Love's Labor Light

That is a beautiful picture which is revealed to us through the lens of the following passage: “And Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her.” The picture before us is of a Syrian valley, with flocks and herds sprinkled over the green pasturage and along the uplands. Among them, with watchful eye, moves a young Hebrew shepherd. Fear sent him hither from his father’s home beyond the solemn Euphrates. But love has drawn him too. To woo the beautiful daughter of Laban, as well as to escape a resentful brother, he has come. He has made a bargain to watch Laban’s flocks for seven long years; and his wages are to be — a wife. So, as he tends his fleecy charge beneath the palm-trees, his thoughts are of her who comes out occasionally to the well’s mouth, and rewards him with a glimpse of her countenance. At eventide, as the maidens grind the grain, it is her voice — singing at the barley-mill — which heals the hardships of the sultry day, and sends him happy to Lis rest. And so we read that the seven years seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her. Within himself there was a relief from every load, a solace for every sorrow, a perpetual stimulant to toil and patience. He lived on love.

Is there not a principle here worth every Christian’s study? The principle is this — the service of God is only pleasant, is only thorough, and is only effective, when it is a labor of love. Our heart must be in our religion, and our religion in our heart, or else it is the most toilsome of drudgeries, and the most intolerable of hypocrisies. Here lies the simple reason why the duties of Christianity become so irksome to many a church member. He has no heart in them. It is all toil and task-work. He tugs at it as a galley-slave tugs at the oar. He takes his Bible as he would take a dose of medicine. He goes to his closet as an anchorite clambers to his mountain cave, or to the top of his pillar. The church-bell rings him to the sanctuary, but no answering bell in his own grateful soul responds, “0 come, and let us worship.” He hungers not, he thirsts not for the Word of Life. Money-giving for Christ’s work is to him a downright robbery, and he flings his unwilling pence at the Lord’s treasury, as if he would say, “There it is, since you will have it; when will these calls of charity be done with?” The whole routine of his external performances in the church is gone through slavishly, carelessly, hypocritically, as if the sharp eye of a taskmaster were upon him, and the lash of an overseer were cracked about his head.

My brother! there is but one way to become a happy, thorough, effective Christian. Whether you are a pastor watching over the church-fold, or a Sabbath-school teacher tending the little flock of your class, or a parent guarding the fireside lambs, or a philanthropist keeping guard over the rights of the neglected, the ignorant, the guilty, or the oppressed, you must learn to work heartily. A man who sincerely loves the Lord Jesus Christ will love to labor for him. He will welcome toil. He will bend cheerfully to every

burthen, rejoicing to be Christ’s willing bondman

—and Christ’s “freedman” too. For to him liberty is but the possibility of duty.

Would you then be a happy Christian? Get the heart full of Jesus. Would you be a thorough Christian? Get the heart full of Jesus. Would you be safe from spiritual declension? Then “keep yourself in the .love of God.” Put your love of the Saviour so deep down that it shall underlie all selfishness — so deep that the frosts of unbelief cannot reach it — so deep that the devil cannot come at it — so deep that the friction of daily life cannot wear upon it — so deep that when even the powers and passions of our nature are dried up by old age, this hidden fountain shall give out its undying stream.

It is said that artesian wells never go dry; but when the torrid heats of July are parching the upper surface into drifts of dust, there is an unexhausted vein far down below that gushes up through its rocky tube, and defies the thirsty sunbeams to quench its perennial flow. So does Christ within us break up through our dusty, selfish humanity, and overflow our nature wTith graces, until even the desert-spot becomes a garden of the Lord.

Again we say, if you would be a lightsome laborer in Christ’s vineyard, you must love your Redeemer. Do you love him now but a little? Then despise not the clay of small things. You have made a good beginning. There may have been but a slight heart-beat in Jacob’s breast when he first met Rachel at the well’s mouth in Haran. But that young affection grew into a love that made the happy hours to tread on roses. And it was with a breaking heart that he hung over his dying wife as she lay moaning in woman’s sorest sorrow on the wayside to Bethlehem. So may your love to Jesus grow until it becomes the master-passion of the soul — until it conquers lust and subdues accursed self — grow until you enjoy the blessed service of the Master — until there is nothing on earth you desire beside him — until you can exclaim with the victorious apostle, ‘’lam persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord P