June 1929
271
T h e
K i n g ' s
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thing, we should see that God did it all in love, love to the old man, and love to the little mice too. Are not two spar rows sold for a farthing? And not one of them shall fall on the ground without our Father. Not one of them is ever forgotten before God. He permitted them, as the Psalm tells us, to find a house, where they might lay their young, § even Thine altars, 0 Lord o f hosts, my King and my God.’ But mice have come closer to Him still. For do we not read in the Bobk of Samuel how the mice of gold were put in a little coffer, and the coffer was laid be side the very Ark of the Covenant, close by the Mercy-seat and the Cherubim, and carried up with it and with them all the way from the land of the Philistines to the border of Bethshemesh ?” Our second extract is from an article entitled “The Bundle of Life.” In this article Mr. Struthers deals with that lovely phrase which was coined by Abigail (First Samuel 25 :29). He says: “I do not know a more wonder ful expression than that in the whole Bible. God and we in one bundle! God’s life and ours, God’s history and ours, bound up together! Is not that the whole story of God’s relation to us, and our relation to Him? It is the story of redemption; our life is hid with Christ in God! We are as safe as God is, and we shall one day be as happy. What a wonderful woman that must have been who could think such a thought as that and could clothe it in such memorable words! And she was a drunkard’s wife! And next to being a drunkard’s mother, that is one of the bitterest lots on earth.” "Now when Jesus saw great multitudes about Him, He gave commandment to depart unto the other side’’ (M att. 8:18). HE Lord Jesus was preaching by parable to great crowds on the west shore of the Sea of Galilee. As a result of the preaching, at least two inquir ers came to Him desiring to follow Him (Matt. 8:19-22). But deliberately He gives command ment to leave the multitude and depart to the other side of the sea. Mark tells us that it was evening when they set sail from the west coast to go over to the other side. No reason is given for the apparently sud den decision, but Mark and Luke both record that He said, “Let us go over unto the other side” (Mark 4:35: Luke 8:22). Why did the Lord Jesus abruptly decide to cross the Sea of Galilee that evening? The question is the more interesting for the reason that we see clearly, from a com parison of the three Gospels, that He went over and re turned again to the west shore at once. He made the passage for a definite purpose and returned from the coun try of the Gadarenes, again to continue His work with the waiting multitudes (Luke 8:37, 40). Was it that He sought a rest from His strenuous labors? He must have been very, very weary, for as soon as he entered the ship He went to the stern, found a cushion, and went fast asleep. Yet the Lord Jesus was not exactly going off for a vacation! For He had not rested long before a terrific storm “came down” upon them.
Our third extract is from an article with the title, “The Cock Crew,” The first three paragraphs I quote: they are thoroughly characteristic. “Is it not a strange thing that on the greatest of all days in time or eternity, when God had so many things on His mind, such things as neither man nor angel can ever comprehend, He thought about the crowing of a cock? “Is it not a strange thing that on the day on which God forsook His own Son, not a sparrow on any house top in Jerusalem, or a living creature, great or small, in all the world, was forgotten by Him? “Is it not a strange thing that as long as the death of Christ is remembered—-and that will be for ever and ever —the crowing of that bird will be spoken of, even as in the council of the Godhead it was spoken of before times eternal ? “And the bird did not know i t !” In “Life and Letters of John Paterson Struthers” there are many gems for expositors of the Bible. In a Letter-Diary which he kept for years for the lady who afterwards became his wife, he wrote on December 20, 1890: “I had a nice subject on Sabbath—the woman with eighteen years’ infirmity. I said she had a history: (1) eighteen years’ trouble, (2) eighteen years’ grace, (3) nineteen centuries of honor, (4) an eternity of glory. ‘Ought not this woman . . . it was necessary. God had her in His purpose from everlasting, and this glory before! her.” T h e L ord J esu s R espond ed to t h e C ry o f N eed No, His trip across the sea that night was not for Himself. He heard a call. He had heard in His soul a cry o f need from the opposite shore. He did not wait till the next day, but left the multitude, faced the storm of oppo sition, to answer the cry of need on the other shore. He went to deliver a man in desperate need in the bondage of the devil. He alone could deliver him, and He delayed not to go to his help. Over there in the country of the Gadarenes there was a man (Matthew says there were two men,—at least there was one),—a man possessed of a legion of demons. “No man could pass by that way,” for fear of him (Matt. 8:28). “No man could any more bind him, no, not with a chain', because that he had been often bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been rent asunder by him, and the fetters broken in pieces. No man had strength to tame him. And always, night and day, in the tombs and in the mountains, he was crying out and cutting himself with stones” (Mark 5 :3-5). “For a long time he had worn no clothes, and abode not in any house, but in the tombs” (Luke 8:27). The demon would often seize him and drive him into the deserts. The demon’s name was “Legion,” for he was possessed of many demons (Luke 8:29, 30). Poor man! Pitiful soul! What a pathetic sight! A help less, hopeless creature! A human being, absolutely in the hands of the enemy! No one could do anything for him.
^'4. afe afe afe A Cry From the Other Shore
B y R ev . R. A. J a ffr a y ( Wuchow, South China)
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