Bright Moments on the Wing
“I know that there is no good in them, but for a man to rejoice, and to do good in his life. And also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labour: it is the gift of God.”
EVERY moment brings its mercy; why should not mercies bring content? To the man who finds favour in his sight, God gives “wisdom and know ledge.” He is conscious of his comforts, and he has sense to use them. But to the sinner God gives “travail.” He has the toil of acquirement without the power of enjoyment. “There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour.”
Throughout the whole of the book language like this is constantly recurring. And, without pausing to enter a caveat against Epicurean perversions of the sentiment, we may at once proceed to its legitimate applications. Of all philosophies the most eclectic is evangelical Christianity; and many a sentiment which, isolated, would be an error, is not only innocent but useful, when acting as a tributary to this master principle.
Even in the days of his vanity, Solomon” saw “that there would be more happiness if there were less hankering. He saw it in mankind; he suspected it in himself. Like the November bee, with its forehead smeared in the honey of the hive, and which, smelling that deceitful lure, fancies that it is the nectar of far-off flowers, and which, still scenting somewhere ahead a land of honey, flies farther and farther afield, till the evening mist enshrouds it and congeals upon its wings, and drags it benumbed to the frozen furrow: so Solomon had often seen his neighbours flying far into the winter in search of that honey which they had left at home; and he said, It would have been better that they had” eaten and drunken “from the produce of their previous toil; — it would have been better if, instead of always labouring after more, they could have halted, and enjoyed t( the good of their former labour.”
And surely this principle is of extensive application. Without disparaging the pleasures of hope, or seeking to quell the zeal of progress, are the cases not numberless where, for all purposes of enjoyment, labour is lost, because coupled with the constant lust of farther acquirement? or because of a strange oblivion of his own felicity on the part of the favoured possessor?
Behold us here in Britain, in the heart of the nineteenth century, surrounded with the broadest zone of peace and material comfort to be found in all the map of history. Looking at our temporal lot, we of this generation and this country stand on the very pinnacle of outward advantage; in all our lives never once affrighted by the rumour of invasion; exempt from all the horrors of impressment and conscription; ignorant of martyrdoms religious and political; — free, self- governed, independent. Who knows it? Who remembers it? Who in these matters adverts to his own happiness? As she presses to her bosom her little boy, or parts on his open brow the darkening hair, amidst all her maternal pride, where is the mother who praises God for her young Briton’s privilege? How many hearts remember to swell with the joyful recollection, Thank God, he may leave me if he pleases; but he can never be dragged from me against his will! He may become a More among lawyers, a Latimer among preachers, a Sidney among statesmen, and need dread neither stake nor scaffold. He may become the victim of false accusation and malignant persecution; but he will not languish, without trial, slow years in the dungeon, nor by the rack be frenzied into a false witness against himself. He may turn out unwise, he may turn out unhappy; but, thank God, the son of British sire can never feel the tyrant’s torture in his limbs, nor the brand of slavery on his brow!
Behold that home of yours! What an Eden a thankful heart might make it! What a concentration of joys it will appear, as soon as the Spirit the Comforter has revealed its brightness; or as soon as its little groups and its daily scenes can only be viewed in the pictures of gold and ebony which furnish the mourner’s memory! And yet, how often does your own peevishness embitter all its joy; and how often, with foolish hankering, do you quit its hoarded pleasures, and fly away to clubs and crowded rooms, to theatres, or lonely travel, in search of the honey you have left at home!
Behold your position as a candidate for immortality! What could you desire which the God of grace has not done for you already? A salvation more complete — a Bible more plain — a revelation more abundant? And yet, instead of sitting down contentedly and thankfully to this “feast of fat things,” and abandoning yourself to all the blessedness which is so freely given you, do you not usually find a barrier of dilatoriness or distrust rising up betwixt you and the costly provision? With that Gospel spreading blandly before you, there is nothing better for you than to eat and drink of its mercies, and enjoy the good which it brings you. Oh, study to realize your amazing position, as one whom Jehovah all-sufficient is daily inviting into his friendship, and whom the Wearer of a sinless humanity is willing to call his brother. Fear not to think it, that to you, poor tenant of the dust, a white robe and a golden harp are offered. Fear not to think it, all sin-laden arid sin-pervaded as you are, that to the fellowship of angels and his own society, the Holy One invites you. Fear not to think it, that as a believer in Jesus, and so a member of his great ransomed body, your very self are soon to be an inhabitant of that world where there is neither sin nor sorrow, and a burgess of that city whose streets are gold, and whose gates are pearl. Fear not to think such things; but fear to forget them. Fear not to believe such things; but fear to credit them in a cold and vacant manner. Fear to get into that habit which engulfs any amount of God’s mercies as the ocean engulfs the argosie, without feeling richer or fuller, or giving any revenue back.
One great source of our prevailing joylessness is our inadvertency. Living in Home, a famous antiquarian and artist* tells us that he gave himself half an hour every day to meditate on his Italian happiness. There was wisdom in the rule. Thousands have lived in Rome, with the same pure sky smiling over them and the same articulate antiquity on every side accosting them, and never been aware of their felicity; just as there are thousands who growl and grumble through long years of English life, and never bless God for the greater mercy of being * Winkelman.
born in Britain. Few of us need to be better off — we all need to know how well off we are. We need to meditate on our human happiness. We might have been lost angels, of whose race no Redeemer took hold. We might have been cut off in our sins long ago, and now been in the place where God forgetteth to be gracious. We might have been born in dark or despotic lands, where faith is a miracle, and where piety is martyrdom. We might have laboured under those prejudices of education which make belief in the faithful saying, as hard as it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. Then absolutely: there is for our meditation, daily, hourly, life-long, God’s chief mercy, — that largess of unprecedented love which is not the envied distinction of some far-off world, but is God’s gift unspeakable to you, to me. Oh, let us for once dwell on our peerless prerogative, till we become a wonder to our selves, — till but for our faith in God we would not be able to believe our own distinguished blessedness. “This is the record that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son,” “He that hath the Son hath life.” “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him freely give us all things?” “Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea, rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.” “Bless the Lord, 0 my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name: who forgiveth all thine p 2 iniquities, — who liealeth all thy diseases, — who redeemeth thy life from destruction, — who crowneth thee with lovingldndness and tender mercies.”
Another source of depression is distrustfulness. Am I wrong, my friends? Are not some of you in this predicament? You have no particular evil to record against the past, and yet you have great fears for the future. If you be a Christian, on the whole your life has been a happy one, — and yet with all that past happiness, you are afraid that you cannot be so happy hereafter. You are afraid that grief is coming — all the more afraid that grief is coming because so much joy is past. But this is wrong. This is perverse reasoning. If a child of God, your greatest happiness is coming yet. You are going up into a future where mightier than the mightiest trial — a grief-transforming, cloud-dispelling Friend awaits you. If God be your chiefest good, and conformity to God be your great desire, the future contains no real evil for you. In that future there may await you some painful incidents. The loss of this and that other loved one may await you there, — the loss of your substance, — the loss of your health may await you, and they may not; sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. But whatever else is in store for you, if you go piously and prayerfully forward into that future, you will find that many sweet mercies are there awaiting you, — many blessings at this moment unsurmised and unsuspected, — blessings, some of them, which the mourner only knows; and you will find that in that future God awaits you, as present, as powerful, and as kind as He has been in the most favoured past. So, summon up courage and go cheerfully forward. “Hope in the Lord; for with the Lord there is mercy.” And whatever else you limit, set no limits to the lovingkindness of the Lord, nor to the largeness of those petitions by which the needy suppliant honours the liberal Giver. Many indulge a complaining spirit who scarcely reflect how wicked it is, and how provoking to the Most High. They take up the Bible, and they read the murmurings of Israel on the march to Canaan, and they pity poor Moses, and they do not wonder that, wearied with their petulance and peevishness, the Lord smote these rebels, so that all their carcases fell in the wilderness. And when they have read the narrative, they close the book; and the first member of the family that comes in their way, they have ready a long lecture of rough reprimanding and perverse fault-finding; or the first visitor that arrives, they inflict on him the story of their grievances; they tell how good and meritorious they have been, but how severely the Lord has frowned upon their wishes and how cruelly the Lord has baffled all their plans. Yes, brethren, we marvel at old Israel, be cause we are ignorant of ourselves. If, just as Canaan was the prize of meekness, and a single murmur was enough to forfeit it, — if the Lord suspended any blessing on the same condition, — if those only were to find next year prosperous who never grumbled this one, and those only were to get to heaven who never murmured by the way, which of us, — who of all the two millions of London, would be the modern Joshua and Caleb? And yet, as it is, who would not try? “Who is there that would not court the panegyric which God pronounced on the sons of Nun and Jephunneh? Who is there that would not wish the perpetual feast of a contented spirit, and the perpetual ornament of a praising one? Let us, brethren, combat our natural fault-finding, and our no less natural foreboding. Let us rejoice in the present, and let us trust for the future. Let us pray and strive till our frame of mind is more in unison with the Lord’s kindness; and in the fulfilment of any wish and the disappointment of any fear, — in the kindness of any friend, and in the answer to any prayer, — in eveiy gracious providence, and in every spiritual mercy bestowed
on ourselves or others dear to us, — in all these let us recognise the merciful kindness of the Lord, and let us acknow ledge what we recognise. “It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord, and to sing praises unto thy name, 0 Most High: to show forth thy loving-kindness in the morning, and thy faithfulness every night: for thou, Lord, hast made me glad through thy work: I will triumph in the works of thy hands.”