The Christian's Triumph
If thou hast run with the footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses? and if in the laud of peace, wherein thou trustedst, they wearied thee, then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan?” — Jer. xii. 5.
One of the greatest battles on record was fought and won, seven hundred years ago, by the merchants and artizans of Brussels against the arms of France. Reduced by famine to the greatest straits, the city one evening opened her beleaguered gates, not to admit the enemy, but that such as were able to carry arms might march out — to make their last throw in the bloody game of war. Their resolution strung to the highest tension, they were resolved to do or die. They had it from the lips of their wives and daughters that, whatever were the result of to-morrow’s battle, they should be safe from the violence of a brutal soldiery. If their fathers and brothers conquered, they would be at the gates to receive them in their arms: if fortune declared for the enemy, still they had a refuge — the last refuge of the oppressed, the grave. They would fire the city, and throwing themselves into the flames, leave nought to the spoiler but blackened corpses, and smoking ruins. This forlorn hope, on leaving their families, carried only as much food as would suffice for one meal.
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If God was pleased to bless their arms, they would get plenty more; on the other hand, if the day was lost, they would need no more. The night, which was falling down when they came in sight of the banners and tents of France, was spent by their enemies in riot and carousings. It was spent by these wise, brave burghers in seeking rest for to-morrow’s fight; and by their leaders, in making the most skillful arrangements.
The men of Brussels rose with the dawn, and took what was to some, and might be to all, their last earthly meal. Knowing that they, a few rude townsmen, had no chance against the magnificent host of France unless God helped the fight for home, and wife, and children, and liberty, they cried to Heaven for help. Arrayed in sacred vestments, with the symbols of salvation in their hands, the priests went up and down their ranks. Every man made confession, and received the rites administered to the dying. The solemn service concluded, they rose from their knees; closed their ranks; levelled their pikes; and wheeling round so as to throw the glare of the sun in the eyes of the enemy, came down on their lines an avalanch of steel. The charge was irresistible. They bore cuirass and knightly lance before them; and these base-born traders scattered the chivalry of France, like smoke before the wind, and chaff before the whirlwind.
Such is a story of the olden time, as told by Froissart in his Chronicles. It illustrates a remarkable saying of one who fought many battles, and seldom, if ever, lost any. Asked to what he attributed his remarkable success, he replied, I owe it, under God, to this, til at I made it a rule never to df ;]jise an enemy.
To -what Tvarfare is this rule so applicable as to the Christian’s; to the battles of the faith; to tlox conflicts which tlic believer is called to wage with Satan, the world and the flesh? His past experience, a careful examination of the circumstances in wh’ch he has failed, and of those also in which he has conquered, cannot fail to prove that. Those works are commonlj? best done which we count most difficult. The athlete leaps the highest who bends the lowest to the spring; and Satan proves to be least when he looks most formidable. Thus” stand in awe, and sin not,’^ are joined as cause and effect. For the way to sin noi’: is just to stand in awe; never to feel too secure; nrjvcr to underrate the difficulty of a duty; never, be it the world, the devil, or the flesh, to despise the poT; t;r of our enemy. Is not that just what Scripture leaches in these words — -What I say unto you, I say unto all, Watch; again, Pray that ye enter not into temptation; again, Put on the whole armour of God; again, Having done all. Stand?
Extremes meet. This adage applies as well to spiritual as to common things; and thus it is I’hat despondency — the fear that we shall never sucieed, by depressing a man’s energies, and paralysing hi 3 power, lead to disaster, almost as certainly as Bresuiuptuous pride. For example: Saul owed his defeat more to the malign influence of the witch of Endor thai, to the arms of the Philistines. When she buried hope in his brave heart, she dug his grave; victory vanish I with the mantled phantom; and when Saul, pale, haggard, his spirits depressed, his courage sunken as his eye, went to fight, he had not a chance. The battle of Gilboa was lost before it was begun. Despair, in truth, is about as bad a leader as presumption — this is Scylla, that Charybdis; and both extremes, the rock, horrid with breakers, and the glassy but treacherous whirlpool, are alike fatal. Here, how true the heathen proverb, The middle is the safe passage! In spiritual matters we are, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and of the Word of God, to steer right between the two; and, to help you forward in this safe and blessed course, let me explain and answer the question, “If ye have run with the footmen, and they have wearied you, how will ye contend with horses?” — in other words, if you have not done the less, how can you do the greater?
The difficulty implied by this proverb appears —
I. In this. That man is less a match for Satan now than when Satan, at their first encounter, proved himself more than a match for man.
In Eden, our first parents and the tempter were not unequally matched. Belonging to a superior race of intelligent beings, he had more mental, but they, on the other hand, being still innocent, were superior to him in moral power. Thus Eve, like one who, though he brings less strength, brings better weapons to the field of battle than his enemy, might be considered as a fair match for the devil. Vice cannot look virtue ill the face, any more than an owl can the sun; and, innocence still, imperfect though it be, seems to possess such power over guilt as the eye of a man has over a lion — the savage beast quails before his fixed and steady look. Clad in his panoply of heavenly armour, it was Eve’s own fault that the simplicity of the dove did not prove more than a match for the cunning of the serpent; but it did not; and you know the result. It burns in the flames of hell; it sounded from the cross in the groans of Calvary; it rises in the corruptions of our degenerate nature; it is written on the blotted pages of every man’s history; it shall be engraven on every man’s tomb. Beneath its burden the whole creation groaneth, and is in pain until now; waiting for redemption till he come who shall free the prisoners and lead captivity captive; and crying, 0 Lord, how long, holy and true? Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly! why tarry thy chariot wheels?
Defeated in Eden, where now can a man look for success? overcome in our state of innocence, what hope, it may be asked, remains for us in one of guilt? The bravest soldiers hang back from the breach, where, as it belches forth fire and smoke, they have seen the flower of the army fall; mowed down like grass. The bravest seamen dread the storm which has wrecked, with the stout ship, the gallant life-boat that had gone to save its crew; men saying. If with her brave hands and buoyant power she, whelmed among the waves, could not live in such a sea, what chance for common craft? And what chance for us where our first parents perished? how can guilt stand where innocence fell? How can poor, fallen creatures, such Jis we are, expect to conquer an enemy who has won his accursed victories in heaven as well as on earth, and triumphed over the innocence both of angels and of men! Summoned to a holy war, we are called to fight the good fight, and to resist the devil; but is it not with us as if I were to raise a sick man from his bed, and when the earth was spinning round to his dizzy eyes, bid him fight an enemy that had conquered him when health bloomed on his palid cheek, and strength lay in the arm that hangs powerless by his side? What chance have infants against the lion that, with bristling mane, lashing tail, and flashing eyes, stands with his paw on the bleeding body of their mother? When traitors swarm in her streets, what hope has the city to resist the foe that in loyal days scaled, and breached, and carried its walls? We have been reduced to slavery; and did bondsmen ever win where freemen lost? Hope there is none for us out of Christ. Our only hope is David’s, that day, when, on presenting himself to do battle with the giant, Goliath, feeling insulted to be bearded by a beardless boy, exclaimed, “Am I a dog, that thou comest to me with staves!” Come on, rush to thy doom; and “I will give thy flesh unto the fowls of the air and the beasts of the field.” Whereupon the stripling, strong in faith, replied, “Thou comest to me with a sword, and a spear, and a shield; but I come unto thee in the name of the Lord God of hosts.” And but that we go to battle with our spiritual enemies, and him who conquered the innocence of Eden in the name of Jesus, and backed “by the Lord God of hosts,” we had had no answer to the question, “If thou hast run with the footmen, and they have wearied thee, how wilt thou contend with horses?”
II. If we were overcome by sin ere it had grown into strength, we are now less able to resist it.
The morning, with every flower glistening in dews, the fresh air loaded with perfumes, the hills bathed in golden light, the skies ringing with the song of larks, is beautiful. Beautiful as is the morning of day, so is that of life. Fallen though we are, there remains a purity, modesty, ingenuousness, and tenderness of conscience, about childhood, that looks as if the glory of Eden yet lingered over it, like the light of day on hill-tops at even, when the sun is down. The word of God, no doubt, declares infants as well as others to be dead in trespasses and sin: and I don’t say but there is death; still it is like death before the body has grown stiff and cold, the colour of life fled the cheek, or decay effaced its beauty. Look at a little child! It does not behave itself unseemly; does not rejoice in iniquity; does not glory in its shame; nor stand with unblushing front before a shocked and wondering world to avow its vileness, and proclaim itself seducer, liar, murderer. Blushes mantle on its cheek; and it has a conscience in its bosom, which protests against thoughts, and words, and actions, that men live to boast of. Sins, afterwards committed without compunction, and rolled as a sweet morsel under the tongue, are followed in early life by fears and uneasy feelings, stings of conscience and bitings of remorse; and the child is no more like what the man becomes, than a rose-bud, bursting its sheatli, breathing odours, and opening into beauty, is like that vile, soiled, and rotten thing which I have seen hanging on the leafless branch — a nest of worms, and smelling rank of decay. It has wrung our heart, as we looked on some lost, and loathsome creature — the pest of society, and the shame of her sex — to think of the days when she was a smiling infant in a mother’s happy arms, or, ignorant of evil, lisyped long-forgotten prayers at a mother’s knee; when her voice rose in the psalms of family worship, or of the house of God, like the song of a seraph in the skies. Alas! “How is the gold become dim? how is the most fine gold changed?”
Justifying this sad description. The wicked are estranged from the womb; they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies — alas! how soon does sin cloud life’s brightest dawn! But then if, in early life, when sin was comparatively weak and conscience was comparatively strong, we were so easily, and so often overcome by temptation, what hope for us, when this order is reversed; when conscience has become weak, and sin grown strong? If we were no match for the cub, how shall we conquer the grown lion? If we had not strength to pull out the sapling, how are we to root up the tree? If it exceeded our utmost power to turn the stream near its mountain cradle, how shall we turn the river that, red, roaring, swollen, pours its flood on to the sea? If we could not arrest the stone on the “brow of the hill, how shall we stop it when, gathering speed at every turn, and force at every bound, it rashes into the valley with resistless might? Sin gaining such power by time and habit, “If we have run with the footmen and they have wearied us, how shall we contend with horses?” Spirit of God! but for thy gracious aids the attempt were hopeless.
Not without the strongest reason does the wise man address himself to the young, saying, “Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth;” for the difficulty of resisting the bad and corrupt passions of our nature grows with man’s growth, and strengthens with his strength. Some things become weak and wear away by use; but not the power of sin. Like the muscles of a blacksmith’s brawny arm, the more it is used the stronger it grows; and thus all sinners, as well as “seducers, wax worse and worse.” The dead become twice dead; the dry bones more dry. Every new act of sin casts up an additional impediment in our way of a return to virtue, and to God; until that which was once only a molehill swells into a mountain that nothing can remove, but the faith at whose bidding mountains are removed, and cast into the depths of the sea. Overcome of sin when it was weak, how could we hope to overcome sin when it is strong, but that faith, undaunted by difficulties, and calling to our aid Him with whom nothing is impossible, despairs of nothing — saying with Paul, I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me.
Yes — they that are accustomed to do evil may learn, and have learned, to do well; the Ethiopian has changed his skin, and the leopard hia spots. Down into that crimson fountain, and it is done! With the blood of Christ to wash away the darkest guilt, and the Spirit of God to sanctify the vilest, and strengthen the weakest nature, I despair of none. Too late! It is never too late. Even old age, tottering to the grave beneath the weight of seventy years, and a great load of guilt, may retrace its steps, and begin life anew. Hope falls like a sunbeam on the hoary head. I have seen the morning rise cold and gloomy, and the sky grow thicker, and the rain fall faster, as the hours wore on; yet, ere he set in night, the sun, bursting through the heavy clouds, has broke out to illumine the landscape, and shed a flood of glory on the dying day.
III. Shew how these difficulties are to be overcome.
The Spirit and the flesh, grace and nature, heavenly and earthly influences, are sometimes so fairly balanced, that like a ship with wind and tide acting on her with equal power, but in opposite directions, the believer makes no progress in the divine life. He loses headway. He does not become worse, but he grows no better; and it is all he can do to hold his own. Sometimes, indeed, he loses ground; falling into old sins. Temptation comes like a roaring sea squall, and, finding him asleep at his post, drives him backward on his course; and further now from heaven than once he was, he has to pray. Heal my backsliding, renew me graciously, love me freely — For thy name’s sake, 0 Lord, pardon mine iniquity, for it is great.
The state of the most advanced Christians is often very unsatisfactory. The affections that, true as the needle to the pole, should point steadily to heaven, go wheeling about like a weather vane, that shifts with shifting winds. Sinful thoughts and bad desires spring up, thick as weeds in showery weather — faster than we can cut them down; and every attempt to keep the heart pure, holy, heavenly, ends in miserable failure — extorting the question, “Who is suf&cient for these things?” It is disheartening! We go into our gardens, and see the jQowers growing into beauty by sunny day, and silent night; week by week of autumn, the fields around us assume a more golden tint, ripening for the harvest; and year by year, childhood in our homes rise into youth, and youth into bearded manhood; — but our poor souls seem standing still. There is no appreciable progress; and we begin to ask, Are we never to grow fit for heaven? Is our hope of it but a pious dream, a beautiful delusion? Daily called to contend with temptation, the battle often goes against us; in these passions, and tempers, and old habits, The sons of Zeruiah are too strong for us. Not that we do not fight. That startling cry. The Philistines are on thee, Samson! rouses us; we make some little fight; but too often resisting only to be conquered, we are ready to give up the struggle — saying, It is useless; and like Saul in Gilboa’s battle, to throw away sword and shield. We would; but that, cheered by a voice from above, and sustained by hope in God’s grace and mercy, we can turn to our souls to say, Why art thou cast down, my soul; why is my spirit disquieted within me? — rise; resume thy arms; renew the combat; never surrender — Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise him who is the health of my countenance, and my God.
To encourage you, let me shew two cases — those of Peter and Abraham — where they who had been overcome by the lesser, overcame the greater trial; and, to use the language of my text, though wearied by the footmen, nobly and successfully contended with horses. No doubt we do not stand on the same platform with these distinguished saints; we are not Peter or Abraham. Still their God is our God for ever and ever — the same yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow; and what he did once, he can do again. His ear is not heavy that he cannot hear; nor his hand shortened that it cannot save.
1. Look at the case of Peter.
The arena where he is matched with footmen is a judgment hall. A woman — no proud Jezebel, plotting Naboth’s murder; no Athaliah, ambitious in her grey hairs of a throne, and wading to the ancles in the blood of her children; no Herodias, gazing with grim satisfaction on John’s gory head — has dragged the disciple to her presence; and fixing on him her malignant eye, asserts, Thou also art one of them! It is a humble maid, come perhaps to cast some billets on the fire, who without intending to hurt him, or without any object other than to satisfy her curiosity, catches a sight of Peter’s face as the rising flame throws it ruddy glare on the crowd around, and says. Thou also art one of them! Coward 1 He denies it; denies his master; asseverates with oaths, I know not the man. “What a fall was there! He ran with the footmen, and they T^^earied him.
The scene changes; and as if Providence kindly intended that Peter should win back his laurels on the field where they were lost, the arena is again a place of judgment. He stands at the bar of stern, bloodthirsty judges. Far more severely tried, he is now equal to the occasion. His courage mounts with the danger, as the eagle with the violence of the storm. No denying of his master now! no repudiating now of his discipleship! They have got no sneaking coward, but a lion at bay. Accused, he turns the accuser; he charges these judges with murdering the Lord of glory; and boldly tells them that Jesus he has preached, and, let them do their worst, Jesus he will preach — obeying God rather than man. He had run with the footmen, and they had wearied him; see there how nobly he contends with horses!
2. Look at the case of Abraham.
We would touch the patriarch’s fault lightly, but that he nobly redeemed it; and that, like the dark back-ground of a picture, it brings out the faith which shone so brilliant in his greatest trial. Woman’s beauty has often been her snare; supplying food to vanity, and exposing her honour to the seducer’s wiles. But Sarah’s beauty was her husband’s snare. About to sojourn in the land of Egypt, he looked on her face with alarm — not with pleasure now; saying to himself. These bright eyes shall be my death; throwing their witchery on the king, he will covet my treasure; to get at tins tempting fruit, as when axes are levelled against a stately palm, they will hew down the tree. Alarmed at such thoughts, frightened by a shadow, his fear of man got the better of his faith in God. As in other cases bringing a snare, it prompted, and his tongue taught this lie, at least mean shuffle and equivocation, to Sarah, Say thou art my sister; and it may be well with me for thy sake. He ran with the footmen, and they wearied him.
Look again; the scene has shifted. Once more he is on his trial. The arena is a mountain summit. He has to contend not with footmen, but with horses here. God has said, “Take thy son, thine only son, Isaac, whom thou lovest; and offer him for a burnt-offering on a mountain that I will tell thee of!” Offer Isaac! make a burnt-offering of my boy, my son, my only son; bind him to the horrid altar; and a father’s hands to bind him! Never, in father’s or mother’s breast, was faith put to so great a trial. Contend with horses? He has to contend with passions stronger far than horses; with love strong as death, love that many waters cannot quench. A thousand devils whispered in his ear, Do it not! and nature, turning traitor to her God, rose in all her might to forbid the bloody deed; protesting that God could never, never demand such a barbarous sacrifice. Yet see him! He lays Isaac gently on the altar, and tenderly kisses him. He bandages his eyes. How his hand shakes as he turns the cord round his trembling limbs! His heart is like to break; yet, though turning away his head from the sight, he now takes the knife. Would God permit, he would bury it up to the haft in his own bosom. Now look there — with an arm uplifted, but arrested from plunging it into Isaac’s, on that mountain summit he stands on the highest pinnacle of faith that man ever stood on. In that grand and terrible spectacle see, God helping them, how those who have been wearied by the footmen may contend with horses!
“There were giants in those days,” as is said of the men before the flood. No doubt. But it was God that made them strong; and all that Peter and Abraham did, they did through the power of his might. He strengthened them with all might by his Spirit in the inner man; and though these great actors have left the stage for lesser men to occupy, the might, the power remain. God remains; staying with his Church to make good these glorious promises. My grace is sufficient for thee — 0 worm Jacob, thou shalt thresh the mountains — One man shall chase a thousand — He that is feeble, not he that is strong, he that is feeble among them thall be as David; and the house of David shall be as God — The light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, in the day that the Lord bindeth up the breach of his people, and healeth the stroke of their wound.
With such promises, and with the assurance of his presence, may we not contend with horses; overcome the m-eatest difficulties: e:o down undaunted even into
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the swellings of Jordan? Great swellings these! There our sins assume a magnitude, and our guilt a blackiess, and our salvation — out of Christ — a hopelessness, they wear nowhere else! The swellings of
Jordan i These are not the pains of parting, nor the pangs of dying, nor the mortal struggle, terrible as it seems; but guilty memories of the past that, like thunder clouds, rise fast, and thick, and black, and terrible on the soul, and the prospect of a judgment near, just, irrevocable, eternal. I have seen these cast a solemn shadow on the face of the holiest, as if the righteous were scarcely saved. And what shall we do in these swellings of Jordan? Do? What can we do, but cling to Jesus? Lay your sins on Jesus; cast your fears on Jesus; die with your head pillowed on his bosom; and, your last conscious gaze fixed on his cross, breathe out your mortal life in words like these —
“Jesus, lover of my soul,
Let me to thy bosom fly,
“When the nearer waters roll,
“When the tempest still is nigh.
“Hide me, O my Saviour! hide,
Till the storm of life is past;
Safe into the haven guide;
Oh I receive my soul at last”