Say So!

Let the redeemed of the Lord say so.”° — PSA. cvii. 2.

You would have thought they could not have helped saying so. They have had marvellous happenings in their souls and they have said nothing about it. It is amazing what men can experience and yet retain their silence. It is possible to be a dumb participant in grace. There are emancipated slaves who never mention their deliverance. There are men and women, who have been lifted out of the horrible pit and out of the miry clay, who are never heard going along the road with a new song in their mouths. People receive marvellous comfort in sorrow, strange cordials and balms, who never refer to their healing. This is the tragedy of dumb discipleship. It is possible to come into the riches of the love of Christ and yet never to name the Lover’s name. You would think they would mention it because they could not help it. You would assume that their silence would be broken under the sheer compulsion of a great joy or by the equally powerful constraint of an upspringing praise.

But there is another reason beside that of common gratitude why we should open our lips in glad and reverent testimony. The sincere witnessing to a secret spiritual happening strengthens and enriches the experience. IfI may so put it, we oxygenate our inner life when we give it sacred expressions. That is so with our feelings. Feelings that are dumb are apt to become faint. Gratitude which never says ‘‘ Thank you!’’ has a very precarious life. Pity which hugs itself in secret soon passes away. These feelings are strengthened and confirmed by a wise publicity. And so it is with truth. We grasp truth with a firmer hand as soon as we begin to give it away. The disciple is never matured until he becomes an apostle. When we proclaim the gospel to another man it reveals itself in new brightness and glory. If we live unto ourselves we surely die. In this, as in all other matters, the secret of saving one’s life is to give it away; in losing it we have it for ever. And, therefore, ‘‘ Let the redeemed of the Lord say so.”

And we must “‘ say so’ because the living witness is one of the great ministries by which the heavenly life is to be transmitted to others. We cannot overestimate the quickening influence of a really vital testimony to the renewing energies of grace and to the providential leadings of our God. When an honest man, speaking about these things, reverently and strongly says, ‘I know,”’ his assurance seizes the timidities and the hesitancies of others and consolidates them into a regal strength. The firm and quiet word of the believer provides the antidote to panic, and transforms many a trembling deserter into a courageous soldier of the Lord. And never had the believer more wonderful opportunities for witnessing than he has to-day. It is the hour of the lay-witness. Would that all the Lord’s servants were prophets! Let us tell what we have seen; let us proclaim what we have known. ‘“‘ Let the redeemed of the Lord say so!”