Sunday, September 30. Attend the burial of William Hevner's son Harvey. He died of typhoid fever. His age was twenty-seven years, two months and four days. It has been a very short while since his sister Elizabeth passed away. We should weep with those who weep: but our deepest sympathy for others cannot give us a realization of the depth of grief felt by bereaved parents and their children. Happy are those who can look beyond the tomb to have their sorrows healed.
Between this time and the close of the year Brother Kline made only one long journey. He and Anna went in his family carriage to Maryland first. After attending a number of love feasts and other meetings around Frederic City and Shepherdstown, they went down the Cumberland Valley beyond Harrisburg, and after a few days' sojourn there they return by very nearly the same route they went. They were just three weeks and two days on this journey.
End of 1849.
Whole distance traveled this year by me is 3,903 miles.
Sunday, February 12, 1850. Meeting at Buck Hill, in Shenandoah County, Virginia. I speak from John 6:44, 45. Text.—"No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him."
I here note the substance of what I said. My text sets forth the two great facts which all should know: man's weakness and God's power. The first part of the text declares man's absolute weakness in himself and of himself. In another place our Lord says: "Without me ye can do nothing." In the text he says: "No man can come to me." Had he stopped here we would be left without hope. But he did not stop here. Immediately, as if by the same breath of love, he adds: "Except the Father which hath sent me draw him." This part shows that if the Father does draw a man he can come to Jesus. Now, then, does the Father draw? The prophets say he does in these words: "And they shall all be taught of God." He draws them by teaching them. In what follows we may learn the power of this Great Teacher. Notice very particularly: "Every man,"—this means every human being, whether man or woman,—"every man therefore that hath heard and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me."
But here are things very deep. Our minds inquire to know how the Father, whose voice we have never at any time heard and whose shape we have never seen, can teach us. It is through the Son that the Father speaks, for the Son bears this testimony himself in these words: "I speak not from myself; but the Father which sent me, he hath given me a commandment what I should say and what I should speak. And I know that his commandment is life eternal: the things therefore which I speak, even as the Father hath said unto me, so I speak." Nothing can be plainer than this that Jesus spoke with authority, the divine authority of the Father, and that he is God the Father manifest in the flesh, the Emmanuel—God the Father with us. For further proof of this, turn to Isaiah 9:6, "Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder; and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace." Again our Lord says: "All power is given to me in heaven and on earth." Paul's teaching harmonizes with this: "For," says he, "in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." By the Godhead he means the Divine Head of creation, providence, redemption and eternal salvation: "For all things were made by him;" and as Paul again says: "In him all things consist," or hold together.
We are now prepared to understand how Jesus could know the thoughts of men, and why he needed not that any should testify to him of man, for he knew what was in man. He knew all this by creation and preservation, by his power of perception which is boundless, and his knowledge which is infinite. Man's body, when viewed intelligently, with its organs of life and motion, is a thing of wonder in our eyes. Anatomy reveals in its organs, designs and purposes in their structures and uses which overwhelm us with astonishment. What, then, must the soul be, when its structure and organization, essence and power as far exceed those of the body as the man who lives in the house exceeds the house? For the body is nothing more than the house or habitation of the soul. Paul calls it "our earthly house." He says: "In this we groan—it will be dissolved." He then immediately turns his thought to the renewed soul or spiritual body, and calls it "a building of God, a house not made with hands." All things, then, pertaining to our souls, being naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we have to do, we may rest secure in the belief that whatever he tells us about ourselves is true. He knows just what we can do and what we cannot do. And it is he who says, "No man can come to me, except the Father draw him."
But perhaps some inside this house are saying within themselves: "Is man not free to choose good or evil—to do right or wrong?" I answer that he is free,—free as the eagle in the air; free as the fox in the bramble; free as the lion in the desert; free as birds and beasts are free to comply with the instincts of their natures and the inclinations of their wills. Man's freedom is what makes him a responsible being. He is yet more free than the brute creation; because that is bounded by the limits of capacity. But man's mind is capable of indefinite expansion and elevation in knowledge. Still the text is true: "No man can come to me, except the Father draw him." Let me draw a comparison here. A king once made a great supper and invited many to come and partake of it. At the right time he sent forth his servants to tell them that were bidden to come, for all things are now ready. Did they go? No! They all began to make excuses. You see they were free, free to go, and free to stay away. They chose to stay away, and in this very way every sinner uses his freedom; he chooses not to come to the Lord.
When a man's will or a woman's will is set on something they love above everything else, can they of themselves change their wills? I have known several instances in which a young lady set her affections upon a man who was not her equal in any respect, and very far below her in general character. I have known the mother of such a lady to bend over her daughter, and with tearful eyes entreat her to withdraw her affections from that unworthy object and give them to another who, in breathless suspense, and with a soul and character and surroundings worthy of her, was but waiting to receive them. And did that young lady change? Did she withdraw her love from the unworthy object and give it to the other? She did not. Her answer every time was: "Mother, I cannot." Just in this sense, relatively, the sinner is free. He is free to love most what he likes best, and that is himself and the world. In this state he would forever remain but for "the grace of God which bringeth salvation." Right here comes in the necessity for the change of heart, the new creation and regeneration, as Paul calls it; the being born again, as the Lord and Peter call it, upon which everything depends, and without which no man can enter the kingdom of heaven. This is connected with the drawing of the Father, "for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh upon the heart."