"More than a prophet"

Preface

T T has pleased God to call me from the com- -*■ panions and loved ones of my early ministry, to preach the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ in Africa ; hence this little book of thoughts on the life of John the Baptist for them. I selected John's life because I love him with a strong, tender, vast personal love. Jesus excepted, there has no one gone from earth to heaven whose spirit I hope to press close to my own with a thrill more enrapturing and a joy more deep, than this mighty man of God, who stood all alone, so strong, firm, and true.

I have culled these few thoughts from among many of my soul communings, because I deemed them helpful to my children in the Gospel, and comforting to the few tried true ones who have stood nearest and firmest by me in life's battles. To these I dedicate this

IV PREFACE.

little volume, with deep, sweet gratitude for the memories of the past, and strong, brightening hopes for the love, glory, and rest of that future when we shall meet and have each

other forever,

C. Clifton Penick.

Baltimore, Md,, Oct, 29, 1880,

Chapter I. God Loves Good Fruits For His Great Acres

" There was in the days of Herod, the King of Judea, a certain priest named Zacharias of the course of Abia : and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth." — Luke i : 5-22.

/^"^ OD is very careful in selecting and training

^~* the parents of His heroes. Long time

may their souls travail ere there is a token of a

real birth. God can wait, or, rather, make man

wait until his requirements ripen. Abraham

and Sarah were not ready to receive Isaac,

the promised son, until after a life of long

and severe travail. Long did Manoah and his

seeming barren wife wait, struggle, suffer, and

pray ere a Samson was born. Deep, bitter, and long were the agonies of a Hannah ere a Samuel was brought forth to stand for his God before Israel and a world. It was in his old age that Jesse begat David, the glory of Israel's kings and the man after God's own heart. And now we come to the close of the Jewish dispensation. God is about to widen His promises unto all the world. The Mosaic law is to be fulfilled : yes, so full by the great soul of Jesus that it shall run over, and the glad tidings flow on, on, widening, deepening through the desert, making it " blossom as the rose," teaching the mountains to send forth " rivers of waters'' until the " knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea."

Now mark how like the beginning is the close of this preparatory kingdom ; how like the birth of Isaac is the birth of John the Baptist ! Zacharias and Elizabeth were both old now. Long and faithfully had God trained their souls for the parentship a man so grand ; and now, in the evening twilight of life, as they wait the call to " come up higher, " lo ! the Angel Gabriel appears in the temple and announces the promise of God, the birth of John the Baptist, the last prophet of the Old Dispensation, who was to be born, reared, and trained by those whom God had trained and proven so many trusting, serving years, thus making the hearts of Zacharias and Elizabeth beat in deep sympathy with those of Abraham and Sarah, causing them to feel that He who began could and would fulfill all His glorious work.

It is time men and women were awakening to the realization of the responsibility before God of bringing souls into existence, were looking into the great causes which go to make the blessing of God a part of a child's birth. Surely, few of the pages of time record more thoughtless recklessness than the birth-page of man. With what abandonment do millions beget and launch young souls upon the awful sea of eternal existence, on to the issues of life or death, without first having prepared their hearts and lives for this fearful responsibility before God, who has ordered a law to run under all these deeds and carry their consequences on through coming generations. " The

IO "MORE THAN A PROPHET."

promise is to you and your seed" is a glorious hope; "visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me" is a fearful reality. How, in the face of these solemn declarations of God, a Christian man or woman can marry a sinner, running all the risk of damning their offspring, to say nothing of committing the deepest and most sacred chambers of the heart to the partnership of one under the control and in the service of Satan, is what I cannot comprehend. It certainly shows a sad mistrust of God's own words and laws, and a horrible braving of consequences before which angels would tremble.

But the Angel Gabriel came to a man and woman approved of God, and came with joy. How His spirit dwells in those great truths wrapped up in His message ! Think you he bore that message with cold indifference ? Think you his was the only angelic spirit thrilled with its truths ? I trow not.

It is no mere accident that such revelations come to us, when an angel announces the birth of Isaac, Samson, John the Baptist, and our Lord ; for they show how intensely the heavenly hosts bend in living interest over these birth-scenes, and with what joy, when God permits them to foresee a great spirit's birth. No wonder, then, that the choirs of heaven came singing at the birth of Jesus. No wonder, when in Revelation we see the woman delivered of a man-child who was to rule the nations, that the child should be caught up unto God and to His throne from a persecuting earth. It is a sweet, comforting thought to realize how close in sympathy these spirits of God hover over the birth-bed of the Christian child, a true propagation of Christian nature by Christian parents. And it is no wonder we hear of their joy in the presence of God, when " one sinner repenteth," one child they have watched and ministered to from birth comes out and fully clasps the sweet fellowship of our Lord. Christian parents, take courage ; God's angels are helping you !

Gabriel pours out the rich treasures of his heavenly message, and pauses before the soul of Zacharias as it staggers beneath the overwhelming richness of the promise, and stumbles at the frailty of himself. !< Whereby shall I know this ? for I am an old man, and my wife well stricken in years." Alas, how often are we stunned at the greatness of God's goodness ! Would that we could look less at our own frailty and more at His boundless grace. How many Christians, like Zacharias, can faithfully and blamelessly serve God through a long life of toil, and yet cannot open their hearts to the fulness of His gracious love. Some great blessing promised seems to stun them, and, like Jacob, they must see the wagons Joseph sent ere they can rejoice ; Tor, like Zacharias, must be dumb for a season, until in their stillness they know He is God.

Strong and startling comes back the answer to his doubt : ''I am Gabriel, that stand in the presence of God." To have his veracity questioned with a doubt was what the heavenly messenger could not brook. He stood " in the presence of God," where truth eternal, truth as live and splendid as the face of Jehovah, beamed in its glory, and no doubt showed it there. "I am Gabriel, a heavenly character, one whose word is known ; here is my name, here is my address ; you doubt my words : look to it, then, for where I stand nothing that is not truth can live ; thou shalt be dumb and not able to speak until the day that these things shall be performed, because thou believest not my words which shall be fulfilled in their season.''

Doubt and unbelief have often silenced the tongue and hushed the joy that should have sounded forth God's praises in songs of gladness. Zacharias now believes ; but it is such a belief as speaks not the joy of soul, such a silent trust as should deepen every word of that heavenly messenger into his very being of beings, and grave it on his heart of hearts. And we learn that when God speaks, commanding us to do or promising us a blessing, He will make our strength sufficient for all His requirements. " My grace is sufficient for thee ; my strength is made perfect in weakness."

Thus it was that God broke the long, painful silence of the night of anxious watching, so quietly, so strongly, so sweetly amid the rising fragrance of two holy, loving, faithful lives. The great temple of Herod stood in the dazzling show of its magnificence ; but the centre of interest now turns from it to the holier temple of the consecrated lives, by the fireside of Zacharias and the carpenter-ship of Nazareth.

Chapter II. The Glory Of Motherhood

Luke i : 23-56.

T"\ 7E have here one of the most tender, ' * touching, beautiful pictures in all the realms of human life : two women chosen of God — one to be the mother of the " greatest of woman born," and the other the mother of the Son of God Himself — and it pleases God to lift the inner veil, to let all of His children look upon their heart-life from the time of conception to the day of bringing forth. Mothers, here is a page of God's word for you ; here the hand of inspiration holds before your souls the great mirror of true motherhood at the period which of all others must be to you the most intense, anxious, and hopeful of life, if you are true women — those days when you are conscious of an immortal soul about to be ushered into existence through your life, and l6 "MORE THAN A PROPHET."

you feel within you the throbbings of life as they struggle in your first-born — life of your life issuing from you to speed on to eternity and to God. This is a time fur deep heart searchings, strong soul pleadings, great heart longings and hopings, tremblings, and prayers. It is said of Elizabeth, "she hid herself five months," and as she passed out from the world's noisy, busy toil and confusion, the words which echo her farewell are full and sweet. " Thus hath the Lord dealt with me in the days wherein Pie looked on me to take away my reproach among men." With these Avords falling upon our ears as she departs, it is not hard to know where and for what she has gone into the cleft of the rock to hide her with her God, to nourish that precious lifegerm within her on the milk from heaven, and breathe holy inspiration into the very essence of his conception, that he may come forth from the womb with the pulsations of God's spirit bounding in his first heart-beats, and the nature of his God breathed in his first breath. No wonder, then, that we hear the .great truth, "He was filled with the Holy Ghost even from his mother's womb." Oh, mothers, do you see what a gate to His heart and life God opens here especially for you ? Do you see how you may get Him to make your child, as it were, born again from the womb, and let the first pulsation of that young life be thrilled with the glad leapings of glorious immortality ? Who can doubt that a child so conceived, so born in the very atmosphere of holiness, as it were on the very steps of the Mercy Seat, must be blessed of God ?

But let us come a little closer, and hear the echoes of her heart a little deeper. The Virgin Mary has come to keep vigil with her, and ask her soul-watchings in her own holy hopes, and the two stand facing each other : the young "blessed above women" and the old faithful servant whose God has " taken away her reproach before men." The Gospel faces the Law. The Law is God's mercy brought forth by His mighty power from man's sinful barrenness. Sarah was barren, Rebekah was barren, Hannah was barren, Elizabeth was barren, but God's mercy found a way to propagate a chosen seed and lead on the generaio "MORE THAN A PROPHET."

tion of His elect through all these difficulties. But now, when it comes to Christ, full nature leaps gladly to her duty all in tune, and the young, hopeful, pure virgin combines in the fulness and freshness of her womanhood with God's great nature of love ; from henceforth flows on in its boundless and fathomless depths of grace. The nature of God no longer speaks through the narrow channels of a ceremonial law, but beats, rises, swells, and sweeps under us, about us, through us, over us, in the soul-filling life of Christ. In Him is life, and He came that we might have this life more abundantly ; that the life of God should henceforth flow in the wideness and fulness of the Spirit, and not in the narrow barrenness of the letter.

At the sound of the Virgin's voice the babe leaped in the womb of Elizabeth ; and this was no mere convulsive, spasmodic jerk, but we are expressly told " it was a leap for joy." God's nature had already so permeated mother and child that the deep quickenings of His Spirit outran the course of nature, and sent a thrill of joy into a being yet unborn.

Thus began that joy which shone in the fullness of glory when, long years after, St. John said, " The friend of the Bridegroom standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the Bridegroom's voice ; this my joy therefore is fulfilled." The joy-leap of the babe was the signal for Elizabeth to break forth in grateful praise — short, but full of faith — which was answered in that exalted and exquisite soul-anthem from the Virgin, bursting forth in the rapturous words, " My soul doth magnify the Lord. My spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour." Such scenes as this are not oft vouchsafed to mortal eyes ; and echoes so sweet and deep from hearts so pure and true, not oft heard by human ears amid the echoes of this cruder life and the grating of a world's friction. Let our souls then, dwell with tender, deep, earnest joy amid their neverdying echoes, and may we press on with all the power of a living, yearning determination to like exaltation and entire consecration of soul.

Sweet indeed must have been the soul-communings of Mary and Elizabeth during this visit. It is not hard to make companionship rich with living joy when we have the great aims and ends of life all in common. The deepest, sweetest soul-blendings this earth can ever know are those born when two great, pure hearts, true to God, flow into each other in some great life - absorbing, confidential, heaven-sent purpose. Such meetings linger in memory like the scenes of bursting sunlight here and there over the clouded landscape, as if Heaven's smiling sympathy broke through to sweeten and bless. Alas ! would that there were more such in life ; would that there were an exaltation in human love, and that souls would climb higher, get nearer to God to make love, or I should say to find it ; for when God tunes two hearts, they have only to touch and the concord of sweet harmony rolls forth. Yes. if w r e ascended in our love-seeking we would get beyond the blight of disappointments and the witherings of years, for we would love God in each other ; the sure beauties of eternal realities that time nor space can change, nor worldly fortune nor frown becloud ; a locking and clasping of souls, to pass on unbroken into the sweet companionship of heaven's own eternal joys.

"About three months Mary abode with Elizabeth, and then departed to her own home." The duties in this life are too real, the battle too pressing, the issues too tremendous to permit " loyal hearts and true" to sit enjoying each other long. Here we may but clasp hands and press on to the front, may but let the heart leap in the holy light of greeting love, to go forward stronger, gladder, braver, into the battle. Jesus loves us too tenderly and dearly to permit us to keep any other than Himself always by our sides. He, and He alone, can say, " I will never leave thee nor forsake thee," and He alone is fit for this continuous companionship. We cannot grow greater and stronger, truer and braver, brighter and happier, in any other companionship than His. " My grace is sufficient for thee." So, leaning on His arm alone, we go into the battle. Still on we press, through the long anxious days, nights, and years of watching, with Him alone, and when at last we descend into " the dark valley of the shadow of death," we still " fear no evil ; His rod and His staff comfort us," and the " Everlasting Arms" are still around us.

Thus may we, like Mary and Elizabeth, drink in all the joys of holy companionship as God sends them, and then press on, each in her course, to a more complete companionship with God. and the brave and faithful bringing forth and fulfilling His holy purposes intrusted to us.

Chapter III. The Preacher Supersedes The Priest

" His name is John." — Luke i : 59-79.

HP* HE day of Elizabeth's delivery came : -*■ her child was born. It must have been a touching scene when the aged father gazed in silent adoration at the fulfilment of God's promise. But it was best thus. The soul needs silence : needs to be still that it may know He is God ; needs seasons of long, deep communion, holy heart-talk with God, unbroken by a prattling world's interruptions.

The day of circumcision has come : the child must be named, and the rejoicing friends would honor the father by giving his boy the name of Zacharias. The mother objects, and says, " His name is John." Friends protest ; 11 None of his kindred is named John" : they refer it to Zacharias. He calls for his tablet, and writes, " His name is John" i.e., gracious gift of Jehovah. Yes, the day of grace had come. The long reign of the schoolmaster " Law" draws to its close, and with it the long and much cherished line of the priesthood. Henceforth the ministers of the Gospel, the " messengers of glad tidings," must go before him and " turn the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just." Henceforth the prophets, and not the priests, are to be His apostles to fallen man, sent to tell of the great sacrifice offered, the debt paid, the sinner ransomed, the Father reconciled, the great " it is finished," and not to pretend to offer anew the sacrifice for sin. Yes, John comes to usher in the King of Grace, the reign of God's love ; and it was meet and fit that with his very name he should cut asunder those associations that bound him to the old order of things, for he comes to proclaim the kingdom of heaven at hand, the shadows past and the substance present. He came to honor God's grace, not to prolong Zacharias' name, family line, or priesthood. The preacher John takes the place of the priest Zacharias, and the wilderness and the conquest of the world ' are substituted for Jerusalem and the Temple.

So God seems to have ordered ; but alas, how long do men hover over that which lives only in the past and was buried on Mount Calvary ! How do they long for the days and incense of Zacharias, instead of pressing into the kingdom at the preaching of John ! No wonder that all present marvelled at those words written by Zacharias. No wonder they laid up those words in their hearts, saying, ' What manner of child shall this be ?" For in that name and its surroundings they felt a trembling like that of an earthquake strike through all the structures of the Levitical dispensation.

No sooner had the words been traced by the style of Zacharias than his tongue was loosed, and the deep, rich meditations of his heart burst forth : " Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for He hath visited and redeemed His people, and hath raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of His servant David. "

How thoroughly had God's chastening done its work. Oh, it is a blessed and glorious thing to see a good man under the rod of the

Lord ! It is like Moses smiting the rock, and forthwith streams of pure living water come forth to slake the thirsting souls of thousands. The sweetest, purest, freshest springs we find in God's word are those given when He bows some holy soul in sorrow ; and well may the pilgrim exclaim, " Ofttimes joy is wrung from sadness." Had not Abel bled and died, He never would have spoken and encouraged all the armies of these sorrow-tried souls. Had not Noah toiled, waited, and stood through all those long days of trial without seeing one soul converted, or even convinced, outside of his own family, we would all miss one great, resting, comforting example in the past. If Abraham's heart had not bled at the severing of the father-ties that bound him to his loved Ishmael, and pressed on through all the fearful trials of Mount Moriah, the faithful would have missed a father. And so with Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Samuel, David — yea, every hero of God comes closer to us in the moments of his deepest agonies, his hours of heroic faithfulness amid the sorrows and trials God sent. Truly, truly, sorrow is one of our richest blessings. Trouble sweeps the sweetest chords from our heart-strings, and blends our spirits lovingly into each other. Yes, God is preparing a family of saints to love Him and one another with a love which the whole creation groaned and travaileth to see manifested ; and this deep love is begotten in sorrow's vale. Here, amid these dark, sweet, sad soul-trials, He is weaving heart to heart, spirit to spirit, in ties that no angel bosom can feel, and fitting them to " sing a new song" never heard in heaven before — the song of sympathetic love which Jesus shares with us through His sorrows ; for the " Captain of our salvation is made perfect through suffering." It was once my privilege to attend a saint of the Lord who for forty years had been an intense sufferer from acute rheumatism. One morning, just before his death, I asked him, " Well, Mr. Merritt, what have you been meditating about to-day?" 'The angels," he said. "What about the angels?" I asked. " I have been thinking why we should have a better inheritance than they." " Why do you think we will?" '* Because our trials and conflicts are greater than theirs/' he said.

Again, these sorrows and trials fit us for the duties of life, and show us God's way. When Zacharias recovered speech, God's kingdom, Christ's nearness, was the theme of his first praise ; not his own son, or the hopes of his own line of priesthood, but " hath raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of His servant David." Ah, how brightly the stars come out after the storm-clouds roll away, and with what loveliness they look down on us through the purified atmosphere ! So with our souls. When our sorrow is truly godly sorrow, and the clouds pass, heaven, with all its stars of hope, seems so much nearer. God's ways reach before us, and God's plans unfold for us with a personal sweetness, a wideness of joy before unfelt, and we cry with David, "It is good for me that I have been afflicted." It is worth while to go, Jacob-like, halting on a shrunken thigh through the rest of life's pilgrimage to be a real Prince of God.

And sorrow gives us a real and true view of our surroundings, our blessings, our trusts, and our ties of relationship. Now could Zacharias see truly the mission of John. There is not one word of parental selfishness, not one breathing for earth's claim upon him. He does not even say " my child," but yields him up to the great work of God with a deep, glad willingness, a joy like that of Hannah when she dedicated Samuel to her God. To these parents the ordinance of circumcision was more than a formal ceremony, it was a living reality, and God's obligatory requirement of the parent, an obligating of entire and honest yielding and training of the child for God. Zacharias says of John, " Thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways." Blessed and lofty parental realization !' holy and grand calling for his boy ! Would God that Christians did more fully enter into this glory, and flee to this safety for their children to-day ! But how few yield them up to the service of God. Where are the Abrams, Hannahs, and Zacharias of this age ? Alas, alas ! When we would speak of lofty, heroic consecration, a life of service and a death of glory for the children of the wealthy and great now, they would say, as Simon Peter of old, " Far be it from thee," my child ; as if God dishonored their children or robbed them of happiness by the hardships of His service, not knowing that thus they are winning immortal laurels and crowns of unfading glory, and are only " suffering with Him that they may also reign with Him."

Had we more silent, true communings with God ; meditated we more deeply and faithfully and truthfully upon the realities, eternal as well as temporal, of life ; did we but pass oftener and lower " under the rod" of our God, with hearts more deeply bowed to His will, we would see and grasp these heavenly glories for our children ; would lose sight of what a child was to be to us in the glory of what he would be to his God, and baptism would become an act in which the child would be as wholly and faithfully offered up to God as was Isaac on the Mount of God : so parent and child would be blessed in an eternal relationship of glory.

Chapter IV. Growing

"And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till the day of his shewing unto Israel." — ■ Luke i : So.

I

N order to lift religion there must be a higher soul-centre to attract. One must take a stand nearer to God, and call others up to him. When the philosopher Archimedes said, ** Give me a point without the world, and I will lift the world," he uttered a truth far deeper than his material philosophy could ever reach — a truth on which rests the restoration of the fallen souls of men. God is educating John the Baptist to be the greatest reformer of the Mosaic dispensation ; and in order to fit him for the work He sends him, not to any school or society of men, but to the deerj solitudes of the desert. There is a time, a state of society and religion when true education can only be had by seclusion therefrom — a time when the whole moral and religious atmosphere becomes so impregnated with clouds and mists of wrong, and so enslaved to the fear and opinions of men, that we must go into solitude and there ask our hearts, " What sayeth the Lord ?" We must flee from the ever-shifting sands on time's sea-shore, flee from the ceaseless rush and confusion of its breaking billows, into some quiet desert mountain, and there listen to the surgings of eternity within .us. Here, arid here alone, will we catch the sound of immortal truth ; here will we get a view of the everlasting hills ; here will we feel the strong presence of the living God pressing in brawny reality close up to life's daily duties. And here, then, it was that God sent the " greatest of woman born," to form and harden that life until in its lone greatness it should bow the hearts of a nation as the tempest bows the trees of the forest. Let us go into the deserts with the soul of this great man, and see him in God's great 'school. " He 'grew." Though he was " filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb," as the Angel Gabriel expressly foretold, yet he grew. What would fill his mind, heart, and powers as an infant would not fill them as a boy of ten, and what would fill them at ten years of age would sadly fail at sixteen. So he must needs keep growing without and within. The child lived with God, and his yearning heart stretched itself out to God, and opened its depths for God. His book was the book of Eternal Truth, and his soul sought to lay hold thereof, and to bring forth its naked realities. He studied God and man through God. He proved God a living, surrounding, unfailing reality. He saw the mighty purposes of Jehovah marching with firm, relentless tread straight on to fulfil the Omnipotent will, despite all the obscurities and delusions of men. He felt that the heart of religion centred not in Gamaliel or Hillel, the Pharisee's Council or the Lawyer's school, but that it beat with the warm throbs of Omnipotent purpose and love in the bosom of God.