Bring him unto Me;
or, "Help and salvation only in Christ"

Then Jesus answered, and said, "Bring him here to Me." Mt. 17:17

The narrative to which these words refer is replete with touches of the deepest interest. Our Lord had just been transfigured. Descending from the mount, His robes streaming with the brightness, and His countenance radiant with the glory of that wonderful scene, He finds Himself in the midst of an anxious and excited group. The occasion quickly transpired. The central object of that multitude, upon whom its chief and most touching interest gathered, was a distressed and suppliant parent, accompanied by an afflicted, demoniacally-possessed child, whom he had brought to the disciples of Christ for their healing. But the case had baffled their skill for, "they could not cure him."

Seeing the Savior approach, the father of the child directed his appeal to Him. "Lord, have mercy upon my son for he is lunatic, and sore vexed; for he often falls into the fire or into the water. And I brought him to your disciples and they could not cure him." And then followed Christ's gracious response, "Bring him here to me. And Jesus rebuked the devil, and he departed out of him: and the child was cured from that very hour."

The whole narrative, viewed in its gospel significance, is richly instructive. The miracles of our Lord were a marvelous blending of human compassion and divine instruction. They were never intended to terminate in mere bodily or mental relief; but were designed also to shadow forth His higher mission to man and His nobler work for man- physical illustrations of spiritual life. In this light let us view the present one, and glean the precious truths it conveys.

What are some of the chief spiritual points it illustrates? The disease of this child reminds us of a peculiar and affecting feature of our moral condition- we are by nature demoniacally possessed. Will any deem this view of our spiritual condition harsh and overdrawn? Are they, with all their reasoning faculties in full health and play, disposed skeptically to question its truth, and indignantly to repel the charge? Pause a moment, my reader, and ponder these striking and solemn words of Scripture- "The heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live."

This awful picture is not that of a class, or of a nation merely, but of every son and daughter of Adam on the face of the globe; and, if still unconverted by the grace of God, it finds its counterpart, my reader, in you. Were you not the subject of this moral insanity, could you, an heir of eternity, live as you do but as an heir of time? Look at your life. A rational being, yet living irrationally. A responsible being, yet ignoring your obligation to God. An accountable being, yet with not one serious thought of your individual accountability. A sinful being, yet with no knowledge of the Savior of sinners. A mortal being, yet living as though you were never to die. An immortal being, yet never pausing to inquire, "Where shall I spend my eternity?"

Living amid dreams, fancies, and hallucinations; playing with straws, blowing bubbles, pursuing shadows, and so sporting each moment upon the precipice of endless woe! Is this an evidence of sanity? Is this a mark of a life of a spiritually renewed and sound intellect? Alas! what does it prove but that the demon of moral insanity, the most terrific and fatal, sits gloomily and supremely enthroned upon your unregenerate heart, and will continue so enthroned until the Savior graciously ejects him thence, and brings you to His feet clothed and in your right mind.

By what avenue can we approach you with words of warning and entreaty? How awaken you to a conviction and sense of your present danger and future condition? Alas, as we cannot by our own efforts reason with the insane, neither can we by our own unaided powers convince you of the depravity of your heart, of the recklessness of your life, and of the terribleness of the doom that awaits you when the shadows and dreams of your present existence give way to the stern, dread realities of the life that is to come.

And yet, morally insane and infatuated though you are, God deals with you as an intelligent, sinful, responsible being, and holds you firm within the grasp of His almighty power. Listen to His gracious overture. "Come now and let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." God in these words recognizes your intelligence, sinfulness, moral responsibility and obligation. Never will He admit your utter impotence to help and save yourself, or for a moment release you from the solemn obligation you are under to love, serve, and obey Him. You tell me that you cannot repent- I answer, it is because you will not repent. You say you cannot believe in Jesus- it is because you will not believe in Jesus. You complain that you cannot come to Christ- it is because you will not come to Christ. Your sin is, not that you cannot, but that you will not be saved. Our blessed Lord clearly puts it in this light. "You will not come unto Me, that you might have life."

Most true is it that you cannot, that you have no moral power, but it is the rebellion of your will that constitutes your highest crime before God. Oh that sinful, stubborn will! It is the depraved, perverse rudder of the soul, guiding all its movements, controlling all its actions, and often steering it amid the rocks, the quicksands and breakers of present destruction and eternal woe. But when Jesus comes with His converting Spirit, He first conquers the will. He grasps this rudder, brings under the power of His grace this all governing principle of man's soul; subdues it, renews it, gives it a new bend and holy bias, and thus, having made the soul "willing in the day of His power," gently and persuasively draws it to Himself.

Lord, subdue my sinful will! Bend and break the iron sinews of its rebellion, bow it to Your control, lay it low beneath the Cross, and make it willing to love and serve and follow You! This done, the demon of our moral madness leaves the soul and leaves the throne for Jesus!

We reach another feature of this narrative -the means of cure sought by the distressed parent. "I brought him to Your disciples." Supposing them to be Christ's representatives, his first resort was to man. There is not a more solemnly instructive feature of the narrative than this. What a rebuke it administers, what a truth it teaches! There is not a stronger feeling of our nature than that which this parent's conduct illustrates- the tendency of our hearts in times of trouble and need to repair first to human help.

"I brought him to Your disciples." What significant words! They meet one of the most popular and prevalent errors of the present day- the priestly element, supposed by many to be lodged in human hands. Underlying the whole system of Ritualism and Sacramentarianism is this principle- the supposed existence of priestly authority and power. Divest the system of this principle, destroy this its central element, and the whole thing crumbles to ruin. Sad, oh how sad, to see men calling themselves Christ's ministers and representatives, vaulting into His throne and usurping His authority and power. The only priest over the Church of God is Christ; and the only priesthood in the Church is the Church of God itself. "You are a royal priesthood." "You"- that is, all believers in Christ Jesus; all who are washed in His blood and clothed with His righteousness, who join the one song of His one priesthood- "Who has made us kings and priests unto God."

That the great Head of the Church has appointed and ordained an order of men to preach His word, and to administer His institutions, we recognize with profound gratitude. The Christian ministry is of Christ, and we gratefully recognize, reverently esteem, and thankfully accept it; giving to Him all the glory and praise of the power and blessing of which it is the channel to His Church. Beyond this we dare not go! Christ is the one and only sacrificing Priest in the Church. He alone has merit to atone for sin, and He alone has authority and power to pardon it. He has delegated this priestly power to no creature, man or angel. All who claim it are profane usurpers, and shall be found deceivers and liars in the great day when every one of us shall give account of himself unto God.

This conducts us to another equally striking feature of the narrative, the inability of the disciples to meet the case. "I brought him to Your disciples, and they could not cure him." What a fatal blow do these words hurl at all the vain pretensions of man to priestly authority and power! What? were these the first and inspired disciples and apostles of Christ, the earliest preachers of His gospel, and administrators of His ordinances, and builders of His Church, powerless to help? Then who shall dare claim in this day a priestly prerogative and power which even the earliest, inspired and holy apostles of the Church never claimed. But what a lesson is here taught us, my reader, even us who regard the figment of priestly power in man but a base delusion and a lie! Are we not often betrayed into a like fatal error of going first to human power for help and salvation?

We go to Christ's ministers, thinking they can relieve us of the burden of sin; we repair to the Lord's servants supposing they can administer comfort in grief, counsel in perplexity, and sympathy in trial; but, alas! we find them often powerless to help. "Lord, I brought my sin, my grief, my wound, my perplexity, my burden, to Your ministers, and they could not hep me."

Thus the Lord empties us of our heart's idolatry, teaches us the weakness of human power, withers the arm and dries up the spring of creature help- that He might but draw us to Himself. We trust either in our own selves or in others, until God writes upon our human dependence the sentence of death. He has written that solemn sentence already within ourselves, that we might not trust in our own righteousness for salvation, and He writes it daily upon all our human props and creature resources, that we might learn to put our trust alone in Jesus. How instructive and solemn the teaching of God's word on this subject of human trust. "This is what the Lord says: "Cursed are those who put their trust in mere humans and turn their hearts away from the Lord. They are like stunted shrubs in the desert, with no hope for the future. They will live in the barren wilderness, on the salty flats where no one lives." Equally pointed is the language of the apostle- "We had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God, which raises the dead."

Accept, as sent in love to you, child of God, the painful and humiliating discipline of your heavenly Father, which has destroyed all your creature confidences, broken your beautiful vessels and blasted your pleasant gourds of created good. Oh, never did Jesus evince His love to you as now! Were not His desire towards you, were He not jealous of your love, and did He not wish to make you supremely happy by bringing you to seek and find that happiness supremely in Himself, then would He have allowed you to follow after your lovers, giving you up to the creature idolatry of your too fond and clinging heart.

But we reach the most interesting and instructive part of the narrative- that portion which will supply the subject of our remaining thoughts. "Then Jesus answered and said,

"Bring him unto ME." It was at this critical juncture, when human power failed, that our Lord steps in and concentrates the entire interest of the scene upon Himself. And what is the spirit He manifests and the language which He employs? Is He offended with the distressed parent, and does He express that offence in words of rebuke? Are His feelings wounded and is His language harsh, because His disciples had received precedence of Himself, and that He had only been applied to as a last resource because all other means had failed?

Ah, no! there was no sin in Jesus, and consequently no pride. How differently we would have felt, and how opposite to this we should have acted! Standing upon our self-respect, which is often nothing less than self-idolatry, and resenting the wound which the slight had inflicted, we should in all probability have looked coldly upon the case, and either have accepted it with reluctance, or have dismissed it with disdain. How often has this infirmity of our nature exhibited itself under real or supposed slight. We could ill brook to be supplanted by another, or to be dismissed to the cold shade of neglect. That we were not given precedence, our judgment first consulted, and our aid first sought, has stung our pride and wounded our sensibilities, and has rendered us peevish, haughty, and morose.

But not thus was it with our adorable Lord. In Him was no sin, and consequently no infirmity. His transcendent trait was humility. He made Himself of no reputation. He condescended to become a servant, yes, the servant of servants. Self negation, like a thread of gold, was interwoven with the web of His whole life, from the moment that He stooped to take our nature in the stable until that in which he bore it with Him to glory. Oh, to be assimilated to Him in this grace of humility! In nothing will our resemblance be more perfect.

Our Lord, when He clustered His disciples at His feet on the mount, did not in those memorable instructions say, "Learn of me, for I am wise," or, "Learn of me, for I am powerful"- no! but, "Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart." His grace of humility was made to eclipse His gift of intellect; the mind was to crown the heart; and passing by the "spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the spirit of counsel and of might" which He possessed was without measure, He turned their eye upon His humility of heart, and bade them learn, admire, and imitate.

Never, perhaps, in the life of our Lord did this lowly trait appear in a lovelier light than now. Not a look of anger darted from his eye, not a word of rebuke breathed from His lips. And thus Jesus demeans Himself towards us. How seldom do we repair to Him with our burdens, perplexities, and needs until we have tried any and every other resource. Such finite beings are we, so earthly and carnal, that if we can but attach ourselves in seasons of conscious sorrow and need and weakness to that which is sensible, however frail the object and feeble the hold, we would rather do so than trust in the invisible God; we bear our burden first to the disciple of Jesus rather than directly and immediately to Jesus Himself. But, finding no help here, we then gladly turn to Christ. And what do we find Him to be? What has our experience of Him been when all human power failed, and all creature resources dried, and men or angels could not help us? Just what this poor, distressed parent found Him to be- a present and willing and all-powerful help.

Now the words which Jesus addressed to this afflicted suppliant in the hour of his need and extremity He equally addresses to us- "bring him here unto ME." It is Christ's invitation to all needy souls, whatever that need may be- it is His invitation, my reader, to you. What a great and precious privilege is this? It would be impossible to over-estimate its worth, or to give full expression to its blessedness. Indeed it is the highest as the sweetest privilege of the believer to bring all to Jesus- to come, though He be a last resource- to come, though filled with shame and penitence at not having come to Him before, at not having come to Him at first, yet to come bearing the burden, unveiling the grief, disclosing the need to Jesus.

Let us endeavor to strengthen and encourage you, my reader, in this holy and helpful privilege of bringing to Jesus what, in all probability, you have brought in vain to man. Imagine the Lord addressing these words to you, "Bring it here unto me." The invitation, perhaps, finds you in deep need, in overwhelming distress, at a critical crisis of your history. Human power has proved helpless, friends faithless, plans futile, and you are at your wits' end. In your moment of disappointment and despair, Jesus meets you with the gracious words, "Bring it here unto me." And now your spirit revives, your heart bounds, at the words, and you exclaim, "Behold, Lord, I come."

Let us in two or three particulars amplify these words. In the first place, Jesus in effect says, "Bring your sins here unto me." He begins with sin, because it is the cause of all burdens, and the heaviest burden of all. Your general experience testifies to this. Your sins are to you a grievous burden, and you sigh and cry for deliverance. You have, perhaps, taken your sins to the minister, or you have disclosed them to a Christian friend. It may be you have sought relief for their oppressiveness in the gaieties of the world, in the excitement of business, or in the rigid but vain observance of religious duties. But, after all, you find yourself in the same dilemma with the afflicted parent, "I brought him to your disciples, and they could not heal him."

Listen to the Savior's gentle, unreproving words, "Bring your sins and guilt here unto Me." To whom more fitly, more hopefully, can you bring that heavy, crushing burden, but to Jesus? He is the only being in the universe who has to do judicially, or who can do remedially, with sin. Sin is a moral disease for which there is but one remedy, and but one physician. That remedy abjured, and that physician rejected, the sinner must accept, as the appalling, the inevitable result, the pangs and horrors of the second and eternal death.

But Jesus has to do personally and officially with sin. His mission to our fallen world was for its overthrow and annihilation. He made His advent to the empire of sin, entered the lazar-house of sin- and took upon Himself, by imputation, the guilt, the curse, and the condemnation of sin. His sufferings on the cross were sin-vicarious, His death was sin-atoning, His blood is sin-cleansing, His last and latest breath was a supplication for the forgiveness of sin- even the sin of His slayers.

In the language of the prophet, "He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities." In the language of the evangelist, "This man receives sinners, and eats with them." In the language of the apostles, "Christ died for our sins." All these witnesses unite in testifying to the great truth of the Bible that, "Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners." Poor sin-distressed soul, will not this suffice? Take not your sin-burdened heart to minister, nor to saints, nor to sacraments, nor to religious duties, nor to pious services- all, all these, are vain helpers, having no power to lighten you of the burden, or to efface the blot of one single sin.

In this infinitely momentous matter, happily for you, you must look up solely and exclusively to Jesus. God's plan of saving you cuts you off from all other resources, dissevers you from all other saviors, and throws you upon Jesus alone. Bring your sins, then, straight and at once to Him. Let there be not a moment's hesitation. Bring them, though they be as high as the pyramids, and red like crimson, and countless as the sands of the sea-shore.

Bring then your sins before conversion, your sins after conversion, your sins negating conversion; be they sins of youth, or sins of manhood, or sins of age, sins against knowledge, and sins against conviction, bring them all to Jesus! Yes, from whatever standpoint you view, and in whatever light you contemplate your sin and guilt, only bring it in confession, penitence, and faith to Jesus, and you shall learn from blessed experience that His blood cleanses from all sin.

Jesus says, "Bring your convictions to Me." There is no state of mind which keeps the inquiring soul, to use the expressive language of the prophet, so "long in the place of the breaking forth of children," as a conviction of sin. How many there are who stop here for months, and even for years, knowing nothing of the peace, and joy, and hope of the new birth? They seem to make no real spiritual progress. There is the infant's feeble and faint sob of life, and that is all. There is nothing of the vigor of youth, still less of the strength of the father, in their religion. They are not fully born again. And why this because they are resting in their convictions, living on their convictions, content to remain in this gloomy and doubtful position, rather than, by a simple, single act of faith, plunge into the fathomless, boundless sea of the Savior's grace, and there forever lose them.

But listen to the overture of Jesus. When He commands, "Bring it unto Me," and when He invites the weary and heavy laden to come to Him for rest, He includes you in the number. Leanness of soul must be the result of every attempt to subsist upon the starving aliment of conviction, while the gospel unveils to you the finest wheat of God's granary, and honey flowing from the rock. What, then, is your remedy? Simply this: instead of taking your convictions to duties, and to ordinances, and to ministers, to take them to Christ.

There is no healing of sin's wound, no lighting of sin's burden, no removal of sin's guilt, no weakening of sin's power, but as Christ deals with it. And since "His name is called Jesus, because He shall save His people from their sins," no turpitude of guilt, however great- no number of sins, however countless- no depth of conviction, however profound- can bar the soul from His redeeming love and pardoning grace.

Jesus says, "Bring your desire for conversion to Me." With how many individuals conversion, in its incipient stage, amounts to a desire only. And yet this day of small things in grace is not to be despised. The writer well remembers when it was his experience. Solemnly conscious of living in an unconverted state, and well instructed in the truth that conversion was essential to the enjoyment of heaven, his heart ardently longed and earnestly prayed for the priceless blessing. Remembering this, the earliest stage of his Christianity, he is prepared to offer sympathy and aid to all whom the experience of this work of grace is but a sincere desire.

And yet that desire is the work of God's Spirit, is the germ, the dawn, the first pulse of spiritual life. Welcome it, cherish it, bring it to Jesus, from whom all holy desires, as all good counsels, and just works, do proceed. And He who "quenches not the smoking flax, nor breaks the bruised reed," will so strengthen and increase that holy desire that it shall ripen into a full state of grace here, and into a perfect state of glory hereafter.

Jesus says, "Bring your sorrows to Me." Never did the soul find so powerful a magnet, attracting to itself affliction in every form, and sorrow in every shade, as Jesus. If sympathy is the expression of compassion nurtured and trained in a like school, then there is to be found in the wide universe of being no sympathy like Christ's. Standing as in the center of a world of woe, He invites every daughter of sorrow, of sin, of grief to repair to Him for succor, sympathy, and healing. As the High Priest of His Church -for whom alone He suffered, and wept, and sobbed- He unveils a bosom capacious enough and loving enough, and sympathizing enough, to embrace every sufferer, and to pillow every grief. Accept, then, His compassionate invitation, and bring your grief to the soothing, sustaining, sanctifying grace of His heart.

Jesus says, "Bring your needs to Me." We are necessitous beings. Sin has created countless needs; the absence of God from the soul, fathomless yearnings. Nor is there a being or a thing in the wide universe of life and wealth that can meet a solitary need. Jesus only can. With all the affluence of the universe which He made at His disposal, is there a single need you have which He is not able to supply? Bring, then, your needs to Him. Are they temporal? "The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof." Are they spiritual? He is " full of grace and truth." Thus, possessing all earthly good, and furnished with all that is heavenly,

"What need shall not our God supply,
From His redundant stores?
What streams of mercy from on high,
An Arm Almighty pours?
From Christ, the ever-living spring,
These ample blessings flow;
Prepare my lips His name to sing,
Whose heart has loved us so."

Jesus says- "Bring your temptations me." To whom more appropriate can the tempted children of God repair with their varied assaults- the temptations of Satan, of the world, of their own hearts- as to Christ the tempted One? "For in that He himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to succor those who are tempted." Truly, our spiritual Joseph, of whom it may truly be said, "The archer sorely grieved Him, and shot at Him, and hated Him," is prepared to quench each flaming arrow hurled at His dear people, to extract the dart, and heal, with balsam flowing from His own pierced side, the wounds those darts have inflicted.

Jesus says- "Bring your sick and suffering ones to me." When He dwelt upon earth He was earth's Great Physician. From all the cities and provinces, the towns and villages, they brought to Him their sick folk, and He healed them all. Not less humane or skillful is He now. To whom can we bring the sick ones we love, but are powerless to help, with such prospect of cure as to Jesus? Man's incurables are Christ's curables. He has power to control mental aberration, saying to the surging billows of the mind, "Peace, be still." He can arrest bodily sickness, quiet the trembling nerve, cool the feverish pulse, assuage the torturing pang, and cause the severest disease to fly at His all-controlling command. Bring, then, your afflicted, drooping one to Christ, and the prayer of faith offered to, and exercised in, Him shall save the sick.

To whom more appropriately can we take the skeptical religious doubts which distress us than to Jesus? Your faith in the truth of the Bible, in part or as a whole, has, perhaps, been disturbed by popular writers. You have come to question the veracity of the Mosaic history, or you have been led to doubt the integrity of this prophecy, or the accuracy of that gospel, or the inspiration of the other epistle, until your mind, having lost its anchorage, is driven out amid the broken seas and bleak rocks of doubt, uncertainty, and despair. And yet you are not satisfied. You have not entirely lost your faith in the integrity of the Bible, nor your filial hold upon God. You have, probably, confided your state of mind to man. You have read this book, and have consulted that authority, and have made known your case to that minister, yearning to find a proper solution to your distressing doubts, and a firm anchorage ground for your tossed and bewildered spirit. But all has proved in vain. You have borne your doubts and difficulties and distress to Christ's disciples, and they have proved powerless to help you.

This little booklet comes to echo the loving, gracious invitation of Jesus to you, "Bring it unto me." To you as truly and as personally He addresses these words as originally He did to the afflicted parent. The explanations of men have failed you, human teaching has proved powerless. Now try the experiment, as a last resource, and take your skeptical doubts to Jesus, and beseech Him to solve them, to neutralize them, to dislodge them, supplanting them by a simple, child-like, unquestioning faith in Himself as "the truth."

The moment your believing heart receives into it the Lord Jesus Christ, that moment all your doubts are gone. Your long-existing and agonizing inquiry, "What is truth?'' is now met fully, instantly answered, as that question only can be answered, by Him who has sublimely declared, "I am the truth." In bringing your doubts touching the truth of revelation to Jesus, you have complied with His command, you have yielded assent to His invitation. And in doing this you have obeyed God's command, who, respecting His beloved Son, uttered those significant words, "Hear Him." And in thus doing God's will, you have placed yourself in the only true position to know the truth of His word, "If any man," says our Lord, "will do His will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself."

Oh bring, then, your agitated mind to Christ! Unveil to Him your mental difficulties, your religious doubts, your tortured feelings. With one word He can dislodge the demon of doubt from your mind, and all will be firm faith, full assurance, and heavenly peace.

Equally does He ask you to bring to Him your spiritual fears. "Fearful heart," is one of the most common and expressive titles of the Lord's people: "Say unto those who are of a fearful heart." This will account for the fact, that no words oftener fell from the lips of Jesus when on earth; than those soothing, precious ones, "Fear not." To whom, then, can you better repair with those distressing fears touching your conversion, your adoption, your salvation, your growth in grace, than to Jesus? Oh, why these fears, we may ask, when He is so near to soothe and allay them?

See the troubled waves receiving upon their foaming crests the footsteps of their Creator! "God manifest in the flesh"- bearing Him to His fearful, foundering disciples, with the words rising higher than the storm, "Be not afraid, it is I." Essentially immutable, He is just the same, high upon His throne in glory, that He was when thus He stepped from billow to billow to the comfort and the rescue of His affrighted disciples on the sea.

You have unveiled your fears to His ministers and to His saints, and still they torment, and still they distress you. He says, "Bring them here to Me." He will not repel your doubts nor chide your fears, but, as of old, He will tenderly meet them, gently deal with them, entirely remove them, and calm your perturbed and trembling heart upon the love and repose of His own. This simple living upon Christ will be found to be a very sanctifying life. Every errand that takes you to Him brings you in personal contact with perfect holiness; and you cannot return from the interview, though it were but of five minutes' duration, without the perfumed garment and the reflected glory. Men will take knowledge of you that you have been with Jesus.

Equally will this habit of bringing all our circumstances to Jesus tend to increase His endearment to your soul. He will grow upon our love. It is an instinct of our nature that the more we are with an object that we admire and love, the more that object entwines with our being. A growing acquaintance with its mental and moral excellence increases and deepens the affections, until we come to feel that communion seems essential to our existence, and that separation is almost its extinction. Thus the more we are with Christ the more we know Him, and the more we know the more we admire Him; and the more we admire, the more we love Him; and to love Him is to walk obediently to His sweet and holy commands. Oh, to love Him more!

Do not be ashamed to take your case to Jesus, even though you have gone first to human help. He won't be ashamed of you, if you are not ashamed of Him. It is His glory to step in and achieve a work and bestow a blessing when all human power and resources have failed. He loves to unlock His treasury when man's is utterly exhausted. Go, then, fall at His feet, and tell Him you have tried all other help, and all has failed you, and at last you come to Him. In a word, Jesus bids you bring all to Him-your depression and despondency, the sadness of your heart, and the anxieties of your mind, the wounds of friends and the calumnies of foes, the chidings of God and the assaults of man; your fear of death and your dread of judgment, all, all He invites to the asylum of His love, to the arm of His power, and to the fulness of His sufficiency. No word of upbraiding will fall from His lip, no look of anger dart from His eye.

Well will He remember how you leaned upon the arm of human power and it failed you, how you reposed upon the heart of human love and it disappointed you, how you resorted to human skill and it could not cure. And now, in the deepest, tenderest sympathy with your blighted hopes, your wounded affections, your disappointed plans, He would sincerely uplift the flower crushed and trampled in the dust, and, bathing it in the dew of His grace, place it in His sheltering bosom, to freshen and to bloom forever beneath the warm sunshine of His smile.

"Toiling in the midnight storm,
Tossed on sorrow's surging sea,
Weary, terrified, forlorn,
Jesus bids you, "Come to Me."

Drifting on the soundless deep,
Wave on wave rolls over thee;
Shadows coldly round you creep;
Jesus bids you, "Come to Me."

Clustering griefs becloud your way,
Earthly joys and comforts flee.
Oh, to be your light, your stay,
Jesus bids you, "Come to Me."

Jesus, take the vacant helm;
Guide me over this troubled sea;
Before the tide my soul o'erwhelm,
Jesus, Savior, come to me.

Let me hear Your cheering voice,
Even though it in chiding be;
Bid my fearful heart rejoice,
Jesus, Savior, come to me!

You can make the tempest cease,
At Your word the shadows flee;
You alone can give me peace;
Jesus, Savior, come to me!

Even upon the billow's crest,
Sweetly tranquil I can be,
If near Your dear heart I rest,
Jesus, Savior, come to me!