receive.” This is a hard saying and who can hear it? and consequently this higher path, with its higher conflicts has been forsaken by not a few, for one easier to the flesh, where if less were given, there was less demanded. There are joys in christian communion, that are intense just in proportion to their reality, but there are sorrows connected with it likewise for which many are little prepared, and in consequence of which many are in great danger of going back into an isolated christianity, that God has not enjoined; for hardness has to be endured as a good soldier of Jesus, in the church, as in the world, and the former will always be the harder of the two.
Many have mistaken a name for a reality, and the high sound of godly phraseology has been mistaken for godliness itself. Satan has waged his war against the Lord and against his Church, by stirring up saints to act like Caiaphas in crucifying the Saviour out of zeal for the honor of God! for that which is done against the least of the Lord’s little ones, is done against the Lord himself. Do saints really remember this? Do they reflect on what the Lord says, “that whosoever shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a mill stone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” It is a terrible thing to sin against the Lord’s people, whom it is the duty of all to watch over and care for. The disciples of Jesus are called to love one another with no less a love, than that wherewith Jesus has loved them: a love so real and palpable that the world can take cognizance of it, for alas! there is much love falsely so called, that often thinks itself genuine, that the Lord will estimate very differently. The Lord give repentance to all who have sinned, and grace to seek that heavenly wisdom, that takes its inspirations from the bosom of Jesus, and seeks to wash the feet of the defiled one, rather than to cut him off. The proud heart wishes, to attain for itself a place of pre-eminence. To this there is one answer, and for it one cure, that contained in the Lord’s answer to Zebedee’s children, “Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink of, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” May we ever seek to walk in the footsteps of Him who “pleased not Himself,” and desired not to be ministered unto but to minister.
