[April 19.]
Monarchs reign, but their dominion is merely external. They do not and can not enter into the realm of the soul; but “there is another king, one Jesus,” whose right it is to sit enthroned in every heart, to direct every conscience, and to have dominion over every thought and action. Have you given him the sovereignty of yourself?
Sin reigns, and that king, alas! holds sway in many—I ought to say in the vast majority of human souls. But he is an usurper; for “there is another king, one Jesus,” who is the rightful lord of the heart. Under which king are you? He who repudiates the royalty of Jesus over him is guilty of treason against the majesty of heaven, and is but courting his destruction.
Death reigns, and day by day he is sweeping in new multitudes into his silent realm. The mightiest and the meanest alike must yield to him who is the terror of kings, no less than he is the king of terrors. At one time he rides on the hurricane, and dashes the laboring vessel and the freighted souls within her on the roaring reef; at another he drives through the city streets riding on his pestilential car, and spreads desolation round him. Now he careers upon the boiling flood, and sweeps whole villages before him into swift destruction; and again he leaps in the lightning-flash upon some devoted building, and kindles a conflagration that burns many in its flames. He laughs at men’s efforts to elude his grasp; and as we look upon the settled countenance of the loved one whom we are preparing to lay in the grave, we are almost compelled to own him conqueror. But no! “there is another king, one Jesus,” who is “the Resurrection and the Life,” and “who hath abolished death and brought life and immortality to light by the Gospel.” Let us, then, be undismayed by this last enemy. He is a vanquished foe. Our Lord Jesus has gone into his domain, and having conquered him there, has brought him back with him to his palace, to be there the page who opens the door for his friends into the chamber of his presence. Yes! as we stand by the remains of our Christian dead, and under the influence of sight are moved to speak of Death as king, we recall in another sense than they were meant, but in a sense which faith recognizes as true, the words “There is another king, one Jesus.”
Paradoxical as it may seem, these two things always go together. Where Christ is owned as the sole sovereign, there his service is perfect freedom; but where his supremacy is either ignored or given to another, there comes the slavery of superstition, or the tyranny of priestcraft, or the cold domination of philosophy, and it is hard to say which of these is the most degrading.—W. M. Taylor.
[April 26.]
He who would preach the Gospel with power must be himself a believer in the Lord. The secret of true, heart-stirring eloquence in the pulpit is, next after the power of the Holy Ghost, that which the French Abbé has very happily called “the accent of conviction” in the speaker. Behind every appeal that Paul made to sinners, there was the memory of that wonderful experience through which he passed on the way to Damascus; and therefore we are not surprised that he so preached as either to secure men’s faith or to rouse their antagonism. But his conversion alone, without his Arabian revelations, would not have made him the apostle he became. In the desert he met his Lord, and received from him many important spiritual communications. There, too, he meditated on the truths revealed to him, and poured out his heart in prayer for a thorough understanding of their meaning and a full realization of their power. Thus he came back to Damascus, if not with a face glowing like that of Moses when he descended from Sinai, at least with a heart filled and fired with love to Him who had there unfolded to him the mysteries of the Gospel. Now, what Paul thus received from the Lord has been given to us by evangelists and apostles in the New Testament Scriptures. Our Arabia, therefore, will be the study and the closet in which we pore over these precious pages, and seek to comprehend their many sided significance, as well as to imbibe the spirit by which they are pervaded. He who would preach to others must be much alone with his Bible and his Lord; else when he appears before his people, he will send them to sleep with his pointless platitudes, or starve them with his empty conceits. Get you to Arabia, then, ye who would become the instructors of your fellowmen! Get you to the closet and the study! Give your days and nights to the investigation of this book; and let everything you produce from it be made to glow with white heat in the forge of your own heart, and be hammered on the anvil of your own experience!—W. M. Taylor.