Part 20 (1/2)
CHAPTER LVIII.
THE WARM HEART OF CHRIST.
The first night that old Dominie Scattergood sat at our tea-table, we asked him whether he could make his religion work in the insignificant affairs of life, or whether he was accustomed to apply his religion on a larger scale.
The Dominie turned upon us like a day-dawn, and addressed us as follows:
There is no warmer Bible phrase than this: ”Touched with the feeling of our infirmities.” The Divine nature is so vast, and the human so small, that we are apt to think that they do not touch each other at any point. We might have ever so many mishaps, the government at Was.h.i.+ngton would not hear of them, and there are mult.i.tudes in Britain whose troubles Victoria never knows; but there is a throne against which strike our most insignificant perplexities. What touches us, touches Christ. What annoys us, annoys Christ. What robs us, robs Christ. He is the great nerve-centre to which thrill all sensations which touch us who are his members.
He is touched with our physical infirmities. I do not mean that he merely sympathizes with a patient in collapse of cholera, or in the delirium of a yellow fever, or in the anguish of a broken back, or in all those annoyances that come from a disordered nervous condition. In our excited American life sound nerves are a rarity. Human sympathy in the case I mention amounts to nothing. Your friends laugh at you and say you have ”the blues,” or ”the high strikes,” or ”the dumps,” or ”the fidgets.” But Christ never laughs at the whims, the notions, the conceits, the weaknesses, of the nervously disordered. Christ probably suffered in something like this way, for He had lack of sleep, lack of rest, lack of right food, lack of shelter, and His temperament was finely strung.
Chronic complaints, the rheumatism, the neuralgia, the dyspepsia, after a while cease to excite human sympathy, but with Christ they never become an old story. He is as sympathetic as when you felt the first twinge of inflamed muscle or the first pang of indigestion. When you cannot sleep, Christ keeps awake with you. All the pains you ever had in your head are not equal to the pains Christ had in His head. All the acute suffering you ever had in your feet is not equal to the acute suffering Christ had in His feet. By His own hand He fas.h.i.+oned your every bone, strung every nerve, grew every eyelash, set every tooth in its socket, and your every physical disorder is patent to Him, and touches His sympathies.
He is also touched with the infirmities of our prayers. Nothing bothers the Christian more than the imperfections of his prayers. His getting down on his knees seems to be the signal for his thoughts to fly every whither.
While praying about one thing he is thinking about another. Could you ever keep your mind ten minutes on one supplication? I never could. While you are praying, your store comes in, your kitchen comes in, your losses and gains come in. The minister spreads his hands for prayer, and you put your head on the back of the pew in front, and travel round the world in five minutes.
A brother rises in prayer-meeting to lead in supplication. After he has begun, the door slams, and you peep through your fingers to see who is coming in. You say to yourself, ”What a finely expressed prayer, or what a blundering specimen! But how long he keeps on! Wish he would stop! He prays for the world's conversion. I wonder how much he gives toward it? There! I don't think I turned the gas down in the parlor! Wonder if Bridget has got home yet? Wonder if they have thought to take that cake out of the oven? Oh what a fool I was to put my name on the back of that note! Ought to have sold those goods for cash and not on credit!” And so you go on tumbling over one thing after another until the gentleman closes his prayer with Amen! and you lift up your head, saying, ”There! I haven't prayed one bit.
I am not a Christian!” Yes, you are, if you have resisted the tendency.
Christ knows how much you have resisted, and how thoroughly we are disordered of sin, and He will pick out the one earnest pet.i.tion from the rubbish and answer it. To the very depth of His nature He sympathizes with the infirmity of our prayers.
He is touched with the infirmity of our temper.
There are some who, notwithstanding all that is said or done to them can smile back. But many of you are so constructed that if a man insults you, you either knock him down or wish you could. While with all resolution and prayer you resist this, remember that Christ knows how much you have been lied about, and misrepresented, and trod on. He knows that though you said something that was hot, you kept back something that was ten times hotter.
He takes into account your explosive temperament. He knows that it requires more skill to drive a fiery span than a tame roadster. He knows how hard you have put down the ”brakes” and is touched with the feeling of your infirmity.
Christ also sympathizes with our poor efforts at doing good.
Our work does not seem to amount to much. We teach a cla.s.s, or distribute a bundle of tracts, or preach a sermon, and we say, ”Oh, if I had done it some other way!” Christ will make no record of our bungling way, if we did the best we could. He will make record of our intention and the earnestness of our attempt. We cannot get the attention of our cla.s.s, or we break down in our exhortation, or our sermon falls dead, and we go home disgusted, and sorry we tried to speak, and feel Christ is afar off. Why, He is nearer than if we had succeeded, for He knows that we need sympathy, and is touched with our infirmity.
It is comforting to know that it is not the learned and the great and the eloquent that Christ seems to stand closest by. The ”Swamp-angel” was a big gun, and made a stunning noise, but it burst before it accomplished anything, while many an humble rifle helped decide the contest. Christ made salve out of spittle to cure a blind man, and the humblest instrumentality may, under G.o.d, cure the blindness of the soul. Blessed be G.o.d for the comfort of His gospel!
CHAPTER LIX.
SACRIFICING EVERYTHING.
Ourselves.--Dominie Scattergood, why did Christ tell the man inquiring about his soul to sell all he had and give everything to the poor? Is it necessary for one to impoverish himself in order to be a Christian?
The Dominie.--You mistake the purport of Christ's remark. He was not here teaching the importance of benevolence, but the duty of self-conquest. That young man had an all absorbing love of wealth. Money was his G.o.d, and Christ is not willing to occupy the throne conjointly with any other deity.
This was a case for what the doctors call heroic treatment. If a physician meet a case of unimportant sickness, he prescribes a mild curative, but sometimes he comes to a room where the case is almost desperate; ordinary medicine would not touch it. It is ”kill or cure,” and he treats accordingly. This young man that Christ was medicating was such a case.
There did not seem much prospect, and He gives him this powerful dose, ”Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor!”
It does not follow that we must all do the same, any more than because belladonna or a.r.s.enic is administered in one case of illness we should therefore all go to taking belladonna or a.r.s.enic. Because one man in the hospital must have his arm amputated all the patients need not expect amputation. The silliest thing that business-men could do would be to give all their property away and turn their families into the street. The most Christian thing for you to do is to invest your money in the best way possible, and out of your business, industriously carried on, to contribute the largest possible percentage to the kingdom of G.o.d.