September 3

"Behold the Lamb of God.” John 1:36.

In the deep study of the holiness of the law, and the strictness of Divine justice, what a suitable and glorious object for the alarmed and trembling spirit to look upon, is He who came to honor that law, and to satisfy that justice! Are you agitated by thoughts of the Divine holiness, and your own impurity? Do you tremble as you contemplate God's determination to punish sin, by no means clearing the guilty? Look unto Jesus, and let your trembling subside into the calmness with which His whisper stills the tempest. He has become "the end of the law for righteousness, to every one that believes." His atonement, while it vindicates the majesty of the Father's government, spreads its mighty shield around the Father's child, and thus protected, neither the thunder of the law nor the flaming sword of justice can reach him. Oh! the blessedness of looking, by faith, to Jesus, from the wrath and the condemnation justly due to our transgressions; to see all that wrath and condemnation borne by Him who wept and bled in the garden, who languished and died upon the tree; to see Jesus, with the keys of all authority and power suspended from His girdle, closing up our hell, and opening wide our heaven.

In the season of solitude and sorrow, Christian reader, when thoughts of God's holiness mingle with views of your sinfulness, and fears of Divine wrath blend with the consciousness of your just deserts, darkening that solitude, and embittering that sorrow, oh! turn and fix your believing eye upon the Divine, the suffering, the atoning Savior, and peace, composure, and joy will lull your trembling spirit to rest. You are not sick, nor in solitude, nor in sorrow, because there is wrath in God; for all that wrath was borne by your redeeming Surety. You are so—oh, that you could believe it!—because God is love. It must be, since Jesus so bore away the curse and the sin, that God now brims the cup He emptied with a love that passes knowledge. "My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord, neither be you weary of His correction: for whom the Lord loves He corrects, even as a father the son in whom he delights.

In every position of life, our privilege is to look unto Jesus. God can place us in no circumstances, be they humble or exalted, in which we may not repair to Christ for the wisdom and the strength, the grace and the consolation, those circumstances demand. It is our mercy to know that God adapts Himself to every position of His saints. He knows that in times of prosperity, the feet of His saints are apt to slide; and that in times of adversity, they are often pierced and wounded. Thus, in the smooth path, as in the rough, Jesus is to be the one object to which the eye is raised, and upon which it rests. If He exalts you, as He may do, to any post of distinction and responsibility, look unto Jesus, and study the self-annihilation and lowliness of His whole life. If He lays you low, as in His dealings with His people He often does, from the depth of your humiliation let your eye look unto Jesus, who reached a depth in His abasement infinitely beneath your own; and who can descend to your circumstances, and impart the grace that will enable you so to adapt yourself to them as to glorify Him in them. Thus you will know both how to abound, and how to suffer need.

In each season of affliction, to whom can we more appropriately look than to Jesus? He was preeminently the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. If you would tell your grief to one who knew grief as none ever knew it—if you would disclose your sorrow to one who sorrowed as none ever sorrowed—then in your affliction turn from all creature sympathy and support, and look to Jesus: to a tenderer bosom, to a deeper love, to a more powerful arm, to a more sympathizing friend, you could not take your trial, your affliction, your sorrow. He is prepared to embosom Himself in your deepest grief, and to make your circumstances all His own. So completely and personally is He one with you, that nothing can affect you that does not instantly touch Him. Tender to Him are you as the apple of His eye. Your happiness, your reputation, your labors, your necessities, your discouragements, your despondencies, all pass beneath His unslumbering notice, and are the objects of His tenderest love and incessant care. If Jesus, then, is willing to come and make, as it were, His home in the very heart of your sorrow, surely you will not hesitate in repairing with your sorrow to His heart of love.