Evening and Morning
By Charles Haddon Spurgeon
January 19
Morning
"I
sought him, but I found him not."—Song of Solomon 3:1.
Tell me where you lost the
company of Christ, and I will tell you the most likely place to find Him. Have
you lost Christ in the closet by restraining prayer? Then it is there you must
seek and find Him. Did you lose Christ by sin? You will find Christ in no other
way but by the giving up of the sin, and seeking by the Holy Spirit to mortify
the member in which the lust doth dwell. Did you lose Christ by neglecting the
Scriptures? You must find Christ in the Scriptures. It is a true proverb,
"Look for a thing where you dropped it, it is there." So look for
Christ where you lost Him, for He has not gone away. But it is hard work to go
back for Christ. Bunyan tells us, the pilgrim found the piece of the road back
to the Arbour of Ease, where he lost his roll, the
hardest he had ever travelled. Twenty miles onward is easier than to go one
mile back for the lost evidence.
Take care, then, when you
find your Master, to cling close to Him. But how is it you have lost Him? One
would have thought you would never have parted with such a precious friend,
whose presence is so sweet, whose words are so
comforting, and whose company is so dear to you! How is it that you did not
watch Him every moment for fear of losing sight of Him? Yet, since you have let
Him go, what a mercy that you are seeking Him, even though you mournfully
groan, "O that I knew where I might find Him!" Go on seeking, for it
is dangerous to be without thy Lord. Without Christ you are like a sheep without
its shepherd; like a tree without water at its roots; like a sere leaf in the
tempest—not bound to the tree of life. With thine
whole heart seek Him, and He will be found of thee: only give thyself
thoroughly up to the search, and verily, thou shalt yet discover Him to thy joy
and gladness.
Evening
"Then
opened He their understanding, that they might understand the
Scriptures."—Luke 24:45.
He whom we viewed last
evening as opening Scripture, we here perceive opening
the understanding. In the first work He has many fellow-labourers,
but in the second He stands alone; many can bring the Scriptures to the mind,
but the Lord alone can prepare the mind to receive the Scriptures. Our Lord
Jesus differs from all other teachers; they reach the ear, but He instructs the
heart; they deal with the outward letter, but He imparts an inward taste for
the truth, by which we perceive its savour and
spirit. The most unlearned of men become ripe scholars in the school of grace
when the Lord Jesus by His Holy Spirit unfolds the mysteries of the kingdom to
them, and grants the divine anointing by which they are enabled to behold the
invisible. Happy are we if we have had our understandings cleared and
strengthened by the Master! How many men of profound learning are ignorant of
eternal things! They know the killing letter of revelation, but its killing
spirit they cannot discern; they have a veil upon their hearts
which the eyes of carnal reason cannot penetrate. Such was our case a
little time ago; we who now see were once utterly blind; truth was to us as
beauty in the dark, a thing unnoticed and neglected. Had it not been for the
love of Jesus we should have remained to this moment in utter ignorance, for
without His gracious opening of our understanding, we could no more have
attained to spiritual knowledge than an infant can climb the Pyramids, or an
ostrich fly up to the stars. Jesus' College is the only one in which God's
truth can be really learned; other schools may teach us what is to be believed,
but Christ's alone can show us how to believe it. Let us sit at the feet of
Jesus, and by earnest prayer call in His blessed aid that our dull wits may
grow brighter, and our feeble understandings may receive heavenly things.