Hidden Words in the Bible

“More and more stars! and ever as I gaze

Brighter and brighter seen!

Whence come they, Father? Trace me out their ways Far in the deep serene.”

KEBLE.

THERE is a great deal of beauty in the world which lies too deep for our eyes. There are millions of stars in depths of the heavens which no telescope reveals. Night unveils to us splendors which lie hidden in day’s glare.

One may write with invisible ink, and the words fade out after the pen, leaving no trace. Yet they remain in the paper, hidden there, unseen and unsuspected by any eye that scans it. But if one day the paper be exposed to heat, the hidden words come out in all clearness, every line appearing in distinctness.

There is a sense in which the revealings of

God in the Bible are hidden. They are not hidden because God seeks to keep them from us, but because we must be brought into a certain condition before we can receive them. One said the other day, “Why did I never see the rich meaning of that psalm before?” We had been going over one of the psalms together, as I sat at my friend’s bedside, and we had seen many sweet things in some of the verses. My friend almost chided herself with dulness of vision, or with carelessness in reading, in not having seen the precious meanings before. “I have read that psalm hundreds of times,” she said. “These sweet thoughts were lying in the verses all the while, but I never saw them until now. Why was it? Did God mean to hide them from me?”

The answer to these questions is that the revealings are made and the blessings bestowed really at the earliest possible moment. The stars are in the sky all day, but we cannot be hold them until night comes. My friend could not have seen the precious thoughts in the psalm six months before. Then she was in health, active, swift in movement, strong, with no consciousness of weakness, rich in human hopes and expectations. And she found very many precious things then in the Bible. It had its lessons, its encouragements, its interpretations. Just what she needed and craved in those active days the book had for her. But the particular revealings which she gets now from its words she did not then find. Now she needs comfort for weakness; strength to endure pain patiently; grace to enable her to readjust her life to its new conditions, assurance of di vine love and care in her experience of feebleness. She did not need these special revealings in the time of health and activity, and they were not then available to her.

The experience is a very common one. A happy young girl may sing sweetly the hymn, —

“Jesus, lover of my soul,
Let me to thy bosom fly;”

and yet it may mean almost nothing to her. She feels no need to fly to the divine bosom. She is conscious of no danger, of no enemy pursuing, of no storm gathering. The words ripple from her tongue in musical measure and tone, but there really is no experience in her heart to interpret them to her. A few years later she is a woman, with many cares, burdens, trials, and sorrows, and again she sings the song: —

“Jesus, lover of my soul,

Let me to thy bosom fly;
While the nearer waters roll,

While the tempest still is high:
Hide me, O my Saviour, hide,
Till the storm of life is past;
Safe into the haven guide,
Oh, receive my soul at last.”

And now she feels every word as it drops from her lips in pleading accents. Every syllable is now a prayer from her heart. On the wings of her song her heart rises, —

‘• As storm-tossed bird
Beats with weary wing the air.”

What makes the song such a new song to her? New experiences have come into her life, and imid these she has learned her own insufficiency and her need of divine shelter, and has learned also of the preciousness of the refuge in the bosom of Christ.

The same is true of very many divine comforts. There are Bible texts which open to the young. They read the sacred book in the bright years when there is no care, no sense of weakness, no consciousness of need, and many of its words speak to them in thoughts of gladness and cheer. Meanwhile there are other words that read sweetly enough, yet over which they do not linger, out of which comes to their heart no soothing voice. Then they go on for a few years, and at length the way slopes into gloom. A child is sick, and the strong man is watching beside its bed, with heart burdened and anxious. Or he is brought down himself to a sick-bed, where he has time for thought. He knows his illness is serious, — that he may never recover. Now he is ready for some new Bible verses. He needs some of the comfort that thus far has been hiddeixfrom him in the words of God, whose deeper meaning he could not re-

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ceive until now. For example, there are the opening lines of the Forty-sixth Psalm: —

“God is our refuge and strength,
A very present help in trouble.”

He felt no need of a refuge in the sunny days, and never availed himself of it. Indeed, the door did not seem to open to him at all. But now in his weakness and fear he seeks a refuge, some place to hide; and, coming upon this word of God, it opens at once to him, and he runs into it and finds warmth, shelter, love, safety, all within its gate.

He had not felt the need of God’s help and companionship when human friendship seemed so all-sufficient, and the word about “a very present help in trouble” had no personal meaning for him then; now, however, the human friendships, sweet as they are, are inadequate, or they are far away. In this condition the assurance that God is “a very present help” is a blessed revealing, and it is the opening to him of a new secret of blessing. When he knows this all the way of life seems lighted with a new and strange illumining. He fears no dangers, no trials, no battles, for with God for a very present help, he can never fail nor falter.

It is thus that all the Bible words must be gotten. There are many precious promises for those who are tempted; but until you are in the grip of temptation you cannot draw the blessing from the quiver which God binds on his tempted ones. There are tender and precious words for the widow; but while the beloved wife has her husband by her side, strong, brave and true, these words are yet closed storehouses to her. They can become hers only when she wears the badge of widowhood, and sits lonely by the coffin of her dead, or amid the cares and burdens which her bereavement has cast at her feet. There are sweet words for orphan children; but while the children have both father and mother with them, and are dwelling in the shelter of a happy home, they can not draw upon this reserve of divine goodness. Only when they have lost one or other or both parents can they quote such a Bible promise as this: — “When my father and my mother forsake me, Then the Lord will take me up.”

There are very loving promises, too, for the old; but the man or woman in youth or mid-life cannot take them. There are beatitudes for certain conditions. “Blessed are they that mourn; for they shall be comforted.” But only those who are in sorrow can experience the blessedness of divine comfort. It never can be learned while the heart knows not grief. An other beatitude is: “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness; for they shall be filled.” But there must first be hunger and thirst before there can be heart-filling.

Thus all the Bible treasures are ready to open to us the moment we have the experience which the particular grace in them is intended to supply. Hence it is that the Bible is never exhausted. Men read it over and over again, and each time they find something new in it, — new promises, new comforts, new revealings of love. The reason is, they are growing in experience, and every new experience develops new needs, and brings them to new revealings.

Another feature of this truth is that the revealings are made only as we enter upon the needs. The blessing for each day is locked up in the little circle of that day, and we cannot even get to it until we come to the place. But when the need comes, the supply is always ready. George MacDonald puts this truth in a sentence: “As you grow ready for it, some where or other you will find what is needful for you, in a book or a friend.” Nor is it mere chance that brings the supply, the help, the light, thus, just at the right moment. The hand of God guides all such chances. It is divine thoughtfulness that watches and always has the goodness ready at the instant of want. As the nature awakes, and its needs begin to express themselves in hungerings and cravings, God brings to us in his own way that which our newly awakened craving requires He watches us, and at the right moment has ready the blessing for the moment.

Every new providence which opens before us has in its own little circle its own supply of goodness. Take, again, for illustration, the case of the young friend who was sick. She had never been ill before. When the sickness came on, the experience was altogether new and strange. At first it seemed mysterious to her, and she was alarmed; but soon she began to realize that while the experience was new and painful, she was receiving new blessings, had come upon new revealings of God’s goodness. For one thing, she had never before .experienced such tenderness of love in her own home as now came to her from all her loved ones. The whole household life began to turn about her sick-room. The love was all there before in the hearts of father, mother, sister, brother, — they loved her no more than before; but in her happiness and health the love had never shown itself as it did now when she lay among the pillows, white and weak and suffering. Now each vied with all the others in the expression of kindly interest.

Then, never had she known before that she had so many friends outside her home. There had always been kindness and courtesy, but now there seemed hundreds who wanted to show their love in some tender way. Still an other new blessing that opened to her in her sickness was her Bible. She had always been a Bible reader, and the book had meant much to her in the bright, sunny days of life. But now she found precious love-thoughts, shining like diamonds, in words which had meant but little to her before. Nor was that all; she found revealings of the love of God which she had never experienced in her days of strength. The friendship of Christ never before had seemed so close and real as it now became. Thus the providence of God which had brought her into a darkened sick-room, had brought her also to a new unfolding of divine goodness, to which she could not have come had not the illness been experienced.

So it is continually in life. The things we dread — the losses, the sorrows, the adversities — bring us to new goodness and blessing which we should have missed if the painful trial had not come. Close beside the bitter fountain of Marah grew the tree that sweetened the waters. Hard by every sorrow waits the comfort needed to alleviate it. Every loss has wrapped up in it some compensating gain. It is in human weakness that God’s strength is made perfect.

We may set it down as a principle, a law of Christ’s kingdom, which has no exceptions, that for every new condition or experience in any Christian life, there is a special reserve of divine goodness, whose supply will adequately meet all the needs of the hour. We need never fear, therefore, that we shall be led to any place in which we cannot have grace to live sweetly and faithfully. “As thy days, so shall thy strength be,” is the unfailing divine promise. But the grace is hidden in the need, and cannot be gotten in advance. The grace for sorrow cannot be given when we are in joy. The grace for dying we cannot get when we are in the midst of life’s duties. And surely that is not the help we need then, but, rather, wisdom and strength to live nobly, lovingly, truly. Then when we approach death we shall be sustained and led through the valley into life.