"For Thy Sake I Am Killed All the Day Long, I Am Accounted as a Sheep for the Slaughter"

ay

EAN CHURCH says somewhere that
what distinguished Dr. Newman’s
preaching above everything else was
his wonderful power of realising and
of making his hearers realise the

truth of what he was saying. And it was this

great gift of a realising imagination, even more than his magical style, that made Dr. Newman the matchless and the epoch-making preacher that he was: so his much-admiring friend assures us. Now, in all my life-long reading of those spiritual writers who themselves realise and who consequently make their readers realise the things

of the spiritual life, I have never met with a

more pungently realising writer than the founder

of Harvard. And in proof of that, and in illustration of that, take for one thing the way he realised how he was literally slain to death every

returning Sabbath day. ‘Sabbath, August 16.

Four things have slain my soul before God all this day: the poverty of my provision for my people, the felt unprofitableness of it all as I delivered it, the utter deadness of heart that has lain upon me all the day, and no true presence of God with me in any part of my work.’ On the very next Sabbath he was even worse: ‘I feel that I deserve death and hell for the motives and the intentions and the ambitions with which I do my pulpit work.’ Another Sabbath as he rested on his bed between sermons he saw himself to be ‘vile beyond all description.” They are his own bitterly realising words: ‘ Vile beyond all description, not because of any of the sins of the flesh, but because of the infinitely worse sins of the spirit. How could the God of holiness ever make use of a sinful wretch like me! He could not, and I need not expect it. Another Sabbath as he vainly tried to take some rest at the same hour a thousand things simply tortured him. ‘In whose name and in whose strength and to whose glory did I do my work this morning? I preached and prayed as with wings when I got on well. I had great liberty and, as I thought great spiritual joy as I repeated in my prayers and in my sermons the eloquent passages I had prepared with such labour beforehand.’ And all that rose before him with such shame and pain that his bed swam under him with his tears of remorse and misery. Another Sabbath he was not well and a neighbour minister took his pulpit. ‘ My wife came home praising above measure Mr. T. H., his sermon. Oh, my God, pity me with this diabolical heart of mine. For all the time T. H. is my best friend. Till he quite forgot his bodily illness that day in the far worse illness of his soul. ‘ November 16. I felt my heart all day to be very unsavoury. I was full of darkness and death. And I felt sometimes as if I were already on my bed in hell. And I saw as never before that nothing but free grace and that abounding toward me could help me out of my exceeding sinfulness, and on that grace alone did I hang my heart all that day.’ And if you are not dead tired of such a monster of a minister as Shepard, take this one more entry of his: ‘ December 9. After my Wednesday sermon I saw the towering pride of my heart in all I did. As soon as I had done any public work my wicked heart would immediately look wistfully whether men praised me enough or no. Hereupon I saw my incurable vileness to make the opinions of passing men my rule and my stay and my reward in doing the work of the everlasting God. I saw also that upon every enlargement of mine I was ready to be somewhat in my own eyes. Whereupon my rule now is to be more vile than any other man in my own eyes, and that every day. For Thy sake I am killed all the day. I am accounted as a sheep for the slaughter.’ ‘The saints are lowered,’ sings Newman, ‘ that the world may rise.’

But with all that, what can this so startling scripture mean when it says, ‘ For Thy sake we are killed all the day long, and are accounted as sheep for the slaughter’? And how are we to realise all that in David, and in Paul and in his Roman readers, and in Shepard and in his New England readers, and most of all in ourselves? How can it be said in any true and sober-minded sense that it was ‘for God’s sake;’ for any advantage or pleasure to Him that Thomas Shepard was so slaughtered in his soul on all those so sinful Sabbath days? What conceivable service could have been done to God by all those shameful self-discoveries and self-condemnations of His unsanctified servant? Much service, my brethren, and that in many ways. And in this way for one. ‘Thou desirest truth in the inward part, and in the hidden part Thou shalt make me to know wisdom.’ So writes David when, like Shepard, he is undergoing a specially inward and a specially spiritual sanctification. That is to say, God is first and foremost to David and to Shepard the God of truth, and as such He demands and He will have the whole truth about themselves from all His elect servants, however terrible that truth may be. And indeed the more terrible that truth is the more He demands it, and the more He will have it at any cost to His servants and to Himself. And thus it is literally and really and supremely for His sake, and for the sake of His truth and His holiness, that His choicest servants have their eyes so opened to see the whole of the awful truth about themselves. Yes, blessed be His gracious name for ever. Almighty God accounts it His highest glory, He holds it as all done for His special sake, when we come to Him in our uttermost misery and cast ourselves at His feet to redeem us and to save us. Poor Thomas Shepard’s puffed-up heart when he was praised for a prayer or for a sermon, his utter prostration and desolation of heart when he did not receive the flattery for which he had laboured and looked, his heartkilling discernment of his miserable motives and intentions and ambitions in all he did and said in his study and in his pulpit and in his pastorate, his diabolical hatred of all the men who excelled him in their talents and in their attainments and in their popularity and in their prosperity, with all the rest of that awful book of his which he wrote out in secret and laid open before God, and which God has had put into our hands this evening — all that was suffered far less for Shepard’s sake than for God’s sake. All that was gone through by Shepard, and it was all written and is now all read in order that God might have His Name in Shepard, as he says himself in another powerful and pungent passage. We all read indeed that God’s law is a spiritual law, and that all His commandments are holy and just and good. And again we read that the word of God is quick and powerful, and is sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. We read all that on occasion, and we do not in as many words deny the truth of it. But we do not truly realise one single syllable of it till we come to have it all experienced and fulfilled and exhibited in our individual selves. The whole heart-searching and heart-breaking holiness of God’s law could not be learned out of mere texts of scripture however inspired and however written out. God has not only to get Holy Scripture written out and read and opened up, but He has to get now one and now another of His most gifted and most sanctified servants killed by His holy law all the day long in order to bring out and to illustrate and to teach to others the heart-piercing and soul-saving spirituality of His holy law. He has to get a David in one age, and a Paul in another age, and a Luther in another age, and a Shepard in another age, in whose profound experience His holy law shall have its free course and be magnified.

But while all that is so, at the same time so manifold and so deep is the wisdom of God that what is suffered by us supremely for His sake is also suffered by us scarcely less supremely for our own sake. As here, David was the first who realised that it was for God’s sake that he was killed all the day long. Now when we go back and read and realise David’s much-suffering psalm, we soon see that David’s own sake is as deeply involved in that psalm as is God’s sake. With all the untold suffering that God and man are able to accumulate on David, he is able and he is bold to call God to be his witness in this way. Just listen to how David is killed all the day long and with what results to himself. ‘Thou hast cast me off and hast put me to shame. They which hate me spoil me for themselves. Thou hast given me like a sheep appointed for meat. Thou hast sold me for nought, and hast not increased Thy wealth by my price. Thou hast made me a reproach to my neighbours, and a scorn and a derision to those who are round about me. My confusion is continually before me, and the shame of my face hath covered me. All this is come upon me, yet have I not forgotten Thee, neither have I dealt falsely with Thy covenant. My heart is not turned back, nor have my steps declined from Thy way. For Thy sake I am killed all the day long. I am accounted as a sheep for the slaughter.” Now, all that daily slaughter of David was ordained of God in order that David’s faith and trust and submissiveness and obedience might be exercised to their very utmost: might be exercised and manifested and perfected to their very utmost. And when Paul takes his Roman readers back to the forty-fourth Psalm it is in order that both he and they may imitate David in their faith and trust and submissiveness and obedience when they are killed all the day. And it was among the awful sufferings of the apostle’s persecuted life that he was enabled to take to himself David’s suffering and triumphant psalm and to realise it and to enrich it in this New Testament way. ‘ Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.’ Now if all that is true of the outward sufferings of the psalmist and the apostle, much more splendidly is it true of their inward and spiritual sufferings. You must all see how much it was for David’s own sake and for Paul’s own sake and for Shepard’s own sake that they were all three so inwardly killed all the day. To keep to Shepard, you must all see how much it was for his true sight of himself, and for his consequent growth in saving grace, that he was so slaughtered every returning Sabbath day. At any rate, whether you see that or no, all your ministers see it till they see little else. What minister who reads or hears of Shepard’s Sabbath night entries does not immediately go to Shepard’s God in prayer for grace to see himself and to despise and detest himself as that distinguished saint did? And what minister who has seen himself as in a glass in Shepard will ever again for a single Sabbath night forget what manner of man he is? Till this will be his secret and his agonising cry to God all his Sabbaths on earth: ‘For my own salvation’s sake, O my God, kill me in this way all my life long! As long as the remains of any such spiritual sin still dwells in my heart, make me to die daily on account of it, like David, and like Paul, and like that New England Puritan of Thine. And I will bless the day I ever heard his honoured name!” My brethren, how wonderful, that what is so acutely suffered by God’s servants is all suffered first and last for God’s sake, but is also at the same time absolutely

indispensable for their own sakes also. Till they make it their adoring ery continually: O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been His counsellor?

But with all that we are not come near the end of God’s manifold wisdom in this deepest of all His dealings with His servants. For not only were Shepard’s terrible sufferings undergone first for God’s sake, and then after that for his own sake, but they were all ordained and overruled for our sake also. I say for our sake also. For had it not been for the terrible nature and the terrible amount of Shepard’s spiritual sufferings we would never have so much as heard his name. Speaking for myself, it was the way he was killed every day, and it was specially the way he was absolutely slaughtered every Sabbath day, it was that which first drew me to this great saint for my spiritual profit and growth in grace. And still as I read and re-read the terrible diary of his soul I again see that great preacher and great pastor in the Divine making. He was one of the foremost students of Emmanuel College in Cambridge and all his days he kept up his studious habits. But it was neither his classical nor his theological scholarship that made him the great Puritan at whose feet I sit. It was his discovered sinfulness. He was like Luther. The devil was one of Shepard’s most diligent and most successful tutors. It was Shepard’s outward temptations, taken along with his inward corruptions, that made him the master in Israel that he is to some men among us. His books, I admit, are not spoonmeat. He does not write for babes at the breast. And that is why he has been so much neglected and forgotten even among the men of his own spiritual and ecclesiastical household. His Parable and his Spiritual Experiences are both written with his heart’s blood, and it is this that makes those spiritual masterpieces so invaluable to those ministers, Puritan and other, who have sinfulness enough in their own hearts, and who have eyes enough alongside of that sinfulness, to enable them to read and to understand such masterly books, so full of intellectual and spiritual power: to read them continually and more and more to profit by them.

But I am forgetting. You are not sinful ministers and you do not need to be killed all the day long for the salvation of your people. No. But it will be no light discipline that will be needed to enable you to understand and to appreciate such ministers as are killed daily in order that their people may live. It will be no light discipline that you will need if you are to understand David in his forty-fourth Psalm, and Paul in his seventh and eighth of the Romans,

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114 THOMAS SHEPARD

and Shepard in his Spiritual Experiences. But even though you are not ministers, and devoted to death like them, you are not on that account shut out from their great salvation. In your lay and retired life you may be as much killed every day for God’s sake and for your own sake as any of your ministers are. Now, are you? For that is the point of this whole evening for you. Are you being so killed for God’s sake first and then for your own sake? And if so, with what sword? Is it with some secret and slaughtering providence of God toward you in your home life, or in your business life, or is it deep down beneath all that and in your heart of hearts which God alone sees? Is it some secret sword of God under which you are fast bleeding down to your grave? Well then attend to this one parting pastoral word. ‘Turn your thoughts every day, Jacob Behmen would say every half-hour, away from the men and the women around you and think you see those men and women above you who through much tribulation are now made for ever perfect. Think you see David and his choirs, and Paul and his readers, and Shepard and his New England hearers. But above all think you see and hear Jesus Christ the Man of Sorrows, and every single sorrow of His for His Father’s sake and for your sake. Find the place and read it every day to your own sinslaughtered heart, how He Himself was brought as a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before His shearers was dumb. And, especially, have this concerning Him always ready to hand: Father!

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‘KILLED ALL THE DAY LONG’ 115

save me from this hour. But, no; since it was for this cause of Thine that I came to this hour Father! glorify Thy Name. Then there came a Voice from heaven saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.