Evening and Morning
By Charles Haddon Spurgeon
June 4
Morning
"The kindness and love of God our Saviour."—Titus 3:4.
How sweet it is to behold
the Saviour communing with His own beloved people!
There can be nothing more delightful than, by the Divine Spirit, to be led into
this fertile field of delight. Let the mind for an instant consider the history
of the Redeemer's love, and a thousand enchanting acts of affection will
suggest themselves, all of which have had for their design the weaving of the
heart into Christ, and the intertwisting of the thoughts and emotions of the
renewed soul with the mind of Jesus. When we meditate upon this amazing love,
and behold the all-glorious Kinsman of the Church endowing her with all His
ancient wealth, our souls may well faint for joy. Who is he that can endure
such a weight of love? That partial sense of it which
the Holy Spirit is sometimes pleased to afford, is more than the soul can
contain; how transporting must be a complete view of it! When the soul shall
have understanding to discern all the Saviour's
gifts, wisdom wherewith to estimate them, and time in which to meditate upon
them, such as the world to come will afford us, we shall then commune with
Jesus in a nearer manner than at present. But who can imagine the sweetness of
such fellowship? It must be one of the things which have not entered into the
heart of man, but which God hath prepared for them that love Him. Oh, to burst
open the door of our Joseph's granaries, and see the plenty which He hath
stored up for us! This will overwhelm us with love. By faith we see, as in a
glass darkly, the reflected image of His unbounded treasures, but when we shall
actually see the heavenly things themselves, with our own eyes, how deep will
be the stream of fellowship in which our soul shall bathe itself! Till then our
loudest sonnets shall be reserved for our loving benefactor, Jesus Christ our
Lord, whose love to us is wonderful, passing the love of women.
Evening
"Received up into glory."—1 Timothy 3:16.
We have seen our
well-beloved Lord in the days of His flesh, humiliated and sore vexed; for He was "despised and rejected of men, a man of
sorrows, and acquainted with grief." He whose
brightness is as the morning, wore the sackcloth of sorrow as His daily dress:
shame was His mantle, and reproach was His vesture. Yet now, inasmuch as He has
triumphed over all the powers of darkness upon the bloody tree, our faith
beholds our King returning with dyed garments from Edom, robed in the splendour of victory. How glorious must He have been in the
eyes of seraphs, when a cloud received Him out of mortal sight, and He ascended
up to heaven! Now He wears the glory which He had with
God or ever the earth was, and yet another glory above all—that which He
has well earned in the fight against sin, death, and hell. As victor He wears
the illustrious crown. Hark how the song swells high! It is a new and sweeter
song: "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, for He hath redeemed us unto God
by His blood!" He wears the glory of an Intercessor who can never fail, of
a Prince who can never be defeated, of a Conqueror who has vanquished every
foe, of a Lord who has the heart's allegiance of every subject. Jesus wears all
the glory which the pomp of heaven can bestow upon
Him, which ten thousand times ten thousand angels can minister to Him. You
cannot with your utmost stretch of imagination conceive His exceeding
greatness; yet there will be a further revelation of it when He shall descend
from heaven in great power, with all the holy angels—"Then shall He
sit upon the throne of His glory." Oh, the splendour
of that glory! It will ravish His people's hearts. Nor is this the close, for
eternity shall sound His praise, "Thy throne, O God, is for ever and
ever!" Reader, if you would joy in Christ's glory hereafter, He must be
glorious in your sight now. Is He so?