Job 4:12

"Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

"Now a thing was secretly brought to me." Job 4:12

Things which are so brought are often the best things. They are not meant for the bodily eye, which can see but imperfectly, but for the vision of the soul, which, where the character is good, is strong and clear. We call the sum of our experiences, "impressions," "feelings," "impulses,""tendencies;" we are afraid to characterise or define them by some positively religious name. Who, for example, dare say he was inspired? Who has sufficient religious boldness to say that the Holy Spirit fell upon him, and taught him this or that, or awakened his faculties to such and such an exercise? Those who are believers in the Bible ought to have no hesitation in using religious terms for the definition of religious impressions. Inspiration is always a secret communication. The Spirit of God steals, so to speak, upon the spirit of man, suddenly, in darkness, in out-of-the-way places, and, communing with him, transforms him into a new being, increasing his faculties both in number and strength, and clothing him with new and beneficent power. When a good impulse stirs the heart, better trace it to a high origin than to a low one. When we are moved in the direction of self-sacrifice for the good of others we should instantly seal the action of the Spirit with the name of God, and thus give it sanctity and nobleness, and turn it into an imperative and gracious obligation. When a man supposes anything has been secretly brought to him from heaven, it was not meant that it should be locked up in his own heart; the very man who says that a secret message was delivered to him now begins to speak of it and to relate it all in graphic detail. We should repeat this experience. Who has not had conviction of sin? Who has not known the mysterious action of conscience? Who has not felt deeply and irresistibly that this world is not all, but that upon the horizon of time there gleams the beginning of eternity? We should speak of these better impulses, these religious exhortations and ecstasies; we should never be ashamed of them, but hold them as in our personal trust for the benefit of the common family of man. Great ideas were never meant to be merely personal possessions; "There is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty" intellectually and spiritually as well as financially. "He that watereth shall be watered also himself." Make no secret of your best ideas, your noblest impulses, your highest enthusiasms; tell them to others; the very stating of them may be as the declaration of gospels, the revelations of the unseen kingdom of Christ. Of course the wise man will not throw his pearls before swine; he will study circumstances, opportunities, and conditions; the very spirit that brought the secret thing to him will indicate the right time and place under which he is to make revelations! of what he has seen and known and handled of the word of life. Some gospels are to be preached to solitary persons; other gospels are to be thundered as it were from mountain-tops, and to be made known in all their majesty and grandeur and beneficence to the whole family of mankind. The heart at once identifies messages which have been brought from heaven: there is no disguising or perverting such messages so as to obliterate their identity. Even when but poorly delivered there is something about them which declares a heavenly origin. This is emphatically so with the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Even when men are tempted to ridicule it, they seem to be trifling with a temple, to be bringing into disdain the noblest tower ever built upon the earth and reaching to heaven. There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding. Perhaps even the commonest soul knows true music from false: there is something in it which claims a species of kinship with the man and awakens him into a new and blessed consciousness.