The hidden life

Front matter

Chap. -. Copyright No...—

REV. DR. MILLER'S BOOKS.

SILENT TIMES.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Hidden Life i

II. The Outer and Inner Life 14

Chapter I. The Hidden Life

" We live together years and years, And leave unsounded still

Each other's springs of hopes and fears, Each other's depths of will ;

We Uve together day by day, And some chance look or tone

Lights up with instantaneous ray An inner world unknown."

In a sense, all life is hidden. The blood courses through the veins as the heart keeps throbbing, throbbing, day and night. You can lay your finger on your wrist and feel the pulsings. The lungs also continue breathing, inhaling, exhaling, without pause, from infancy's first gasp until at last watching friends say, ** He is gone ! " Pulsings, breathings — ye3 ; but have you found the life ? What is it that keeps the heart throbbing and the lungs respiring ? " Life/' you say. Yes, but what is life ?

Take the mind. It is very active. One man thinks, and writes beautiful poems or charming stories. Another thinks, and puts marvellous visions on canvas, or throws great bridges over rivers, or erects a noble cathedral. But who ever saw the processes of thought.^ Mental life is hidden.

Take heart-life — the life you lived yesterday, with its hopes and fears, its joys and sorrows, its pleasures and pains, its cares and its affections, its thousand varying experiences. Does the world know what is going on in your breast to-day, any day } People see the smile or the shadow that flits across your face, but they do not see the emotion which produced it. Even to your closest bosom friend your life is unrevealed, cannot be revealed. Says Keble : —

** Not even the tenderest heart and next our own Knows half the reasons why we smile or sigh."

Take spiritual life. We see the effects of the Holy Spirit's work — new dispositions, new conduct, new character ; but the divine spark of life we cannot see as it comes down from above. It is secret, hidden. One day you are sad, disheartened ; and, taking up your Bible, you find a sweet word of promise, a revealing of God's love, and into your heart there comes a strange peace. You are in sorrow. A friend sits down beside you, and speaks a few words of strong comfort. You are calmed and quieted. Yet no one sees any of these processes. They are hidden, secret.

There is an inspired word which says, ** Your life is hid with Christ in God." The thought is wonderfully bold and strong. Christ is the source of the Christian's life. Christ is in heaven with God, in God, wrapped up in the very glory of divinity. Hence the Christian's life is with Christ in God. Its source is thus in the very heart of God.

Outside an old garden wall hung a great branch covered with purple clusters of grapes. No root was visible anywhere; and those who saw it wondered how the vine grew, how its life was nourished, where its roots clung. It was then discovered that the great vine from which this branch sprung grew inside the garden. There it had an immense root, with a stem like the trunk of a tree. This one branch had pushed out over the wall and hung there, bearing in the mellow autumn its clusters of luscious fruit.

Every Christian life in this world is a branch of a great vine which grows in heaven — a branch growing outside the wall. **Your life is hid with Christ in God." We have heaven's life in us in this world. The fruits that grow upon our life are heavenly fruits. Jesus spoke of giving his own peace to his disciples. He prayed that they might have his joy fulfilled in themselves. We read too that love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, meekness, are fruits of the Holy Spirit. Thus in our human experience in this world we are drawing our life and its support from the hidden source of life in the heart of God. This assures us of its security. It is beyond the reach of earthly harm. Herein, too, lies the secret of the quiet

THE HIDDEA' LIFE. 5

peace which we find so often in Christian sufferers. In all their pain they are sustained by some hidden strength which the world cannot understand. They are drawing their life from a source which no earthly experience can reach or affect.

** Oh ! there are some who, while on earth they dwell, And seem to differ little from the throng, Already to the heavenly choir belong. And even hear the same sweet anthem swell.

They joy, at times, with joy unspeakable.

Pouring to him they love their heartfelt song; While to behold him face to face they long,

As the parched traveller for the cooling well.

Ask you how such from others may be known? Mark those whose look is calm, their brow serene, Gentle their words, love breathing in each tone,

Scattering rich blessings all around unseen.

They draw each hour, from living founts above.

The streams they pour around of peace and joy and love."

One writes of watching an old tree in the autumn, as the leaves were touched by the frosts and fell off when the rough wind blew. As the tree at last became bare he saw a bird's nest on one of the branches. Through the summer days the nest had been hidden beneath the thick foliage, but the blasts of winter which swept away the leaves uncovered this home and shelter of the birds. So, ofttimes, is it in the history of God's children. In their prosperity we see not their refuge, which is hidden and secret — hidden beneath the leaves of worldly prosperity. But when adversity comes, taking away earthly beauty, stripping off the bright foliage, their true and eternal refuge in God is disclosed. The storms of earth only drive them back into God's bosom.

We say a certain person's beauty has been wasted by sickness. One came to me whom I had not seen before for five years. Then a dark tragedy had just darkened her home, and I went to try to give a little comfort. Until that day her face had been beautiful with all the freshness of youth. But these five years since had been like twenty years in her life. The beauty was now faded ; how could it have been otherwise, with the broken heart she brought out of those terrible days } Yet a few minutes* conversation showed me that in

THE HIDDEN LIEE, 7

all the wasting of physical beauty her spiritual loveliness had not been marred. She had kept near the heart of Christ in all the bitter anguish, and the joy and peace of her inner life had not failed. Beauty of the face is only external, and is transient. Any accident may mar it. But beauty of the soul is spiritual and imperishable. It abides even in the destruction of the body.

There is mystery in this hidden life which is in every Christian. It has a strange power of recognition. When two Christians meet, though utter strangers heretofore, there is something that reveals them to each other. The same life pulses in their hearts. They have the same hopes, the same joys, the same Christ, the same purpose in living, the same heaven. The world has nothing in common with Christians, but all who love Christ are members of one family.

** I walk along the crowded streets, and mark The eager, anxious faces, Wondering what this man seeks", what that heart craves, In earthly places.

8 THE HIDDEN LTEE,

Do I want anything that they are wanting?

Is each of them my brother?

Could we hold fellowship, speak heart to heart,

Each to the other?

Nay, but I know not ! only this I know,

That sometimes, merely crossing Another's path, where life's tumultuous waves

Are ever tossing —

He, as he passes, whispers in mine ear

One magic sentence only, And in the awful loneliness of crowds

I am not lonely.

Ah, what a life is theirs who live in Christ !

How vast the mystery, Reaching in height to heaven, and in its depth

The unfathomed sea!"

The Christian's life is hidden also in the sense that its true and full glory is concealed in this world, and will not appear until it enters the heavenly life. Only the bud is seen as yet ; by and by the flower will burst into rich bloom. The best of every Christian's life remains unrevealed on the earth. We fail to realize even our own best intentions. You did not live yesterday as you meant to live when you went out in the morning. No artist ever puts on his canvas all the beauty of his mental vision. No singer ever gets into the song he sings all the music of his soul. No saintly Christian ever translates into disposition and conduct all the spiritual loveliness that glows in his ideal. Our hands are too clumsy and unskilful to express the best things of our mind and heart in word or act or character. We see the good, but cannot do it in more than a mere fragmentary way. Yet the visions of beauty which we have in mere flashes and glimmerings are hints of divine revealings that are yet to be made, and of the wondrous possibilities which lie in the hidden depths of our nature, some day to be brought out.

The sea covers great fields of concealed splendors. Now and then a storm stirs its depths, and washes up a few brilliant shells or pebbles, which shine like fragments broken from heaven's walls. Yet these few stones or shells are only specimens of millions more, even more brilliant, that are buried in the lO THE HIDDEN LIFE,

ocean depths. So there come out here and there, in a human life, in times of special exaltation, glimpses of something rarely beautiful — an act, a word, a self-denial, a disposition, the revealing of some noble quality or some marvellous power or measure of love ; and we say as we see it, **That is like Christ. That is a gleam of heavenly life. That is a fragment of divinity." But that flashing gleam of character, that glimmering of Christlikeness, that act which seems too pure for earth, is only a hint of the infinite possibilities of each human soul. Hidden in the depths of the nature, under all its faults and imperfections, is a life which far surpasses the highest things that are reached in this world. The love, joy, peace, unselfishness, purity, holiness, attained in the saintliest experience of earthly Christian life, are but divine intimations of what we shall be when the limiting conditions of earth shall have been left behind.

There will be a time when all this hidden life shall be revealed. The bud shall burst

THE HIDDEN LIFE, II

into the rich flower. The gem shall break through its rough imprisoning crust, and shine in lustrous splendor. The dull character that here shows only gleams and flashes of spiritual beauty, amid manifold defects, flaws, and infirmities, shall yet show in its every feature the beauty of Christ. The holy thoughts, desires, longings, and the hunger after righteousness, which here are hindered, restrained, limited, and which fail to take full form in life and character, shall yet be wrought out in deeds as beautiful and holy as themselves. We shall see Christ, and we shall be like him, when we shall see him as he is. Some day we shall slip away from the things that are familiar to our eyes and hearts here, and shall enter into what we call the other life. Really, however, it is not another life, but only a fuller, deeper revealing of the life we have been living in Christ since we first gave ourselves to him. The mystery of the Christian's life of faith is that it is " hid with Christ in God.'' Here we touch but the outer edge of it ; in what we call dying we shall press farther into its blessedness. Here our little barks move only along the shore ; by and by we shall sail out into the infinite expanse. There will be nothing to dread in the experience. We call it death, and we shudder at its mention ; but really it is life — fulness of life. To those who watch us in departing we shall disappear ; but to us the path will be only one of increasing brightness, as we go on until we enter into the presence of Christ.

" I watched a sail until it dropped from sight Over the rounding sea. A gleam of white, A last far-flashed farewell; and like to thought Slipt out of mind, it vanished and was not.

Yet, to the helmsman standing at the wheel, Broad seas still stretched before the gliding keel. Disaster? Change? He left no slightest sign, Nor dreamed he of that dim horizon line.

So may it be, perchance, when down the tide Our dear ones vanish. Peacefully they glide On level seas, nor mark the unknown bound. We call it death — to them 'tis life beyond."

So will it be when we leave this world. It will not grow dark to our eyes, as we imagine it will do, when we enter the valley of shadows. We shall pass into fuller light, until we, too, are hid with Christ in God, in the glory of eternal life.

Chapter II. The Outer And Inner Life

« I wait Till from my veiled brows shall fall,

This being's thrall, Which keeps me now from knowing all. In stormless mornings yet to be, I'll pluck from Life's full-fruited tree The joys to-day denied to me."

In every man there are two men. There is an outer man, that people can see ; there is an inner man, that no human eye can see. The outer man may be hurt, wounded, marred, even destroyed, while the inner man remains untouched, unharmed, immortal. St. Paul puts it thus : " Though our outward man is decaying, yet our inward man is renewed day by day." He is referring to his own sufferings as a Christian. His body was hurt by scourgings, by stonings, by exposure. It was worn by toil, and by endurance of hunger, of hardship. But these things which scarred his body, leaving marks upon it, making it prematurely old, had no effect on the inner man. His real life was not wounded by persecution. It even grew in strength and beauty as the outer man decayed.

There is a quenchless life within our decaying life. The beating heart, the breathing lungs, the wonderful mechanism of the body, do not make up the real life. There is something in us which thinks, feels, imagines, wills, chooses, and loves. The poet lies dead. His hand will write no more. But it was not the poet*s body that gave to the world the wonderful thoughts which have so wrought themselves into the world's life. The hand now folded shaped the lines, but the marvellous power which inspired the thoughts in the lines was not in the hand. The hand will soon moulder in the dust, but the poet is immortal. The outward man has perished ; but the inner life is beyond the reach of decay, safe in its immortality.

The inner spiritual life of a Christian is not subject to the changes that come upon his outer life. The body suffers ; but if one is living in fellowship with Christ, one's spiritual life is untouched by physical sufferings. The normal Christian life is one of constant, unchecked, uninterrupted progress. Unkindly conditions do not stunt it. Misfortunes do not mar it.

The inner growth of a Christian should be continuous. The renewal is said to be ** day by day.'' No day should be without its line. We should count that day lost which records no victory over some fault or secret sin, no new gain in self-discipline, in the culture of the spirit, no enlargement of the power of serving, no added feature of likeness to the Master. " The inward man is renewed day by day."

This does not mean that all days are alike in their gain. There are special dates in every spiritual history which are memorable forever for their special advance — days when decisive battles are fought, when faults are discovered and conquered, when new visions of Christ are granted, when the heart receives a new accession of divine life, when one is led into a new field of service, when a new friend comes into the life, when one takes new responsibilities or enters into new relations.

Then there are days in every life when there would seem to be no spiritual advancement. We all have our discouraged days. We have days that are stained by folly, marred by mistakes, blurred and blotted by sin ; and these seem to be lost days. There are days when we appear to fail in duty or in self-control, or in struggle with temptation. The inner man would appear to be crippled and hurt in such experiences as these ; and the days would seem to be idle and useless, without profit or progress. We come to the evening with sad confessions of failure, and with painful regret and disheartenment. But even such times as these are really gaining times, if we are living near the heart of Christ. We are at least learning our own weakness and frailty, the folly of selfdependence, the feebleness of our own best resolves. Ofttimes our defeats prove our greatest blessings. No doubt many of our richest gains are made on the very days on which we weep most sorely over our mistakes and failures.

Then there are days that are broken by sorrow. The lights go out in our sky, and leave us in darkness. The friends of many years are taken away from us. Prosperity is turned to adversity. Misfortune touches our interests. Our circumstances become painful. Is not the growth of the inner life interrupted by such experiences 1 Not if we are truly abiding in Christ, and receiving from him the grace he has to give. No doubt many of the best, the divinest blessings of spiritual life come to us on just such days. The photographer takes his sensitive plate into a dark place to develop his picture. Sunlight would mar it. God often draws the curtain upon us, and in the darkness brings out some rare beauty in our life, some delicate feature of his own loveliness.

The teaching of the Scriptures is that, whatever the experience of the outer life, the growth and enrichment of the inner life should never be interrupted or hindered. This is the divine purpose for us. Provision is made in the grace of God for this continuous work. We need never be harmed by anything that breaks into our life. Indeed, there is nothing that touches us in any way that may not be made to minister good to us. Woundings of the outer life may become pearls in the soul. Losses of earthly things may become gains in the spiritual realm. Sickness of the body may result in new health and increased vigor in the inner man. It is the privilege and the duty of the child of God to move upward and forward day by day, whatever the day's experience may be.

This is the meaning of the promises of peace which are found so frequently in the Bible. We have no assurance of a life without strife, trial, trouble, earthly pain, and loss ; but we are assured that we may have unbroken peace within, while the outer life is thus beset. " In the world ye shall have tribulation." "In me ye shall have peace."

The blessing of such a life in this world is incalculable. It becomes a source of strength, of shelter, of comfort, of hope, to many other lives. Susan Coolidge writes of one whose heart is kindest, and whose life is a perpetual benediction : —

*'0 heart beloved, O kindest heart! Balming Hke summer and Uke sun

The sting of tears, the ache of sorrow,

The shy, cold hurts which sting and smart, The frets and cares which underrun

The dull day and the dreaded morrow — How when thou comest all turns fair ! Hard things seem possible to bear, Dark things less dark, if thou art there.

Thou keepest a climate of thine own 'Mid earth's wild weather and gray skies,

A soft, still air for human healing,

Where frosts smite not, nor winds arise ;

And past the tempest-storm of feeling Each grieved and weak and weary thing, Each bird with numbed and frozen wing, May sink to rest and learn to sing."

Then she writes, giving the secret of this wondrous power of helpfulness : —

Which keeps through change of cold and heat Still temperature and equal weather,

Thy sweetness stands, untouched, unhurt,

By any mortal storms that beat. Calm, helpful, undisturbed forever.

Dear heart, to which we all repair,

To bask in sunshine and sweet air,

God bless thee ever, everywhere."

We can be truest and best blessings to others only when we live victoriously ourselves. We owe it therefore to the needy, sorrowing, tempted world about us, to keep our inner life calm, quiet, strong, restful, and full of sweet love, in whatsoever outer turbulence of trial or opposition we must live. The only secret is to abide in Christ.

The lesson has a special application to sickness. Sickness is common. Not always does it prove a means of grace. There are some who are not spiritually benefited by it. Yet it is the duty and the privilege of every Christian so to meet the experience of illness or invalidism as ever to grow in it into Christlier character. The secret is a living faith in

Christ. Restlessness or distrust will mar the divine work that Christ would do in the heart ; but quiet submission to the will of God and peaceful waiting for him will ensure continual renewal of the inner life, even while the outer life is being consumed.

It is well, therefore, that those who are called to endure sickness should learn well how to relate themselves to it, so as not to be harmed by it. Sickness is discouraging. It is not easy for one with life broken, unable longer to run the race with the swift, to keep his spirit glad, cheerful, and wholesome. It is hard not to be able to do the heroic things which the unquenched spirit longs to do. Life seems now to be useless. They appear lost days, in which no worthy service can be done for Christ. Too often those who are called to invalidism lose out of their heart the hope, the enthusiasm, the zest of living, and become depressed, unhappy, sometimes almost despairing. But this is to fail in true and noble living. When we cannot change our conditions, we must conquer them through the help of Christ. If we are sick, we would better not fret nor chafe. Thereby we shall only make our illness worse, retarding our recovery, while at the same time we shall mar the work of grace going on in our inner life. The captive bird that sits on its perch and sings is wiser than the bird that flies against the wires and tries to get out, only bruising its wings in its unavailing efforts. The sick-room may be made a holy of holies instead of a prison. Then it will be a place of blessing.

The lesson has its application, also, for those who are growing old. Old age ought to be the most beautiful period of a good life. Yet not always is it so. There are elements in the experience of old age which make it hard to keep the inner life ever in a state of renewal. The bodily powers are decaying. The senses are growing dull. It is lonely. There is in memory a record of empty cribs and vacant chairs, of sacred mounds in the cemetery. The work of life has dropped from the hands. It is not easy to keep the joy living in the heart in such experiences. Yet that is the problem of true Christian living. While the outward man decays, the inward man should be renewed day by day. This is possible, too, as many Christian old people have proved. Keeping near the heart of Christ is again, as always, the secret. Faith gives a new meaning to life. It is seen no more in its relation to earth and what is gone, but in its relation to immortality and what is to come. The Christian old man's best days are not behind him, but always before him. He is walking, not toward the end, but toward the beginning. The dissolving of the earthly tabernacle is a pledge that the house not made with hands is almost ready.

The lesson has its application also for death. That seems to be the utter destruction of the outer man. The body returns to the dust whence it came. What of the inner life t It only escapes from the walls and fetters which have confined it on the earth. It is as when one tears a bird's cage apart, and the bird, set free, flies away into the heavens.

An old man, nearing his end, spoke of his bodily decay, the tokens of the approach of death, as the land-birds lighting on the shrouds, telling the weary mariner that he is nearing the haven. Death is not misfortune ; it is not the breaking up of life ; it is growth, development, the passing into a larger phase of life. We need death for life's completing.

"Death is the crown of life; Were death denied, poor man would live in vain; Were death denied, to live would not be life ; Were death denied, e'en fools would wish to die. Death wounds to cure; we fall; we rise; we reign; Spring from our fetters; hasten to the skies, Where blooming Eden withers in our sight. Death gives us more than was in Eden lost; This king of terrors is the prince of peace."

Chapter III. Satisfaction — Not Repression

"The mighty God! Here shalt thou find thy rest, O weary one! There is naught else to know, Naught else to seek — here thou may'st cease thy quest. Give thyself up. He leads where thou shalt go.

*' The changeless God ! Into thy troubled life

Steals strange, sweet peace ; the pride that drove thee on, The hot ambition and the selfish strife

That made thy misery, like mists are gone."

Thirst is characteristic of humanity. Wherever you find a human soul you find in it longings, desires, yearnings. Then it is only commonplace to say that in all this world there is nothing to satisfy a human soul. There has been no lack of searching for a fountain of life whose waters will quench human thirst ; but in vain. There is nothing that has not been tried, and yet always the result has been the same :

" Life's thirst quenches itself

With draughts which double thirst."

The theory of happiness which Buddhism proposes is to tear desire from the soul, and to destroy the heart's hunger. But this is not possible. A craving repressed, held in check, shut up in the heart, is not at rest. The desire still lives, though caged, smothered, confined. Happiness never can be found in this way.

Christ came to tell us of a way in which our soul's thirsts and cravings may all be satisfied. Instead of crushing them within the heart, he would let them live, and would find perfect satisfaction for them.

These longings within us are not evil in themselves. They are the divine qualities in our soul crying out for divine nourishment. We are not bodies — we are souls, immortal souls. We bear the image of God. We belong to heaven. It is no wonder that house and furniture and pictures and sumptuous fare and rich clothing will not answer our higher nature's needs. How could such things satisfy an immortal soul ? Imagine an angel living in the house of one of our worldly millionaires, and living just as the millionaire lives. How much comfort would he get from it all? It is because we have in us the divine that earth cannot satisfy us.

** Thank God for life ; life is not sweet always; Hands may he heavy laden, heart care-full, Unwelcome nights follow unwelcome days, And dreams divine end in awakenings dull; Still it is life; and life is cause for praise. This ache, this restlessness, this quickening sting Prove me no torpid and inanimate thing, — Prove me of him who is the life, the spring. I am alive, — and that is beautiful.''

A traveller tells of holding in his hand the egg of a rare East India bird which was so near the hatching that the bird inside was pecking away at the shell. He could hear it struggling to get out. It was shut away in the darkness, cramped, confined, but it was not content to stay there. It seemed to know that there was a larger life for it outside, that on wings it might soar away to greet the morning light, that it might put on splendors of beauty, that it might look on mountains, valleys, and rivers, and bathe in the pure air of sunny skies.