Employment in the Garden

Dam was not put in the garden that he might simply walk through its borders, and admire its flowers, and taste its fruits; but he was placed there to keep it and to dress it. There was sufficient to be done to prevent his stagnating from want of occupation. He had not to toil sufficiently to make him wipe the sweat from his brow, for that came of the curse: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread:” but still he was not permitted to be idle, for that might have been a worse curse. Even for a perfect man unbroken leisure would not be a blessing. It is essential even to an unfallen creature that he should have work to do — fit work and honourable, seeing it is done by a creature for the great Benefactor who had created him. If we had not our daily tasks to fulfil, rest would corrode into rust, and recreation would soon gender corruption.

You and I are set in the garden of the church because there is work for us to do which will be beneficial to others and to ourselves also. Some have to take the broad axe and hew down mighty trees of error; others of a feebler sort can with a child’s hand train the tendril of a climbing plant, or drop into its place a tiny seed. One may plant and another may water; one may sow and another gather fruit. One may cut up weeds and another prune vines, God hath work in His church for

* Cant. viii.

us all to do, and He has left us here that we may do it. Our Lord Jesus would not keep a single saint out of heaven if there were not a needs-be for his being here in the lowlands to trim these gardens of herbs, and watch these beds of spices. Would He deny His well-beloved the palm branch and the crown if it were not better for us to be holding the pruning-hook and the spade? A school-book wherewith to teach the little children may be for a while more to our true advantage than a golden harp. To turn over the pages of Scripture wherewith to instruct the people of God may be more profitable to us than to hear the song of seraphim. I say, the Master’s love to His own which prompts Him to pray, “I will that they also whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory,’ would long ago have drawn all the blood-bought up to Himself above, had it not been the fact that it is in infinite wisdom seen to be better that they should abide in the flesh. Ye are the light of the world, ye are the salt of the earth: shall the light and the salt be at once withdrawn? Yeare to be as a dew from the Lord in this dry and thirsty land; would ye be at once exhaled? Have you found out what you have to do in these gardens? Have you found out the plants for which you are to care? If not, arouse yourself and let not a moment pass till you have discovered your duty and your place. Speak unto Him who is the Lord of all true servants, and say to Him, “Show me what Thou wouldest have me to do. Point out, I pray Thee, the place wherein I may serve Thee.” Would you have it said of you that you were a wicked and slothful servant? Shall it be told that you dwelt in the gardens, and allowed the grass to grow up to your ankles, and suffered the thorns and the thistles to multiply until your land became as the sluggard’s vineyard, pointed at as a disgrace and a warning to all who passed by? “Thou that dwellest in the gardens!” The title sets forth employment constant and engrossing.

I know many Christian people who do not feel that they dwell in the gardens. They reside in a certain town or village where the Gospel may be preached, but not in demonstration of the Spirit and in power. A little Gospel is made to go a long way with some preachers. In some ministries there is no life or power, no unction or savour. The people who meet under such preaching are cold of heart and dull in spirit; the prayer-meetings are forgotten; communion of saints has well-nigh died out; and there is a general deadness as to Christian effort. Believe me, it is a dreadful thing when Christian people have almost to dread their Sabbath days; and I have known this to be the case. When you are called to hard toil through the six days of the week you want a good spiritual meal on the Sabbath, and if you get it, you find therein a blessed compensation and refreshment. Is it not a heavenly joy to sit still on the one day of rest, and to be fed with the finest of the wheat? I have known men made capable of bearing great trials — personal, relative, pecuniary, and the like — because they have looked backward upon one Sabbatic feast, and then forward to another. They have said in their hour of trouble, — “Patience, my heart; the Lord’s day is coming, when I shall drink and forget my misery. I shall go and sit with

God’s people, and I shall have fellowship with the Father and with the Son, and my soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness, till I praise the Lord with joyful lips.” But what a sorry case to dread the Sunday, and to mutter, “I shall get nothing next Sunday any more than I did last Sunday except some dry philosophical essay, or a heap of the childish toys and fireworks of oratory, or the same dull mumbling of a mechanical orthodoxy.”