Even our "Hero's" of the Faith Struggled!!

Even our "Hero's" of the Faith Struggled!!

Brother, is this not what Bible history teaches us? And the Psalms are rich in detailing one's thoughts about God and life. The reason these Bible stories and the Psalms appeal to us is because they seem to have been written just recently and are so relevant to us where we live. The reason things do not change is because the LORD has imposed limits on what the devil can do which then means God's mercy and grace is constant and does not change.

Interesting story...appreciate you sharing it.

ginnyrose

Even C.H. Spurgeon needed to be refreshed with
anointed, passionate preaching !!

I believe the greatest encouragement for a growing saint is not reading about the victories of others, but rather their failures. We hear so little of the failures of the great, heroic men and women of God. Of course, the Bible is chock-full of failure - some exceedingly grevious - of the men who have written scripture, of the amazing men of God we have so come to revere today. Peter, Abraham, David, Lot, Moses, Jeremiah just to name a few. I am always so strangely blessed to read of the hardships of John Wesley and his choice of a wife, of his brother Charles and his bouts with depression. Of Oswald Chambers and his extended period (I believe it was two years) of having absolutey [i]no[/i] awareness of the presence of God in his life. Of Wigglesworth's many shortcomings. Zac Poonen wrote a great little book called "The Purpose of Failure", and in it he confesses all the failures and defeats he experienced, even as an anointed preacher of the gospel. Imagine if you could read of the failures of Ravenhill, of Wilkserson, of Keith Daniel and Art Katz, of George Whitefield and Moody? Would this not encourage and strengthen you more than reading of their amazing exploits for God - exploits that baffle your mind and humble your spirit...without the least mention at all of the struggles and breakings and inner defeats God used to craft them into the saints they are today? Brethren, I would love to get my hands on such a book.

Someone once asked Spurgeon why he needed to be being constantly filled with the Holy Spirit, and he simply replied, "Because I leak!"

Amazing answer!

Would love to read that book by Zac. Some very true and tremendous things here. Just the honesty draws like a magnet ... it is very encouraging and puts us much more on level ground. Went back and dug up that which brother Paul mentioned about Oswald Chamber. It's a bit of a read.

[b]DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL[/b]
(1897–1901)

In Oswald’s preaching and teaching he seldom spoke of his personal spiritual experiences. The one rare exception is his account of what happened to him during his first four years at Dunoon. It is best described by Chambers himself:

[i]After I was born again as a lad I enjoyed the presence of Jesus Christ wonderfully, but years passed before I gave myself up thoroughly to His work. I was in Dunoon College as tutor of Philosophy when Dr. F. B. Meyer came and spoke about the Holy Spirit. I determined to have all that was going, and went to my room and asked God simply and definitely for the baptism of the Holy Spirit, whatever that meant.

From that day on for four years, nothing but the overruling grace of God and the kindness of friends kept me out of an asylum. God used me during those years for the conversion of souls, but I had no conscious communion with Him. The Bible was the dullest, most uninteresting book in existence, and the sense of depravity, the vileness and bad-motivedness of my nature was terrific.[/i]

While others thought everything was fine in Oswald’s life and spoke of him as a saint, he alone understood the plague of sin in his heart. It was a lonely, undeclared struggle, as much like Jesus’ temptation in the desert as Chambers would ever know. A letter to Chrissie from Dunoon in May 1897 hinted at what was to come:

[i]Everything goes with me in amazing prosperity. Perhaps the consciousness that I am thought of too highly makes me want to get away at times. They all place me so high that I am weary of it. Oh, that I might be away with Nature, and see and not be seen.[/i]

The hills around Dunoon provided brief respites for Chambers, but he craved longer periods when he could walk with his collie, Tweed, and seek renewal in God’s creation. During summer breaks, he often traveled a hundred miles north to the Highlands near Fort William, and the home of John Cameron, an old friend.

Cameron pastured sheep on the slopes of Ben Nevis, Britain’s highest mountain. Chambers found emotional release in the hard labor of shepherding, and he loved to climb the towering mountain often called “the Ben.” From the base, a footpath snaked its way for five miles toward the barren 4,400-foot summit. When hiking with others, Chambers would usually enjoy the walk at a leisurely pace. But when he was alone, he sometimes pushed himself with long strides until his lungs ached and his muscles cried for relief. Without stopping, he climbed through the swirling mists, perspiring even in the chilling wind.

If he reached the summit on a clear day, he could feast for hours on the panorama spread out below him. Even in summer, a thick crust of snow clung to the northeast rock face, with its sheer drop of 2,000 feet onto the crags below. To the west, the sleepy town of Fort William lay at the northern end of Loch Linnhe. Snow-capped peaks spread to the east and south as far as he could see.

Chambers loved Ben Nevis best in the early morning, before sightseers struggled up the mountain and hurried back down. He would walk the footpath in the dark of night in order to reach the summit in time to see the sunrise. Before most of the people awoke in the valleys below, he had watched the finger of God paint the morning sky.

In Chambers’ estimation, John Cameron was a man who matched the mountain where he lived. The rugged old bachelor lived simply and gave the bulk of his income to the Lord’s work. Cameron entertained hospitably and prayed as regularly and naturally as the sunrise. During one of Chambers’ visits, he and Cameron were out shooting rabbits, accompanied by two dogs. When they reached a heather knoll, the old man suggested they stop for a while and pray.

“We knelt down and he led in prayer,” Chambers wrote of the occasion. “Then I began to pray, but the young collie dog, who had been perfectly quiet during the old man’s prayer, imagined I was meant for nothing but to play with him, and he started careering around, pawing me all over, licking my face and yelping with delight.”

Cameron rose from his knees, sternly took the dog by the neck and said, “Hoot, hoot, I will sit on the dog while you pray.” And he did.

A few days later, Cameron took Chambers aside and said, “If you get permission to speak to my ploughman about his soul, do so.” Oswald expressed surprise that Cameron had not spoken to the man himself, because he had watched the old farmer speak about Jesus to all sorts of people.

“My laddie,” Cameron replied, “if you don’t know what the permission of the Holy Ghost is in talking to a soul about salvation, you know nothing about the Holy Ghost.”

Chambers pondered the remark on the train back to Glasgow. How much did he know of the Holy Spirit and His power? He had asked in faith to be filled, but it seemed that nothing had happened. Was he holding something back from God?

He wrote to Chrissie saying he felt compelled by God to go solitary, for the time being, and shut himself up alone to God and his studies. “I hear the imperative command of my own inner soul,” he told her, “ ‘cut every tie and wait.’ Shall I obey or disobey?” She knew his action was taken in sheer obedience to what he sensed as a definite call of God. That gave them courage, but didn’t lessen the pain for either of them.
Oswald had renounced his ambitions in art and had now cut the cords of his relationship with Chrissie. If there was anything else he loved ahead of God, he was ready to place it on the altar as well. But the power and presence of God did not come after his renouncements. Instead, he became more aware of his own sinfulness than before. He could pluck out his offending eye and cut off his right hand, but he could not escape the plague of his own heart.

On May 4, 1898, Oswald and Mrs. MacGregor heard the sound at the same time—an awful shattering of glass and a sickening thud, followed by absolute silence. They rushed upstairs into the hall at Dhalling Mhor and found Duncan sprawled unconscious on the floor, his face ashen and his breathing irregular and shallow. In an attempt to make a minor repair to the roof, he had fallen through a skylight.

The doctor’s report was grim—MacGregor was near death with one bone broken, several dislocated, a severe concussion, and internal injuries. If he survived, he would certainly never recover to his previous level of health and activity. No one thought the college could go on without him.
For the next three months Chambers personally attended Duncan MacGregor and nursed him back to health. Their relationship deepened beyond natural affinity into one of unshakable mutual admiration and respect.

Chambers shouldered the extra load of teaching, administration, and spiritual leadership in the college while the principal recovered. By the end of August, MacGregor surprised everyone by preaching again in church and declaring that he would resume his academic responsibilities in October.

During the years 1897–1901, Chambers appeared to be doing exceptionally well. Articles he wrote on music, nature, and Robert Browning’s poetry appeared regularly in The Dunoon Herald newspaper. In addition, he often reported important events of the college and Dunoon Baptist Church. He was highly regarded by students and townspeople alike and known for his cheerful disposition.

In May of 1899, during the college’s annual Day of Thanksgiving, Oswald was ordained to the ministry. Increasingly he was asked to speak at meetings outside the college and Dunoon. But his high visibility in Christian circles seemed to accentuate his growing sense of inner emptiness and longing.

Once again, Chambers’ poetry written during this time reveals his inner struggle:

[b]MOODS[/b]
(Kirn, March 4, 1899)

[i]Rain on, dark skies, through the night,
The waters have burst their bound;
Destruction may rule till the light,
But day follows night, ever round.
Scowl on, dark moods of the mind,
Threaten, lower, and storm your way;
But the soul must bleed ere it find
The good you are seeking to slay.
Moods pass away like the rain-clouds,
Good is as day in the soul;
After the gloom of the earth-shrouds
Cometh complete heaven’s whole.[/i]

Oswald continued his cheerful outward appearance while one by one his hopes and dreams were being put to death. Some he laid willingly on the altar while others seemed to be snatched from him by the hand of God. In either case, the pain of heartbreak and loss felt the same. The most severe was the end of his long relationship with Chrissie. The absence of his letters to her after this time indicates that any hopes they may have had for marriage ended by the close of 1899. The decision came from Oswald as a cross-bearing sacrifice he felt compelled to make in order to follow Christ completely. The break-up represented a great loss for both Chrissie and him. For nearly eight years, a steady exchange of letters, along with holiday visits, had kept the flame alive. Some of their friends in London thought they might even be secretly engaged. Now it was over.

In the sorrow of those days, he wrote of the pain and peace which fought for supremacy in his heart:

[b]AFTERWARD[/b]
(Kirn, January 22, 1900)

[i]O my beloved Jesus! Not Thy cross
Nor any portion of Thine earthly life
Revealed Thy love to me.
But when my heart broke in its first true love,
And all my feelings like a lash of pain
Recoiled and stung me, till my tortured nerves
Refused to aid my spirit—
Then, in that pain, I saw Thee, O my Christ!
And that my first love, which so hopeless seemed,
Was after all for Thee disguised indeed.
But I mistook the form assumed by Thee,
And now I love Thee, Jesus, with the love
That lovers think they have for those they love.
O rapture! where there was such pain before.[/i]

If Oswald hoped that by relinquishing his fondest loves only his love for Christ would remain, he was deeply disappointed. He had won a costly victory, but the war was not over. He longed for peace in his soul, but found only turmoil inside and out. God’s gifts of keen intellect and handsome appearance seemed to work against him. When a young woman in a local church accused Chambers of misconduct with her, it seemed to be more than he could bear. There was no truth to her story and a thorough investigation vindicated Oswald, but the damage had been done. Slander of all kinds followed the episode. He was misunderstood, shunned, avoided, and became the object of whispers throughout Dunoon.

More than causing damage to Oswald’s reputation, the charge had heightened his own awareness of what lay within him.

“What any human being has done,” he had heard a preacher say, “any other human being is capable of.” He had not sinned sexually with the girl, but he knew he [i]could[/i] have. The disturbing realization of what he was capable of thinking and doing began to oppress Oswald’s mind.

He became aware of an abhorrent dualism in his personality. The sham and hypocrisy he detested in others had a foothold in his own heart. He could proclaim that God must be given glory for all his good works, but he enjoyed the praise of men. While many people in Dunoon thought he was a near-perfect saint, he knew the truth about himself. Within him lurked a frightening pride that was beyond his power to conquer.

His anguished poems reveal that behind his vindicated reputation lurked the reality of sin known only to him.

[b]SIN IN PENITENCE[/b]
(Kirn, September 24, 1900)

[i]Let me lay my life here
Where my sin is known,
Where the rapture and the fear,
Where the laughter and the tear
Isolate my heart, alone.
Till in all its inmost part
Sweetly bitter is the smart
Of my sin in me.
Cowardly sorrow maketh plaint,
“This is hard to bear.”
Makes a shape at being saint,
While the loathsome sin cloth taint
All that others think so fair.
Jesus, Jesus, I can’t pray,
For the horror of the thing
Haunts my waking thoughts alway,
And I have no word to say
For my wicked, wicked sin.[/i]

By the summer of 1901, this interior struggle intensified, building toward a crisis. Chambers’ letters to the editor of the Dunoon Herald were caustic, cynical, and filled with frustration as Oswald mounted a one-man crusade to preserve the aesthetic beauty and spiritual health of Dunoon.

In the April 11, 1901, edition he wrote:

[i]Sir: “Improvements” and “alterations” attract attention. Some alterations are improvements, not all. The new bridge leading to the Bull Wood is a decided alteration, but one hesitates in calling it an improvement without necessarily qualifying the word. The bridge is an improvement, a great improvement for traffic.

But the bridge is not an improvement from the artistic point of view. It is a straight, ugly erection, entirely out of keeping with its surroundings and the end and aim of Dunoon.

I am, etc. Oswald Chambers, Dhalling Mhor, Kirn[/i]

On June 19, 1901, he continued the attack:

[i]Sir: The trees will surely be spared in the proposed widening of the roadway alongside the convalescent homes! All those trees in line making the curb edge of a pavement would greatly add to the appearance of that approach to Dunoon. The few trees out of line might be sacrificed and new ones planted to fill up the gaps, but to take the trees away!!—surely our councillors will give this matter consideration before sacrificing the whole of those splendid trees.[/i]

On June 28, 1901, Oswald wrote as follows on the
Sunday steamer question:

[i]The questions of Sunday observance or non-observance is of vital interest to many people at the coast just now as the Sunday steamer, and its advocates, with a persistent insolence, determine to thrust themselves on us.

However, not all who oppose out attitude at Dunoon are mere thoughtless Sabbath breakers. Many consider our attitude to be one of the narrowest of traditional and religious bigotries, and seem to feel it is in the interest of civilization and the onward march of the human race that the insolent determination to make Dunoon receive a Sunday steamer should be warmly encouraged.

To all such broadminded—if shallow—people, we would like to urge that it is not a question of the highest of traditional religious bigotry, but a question of the highest moral, spiritual and civic importance.

The Sunday steamer is a disgrace to the good manners of our British nation. It is an expression of shallow indifference to any of the higher concerns of the human race. God is not in all the thought of it. It is neither common human courtesy nor ordinary decency, the untoward impudence of these poor, infatuated Sunday steamer people.[/i]

During this period few people beside Principal and Mrs. MacGregor knew of the battle raging inside Chambers. Waking in the night, Duncan could have walked to his bedroom window and seen a tall figure pacing the mist-shrouded grounds of Dhaling Mhor, head bowed, followed at a slight distance by a collie dog, trotting to keep up with the long strides of his master. If MacGregor ached to see a resolution and release for Chambers, he knew he could help most by waiting, praying, and loving unconditionally.

Still, Oswald wrestled with himself. How could he speak to others of God when the deepest realities eluded him? What right did he have to represent Christ when his heart was so filled with the eelfish impurity he said Christ came to cleanse?

[i]Chambers, Oswald: Abandoned to God.[/i]

([i]Continued[/i])

Thanks for posting this. I've been getting rocked lately, so this was good news.

Sometimes I wonder, when the people don't persecute us, does God? I mean that in a reverential way. It seems like when there is an absence of external trials God allows inner troubles to make sure that we're getting beat up, broken down, and battle-hardened. It's my experience, anyway.

thanks brother Paul - "The Purpose of Failures" by Poonen here it is: http://www.cfcindia.com/web/mainpages/book_window.php?book=the_purpose_of_failure

Thanks brother for that link!

Here is some more from Chambers;

[b]“STRIVE TO ENTER IN AT THE STRAIT GATE”[/b]
(Kirn, June 7, 1901)

[i]“Cut it off.” My heart is bleeding,
And my spirit’s wrung with pain,
Yet I hear my Jesus pleading,
“Cut it off or all is vain.”
So I’ve stopped my ears in terror
Lest self-pity make me quail,
Lest at last I take the error
And God’s purpose thwart and fail.
I am bowed to death in sadness,
For the pain is all too great,
But the dear Lord must find pleasure
In the way He maketh straight.[/i]

During the summer break, he traveled north again to visit John Cameron. As the train puffed along the shore of sparkling Loch Lomond, Oswald could feel the tightness in his shoulders begin to ease. He would climb Ben Nevis again and talk with old John. Perhaps he could find peace once and for all in the Highlands he treasured.

Oswald loved to hear John Cameron pray. When they were alone, the old Highlander’s words were simple and childlike. But when he gathered his workers around the table for prayer in his home, he prayed long, stately “architectural” prayers that would have seemed ponderous without his intense personal devotion and humility. From John’s advice to others in difficult circumstances, Oswald gleaned a phrase to guide his return to Dunoon: “And you must be sure to ask Him why this came,” Cameron said. “He knows.”

Back at the college, Oswald’s agitation became less concealed as summer merged into autumn. On September 6, 1901, he answered a letter from his father in which Clarence had apparently expressed his displeasure that Oswald was giving his teaching services free of charge at Dunoon College.

[i]Dear Father:
I was glad to hear from you again, we are just nearing the new session and consequently very busy preparing for work. I am very well indeed after my trip north. Thank you very much for information re insuring my life. I had never thought of it before—I will think of it now.

About your attitude to me in my present circumstances, I know you would not hold them for one moment if you new them. “Worthy of my hire?” my dear Father, I get more, far more than I deserve even of money. Here I have leisure to work at my will, here I have opportunity of doing a little to help men toward a realisation of their calling—The Ministry. Here I am clothed and fed and thought a great deal more highly of than I deserve. Here I have the inward conviction that I am doing God’s will. You are not of some who can see nothing but the immediate present position and salary, as some have been who have talked to me. You can and do understand, they cannot and do not.

You say can I not earn money somewhere and someway else so that I can help my Mother and sisters to say nothing of you? I could at the expense of greater usefulness. What is money help to you and mother and my sisters compared to the eternal assistance I am certainly enabled to give here to souls. I dare to say, in Heaven, you will thank God for the life so few of you deem more than mere foolishness.

When my way opens to my own conviction to go from here I will, and no affection or friendship or leisure or ties will keep me. I see all along the run of life ‘Many are called, few are chosen.’

I cannot alter my course today—God will in time as it suits Him. I am not good or worthy, but the ring of our Masters’ passion is in my soul. How can I disobey His voice so clear to my own convictions even at the expense of being thought foolish, a dreamer, an idealist, at best; at worst, a fool and youth lacking common sense. Whatever happens cannot be outside the all things.

I understand your earnestness about me, I understand my former foolishness, my ignorant stubbornness, but God has been and is guiding me even when I do not see Him or understand. When you read and meditate near the heart of God you must know I am right; but when you remember me, your son, and the ways of the world, you think the way of life cannot be for me and my son. Believe me Father it can be and it is. Do not urge me because I cannot budge from my convictions. God will bring it all out clear.
This all seems a high tone, but it is necessary to take a high true tone.

I hear and know continually the cry and the irritation, for what purpose is this waste, could it not be sold and given to the poor? Let my life answer by its whole devotion for the sake of the wounded palms, and feet and side of the Saviour of the World.

I am neither great nor good nor noble, nor do I think I am, but I am impelled by the persistent mercy and love of God.

I know you shall know it someday, that I did well in sacrificing the present for His sake.
With much love to Mother and yourself.

Your loving son,
Oswald Chambers[/i]

His claim to be “very well indeed” may have been true of physical health and mental capacity, but his quiet moments alone brought him back into the pressure of the enemy—himself. He realized as he had never believed possible what the disposition of sin in him could do.

A poem written in September concluded with this stanza:

[i]O Lord Jesus, hear my crying
For a consecrated life,
For I bite the dust in trying
For release from this dark strife.
Oswald was living dangerously close to the edge of a complete breakdown. Deep in his soul, he echoed the words of Robert Browning,
I give the fight up: let there be an end,
A privacy, an obscure nook for me.
I want to be forgotten even by God.[/i]

Only three times during the past four years had Oswald been conscious of God speaking personally to him: Once, when sitting in his room late one night, his collie, Tweed, had come in through the window, put his head on Oswald’s knee, looked into his eyes for a few minutes, then gone out again. Another time, his door opened and in came the baby boy of the house, barefoot and in his night-clothes. He came up to him and said, “Mr. Chambers, I loves you” and went back to his bed. Again, while conducting a Christian Endeavour meeting, a mentally retarded girl walked down the church aisle and laid a bunch of withered flowers on the table. A piece of paper tied to the flowers said, “With love from daft Meg.” Each event seemed to be a tender touch from the Father conveying His presence and love.

Chambers’ account of this period continued in his testimony.

[i]I see now that God was taking me by the light of the Holy Spirit and His Word through every ramification of my being. The last three months of those years things reached a climax, I was getting very desperate. I knew no one who had what I wanted; in fact I did not know what I did want. But I knew that if what I had was all the Christianity there was, the thing was a fraud.
Then Luke 11:13 got hold of me—‘If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?’

But how could I, bad motived as I was, possibly ask for the gift of the Holy Spirit? Then it was borne in upon me that I had to claim the gift from God on the authority of Jesus Christ and testify to having done so. But the thought came—if you claim the gift of the Holy Spirit on the word of Jesus Christ and testify to it, God will make it known to those who know you best how bad you are in heart. And I was not willing to be a fool for Christ’s sake.

But those of you who know the experience, know very well how God brings one to the point of utter despair, and I got to the place where I did not care whether everyone knew how bad I was, I cared for nothing on earth, saving to get out of my present condition.

At a little meeting held during a League of Prayer mission in Dunoon, a well-known lady was asked to take the after meeting. She did not speak, but set us to prayer, and then sang, ‘Touch me again, Lord.’ I felt nothing, but I knew emphatically my time had come, and I rose to my feet.

I had no vision of God, only a sheer dogged determination to take God at His word and to prove this thing for myself, and I stood up and said so. That was bad enough but what followed was ten times worse. After I had sat down the lady worker, who knew me well, said: ‘That is very good of our brother, he has spoken like that as an example to the rest of you.’

I got up again and said: ‘I got up for no one’s sake, I got up for my own sake; either Christianity is a downright fraud, or I have not got hold of the right end of the slick.’ And then and there I claimed the gift of the Holy Spirit in dogged committal on Luke 11:13.

I had no vision of heaven or of angels, I had nothing. I was as dry and empty as ever, no power of realization of God, no witness of the Holy Spirit. Two days later I was asked to speak at a meeting, and forty souls came out to the front. Did I praise God? No, I was terrified and left them to the workers, and went to Mr. MacGregor and told him what had happened.

He said, ‘Don’t you remember claiming the Holy Spirit as a gift on the word of Jesus, and that He said: “Ye shall receive power ...”? This is the power from on high.’

And like a flash something happened inside me, and I saw that I had been wanting power in my own hand, so to speak, that I might say—Look what I have by putting my all on the altar.

Glory be to God, the last aching abyss of the human heart is filled to overflowing with the love of God. Love is the beginning, love is the middle and love is the end. After He comes in, all you see is ‘Jesus only, Jesus ever.’ When you know what God has done for you, the power and the tyranny of sin is gone and the radiant, unspeakable emancipation of the indwelling Christ has come.[/i]

Chambers never looked back on this spiritual experience at Dunoon with the smug satisfaction of having “arrived.” Instead, on a few occasions when he mentioned it in public meetings or private conversations, he spoke of it as a new beginning; a gateway instead of a goal. To most observers, he was the same as he had always been—a gifted, engaging, humorous, articulate, deep-thinking man of God. Only Chambers himself understood the extent to which his inner turmoil had given way to transforming peace.

Many years later, Chrissie Brain wrote about Oswald’s struggle in Dunoon: “One can trace the mature years of service back to these formative and wonderful years of ‘Genesis,’ and watch the plan of God develop under His guiding hand. The master of ‘Black and White’ had his share of both in the landscape of his life at this time, and those who knew him most intimately in these days of sunshine and shadow can best interpret his later teaching. God’s purpose is progressive, and his ultimate life work was as the fruit to the flower.

“He was no ‘church window’ saint, that is the last thing he would have desired to be—very real and human; not faultless, but blameless, a true knight of God, obedient to death, laying his ‘Isaac’ unquestioningly on the altar. To such is given the Crown of Life.

“After this the seal of God came in floods of blessing, irrigating countless lives. ‘Because thou hast done this thing, ... I will bless thee, ... and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.’ God does not lead many thus, but He does lead some, and they must obey.”

Finally, the long night was over and peace had come. The citadel of his heart had fallen, not to a conquering Christ, but to the gentle knocking of a wounded hand. In a new and powerful way, at the age of twenty-seven, the story of Oswald Chambers’ life had just begun.

[i]Chambers, Oswald: Abandoned to God.[/i]

God’s purpose is progressive, and his ultimate life work was as the fruit to the flower.

He realized as he had never believed possible what the disposition of sin in him could do.

To most observers, he was the same as he had always been—a gifted, engaging, humorous, articulate, deep-thinking man of God. Only Chambers himself understood the extent to which his inner turmoil had given way to transforming peace.

He said , "Are you not Mr. Spurgeon?"
I replied, "Yes."
"Dear, dear," said he, "that was your sermon I preached this morning." I knew it was, and that was one reason why I was so comforted. I realized that I could take my own medicine. I asked the preacher to my inn for dinner. We rejoiced that he was led to give the people one of my sermons that day, that I could be fed from my own kitchen.

From the first post. This has realy stuck in the thinking, something of an uncommon humility and understanding.

Hope these Chambers excerpts are not too much of an intrusion on this, would love to see this continue with other accounts (Zac Poonen for instance). But just one more regarding Chambers as it follows in the sequence ...

[b]THE WIDER SPHERE[/b]
(1902–1906)

Chambers’ crisis of full surrender to God in 1901 profoundly altered his life. some time after the experience, he spoke of it in a letter to a friend:

[i]You ask a question about the baptism of the Holy Ghost—did I get there all at once, or easily? No, I did not. Pride and the possession of the high esteem of my many Christian friends kept me out for long enough. But immediately I was willing to sacrifice all and put myself on theAltar, which is Jesus Himself, all was begun and done.

Holiness is not an attainment at all, it is the gift of God, and the pietistic tendency is the introspection which makes me worship my own earnestness and not take the Lord seriously at all. It is a pious fraud that suits the natural man immensely. He makes holy, He sanctifies, He does it all. All I have to do is come as a spiritual pauper, not ashamed to beg, to let go of my right to myself and act on Romans 12:1–2. It is never ‘Do, do and you’ll be’ with the Lord, but “Be, be, and I will do through you.’ It is a case of ‘hands up’ and letting go, and then entire reliance on Him.[/i]

During the next five and a half years at Dunoon, Chambers developed into a powerful and much sought after preacher. To his gift of unique and forceful expression he added tact and compassion, qualities evidently lacking in his earlier years.

Duncan MacGregor’s son Easdale, a close friend and keen observer of Chambers, notes that Oswald’s earlier sermons “seemed to create a fear of God, in the sense of terror, in his hearers rather than of confidence and love.” One request to the principal for a preacher from the college concluded with a prohibition against Oswald: “Dinna send us yon lang-haired swearin’ parson!”

A friendship with the Rev. Dinsdale T. Young, then at Nicholson Square Church in Edinburgh, had a telling effect on Oswald’s approach in the pulpit. During an address at Dunoon College in 1902, the Rev. Young explored the passion and genius of the late Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Chambers reported the address for the Dunoon Herald, noting Young’s emphasis on “the grip and hold of the fundamentals” along with “the tender, passionate pleading of the preacher.”
Easdale MacGregor believed that the Rev. Young convinced Chambers, “more by example than by argument, that there was work for him in preaching a simpler and friendlier gospel.” But the softening was only in style and not content.

Chambers maintained a lifelong stricture against “watering down the Word of God to the level of human experience.”

Even with a demanding schedule of college and extracurricular responsibilities, Chambers took time to study and think. When a person or topic captured his interest, he plunged headlong into wholehearted intellectual pursuit until he had mastered the subject at hand. A casual conversation about Emmanuel Swedenborg, for example, so stimulated Chambers that he purchased all of Swedenborg’s works and studied them in depth. This diligent inquiry led to a paper on the Swedish scientist, philosopher, and mystic, which Chambers presented in Glasgow in 1902.

“I am not a Swedenborgian,” Chambers told the audience, “nor do I belong in the slightest way to the New Church.” (The New Church was an organization founded by followers of Swedenborg’s teaching.) Rather than hunting for heresy, Chambers appreciated the man’s mind while carefully sifting and evaluating his conclusions.

When the Scottish New Church Evidence Society published the paper as a pamphlet, it brought a hail of criticism on Chambers from people who misinterpreted his intention. A vicious letter denouncing Oswald was published in the Dunoon Herald, but it brought no response from Chambers. At one time, he would have felt compelled to defend himself. Now, he had the power to keep silent.

Oswald read the novels of Balzac, the plays of Ibsen, and the stories of George MacDonald along with the latest theological writings of his day. The Revs. Alexandar Whyte, James Denney, W. R. Inge, and J. H. Jowett were among his favorites.
Chambers and Duncan MacGregor shared a sparsely populated common ground in their attitude toward Christianity and the arts. In a day when many conservative Christians denounced the theater as the devil’s workshop and avoided novels as an-inherently sinful medium of expression, Chambers found that both presented useful, if painfully sharp, images of the human condition.

In 1901, MacGregor’s own novel, Lady Christ, was published by Arthur H. Stockwell Company, a well-known London firm. The title alone was enough to send most evangelicals into a fit of objection. Chambers applauded the effort and contributed a drawing of a beautiful young woman sitting on a stretch of Highland seashore as a frontispiece for the book.

In the book MacGregor used his characters to tackle issues ranging from the landed nobility’s oppression of the crofters to the church’s insensitive stifling of common people who hunger for God. Infused throughout were tidbits of MacGregor’s Highland humor. “It’s a blessing Scotsmen are so few or they would conquer the world.”

The novel underscored the uniqueness of the Rev. Duncan MacGregor and his vision expressed through Dunoon College. Chambers loved “Mac’s” unconventionality and his uncompromising integrity.

Duncan MacGregor’s most significant influence on Chambers during these years, however, was his daily life. “I never knew him in a controversy in my life,” Chambers said. “He always let the other man have it all his way. I have known him to be defrauded over and over again; but I never knew him to be defrauded without knowing it.”
Walking the streets of Dunoon and Glasgow with the principal, Oswald observed a man who lived what he preached. “One of the most touching sights to me,” Chambers wrote, “was to see that man of God with the poor, the blind, the lame, the halt and the imbecile: they all seemed to feel that they had a strong refuge in him.

“Children were always very fond of the Rev. MacGregor and he never refused anything they offered him. I remember once a dirty little urchin, sprawling about in the puddles on the sidewalk, scrambled to her feet when she saw the Principal coming, and held up her grimy little hand with a mean [ordinary] piece of half-sucked candy in it, which the Principal took and put in his mouth with a most gracious, ‘Thank you.’”

While still teaching at Dunoon College, Chambers first attended a meeting of the League of Prayer in Perth. He felt a special kinship with the “Leaguers” and their earnest love for God.

Oswald’s experience of the Holy Spirit’s fullness and his study of the Bible convinced him that the organization’s emphasis on scriptural holiness sounded a much-needed call for Christians in every denomination. He continued his involvement with the local chapter in Perth and began speaking on occasion at League gatherings in Scotland and the north of England.

When Reader Harris, founder of the League, first met Chambers, he took a special interest in the keen young tutor from Dunoon. They talked about Oswald’s gifts and desires, and where God might be leading him. Harris helped raise Chambers’ vision from Britain to the world. And the more Oswald learned about this tall man of dignified grace and decisive action, the more he liked him. Harris was a prominent London barrister and also a King’s Counsel, a lifetime appointment recognizing his skill and success in the legal profession. His leadership in the League of
Prayer was voluntary and unpaid. From the circles of royalty to the slums of London, Harris moved freely as a fearless but compassionate representative of Christ.

Richard Reader Harris was an unlikely person to establish a religious organization devoted to scriptural holiness and spiritual revival. As a teenager, Harris had sought God, but his conversations with a liberal clergyman left him so disillusioned that he later became a follower of Charles Bradlaugh, the well-known London atheist. Bradlaugh often lectured on Bible texts, ridiculing Christians for their weak response to its teachings while he called people to live moral lives and put into practice the ideas in the Sermon on the Mount.

Joining the Puritan Wing of Bradlaugh’s Ethical Society, Harris pledged not to smoke or drink. If a man lived more uprightly than most Christians, he thought, why did he need their God?

“For ten years,” Harris later said, “I remained an honest doubter because no one pointed me to Jesus Christ as the One Who saves ‘to the uttermost.’ I had wanted to know God, but the professing Christians I knew failed to introduce me to Him, because they did not know Him themselves.”

His conversion to Christ came through Mary Griffin Bristow, a gifted and cultured young lady whom he married in 1880. Reader and Mary Harris could easily have remained well-respected, comfortable members of the upper strata of London society. But Reader could not forget the scathing accusations of Charles Bradlaugh from years past: “If Jesus had been divine,” Bradlaugh thundered, “his followers would long ago have claimed the power He offered them, obeyed His command, and evangelised the world.”

In 1884, a Moody-Sankey meeting in London fired the Harrises’ concern for evangelism. Seven years later, they experienced a spiritual revolution identical to that of Chambers’ complete surrender to God at Dunoon. The Pentecostal League of Prayer was founded in 1891 as “an interdenominational union of Christian people who, conscious of their own need, would join in prayer:?

• 1. For the filling of the Holy Spirit for all believers;?
• 2. For revival in the Churches;?
• 3. For the spread of Scriptural holiness.”

The organization celebrated its tenth anniversary in 1901, the year Chambers first attended a League meeting. By 1905, Oswald was speaking regularly at regional League functions and brought a message at the Annual Meeting in London. In a June editorial in Tongues of Fire, the League magazine, Reader Harris referred to Oswald as “a new speaker of exceptional power ... whose address will long be remembered.”

Along with Oswald’s growing involvement in the League, his weekends and holidays were filled with speaking engagements in churches across the country. His reputation as a unique and powerful communicator of the gospel brought more requests than he could accept. He often filled his brother Arthur’s pulpit, and in 1905 first preached for the Rev. Dinsdale T. Young in London’s Great Queen Street Chapel, Kingsway.

During the Christmas holiday of 1905, Oswald held a week’s mission at his brother Arthur’s church, Eltham Park Baptist, ten miles east of central London. Among those listening to his impassioned call to yield fully to the Holy Spirit were two sisters, twenty-six-year-old Edith and twenty-two-year-old Gertrude Hobbs.
Only two months before they had presented themselves for baptism and church membership.

It is likely that Mrs. Hobbs, their widowed mother, invited Chambers to their home for a midday meal or afternoon tea. Church hospitality called for members to take a turn in feeding each visiting preacher. At the table, Oswald showed none of the serious intensity that characterized him in the pulpit. With the family dog lying at his feet, he was quite content to discuss everything from politics to the plays of George Bernard Shawl Of the two sisters, Edith, nicknamed Daisy or Dais, was closer to Oswald in age and education. Gertrude, known as Truda, was nine years younger than he, but struck him as very mature for her age. Mrs. Hobbs seemed gracious and proper while Dais impressed him as pleasant and kind. Truda’s eyes, however, twinkled in a way that was hard to ignore. If a spark of interest was struck between Oswald and Gertrude at this meeting, it was two and a half years away from being kindled into flame.

A most intriguing topic occupied Oswald’s time with his brother. Six months before, the church had sent Arthur to Wales for a first-hand look at the revival sweeping that land. He questioned Arthur about the spiritual fervor transcending denominational lines and bringing people of all social classes to faith in Christ and reconciliation with each other. What accounted for it? Had it resulted from dedicated prayer? Or was it simply a sovereign act of the Holy Spirit? Could it cross the borders into England, Scotland, and Ireland? Might it span the Atlantic to America?

Oswald returned to Dunoon with a verse burning in his heart for 1906: “Go ye into all the world and make disciples of all nations.” He sensed that God was about to issue him a new set of marching orders, but he had no idea how they would come or where they would lead. He plunged back into his teaching, and a few months later, at a League meeting in Perth, he met Juji Nakada. The diminutive Japanese evangelist was in England, ostensibly to rest and be spiritually recharged. Even with that goal, he rarely slowed down.

Juji Nakada was a foot shorter than Oswald Chambers physically, but spiritually, they looked each other in the eye. From their first meeting they felt a unique kinship and calling to work together. In May 1906, they shared an evening platform at the League’s annual convention in London, both testifying to the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives.

During long walks and talks together, Chambers was enthralled by Nakada’s story of leaving Japan, going to Chicago, and entering Moody Bible Institute in 1897 in search of spiritual power. Although already recognized as a bold and effective evangelist in Japan, Nakada alone understood the dryness of his own soul. “If I don’t find the power of the Holy Ghost,” he told his wife before leaving Japan, “I’ll come back, leave the ministry, and be a dentist.”

Through the writings of John Wesley and the ministry of friends at Moody, Nakada found the filling of the Holy Spirit he sought. At a nearby church, he became acquainted with a Western Union executive named Charles Cowman, and his wife, Lettie. (Mrs. Cowman is remembered today for her book [i]Streams in the Desert[/i].) Through the Cowmans, Nakada was introduced to Martin Wells Knapp and his Cincinnati training college known as God’s Bible School. Nakada returned to Japan and in 1901, the Cowmans sailed as missionaries and joined forces with him to open the Tokyo Bible College.

When Nakada launched into a humorous description of the providential twists and turns that had brought him to Britain in 1906, Oswald laughed until tears filled his eyes.

“You must come to Japan,” Nakada told Chambers. “We need a man like you to teach at our Pastors’ college.” It was an intriguing but impossible invitation. Chambers had no money, no sponsoring organization, and no permission from Duncan MacGregor to leave his post at Dunoon. But the words lodged in his heart next to his Lord’s command, “Go ye into all the world.”

The two decided to begin where they were. After praying long and fervently, they made plans to visit Wales and preach the holiness message to the recent converts in the revival. Chambers returned to complete his work in Dunoon and became seriously ill. Nakada went on to Wales accompanied by others.

A few years earlier in Dunoon, the usually healthy Chambers had suffered from what his brother, Arthur, called a “severe illness that nearly cut short his career.” Mrs. MacGregor was so concerned for him then that they brought him up from his room in the caretaker’s cottage to care for him in the main house at Dhalling Mhor.

Because Chambers’ writing usually grew out of his experience, an unusual poem introduces the strong possibility that he may have suffered from a form of recurring respiratory illness, perhaps tuberculosis:

[b]THE CONSUMPTIVE[/b]
(Edinburgh, September 14, 1896)

[i]“Waiting—wistful still?”
Yes, just for tonight,
Tomorrow, with the light,
I’m sure to be all right,
Don’t you think I will?
“Waiting—wistful still?”
Yes, just for today,
Tomorrow, I’ll away,
Just now I’m forced to stay,
For they say I’m ill.
“Waiting—wistful still?”
Yes, just for this year,
Because they say they fear
The cost will be too dear,
So I’m waiting—till!”
“Waiting—wistful still?”
Yes! From the still white bed,
Came whispered from the dead,
“Till to God you’re led,
Waiting, wistful still.”[/i]

Chambers’ greatest difficulty in leaving Dunoon was Principal MacGregor’s hesitancy over his departure. His deep respect for MacGregor and personal attachment to him made it all the more difficult. Duncan would not stop Oswald from following what he saw as the clear leading of God, but he had no sense that it was time for this gifted tutor of philosophy to go. Oswald’s personal record of his feeling at their parting was metaphoric. “It was night,” he wrote.

He had spent nine and a half years with Duncan MacGregor and learned to love him, in some ways, more than his own father. Through the most tumultuous decade of Oswald’s life, MacGregor had been a staying power for him. Knowing he could never repay that debt, Chambers determined to be the same influence in the lives of young men who might someday come to him as he had come to Duncan and Mrs. MacGregor.

During summer and early autumn, Nakada and Chambers visited churches and League centers throughout England and Scotland. July found them at the famous Keswick Convention, soaking in the preaching of G. Campbell Morgan, F. B. Meyer, J. Stuart Holden, and W. H. Griffith Thomas. By the time the convention was over, they had made plans to go to America and then travel on to Japan. “This small Japanese is very good at stealing hearts and minds,” Chambers said. “He stole mine, and then visited my home and stole the hearts of my father and brother, and he made them willing to send me to Japan.”

On September 25, 1906, Oswald wrote to his mother:

[i]My dear ‘brick’ of a Mother,
I am proud of your letter, and more than proud of such a mother. I read a portion of your letter to Nakada, and he said—‘Your mother is a noble woman.’

God has undertaken mightily, the enervation caused by the fondness and attachment of home folks has so often been terrible in an outgoing missionary’s life. If it is possible, I love you more than ever for being so robust and strong in your mind. Thank God for you and upon every remembrance of you.[/i]

October found them in company with James Gardiner, League secretary for Scotland. They preached at Perth, Dundee, and Glasgow, then traveled up the Caledonian Canal, holding meetings in towns and villages all the way to Inverness. In Fort William, Chambers pointed to massive Ben Nevis, Britain’s highest peak at 4,400 feet. Nakada was unimpressed. His tall friend’s mountain would reach only a third of the way to the summit of Mt. Fuji.

With their characteristic good humor, rare camaraderie, and great difference in height, they presented a striking sight wherever they went. Glancing up at Chambers one day, Juji remarked, “You are long like a poker.” Oswald countered with, “You are short like a shovel. And it takes both to make a fire.” Their laughter endeared them to the townspeople who listened with interest to their message of salvation and sanctification in Christ.

By the time of their November 6 sailing, plans called for them to spend the winter in the U.S. and Canada. The arrangements were sketchy but Chambers was unconcerned.

Aboard the SS Baltic, bound for New York, he wrote in a letter:

[i]Nov. 11, 1906
The passage in Exodus 33:17–23 which God gave me this morning has been a wonderful portion to my soul and heart and mind and body. ‘Satisfied with Jesus every day.’

My own heart and life is at leisure from itself, and God’s call is on me and in me, and in the heaving ridges of the deep and the ponderous distances rolling around, and the huge and thoughtful expanse above enfolding us, and we forging a way through it all—I never felt God’s call so clear, or His meaning so certain.

Nakada has become a universal favorite on board. The grace of God has so endowed him with a sense of oneness with God that he really beams with the Spirit of God perpetually.

Probably the most persistent sentiment with me is the watch of the angel hosts in answer to the prayers of the numerous saints in the homeland. It seems to me as if a special watch surrounded this boat. How many go out into the world with so much unselfish love lavished on them as I have? Sometimes hands are too insistent, and human affection wickedly selfish, almost strong enough to break the ties to God. But all this I am free from, in much peace, in a perfect sense of God’s call and leading, I go forth. The world is very wide and God is reigning. Thank God I feel strong to bear and do.[/i]

Nakada watched in amazement every morning as Chambers lay on his heaving berth, slowly turning the pages of his prayer notebook, bringing scores of his friends before the throne of God. Juji tended toward seasickness while Oswald loved the open deck where he could watch the swelling, crashing waves of the North Atlantic. On this first voyage, Chambers marveled at the vastness and power of the sea, drawing strength and refreshment from it.

Oswald’s letter of November 11 concluded on a confident note:

[i]The goodness of God strikes me. People don’t know Him, but it is not a wicked ignoring, it is ignorance. The full compassionate love of the Holy Ghost for the crowd is a precious, though intolerable, compassion. But to the ones who have tasted God, how nothing on earth again can satisfy. Once we think with God, all the rest is far and sinks to a relative place. Pray and keep my hands up while I do what our Father wants me to do.[/i]

[i]Chambers, Oswald: Abandoned to God[/i]

I would hope others share what they have read, there is fast number of articles out there that many haven't been able to read or know how to find. I didn't know Oswald Chambers went through long bouts of quiet time with God or Spurgeon dealing with depression and doubts at times... It's a great encouragement to me. SHARE SHARE, please!

What is great about this, is that we are building one another up, instead of debating issue's all the time.

Couldn't agree more brother. Will set about to dig up more. For the longest time I have been unable to find something I read years ago about Spurgeon. Apparently he did suffer from quite a bit of depression and the line that I vaguely recall was something on the order of his times of God's felt presence were so rare to him that they were like gold. Pray I find it some day and do better justice to what he was expressing.

The words about Spurgeon and Chambers were more of an encouragement than anything that I have read in well over a year. Great posts!

Praise God for this thread. Oh, that all the saints would walk in honesty one with each other. How we fail.

PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF THE COMPASSION OF CHRIST.

I shall only recall my own experience in order to stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance, my brethren and sisters. I do well remember when I was under conviction of sin and smarted bitterly under the rod of God, that when I was most heavy and depressed there would sometimes come something like hope across my spirit. I knew what it was to say, “My soul chooseth strangling rather than life,” yet when I was at the lowest ebb and most ready to despair, though I could not quite lay hold of Christ, I used to get a touch of the promise now and then, till I half hoped that, after all, I might prove to be God’s prisoner, and he might yet set me free. I do remember well when my sins compassed me about like bees, and I thought it was all over with me, and I must be destroyed by them, it was at that moment when Jesus revealed himself to me. Had he waited a little longer, I had died of despair; but that was no desire of his. On swift wings of love he came and manifested his dear wounded self to my heart. I looked to him and was lightened, and my peace flowed like a river. I rejoiced in him. Yes, he was moved with compassion. He would not let the pangs of conviction be too severe; neither would he suffer them to be protracted too long for the spirit of man to fail before him. It is not his wont to break a leaf that is driven by the tempest. “He will not quench the smoking flax.” Yea, and I do remember since I first saw him and began to love him many sharp and severe troubles, dark and heavy trials; yet have I noted this—that they have never reached that pitch of severity which I was unable to bear. When all gates seemed closed, there has still been with the trial a way of escape; and I have noted again that in deeper depressions of spirits through which I have passed and horrible despondencies that have crushed me down, I have had some gleams of love and hope and faith at the last moment; for he was moved with compassion. If he withdrew his face, it was only till my heart broke for him, and then he showed me the light of his countenance again. If he laid the rod upon me, yet when my soul cried under his chastening, he could not bear it; but he put back the rod, and he said, “My child, I will comfort thee.” Oh! the comforts that he gives on a sick bed! Oh! the consolations of Christ when you are very low. If there is anything dainty to the taste in the Word of God, you get it then; if there be any bowels of mercy, you hear them sounding for you then. When you are in the saddest plight, Christ comes to your aid with the sweetest manifestations; for he is moved with compassion. How frequently have I noticed, and I tell it to his praise, for though it shows my weakness, it proves his compassion—that sometimes, after preaching the gospel, I have been so filled with self–reproach, that I could hardly sleep through the night because I had not preached as I desired. I have sat me down and cried over some sermons, as though I knew that I had missed the mark and lost the opportunity. Not once nor twice, but many a time has it happened, that within a few days someone has come to tell me that he found the Lord through that very sermon, the shortcoming of which I had deplored. Glory be to Jesus; it was his gentleness that did it. He did not want his servant to be too much bowed down with a sense of infirmity, and so he had compassion on him and comforted him. Have not you noticed, some of you, that after doing your best to serve the Lord, when somebody has sneered at you, or you have met with such a rebuff as made you half–inclined to give up the work, an unexpected success has been given you, so that you have not played the Jonah and run away to Tarshish, but kept to your work? Ah! how many times in your life, if you could read it all, you would have to stop and write between the lines, “He was moved with compassion.” Many and many a time, when no other compassion could help, when all the sympathy of friends would be unavailing, he has been moved with compassion toward us, has said to us, “Be of good cheer,” banished our fears with the magic of his voice, and filled our souls to overflowing with gratitude. When we have been misrepresented, traduced, and slandered, we have found in the sympathy of Christ our richest support, till we could sing with rapture the verse—I cannot help quoting it now, though I have often quoted it before:

“If on my face for thy dear name
Shame and reproach shall be,
I’ll hail reproach and welcome shame,
Since thou rememberest me.”

The compassion of the Master making up for all the abuses of his enemies. And, believe me, there is nothing sweeter to a forlorn and broken spirit than the fact that Jesus has compassion. Are any of you sad and lonely? Have any of you been cruelly wronged? Have you lost the goodwill of some you esteemed? Do you seem as if you had the cold shoulder even from good people? Do not say, in the anguish of your spirit, “I am lost,” and give up. He has compassion on you. Nay, poor fallen woman, seek not the dark river and the cold stream—he has compassion. He who looks down with the bright eyes of yonder stars and watches you is your friend. He yet can help you. Though you have gone so far from the path of virtue, throw not yourself away in blank despair, for he has compassion. And you, broken down in health and broken down in fortune, scarcely with shoe to your feet, you are welcome in the house of God, welcome as the most honored guest in the assembly of the saints. Let not the weighty grief that overhangs your soul tempt you to think that hopeless darkness has settled your fate and foreclosed your doom. Though your sin may have beggared you, Christ can enrich you with better riches. He has compassion. “Ah!” say you, “they will pass me on the stairs; they will give me a broad pathway, and if they see me in the street, they will not speak to me—even his disciples will not.” Be it so; but better than his disciples, more tender by far, is Jesus. Is there a man here, whom to associate with were a scandal from which the pure and pious would shrink? The holy, harmless, undefiled one will not disdain even him—for this man receives sinners—he is a friend of publicans and sinners. He is never happier than when he is relieving and retrieving the forlorn, the abject, and the outcast. He despises not any who confess their sins and seek his mercy. No pride nestles in his dear heart, no sarcastic word rolls off his gracious tongue, no bitter expression falls from his blessed lips. He still receives the guilty. Pray to him now. Now let the silent prayer go up, “My Savior, have pity upon me; be moved with compassion toward me, for if misery be any qualification for mercy, I am a fit object for thy compassion. Oh! save me for thy mercy’s sake!” Amen.

Charles H Spurgeon
[i]A Collection of Sermons[/i]

[b]The Worker among Sick Souls[/b]

[i]The destruction that wasteth at noonday.[/i] Psalm 91:6

I wonder if this has been growing clear to you, that we cannot understand the cases we have to deal with. One of the first things a worker for God has to learn by experience is that strangely obvious lesson, that none of us can understand the cases we meet to work with. Then how can we work for the cure of them? Remember the first principles we laid down: By knowing Jesus Christ for ourselves experimentally, and then by relying on the Holy Spirit.

“And I hated all my labour wherein I laboured under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 2:18 rv). These words were written by Solomon, the wisest man that ever lived, and you will find the last summing up of all he says is the statement of a sick soul, not a healthy-minded soul, not a vigorous sunshiny hopeful soul, but exactly the opposite.

We have spoken about the worker for the cure of souls among the “hardy annuals,” the hardy sinners, nothing sick about them, they are healthy and happy and wholesome. Now I want to take exactly the opposite kind of people. If our religion is only a religion of cheerfulness for the healthy-minded, it is no good for London, because more than half the people there, a great deal more than half, are not able to be cheerful, their minds and consciences and bodies are so twisted and tortured that exactly the opposite seems to be their portion. All the talking and preaching about healthy-mindedness, about cheering up and living in the sunshine will never touch that crowd. If all Jesus Christ can do is to tell a man he has to cheer up when he is miserable; if all the worker for God can do is to tell a man he has no business to have the “blues”—I say if that is all Jesus Christ’s religion can do, then it is a failure. But the wonder of our Lord Jesus Christ is just this, that you can face Him with any kind of men or women you like, and He can cure them and put them into a right relationship with God.

The New Testament mentions quite a few of these sick souls. We will take two just now—Thomas and Mary Magdalene. Thomas was naturally gloomy, not happy and healthy-minded, that was not the way he was made. He was loyal to Jesus Christ, but he took the “sick” view of life; he always thought the worst was going to happen. You remember that when Lazarus died and Jesus said He was going to Bethany, Thomas said, “Let us also go that we may die with Him.” It was no use going to Thomas and preaching the gospel of cheerfulness; you cannot alter facts by saying “Cheer up.” What did Jesus Christ do for Thomas? He brought him into personal contact with Him self and altered him entirely (see John 20:24-29).

Mary Magdalene was another type of the sick soul, tortured and afflicted. It was no use going to Mary and telling her to believe there was no such thing as the devil, no such thing as sin, she was absolutely incapable of taking the first step. What did Jesus Christ do for Mary Magdalene? Help her to be happy when she was miserable? Help her to realise that there was no such thing as demon-possession? No. He turned out the demons and healed her (Luke 8:2).

In the second chapter of Hebrews we read of a great crowd of sick souls who were subject to bondage through fear of death, and Jesus Christ came to deliver them from their bondage; and in 1 Corinthians 11:30 (rv) we read, “For this cause many among you are weak and sickly, and not a few sleep.” I have simply run over these cases to show that there is sufficient indication in the Book of God for us to recognise that there are sick souls naturally.

One word about the physical condition of people. There is a threshold to our nerves, that is, a place where the nerves begin to record. Some people’s nerves do not record things as quickly as others. Some people have what is called the “misery” threshold of nerves, the threshold where the nerves begin to record is much lower down than it is in other people. Take it in connection with sound, some people can sleep in a tremendous racket, noise makes not the slightest difference to them. The ear gathers up vibrations, and only when those vibrations are quick enough do we hear. If the threshold of our hearing were lower, we should hear anything that makes waves in the atmosphere, we should hear the flowers grow, everything that grows makes a motion in the atmosphere. The majority of us have a threshold that is high up, and we cannot hear unless there is sufficient vibration in the atmosphere. Get a nervous system where the threshold of nerves is low, and life is an abject torture to that one wherever he goes.

What is the good of telling him to cheer up? There is a bigger problem there than we can touch. That one is in contact with forces which the majority of us know nothing about; he is tortured by things we never hear, tortured by things we never feel. Such people take a very gloomy view of life; they cannot help it.

When a worker meets a soul like that, what is he going to do—preach the gospel of temperament, “Cheer up and look on the bright side,” or preach Jesus Christ? “The gospel of cheerfulness” is a catchword of the day—it may be all very well among people who are naturally cheerful, but what about the folk who cannot be cheerful, who through no fault of their own have bodies where the threshold of their nerves is so low down that life is a misery? Read the second chapter of Hebrews again, and you will find it says that Jesus Christ took on Him not the nature of angels, but—“since then the children are sharers in flesh and blood, He also Himself in like manner partook of the same” (rv). Jesus Christ took on Him a flesh and blood nature with nerves and He knows exactly how the human frame is tuned and how it is tortured. Every Christian worker ought to know how to bring the sick souls, the souls that take the gloomy view, to Jesus Christ. These people will accept all you say about the need to receive His Spirit, but nothing happens; they do not cheer up. How are we going to bring Jesus Christ into contact with them?

If you read Acts 10:38 (rv) you will find Peter says a wonderful thing about Jesus of Nazareth—“how that God anointed Him with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil.” Peter had just awakened to the fact that “God is no respecter of persons,” and it is important to notice that he says God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power. Peter had never preached like that before. When he preached to the Jews he had presented Jesus Christ as being first the Son of God. As soon as he came in contact with the outside crowd who were not Jews, who were not religious, the Spirit of God makes him present Him as Jesus of Nazareth. When men are being led of the Spirit of God, they never preach their convictions.

But I want to notice what it was Peter said Jesus of Nazareth did; He healed “all that were oppressed of the devil.” There are only two religions that accept gloom as a fact (I mean by gloom, sin, anguish and misery, the things that make people feel that life is not worth living), viz., Buddhism and Christianity. Every other religion ignores it. This is the age of the gospel of cheerfulness. We are told to ignore sin, ignore the gloomy people, and yet more than half the human race is gloomy. Sum up your own circle of acquaintances, and then draw your inference. Go over the list, and before long you will have come across one who is gloomy, he has a “sick” view of things, and you cannot alter that one. How are you going to get that oppression taken off? Tell him to take so many weeks’ holiday by the sea? Take iron pills and tonics? No! Living in the peace and joy of God’s forgiveness and favour is the only thing that will brighten up and bring cheerfulness to such an one. Only when God takes a life in hand can there come deliverance from the “blues,” deliverance from fits of depression, discouragement and all such moods. The Scriptures are full of admonitions to rejoice, to praise God, to sing aloud for joy; but only when one has a cause to rejoice, to praise, and to sing aloud, can these things truly be done from the heart. In the physical realm the average sick man does not take a very bright view of life, and with the sick in soul true brightness and cheer are an impossibility. Until the soul is cured there is always an underlying dread and fear which steals away the gladness and the “joy unspeakable and full of glory” which God wishes to be the portion of all His children.

In dealing with sick souls, we must remember the Master’s way, how He went to the root of the matter. Hear Him as He said, time and again when one was brought to Him for physical healing, “thy sins be forgiven thee.” Dig out the “root of bitterness,” then there can be no fruit to sour the life and set the nerves on edge.

My brother or sister, if you are a worker for Jesus Christ, He will open your eyes wide to the fact that sin and misery and anguish are not imaginary, they are real. Anguish is as real as joy; fired, jangled and tortured nerves are as real as nerves in order. Low threshold nerves, where everything is an exquisite misery, are as real as high threshold nerves where nothing is misery. Listen to this, they are Luther’s own words:

[i]“I am utterly weary of life. I pray the Lord will come forthwith and carry me hence. Let Him come above all with His last judgment. I will stretch out my neck, the thunder will burst forth and I shall be at rest.” And having a necklace of white agates in his hand at the time, he added: “O God, grant that it may come with out delay. I would readily eat up this necklace to-day for the judgment to come to-morrow.”

The Electress Dowager one day, when Luther was dining with her, said to him, “Doctor, I wish you may live forty years to come.”

“Madame,” replied he, “rather than live forty years more, I would give up my chance of Paradise.”[/i]

That was Luther speaking at the end of his life. What produced the misery? He saw the havoc the Reformation had wrought, he did not see the good, he was too near it.

There was the same thing in Goethe’s writings; in 1824 he writes:

[i]I will say nothing against the course of my existence, but at the bottom it has been nothing but pain and burden, and I can affirm that, during the whole of my seventy-five years, I have not had four weeks of genuine well-being. It has been the perpetual rolling of a rock that must be raised up again.[/i]

Robert Louis Stevenson said that three hours out of every five he was insane with misery. John Stuart Mill said that life was not worth living after you were a boy.

This is not fiction, these are human facts. What does Christian Science do—ignores them! New Thought—ignores them! Mind Cure—ignores them! Jesus Christ opens our eyes to these facts, but here comes the difficulty: how am I to get Jesus Christ in contact with these sick souls?

In the first place, will you realise that you do not know how to do it? I want to lay that one principle down very strongly. If you think you know how to present Jesus Christ to a soul, you will never be able to do it. But if you will learn how to rely on the Holy Ghost, believing that Jesus Christ can do it, then I make bold to state that He will do it. If you get your little compartment of texts, and search them out and say, “I know how to deal with this soul,” you will never be able to deal with it; but if you realise your absolute helplessness and say, “My God, I cannot touch this life, I do not know where to begin, but I believe that Thou canst do it,” then you can do something.

It is wonderful to see Jesus Christ slip His coolness and His balm through fired and jangled nerves, turn out demons, alter the whole outlook and lift the life into a totally new relationship. Have you ever seen Him do that? I have seen Him do it twice in my lifetime, and I will never forget it. While you watch and while you realise the marvellous work of God going on in those gloomy, tortured lives, it is as if you were bathed in the sunlight of the Presence of God in a way you never are until you are face to face with one of these cases that make you realise your own utter helplessness and the power of Jesus Christ.

It was Jesus Christ coming in contact with Thomas that altered his gloom; the disciples’ testimony could not do it. “Thomas, we have seen the Lord,” and out of the agony of his sick soul, Thomas says, “I cannot, I dare not, believe!” “Except I shall see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.” The testimony of the disciples was not the slightest bit of use, but when Jesus Christ came in contact with Him, all was different. “Then saith He to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and see My hands; and reach hither thy hand, and put it into My side; and be not faithless, but believing. Thomas answered and said unto Him, My Lord and my God” (rv).

And Mary Magdalene—what did Jesus Christ do for her? He turned the demons out of her. “Mary that was called Magdalene, from whom seven devils had gone out” (Luke 8:2 rv).

Demon possession means that one body can hold several personalities. Do you believe that? Very few people do nowadays, but it is an awful fact, not only in the New Testament, but outside the New Testament, that one body may be the holder of more than one personality. How much room does thought take up? None. Personality partakes of the nature of thought. How much room does personality take up? None. “And when He was come forth upon the land, there met Him a certain man out of the city, who had demons [asv]. . . . And Jesus asked him, What is thy name? And he said, Legion; for many demons [asv] were entered into him” (see Luke 8:27-30 rv) Many devils in one man, the modern man laughs at the idea, but the poor, tortured, demon-possessed man is left alone. Jesus Christ heals him and delivers him of them all.

God grant us the grace so to rely on the Holy Ghost, to so know our ignorance, so to get out of the way with our knowledge, that we will let the Holy Ghost bring the Majestic Christ face to face with the diseased, sick folk we meet. The majority of workers are in the road with their convictions of how God is going to work, there is no real, living, stirring, vital reliance on the Holy Ghost which places straight before the tortured, stricken soul the Mighty Lord Jesus. God grant we may so rely on the Holy Spirit that we may allow Him to introduce through the agony of our intercession—that is the point, through the agony of vicarious intercession—the Living, Mighty Christ! My brother and sister, are you willing to allow Jesus Christ to use every bit of your life to trample on in His way to another soul? Do you know anything about spending one costly drop of blood in vicarious intercession? There is nothing worked in the way of result in answer to prayer that does not cost somebody something. “Who in the days of His flesh, having offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears . . .” (rv). When you meet your sick soul, do you cry awhile and then go home and sleep, instead of taking that soul before God and vicariously interceding until by reliance on the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ is presented to that darkened, difficult life? Blessed be the Name of God, there is no case too hard for Jesus Christ!

One more thing—what is it produces sick souls? Our emotions are associated with certain things and the value of those things to us lies in the emotion they start. For instance, you have some things in your home that are of no use to anybody on earth, but to you they are enormously valuable. Let something come in and destroy your emotions and associations, and what kind of a world are you in? A world in which suicide is the only outlet. Let some paralysis come and destroy your emotions, all your associated ideas with things, with people, with houses, with friends, with work, and the light is gone out of the sky, the power and the joy out of life, everything is paralysed, and the universe is one black prison-house. What will produce that? Look at the prodigal son. Have you ever dropped the plumb-line down into his heart and tried to fathom one phase only of his cry—“I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight”? Oh, the agony of the soul that has been paralysed on the inside—the gloom, the darkness, and the shadow! No preaching of the gospel of good cheer will touch that; it is only the great Life-giving, Life-imparting Christ Who can touch it. Oh, my brother or sister, you have lately been brought face to face with some case and you have said, “This is conviction of sin,” but you know it is not. You have tried all the Scriptural teaching you know, with no result. You have tried to advocate this thing and that, but no result, and you have been humiliated to the dust before God. Is not this the reason—you have been trying to find out what is wrong? God will never show you what is wrong; that is not your business. What He wants us to do is to bring the case to Him: “Lord, use my intercession as a channel through which Thou canst reach that soul.” God grant that we may be so centred in Him that He can use us in that wonderful way.

Oswald Chambers
[i]Workmen of God[/i]

[b]The Minister's Fainting Fits[/b]

Charles Haddon Spurgeon

As it is recorded that David, in the heat of battle, waxed faint, so may it be written of all the servants of the Lord. Fits of depression come over the most of us. Usually cheerful as we may be, we must at intervals be cast down. The strong are not always vigorous, the wise not always ready, the brave not always courageous, and the joyous not always happy. There maybe here and there men of iron, to whom wear and tear work no perceptible detriment, but surely the rust frets even these; and as for ordinary men, the Lord knows, and makes them to know, that they are but dust. Knowing by most painful experience what deep depression of spirit means, being visited therewith at seasons by no means few or far between, I thought it might be consolatory to some of my brethren if I gave my thoughts thereon, that younger men might not fancy that some strange thing had happened to them when they became for a season possessed by melancholy; and that sadder men might know that one upon whom the sun has shone right joyously did not always walk in the light.

It is not necessary by quotations from the biographies of eminent ministers to prove that seasons of fearful prostration have fallen to the lot of most, if not all of them. The life of Luther might suffice to give a thousand instances, and he was by no means of the weaker sort. His great spirit was often in the seventh heaven of exultation, and as frequently on the borders of despair. His very death-bed was not free from tempests, and he sobbed himself into his last sleep like a great wearied child. Instead of multiplying Gases, let us dwell upon the reasons why these things are permitted why it is that the children of light sometimes walk in the thick darkness; why the heralds of the daybreak find themselves at times in tenfold night.

Is it not first that they are men? Being men, they are compassed with infirmity, and heirs of sorrow. Well said the wise man in the Apocrypha, (Ecclus xl. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5-8) "Great travail is created for all men, and a heavy yoke on the sons of Adam, from the day that they go out of their mother's womb unto that day that they return to the mother of all things—namely, their thoughts and fear of their hearts, and their imagination of things that they wail for, and the day of death. From him that sitteth in the glorious throne, to him that sitteth beneath in the earth and ashes; from him that is clothed in blue silk, and weareth a crown, to him that is clothed in simple linen—wrath, envy, trouble, and unquietness, and fear of death and rigour, and such things come to both man and beast, but sevenfold to the ungodly." Grace guards us from much of this, but because we have not more of grace we still suffer even from ills preventible. Even under the economy of redemption it is most clear that we are to endure infirmities, otherwise there were no need of the promised Spirit to help us in them. It is of need be that we are sometimes in heaviness. Good men are promised tribulation in this world, and ministers may expect a larger share than others, that they may learn sympathy with the Lord's suffering people, and so may be fitting shepherds of an ailing flock. Disembodied spirits might have been sent to proclaim the word, but they could not have entered into the feelings of those who, being in this body, do groan, being burdened; angels might have been ordained evangelists, but their celestial attributes would have disqualified them from having compassion on the ignorant; men of marble might have been fashioned, but their impassive natures would have been a sarcasm upon our feebleness, and a mockery of our wants. Men, and men subject to human passions, the all-wise God has chosen to be his vessels of grace; hence these tears, hence these perplexities and castings down.

Moreover, most of us are in some way or other unsound physically. Here and there we meet with an old man who could not remember that ever he was laid aside for a day; but the great mass of us labour under some form or other of infirmity, either in body or mind. Certain bodily maladies, especially those connected with the digestive organs, the liver, and the spleen, are time fruitful fountains of despondency; and, let a man strive as he may against their influence, there will be hours and circumstances in which they will for awhile overcome him. As to mental maladies, is any man altogether sane? Are we not all a little off the balance? Some minds appear to have a gloomy tinge essential to their very individuality; of them it may be said, "Melancholy marked them for her own;" fine minds withal, and ruled by noblest principles, but yet most prone to forget the silver lining, and to remember only the cloud. Such men may sing with the old poet (Thomas Washbourne.)

"Our hearts are broke, our harps unstringed be,
Our only music's sighs and groans,
Our songs are to the tune of lachrymœ,
We're fretted all to skin and bones."

These infirmities may be no detriment to a man's career of special usefulness; they may even have been imposed upon him by divine wisdom as necessary qualifications for his peculiar course of service. Some plants owe their medicinal qualities to the marsh in which they grow; others to the shades in which alone they flourish. There are precious fruits put forth by the moon as well as by the sun. Boats need ballast as well as sail; a drag on the carriage-wheel is no hindrance when the road runs downhill. Pain has, probably, in some cases developed genius; hunting out the soul which otherwise might have slept like a lion in its den. Had it not been for the broken wing, some might have lost themselves in the clouds, some even of those choice doves who now bear the olive-branch in their mouths and show the way to the ark. But where in body and mind there are predisposing causes to lowness of spirit, it is no marvel if in dark moments the heart succumbs to them; the wonder in many cases is—and if inner lives could be written, men would see it so—how some ministers keep at their work at all, and still wear a smile upon their countenances. Grace has its triumphs still, and patience has its martyrs; martyrs none the less to be honoured because the flames kindle about their spirits rather than their bodies, and their burning is unseen of human eyes. The ministries of Jeremiahs are as acceptable as those of Isaiahs, and even the sullen Jonah is a true prophet of the Lord, as Nineveh felt full well. Despise not the lame, for it is written that they take the prey; but honour those who, being faint, are yet pursuing. The tender-eyed Leah was more fruitful than the beautiful Rachel, and the griefs of Hannah were more divine than the boastings of Peninnah. "Blessed are they that mourn," said the Man of Sorrows, and let none account them otherwise when their tears are salted with grace. We have the treasure of the gospel in earthen vessels, and if there be a flaw in the vessel here and there, let none wonder.

[i]Our work, when earnestly undertaken, lays us open to attacks in the direction of depression.[/i] Who can bear the weight of souls without sometimes sinking to the dust? Passionate longings after men's conversion, if not fully satisfied (and when are they?), consume the soul with anxiety and disappointment. To see the hopeful turn aside, the godly grow cold, professors abusing their privileges, and sinners waxing more bold in sin—are not these sights enough to crush us to the earth? The kingdom comes not as we would, the reverend name is not hallowed as we desire, and for this we must weep. How can we be otherwise than sorrowful, while men believe not our report, and the divine arm is not revealed? All mental work tends to weary and to depress, for much study is a weariness of the flesh; but ours is more than mental work—it is heart work, the labour of our inmost soul. How often, on Lord's-day evenings, do we feel as if life were completely washed out of us! After pouring out our souls over our congregations, we feel like empty earthen pitchers which a child might break. Probably, if we were more like Paul, and watched for souls at a nobler rate, we should know more of what it is to be eaten up by the zeal of the Lord's house. It is our duty and our privilege to exhaust our lives for Jesus. We are not to be living specimens of men in fine preservation, but living sacrifices, whose lot is to be consumed; we are to spend and to be spent, not to lay ourselves up in lavender, and nurse our flesh. Such soul-travail as that of a faithful minister will bring on occasional seasons of exhaustion, when heart and flesh will fail. Moses' hands grew heavy in intercession, and Paul cried out, "Who is sufficient for these things?" Even John the Baptist is thought to have had his fainting fits, and the apostles were once amazed, and were sore afraid.

[i]Our position in the church will also conduce to this.[/i] A minister fully equipped for his work, will usually be a spirit by himself, above, beyond, and apart from others. The most loving of his people cannot enter into his peculiar thoughts, cares, and temptations. In the ranks, men walk shoulder to shoulder, with many comrades, but as the officer rises in rank, men of his standing are fewer in number. There are many soldiers, few captains, fewer colonels, but only one commander-in-chief. So, in our churches, the man whom the Lord raises as a leader becomes, in the same degree in which he is a superior man, a solitary man. The mountain-tops stand solemnly apart, and talk only with God as he visits their terrible solitudes. Men of God who rise above their fellows into nearer communion with heavenly things, in their weaker moments feel the lack of human sympathy. Like their Lord in Gethsemane, they look in vain for comfort to the disciples sleeping around them; they are shocked at the apathy of their little band of brethren, and return to their secret agony with all the heavier burden pressing upon them, because they have found their dearest companions slumbering. No one knows, but he who has endured it, the solitude of a soul which has outstripped its fellows in zeal for the Lord of hosts: it dares not reveal itself, lest men count it mad; it cannot conceal itself, for a fire burns within its bones: only before the Lord does it find rest. Our Lord's sending out his disciples by two and two manifested that he knew what was in men; but for such a man as Paul, it seems to me that no helpmeet was found; Barnabas, or Silas, or Luke, were hills too low to hold high converse with such a Himalayan summit as the apostle of the Gentiles. This loneliness, which if I mistake not is felt by many of my brethren, is a fertile source of depression; and our ministers, fraternal meetings, and the cultivation of holy intercourse with kindred minds will, with God's blessing, help us greatly to escape the snare.

There can be little doubt that sedentary habits have a tendency to create despondency in some constitutions. Burton, in his "Anatomy of Melancholy," has a chapter upon this cause of sadness; and, quoting from one of the myriad authors whom he lays under contribution, he says—"Students are negligent of their bodies. Other men look to their tools; a painter will wash his pencils; a smith will look to his hammer, anvil, forge; a husbandman will mend his plough-irons, and grind his hatchet if it be dull; a falconer or huntsman will have an especial care of his hawks, hounds, horses, dogs, &c.; a musician will string and unstring his lute; only scholars neglect that instrument (their brain and spirits I mean) which they daily use. Well saith Lucan, "See thou twist not the rope so hard that it break." To sit long in one posture, poring over a book, or driving a quill, is in itself a taxing of nature; but add to this a badly-ventilated chamber, a body which has long been without muscular exercise, and a heart burdened with many cares, and we have all the elements for preparing a seething cauldron of despair, especially in the dim months of fog—

"When a blanket wraps the day,
When the rotten woodland drips,
And the leaf is stamped in clay."

Let a man be naturally as blithe as a bird, he will hardly be able to bear up year after year against such a suicidal process; he will make his study a prison and his books the warders of a gaol, while nature lies outside his window calling him to health and beckoning him to joy. He who forgets the humming of the bees among the heather, the cooing of the wood-pigeons in the forest, the song of birds in the woods, the rippling of rills among the rushes, and the sighing of the wind among the pines, needs not wonder if his heart forgets to sing and his soul grows heavy. A day's breathing of fresh air upon the hills, or a few hours, ramble in the beech woods? umbrageous calm, would sweep the cobwebs out of the brain of scores of our toiling ministers who are now but half alive. A mouthful of sea air, or a stiff walk in the wind's face, would not give grace to the soul, but it would yield oxygen to the body, which is next best.

"Heaviest the heart is in a heavy air,
Ev'ry wind that rises blows away despair."

The ferns and the rabbits, the streams and the trouts, the fir trees and the squirrels, the primroses and the violets, the farm-yard, the new-mown hay, and the fragrant hops—these are the best medicine for hypochondriacs, the surest tonics for the declining, the best refreshments for the weary. For lack of opportunity, or inclination, these great remedies are neglected, and the student becomes a self-immolated victim.

The times most favourable to fits of depression, so far as I have experienced, may be summed up in a brief catalogue. First among them I must mention the hour of great success. When at last a long-cherished desire is fulfilled, when God has been glorified greatly by our means, and a great triumph achieved, then we are apt to faint. It might be imagined that amid special favours our soul would soar to heights of ecstacy, and rejoice with joy unspeakable, but it is generally the reverse. The Lord seldom exposes his warriors to the perils of exultation over victory; he knows that few of them can endure such a test, and therefore dashes their cup with bitterness. See Elias after the fire has fallen from heaven, after Baal's priests have been slaughtered and the rain has deluged the barren land For him no notes of self-complacent music, no strutting like a conqueror in robes of triumph; he flees from Jezebel, and feeling the revulsion of his intense excitement, he prays that he may die, lie who must never see death, yearns after the rest of the grave, even as Caesar, the world's monarch, in his moments of pain cried like a sick girl. Poor human nature cannot bear such strains as heavenly triumphs bring to it; there must come a reaction. Excess of joy or excitement must be paid for by subsequent depressions. While the trial lasts, the strength is equal to the emergency; but when it is over, natural weakness claims the right to show itself. Secretly sustained, Jacob can wrestle all night, but he must limp in the morning when the contest is over, lest he boast himself beyond measure. Paul may be caught up to the third heaven, and hear unspeakable things, but a thorn in time flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet him, must be the inevitable sequel. Men cannot bear unalloyed happiness; even good men are not yet fit to have "their brows with laurel and with myrtle bound," without enduring secret humiliation to keep them in their proper place. Whirled from off our feet by a revival, carried aloft by popularity, exalted by success in soul-winning, we should be as the chaff which the wind driveth away, were it not that the gracious discipline of mercy breaks the ships of our vainglory with a strong east wind, and casts us shipwrecked, naked and forlorn, upon the Rock of Ages.

[i]Cont.[/i]

[i]Cont.[/i] ...

[i]Before any great achievement[/i], some measure of the same depression is very usual. Surveying the difficulties before us, our hearts sink within us. The sons of Anak stalk before us, and we are as grasshoppers in our own sight in their presence. The cities of Canaan are walled up to heaven, and who are we that we should hope to capture them? We are ready to cast down our weapons and take to our heels. Nineveh is a great city, and we would flee unto Tarshish sooner than encounter its noisy crowds. Already we look for a ship which may bear us quietly away from the terrible scene, and only a dread of tempest restrains our recreant footsteps. Such was my experience when I first became a pastor in London. My success appalled me; and the thought of the career which it seemed to open up, so far from elating me, cast me into the lowest depth, out of which I uttered my miserere and found no room for a gloria in excelsis. Who was I that I should continue to lead so great a multitude? I would betake me to my village obscurity, or emigrate to America, and find a solitary nest in the backwoods, where I might be sufficient for the things which would be demanded of me. It was just then that the curtain was rising upon my life-work, and I dreaded what it might reveal. I hope I was not faithless, but I was timorous and filled with a sense of my own unfitness. I dreaded the work which a gracious providence had prepared for me. I felt myself a mere child, and trembled as I heard the voice which said, "Arise, and thresh the mountains, and make them as chaff." This depression comes over me whenever the Lord is preparing a larger blessing for my ministry; the cloud is black before it breaks, and overshadows before it yields its deluge of mercy. Depression has now become to me as a prophet in rough clothing, a John the Baptist, heralding the nearer coming of my Lord's richer benison. So have far better men found it. The scouring of the vessel has fitted it for the Master's use. Immersion in suffering has preceded the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Fasting gives an appetite for the banquet. The Lord is revealed in the backside of the desert, while his servant keepeth the sheep and waits in solitary awe. The wilderness is the way to Canaan. The low valley leads to the towering mountain. Defeat prepares for victory. The raven is sent forth before the dove. The darkest hour of the night precedes the day-dawn. The mariners go down to the depths, but the next wave makes them mount to the heaven: their soul is melted because of trouble before he bringeth them to their desired haven.

[i]In the midst of a long stretch of unbroken labour, the same affliction[/i] may be looked for. The bow cannot be always bent without fear of breaking. Repose is as needful to the mind as sleep to the body. Our Sabbaths are our days of toil, and if we do not rest upon some other day we shall break down. Even the earth must lie fallow and have her Sabbaths, and so must we. Hence the wisdom and compassion of our Lord, when he said to his disciples, "Let us go into the desert and rest awhile." What! when the people are fainting? When the multitudes are like sheep upon the mountains without a shepherd? Does Jesus talk of rest? When Scribes and Pharisees, like grievous wolves, are rending the flock, does he take his followers on an excursion into a quiet resting place? Does some red-hot zealot denounce such atrocious forgetfulness of present and pressing demands? Let him rave in his folly. The Master knows better than to exhaust his servants and quench the light of Israel. Rest time is not waste time. It is economy to gather fresh strength. Look at the mower in the summer a day, with so much to cut down ere the sun sets. He pauses in his labour, is he a sluggard? He looks for his stone, and begins to draw it up and down his scythe, with "rink-a-tink—rink-a-tink—rink-a-tink." Is that idle music? is he wasting precious moments? How much he might have mown while he has been ringing out those notes on his scythe! But he is sharpening his tool, and he will do far more when once again he gives his strength to those long sweeps which lay the grass prostrate in rows before him. Even thus a little pause prepares the mind for greater service in the good cause. Fishermen must mend their nets, and we must every now and then repair our mental waste and set our machinery in order for future service. To tug the oar from day to day, hike a galley-slave who knows no holidays, suits not mortal men. Mill-streams go on and on for ever, but we must have our pauses and our intervals. Who can help being out of breath when the race is continued without intermission? Even beasts of burden must be turned out to grass occasionally; the very sea pauses at ebb and flood; earth keeps the Sabbath of the wintry months; and man, even when exalted to be God's ambassador, must rest or faint; must trim his lamp or let it burn low; must recruit his vigour or grow prematurely old. It is wisdom to take occasional furlough. In the long run, we shall do more by sometimes doing less. On, on, on for ever, without recreation, may suit spirits emancipated from this "heavy clay," but while we are in this tabernacle, we must every now and then cry halt, and serve the Lord by holy inaction and consecrated leisure. Let no tender conscience doubt the lawfulness of going out of harness for awhile, but learn from the experience of others the necessity and duty of taking timely rest.

[i]One crushing stroke has sometimes laid the minister very low[/i]. The brother most relied upon becomes a traitor. Judas lifts up his heel against the man who trusted him, and the preacher?s heart for the moment fails him. We are all too apt to look to an arm of flesh, and from that propensity many of our sorrows arise. Equally overwhelming is the blow when an honoured and beloved member yields to temptation, and disgraces the holy name with which lie was named. Anything is better than this. This makes the preacher long for a lodge in some vast wilderness, where he may hide his head for ever, and hear no more the blasphemous jeers of the ungodly. Ten years of toil do not take so much life out of us as we lose in a few hours by Ahithophel the traitor, or Demas the apostate. Strife, also, and division, and slander, and foolish censures, have often laid holy men prostrate, and made them go "as with a sword in their bones." Hard words wound some delicate minds very keenly. Many of the best of ministers, from the very spirituality of their character, are exceedingly sensitive—too sensitive for such a world as this. "A kick that scarce would move a horse would kill a sound divine." By experience the soul is hardened to the rough blows which are inevitable in our warfare; but at first these things utterly stagger us, and send us to our homes wrapped in a horror of great darkness. The trials of a true minister are not few, and such as are caused by ungrateful professors are harder to bear than the coarsest attacks of avowed enemies. Let no man who looks for ease of mind and seeks the quietude of life enter the ministry; if he does so he will flee from it in disgust.

To the lot of few does it fall to pass through such a horror of great darkness as that which fell upon me after the deplorable accident at the Surrey Music Hall. I was pressed beyond measure and out of bounds with an enormous weight of misery. The tumult, the panic, the deaths, were day and night before me, anti made life a burden. Then I sang in my sorrow—

"The tumult of my thoughts
Doth but increase my woe,
My spirit languisheth, my heart
Is desolate and low."

From that dream of horror I was awakened in a moment by the gracious application to my soul of the text, "Him hath God the Father exalted." The fact that Jesus is still great, let his servants suffer as they may, piloted me back to calm reason and peace. Should so terrible a calamity overtake any of my brethren, let them both patiently hope and quietly wait for the salvation of God.

[i]When troubles multiply[/i], and discouragements follow each other in long succession, like Job's messengers, then, too, amid the perturbation of soul occasioned by evil tidings, despondency despoils the heart of all its peace. Constant dropping wears away stones, and the bravest minds feel the fret of repeated afflictions. If a scanty cupboard is rendered a severer trial by the sickness of a wife or the loss of a child, and if ungenerous remarks of hearers are followed by the opposition of deacons and the coolness of members, then, like Jacob, we are apt to cry, "All these things are against me." When David returned to Ziklag and found the city burned, goods stolen, wives carried off, and his troops ready to stone him, we read, "he encouraged himself in his God;" and well was it for him that he could do so, for he would then have fainted if he had not believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Accumulated distresses increase each other's weight; they play into each other's hands, and, like bands of robbers, ruthlessly destroy our comfort. Wave upon wave is severe work for the strongest swimmer. The place where two seas meet strains the most seaworthy keel. If there were a regulated pause between the buffetings of adversity, the spirit would stand prepared; but when they come suddenly and heavily, like the battering of great hailstones, the pilgrim may well be amazed. The last ounce breaks the camel's back, and when that last ounce is laid upon us, what wonder if we for awhile are ready to give up the ghost!

[i]This evil will also come upon us, we know not why[/i], and then it is all the more difficult to drive it away. Causeless depression is not to he reasoned with, nor can David's harp charm it away by sweet discoursings. As well fight with the mist as with this shapeless, undefinable, yet all-beclouding hopelessness. One affords himself no pity when in this case, because it seems so unreasonable, and even sinful to be troubled without manifest cause; and yet troubled the man is, even in the very depths of his spirit. If those who laugh at such melancholy did but feel the grief of it for one hour, their laughter would he sobered into compassion. Resolution might, perhaps, shake it off, but where are we to find the resolution when the whole man is unstrung? The physician and the divine may unite their skill in such cases, and both find their hands full, and more than full. The iron bolt which so mysteriously fastens the door of hope and holds our spirits in gloomy prison, needs a heavenly hand to push it back; and when that hand is seen we cry with the apostle, "Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God." 2 Cor. i. 3, 4. It is the God of all consolation who can—

"With sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse our poor bosoms of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart."

Simon sinks till Jesus takes him by the hand. The devil within rends and tears the poor child till time word of authority commands him to come out of him. When we are ridden with horrible fears, and weighed down with an intolerable incubus, we need but the Sun of Righteousness to rise, and the evils generated of our darkness are driven away; but nothing short of this will chase away time nightmare of the soul. Timothy Rogers, the author of a treatise on Melancholy, and Simon Browne, the writer of some remarkably sweet hymns, proved in their own cases how unavailing is the help of man if the Lord withdraw the light from the soul.

If it be enquired why the Valley of the Shadow of Death must so often be traversed by the servants of King Jesus, the answer is not far to find. All this is promotive of the Lord's mode of working, which is summed up in these words—"Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord." Instruments shall be used, but their intrinsic weakness shall be clearly manifested; there shall be no division of the glory, no diminishing the honour due to the Great Worker. The man shall be emptied of self, and then filled with the Holy Ghost. In his own apprehension he shall be like a sere leaf driven of the tempest, and then shall be strengthened into a brazen wall against the enemies of truth. To hide pride from the worker is the great difficulty. Uninterrupted success and unfading joy in it would be more than our weak heads could bear. Our wine must needs be mixed with water, lest it turn our brains. My witness is, that those who are honoured of their Lord in public, have usually to endure a secret chastening, or to carry a peculiar cross, lest by any means they exalt themselves, and fall into the snare of the devil. How constantly the Lord calls Ezekiel "Son of man"! Amid his soarings into the superlative splendours, just when with eye undimmed he is strengthened to gaze into the excellent glory, the word "Son of man" falls on his ears, sobering the heart which else might have been intoxicated with the honour conferred upon it. Such humbling but salutary messages our depressions whisper in our ears; they tell us in a manner not to be mistaken that we are but men, frail, feeble, apt to faint.

By all the castings down of his servants God is glorified, for they are led to magnify him when again he sets them on their feet, and even while prostrate in the dust their faith yields him praise. They speak all time more sweetly of his faithfulness, and are the more firmly established in his love. Such mature men as sonic elderly preachers are, could scarcely have been produced if they had not been emptied from vessel to vessel, and made to see their own emptiness and the vanity of all things round about them. Glory be to God for the furnace, the hammer, and the file. Heaven shall be all the fuller of bliss because we have been filled with anguish here below, and earth shall be better tilled because of our training in the school of adversity.

The lesson of wisdom is, [i]be not dismayed by soul-trouble[/i]. Count it no strange thing, but a part of ordinary ministerial experience. Should the power of depression be more than ordinary, think not that all is over with your usefulness. Cast not away your confidence, for it hath great recompense of reward. Even if the enemy's foot be on your neck, expect to rise amid overthrow him. Cast the burden of the present, along with the sin of the past and the fear of the future, upon the Lord, who forsaketh not his saints. Live by the day—ay, by the hour. Put no trust in frames and feelings. Care more for a grain of faith than a ton of excitement. Trust in God alone, and lean not on the reeds of human help. Be not surprised when friends fail you: it is a failing world. Never count upon immutability in man: inconstancy you may reckon upon without fear of disappointment. The disciples of Jesus forsook him; be not amazed if your adherents wander away to other teachers: as they were not your all when with you, all is not gone from you with their departure. Serve God with all your might while the candle is burning, and then when it goes out for a season, you will have the less to regret. Be content to be nothing, for that is what you are. When your own emptiness is painfully forced upon your consciousness, chide yourself that you ever dreamed of being full, except in the Lord. Set small store by present rewards; be grateful for earnests by the way, but look for the recompensing joy hereafter. Continue, with double earnestness to serve your Lord when no visible result is before you. Any simpleton can follow the narrow path in the light: faith?s rare wisdom enables us to march on in the dark with infallible accuracy, since she places her hand in that of her Great Guide. Between this and heaven there may be rougher weather yet, but it is all provided for by our covenant Head. In nothing let us be turned aside from the path which the divine call has urged us to pursue. Come fair or come foul, the pulpit is our watch-tower, and the ministry our warfare; be it ours, when we cannot see the face of our God, to trust under THE SHADOW OF HIS WINGS.

[url=http://the-highway.com/articleSept99.html]The Highway[/url]

As to mental maladies, is any man altogether sane? Are we not all a little off the balance?

To hide pride from the worker is the great difficulty. Uninterrupted success and unfading joy in it would be more than our weak heads could bear. Our wine must needs be mixed with water, lest it turn our brains.

Be content to be nothing, for that is what you are. When your own emptiness is painfully forced upon your consciousness, chide yourself that you ever dreamed of being full, except in the Lord.

This deserves a bump up.