Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing

by T. S. Arthur

THE DAWN OF THE MORNING.—I have gone back to my Bible with the old childish love and reverence. I read it with an object now. I know that in it, the beautiful Christ-nature was portrayed; and I read with infinite longings to find Him the "unknown God;" and bright revealings come to me through this Book. I feel that it is Divine, and the light grows upon me; and sometimes like the Apostles, who awakened in the night, and saw Christ transfigured before them, I also saw a transfiguration. I lose sight of the mere material man, and I perceive an inner glory of being, a radiance of wisdom, and purity, and love, that clothe Him in a Divine light, and make His countenance brilliant with a spiritual glory.

This transfiguration, what was it? My thought dwells upon it so—it was a wonderful thing. I know that the scoffing philosophers ridicule the idea of there being any reality in it; they regard it either as a fiction on the part of the writers, or as a dream or a delusion of the senses. But I believe that it all happened just as it was narrated. For it is beautiful to believe it. If it did not happen, I am none the worse for believing it, even if the whole life was a fiction, which all history proves to have been true; and had no Christ lived upon the earth, yet, as a work of art, this fiction would have been the highest and most beautiful dream of the human thought. But if it is all literally true; if Christ was "God manifest in the flesh," how much do I gain by believing in him! I have attained the highest and best of all knowledge—I know GOD!

And this transfiguration becomes a wonderful revelation! It was the Spirit of God shining through the Man. And this spirit was a substance and a form. And what was its form?—that of a man, with a face radiant as the sun. Now know I how to think of God. He is no longer a vague, incomprehensible existence; an ether floating in space. But He is a living, breathing human form, a Man! in whose image and likeness we were created. Oh, how I thank God that He has revealed this to me! Now, I know what manner of Being I pray to; and like as the apostles saw Him, in His Divine spiritual human form, will I now always think of Him. I will look through His veil of flesh, I will love Him as the only God-man that ever existed.

When I think thus of the inner Divine nature, clothed in a material body, how wonderfully do the scenes of this drama of the life of Christ strike me! Imagine Him, the God of the universe, standing before the Jewish sanhedrim, condemned, buffeted, and spit upon. How at that moment in His inmost Divine soul, He must have glanced over the vast creation, that He had called into being; and felt that an Infinite power dwelt in Him. One blazing look of wrathful indignation would have annihilated that rude rabble. But He had clothed himself in flesh, to subdue all of its evil and vile passions; to show to an ignorant and sensual race, the grace and beauty of a self-abnegation—a Divine pity and forgiveness. And thus did the outer material Man die with that beautiful and touching appeal to the Infinite-loving soul, from which the body was born: "Father! forgive them, they know not what they do." Oh, Thou! Divine Jesus! make me like unto Thee in this heavenly and loving spirit.

How clear many things grow to me now! I smile when I think of the old childish trouble over the word "Logos," for this Logos, i. e. truth, has been revealed to me. In the knowledge that Christ was the Infinite God—the Creator of the universe, I see Him as the central truth. Thus Christ was the Logos,—the Word; the Divine Truth, and now I read, that "In the beginning was Christ, and Christ was with God, and Christ was God." And I am happy in this knowledge—my thought has something to rest upon out of myself; and my affections grow up from the earth to that wonderful Divine Man, who, after the death of the body, was seen as a man, a living man! Immortality is no longer the dream of a Plato. It is a demonstrated fact.

In my mind is the stirring of a new life, as in the light of an early morning-glory; the voice of singing birds is in my heart, and an odour of blooming flowers expands itself in the delight of my new day. I see the morning sun in a fixed form, yet flooding worlds with the radiations of its light and heat, and shining in its glory on the dew-bespangled blade of grass. Oh Christ!—thou art my Sun—and I, the tiny blade of grass, rejoice in Thy Divine wisdom and love. Look down upon me, oh, Thou holy One! from the "throne of Thy glory, and the habitation of Thy Holiness," and exhale from me, through the dew of my sorrow, the incense of my love. Draw me up from the earth, even as the sun draws up the bowed plants, and let me drink in the beautiful life of free heavenly airs.

NOON-DAY.—How the light grows! In the warm love of my soul a summer's day glows—so serene and bright, so full of ceaseless activities, that the fruits ripen in a smiling, rosy beauty.

The living Christ hath heard my soul's prayer; and books, which I never before heard of, have revealed to me all those wonderful truths after which my spirit yearned.

First of all, the mystery of the Bible has been made clear to me. I see it now as a beautiful whole. The Infinite knew from the beginning that He was going to descend upon the earth, and take upon Himself a human nature, weak and ignorant and vicious; and that He was to purify and enlighten, and make Divine this fallen nature, that man might know God in a material form, and love Him. All this is written out in the Bible.

I stand on the threshold of a wonderful science. There are innumerable things that I do not comprehend in the Bible; but what I see and understand awakens in me a thrilling delight, and I can never exhaust this book; for it is full of the nerves of life; and I can no more number them than I can count the sensitive fibres that spread themselves from my brain, to the innumerable cellular tissues of my skin. But as the body is full of a sentient life, so is every word of the Bible full of an indwelling life.