The Soul's Desertion 2

And so, a child of God soon loses all his joy and comfort when the tenant of his soul is withdrawn. No sparkling of the eye, no singing of the great hallelujahs; no sounding of the cymbals, even the high-sounding cymbals. He will be glad enough to get a note out of the sack but now. He cannot get up to those glorious songs which once made his spirit keep tune with the angels because the joys of heaven had come down to earth.

Then the house, being empty, is sure to 'get into a state of filth'. There is nobody to clean the dust; all sorts of spiders and foul things get into the corners and crannies, and the longer the house is shut up the more these creatures multiply. Down in the cellar there is a little vegetation -- long yellow stalks and roots trying to live -- left there by some old inhabitant. But there is nothing fair, nor beautiful; all is uncomfortable. So it gets to be in our hearts. All sorts of evils spring up. Evils we little suspected, which would have been kept in check by the presence of Christ, begin to multiply and increase upon us, and the little good that is in us seems be an unhealthy sprout, bringing forth nothing unto perfection.

Then a house with nobody in it 'decays'. How the metal rusts! How the paint gets stained! How the wood begins to rot! How the whole thing has a damp kind of smell! It is all going to ruin. Why, ten years of habitation would not do so much mischief as these twelve months of shutting up.

When Jesus Christ is gone, 'everything is amiss' -- love nearly expires, hope scarcely glimmers, faith is well-near paralysed, no grace is in lively exercise. Without the life of God in the soul, there is a total collapse, and a chill strikes right through the spirit.

Has the house been long empty? The boys outside are pretty sure to mark it for their sport, and to break the windows. In fact, it stands 'exposed to all sorts of outward damage'. So, too, with malice and mischief, the devil will come upon a man when he knows that he has lost the light of God's countenance. What a horrible old coward he is! When the child of God is rejoicing in the company of Christ, he has not often to encounter Satan. The accuser of the brethren well knows how to time his tactics and his temptations. But when he sees that the Lord he departed, then Satan takes courage, and attacks the child of God to his serious damage and hurt.

I heard the other day of a good country ploughman who told a story of victory over temptation in his own simple style. He was a man who feared God above his neighbors, and seemed to live above the world in spiritual things. A minister asked him if he did not get tempted and worried sometimes by Satan. "Yes," he said; "I have known much about being tempted by Satan in my time. Why, sir, ten years ago I was threshing in this barn here, and the devil came upon me with a strong temptation. It plagued and worried me so, that I could not get rid of it; until at length I put down my flail, and got away into a corner, just beyond the wheat there, and I wrestled with God against him until I gained such a victory that I came back to my place rejoicing. Many a time since that," said the old man, "he has lurked about my path; but I never stop to parley with him. I repeat the promise by which I found a way of escape that day in this barn, and I feel myself made strong by the remembrance of that victory, " Ay, and just so when we can remember some of those occasions when we seemed to overcome temptation by private communion with God, then we get strong, but

"Let the Lord be once withdrawn,
And we attempt the work alone,
When new temptations spring and rise,
We find how great our weakness is."

Like Samson, when his hair was lost, we think we shall defeat Satan as at other times, but we--
"make our limbs with vain surprise,

Make feeble fight, and shut our eyes."

When houses have been long left without tenants and look deserted, they get up a rumor that they are 'haunted'. And sure I am that when a heart has been left by Christ, and there have been no comfortable enjoyments of his presence, our souls do get haunted with strange, mysterious doubts and fears, vexations and forebodings which you cannot grapple with; horrors that do not take any shape; troubles that ought not to be distressing; alarms that are made up of shadows; dangers that have not any real existence. Oh! that Christ were there! As phantoms would all vanish in the sunlight, so would all these dreary doubts and dismal dilemmas be chased away if Christ returned.

Oh! that our poor empty house could once more have its gates flung wide open, and that the King could come to dwell in his own palace, and make it all bright and lustrous with his presence! Master, see how sick we are without you! Come, blessed Physician! Jesus, see what wretched beings we are if you withdraw! Come, our Beloved; come to us! Let the sad effects of your departure quicken your footsteps, and bring you over the mountains of division to the longing spirits of your fainting children.

Passing on, let us enquire-- WHAT COMFORT IS THERE FOR A SOUL WHEN THE BELOVED HAS WITHDRAWN HIMSELF AND IS GONE!

Let me reply, there is no comfort at all that will be of any service to you unless you get him back. Ah! but if a wife loves her husband, and he is gone, we may quote the old song: --

"There is no luck about the house,

When the good man is away."

The dear man, the joy of her heart, being gone, she could not make anything go well. And so, where the loving heart has lost its Beloved, it's best Beloved, there seems to be no joy anywhere. Nothing can make up to a regenerate soul for the loss of the society of her Lord.

And yet some considerations may help to stay us while we are seeking for it. Though he is gone, he is our Beloved still. Though we cannot see him, yet we love him; and if we cannot enjoy him, we thirst after him, and that is some consolation, though it be a poor consolation, to think it has not quite lost all its life, for it has got life enough to hurt, and life enough to be in pain, and life enough to feel itself in exile until Christ's return.

Methinks, too, there is some comfort in this, that though he is gone, he is gone out of love. Was it in a tiff of anger? yet it was rather a rebuke of our sins than a rejection of our people. Christ withdraws because he needs to bring us to our senses, and to draw us more closely to himself. He knows that if we were to have enjoyments, and yet walk in sin, this would be highly dangerous; therefore, these enjoyments must be withheld until the heart is broken, and the soul abhors itself in dust and ashes. It is some comfort also, that though he is gone, he net gone out of earshot. Jesus Christ can still hear the cry of his people. No, he is not gone beyond the reach of his eyesight. He is looking upon his poor deserted one to see what the effect of his hiding himself is.

And there is this to be said, that he is not so far gone but what at any moment he can return, and his return can at once make our souls like the chariots of Amminadab. He can rise upon our darkness, and that in the next instant if so it pressed him. He is gone, but he is not altogether gone. He has not taken his love from us, nor shall his loving-kindness utterly fail. Still on his hands he bears the marks of his passion for our salvation. Still on his breast-plate glitter the jewels that bear our names. He cannot forget us, though he hides himself. He may be asleep, but it is in the same boat with us, and near the helm. He may appear to have utterly deserted us, but "can a woman forget her sucking child that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb", Yes, they may forget, but Christ shall never forget his saints.

But now, lastly-- WHAT IS OUR DUTY IN SUCH A PLIGHT?

If he is gone, what then? I answer -- our duty is to repent of that which has driven him away. We must institute a search at once. Bunyan describes the citizens of Mansoul as searching for the cause why Emmanuel had withdrawn himself, and they took Master Carnal-Security, and burned his house, and hanged him on a gallows on the site where the house stood, for it was through feasting with him that the Prince was angered, and his subjects lost his presence.

Search yourselves if you are not as happy as you were; if you are not living as near heaven-gate as you were, search yourselves. And having so done, and found out the evil, ask grace to be purged of it. Oh! you will fall into that evil again if you trust to your own strength, but in reliance upon the Holy Spirit's power you can overcome it; you can put your foot upon the neck of this evil, and so destroy it that it shall not molest you again.

And then, beloved, let me earnestly entreat you -- and I am speaking more to myself, perhaps, than I am to any of you -- to stir up your whole soul to recover lost ground. Be ashamed that there is any lost ground to recover. Oh! it is easier to lose Christ than it is to find him after we have lost him. It is easier to go straight on in the strength of grace than it is to have to go back to find your roll which you have lost under the settle in the harbor of ease, and then, after going back, to have to go over the same ground again.

When you have got the wings of an eagle, what blessed work it is to soar, and to pass over long tracks of country! But when the eagle-wing is gone, and you have to limp painfully along, like David, with broken bones, it is hard work. But, beloved, if you have slipped at all, ask grace to recover now. For my own part, I feel I have so little grace that I have none to lose. As to falling back -- oh! what should we be if we fell at all back, for we are back enough now! We are nowhere at all in comparison with the saints of God in the olden times. We are but beginners and babes, but where, where, where shall we be if we are to go farther back still? No, no, sovereign grace, prevent so dreadful a catastrophe! Press forward.

And, brethren, will it not be a great thing and a right thing for us to endeavour to set apart much time for special prayer that we may have lost grace restored? Should we not set ourselves to this one thing, that we must get back by the simplicity of faith to the cross-foot, and by the earnestness of love unto the bosom of the Master once more, and that we will not he satisfied with preaching, and praying, and going to places of worship, or with ordinances, or with anything, until we get Christ back again? Oh! my soul, I charge you be content with nothing until you get your Lord again. Say, with the good housewife I spoke of just now, whose husband was from home, "Yes, this room shall be decorated, and every part of the house shall be cleansed, but, ah! the joy of my heart will be to see him return, and until he come the house cannot be cheerful and joyous." It is so with our souls. We must have the King back, and back soon. But when he does come back, we must hold him fast, and not let him go. Charge your souls to be more careful in the future, lest you again provoke him to jealousy.

Alas! for those who never knew my Lord! Oh! may they seek him early, and find him speedily! If it is sad to lose his presence for awhile, what must it be to live and die without Christ? Oh! that is a black word for anyone to have written on his brow-- "Without Christ." If you are in that condition, dear hearer, may divine grace bring you to Christ, and Christ to you, that you may enjoy the fellowship of his love! Amen.

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