort to the disciple in distress is his general confidence in the goodness of his Lord. "Comfort them with a sense of Thy goodness!" asks the collect for the sick and the afflicted in the prayer-book; and there is not in that whole wonderful volume a sentence more full of meaning. "My Father is all-wise, therefore He cannot make a mistake; He is perfectly holy, therefore He cannot do an unjust thing; He is perfect love, therefore He will never do a cruel thing; and He sees and cares for me as much as if I were the only child for whom He had to care." Thoughts like these come to the pilgrim, bowed down by the burden and heat of the day; and they give him courage to take up his load and struggle on toward that rest which remains for the people of God—that mansion prepared for him, and whose roofs and towers his faith sees above the clouds, gleaming in Heaven's own sunshine. To souls like this it does indeed come to pass that, going through the valley of misery, they use it for a well, and the pools are filled with water. "Their light affliction, which is for a moment, worketh for them a far more exceeding weight of glory," because "they look not at the things which are seen, but at those things which are unseen and eternal." (2 Cor. iv. 17.)

The second source of comfort to the Christian which we shall consider is the written word of God. "In the Lord's word will I comfort me." (Ps. lvi. 10.) Here is the sure holding-ground for the anchor of faith. Our feelings are the sport of every wind that blows, but the written word remains, and remains ever the same. The stricken woman whose prop and stay has been taken away, perhaps in a moment, and who knows not where to turn for help, may read in that Word that God is the God of the fatherless, and defendeth the cause of the widow. (Ps. lxviii. 5.) The invalid, wearied out with the life-long pain, which has become such an old story that people no longer think of asking about it, who feels faith ready to fail, and courage to give way under the load, to such an one comes the message, "My grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness." (2 Cor. xii. 9.) The aged saint bowed beneath the burden of years, perhaps with no child or near friend to support his weakness and bear with his infirmities, prays, "Forsake me not when I am gray-headed" (Ps. lxxi. 16), and the Word which supplies the prayer answers it with a corresponding promise, "Even to your old age I am He; and even to hoary hairs will I carry you." (Is. xlvi. 4.) The repentant, all but despairing sinner, is told by that very righteous and holy God whom he hath so grievously offended, "I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins." (Is. xliv. 22.) And again, "The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin." (1 John i. 7.) The backslider reads, "I will heal their backslidings; I will love them freely." (Hosea xiv. 4.) And to the child of God, striving in meekness and faithfulness to follow in the steps of his Lord and Master, and to do his commonplace, every task for Him, the words of cheer and strength are not to be counted.

The worship and ordinances of the Church are perennial springs of help and cheer to the Christian. I appeal to your experience, faithful fellow-disciples. How many times, when it has perhaps been a great effort to go to church, has not the very stillness of the place fallen like balm on your tired nerves, so that your few minutes of mental prayer have made you able to realize that you are indeed in the presence of Him who has said, "When two or three are gathered together, there am I in the midst of them"! (Matt. xviii. 20.) How often has the Psalter or the lesson contained the very words you needed! How often has the sermon or address been just what you wanted, and the whole service sent you home strengthened and cheerful to take up the burden of the week or the day! Then there is the crown of all our services—the Holy Communion. We "do not feel like going," perhaps. We have had but little time for preparation. There has been much in the week to harass and perplex us. Perhaps some slip or fall has clouded our experience, and burdened our conscience. But we know our duty, and at least we can obey. We carry our burden, whatever it may be, into the presence of the symbols of our Lord's dying love; perhaps to the very altar rail; but when we rise from our knees, we find we have left it there.

Isa. lxv. 2 Cor. 1.

_FIFTH FRIDAY IN LENT._

_THE GREAT CONSOLER._

"THE Comforter which is the Holy Ghost." The third Person of the ever-blessed Trinity does not disdain to take the title and office of our consoler, as well as that of our teacher and guide. He does not disdain to enter the lowest dwelling which is open to receive Him, nor to hold communion with the youngest and feeblest who seek His aid. It is He who opens our heart to understand the Scriptures, who directs us to the very word we need, who shows us, in some passage we have read a hundred times, a new meaning which we never saw before. It is He who inspires our prayers, and He, when our hearts are too burdened for words, makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. (Rom. viii. 26.) How are we to obtain the help of this Divine Comforter? First, by asking for it. That is one of the prayers certain to be answered, whatever is refused. "If ye, then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him"! (St. Luke xi. 18.) The very greatest gift of all is never refused to the poorest suppliant.

Then, when we have invited our guest, we must make our house ready to receive Him. We must open the door and be on the watch for Him. We must remember, too, that He will never share a divided throne. If we are entertaining any impure or unworthy guests—if we have set up any idols there—if there is within any chamber of imagery where we pay secret worship, as did the elders of Israel whom Ezekiel saw in his vision (Ezek. viii. 7), the guests must be turned out, the idols overthrown, the secret chamber opened to the light of God's day, before the Spirit of purity will make our heart His shrine. He Himself will purify His own temple if we consent thereto, but we must be willing, and we must have no reserves from Him.