M&E Friday

Morning and Evening: Daily Readings
by C. H. Spurgeon
Friday Morning, December 2

Thou art all fair, my love.

Song of Solomon 4:7

The Lord's admiration of his Church is very wonderful, and his description of her beauty is very glowing. She is not merely fair, but all fair. He views her in himself, washed in his sin-atoning blood and clothed in his meritorious righteousness, and he considers her to be full of comeliness and beauty. No wonder that such is the case, since it is but his own perfect excellency that he admires; for the holiness, glory, and perfection of his Church are his own glorious garments on the back of his own well-beloved spouse. She is not simply pure, or well-proportioned; she is positively lovely and fair! She has actual merit! Her deformities of sin are removed; but more, she has through her Lord obtained a meritorious righteousness by which an actual beauty is conferred upon her. Believers have a positive righteousness given to them when they become accepted in the beloved (Eph. 1:6). Nor is the Church barely lovely, she is superlatively so. Her Lord styles her Thou fairest among women. She has a real worth and excellence which cannot be rivalled by all the nobility and royalty of the world. If Jesus could exchange his elect bride for all the queens and empresses of earth, or even for the angels in heaven, he would not, for he puts her first and foremost--fairest among women. Like the moon she far outshines the stars. Nor is this an opinion which he is ashamed of, for he invites all men to hear it. He sets a behold before it, a special note of exclamation, inviting and arresting attention. Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair (Song of Sol. 4:1). His opinion he publishes abroad even now, and one day from the throne of his glory he will avow the truth of it before the assembled universe. Come, ye blessed of my Father (Matt. 25:34), will be his solemn affirmation of the loveliness of his elect.

Evening, December 2

Behold, all is vanity.

Ecclesiastes 1:14

Nothing can satisfy the entire man but the Lord's love and the Lord's own self. Saints have tried to anchor in other roadsteads, but they have been driven out of such fatal refuges. Solomon, the wisest of men, was permitted to make experiments for us all, and to do for us what we must not dare to do for ourselves. Here is his testimony in his own words: So I was great, and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem: also my wisdom remained with me. And whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them, I withheld not my heart from any joy; for my heart rejoiced in all my labour: and this was my portion of all my labour. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. What! the whole of it vanity? O favoured monarch, is there nothing in all thy wealth? Nothing in that wide dominion reaching from the river even to the sea? Nothing in Palmyra's glorious palaces? Nothing in the house of the forest of Lebanon? In all thy music and dancing, and wine and luxury, is there nothing? Nothing, he says, but weariness of spirit. This was his verdict when he had trodden the whole round of pleasure. To embrace our Lord Jesus, to dwell in his love, and be fully assured of union with him--this is all in all. Dear reader, you need not try other forms of life in order to see whether they are better than the Christian's: if you roam the world around, you will see no sights like a sight of the Saviour's face; if you could have all the comforts of life, if you lost your Saviour, you would be wretched; but if you win Christ, then should you rot in a dungeon, you would find it a paradise; should you live in obscurity, or die with famine, you will yet be satisfied with favour and full of the goodness of the Lord.

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EVENING THOUGHTS, or
DAILY WALKING WITH GOD

Octavius Winslow, 1858

"Let my prayer be set forth before you as
 incense; and the lifting up of my hands
 as the evening sacrifice."  Psalm 141:2

"But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, has quickened us together with Christ (by grace you are saved;) and has raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." Ephesians 2:4-6

All real spiritual-mindedness is the offspring of a new and spiritual life in the soul. It is the effect of a cause, the consequent upon a certain condition of mind. Before a man can exercise any degree of true heavenliness, he must be heavenly. Before he can bring forth the fruits of holiness, he must be holy. Dear reader, is this your condition? Have you the life of God in your soul? Have you passed from death unto life? Is the fruit you bear the result of your engrafting into Christ? You attend upon the service of the sanctuary; you visit the abodes of the wretched; you administer to the necessities of the poor; you are rigid in your duties, and zealous in your charities; but does it all spring from faith in Christ, and from love to God? Is it from life, or for life? Oh! remember, that the spiritual-mindedness which the Bible recognizes, of which God approves, has its root in the life of God in the soul!

But in what does spiritual-mindedness consist? It is the setting of the mind upon spiritual objects. The heart is fixed on God. The bent of the soul—its desires and breathings—are towards Him. It is a firm, growing approximation of all the renewed faculties to spiritual and heavenly realities. God in Christ is the attraction of the heart. That the needle of the soul always thus steadily points to Him, we do not affirm; there are false attractions which lure the affections from God, and deaden the spirituality of the mind. To be carnally-minded brings a kind of death even into the renewed soul; but this is not his reigning, predominant state. Let God remove that false attraction, let the Eternal Spirit apply with His own quickening power some precious truth to the heart, and the wayward, tremulous needle returns to its center; the heart is again fixed on God, its exceeding joy. Oh, how holy and precious are these restorings!

Individual and close communion with Jesus, in the matter of confession of sin, and washing in the atoning blood, strongly marks the state of spiritual-mindedness. No Christian duty forms a surer test of the spiritual tone of the believer than this. The essence, the very life, of spiritual-mindedness is holiness; and the deepening of heart-holiness is the measure of our sanctity of life. Now, there can be no progress in holiness apart from a habit of frequent laying open of the heart, in the acknowledgment of sin, to Christ. The conscience only retains its tenderness and purity by a constant and immediate confession; the heart can only maintain its felt peace with God, as it is perpetually sprinkled with the blood of Jesus. The soul, thus kept beneath the cross, preserves its high tone of spirituality unimpaired, in the midst of all the baneful influences by which it is surrounded. The holy sensitiveness of the soul that shrinks from the touch of sin, the acute susceptibility of the conscience at the slightest shade of guilt, will of necessity draw the spiritual man frequently to the blood of Jesus. Herein lies the secret of a heavenly walk. Acquaint yourself with it, my reader, as the most precious secret of your life. He who lives in the habit of a prompt and minute acknowledgment of sin, with his eye resting calmly, believingly, upon the crucified Redeemer, soars in spirit where the eagle's pinion ranges not. He walks in secret with God, and "sits in heavenly places in Christ Jesus."

 

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