FOLLOW THE LAMB. SELECTIONS BY
HORATIUS BONAR. MY SHEEP HEAR MY VOICE, AND THEY
FOLLOW ME. John 10, verse 27. Christian, your whole life is
to be one continuous following of the Lord. You begin with turning
your back upon the world and looking to Jesus. Keep ever thus,
looking to Him brought rest to you at first and healed your
soul. So looking to Him daily will
maintain your rest and perfect your spiritual health. Christian,
should your eye ever be withdrawn from the cross, you will be sure
to go backwards, to grow cold, and to forget that you were purged
from your old sins. That cross is life, health, holiness,
consolation, strength, and joy. Let nothing come between it and
you. Christian, your life is a book. It may be a volume of larger
or smaller size. Conversion is but the title page
or the preface. The book itself remains to be
written, and your years and weeks and days are its chapters and
pages and lines. It is a book written for eternity. See that it be written well.
It is a book for the inspection of enemies as well as friends. Be careful of every word. It is a book written under the
eye of God. Let it be done reverently, without
levity, yet without constraint or terror. The grace of God is
your strength, as it is your joy. and it is only by abiding
in it that you can really live the life of the redeemed. Be
strong, then, in this grace. Draw your joy out of it, and
beware how you turn to anything else for refreshment, or comfort,
or holiness. Though a believer, you are still
a sinner, a sinner to the last, and as such nothing can suit
you but the free love of God. Draw continually on Christ and
His fullness for this grace. This abounding grace, rightly
understood, will not make you sin. It will not relax morality
or make inconsistency a trifle. It will magnify sin and enhance
its evil in your eyes. Let the righteousness of the
Righteous One Be your daily covering. Don't dally with error, and don't
tamper with truth. Buy the truth, at any price,
but sell it not, for all the gold and silver on earth. But
the love of controversy is pernicious, even when it takes the side of
truth. The man who likes better to be
fighting about his food than eating it is likely to remain
lean enough. Disputes, like offenses, must
sometimes come. But, like David's sharp razor,
they work deceitfully, and are difficult to handle safely. They often eat out love, even
when they do not destroy faith. We deal with a slack hand in
things pertaining to our own sins, and let things go unreproved
and uncondemned in ourselves which we are sharp enough to
discover and rebuke in others. Deal honestly with every part
of your daily life, in regard to duty, or trial, or sacrifice,
or self-denial, or forbearance with others. Strange that in
spiritual things we should try to cheat ourselves as well as
others. Yet so it is. We are loath to
take the worst view of our own case, to think evil of ourselves,
to act the stern censor in regard to our own omissions and commissions. We have few excuses for others,
many for ourselves. Evils that seem monstrous in
others are trifles when in us. When looking at others we use
a microscope, at ourselves we either shut our eyes or put on
a veil. This dishonest dealing is very
pernicious. This covering of sin is destructive
both of peace and progress. If you are one given to the divine
companionship, you will be saved from much idle and wasteful society
and conversation. You will not feel at home with
worldly men, nor they with you. Do not conform to the world in
order to please men or to save yourself from their taunt or
jest. Go where you please if you can
take Jesus with you. Go nowhere if He cannot be admitted,
or if you are obliged for the time to conceal or disguise your
divine discipleship. Beware of going through prayer
in a careless or perfunctory way. like a hireling doing his
work in order to get done with it. Pray in the Holy Spirit. Pray with honest fervor and simple
faith, as men who really want what they ask for, and expect
to get it all. Few things tend more to deaden
the soul, to harden the heart, to drive out spirituality, than
cold, formal prayer. It will eat as does a canker.
dread it, and shun it. Do not mock God by asking what
you don't want, or by pretending to desire what you don't care
for. Be much alone with God. Do not
put Him off with a quarter of an hour morning and evening.
Take time to get thoroughly acquainted. Converse over everything with
Him. Unbosom yourself wholly. Every
thought, feeling, plan, doubt, all to him. He wants converse
with his creatures. Shall his creatures not want
converse with him? He wants not merely to be on
good terms with you, if one may use man's phrase, but to be intimate. Shall you decline the intimacy,
and be satisfied with mere acquaintance? What, intimate with the world,
with friends, with neighbors, but not with God? that would
look ill indeed. Folly to prefer the clay to the
potter, the marble to the sculptor, this little earth and its lesser
creatures to the mighty Maker of the universe, the Great All
in All. You must go straight to Jesus
with that cold heart, and warm it at His cross. Then your work
for Him will be at once a necessity, a delight, and a success. The Christian has discovered
one book truer, more precious, and more poetical than all the
rest together. All truth is precious, though
not all divine. Let the Bible be to us the book
of books, the one book in all the world whose every wisdom
is truth. and whose every verse is wisdom. In studying it, be sure to take
it for what it really is, the revelation of the thoughts of
God given us in the words of God, knowing that we have divine
thoughts embodied in divine words, through the inspiration of an
unerring translator. We sit down to the study of the
Heavenly Volume, assured that we shall find in all its teachings
the perfection of wisdom, and in its language the most accurate
expression of that wisdom that the finite speech of man can
utter. Every word of God is as perfect
as it is pure. Let us read and re-read the scriptures,
meditating on them day and night. They never grow old, they never
lose their sap. they never run dry. Though it
is right and profitable, as I have said, to read other books if
they are true and good, yet beware of reading too many. Do not let
man's book thrust God's book into a corner. Do not let commentaries
smother the text, nor let the true and the good shut out the
truer and the better. Take heed to your steps. Beware
not merely of falling, but of stumbling. Walk circumspectly,
not as fools, but as wise, like men in an enemy's country, or
like travellers climbing a hill, slippery with ice, and terrible
with precipices, where every step may be a fall, and every
fall a plunge into a chasm. Beware of little slips. slight
inconsistencies, as they are called, they are the beginning
of all backsliding, and they are in themselves evil, as well
as hateful to God. Keep your garments undefiled,
beware of small spots as well as larger stains or rents, and
the moment you discover any speck, however small, go, wash in the
fountain, THAT YOUR GARMENTS MAY BE ALWAYS WHITE, AND SO PLEASING
IN THE EYES OF HIM WHOSE YOU ARE AND WHOM YOU SERVE. CRUCIFY
THE FLESH WITH ITS AFFECTIONS AND LUSTS. MORTIFY YOUR MEMBERS
WHICH ARE UPON THE EARTH. STAND ALOOF FROM THE WORLD'S
GAIETY, AND BE JEALOUS OF WHAT ARE CALLED HARMLESS AMUSEMENTS. I DO NOT CONDEMN ALL AMUSEMENTS. but I ask that they should be
useful and profitable, not merely harmless. Dancing and card-playing
are the world's devices for killing time. They are bits of the world
and the world's ways which will ensnare your feet and lead you
away from the cross. Let them alone. Keep away from
the ballroom, the opera, the oratorio, the theatre. Dress,
finery, and display are deadly snares. Put away levity and frivolity. Be you a Christian in little
things as well as great. Dread little sins, little errors,
little omissions of duty. Remember the Master's words about
denying self, every part of self. Be not a servant of self, or
a worshipper of self, or a lover of self, in any form. Take up
your cross and follow your Lord. As it is written, even Christ
pleased not Himself. God's aim in all His doings of
grace is to hide pride from man, to hinder boasting, to keep the
sinner humble. All confidence in the flesh,
all trust in self, all reliance on the creature, are set aside
by that great work of the Divine Substitute who did all for us
and left us nothing to do out of which it would be possible
to extract a boast. Let us fling away self-esteem
and high-mindedness, for it is the very essence of unbelief. Be meek, be poor in spirit, be
humble, be teachable, be gentle, and easy to be entreated, putting
away all high thoughts and lofty imaginations. either about what
we are or what we can do, content to take the obscurest corner
and the lowest seat, and this not to indulge in a false lowliness
or in the pride that apes humility, feeding our vanity with the thought
that we are martyrs, and puffing up our fleshly mind with the
idea of our wonderful condescension, or by brooding over our supposed
wrongs and trials. Let us truly be humble, as was
the Son of God, content to live unknown, and to do our work unnoticed,
as a work not for the eye of man, but of God. Keep self in
the background, and don't say or do anything that looks like
baiting your hook for a little praise. True spiritual discernment
is much lost sight of as a real Christian grace. discernment
between the evil and the good, the false and the true. Beloved,
believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they
are of God, because many false prophets are gone out into the
world. This discernment, which belongs
to every one who is taught of God, is the very opposite of
that which is called in our day by the boastful name of Liberality. Spiritual discernment and liberal
thought have little in common with each other. Truth is a mighty
thing in the eyes of God, whatever it may be in those of men. All
error is, more or less, whether directly or indirectly, a misrepresentation
of God's character, and a subversion of His revelation. Satan is the
consummate deceiver. It is Satan who gives to the
ballroom and the dance, and the theatre and the voluptuous music,
their special power to harm. For these are Satan's baits and
nets, by means of which he allures the unwary, and leads back the
believer to unbelieving ground, disarming our watchfulness, dazzling
our vision, reviving our worldliness, and perhaps, for a season, lulling
us wholly asleep. We know that the last days are
to be like the days of Noah and Lot, days of reveling and banqueting
and luxury. Let us be wary, lest, standing
as we do on the edge of these days, we may be drawn away into
the sins of an age led captive by Satan. Do something for God. You were neither born nor reborn
for yourselves alone. You may not be able to do much,
but do something. Work while it is day. You may
not be able to give much, but give something, according to
your ability, remembering that the Lord loves a cheerful giver.
Take heed and beware of covetousness, for the love of money is the
root of all evil. Whenever worldliness comes in,
in any shape, Whether it be the love of money or love of pleasure,
you cease to be faithful to Christ and are trying to serve both
God and Mammon. I am the Lord that brings you
up out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You shall therefore
be holy, for I am holy. God calls us to be holy. He becomes
our God to make us like himself. He calls us to be partakers of
the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the
world through lust. He expects that we should represent
Him among our fellow men by our resemblance to Himself. God calls
us to be holy. He expects us to grow in unlikeness
to this world and in likeness to that world which is to come.
He expects us to follow Him. who did no sin, even though the
attainment of perfection should not be in a day or a year, but
the growth of a lifetime. It is for lack of daily growth,
not for lack of complete and constant sinlessness, that God
so often challenges His own. Let us grow. Let us bring forth
fruit. Put you on the Lord Jesus Christ,
and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof. Self, in all its forms, is a
hindrance to our spiritual growth. Self-will, self-sufficiency,
self-indulgence, self-importance, self-glory, self-seeking, self-brooding—all
these mar fruitfulness. Denying self is the beginning,
the middle, and the end of our course here as followers of Christ. takes the form of covetousness,
or love of money, of luxury, or love of foods and drinks and
the good things of this life. How can a man grow when he is
pampering self instead of crucifying the flesh, when he is indulging
and fondling the old man instead of nailing him to the cross,
when he is enjoying all softness and ease and worldly comfort
instead of enduring hardness, and taking up his cross, and
mortifying his members which are upon the earth. COVETOUSNESS The love of money
is the root of all evil. Few things are more hateful in
a Christian man than this. Few things more completely destroy
his influence, and few things more sadly or more justly, make
him the scorn of the world, than eagerness for money, or stinginess
in parting with it. The covetous man cannot grow
spiritually. He must ever remain a stunted
Christian. Filthy lucre is poison to the
soul. If we do not make friends of
the mammon of unrighteousness by laying out our substance for
God, it will become the blight of spirituality. the destruction
of our religious life. Be generous, be large-hearted,
be open-handed, be loving, be free in giving, if you would
grow. PRIDE. Self-satisfaction in any
shape, or self-admiration of any kind, in regard to person,
or property, or accomplishments, or These are immensely hurtful
to spiritual life. True godliness prospers only
in the lowly heart, the heart which, in proportion as it becomes
more and more satisfied with Christ, becomes more and more
dissatisfied with itself. If the Master was meek and lowly,
shall the disciple be anything else? The good-natured formality
of thousands is just the hateful lukewarmness of Laodicea. Do you say that you are in Christ
and that you are abiding in Him? Then you ought to walk as He
walked. You are bound to follow His footsteps. We seek henceforth conformity
to Him who has set us free and who bids us follow Him in the
path of conformity to the Father's will. Love him who has brought
our souls out of prison by going into prison for us.