"As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I
lighted on a certain place where was a den, and laid me down in that place
to sleep."--Pilgrim's Progress.
"Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Haran. When he
reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had
set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down
to sleep." Genesis 28:10-11
We must now follow Jacob on his lonely way, as after successive days of
journeying, under the blaze of an eastern sun, the shadows of eventide were
gathering round him. As the flaming orb was descending, and the hills of
Benjamin were rearing their rounded crests in front, he would naturally
assign a preference for his next halt to the place familiar to him by name
as his grandfather's first camping ground and sanctuary. The gates of Luz
had already probably been shut, like those of eastern towns, at the close of
day. But it would be no strange or unusual occurrence for the exile to spend
the night on a grassy couch under the canopy of heaven. He must have been
familiarized to such an experience in his pastoral life at Beersheba.
In the hush of that somber twilight, the spot where he
was directing his steps could not surely be approached without emotion.
Every relic of the tent whose image had been stored in child-memory was
doubtless gone; but while the movable canvas shelter left no trace behind,
the altar-stones would still be there to memorialize the devotion of him who
reared them, and to revive and suggest sacred lessons to his chartered heir.
These 'stones of Bethel' would be invested with an interest somewhat akin,
only far deeper and intenser, to that which is associated with the Register
in the Family Bible of modern times--the genealogical record of ancestral
piety and worth, often the one heirloom of the Christian dwelling. While the
ruins of Bethel's Sanctuary spoke of his fathers, may they not also, after
the exciting and agitating events of the preceding days, have formed the
first mute remembrances of his fathers' God. They may thus have rendered his
mind more susceptible to those devotional feelings we shall find evoked by
the vision so soon to follow.
In the great pilgrim journey, of which Jacob's was
the type, we are in one sense the creatures of circumstance. The Patriarch,
when he left his resting place that morning, must have had a dim premonition
where, as a wayfaring man, he would turn aside to tarry for the night. It is
not so with us. Often, at least, the turns and windings of the earthly way
are very different from those we dreamt of at life's early start. Our own
anticipations how often thwarted; our sagest forecastings how often
singularly reversed! Those who commenced with firm step and buoyant hope,
have been arrested before noontide with the unforeseen 'Hill Difficulty,' or
made to leave the sunny path to thread the gloomy ravine--while those who
began faltering and in darkness, have reached, almost without impediment,
the goal of their desires and aspirations.
Each, also, has to tread his own separate and peculiar
road with few features of resemblance to that of others. The two youths who
may leave their village homes the self-same day to enter on the stern
realities of life, may be sundered ever after in their pursuits and
avocations, their sympathies and fellowships. Or, to vary the figure, they
embark from the same haven, their sails are filled by the same gale; but
either they part for different shores; different charts severing them on the
great ocean highway; or else, for the one, there is the favoring propitious
breeze, while for the other, there is buffeting storm and fatal disaster.
But while all this is true, there is another experience
of a different character, as comforting as it is real, which the words at
the head of this chapter without any violent strain in their meaning
suggest– that is, that there is a Higher Hand and, a Higher Will than our
own, that directs this "reaching a certain place;" that no events in our
history are fortuitous, but all form part of a divine plan. The Jews had a
belief that a guardian angel waited at every birth to attend the spirit
through life, its protector, defender, and guide. What may be regarded in
their case as only a beautiful figment of imagination, is at least a sublime
reality regarding God. He compasses our path and our lying down, and is
acquainted with all our ways. In quaint oriental simile, He is said to "put
our tears into His bottle," and to "keep us as the apple of His eye." There
is, there ought to be, no such thing in the Christian creed as chance
in the appointments of existence. Every turn in the road has a divine
signboard and warning, if we would only see it, and read it, and hear it--"This
is the way, walk in it." The saddest of all things is to crush ourselves
on the rock of fatalism. The dreariest of all beliefs is that of an
impersonal God, who has relegated His sovereignty to whim and accident; left
man to a capricious destiny, to be driven by the wanton winds here and there
like the leaves of the forest. The Pilgrim, day by day, follows "the certain
road," and eventide by eventide reaches "the certain place."
In the case of Jacob, this Almighty Guide authenticated
and verified, in the after vision, His directing hand and ever-present
guardianship. Each future returning night, the sentiment at least of an
inspired though yet unwritten legend must have sounded in the dreamer's
ears--"I will lie down in peace and sleep, for you alone, O Lord, will keep
me safe." (Psalm 4:8).
In one sense we err when we speak of God's 'Providential
dealings;' for in doing so, we seem to limit or restrict them to some
specific and exceptional experiences--some crisis-hours in life; while the
simple but sublime verity is, that there is no moment when we are exempt
from His paternal supervision. In the words just quoted, "He is ACQUAINTED
with ALL our ways." Of course it follows that if He interests Himself in the
minute and the trivial, much more may we trace His hand and own His guidance
in great emergencies.
Take some other analogous Scriptural examples,
illustrating what is thus called the doctrine of particular Providence. The
woman of Samaria 'arrived at a certain place,' at the very noontide
hour when the weary Traveler (but in truth the Son of God who had redeemed
her with His blood) was passing from Judea to Galilee. Lydia, the
seller of purple, 'arrived at a certain place,' when she found herself at a
riverside prayer-meeting, near the European city of Philippi, some hundred
miles from her own Asiatic Thyatira, just at the time when the Great Apostle
was present to cheer her heart with the full revelation of God's grace and
mercy. The Ethiopian chamberlain 'arrived at a certain place,' when,
returning from Jerusalem through the Gaza desert, a Pilgrim Missionary
confronted his chariot, and, expounding to him truths he had sought for in
vain amid the rites and splendors of an abrogated ritual, sent him on his
way rejoicing.
Nor need we confine ourselves to Bible instances. Many a
youth among ourselves has 'arrived at a certain place' immediately after
leaving, like Jacob, for the first time the parental roof. The call to a
secular profession or trade, the hope of promotion and advancement, directed
his steps to the distant city; but it was the means of taking him to some
hallowed dreamland--some Bethel sanctuary, where he had unfolded to him the
plenitude of redeeming love. The words of everlasting life came home with
saving energy to his soul, altering from that hour the whole current of his
mental and moral history.
In these and similar cases there was apparently nothing
but accidental occurrences, curious coincidences; but the true key to all,
"the reading and interpretation of the writing," is to be found in the
saying of Jacob's illustrious son--"So then it was not you that brought me
here, but God." "The certain place" ("THE place," as it is in the original),
was of His appointed choosing; "He knows the way that I take" (Job
23:10).
Reader! be it yours obediently, lovingly, joyfully to
conform to the arrangement of your outward circumstances as the decree of
Heaven. If conscience within, can countersign the leadings and indications
of Providence without, then accept the career, be what it may, which has
been opened to you and assigned you. Cast yourself without reserve or
hesitation on 'the certain place.' It may be unpromising--not what you
yourself would have selected or desired. Bleak and unattractive in its mere
outward aspect would that moorland, doubtless, be to Jacob. Tufts of rough
and rugged heather, scorched with the remorseless rays of noonday, take the
place of verdant meadows with beds of anemone and fragrant thyme.
But, undeterred by the cheerless and unloving
surroundings, he sets about preparing his couch. So it may be in your case
as regards the surroundings of your daily life. There may be little else
than what corresponds in the experience of the Bethel-dreamer to the ledge
of rock and the deepening shadow, the drenching dew and the sigh of the
night wind; no tent for the traveler, no hospice for the pilgrim. Like the
patriarch on an after occasion, you may be tempted even to say in your
moments of despondency, "All these things are against me." But, "be still,
and know that I am God!" The shuttles may dart ever so capriciously to us,
but the weaving of the life-web--is in the hands of the Great Craftsman.
If 'the certain place' He selects be not amid the
blooming gardens of Gerar, or by the wells of Beersheba, but in the dreary
uplands of Benjamin, He has some wise reason for it, and He will yet, in His
own time and way, vindicate the wisdom and rectitude of His procedure. If He
sees it to be well, sunlit heights may yet disclose themselves in the
wilderness. The rough stones of the desert may yet, as in the case of the
sleeper at Bethel, be transmuted into steps for angels.
That was a dreary place in olden-time for the future
minstrel of Israel, amid the rocky wilderness of southern Judah, when he was
chased like a panting gazelle on the mountains, uttering ever and anon the
plaintive soliloquy, "I shall one day perish by the hand of Saul;" but after
generations would have been defrauded of the most touching portion of his
Psalter, had he known no experience but that of "the green pastures and
still waters."
That was a dreary place for Paul of Tarsus, when he was
flung a shipwrecked castaway on the rocks of Melita. But there was work to
do even on such an inhospitable shore. So, without a murmur on his lips, he
gathered his "bundle of sticks," and kindled the fire, and left the morrow,
with the unfolding of its yet unknown calls and duties, to that God--whose
he was, and whom he served.
That was a dreary--a still drearier place for him, when
immured in a Roman dungeon, the itinerant Apostle felt the chain of
captivity dangling at his side--his life-work apparently arrested. How would
the chafed imprisoned eagle beat his wings against the enclosing bars, and
long for freedom to speed as aforetime from city to city! It may have been
so at the time, but he could write afterwards on the retrospect--"everything
that has happened to me here has helped to spread the Good News."
That was a dreary and cheerless exile, when a later but
not less illustrious dreamer than Jacob, was confined within Bedford
jail--his lips muffled, his message silenced. The Church could ill spare her
humble but stalwart champion. Yes, honest Bunyan, it was hard for rough,
stirring, enlightened eloquence like yours, to be thus gagged within those
silent walls. But be still! The God who sent you to that 'certain place' has
work for you to do there. Dream your dream, weave your similitudes--the
hundreds of Bedford miss you; but the world's millions will yet bless God,
and you in Him, for that cell and that chain!
That was a spot of dreary solitude, the sick-chamber of
Richard Baxter, with its experience of racking, excruciating pain. It was
hard, amid the cherished activities of a consecrated life, to drag about
from day to day that weary body, the gates of death ever ajar, added to
other heavy sorrows. But that nook in the dark valley, that gloomy niche in
the Temple, was assigned and appointed for reasons unknown to the meek
sufferer. These forty years of prolonged weakness and pain enabled him to
dream a kindred dream for behalf of the suffering children of God in all
future ages--not of the Pilgrim's Journey, but of the Pilgrim's Home. The
"Saint's Rest" could never have been written but by one who, with trembling
hand and tear-dimmed eye, waited in habitual anticipation of the welcome
summons within the Gate into the City.
Perhaps by none are these lessons of 'the certain place'
more needed, than by those who are in the thick of the great battle of
life--sore pressed in the unequal fight; looking, it may be, with envious
eye on fortunate comrades who have already attained victory and promotion,
while they are still lagging behind--the base-born spirits of
dissatisfaction and discontent, hardest of all to grapple with among a demon
horde of like assailants. Even those who have little reason to complain of
harassing conflicts, are often too apt to make their allotments the cause of
heart-burning. They long for some better, imaginary destiny--something
other, at all events, than that which they have. It is the
child-allegory of the firefly that was ever moping and fretting because it
was not a star; of the marigold and daisy that drooped their heads and
refused the light, because they were not the rose and the lily; the spikes
of grass and coils of lichen that spurned the rain, and dew, and sunshine,
because they were not exalted to the rank of oak and cedar.
It is enough to say that He who 'appoints the bounds of
our habitation,' knows what is best for us. The Pilgrimage is shaped not
by us but for us. "The lot may be cast into the lap, but the
whole disposing thereof is of the Lord" (Prov. 16:33). Do nothing that will
tend to thwart the Divine plan, and by seeking some softer pillow and more
curtained couch to defraud yourselves of 'the visions of God.' Believe it,
it is not outward fullness and prosperity which secure the softest, balmiest
rest. There is a striking verse in Ezekiel where God thus speaks of the
peace enjoyed by His own chosen people, even when called to a life of
outward hardship and endurance--"They shall dwell safely in the wilderness,
and sleep in the woods" (34:25). If conscience be pure and unsullied, then
His lullaby can hush to quiet repose amid the dews of the wilderness, or
under the boughs of the forest, as well (often better) than on the couch of
down. He can convert the bed of rock into the Gate of Heaven. Yes, and when
the end of all is reached, and the Bethel road is retrospectively traversed,
the testimony of many a Pilgrim will be joyfully re-echoed as you stand by
the gate of the many mansions--"He led them forth by the right way,
that they might go to a city of habitation!"