failure in the instrument can justify the rejection of that which God has revealed. Amidst all the confusion and noise of the conflict, a conflict between light and darkness, which takes place in the church (having a character of its own) as well as in the world, God’s voice is heard and truth triumphs in the truthful soul now, as it will triumph before all when He comes to make the crooked things straight, and to set all to His line and to His plummet. Let there be no hope of rest in any thing but in the truth as it is in Jesus, in all its fulness and in all its minuteness. There may be slumber, but there can be no rest found, but in following Jesus and in his bosom. We dare not give up even the smallest truth (smallest only in our estimation) because the path is not so plain and easy as it at first appeared. Had Abraham acted thus, when in obedience to the command “Get thee out” he went to Canaan, and was there met by “a famine in the land,” he would at once have gone back to Mesopotamia, assuredly gathering he had made a mistake. Nor must we with that holy man go to Egypt, because in the place to which God has sent us there is trial and disappointment. Our well springs are in Himself and not in His church, and if this is forgotten, it is a lesson that God will find many opportunies of sorrow to teach over again. The way has not been missed, because clouds darkened the sky, and the enemy has slain many in the struggle; the way is where it ever was, and what it ever was, the King’s highway of holiness and peace, where none can hurt, and none can destroy those who follow the footsteps of the Master, though thousands fall all around.
Many dreamed of a loving fellowship of saints on earth that would lead calmly and joyfully heavenward; they came into church fellowship and found to their dismay that church fellowship meant that they were called to bear and to forbear; it was not like Christ’s own fellowship, not like His holy faithful love, so that instead of finding rest, they found a heavy burden laid upon them, their hopes were blighted because ill-founded, and some have sought a refuge somewhere, where they might find less to bear. They mistook the character of the path they had to tread, they found they had got into a place where they had to follow the example of their Master, and bear the burdens, the weaknesses and infirmities of others, they had not counted the cost of thus following Christ into a closer fellowship of saints whom they would have to minister to, and not to be ministered unto, and whose feet they would have to wash, and where that most difficult and most blessed lesson taught in the life and ways of Christ has to be learned deeply, inwardly, and practically, “It is more blessed to give than to
