Spiritual Health
‘““Onk hundred able-bodied men wanted,” was the announcement we lately saw at the head — uy of an advertisement for recruits in the Government service. No invalids could pass muster. — It was duty on deck and among the rigging that was required, and not a berth in the hospital. As we ministers are recruiting-officers for the — King, it occurred to us that an announcement — would not be out of place on the doors of the churches, ‘‘A hundred able-hearted and able- — handed men and women wanted for duty.’ There are quite enough now who never answer to roll-call, or are stowed away in the berths of the sick and sleeping. The essentials an
needed by the King should be pene (t em full of praying without ceasing), patient, persevering, and powerful with the indwelling Spirit. These four P’s constitute the healthy Christian. Such God commands évery redeemed and renewed soul to be. His injunction is, ‘‘Be ye holy.’’ Holiness signifies health of heart and daily life. It is equivalent to the Saxon word wholth, and therefore to be holy is to be healed from the deadly disease of sin and to be whole in the inner man. Regeneration is the recovery from the only disease which can cast both body and soul into hell. There are several characteristics of this healed or renewed state. One is a faith which can overcome the world and the powers of darkness. A second is a good conscience — a conscience illuminated by God’s Word, kept sweet and wholesome by prayer, a conscience alert as the needle to the magnetic pole, and one that is a comfort to its owner, and not a tormentor. Just what a disordered liver is to the body is a bad conscience to the soul. One chief cause of the spiritual dyspepsia which makes so many professors of religion wretched and worthless is an ill-conditioned conscience.
HG eos NEWLY ENLISTED.
A third evidence of soul-health is a strong appetite for the Word and for work. There is a hunger for the manna from heaven, and no lusting for the flesh-pots of the world. It is not the confectionery of fiction or the ‘‘mixed wine”? of sensual amusements, or even the spiced stimulants of sensational sermons, that such a soul hungers for, but for the strong meat and the — honeycomb of the inspired Word. An appetite for Bible-diet on the Sabbath and Bible-duties all through the week keeps a Christian athletic. He can mount up with an unclipped wing, as — well as run with an unwearied foot. You never — find such Christians hobbling on crutches or; with limbs bandaged from a bad fall. E
Since spiritual sickness is the fruit of sin, and spiritual health is both possible and obliga- — tory upon every Christian, how shall the in- valids be recovered? ‘‘I will restore health unto thee, saith the Lord.’? God works cures
cines. One of these is the purgative of truth faithfully administered. Finney understood how — to apply this heroic treatment; but with some pulpit-practitioners we fear that it is a lost art. Ministers ought to read ‘his ‘‘ Lectures on Revivals’’ at least once every year. Our Heavenly Father in his restoring processes often employs the sharp surgery of ¢va/s, and He always knows where to apply the lancet. Many a chastised Christian, as the bad blood was drawn from him, has cried out, ‘‘ Thy hand presseth me sore!’’ and the answer has been, ‘‘I wound that I may make whole; I can restore unto thee the joys of “salvation.”
Christ Jesus is the great health-giver ‘and health-preserver. Do we often enough take in the full scope of that wonderful expression, ‘‘ the Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in his wings’’? There is hygienic power in physical sunshine; it brings not only light and heat, but health. It would bring quick recovery for
many an enfeebled and diseased soul to come back into the light of Christ’s countenance. A great deal of spiritual sickness springs from bad atmosphere; and the heavenly winds of the divine Spirit alone can sweep away this mala- tia. With the powerful breath of the Holy Spirit comes a new and purified and bracing atmosphere. We remember addressing a crowded 5 audience once in a country schoolhouse on a winter night, and the air became so foul that the candles went almost out. ‘‘ Please to open that — door.’’
The moment that the opened door let in ene oxygen of the wintry air, every candle flamed up immediately. Perhaps one reason why the — lights are so deplorably low, and almost gone out, in too many churches, is that the atmosphere has become heavy with worldliness and unbelief and indifference to the salvation of sinners. Oh, what a glorious oxygen would pour — into our churches and prayer-meetings and — hearts if the Holy Spirit should come like a — mighty rushing wind, purifying, arousing, and quickening unto the very life of God in the soul! This would be a revival, a living again, a reconversion from dead and decaying works into the muscle and the glow of a vigorous health. Such recovery is not to be reached by a wholesale process; it must be the individual ’ repentance and restoration of each invalid for himself or herself. God says to each one, ‘‘ Return unto me, and I will heal thy backslidings.”’ The lepers that came to Christ were not afraid to show their loathsome diseases right before the very face of the compassionate Son of God. We must not be gingerly in our confessions, or seek to cover our sins with bandages or pull a plaster of apology over the leprous spots. ‘‘ Wash me thoroughly from my iniquities’’ is the true prayer of penitence. This means (as Maclaren has well put it), ‘‘ Wash me, beat me, tread me down, hammer me with mallets, rub me with caustic nitre; do anything, anything with me, if only those foul spots melt away from the texture of
—my soul.”’
Such penitence, such prayer, brings pardon. Not only pardon for the past, but purity and peace with God, and power. Then the penitent soul can cry, ‘‘ Restore unto me the joys of thy salvation,’’ and the joys will pour in like fresh, full streams after a drought. A church thu purified and empowered from heaven will teach - transgressors God’s ways, and once more sinn will be converted unto Him. Brethren, th
God’s plan to secure it. He is the almighty and the all-loving Healer. Hope ye in God; and we may yet praise Him who is the health of our countenance and our God. oY