Persistent Darkness

Persistent Darkness is one of the most malignant and desperate of spiritual diseases. An astronomical figure runs through the Word of God, which is very helpful in the understanding of this and kindred themes. For example, Psa. lxxxiv. 11:” The Lord God is a 5««.” Three words are conspicuous in John’s Gospel and his First Epistle — Life, Light, and Love. The sun represents in the physical sphere light, heat, life. God, as a Sun, in the spiritual sphere, likewise represents life, which is the sum of all being; light, the sum of all intellectual excellence; and love, the sum of all moral and spiritual excellence; therefore, to abide in God, as a Sun, is to abide in life, and light, and love; and to turn our back upon God, and to be without God, is to abide in darkness, death, and hate. This explains the substance both of the Gospel and of the First Epistle of John. This figure of speech illustrates many points that I shall make.

On the whole, the most suggestive text in Scripture, on this subject of darkness, is Isa. L. 10, 11. There is nothing else just like it in the Word of God.

“Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of His servant, that walketh in darkness, and hath no light? Let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay upon his God. Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that compass yourselves about with sparks: walk in the light of your fire, and in the sparks that ye have kindled. This shall ye have of Mine hand; ye shall lie down in sorrow.”

Here are represented two classes of people, both in darkness. The first class fear Jehovah, and obey the voice of His servant, and yet they walk in darkness, so deep that they have no light. The other class walk in darkness, but neither fear Jehovah, nor obey the voice of His servant.

The former class are exhorted to trust in the name of Jehovah and to stay upon their God — the same terms used in the song of salvation in Isa. xxvi. 3, 4: “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he trusteth in Thee.” Then, in the next verse, we find the tripHcate use of the name Jehovah, the only case, I believe, in the Bible: “Trust ye in Jehovah for ever: for in Jehovah, Jehovah is the Rock of Ages.” The same words are used here again by Isaiah: “Let him trust in the name of Jehovah, and stay upon his God.”

The other class are warned that, to attempt to relieve their darkness by their own philosophies and vain endeavours is simply to compass themselves about with the sparks of a fire that they have themselves kindled and the ultimate event is that they lie down in sorrow, their darkness deepening into final and everlasting despair. You might as well try to make up for lack of sunlight by kindling a bonfire, which presently goes out, and leaves you in midnight darkness. Only the sun will serve the purpose of any soul that wants enlightenment.

It is very noticeable, in this same passage, that there is not one word of comfort for any disobedient soul. “Is there any among you that feareth Jehovah and obeyeth the voice of His servant “? He is bidden to trust and hold on to God, and wait for the light. But there is not one word in the whole Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, to bring comfort to any who continue disobedient. Whether such disobedient soul is unregenerate, or regenerate, it makes little difference — there is no word of comfort for him. If darkness comes from disobedience, it will continue as long as disobedience continues. We may as well understand that. If there is anything for which “Keswick” has stood for more than thirty years, it is for the necessity of obedience in order to light, in order to blessing. Not one of the teachers on this platform has ever winked at disobedience in any form, or given any soul any hope or comfort while continuing in disobedience. And it is taught here consistently that obedience must be a studious obedience, an obedience that looks at little as well as at great commands, and renounces even doubtful things, since God must have the advantage of doubts, and not we ourselves, if we would walk in light.

The most terrible metaphor perhaps in the Holy Scriptures is the astronomical one in Jude 13: “Wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever,” That is the more striking, because, when Jude wrote, certain astronomical facts were not known. It was not known, for instance, what would be the effect if a star broke away from its centripetal force and gave way to the centrifugal. But we know now that such a star would dash off into space, going farther and farther from its original centre, and sweeping faster and faster into the depths and infinitudes of space. Such a wandering star would get into deeper and more absolute midnight, farther away from the source of both light and heat, until it became one great crystal of ice, plunging into the infinitudes of space in the darkness of a sunless and starless midnight. This is the Spirit’s way of expressing the final result of persistent and wailful disobedience to God. There is absolutely no hope for any disobedient soul; and persistent disobedience means an increase of darkness, a loss of light, and love, and life for evermore.

Let us understand this, that, whether one is a child of God or not, disobedience is deadly it tends unto death; to the decay of all spiritual affections, convictions, sensibilities, and choices. Whether you are a child of God or not, at once stop your disobedience, turn at once your back upon everything sinful or doubtful, if you want to walk in light.

Disobedience must extend not only to things purely Divine, but to things human. Wherever God has ordained authority, that authority must be obeyed. Marital authority — the wife must submit herself to her husband as unto the Lord. Parental Authority — the child must obey his parents. Ecclesiastical Authority — in the Church there must be an obedience to the powers that are ordained of God. And so in the State; there must be submission to all constituted rulers. There can be no relief or release from darkness while there is disobedience. I have known a wife, after years of gloom, to come at once into light by a proper wifely submission to her husband. I have known a child to come out of years of darkness by going to a parent that had been disobeyed, confessing and forsaking a long course of disobedience, and coming under parental authority. God only knows how many are in darkness because they are rebelling against His order, whatever that may be, in things purely Divine, or in things human but subject to Divine ordinance and direction.

But, supposing there is the fear of Jehovah, and obedience to the voice of His servant; supposing there is obedience to all constituted authority, both in heaven and on earth — conscientious, studious, habitual obedience, may there not still be darkness? This text concedes it.

Let us look at the remedy for such gloom.

First, physical disease may have something to do with spiritual darkness. The body, soul and spirit are so intimately connected that we cannot quite say where the influence of one or another begins and ends, because the influences of body and spirit are reciprocal. We are learning this more and more through increased, careful, microscopical examinations of the body in our day. There is such a thing as a holy care of the body, in cleanliness; in careful, abstemious, and prudent diet, neither eating what is injurious, nor more than is healthful. There is much sin, committed against God at our tables, and no wonder if clouds come over the spirit when the liver is pouring black bile into the stomach; and when the whole circulatory, respiratory and perspiratory system is, in a large degree, rendered morbid by habits of what, no doubt, God considers positive sin. For instance, in Asaph’s 77th Psalm, we read about his running sore in the night, and his insomnia, and complaining against God, and vain attempt to get hold of God. In the middle of the Psalm he says: “This is my infirmity “; in other words, •’! am a fool j God is not at fault — it is myself.” We see, in Job’s great trial, how when his afflictions came upon him, he lost sight of God in a measure, and began to complain and murmur against Him partly as a result of his physical condition.

There may be also mental disease — melancholia is a form of virtual insanity, and often largely the fruit of mere wilfulness. The great majority of cases of insanity ,betray such abnormal self-will that nobody can say whether wilfulness does not tend to insanity. If, therefore, the will were thoroughly given up to God, surrendered, so far as self-indulgence is concerned and the determination to have one’s own way, many cases of insanity might become impossible, especially to the child of God. It is important that we should learn to get and keep a healthy physical and mental tone; and nothing will help it like absolute obedience to almighty God in things physical and spiritual.

Delusion may sometimes cause darkness, leaving one to the control of notions that are false to God’s truth. It is always possible for a believer to run into that snare. One of the chief arraignments of the Roman Catholic System is that it tends to becloud human souls with superstitious errors. It puts the priest between the soul and God in baptism, preventing the child from being incorporated into the church, according to papal notions. It puts the priest between the child and the knowledge of God, in His Word, and makes him the interpreter of truth. It puts the priest between the child and the reception of the body of Christ, so-called, in the Mass. It puts the priest between forgiveness of sins and the soul in Confession; between the soul and the Holy Spirit, in Confirmation; between the believer and the right to preach and minister, in Ordination. And it carries this interposition even to the last hour, in Extreme Unction, putting the priest between the soul and heaven; yes, even after death, in prayers for the dead, it puts the priest between the soul and actual entrance into eternal joys. No wonder that people of Roman Catholic communions are immersed in deep darkness. They are the subjects of the greatest delusion that this world has ever seen under the name of religion, when the Devil, with his masterpiece of strategy, insists upon the interposition of man between the human soul and Almighty God in every conceivable relation of life.

Legalism is often, in our Protestant churches, taught and preached; so that awakened souls, instead! of looking away from their works to the accomplished and finished work of Jesus — and even believers, after they have found salvation in renouncing their own works — expect to find justification, sanctification, and acceptance with God, through something that they themselves have done. The consequence is that all such get into darkness, because they continue to *’ come to the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire; unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they had heard intreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more.... And so terrible was the sight that “even “Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake.” How can a soul ever find peace, lingering under the brow of Sinai? Do you not know that Sion is the only place of security and serenity? And if you, having found your way to Calvary, go back to linger under the shadows of Sinai, you cannot blame God for your darkness. There is nothing but darkness to be expected there.

Again, people get the delusion that all suffering is a judgment from God. They know not how to make the distinction between hereditary evil, coming down from generations before them, or punitive judgments, iind the purely disciplinary and educative suffering, designed to develop faith, patience, and holiness. Many have no idea of these things, and when suffering overtakes them, they say they do not know what they have done that God should visit them with judgment. “Like as a father chasteneth his children, so the Lord chasteneth them that fear Him;” “Whom the Lord loveth He correcteth, even as a father the son in whom he delighteth,” so that the absence of such correction is a sign of the bastard, and not the son, and, instead of such correction being a token of judgment, it is a token of love. If you interpret God’s chastisements as judgments and curses, you must get into darkness.

A morbid habit of introspection wmU account for a vast amount of darkness in the children of God — for ever looking within instead of without, at themselves instead of at Christ. In only two instances in the New Testament are we taught to examine ourselves, and it is for a specific purpose, in both cases. There is no authority in the Word of God for this morbid habit of introspection which is at the” bottom of nine-tenths of the cases of persistent darkness that I have met in the course of my ministry. I have received a letter from a woman — I have had plenty from men as well, but the majority of such letters come from women. Woman is more religious in her nature than man, and for that very reason, if she becomes morbidly introspective she is apt to get into more desperate darkness than a man. This letter states that the writer has absolutely abandoned all hope that she is a child of God, or an heir of heaven. She thinks she has committed the unpardonable sin, while every line of her letter shows she has not. The tenderness of conscience, the anxiety to be the Lord’s, the desire to undo the past of her life — such frames of mind are inconsistent with having committed the unpardonable sin. The conviction that one has committed such sin is almost an inevitable result of persistent self-scrutiny. There are two results, either of which may come from this subjective process: one is despair, because you see nothing good in yourself; the other is self-complacency, because you think you do see something good in yourself. In the first case you will reach hopelessness; in the other, what is even worse, self-gratulation.

While referring to this sin against the

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Holy Ghost let it be added — for I have no doubt there are many who may read these words who are fearful lest they have committed that very sin — that it is specifically described in the New Testament, so that we may recognise it. It is not so much an act as a state in which an act becomes possible. Again, it implies such moral blindness and hardness as probably precludes the consciousness of having committed such a sin. Then, still further, it is possible to cultivate a morbid sensibility of conscience that makes you like a man that is flayed, with every nerve exposed to irritating influences. Excessive self-scrutiny simply strips off what was intended to protect you against abnormal sensitiveness, and then you wonder at the acute and agonising sensitiveness that makes you think you are everything you ought not to be, and have never known anything of God.

Dr. A. J. Gordon had a desperate case of this kind in his congregation. He went to see a woman on her dying bed, and began to console her. Regarding such cases, he said, “I never attempt to assure any man or woman who is in that state: I dare not, I leave that to God.” As he tried to comfort this woman, she said; “It’s no use; I know that years ago I committed the unpardonable sin. But when I am gone, people will say: It’s strange that God should send that woman to hell who has been living an upright, consistent life, and was known as one who gave away a great deal to the poor. Now,” said she, *’ do not you ever allow God to be impugned, or anybody to insinuate that He is not a holy, just, pitiful, and loving God.*’ In her unsparing condemnation of herself she was specially zealous to justify God.

An unrenewed disposition will also bring darkness. Let us recur to our astronomical figure. In science you may separate the light ray from the heat ray, so that while you obstruct the one you get the other. You cannot do that in the spiritual life. If you obstruct the ray of love, you lose the ray of light; and so John says in his First Epistle: ‘* He that hateth his brother is in darkness, and walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth.” So far as you discourage the love of God from possessing you and exercising itself through your life, you obstruct the light of God from bathing and illuminating you. Therefore, so long as an envious, uncharitable, impatient, resentful temper is exercised, or allowed within you, toward even your bitterest enemy, or vilest traducer, you shut

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out the light of God in shutting out His love; for so long and so far as you are a stranger to His love, you are a stranger to His light. It is most important to understand that, in order to have true peace, there must be renewed and sanctified temper. We must not indulge an unholy or unlovely disposition. Many of those who teach on the Keswick platform have known men or women to step out into a new life of peace and love, instantaneously, upon renouncing some long-cherished resentment.

Let us look a little further into the effect of an unholy disposition. By the microscopic examination of the blood w-e can tell whether malignant tempers have been influencing a patient. This is a wonderful discovery of the last few years. We can trace the influence of malignant temper and disposition upon the very structure of the human body; it leaves its mark. Any indulgence of that which is wrong, in spirit, thus leaves its impress even upon the body. If this be so with regard to the physical, what must be the effect on the subtler spiritual nature?

It was a favourite saying of Bancroft, the historian, who was a vigorous old man at ninety, that the secret of a long life is in never losing one’s temper. The remark was simply a concrete way of expressing the hygienic value of amiability — a principle which, until lately, has scarcely been considered in the training of children. Hitherto we have regarded fretfulness, melancholy, and bad temper as the natural concomitants of illness. But modern science shows that these mental moods have actual power to produce disease. No doubt in most cases imperfect bodily conditions are the cause of irritable and depressed feelings, yet sometimes the reverse is true, and a better knowledge of physiological laws would show them to be effect rather than cause. The fact that discontented and gloomy people are never in good health is an argument in favour of the theory that continual indulgence in unhappy thoughts acts as a poison and creates some form of disease.

Darkness may sometimes be due to Divine discipline. There can be little doubt that sometimes God allows for a time a pall of darkness to come on a human soul for a purpose, just as in the case of Job, or Jonah. John Wesley, beautiful Christian as he was, passed for hours into a “horror of darkness,” at one time, and when he came out of it he began to sing: —

“I the chief of sinners am,
But Jesus died for me”

C. H. Spurgeon had his times of darkness, and, after one of them, he said: “I am living on four words, and I am going to die on them — ‘Jesus died for me.’” And the late Bishop of Durham, it is said, in his declining days, had a period of despondency, and sought from his chaplain some words of comfort and consolation such as he had often ministered to others, God may permit such discipline for the strengthening of faith, and educating of patience, leading you to look to Him in supplication and trustful waiting, when there are less external signs of His favour and blessing.

Sometimes, darkness may be the effect even of a vision of God. A young woman said to me lately: “After your address on having a vision of God, I got into darkness and distress. I have humbled myself, as you showed me I ought, but I cannot lift myself up.” ‘’No,” said I,” let God lift you up; you are told to humble yourself in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.” “But am I to endure this distress of mind, and sorrow, and suffering, and humiliation until God pleases to raise me?” “Yes, only be careful that you follow Scriptural directions. Look to Him, stay yourself upon Him, trust in Him; do not ’ kindle your own fire, nor compass yourself about with sparks.’ God may have some purpose in allowing this delay before He gives you true uplift and exaltation.”

I have no question that sometimes spiritual darkness is the result of diabolical agency, How solemn are Christ’s words in Luke xxii. 53: “This is your hour and the power of darkness.” How solemn is that record by John: “It was night” — night in more senses than one — the darkest of human history when the midnight of Gethsemane and Calvary enshrouded the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no question — some of us have known somewhat of it in our own life — that when you are trying to live nearest to God, a diabolical assault may encompass you for a time with the power of darkness. It is remarkable that, in that sixth chapter of Ephesians — one of the two Epistles in the New Testament that lift us to the highest Alpine summit of Christian privilege — there is a more solemn warning against the devil than in any other part of the Word of God. The fact is, whenever one is in the heavenlies he is sure to meet the Devil. As long as you are down in the earthlies, under the control of the flesh, he will probably let you alone, because his subordinate agents are taking care of you already. But, when you rise above the power of the world and the flesh, look out! The general-in-chief will not allow you to escape his power without turning all his force against you. Do not be surprised if you have diabolical assaults at the very time when you have been lifted into the highest spiritual ecstasy. What are those “fiery darts” of Eph. vi.? Of course, the reference is to the darts and arrows sent into the midst of the enemy, and especially his fleet, to set everything on fire that they touched. And what are “the fiery darts of the devil” but the blasphemous and obscene suggestions that he seeks to lodge in our minds. We do not know where they come from, and we abhor them when they find their way there. They are from the devil’s bow. Always remember that you are not responsible for the presence of unholy suggestions, but only for the cherishing of them. You are not responsible for the foul birds that come to your window; but you are responsible whenever you allow Satan’s fowls of the air to find a nest within you. You cannot prevent bad people from ringing your door bell, but you need not admit them into your house. Catherine of

Siena, in the Middle Ages, used to have remarkable dialogues with the Lord. After days of intense diabolical contest, when she came out of it, she said: “O Lord, how couldst Thou forsake me and leave me to the devil’s power?” “But I did not forsake thee, Catherine.” “How could I have had all these vile thoughts? “*’ But, Catherine, did you welcome those thoughts?” “Thou knowest that I abhorred them, and cast them from my soul as vile.” “That was because I was with thee in that awful conflict. Hence those suggestions of the devil were infinitely abhorrent to thy nature.” So you are not responsible for diabolical suggestions, but only for the degree to which they find welcome in your soul.

Let me now add some suggestions as to how relief may be found, in addition to those already made incidentally.

In the first place, turn to the truth that Almighty God has revealed in Holy Scripture, Do not go to human books; go to the Divine Book. Immerse yourself in the Holy Scriptures. Let the light of God correct your errors, superstitions, delusions, and false notions. Sir Edward Peary in his Polar explorations thought he was going ten miles a day on his sledges toward the North

Pole; but he discovered that the icefloe on which he was sledging was itself distinctly moving twelve miles southward every day; so that he was actually going two miles backward instead of ten miles forward; and he found out that fact by look’uig at the sky. When Livingstone, in the heart of Africa, was persuaded that his guides were either ignorant of the direction in which they were going, or else deceiving him, he studied his compass, and found out his latitude and longitude without their help. It is a great thing to keep your eye upward; to cease to look at human standards, traditions and modes of doing things, seeking human help, and compassing yourself about with sparks; and keep your eyes fixed on the stars; for, somehow or other, nothing under the stars goes exactly right. The best watch sometimes is fast or slow. Nothing under heaven is accurate. But, blessed be God, the celestial clock has not varied one thousandth part of a second for the last thousand years. The sun and north star always appear where they ought to be. If you get celestial signs by which to guide yourselves, you will come out of many errors, due to human teaching and perverse traditions, which make the Word of God of none effect. Seek comfort first of all, in the Word of God, and the Spirit of God and the place of secret prayer. “Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.”

A great physician in America had an interview with a patient who was subject to peculiar nervous prostration. He said; “Madam, I want you to go home and devoutly study your Bible an hour a day;” and he bowed her out without further ceremony. She said to herself: “After all, this prescription does not cost me anything. Suppose I try it.” She went home, and held communion with God for an hour a day, and at the end of a month she was entirely cured. Then she went back to her doctor, and said: “I was angry with you, doctor.” “Yes,” he remarked, “I supposed you would be;” and taking down his own Bible from the shelf, he said: “Do you see this? I read it before every operation, and go to work in the light of God’s Word. I read it before visiting my patients, and it is the only thing that keeps me, in the strain of my profession, from darkness and despair. I knew that you needed it, and that it was the only remedy that would meet your case.”

In conclusion, remember the text we started with:” Trust in the name of the

Lord, and stay yourself upon your God.” Remember Hudson Taylor’s words: “The devil may fence us round, but he cannot roof us in, he cannot prevent us looking up.” Those are beautiful words in Psalm xxxiv. 5 (R.V.): “They looked unto Him and were radiatit.’^ Notice again the astronomical figure. You set your face to the sun, and the sun lights up and illumines your features; and you look unto God as your Sun, and you become radiant. Leave yourself in God’s hand. Never seek any consolation that is not found in God, for if you find any other you are the worse for it — it is false consolation. Triumph in God, notwithstanding your darkness. I have spoken of the great stratagem of the devil in turning our minds introspectively upon our own spiritual state to involve us in despair. Thousands of people, true believers, in the Christian Church, are in the snare of the devil’s darkness. He robs them of their testimony by discouraging their hearts, and stops them in holy service to other souls by persuading them that they are probably without ground of hope themselves. If there are any master tricks of the devil, they are found, first, in preventing people from coming to Christ at all; nd, if he cannot do that, in making them of no use practically after they have come. I feel like saying to every child of God: Forget your darkness, and go to work for somebody else. Look at those words in Isa. lviii.:” If thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noonday; and the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones; and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.” Our Lord Jesus Christ said: “He that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” What is it to follow Christ? Not simply to obey Him, but to do as He did. How did He do? Was there ever seen on earth a life of such self-abnegation as His? It could not be said of Him: “He saved Himself; others He cannot save.” His great thought was to save others. When you forget your own salvation in absorption in the salvation of others, it is not unlikely that you will pass out of your darkness into the light of life.

A young man in college had fallen into this snare of the devil. A time of revival came, and the chaplain wanted him to go and visit other students. “I cannot do it; I have no hope for myself!” “How did you get into that condition?” “By grieving and neglecting the Spirit.” “But you do not want other students to do that?” “No!” Then supposing you go and warn them not to grieve the Spirit?” He went, first of all to a profligate in the college, and said: “Why do not you turn to Christ?” “There is no hope for me” was the reply. “Look at the life I’ve been living, I’ve been such an awful sinner!” “Well, but Christ is perfectly able to save the chief of sinners. Do not you see it? / see it myself” And out of his own darkness he came. Forget yourself, try to make some poor sinner see that there is no unpardonable sin, except sin unrepented of and as you try to guide poor sinning souls to Calvary, you will find that Calvary’s blood is sufficient for you.

My last word is an exhortation, that you should triumph in God, and thus defeat the devil. The question is whether he or God shall have the victory. Be determined that he shall not triumph, but that God shall. Forget your feelings, your states, your past life of sin, forget everything except that Christ came into this world to seek and save that which was lost. Then triumph ip God in the darkness, and despite the darkness, defying even the darkness itself, because” the true light shineth.’^ Get out into the light by ignoring the darkness. Obey God, cherish a holy disposition, look after the health of your body and soul, take the Word of God as your guide, take the Spirit of God as your controlling power. Then, encompassed in the armour of God, defy Satan to do his worst. Stand aside, let Christ and Satan fight out your battle. You are quite incompetent to conquer. But there is the Overcomer and in that Overcomer you yourself may overcome.