A Fold Where None Can Stray

THERE is a fold where none can stray,
And pastures ever green,
Where sultry sun, or stormy day,
Or night, are never seen.
Far up the everlasting hills,
In God’s own light it lies,
His smile its vast dimension fills
With joy that never dies.

There is a Shepherd living there,
The first-born from the dead,
Who tends, with sweet, unwearied care,
The flock for which he bled.
There, the deep streams of joy that flow,
Proceed from God’s right hand;
He made them, and he bids them go
To feed that happy land.

There congregate the sons of light,
Fair as the morning sky,
And taste of infinite delight,
Beneath their Savior’s eye.
Where’er he turns, they willing turn;
In unity they move;
Their seraph spirits nobly burn
In harmony of love.

There, in the power of heavenly sight,
They gaze upon the throne,
And scan perfection’s utmost height,
And know as they are known.
Their joy bursts forth in strains of love,
And clear, symphonious song,
And all the azure heights above
The echoes roll along.

O may our faith take up that sound,
Though toiling here below;
‘Midst trial may our joys abound,
And songs amid our woe;
Until we reach that happy shore,
And join to swell their strain,
And from our God go out no more,
And never weep again.

A Short Meditation on the Moral Glory of Our Lord Jesus Christ
A great combination of like moral glories in the Lord’s ministry may be traced, as well as in his character. And in ministry we may look at him in relation to God, to Satan, and to man. As to God, the Lord Jesus, in his own person and ways, was always representing man to God, as God would have him. He was rendering back human nature as a sacrifice of rest, or of sweet savor, as incense pure and fragrant, as a sheaf of untainted first fruits, out of the human soil. He restored to God his complacency in man, which sin or Adam had taken from him. God’s repentance that he had made man (Genesis 6:6,) was exchanged for delight and glory in man again. And this offering was made to God in the midst of all contradictions, all opposing circumstances, sorrows, fatigues, necessities, and heartbreaking disappointments. Wondrous altar wondrous offering A richer sacrifice it infinitely was, than an eternity of Adam’s innocency would have been. And as he was thus representing man to God, so was he representing God to man.
Through Adam’s apostacy God had been left without an image here; but now he gets a fuller, brighter image of himself than Adam could ever have presented. Jesus was leaving, not a fair creation, but a ruined, worthless world—knowing what God was, representing him in grace, and saying, “He that hath seen me, bath seen the Father.” He declared God. All that is of God, all that can be known of “the light” which no man can approach unto, has now passed before us in Jesus: And again, in the ministry of Christ, looked at in relation to God, we find him ever mindful—of God’s rights, ever faithful to God’s truth and principles, while in the daily, unwearied actions of relieving man’s necessities. Let human sorrow address him with what appeal it may, he never sacrificed or surrendered anything that was God’s to it. “Glory to God in the highest,” was heard over him at his birth, as well as, “on earth good-will to man;” and, according to this, God’s glory, all through his ministry, was as jealously consulted, as the sinner’s need and blessing were diligently served. The echo, of those voices, “Glory to God,” and “Peace on earth,” was, as I may express it, heard on ‘every occasion. The Syro-phoenician’s case, already noticed, is a vivid sample of this. Till, she took her place in relation to God’s purposes and dispensations he could do nothing for her; but then, everything.
Surely these are glories in the ministry of the Lord Jesus, in the relations of that ministry to God.
Then as to Satan. In the first place, and seasonably and properly so, the Lord meets him as a tempter. Satan sought, in the wilderness, to impregnate him with. those, moral corruptions which he had succeeded in implanting in Adam and the human nature. This victory over the tempter was the needed righteous introduction to all his works and doings touching him. It was, therefore, the Spirit that led him up touching this action. As we read, “Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness, to be tempted of the devil.” Ere the Son of God could go forth and spoil the house of the strong man, he must bind him. (Matthew 12:29.) Ere he could “reprove” the works of darkness, he must show that he had no fellowship with them. (Ephesians 5: 11.) He must withstand the enemy; and keep him outside himself, ere he could enter his kingdom to destroy his works.
Jesus thus silenced Satan. He bound him. Satan had to withdraw as a thoroughly defeated tempter. He could not get anything of his into him; he rather found that all that was there was of God. Christ kept outside all that which Adam, under a like temptation, had let inside; and having thus stood the clean thing, he can go, under a perfect moral title, to reprove the unclean.
“Skin for skin,” the accuser may have to say of another, and like words that charge and challenge the common corrupted nature; but he had nothing to do, as an accuser of Jesus, before the throne of God. He was silenced.
Thus, his relationship to Satan begins. Upon this, he enters his house and spoils his goods. This world is that house, and there the Lord, in his ministry, is seen effacing various and deep expressions of the enemy’s strength. Every deaf or blind one healed, every leper cleansed, every work under his repairing hand, of whatsoever sort it was, was this. It was a spoiling of the goods of the strong man in his own house. Having already bound him, he now spoiled his goods. At last he yields to him as the One that bad” the power of death.” Calvary was the hour of the power of darkness. All Satan’s resources were brought up there, arid all his subtlety put forth; but he was overthrown. His captive was his conqueror. By death he destroyed him that had the power of it. He put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. The head of the serpent was bruised; as another has said, that “death and not man was without strength.”
Thus, Jesus the Son of God was the bruiser of Satan, as before he had been his binder and his spoiler. But ‘there is another moral glory that is seen to shine in the ministry of Christ, in the relation it bears to Satan. I mean this, He never allows him to bear witness to him. The testimony may be true, and, as we say, flattering, good words and fair words, such as, “I know thee who thou art; the holy One of God,” but Jesus suffered him not to speak. For his ministry was as pure as it was gracious. He would not be helped in his ministry by that which he came to destroy. He could have no fellowship with darkness in his service, any more than in his nature. He could not act on expediency, therefore rebuke and silencing of him was the answer he got to his testimony. Then as to man, the moral glories which show themselves in the ministry of the Lord Jesus are bright and excellent indeed.
He was constantly relieving and serving man in all variety of his misery; but he was as surely exposing him, showing him to be a nature fully departed from God in revolt and apostasy. But further; he was exercising him. This is much to be considered, though perhaps not so commonly noticed. In his teaching he exercised people in whatever relation to himself they stood; disciples, or the multitude, or those who brought their sorrows to him, or those who were friendly, as I may call them, or those who as enemies were withstanding him. The disciples he was continually putting through exercises of heart or conscience, as he walked with them, and taught them. This is so common that it need not be instanced.
The multitude who followed him he would treat likewise. “Hear and understand,” he would say to them; thus, exercising their own minds, as he was teaching them.
To, some who brought their sorrows to him he would say, “Believe ye that I can do this?” or such like words. The Syrophoenician is an eminent witness to us how he exercised this class of persons.
Addressing the friendly Simon in Luke 7, after telling him the story of the man who had two debtors, “Tell me,” says he, “therefore, which of them will love him most?”
The Pharisees, his unwearied opposers, he was, in like manner, constantly calling into exercise. And there is such a voice in this, such a witness of what he is. It tells us that he was not performing summary judgment for them, but would fain lead them to repentance: and so, in calling disciples into exercise, he tells us that we learn his lessons only in a due manner, as far as we are drawn out, in some activity of understanding, heart or conscience, over them. This exercising of those he was either leading or teaching is surely another of the moral glories which marked his ministry. But further: in his ministry towards man we see him frequently as a reprover, needful so, in the midst of such a thing as the human family; but his way in reproving shines with excellency that we may well admire. When he was rebuking the Pharisees, whom worldliness had set in opposition to him, he uses a very solemn form of words: “He that is not with me is against me.” But when he is alluding to those who owned him and loved him, but who needed further strength of faith or measure of light, so as to be in full company with him, he spake in other terms: “He that is not against us is for us.”
We notice him again in this character in Matthew 20, in the case of the ten and the two brethren. How does he temper his rebuke because of the good and the right that were in those whom he had to rebuke? And in this he takes a place apart from his heated disciples, who would not have had their two brethren spared in any measure. He patiently sits over the whole material, and separates the precious from the vile that was in it.
So, he is heard again as a reprover in the case of John, forbidding any to cast out devils in his name, if they would not walk with them. But at that moment John’s spirit had been under chastening.
In the light of the Lord’s preceding word’s, he had been making discovery of the mistake he had coin witted, and he refers to that mistake, though the Lord himself had in no way alluded to it. But this being so, John having already a sense of his mistake, and artlessly letting it tell itself out, the Lord deals with it in the greatest gentleness. (See Luke 9:46-50.)
So as to the Baptist: The Lord rebukes him with marked consideration. He was in prison then. What a fact that must have been in the esteem of the Lord at that moment! But he was to be. rebuked for having sent a Message to his Lord that reproached him But the delicacy of the rebuke is beautiful. He returns a message to John. which none but John himself could estimate: “Blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me.” Even John’s disciples, who carried the message between him and the Lord, could not have understood this. Jesus would expose John to himself, but neither to his disciples nor to the world.
So further, his rebuke of the two of Emmaus, and of Thomas after the resurrection, each has its own excellency. Peter—both in Matthew 16 and 17— has to meet rebuke; but the rebuke is very differently ministered on each occasion.
But all this variety is full of moral beauty; and we may surely say, whether his style be peremptory or gentle, sharp or considerate; whether rebuke, on his lips, be so reduced as to be scarcely rebuke at all; or so heightened as almost to be the language of repulse and disclaimer; still, when the occasion is weighed, all this variety will be found to be but various perfections; All these his reproofs were “ earrings of gold, and ornaments of fine gold,” whether hung or not upon “ obedient ears.” (Proverbs 25:12.) “Let the righteous smite me; it shall be a kindness and let him reprove me; it shall be an excellent oil which shall not break my head.” (Psalms 141:5.) Surely the Lord gave his disciples to prove this.