On Thy Ordinances
“With joy shall ye draw -water out of the wells of salvation.” — IsA. xii. 3.
My Soul! thou art here far from thy true Home. A wilderness is thy place of sojourn; but Immanuel has provided wells in this Baca — this vale of weeping — for the refreshment of His pilgrims! In merciful adaptation to their weakness and wants, He has furnished means and instrumentality to keep alive the flame that would otherwise languish and decay. These are the golden pipes which convey the living water to the soul, fed by Christ himself from the great cistern of His own grace.
Header! dost thou love the ordinances of God’s appointment? Is the Sabbath to thee a bo THE NIGHT WATCHES.
holy and welcome season? Dost thou gladly respond to the summons, “Go ye up into the house of the Lord?” Hast thou felt that it is there that” He commands the blessing, even life for evermore? Or holier ground still; do you rejoice, as the solemn season comes round, to covenant afresh with your adorable Kedeemer at His own table — to record anew your unalterable attachment to Him as your Lord and Master, and commemorate His dying, ever-living love?
See that it be not the reverse of all this. Do the hours of the Sabbath, once a delight — “day of all the week the best” — hang heavily upon you? Is prayer less a privilege than it was? Is the closet less habitually frequented? Is the fire burning with a sicklier glow on the domestic altar? Have the services of the sanctuary become more matter for the head than for the heart? Be assured these are lamentable symptoms of declension — tokens of a backward and downward state. “Ye did run well — who did hinder you?”
Return forthwith to the deserted closet — crucify forthwith the deadening sin. Hast thou not abjured it, over and over, at a communion table? Why suffer it again to have dominion over thee — robbing thee of all thy joy — extracting all relish from ordinances — impeding grace — grieving the Spirit? Lose no time in seeking restoration of lost filial nearness. “Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation.” The lost Bride, in the Canticles, found her Lord beside the “Shepherds’ tents;” and “of Zion it shall be said. The Lord shall count, when He writeth up the people, that this man was born there.’” Thou may est sometimes have long to wait at the Gospel Bethesdas without any visible blessing; but, be assured, the Angel of the Covenant will, in due time, come down and show that He “is good to them that wait for Him — to the soul that seeketh Him!” ““Wait, then, on the Lord; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine heart!”
My soul! value ordinances, but do not overvalue them. Put not ordinances in the place of the God of ordinances. They are at best but the pole to hold up the brazen serpent upon — the scaffolding by which to get up beside the Chief corner-stone. “Hold Thou me up, and I shall be safe!” It is not “the altar of God,” but “God Himself;’ who is “the exceeding joy” of His people; and thus, even if wasting health and pining sickness should deprive me of outward ordinances, I may look upwards to that God who, though He “loves the gates of Zion,” does not forget “the dwellings of Jacob,” and say —
“I WILL BOTH LAY ME DOWN IN PEACE AND SLEEP; FOR THOU, LOED, ONLY MAKEST ME DWELL IN SAFETY!”
~T