The Hidden Life

“We live together years and years,
And leave unsounded still

Each other’s springs of hopes and fears, Each other’s depths of will;

We Uve together day by day,
And some chance look or tone

Lights up with instantaneous ray
An inner world unknown.”

In a sense, all life is hidden. The blood courses through the veins as the heart keeps throbbing, throbbing, day and night. You can lay your finger on your wrist and feel the pulsings. The lungs also continue breathing, inhaling, exhaling, without pause, from infancy’s first gasp until at last watching friends say, He is gone! “Pulsings, breathings — ye3; but have you found the life? What is it that keeps the heart throbbing and the lungs respiring? “Life,” you say. Yes, but what is life?

Take the mind. It is very active. One man thinks, and writes beautiful poems or charming stories. Another thinks, and puts marvellous visions on canvas, or throws great bridges over rivers, or erects a noble cathedral. But who ever saw the processes of thought.^ Mental life is hidden.

Take heart-life — the life you lived yesterday, with its hopes and fears, its joys and sorrows, its pleasures and pains, its cares and its affections, its thousand varying experiences. Does the world know what is going on in your breast to-day, any day y People see the smile or the shadow that flits across your face, but they do not see the emotion which produced it. Even to your closest bosom friend your life is unrevealed, cannot be revealed. Says Keble: —

“Not even the tenderest heart and next our own Knows half the reasons why we smile or sigh.”

Take spiritual life. We see the effects of the Holy Spirit’s work — new dispositions, new conduct, new character; but the divine spark of life we cannot see as it comes down from above. It is secret, hidden. One day you are sad, disheartened; and, taking up your Bible, you find a sweet word of promise, a revealing of God’s love, and into your heart there comes a strange peace. You are in sorrow. A friend sits down beside you, and speaks a few words of strong comfort. You are calmed and quieted. Yet no one sees any of these processes. They are hidden, secret.

There is an inspired word which says, “Your life is hid with Christ in God.” The thought is wonderfully bold and strong. Christ is the source of the Christian’s life. Christ is in heaven with God, in God, wrapped up in the very glory of divinity. Hence the Christian’s life is with Christ in God. Its source is thus in the very heart of God.

Outside an old garden wall hung a great branch covered with purple clusters of grapes. No root was visible anywhere; and those who saw it wondered how the vine grew, how its life was nourished, where its roots clung. It was then discovered that the great vine from which this branch sprung grew inside the garden. There it had an immense root, with a stem like the trunk of a tree. This one branch had pushed out over the wall and hung there, bearing in the mellow autumn its clusters of luscious fruit.

Every Christian life in this world is a branch of a great vine which grows in heaven — a branch growing outside the wall. “Your life is hid with Christ in God.” We have heaven’s life in us in this world. The fruits that grow upon our life are heavenly fruits. Jesus spoke of giving his own peace to his disciples. He prayed that they might have his joy fulfilled in themselves. We read too that love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, meekness, are fruits of the Holy Spirit. Thus in our human experience in this world we are drawing our life and its support from the hidden source of life in the heart of God. This assures us of its security. It is beyond the reach of earthly harm. Herein, too, lies the secret of the quiet peace which we find so often in Christian sufferers. In all their pain they are sustained by some hidden strength which the world cannot understand. They are drawing their life from a source which no earthly experience can reach or affect.

Oh! there are some who, while on earth they dwell, And seem to differ little from the throng, Already to the heavenly choir belong. And even hear the same sweet anthem swell.

They joy, at times, with joy unspeakable.

Pouring to him they love their heartfelt song; While to behold him face to face they long,

As the parched traveller for the cooling well.

Ask you how such from others may be known? Mark those whose look is calm, their brow serene, Gentle their words, love breathing in each tone,

Scattering rich blessings all around unseen.

They draw each hour, from living founts above.

The streams they pour around of peace and joy and love.”

One writes of watching an old tree in the autumn, as the leaves were touched by the frosts and fell off when the rough wind blew. As the tree at last became bare he saw a bird’s nest on one of the branches. Through the summer days the nest had been hidden beneath the thick foliage, but the blasts of winter which swept away the leaves uncovered this home and shelter of the birds. So, ofttimes, is it in the history of God’s children. In their prosperity we see not their refuge, which is hidden and secret — hidden beneath the leaves of worldly prosperity. But when adversity comes, taking away earthly beauty, stripping off the bright foliage, their true and eternal refuge in God is disclosed. The storms of earth only drive them back into God’s bosom.

We say a certain person’s beauty has been wasted by sickness. One came to me whom I had not seen before for five years. Then a dark tragedy had just darkened her home, and I went to try to give a little comfort. Until that day her face had been beautiful with all the freshness of youth. But these five years since had been like twenty years in her life. The beauty was now faded; how could it have been otherwise, with the broken heart she brought out of those terrible days y Yet a few minutes* conversation showed me that in all the wasting of physical beauty her spiritual loveliness had not been marred. She had kept near the heart of Christ in all the bitter anguish, and the joy and peace of her inner life had not failed. Beauty of the face is only external, and is transient. Any accident may mar it. But beauty of the soul is spiritual and imperishable. It abides even in the destruction of the body.

There is mystery in this hidden life which is in every Christian. It has a strange power of recognition. When two Christians meet, though utter strangers heretofore, there is something that reveals them to each other. The same life pulses in their hearts. They have the same hopes, the same joys, the same Christ, the same purpose in living, the same heaven. The world has nothing in common with Christians, but all who love Christ are members of one family.

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