2 Corinthians 5:6-9 Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: These were the words that arose to our recollection in visiting that old castle of St. Andrews, out of which Hamilton and Wishart, our first Scotch martyrs, came to die for God's truth at the stake. Groping our way along a tortuous passage, we descended by some steps into an inner prison, and there, by a beam of light that streamed through a loophole of the massive wall, we saw an opening in the rocky floor. Candles lighted and let down showed a shaft descending into the bowels of the rock, where, widening out like the neck of a bottle, it formed a dreadful dungeon. It was called — and justly — an oubliette, or place of forgetfulness, because those that black mouth swallowed up were ever after lost to life, to light, to liberty. It made one shudder to look down into that horrible pit; nothing seen but the blackness of darkness — nothing heard but the muffled sound of the waves, as bursting on its rocky walls they seemed to moan for the deeds that had been perpetrated there. "There," says John Knox, "many of God's children suffered death, pining away slowly till their life lapped up like the tide on the shore, or was suddenly destroyed by the blow of the assassin." Such were the bloody days and deeds of Popery — never more, we trust, to return. But as our fancy called up the men who entered that low door to be let down like a coffin into that living sepulchre, never to come out but to die on the scaffold or the stake, the words that sprang to our memory were, "They walked by faith, not by sight." The apostle makes a similar application of these words, which are the key to what must have been regarded as a perfect enigma. Note not the resignation only, but the cheerfulness with which he and his fellow-Christians suffered wrong (2 Corinthians 4:17, 18). No doubt our days are in many respects very different from his, but the changes that have taken place in the world since the days of Paul have not changed human nature. This world is like yon volcanic mountain, where vineyards and fig-trees cover its sides with verdure; an occasional growl, a tremor, a puff of smoke, proves that the volcano that buried Herculaneum and Pompeii in its fiery discharges is not dead; it is but dormant. But whatever be the age we live in, whether we shall wear a martyr's crown or not, all the saints that go to glory must go there by the way of faith. The believer walks by faith — I. IN THE WORK AND CROSS OF CHRIST. 1. By faith Noah, Abraham, David, etc., won themselves a place in the cloud of witnesses. And yet he who waited for the consolation of Israel was second to none of them. What is that he holds in his aged arms? An infant — the offspring of a poor woman; born in a stable, a flame, a breath would blow out. Simeon is at that stage in human life when enthusiasm dies, and yet this sight throws him into an holy ecstasy. And why? The long looked-for has come at last; and now, as if there were nothing more on earth worth looking at or waiting for, he lifts his aged arms and eyes to heaven to exclaim, "Now, Lord," etc. Faith never uttered a bolder speech than that. In that infant, as I have seen the giant oak wrapped up in the tiny acorn, Simeon saw the Saviour of mankind, and in the arm that hung round a mother's neck, the strength that sustained the universe. He walked by faith in that, and yet we have more need than he to walk by faith. He said, "Mine eyes have seen Thy salvation" — a privilege ours never shall enjoy till these eyes are closed on this world and open on another. Still more had the disciples in their senses aids to their faith which we do not enjoy. Simeon saw the boy; they saw the man; they touched the hand that wrenched its fetters from the tomb; they heard the voice that rebuked the tempest and cured disease, and said, "Thy sins be forgiven thee." 2. Are we ready to envy the apostles and Simeon? "Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed." The faith of the humblest believer nowadays is in some senses a higher attainment than theirs. The emigrant who sees the hills of his native land sink beneath the wave, and goes away to the land of gold, has seen and handled the gold dug from the mines of that distant land. He has seen those who have been there — go out poor and come back rich; but I believe in a land to which I have seen hundreds go, but none come back to unveil its secrets. I believe in a Saviour I never saw, and never saw the man that saw, and commit to His keeping what is more precious than all the gold of the Bank of England — viz., my precious soul. I stake my everlasting welfare on works done eighteen long centuries ago, of which there is not one solitary vestige now on this earth for my faith to cling to, like ivy to a crumbling ruin. And does the world say to me, "Such trust were madness in earthly matters"? I admit it, but "I am not mad, most noble Festus." Is He unseen? Why the most real things in this world are unseen. My spirit is unseen. The things you see are but the shadows of the unseen, and because my Saviour is unseen, that no more shakes my faith in Him than it shakes my faith in God, in angels, in the heavens, in the spirits of the blest who await my coming. 3. Yon lighthouse tower that stands among the tumbling waves, seems to have nothing but them to rest on, but beneath the waves its foundation is the solid rock. And what that tower is to the but on yon sandbank, which the last storm threw up, and the next shall sweep back into the sea, Christ's righteousness is to mine-Christ's works to my best ones. And so, when the Christian man was dying after a life full of good works, and they told him of them, he replied, "I take my good works and my bad works, and I east them in one heap, and I flee from them both to Jesus. He is all my salvation, He is all my desire." II. IN THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD. 1. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night teacheth knowledge of Him. All nature is vocal with His praise. For a man to sit down and write a book to prove it, seems to me a perfect waste of time and labour, graved as these are on every rock, written on every leaf, painted on every flower. But though that be true, generally, what may be called His special providence, at least so far as regards His own people, is very often with them more a thing of faith than a thing of sight. The sun shines on the evil and on the good, the rain falls alike on the just and unjust, and there are many things besides death of which it is true that there is one event to all. Nay, our faith finds stumbling-blocks far more staggering than this. There is Lazarus begging at a rich man's gate. In poverty, in disease, in domestic trials, I have seen God's people have the bitterest cup to drink, and the heaviest burden to bear. "Peace, Mary, peace," said a godly woman, who had lost all her family, to a godless neighbour, who was rebelling against the providence that had taken one child of many; "while I have six empty pairs of shoes to look on you have but one." There are trying circumstances in which the only safety or confidence of a believer rest in walking by faith, and not by sight; in believing how "behind a frowning providence" God hides a smiling face. 2. In ascending a lofty mountain, standing high above all its fellows, which the sun is the first to reach and the last to leave, I have seen the rock that crowned it cleft with storm, and its summit all naked and bare, and so, sometimes, with those whose heads are most in heaven. What are they to do under such circumstances? On the higher Alps, along a path no broader than a mule's foothold, that skirted a dreadful precipice, I have known a timid traveller who fancied it safest to shut her eyes and not attempt to guide the course nor touch the bridle. And there are times in the believer's life when, if he would keep himself from failing into despair, he must, as it were, shut his eyes, lay the bridle on the neck of Providence, and "walk by faith, not by sight." 3. Had Jacob, for instance, done so, he had played a nobler part in Pharaoh's palace; he had stood a venerable witness for the God of truth in that heathen palace instead of indulging in this pitiful cry, "Few and evil have been the days of my pilgrimage on earth." He lived to regret he had ever said it, and to bear other testimony to the providence of God. Our great dramatist says of one of his characters that nothing of his life became him so much as the leaving it. Nor did anything in Jacob's life become him so much as the leaving it. "The God which fed me all my life long unto this day, the angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads." Jacob dies in the light of faith. Never say, "All these things are against me." Let all His waves and billows go over ye, let your bark go rolling and staggering amid the sea of troubles; never yield to the belief that you are the sport of chance, at the mercy of winds and waves. Your Father is at the helm, as the sailor boy said. III. IN AND TO ANOTHER WORLD. The discovery of the New World was not, like many discoveries, an accident; it was the reward of Christopher Columbus's faith. He found fruits on the shores of Europe, cast up by the Atlantic waves, which he knew must have grown in lands beyond. They thought him mad to leave his home, to launch on a sea which keel had never ploughed, in search of a land man had never seen. I tell that infidel that I know whom I have believed; I can give a reason for the faith that is in me; and so could he. And so he launched his bark on the deep, and with strange seas around him, storms without, and mutinies within, that remarkable man stood by the helm, and kept the prow of his bark onward till the joyful cry, "Land!" rang from the mast-head, and faith was crowned with success, and patience had her perfect work. Now I look on that man as one of the finest types of a believer, but I cannot read his story without feeling that it puts our faith to the blush. "I have not found such great faith; no, not in Israel." What had he? He walked by faith, and not by faith such as we have. He had but conjecture, we have certainty; he had not even the word of man that lies; we have the word of Him, that cannot lie. (T. Guthrie, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: |
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