Daily Devotionals

Mornings and Evenings with Jesus

Devotional: May 15th

I am as a wonder unto many. - Psalms 71:7.

WHAT the Psalmist here says concerning himself may be said by Christians now, for “they are men wondered at.” The men of the world wonder at the Christians’ preferences. They think it strange that they run not with them to the same excess of riot; that they can so readily dispense with those diversions and amusements which seem almost necessary to their very existence: but they know not what it is that has weaned them from it all, -that it is the discovery of something infinitely superior; otherwise they would not wonder that a man should leave the filthy puddle for the spring of living waters, or quit the dunghill to ascend a throne. Then they wonder that Christians should find such delight in the exercises of the Lord’s day; that they should hail it as the day the best of all the seven, “and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, and honourable,” while they are saying, “What a weariness it is! when will it be over?” They know nothing of the spiritual taste Christians possess, nothing of their love to God; otherwise they would not wonder that they find such delight in approaching unto him, while they say, “Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon the earth that I desire beside thee.”

Their expressions under affliction often perplex the people of the world. They see them in their patience possessing their souls, that while they moan they do not murmur. They see their afflictions, but they do not see their consolations; they see their various burdens, and often wonder they do not sink under them; but they know nothing of the everlasting arms underneath them; how that the “eternal God is their refuge, and that he has made with them an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure,” when he makes not other things to grow. They know not how they call upon him in a day of trouble, and that he “strengthens them with strength in their souls, and that while in the world they have tribulation in him they have peace.”

Their conduct is often equally puzzling to them. They wonder to see them following a course which is not likely to gain them worldly advantage, but which exposes them to endure reproach and self-denial. They know not the lever that moves them, and are unacquainted with the love of Christ, that sets all in motion: if they knew this, they would not wonder that it should constrain them to love him in return. Neither can they judge of the system of doctrine which they hold: the truths and promises seem in their view to lead to licentiousness; yet the believers of them lead the strictest of all lives, and their liberality is known unto all.

Thus it is that Christians perplex others and cause them to wonder. It is to their honour and their distinction that they are “wonders unto many.”

As a root out of a dry ground, he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him there is no beauty that we should desire him. - Isaiah 53:2.

THIS is most culpable ignorance. If we found a man who was entirely insensible to Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” or Cowper’s “Task,” dead to Raffael’s pencil, to all the beautiful and sublime scenery of nature, to all that is illustrious and inspiring in human disposition and action, we should be ready to say, Why this senselessness is enough to make a stone speak. Men may be undeserving of the praise they obtain, or if the praise be deserved in the reality, it may be excessive in the degree. But it is impossible to ascribe titles too magnificent, attributes too exalted, adoration too intense, to him who “is fairer than the children of men;” who is “the chief among ten thousand, and the altogether lovely;” for “how great is his beauty!”

“All human beauties, all divine,

In our beloved meet and shine.”

Oh! there have been individuals whom it would have been a sin not to have admired and applauded. We have heard of a Pearce, a Wilberforce, a Winter, and a Newton, who seemed to be “the Spirits of just men made perfect.” We have heard of a Howard, and have melted at the recollection before his image in St. Paul’s; of a Fenelon, who seemed to possess the meekness of wisdom and the wisdom of meekness; and as to Archbishop Usher, Bishop Burnet says, “In free and frequent conversation I had with him for twenty-five years, I never heard him utter a word which had not a tendency to edification; and I never saw him in any other frame than that in which I wish to be found when I come to die.” But He made all these fine beings- all their excellencies were derived from Him; and if all these excellencies, and all other excellencies that could be extracted from men on earth or from angels in heaven, were assembled together, the aggregate could be no more compared with his glory, than a drop to the ocean or a beam to the sun.

Now to be insensible to such a Being as this, argues not merely a want of intellectual, but of moral taste; and evinces not only ignorance, but depravity. The man is dead; but, as the Apostle says, “he is dead in trespasses and sins”-that is, morally and guiltily dead. He can “walk according to the course of this world,” though he cannot take a step in the way everlasting. He can feel a veneration before an earthly judge, but he can constantly trifle in the presence of the Judge of all. He can admire an earthly friend, but never extols that “Friend who sticketh closer than a brother:”

“Whose heart is made of tenderness,

Whose bowels melt with love.”

He can idolize the hero that falls in defence of his country; he can applaud all that the chisel, all that the pen, all that the pencil can produce, and aid in rolling along his fellow-creature’s fame to the end of the earth; but he who died not for a country, but for a world, and for a world of crime, He awakens no emotion, no respect.

“Brightness of thy Father’s glory,

Shall thy praise unheeded he?

Fly, my soul, such guilty silence,

Sing the Lord who came to die.”