"Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I
will give you rest."
"Occupy until I come." Luke 19:13
"Blessed are those servants, whom the Lord when he comes
shall find watching." Luke 12:37
These two verses describe the character and the position
of Christ's faithful servants, who, when the sign of the Son of man shall be
seen in the heavens and the cry heard, "He comes, He comes to judge the
earth," will be found safe in the Gospel Hospice, "occupying" and
"watching;" ready with the exulting challenge, "Who shall separate us from
the love of Christ?"
It is a double message, meanwhile, from the Rest-Giver to
those pilgrims who have borne, and are still bearing their burdens; who have
accepted life as an appointed scene of discipline--every trial appointed;
and who are looking forward with calm expectancy to that day which will
reveal and explain all mysteries and solve all doubts; not over-solicitous
to have the burden weighing on them removed or the cross uplifted, if it be
His will to retain it. "Occupy until I come." "Occupy!" Work. Be
busy. Recognize the present as the time, not for reverie, but as the season
and realm of duty. It is the voice of Jesus, reminding of privilege and
responsibility. "Occupy!" Be not like the lone marsh, the inky pool, with no
outflow for its waters, with the miasma brooding over it, and whose margin
the very birds seem to avoid. Rather be like the flowing stream "bounding
over rock and wild cascade," "occupying" its living, life-giving mission to
fertilize and bless.
"Found watching." This is the complementary call. As
the first is all exhortation to active, unremitting energy--working out
salvation with fear and trembling; the latter is the inculcation of the
passive virtues--waiting and watching, patience and trust. The one is the
exhortation for the girded loins--zeal and activity; the other for the
burning lamps--readiness for the opened door and the Bridegroom's summons,
keeping vigil for the present, if need be, in the gloom under the
olive-trees of sorrow--"Tarry here and watch with Me;" trusting the
faithfulness of Him who there bore heavier and more mysterious burdens. Seen
in the light of that great day of God, these burdens will lose their
heaviness; they will be burdens no more.
Prepare me specially, gracious Savior, for that blessed
hope, even Your own glorious appearing. "Until I come." It is a
luminous rainbow, bright with the prismatic colors of gospel promise,
spanning the evening of life and the Church's future. Let me often love to
repair to the battlements of this Hospice and gaze at it through rain and
cloud. "At evening-time it shall be light." When the advent-hour shall
strike, it will be the world's true curfew-bell, announcing that the fires
are to be put out--the fires of sin, the fires of tribulation; and that the
peace, so fitful, troubled, intermittent here, will be merged into that of
eternity. The motto-saying of our Volume will have thus a new and
everlasting significance– "Come unto Me, and I will give you rest FOREVER."
"I am come," says a gifted writer, as the night-shadows
were passing into daybreak--"I am come to that stage of my pilgrimage that
is within sight of the River of Death; and I feel that now I must have all
in readiness, day and night, for the messenger of the King."
Happy those who thus, with trimmed lamps and replenished
vessels, will be able, as they join the festal train on the great bridal day
of the Church triumphant, to say– "Lo, this is our God; we have waited
for Him."
"This is the resting place, let the weary rest. This is
the place of repose." Isaiah 28:12