Silent times; a book to help in reading the Bible into life

Preface

The point at which many Christians fail in the using of divine truths is the point at which doctrine should be transmuted into life. They know and honor the Bible as the word of God, and sincerely wish to conform their lives to its inspired teachings, but have difficulty in applying them to the actual experiences of daily life. This book is offered as a humble help in this direction. Its aim is to bring the divine lessons down, and give some hints of the way they may be used on common days and in the actual experiences of those days. The title, " Silent Times," is suggestive of the need of seasons of quiet in every life that would grow into full, rich beauty. It is suggestive also of one particular use that may be made of the book, — the reading of its chapters, or portions of them, in the " silent times " of busy, feverish days, as helps in the direction of true Christian growth. The book is sent out in Christ's name, and with the hope that it may make the way a little plainer for some earnest pilgrims, and religion a little more real, and that it may become a lamp for some dark ways, and a staff for some rough and steep paths.

J. R. M.

Philadelphia.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Silent Times 7

II. Personal Friendship with Christ . 17

Chapter I. Silent Times

In Wellesley College a special feature of the daily life of the household is the morning and evening " silent time." Both at the opening and closing of the day, there is a brief period, marked by the strokes of a bell, in which all the house is quiet. Every pupil is in her room. There is no conversation. No step is heard in the corridors. The whole great house with its thronging life is as quiet as if all its hundreds of inmates were sleeping. There is no positively prescribed way of spending these silent minutes in the rooms, but it is understood that all whose hearts so incline them shall devote the time to devotional reading, meditation, and prayer. At least, the design of establishing this period of quiet as part of the daily life of the school, is to give opportunity for such devotional exercises, and by its solemn hush to suggest to all the fitness, the helpfulness, and the need of such periods of communion with God. The bell that calls for silence, also calls to thought and prayer ; and even the most indifferent must be affected by its continual recurrence.

Every true Christian life needs its daily " silent times," when all shall be still, when the busy activity of other hours shall cease, and when the heart, in holy hush, shall commune with God. One of the greatest needs in Christian life in these days is more devotion. Ours is not an age of prayer so much as an age of work. The tendency is to action rather than to worship ; to busy toil rather than to quiet sitting at the Saviour's feet to commune with him. The key-note of our present Christian life is consecration, which is understood to mean devotion to active service. On every hand we are incited to work. Our zeal is stirred by every inspiring incentive. The calls to duty come to us from a thousand earnest voices.

And this is well. There is little fear that we shall ever grow too earnest in working for our Master, or that our enthusiasm in his service shall ever become too intense. We are set on earth to toil for the world's good and for God's glory. The day's heat is not to draw us from our active duty. Till death comes, as God's messenger to call us from toil, we are not to seek to be freed from service. Devotion is not all. Peter wished to stay on the Mount of Transfiguration, to go back no more to the cold, sin-stricken world below; but no : down at the mountain's base, human suffering and sorrow were waiting for the coming of the Healer, and the Master and his disciples must leave the rapture of heavenly communion, and hasten down to carry healing and comfort. It is always so. While we enjoy the blessedness of fellowship with God in the closet, there come in at our closed doors, and break upon our ears, the cries of human need and sorrow outside. Amid the raptures of devotion we hear the calls of duty waiting without. We should never allow our ecstasies of spiritual enjoyment to make us forgetful of the needs of others around us. Even the Mount of Transfiguration must not hold us away from ministry.

The truest religious life is one whose devotion gives food and strength for service. The way to spiritual health lies in the paths of consecrated activity. It is related in monastic legends of St. Francesca, that although she was unwearied in her devotions, yet if during her prayers she was summoned away by any domestic duty, she would close her book cheerfully, saying that a wife and a mother, when called upon, must quit her God at the altar to find him in her domestic affairs. Yet the ■ other side is just as true. Before there can be a strong, vigorous, healthy tree, able to bear much fruit, to stand the storm, to endure the heat and cold, there must be a well-planted and well-nourished root ; and before there can be a prosperous, noble, enduring Christian life in the presence of the world, safe in temptation, unshaken in trials, full of good fruits, perennial and unfading in its leaf, there must be a close walk with God in secret. We must receive

SILENT TIMES. II

from God before we can give to others, for we have nothing of our own with which to feed men's hunger or quench their thirst. We are but empty vessels at the best, and must wait to be filled before we have any thing to carry to those who need. We must listen at heaven's gates before we can go out to sing the heavenly songs in the ears of human weariness and sorrow. Our lips must be touched with a coal from God's altar before we can become God's messengers to men. We must lie much upon Christ's bosom before our poor earthly lives can be struck through with the spirit of Christ, and made to shine in the transfigured beauty of his blessed life. Devotion is never to displace duty, — it often brings new duties to our hands, — but it fits us for activity.

" That Thy full glory may abound, increase, And so Thy likeness shall be formed in me,

I pray : the answer is not rest or peace,

But charges, duties, wants, anxieties,

Till there seems room for every thing but Thee,

And never time for any thing but these.

The busy fingers fly ; the eyes may see Only the glancing needle which they hold :

But all my life is blossoming inwardly,

And every breath is like a litany ;

While through each labor, like a thread of gold,

Is woven the sweet consciousness of Thee."

In order to this preparation for usefulness and service, we all need to get into the course of our lives many quiet hours, when we shall sit alone with Christ in personal communion with him, listening- to his voice, renewing our wasted strength from his fulness, and being transformed in character by looking into his face. Busy men need such quiet periods of spiritual communion ; for their days of toil, care, and struggle tend to wear out the fibre of their spiritual life, and exhaust their inner strength. Earnest women need such silent times, for there are many things in their daily household life and social life to exhaust their supplies of grace. The care of their children, the very routine of their home-life, the thousand little things that try their patience, vex their spirits, and tend to break their calm ; the influences of much of their social life, with its manifold temptations to artificialness, insincerity, formality, unreality, or, on the other hand, to frivolity, idleness, vanity, and worldliness, — amid all these distracting, dissipating, secularizing influences, every earnest woman needs to get into her life at least one quiet hour every day, when, like Mary, she can wait at the feet of Jesus, and have her own soul calmed and fed.

Preachers, teachers, Christian workers, all need the same. How can men stand in the Lord's house to speak his words to the people unless they have first waited at Christ's feet to get their message ? How can any one teach the children the truths of life without having been himself freshly taught of God ? How can any one bear heavenly gifts to needy souls if he has not been at the Load's treasure-house to get these gifts ? Dr. Austin Phelps, in speaking of the danger of incessant Christian activity without a corresponding secret life with God, says, "The very obvious peril is, that the vitality of holiness may be exhausted by inward decay through the want of an increase of its devotional spirit proportioned to the expansion of its active forces. Individual experience may become shallow for the want of meditative habits and much communion with God. Activity can never sustain itself. Withdraw the vital force which animates and propels it, and it falls like a dead arm. We cannot, then, too keenly feel, each one for himself, that a still and secret life with God must energize all holy duty, as vigor in every fibre of the body must come from the strong, calm, faithful beat of the heart."

A Christian man of intense business enterprise and activity was laid aside by sickness. He who never would intermit his labors was compelled to come to a dead halt. His restless limbs were stretched motionless on the bed. He was so weak that he could scarcely utter a word. Speaking to a friend of the contrast between his condition now and when he had been driving his immense business, he said, "Now I am growing. I have been running my soul thin by my activity. Now I am growing in the knowledge of myself and of some things which most intimately concern me." No doubt there are many of us who are running our souls thin by our incessant action, without finding quiet hours for feeding and waiting upon God.

" The world is too much with us : late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers. Little we see in nature that is ours : We have given our souls away, a sordid boon."

Blessed, then, is sickness or sorrow or any experience that compels us to stop, that takes the work out of our hands for a little season, that empties our hearts of their thousand cares, and turns them toward God to be taught of him.

But why should we wait for sickness or sorrow to compel into our lives these necessary quiet hours ? Would it not be far better for us to train ourselves to go apart each day for a little season from the noisy, chilling world, to look into God's face and into our own hearts, to learn the things we need so much to learn, and to draw secret strength and life from the fountain of life in God ? George Herbert's quaint lines contain wise counsel : —

" By all means use sometimes to be alone ;

Salute thyself, see what thy soul doth wear. Dare to look in thy closet, — for 'tis thine own, — And tumble up and down what thou findest there."

With these sacred " silent times " in every-day of toil and struggle, we shall be always strong, and "prepared unto every good work." Waiting thus upon God, we shall daily renew our wasted strength, and be able to run and not be weary, to walk and not be faint, and to mount up with wings as eagles in bold spiritual flights.

Chapter II. Personal Friendship With Christ

" I would converse with Thee from day to day, With heart intent on what Thou hast to say, And through my pilgrim-walk, whate'er befall, Consult with Thee, O Lord ! about it all. Since Thou art willing thus to condescend To be my intimate, familiar friend, Oh ! let me to the great occasion rise, And count Thy friendship life's most glorious prize ! "

We are in danger on several sides of superficial and shallow conceptions of a religious life. One of these is, that it consists in correct doctrinal beliefs, that holding firmly and intelligently to the truths of the gospel about Christ makes one a Christian. Another is the liturgical, that the faithful observance of the forms of worship is the essential element in a Christian life. Still another is, that conduct is all, that Christianity is but a system of morality. Then, even among those who fully accept the doctrine of Christ's atonement for sin, there is ofttimes an inadequate conception of the life of faith, a dependence for salvation upon one great past act of Christ, — his death, — without forming with him a personal relation as a present, living Saviour. In the New Testament the Christian's relation to Christ is represented as a personal acquaintance with him, which ripens into a close and tender friendship. This was our Lord's own ideal of discipleship. He invited men to come to him, to break other ties, and attach themselves personally to him ; to leave all and go with him. He claimed the full allegiance of men's hearts and lives : he must be first in their affections, and first in their obedience and service. He offered himself to men, not merely as a helper from without, not merely as one who would save them by taking their sins and dying for them, but as one who desired to form with them a close, intimate, and indissoluble friendship. It was not a tie of duty merely, or of obligation, or of doctrine, or of cause, by which he sought to bind his followers to himself, but a tie of personal friendship.

That which makes one a Christian is not therefore the acceptance of Christ's teachings, the uniting with his church, the adoption of his morals, the espousing of his cause, but the receiving of him as a personal Saviour, the entering into a covenant of eternal friendship with him. We are not saved by a creed, which gathers up in a few golden sentences the essence of the truth about Christ's person and work : we must have the Christ himself whom the creed holds forth in his radiant beauty and grace. We are in the habit of saying that Christ saved us by dying for us on the cross. In an important sense, this is true. We never could have been saved if he had not died for us. But we are actually saved by our relation to a living, loving, personal Saviour, into whose hands we commit all the interests of our lives, and who becomes our friend, our helper, our keeper, our care-taker, our all in all. Christian faith is not merely laying our sins on the Lamb of God and trusting to his one great sacrifice : it is the laying of ourselves on the living, loving heart of one whose friendship becomes thenceforward the sweetest joy of our lives.

The importance of this personal knowledge of Christ is seen when we think of him as the revealer of the Father. The disciples first learned to know Christ in his disguise, with his divine glory veiled. He led them on, talking to them, walking with them, winning their confidence and their love, and at length they learned that the Being who had grown so inexpressibly dear to them was the manifestation of God himself, and that by their relation to him as his friends, their poor, sinful humanity was lifted up into union with the Father. They became children of God through their attachment to the only-begotten Son of God. Clinging to him, and cleaving to him in deathless friendship, in his humiliation, he exalted them in his exaltation to be joint-heirs with him in his divine inheritance. It was as if a royal prince should leave his father's palace for a time, and in disguise dwell among the plain people as one of themselves, winning their love, and binding them to him in strong personal friendship, and then, disclosing his royalty, should lead them to his palace, and keep them about him ever after as his friends and brothers, sharing his rank and honors with them. The friends Christ won in his lowly condescension he did not cast off when he went back to his glory : he lifted them up with him to share his heavenly blessedness. It is in the same way that Christ now saves men. He wins their love and trust by the manifestation of his love for them, and then exalts them to the possession of the privileges which belong to himself as the Son of God.

Any one whose life is knit to Christ in love and faith, is lifted up into the family of God. Some one has represented this truth in this way : A vine has been torn from the tree on which it grew and clung, and lies on the ground : it never can lift itself up again to its place. Then the tree bends down low until it touches the earth. The vine unclasps its tendrils which have twined about frail and unworthy weeds, and, feebly reaching upward, fixes them upon the tree's strong, living branches. The tree, again lifting itself up, carries the vine with it to its natural and original place of beauty and fruitfulness, where it shares the tree's glory. This is a parable of soul-history. We were torn from our place, and lay perishing in our sins, clinging to the earth's treacherous trusts. We could never lift ourselves up to God. Then God himself stooped down in the incarnation, bending low to touch these souls of ours ; and when our hearts let go earth's sins and its frail, false trusts, and lay hold never so feebly, by the tendrils of faith and love, upon Christ, we are lifted up, and become children and heirs of God. But how may we form a personal acquaintance with Christ ? It was easy enough for John and Mary, and the others who knew him in the flesh. His eyes looked into theirs ; they heard his words ; they sat at his feet, or leaned upon his bosom. We cannot know Christ in this way, for he is gone from earth ; and we ask how it is possible for us to have more than a biographical acquaintance with him. If he were a mere man, nothing more than this would be possible. It were absurd to talk about knowing St. John personally, or forming an intimate friendship with St. Paul. We maylearn much of the character of these men from the fragments of their story which are preserved in the Scriptures, but we can never become personally acquainted with them until we meet them in the other world. With Christ, however, it is different. The Church did not lose him when he ascended from Olivet. He never was more really in the world than he is now. He is as much to those who love him and believe on him as he was to his friends in Bethany. He is a present, living Saviour ; and we may form with him an actual relation of personal friendship, which will grow closer and tenderer as the years go on, deepening with each new experience, shining more and more in our hearts, until at last, passing through the portal which men misname death, but which really is the beautiful gate of life, we shall see him face to face, and know him even as we are known.

Is it possible for all Christians to attain this personal, conscious intimacy with Christ ? There are some who do not seem to realize it.

To them Christ is a creed, a rule of life, an example, a teacher, but not a friend. There are some excellent Christians who seem to know Christ only biographically. They have no experimental knowledge of him : he is to them at best an absent friend, — living, faithful, and trusted, but still absent. No word of discouragement, however, should be spoken to such. The Old Testament usually goes before the New, in experience as well as in the biblical order. Most Christians begin with the historical Christ, knowing of him before they know him. Conscious personal intimacy with him is ordinarily a later fruit of spiritual growth ; yet it certainly appears from the Scriptures that such intimacy is possible to all who truly believe in Christ. Christ himself hungers for our friendship, and for recognition by us, and answering affection from us ; and if we take his gifts without himself and his love, we surely rob ourselves of much joy and blessedness.

The way to this experimental knowledge of Christ is very plainly marked out for us by our Lord himself. He says that if we love him, and keep his words, he will manifest himself unto us, and he and his Father will come and make their abode with us. It is in loving him, and doing his will, that we learn to know Christ; and we learn to love him by trusting him. A dying youth looked up into the face of a friend, and with troubled tones said, " I want to love Christ : will you tell me how ? " — " Trust him first," was the answer, " and you will learn to love him without trying at all." It was a new revelation. " I always thought I must love Christ before I could have any right to trust him," was the answer. Ofttimes we learn to know our human friends by trusting them. We see no special beauty or worth in them as they move by our side in the ordinary experiences of life : but we pass at length into circumstances of trial, where we need friendship ; and then the noble qualities of our friends appear, as we trust them, and they come nearer to us, and prove themselves true. In like manner, most of us really get acquainted with Christ only in experiences of need, in which his love and faithfulness are revealed.

The value of a personal acquaintance with Christ is incalculable. There are men and women whom it is worth a great deal to have as friends. As our intimacy with them ripens, their lives open out like sweet flowers, disclosing rich beauty to our sight, and pouring fragrance upon our spirits. A true and great friendship is one of earth's richest and best blessings. It is ever breathing songs into our hearts, kindling aspirations and hopes, starting impulses of good, teaching holy lessons, and shedding all manner of benign influences upon our lives. But the friendship of Christ does infinitely more than this for us. It purifies our sinful lives; it makes us brave and strong; it inspires us ever to the best and noblest service. Its influence, perpetually brooding over us, woos out the winsomest graces of mind and spirit. The richest, the sweetest, and the only perennial and never failing, fountain of good in this world, is the personal, experimental knowledge of Christ.

That Christ should condescend thus to give to us sinful men his pure, divine friendship is the greatest wonder of the world ; but there is no doubt of the fact. No human friendship can ever be half so close and intimate as that which the lowliest of us may enjoy with our Saviour. If we but realize our privileges, the enriching that will come to our lives through this glorious relationship will be better than all gold and gems.

"And can a thing so sweet, And can such heavenly condescension, be? Ah ! wherefore tarry thus our lingering feet? It can be none but Thee.

There is the gracious ear That never yet was deaf to sinner's call: We will not linger, and we dare not fear,

But kneel, and tell Thee all.

We tell Thee of our sin, Only half loathed, only half wished away; And those clear eyes of love that look within,

Rebuke us, seem to say, —

' Oh ! bought with My own blood, Mine own, for whom My precious life I gave, Am I so little prized, remembered, loved,

By those I died to save ? '

And under that deep gaze Sorrow awakes. We kneel with eyelids wet, And marvel, as with Peter at the gate,

That we could so forget.

We tell Thee of our care, Of the sore burden pressing day by day; And in the light and pity of Thy face

The burden melts away.

We breathe our secret wish, The importunate longing which no man may see We ask it humbly, or, more restful still,

We leave it all to Thee.

The thorns are turned to flowers ; All dark perplexities seem light and fair ; A mist is lifted from the heavy hours,

And Thou art everywhere."

Chapter III. Having Christ In Us

" As some rare perfume in a vase of clay Pervades it with a fragrance not its own, So when Thou dwellest in a mortal soul,

All heaven's own sweetness seems around it thrown."

The Scriptures make a great deal of having Christ in men, if they are Christians. Christ himself speaks of abiding in his people, and of his life as flowing through them as the life of the vine flows through its branches. The figure of the body is used, believers being members of Christ's body, and deriving all their life from him. The idea of a building or temple with the divine Spirit as indwelling guest, is also employed to represent the Christian's relation to his Lord. Then, St. Paul says without figure, " Christ liveth in me," and speaks of being "filled with the Spirit," " filled with all the fulness of God," as a possible and most desirable attainment of Christian experience. From the many forms in which this truth is represented in the Scriptures, it is evident that the ideal Christian life is one that is thoroughly pervaded, saturated, so to speak, with the life and spirit of Christ. Far more certainly is implied than mere divine influence over us or upon us from without, such influence as a friend exerts over a friend, a teacher over a pupil, or even a mother over a child. To become a Christian is to have a new spiritual life enter the soul, as when a seed with its living germ is planted in the dead soil : to grow as a Christian is to have this new life increase in strength and energy, making daily conquests over the old nature, extending itself, and expelling the evil by the force of its own good, and ultimately bringing the affections, feelings, desires, and all the activities, even the thoughts of the heart, into subjection to Christ.

There is a great difference between having Christ outside and having him in us. If he is only outside, we may listen for his words, and try to obey his voice, following where he leads ;

and we may gaze upon his loveliness, and seek to copy it in our lives ; but our following and obeying will be under the impulse of duty only, with no inward constraint; and our striving after the divine likeness will be like the carving of a figure in cold marble rather than the growing up of a life from within by its own vital force and energy into fulness of power and beauty.

Only as we get Christ into our hearts, and let him dwell in us by his Spirit, shall we reach the true ideal of Christian life and experience. Then shall we do right, not by direction of written rule, but by the promptings of our regenerated nature, the Christ indwelling. Then shall our dull lives be transfigured by the light that shines in our hearts, and slowly changes all the earthliness to heavenliness. Then shall the features of the divine image come out little by little as the new life within forces itself through the dull crust of the old nature, until at length the full beauty of Christ shines where once only sin's marred visage was seen.

Christ within makes an inner joy that all the darkness of earth's trials cannot quench.

There are great diversities of experience in sorrow. Some when this world's lights are quenched are left in utter gloom, like a house without lamp or candle or flickering firelight when the sun goes down. Others, in similar darkness, stand radiant in the deep shadows : they have bright light within themselves. Christ dwells in them, and the beams from his blessed life turn night into day. There is an ancient picture of the Christ-child in the stable which illustrates this experience. The child lies upon the straw, the mother is bending over him, the wondering shepherds are near, and in the background are the cattle. It is night, and there is only one feeble lantern in the place ; but from the infant child a radiance streams which lights up all the rude scene. So it is in sorrow-darkened hearts when Christ truly dwells within. The light streaming from him who is the light of the world, in whom is no darkness, illumines all the gloom of grief. Indeed, when Christ dwells in the heart, sorrow is a blessing, because it reveals beauties and joys which could not have been seen in the earthly light. It is one of the blessings of night, that without it we could never see the stars : it is one of the blessings of trial, that without it we could never see the precious comforts of God.