The Fulness

It pleased the Father, that in Him should all fulness dwell.- COLOSSIANS i. 1 9.

happiness depends in a very small degree upon what is external to us. Its springs lie deep within; like those waters that, warm in winter and cold in summer, have their fountains bordered with evergreen grass. Yet, how common it is to think otherwise! Hence the keen pursuit of pleasure, lovers’ sighs, war’s fierce ambition, the student’s patient labour as he feeds his midnight lamp with the oil of life, the panting race for riches, the desperate struggles some make to keep themselves from sinking into poverty, and the toil and trouble others endure, to say nothing of the sins which these may alike commit, to rise in the world, as it is called — to keep a better table, to wear a better dress, to live in a better house than satisfied their humble, but happier parents. These paths, crowded and beaten down though they be by the feet of thousands who are treading on each other’s heels, never yet conducted any man to happiness. Never. It lies in another direction. Whatever be his condition, be he poor or rich, pining on a sick bed or with health glowing on his cheek, to be married or to be hanged to-morrow, “Blessed,” or, as we should say, Happy, “is he whose trangression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth riot iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile.”

The way to happiness does not lie in attempting to bring our circumstances up to our minds, but our minds down to our circumstances. Many birds wear a finer coat than the lark, nor is there any that dwells in a lowlier home; yet which of the feathered songsters soars so high, or sings so merrily, or teaches man so well how to leave the day’s cares and labours for the bosom of his family, as when, neither envying the pea cock his splendid plumage, nor the proud eagle her lofty realm, it drops singing into its grassy nest, to caress its young, and with its wings to shield them from the cold dews of night? To indulge an unsanctified and insatiable ambition, to attempt to bring our circumstances up to our minds, is to fill a sieve with water, or the grave with dead, or the sea with rivers. The passions that in such a case seek gratification, are like that wretched drunkard’s thirst; they burn the fiercer for indulgence, and crave for more the more they get. It is often difficult, I grant, to bring our minds down to our circumstances, but he attempts not a difficult, but an impossible thing, who attempts to bring his circumstances up to the height of his ambition. Nature, says the old adage, is contented with little, grace with less, lust with nothing. And ours be the happiness of him who, content with less than little, pleased with whatever pleases the Father, careful for nothing, thankful for anything, prayerful in everything, can say with Paul, I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.

Before directing your attention to the fulness that is in Christ, let me embrace the opportunity which the expression offers of exhorting you,

I. To be pleased with whatever pleases God.

I have read of an Italian who had learned that difficult lesson so well, that all who witnessed his magnanimity under the most adverse fortunes, stood astonished. He recalled to men’s minds the grand saying of an old heathen, that a good man struggling with adversity was a sight for the gods to look at. It was not that his natural temper was too sweet to be soured or too phlegmatic to be moved; nor was it that, like a cold blooded animal, he did not feel the iron when it entered his soul. No. He felt it keenly, and bore it bravely; and the secret of his tranquil, heroic patience lay in these four things. First, he said, I look within me, then without me, afterwards beneath me, and last of all, I look above me.

First, he looked within him; and what saw he there? Corruption, guilt, so much un worthiness, as led him to conclude that he deserved no good thing at the hand of God; and that, therefore, whatever blessings his calamities had left to him, were more than he had any right to expect. We write our blessings on the water, but our afflictions on the rock. Those are forgot, these are remembered; and yet, if we turn away our eyes from our trials, and look back on our lives and in upon our hearts, how would that check each rising rebellious murmur? Gratitude would temper our grief; and though we might continue to mourn, we should say with David, I will sing of mercy and judgment?

Next, he looked without him, and there he saw, what you all may see, many more severely tried than him self; thousands in point of merit not more unworthy, yet in point of circumstances much more unhappy. Would it not help to clear away the vapours, and rebuke the discontent, and improve the temper of some grumblers among us, were they now and then to visit the sad abodes of wretchedness and poverty? It would certainly teach them how thankful they ought to be that they are not as many are, and how thankful many would be to be as they are. Have I not seen many a poor wretch in this world who would gladly change places with those of you that are most weary of your burdens, and almost weary of your life. How has it reconciled us to the discomforts of a cold, blustering storm on land, to think of the poor seamen who were tossing on the deep in dread of shipwreck, or hanging on by the shrouds, or whelmed in the ocean, their last prayer washed from their lips, their cries for help drowned in the roar of breakers. When we lay stretched on a bed of sickness, with kind faces around us, angels, as it were, ministering to our wants, it has helped to reconcile us to the weary pillow to think of them who, far from home, lay bleeding on the battle-field, none near to raise their drooping head, or to answer their dying cry of “water, water!” And when death, unwelcome visitor, entered our home, ah! the one coffin felt less heavy, when, looking on sweet ones left, we thought of dwellings that the spoiler had, or had all but desolated. Such a thought has calmed the troubled breast, and said to murmuring passions, Peace, be still. It is with its potent spell that in this humble cottage a pious peasant approaches a mother who, wringing her hands, hangs in wild, frantic, terrible grief, over the body of her dead babe; by the wildness of her passion, as a vehement wind beats down the sea, calming the grief of others. Laying her hand kindly on her shoulder, she says, with eyes full of tears, and a voice trembling with emotion, “Hush, Mary; you have but one pair of empty little shoes to look on. Be you thankful. I have six of them.” And, when most severely tried, and all God’s billows seem to be going over us, besides feeling that we are visited with far less than our iniquities deserve, we have only to look abroad to see that our afflictions are fewer than those which many others suffer.

He looked next beneath him. And there, to his fancy’s eye, lay his grave; a green grassy mound, six feet of earth! How foolish it seemed to repine over the loss of broad lands, when so small a portion of this earth was all he soon would need, and all, though stretched out at his full length, he could occupy! That man blunts the keen edge of misfortune, who meets its stroke with the thought, that when it does its worst, it cannot strip him so bare as death shall the most prosperous and envied of men? Adversity, at the worst, but takes time by the forelock, and, by a few brief years, anticipates the hand of the greatest spoiler, inexorable death. We came into the world naked infants, and we shall go out of it as naked. We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The men of fortune shall not carry away a penny of their gains, nor the men of fame so much as one leaf of their laurel crowns. When life’s play in all its acts is over, and the curtain drops, and the lights are put out, and the stage is deserted, its kings, queens, priests, soldiers, peasants, statesmen, dropping their distinctive characters, must all return to one common level. There is one event to all. And let us remember that it shall be with us as with those actors on the stage whom men applaud, not because of the parts they play, but of the way in which they play them. Well done from God, well done from Christ, well done from the tongues of ten thousand angels, shall crown the life of a good servant, but not the life of a bad sovereign. God has no respect for persons, but will reward every man, not according to his place, but according to the way he filled it. He shall reward every man according to his work.

He looked last of all above him, and saw his home in heaven. And how should that glorious prospect sustain us under our severest trials! To that refuge our thoughts may always fly; and as there is no pit so deep but it has that opening over head, though it may be dark below and all around, it is always bright above us. Let the world reel and shake, let banks break, let sudden changes whelm affluence into the lowest depths of poverty, let convulsion succeed convulsion, till the stateliest fabrics and firmest fortunes are hurled into the dust, how blessed at such a time to know that heaven is sure. No tempests sweep its sea of glass. Up there it is calm when it is stormy here; up there it is clear when it is cloudy here; up there it is day when it is darkness here; nor are those realms of bliss any more affected by the events of earth, than are the stars of the firmament by the earthquakes that shake our world, or the thunders that shake our skies. By considerations like these we should strengthen our minds, and give them that firmness of texture which shall preserve us from devouring cares, as solid, close-grained oak is preserved from those insects that eat out the heart of softer woods. Let God give his blessing to such thoughts, and they will enable a Christian man to meet evil as the mountain crag looks out on the approaching storm.

Yet the Italian’s explanation of his equanimity under afflictions to which all of us are exposed, and against which, therefore, we do well to be fortified, does not bring out the grandest secret of a calm, resigned, happy spirit; the secret of a patriarch’s unparalleled patience and of a prophet’s dauntless courage. That lies not so much in looking within, or looking without, in dropping our eye on the grave, or raising it to the crown, as in looking to God. The brightest light that falls on our trials issues from his throne. That changed the whole aspect of Job’s afflictions, and hence, his well-known exclamation, The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. And what also but a sight of God inspired the courage with which the prophet eyed the approach of misfortune, defying it as a man on a rock defies the swelling billows of an angry sea. “Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation.”

Extravagant as that may sound in the ears of some, it is the language of a calm, sober, solid faith. For what in reason should hinder him who sees in God a Father, and believes that all events proceed from his hand, and are managed by his wisdom, and are prompted by his love, from kissing the rod, and saying, Father, not my will, but thine be done; from taking the cup and draining it to the bitterest dregs. We have perfect confidence in his wisdom and in his love; and we only do him the justice which we would expect from our own children when we believe that he doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men, nor ever chastens but in love. His was a noble saying who, when his crops were rotting in flooded fields, and ruin stared him from the scowling heavens, and other men cursed the weather, on being asked his reason for saying that it pleased him, replied, It pleases God to send it, and whatever pleases him pleases me. That sounds like an echo of the old prophet’s voice; and we arc ready to envy a man whose faith could triumph over such great misfortunes. Yet why should we not lie as calmly in the arms of God’s providence as we lay in infancy on a mother’s breast? Having an ever-living, an everlasting, an ever-loving father in God, how may we welcome all providences; and, drawing some good from every evil, as the bee extracts honey even from poisoned flowers, how may we say, “Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory!” Sweetly submissive to the will of God, shall it not fare with us as with the pliant reeds that love the hollows and fringe the margin of the lake, and bending to the blast, not resisting it, raise their heads anew, unharmed by the storm that has snapped the mountain pine, and rent the hearts of oak asunder? The joy of the Lord is our strength. Let us now consider that which, while it pleased God, will certainly please all his people,

II. The fulness that is in Christ.

Within the palace, but without the throne-room of Shushan, Queen Esther stands. They who enter the King’s presence unsummoned do it at the peril of their life; and resolved in a good cause to dare the penalty, she stands there writh her jewelled foot upon the grave. A noble spectacle! not so much for her unrivalled beauty, still less for the splendour of her apparel, as for the resolution to venture life, and either save her nation or perish in the attempt. In her blooming youth, in the admiration of the court, in the affections of her husband, in her lofty rank, in her queenly honours, she has everything to make life attractive. Hers is a golden cup; and it is foaming of pleasures to the brim. But her mind is made up to die; and so, with a silent prayer, and “if I perish,” I perish,” on her lips, she passes in, and now stands mute and pallid, yet calm and resolute outside the ring of nobles, to hear her doom. Nor has she to endure the agony of a long suspense. Her fate, which seems to tremble in the balance, is soon determined. No sooner does the monarch catch sight of the beautiful woman, and brave and good as beautiful, whom he had raised from slavery to share his bed and throne, than her apprehensions vanish. The clouds break“”; and she finds, as we often do with Christ, that her fears have wronged her lord. Instantly his hand stretches out the golden sceptre; the business of the court is stopped; the queen, the queen! divides the crowd of nobles; and up that brilliant lane she walks in majesty and in charms that outvie her gems, to hear the blessed words, What wilt thou, Queen Esther? and what is thy request? it shall be even given thee to the half of the kingdom.

What wilt thou, Queen Esther? is but an echo of the voice which faith catches from the lips of Jesus; and the whole scene presents but a dim imperfect image of that which heaven presents when the gate rolls open, and angels and archangels making way for him, a believer enters with his petitions. Was that beautiful woman once a slave? So was he. In her royal mar-

2 A riage was lowliness allied to majesty? So it is in his union by faith with Jesus Christ. And as to her royal apparel, the diadem, the cloth of gold bedecked with sparkling gems, in which her maids have attired their mistress, why, in the righteousness that clothes, and the graces of the Spirit that adorn him, the believer wears a robe, which wins the admiration, not of men’s, but angels’ eyes, and shines even amid the glories of a city whose gates are made of pearls, and whose streets are paved with gold. To the half of his kingdom, the Persian promised whatever his queen might ask; and generous, right royal as was his offer, it helps us by its very meanness, as a molehill at the foot of a mountain, as a taper’s feeble yellow flame held up against the blazing sun, to form some estimate of the boundless grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Half his kingdom! He oifers nothing by halves. His promise is illimitable. All mine is thine. Confining his generosity neither to kingdoms, nor continents, nor worlds, nor heaven itself, he lays the whole universe at a poor sinner’s feet. Away then with fears and cares! There is nothing we need that we shall not get, nothing we can ask that we shall not receive. It pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell. Transferring divine wealth, if I may so speak, to our account in the bank of heaven, and giving us an unlimited credit there, Jesus says, All things, whatsoever ye ask in prayer believing, ye shall receive.

In regard to Christ’s fulness, I remark —

]. That there is all fulness of mercy to pardon in him.

Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savour, so, says Solomon, doth a little folly him that is in reputation for wisdom and honour. Such great mischief can little things do. One small leak will sink the biggest ship that ever sailed the ocean; one bad link in the chain she rides by, and parting from her anchor, she is hurled on the horrid reef or driven before the fury of the tempest; and even one little wedge left carelessly on the slips arrests her progress when the signal is given, and eager crowds are waiting to cheer the launch, and the bosom of the sea is swelling to receive her into its arms. And had there been the smallest doubt expressed in the Bible about the fulness of pardoning mercy, had it not been made clear as noon-day that the blood of Christ cleanseth from all sin, from sins as well of the deepest as of the lightest dye, what a stumbling-block would that have been! I believe that it would have arrested the steps of thousands now happy in Christ, or now safe in heaven, as they went to throw themselves at his feet and cry, Lord, save us, we perish.

But there is no such doubt. A herald of the cross, I stand here in my master’s name to proclaim a universal amnesty. When the last gun is fired, and pardon is proclaimed in reconquered provinces, is it not always marked by some notable exceptions? When the sword of war is sheathed, the sword of justice is drawn, only to be returned to the scabbard after it is filled with blood.

Men say that they need not look for mercy in the hour of retribution, who wreaked ruthless vengeance on help less women, nor had pity on sweet tender babes. But from the pardon of redeeming mercy there are none excepted, unless those, who, by refusing to accept it, except themselves. Are you unjust? Christ Jesus died, the just for the unjust. Are you sinners? He came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Are you the vilest of the vile? He never lifted his foot, when he was on this earth, to spurn the guiltiest away. He pitied whom others spurned; he received whom others rejected; he loved whom others loathed. Let the vilest, meanest, most wretched outcasts, know that they have a friend in him. A mother’s door may be shut against them, but not his. It was his glory then, and it is his glory still, to be reproached as the friend of sinners. He faced contumely to save them; he endured death to save them. And be you groaning under a load of cares or guilt, of sins or sorrows, kind and gracious Lord! he says, Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, “which also leaned on his breast at supper,” and lingered by his cross, and was entrusted with the care of his mother, and more than any of the others enjoyed his master’s intimacy and knew his mind, says, not as one who balances his language, and carefully selects his words, lest he should compromise and commit his master too far, “If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Fa ther, Jesus Christ, the righteous:” adding, “and he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” The whole world! ah! some would say, that is dangerous language. It is God’s language. It binds a zone of mercy around the world, and perish the hand that would narrow it by a hair’s-breadth. Beneath his grace in Christ, as beneath that ample sky, there is room enough for all the men and women in the wide world. None shall be damned but they who damn themselves. What were it but to make God a liar, should we doubt that our sins can be pardoned, ay, and shall be pardoned, if we seek their forgiveness? Within its widest shores the vast ocean has its bounds, and so has the far-travelling sun within his orbit; but this pardon is confined within no limits of time, or age, or guilt, or class, or character, and is clogged with no conditions but that you accept it.

One might fancy that now all are certain to be saved. Who will not accept of it? Offer a starving man bread, he will take it; offer a poor man money, he will take it; offer a sick man health, he will take it; offer an ambitious man honour, he will take it; offer a life-boat in the wreck, a pardon at the gallows, oh! how gladly he will take them. Salvation, which is the one thing needful, is the only thing man will not accept. He will stoop to pick up a piece of gold out of the mire, but he will not rise out of the mire to receive a crown from heaven. What folly! What infatuation! May God by his Spirit empty our hearts of pride, and take away the evil heart of unbelief! Vain here is the help of man. Arise, 0 Lord, and plead the cause that is thine own. Break the spell of sin, and help us to say with the man of old, Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief!

2. There is all fulness of grace to sanctify in Christ.

“My leanness! my leanness!” is a lamentation which God’s people, as well as the old prophet, have often used in mourning over their spiritual condition. It may be very low, very sad; presenting the contrast of a soul famished, and a body luxuriously fed; increase of earthly, but a diminution of sacred joys; at the year’s end more money in the bank, but less grace in the heart; the tide of worldly fame flowing, and the tide of God’s favour ebbing; gardens, and orchards, and woodlands, and the fields of nature, green, gay, and beautiful, but barrenness of soul within; graces withering, prayers dull, faith weak, love cold, desires feeble, spiritual appetite failing; much to alarm the saint, and send him to his knees crying, My soul cleaveth to the dust, quicken thou me according to thy word.

But why is it, why should it be so? Why burns the virgins’ lamp with such a flickering flame? Why runs the stream of grace so small, shrunk to the size of a summer brook? Why are the best of us no better, no holier, no happier, than we are? Hath God forgotten to be gracious? hath he in anger shut up his tender mercies? No. The supplies are not exhausted, nor is the fountain empty; nor is our Father fallen into poverty, that his children are so scantily supplied, and have to go about meanly begging a share of the world’s enjoyments. It is easy to know why many poor chil dren in this city come to have misery stamped on their young faces, and look as if they had never smiled in this world, nor found this world smiling on them; a tyrant rules at home, harsh, stern, cruel, forbidding. Hapless creatures, they wander shoeless and shivering on our frosty streets, and with hunger in their hollow cheeks, and beggary hung on their backs, they hold out their skinny hands for charity; their father is poor, or dead, or, worse than dead, the base slave of a most damning vice, a drunkard, from whose imperious voice they fly, whose reeling step they tremble to hear. But what have God’s children to do with unhappy looks?

God is love. Fury is not in me, saith the Lord. With him is fulness of joy and pleasures for evermore. What do you wish or want? Go tell it to your Father. They that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing. Can he who justified not sanctify? Can he who enlisted us under his holy banner not provide munitions of war enough to secure, though there may be a hard fight for it, the final victory? Can he who led the march out of Egypt not beat down our foes, and conduct our triumphant way through a thousand dangers and over a thousand difficulties on to the promised land? Oh, yes; there is all efficiency and sufficiency in Jesus Christ to crown the work of grace, and to complete what he has begun. There is his Holy Spirit to sanctify you; there are stores of grace which, like the widow’s barrel that grew no emptier for all the meals it furnished, will appear the fuller the more you draw on them. As with an arch, the grace of God stands the firmer, the more weight you lay on it; its sufficiency, at least, will be the more evident; the more clearly you will see the truth of the promise, My grace is sufficient for thee. With the well ever full and ever flowing, our vessels need never be empty. Whether, therefore, you want more faith, more purity of heart or peace of mind, more light or love, a humbler or a holier spirit, a calmer or a tenderer conscience, a livelier sense of Christ’s excellences or of your own unworthiness, more tears for Christ’s feet or more honours for his head, fear not to draw, to hope, to ask, too much. No earthly fortune will stand daily visits to the bank, but this will. You may ask too little, you cannot ask too much; you may go too seldom, you cannot go too often, to the throne; for in Jesus dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.

III. There is a constant supply of pardoning and sanctifying grace in Christ.

It pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell; dwell, not come and go, like a wayfaring man who tarrieth but a night, who is with us to-day, and away to-morrow; not like the shallow, noisy, treacherous brook that fails, when most needed, in heat of summer, but like this deep-seated spring, that rising silently though affluently at the mountain’s foot, and having unseen communication with its exhaustless supplies, is ever flowing over its grassy margin, equally unaffected by the long droughts that dry the wells, and the frosts that pave the neighbouring lake with ice. So fail the joys of earth; so flow, supplied by the fulness that is in Christ, the pleasures and the peace of piety. It can not be otherwise. If a man love me, says Jesus, he will keep my words; and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

I have read how, in the burning desert, the skeletons of unhappy travellers, all withered and white, are found, not only on the way to the fountain, but lying grim and ghastly on its banks, with their skulls stretched over its very margin. Panting, faint, their tongue cleaving to the roof of their mouth, ready to fill a cup with gold for its fill of water, they press on to the well, steering their course by the tall palms that stand full of hope above the glaring sands. Already, in fond anticipation, they drink where others had been saved. They reach it. Alas! sad sight for the dim eyes of fainting men, the well is dry. With stony horror in their looks, how they gaze into the empty basin, or fight with man and beast for some muddy drops that but exasperate their thirst. The desert reels around them. Hope expires. Some cursing, some praying, they sink, and themselves expire. And by and by the sky darkens, lightnings flash, loud thunders roll, the rain pours down, and, fed by the showers, the treacherous waters rise to play in mockery with long fair tresses, and kiss the pale lips of death.

But yonder, where the cross stands up high to mark the fountain of the Saviour’s blood, and heaven’s sanctifying grace, no dead souls lie. Once a Golgotha, Calvary has ceased to be a place of skulls. Where men went once to die, they go now to live; and to none that ever went there to seek pardon, and peace, and holiness, did God ever say, Seek ye me in vain. There are times when the peace of God’s people, always like a river, is like one in flood, overflowing its margin, and rolling its mighty current between bank and brae. There are times when the righteousness of God’s people, always like the waves of the sea, seems like the tide at the stream, as, swelling beyond its ordinary bounds, it floats the boats and ships that lie highest, driest on the beach. But at all times and seasons, faith and prayer find fulness of mercy to pardon, and of grace to sanctify, in Jesus Christ. The supply is inexhaustible.

Mountains have been exhausted of their gold, mines of their diamonds, and the depths of ocean of their pearly gems. The demand has emptied the supply. Over once busy scenes, silence and solitude now reign; the caverns ring no longer to the miner’s hammer, nor is the song of the pearl-fisher heard upon the deep. But the riches of grace are inexhaustible. All that have gone before us have not made them less, and we shall make them no less to those who follow us. When they have supplied the wants of unborn millions, the last of Adam’s race, that lonely man, over whose head the sun is dying, beneath whose feet the earth is reeling, shall stand by as full a fountain as this day invites you to drink and live, to wash and be clean.

I have found it an interesting thing to stand on the edge of a noble rolling river, and to think, that although it has been flowing on for six thousand years, watering the fields, and slaking the thirst of a hundred generations, it shows no sign of waste or want; and when I have watched the rise of the sun, as he shot above the crest of the mountain, or in a sky draped with golden curtains, sprang up from his ocean bed, I have wondered to think that he has melted the snows of so many winters, and renewed the verdure of so many springs, and painted the flowers of so many summers, and ripened the golden harvests of so many autumns, and yet shines as brilliant as ever, his eye not dim, nor his natural strength abated, nor his floods of light less full for centuries of boundless profusion. Yet what are these but images of the fulness that is in Christ? Let that feed your hopes, and cheer your hearts, and brighten your faith, and send you away this day happy and rejoicing. For, when judgment flames have licked up that flowing stream, and the light of that glorious sun shall be quenched in darkness or veiled in the smoke of a burning world, the fulness that is in Christ shall flow on throughout eternity in the bliss of the redeemed. Blessed Saviour, Image of God, divine Redeemer! in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore. What thou hast gone to heaven to prepare, may we be called up at death to enjoy!