Spiritual Health

“Whataileth thee?” — Judges xviii, 23.

The Bible was not written for saints in heaven. It was written for struggling, tempted, sinning and sorrowing mortals in this world. The loftiest Christians portrayed on its pages were by no means j)erfect; some of them made lamentable slips and falls; their finest gold of character was not without alloy. Human nature has not changed since the times when even the chief est of Christ’s Apostles could honestly confess, “I have not already attained nor am I already made perfect.”

If you were all whole and all happy, you would not need any spiritual physician. But I suspect that there are many aching hearts in this assembly, many ‘’weak hands and feeble knees,” and many who are sadly crippled by besetting sins. To each of you who is unhappy, and to each one who is unhealthy, I may address the same question which was addressed to Micah by the Danites, who had stolen away his household gods, “What ailetli theef” If you will turn to this eighteenth chapter of the

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Book of Judges (in which my text is found) you will see how the Danite marauders had broken into poor Micah’s private chapel of idols, and had carried oflt’ his graven images. Perhaps this is the trouble with some of you. Your hearts have been made, not the dwelling-. j)lace of Jesus Christ by his Siirit, but a private chapel in which you have enshrined favorite idols. They have absorbed your affections and shut your Saviour out from the central throne of your heart. Perhaps your idol has been money, a very useful article when a Christian holds it in trust for the honor of his Master, but a terrible curse when it owns and enslaves a Christian. This idol, like Micah’s, was a movable article, and it is gone! Brother, you are not a pauier; stop and count up the precious things you still possess, and the treasures that cannot be stolen away, or swallowed uj) by commercial disasters. God may have permitted your income to be cut down in order to enrich you with graces better than gold. Instead of whining and weeping over your heaj:) of broken projects, use them as a stepping stone to climb uj) into a higher and holier life, closer to God. What is true of money, may be equally true of any other subject, or of any other person, that your heart may enshrine in that inner sanctum, which of right belongs to your Redeemer; and if the loss of heartidols serves to cure you of inordinate love of them, then it is a sxiritual blessing to lose them.

Another may answer the question, “What ailetli thee?” by saying, “I have had some bitter disappointment.” Either you have not got what you wanted, or when you did get it, it did not meet your exx)ectations. Perhaps you chose a certain jDath for yourself, and God hedged you up or sent you off very reluctantly into some other way. This has started your tears, or soured your s]3irit. ISTow, as I look back over my own life, I can discover that some of the richest mercies my Heavenly Father has ever bestowed, have come in the shape of bitter disappointments. It has been truly remarked that “disappointment never means wreck when God’s hand is in it. There is often a lift in that ugly thing.” Disappointment, like fire, has a double power; it may scorch and crisis and blast a man, or else it may thaw out his blood, and quicken his life. It is a more heroic triumj)h of grace for a Christian to rise above the billows of adversity than it is to run, with flying colors, before a fair breeze of constant successes. Probably it suits the inclination of all of you to be up in the world, but it is not always safe; and it is a wholesome process to be “taken down” occasionally. The grass in my yard has a tendency to grow rank and it requires to be taken down by a mower; and it never looks so well as after the sharp cutter has gone over it. Many a Christian never appears as attractive in his graces as when God’s mowing machine has gone over him; his pride, or his self-confidence or his worldly ambition needed the scythe. Even Paul himself would not have grown ux3 so strong from the roots if he had not been mowed pretty often. We suspect that God discovered the peril he was in of becoming “exalted beyond measure” so he sent a thorn in the flesh to humble him. It is quite possible that the Lord saw what a dangerous place for Joseph was that luxurious house of Potiphar, and therefore the young Hebrew was sent to a prison, which proved to be the training school for the palace. Remember that the very name “God” signifies good, and you may yet discover that he has never been so truly kind to you as when he crossed your inclination, or when he chastised your waywardness. The map of our lives will be an interesting study in heaven.

But yonder sits another excellent brother, a Sabbath school teacher, or an active member of the Young Pcoi)le’s Association, or some other organization for doing good, and he is becoming rather disheartened in his work. He does not see the results that he hoped for. Is this anything new? Isaiah complained that he “had labored in vain and spent his strength for naught.” Martin Luther died with a broken heart over the hindrances that obstructed the progress of the Protestant Reformation. Saint Cecilia was ready to break her harp when she overheard the music of the angels. Are you conscientiously working for your Master and for the souls of your fellow-men? Then leave results with the Master; He is resx)onsible for them. It is your business to sow precious seed, and with all your anxious lingering you cannot make it come up. You never know just how much good you may be doing when you do any thoroughly good deed. Nothing pleases the devil more than to )lt a working Christian away in a wet blanket; that sort of hydropathy has chilled to death more than one excellent undertaking.

Let me now turn the lens away from the unhaipy hearts to those who are unliealtliy. The word “holiness” is synonymous with the old Saxon word lolioUli, or health; therefore, a holy person is one who has been healed by the Divine Physician and is in a sound spiritual condition. There must be something wTong with a church member who does not grow in grace, or bear the fruits of the Spirit. During my many years of hospital x)ractice (which is a considerable i)art of every pastor’s work) I have found that there is a numerous class of weak-handed, low-pulsed, and feeble-kneed Christians who are self-made invalids. Their spiritual debility is the direct result of their own sins, either of omission or commission.

The same principle apilies to sijiritual as to I)liysical hygiene; disease is often the inevitable i)unislmient of the violation of the laws of health. Is not the inebriate’s poisoned frame the immediate legacy of his bottle? The indolence which never earns its daily bread cannot earn the appetite to enjoy it; the gluttony which gorges the stomach is often only a fattening of an early banquet for the worm. Dyspepsia is frequently found to be a divinely-appointed health officer, stationed at the gate-Avay of excess, to warn off all comers, and to punish those who will persist in entering the forbidden ground. Si3iritual dyspex)sia is, in most cases, the result of sin indulged or of duty neglected. How can a Christian be healthy wdio neglects a wholesome diet for his soul, or who seldom does a “stitch” of work for his Master? How can his faith be strong who seldom enters his closet? The constipation of charity soon becomes chronic when selfishness locks its 13urse against the most eloquent appeals. My dyspeptic friend, I commend to you the double remedy — Bible diet and Bible duty. K these don’t restore you, then your case must be imst all medication.

Brother A, what aileth thee? Judging

from the symptoms, you are suifering from a fever. One of the symptoms of fever is loss of aj)petite for food, and another is an inordinate thirst. Your appetite for gospel food is sadly low, and your thirst for worldly gain is becoming insatiable. The more you swallow, the thirstier you are. The syirit of covetousness, when it gets full sweep in the heart, carries down so much deposit that it silts up the soul with a sand-bar, and no freights of benevolence can ever “cross the bar.” The Bible abounds in solemn admonitions against this sin.

A kindred disease with the greed for wealth is an ambition for social display — a style of prominence that is often secured at the cost of one’s spiritual peace and power. There is a *’ getting up in the world “that ends in a getting down in the kingdom of Christ. Jesus rebuked such selfish aspirations when He said, ‘’Whosoever of you would be chief est, shall be the servant of all.” True promotion comes from the iromotion of the welfare of others; he is the greatest who achieves the greatest amount of good in the community. Do not wait, my friend, for God to prescribe for thy fevers by depleting thy purse, or by humbling thy crest. Consecrate to Him thy money and thy social influence, and enjoy a new sensation. Our philanthropic millionaire, of Brooklyn, the late Charles Pratt, once said to me, “There is no greater humbug in this world than the idea that the mere possession of wealth can make any man happy. I never got any solid satisfaction out of mine until I be£>:an to do good with it.” It is not what we take up, but what we give up, that will yield us treasures in Heaven.

Brother B, what aileth thee? Perhaps

the all-seeing eye discovers the growing cancer of a besetting lust. There is but one remedy for that — it is the knife. Speedy and thorough repentance — proved by abandonment of the darling sin — can alone restore thee. If thy hand cause thee to offend, cut it off; if thine eye, then iluck it out! It is better to go maimed on the road to Heaven than to lose the life everlasting. The vines that yield the largest and most luscious clusters have felt the keenest incisions of the pruning-knife. Shall the Divine Husbandman be compelled to use it, or wilt not thou make short and sharp work with thy besetting sins?

Here is another professed servant of Christ who is “sick with the palsy.” His paralyzed hands accomplish no work; his tongue is so paralyzed that he is no longer heard in the place of prayer; nay, there is but little more left of him than his idle name on the church register. To such as thee the Master si)eaks the short authoritative command, “Arise, take ui thy bed and walk”; you need the movement cure. The first sincere prayer of contrition that you utter, the first temptation you resist, the first step you take to honor Christ, breaks the spell. As soon as you arouse from that self-begotten iaralysis of sloth, your feet and ankle-bones will receive strength, and you may go on your way rejoicing.

Much of the spiritual debility in our churches arises from the ignoring of a very simple principle, viz: that every creature on this earth is dependent. All vegetable life depends on the soil beneath it, and the atmosphere around it. Shut up the most stalwart man in a cell without food and water, and in a few hours he is a corpse. JSTo one can keep alive his own body by sheer self -sustentation; and God’s word declares that ‘’ none can keep alive Ms own souiy Some members of a Christian Church commit the sad mistake of trying to live on a past experience. They believe that they were once converted, and that is enough; they insist that they were once “born anew,” and having IDublicly confessed Christ, why should they feel any apprehensions about their own salvation. I have known hundreds of bright infants that are slumbering soundly under the turf in Greenwood Cemetery to-day. The attempt to maintain a Christian life on the bygone exjjerience of conversion, is as absurd as an attempt to subsist on the milk fed to you in the nursery a score of years ago. The vital question for each one of us is, am I alive now? If alive, how shall my life be maintained? How shall I grow in grace?

I. The first source of a healthy life is good food for the soul. The more nourishhig the food and the better the digestion the stronger do we become. Some Christians die of starvation. They surfeit the inner man with secuhir stimukmts of all sorts — with si:)iced books of fiction, with “light reading” that is mere sillabub. Many swallow little else than their daily newspaper. The moral faculties become debilitated on this flimsy diet. Now all the athletic Christians — all those who can carry heavy loads, do thorough work and stand a long pull — are hungry feeders on God’s Book. Nothing will imj)art sinew and muscle to your piety like the thorough study and digestion of your Bible. A good sermon mast be digested or it will be of little use to you, and your daily bread of the Bible must go through the same process in order that it may be assimilated and taken into your spiritual fiber. “Thy words were found and / did eat tJiem and they were the joy of mine heart,” said the old-time saint. Every growing Christian is a ruminating animal; he chews Bible truths and nutritious sermons and wholesome books and other such jDrovender, as the cow cheweth her cud. One strong Bible text lodged in the memory, and turned over and over and well digested, will be a breakfast for your soul, and in the strength of it you go through the whole day. A soldier is never in so good trim for battle as after a sound sleep and a square morning meal; it is not easy to fight or to march on an empty stomach. In like manner, every servant of Jesus Christ must recruit his or her spiritual strength by reading Christ’s words, and thinking about them, by meditation, by prayer and soul converse with God. Martin Luther, in the thick of his campaigns with the Pope and the devil, said that he could not get on without two good hours each day for his private devotions. I have always observed that the light readers and light thinkers make light Christians, and those who neglect their Bibles and their closets soon dwindle into dwarfs. Having no dexDth of root their religion withers away.

II. A second promoter of spiritual life is good air for your soul to breathe. A soul requires oxygen as much as the body. Have jou not noticed how an audience wdll drop off into listlessness, and some of them into slumber, when the oxygen has become exhausted in the room? The fetid air of some railway cars is poison to the lungs. Our souls have lungs also, and you cannot keep them in health while you are in the atmosiohere of a business that has trick or gambling in it; or in the atmosphere of amusements which stimulate sensual passions; or in any sort of atmosphere which puts conscience to sleep, and benumbs your moral sensibilities. Orange trees do not thrive in Labrador, or tuberoses bloom in snow-banks. Just as soon expect to make your graces thrive by taking your soul out of fellowship with Christ and steeping it in the hot air of selfish schemings, or in the poisonous air of social frivolities. I have noticed that when young converts begin to exchange their jDrayer meetings for convivial clubs, the theater, etc., they soon wither away. Bad atmosphere stunts their religion, sometimes kills it. Christians have got to mingle with the world in a thousand ways, and yet they must “keep unspotted from the world.” Daniel keptihis heart clean in the atmosphere of a wicked court, and a city missionary may keep clean in the slums. But there are certain boggy places in business life, and politics, and social life, where you cannot set your foot without sinking in; there is a certain line beyond which a Christian cannot venture without betraying his Master. Never venture a single inch into any business however lucrative, or any s^eculation however attractive, or any social circles however fascinating, if you cannot carry Christ ‘with you and a clean conscience. Remember that Christ is your life, and without Him “no man can keep alive his own soul.”

III. Exercise, of course, is as essential to spiritual as it is to physical health. There is great pith in the apostle’s injunction, “Exercise thyself unto godliness.” God has intrusted to you (not given them to you “in fee simple”) certain powers, faculties, possessions, and capacities for His service. For want of use these limbs of the soul may become as powerless as the legs of a fever patient three weeks in a hospital. Inactivity is the “dry rot” of thousands of church mexnbers. You will never gain a good appetite for God’s Word, or a flush of joy on your countenance, until you lay hold of some earnest, self-denying work and keep at it. Nothing will impart such a holy vehemence to your prayers as to spend an hour by a sick bed, or in close labor with an impenitent heart. JN’othing will stiffen your muscle more than tough ui3-hill work in behalf of some unpopular cause or moral reform. The only cure for indolence is honest work; the only cure for selfishness is self-sacrifice; the only cure for timidity is to I)lunge into duty before the shiver benumbs you; the only cure for unbelief is to put Christ to the test every day. Prayer must kill unbelief or else unbelief will kill prayer. The christian warfare is not a single pitched battle; it is a campaign for life. You may often imagine that you have attended the funeral of some besetting sin — and lo! it was on its feet again next morning! You will not fire the last shot until the gates of glory welcome you in among the crowned conquerors.

Important as food and good air and active exercise are in themselves, yet the chief maintenance of your Christian life is ‘the constant indwelling of the Sxirit of Jesus Christ in your soul. He is the divine fire to keep you warm, the divine flame to burn out your lusts and corrux)tions5 the divine power to propel all your activities. Quench not Christ’s Spirit! Dejpend on it that your soul will soon wither unless it is “hid with Christ in God.” As carefully as you lock money in a safe, or hide a diamond out of the reach of a thief, hide your innermost ho^e and heart in the safe keeping of your Saviour! If you become a part and iarcel of the Lord Jesus — as every true Christian is — then because he lives you shall live forever also.

It is a glorious truth that Jesus Christ came into this sin-sick world not only to give life, but that those who secure it may “have it more abundantly.’’^ Those who long for this more abundant life and seek for it aright may possess it. One evidence will be an increase of faith. A feeble faith may move a mole-hill, but it cannot stir a mountain. It can say ’ ‘’])erhaps God may hear me,” or ‘’^ jperliaps I ma y be delivered from this quagmire of doubts and difficulties.” Now faith is just the taking in of Christ into the soul, and the more of Christ the more strength. To grapple with stubborn sins, to conquer debilitating doubts, to carry a heavy load, to take hold of “hard cases” and try to bring them to Christ, to do all such feats is given to those who are filled with might in the inner man. Luther spent three hours a day in prayer that he might have the stamina for his wrestle with the giant on “the seven hills.” Charles G. Finney tells us in his autobiography how he was pleading with God to remove the difficulties that obstructed his path, until he says that ‘’his flesh trembled on his bones and he shook from head to foot.” Then there came a full tide of assurance into his soul, a “great lifting up,” and a sweet calm of entire trust; from that room he went forth into one of the most X3owerful revivals that he ever witnessed. The pastor who believingly asks for a rich harvest and steeps his Gospel-seed in prayer, will not come into the Lord’s barns with an empty wagon. Let the Sunday-school teacher pin this promise into his or her class-book: ‘’All things are possible to him that helieietli.^’^

(2) With this increase of faith will come an increase of spiritual vigor. When I found that a tree in my yard bore more blossoms than fruit, I had the gardener dig around it, and put a bushel or two of fertilizer to reach its roots, and the next July it was crimsoned on every limb with ripe cherries. The more abundant life in the tree yielded the more abundant fruit. The simple reason why any Christian does not yield the fruits of the Spirit is the lack of inward vigor. The soil of his soul has become impoverislied. He needs the tillage of prayer and honest self-examination, the subsoiling of repentance and a new inpouring of the Spirit of Christ. ^’ If a man abide in Me, he shall bring forth much fruit.”

It is the debilitated folk who catch all the fevers that are going, and a phy sician can do little for a iatient who has not vitality enough to slough off the disease. An immense proportion of all our church-members are in the hospitals, or off on furlough, or too feeble to carry a weapon. Their disease is a low vitality, and some are dying of “” heart failure.” The only recovery of all those pitiable invalids must come from the tonic which Jesus Christ gives when He gives His quickening Spirit. There is really no such thing as a genuine reilval for a Christian or for a church except by a living again of Christ in their souls, and a limng again for Christ in their daily conduct. Listen, oh, ye invalids and impotent folk and idlers, to this trumpet-call of the Master: “I am come that ye might have life, and that ye may have it more abundantly!”

(3) With this increased vigor of heart-life will come more genuine joy. There is no sunshine for those who persist in keeping their shutters barred. Joy is not gained by the asking for it, but only by the acting for it; we have got to walk with Christ if we want to walk in the siinsliine. There is a lamentable lot of moping and grumbling and sour-spirited Christians who disgrace the name they bear. If one of this sorry regiment should ask a shrewd man of the world to embrace Christianity, he might well reply: ^’ No, I thank you; I have troubles enough now without being troubled with such a peevish and doleful religion as yours seems to be.” What a letter of recommendation some Christians carry in their cheerful countenances! What a brace of joyous prisoners were those two Apostles who sang their duet down in Philippi’s dungeon at midnight! Those early Christians managed to draw oil out of the flintiest rocks — and the dark waves of persecution phosj)horesced with the sparkles of a holy gladness. They were filled with Christ, and their joy was brimming over.

Now here are three things which you, the ailing souls, most need: more faith, more vigor, more joy in the Holy Spirit. Your Divine Physician offers them to you, if you will accept them; bat you must let Him bestow them in His own way and on His own terms. A hajipy day would it be in all our churches if the f ever-X)atients and the emaciated dysx)eptics and the restored paralytics would come trooping out of the hosx)itals and report themselves for duty!

You have been long enough gasping for breath, my dear friends; now throw open your whole souls to Jesus and then “shall your light break forth as the morning, and your healing shall spring forth speedily.’’