THE

MIND OF JESUS.

But how lofty such a standard! How all creature-perfection shrinks abashed and confounded before a Divine portraiture like this! He is the true “Angel standing in the sun,” who alone projects no shadow; so bathed in the glories of Deity that likeness to Him becomes like the light in which He is shrouded—“no man can approach unto it.” May we not, however, seek at least to approximate, though we can not adequately resemble? It is impossible on earth to associate with a fellow-being without getting, in some degree, assimilated to him. So, the more we study “the Mind of Christ,” the more we are in His company—holding converse with Him as our best and dearest friend—catching up his holy looks and holy deeds—the more shall we be “transformed into the same image.”

“Consider,” says the Great Apostle (literally ‘gaze on’) “Christ Jesus” (Heb. iii. 1). Study feature by feature, lineament by lineament, of that Peerless Exemplar. “Gaze” on the Sun of Righteousness, till, like gazing long on the natural sun, you carry away with you, on your spiritual vision, dazzling images of His brightness and glory. Though He be the Archetype of all goodness, remember He is no shadowy model—though the Infinite Jehovah, He was “the Man Christ Jesus.”

We must never, indeed, forget that it is not the mind, but the work of Immanuel, which lies at the foundation of a sinner’s hope. He must be known as a Saviour, before He is studied as an Example. His doing and dying is the center jewel, of which all the virtues of His holy life are merely the setting. But neither must we overlook the Scripture obligation to walk in His footsteps and imbibe His Spirit, for “if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His!”

Oh, that each individual Christian were more Saviour-like! that, in the manifestation of a holy character and heavenly demeanor, it might be said in some feeble measure of the faint and imperfect reflection—“Such was Jesus!”

How far short we are of such a criterion, mournful experience can testify. But it is at least comforting to know that there is a day coming, when, in the full vision and fruition of the Glorious Original, the exhortation of our motto-verse will be needed no more; when we shall be able to say, in the words of an inspired apostle,

“We have the mind of Christ!”

What a pattern to His people, the tender compassion of Jesus! He found the world He came to save a moral Bethesda. The wail of suffering humanity was every where borne to His ear. It was His delight to walk its porches, to pity, relieve, comfort, save! The faintest cry of misery arrested His footsteps—stirred a ripple in this fountain of Infinite Love. Was it a leper,—that dreaded name which entailed a life-long exile from friendly looks and kindly words? There was One, at least, who had tones and deeds of tenderness for the outcast. “Jesus, being moved with compassion, put forth His hand, and touched him.” Was it some blind beggars on the Jericho highway, groping in darkness, pleading for help? “Jesus stood still, and had compassion on them, and touched their eyes!” Was it the speechless pleadings of a widow’s tears at the gate of Nain, when she followed her earthly pride and prop to the grave? “When the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her, and said, Weep not!” Even when He rebukes, the bow of compassion is seen in the cloud, or rather, that cloud, as it passes, dissolves in a rain-shower of mercy. He pronounces Jerusalem “desolate,” but the doom is uttered amid a flood of anguished sorrow!

Reader! do the compassionate words and deeds of a tender Saviour find any feeble echo and transcript in yours? As you traverse in thought the wastes of human wretchedness, does the spectacle give rise, not to the mere emotional feeling which weeps itself away in sentimental tears, but to an earnest desire to do something to mitigate the sufferings of woe-worn humanity? How vast and world-wide the claims on your compassion!—now near, now at a distance—the unmet and unanswered cry of perishing millions abroad—the heathendom which lies unsuccored at your own door—the public charity languishing—the mission staff dwarfed and crippled from lack of needful funds—a suffering district—a starving family—a poor neighbor—a helpless orphan—it may be, some crowded hovel, where misery and vice run riot—or some lonely sick chamber, where the dim lamp has been wasting for dreary nights—or some desolate home which death has entered, where “Joseph is not, and Simeon is not,” and where some sobbing heart, under the tattered garb of poverty, mourns, unsolaced and unpitied, its “loved and lost.” Are there none such within your reach, to whom a trifling pittance would be as an angel of mercy? How it would hallow and enhance all you possess, were you to seek to live as almoner of Jehovah’s bounties! If He has given you of this world’s substance, remember it is bestowed, not to be greedily hoarded or lavishly squandered. Property and wealth are talents to be traded on and laid out for the good of others—sacred trusts, not selfishly to be enjoyed, but generously to be employed.

“The poor are the representatives of Jesus, their wants He considers as His own,” and He will recompense accordingly. The feeblest expression of Christian pity and love, though it be but the widow’s mite, or the cup of cold water, or the kindly look and word when there is neither mite nor cup to give, yet, if done in His name, it is entered in the “book of life” as a “loan to the Lord;” and in that day when “the books are opened,” the loan will be paid back with usury.

“ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND.”

“Not my will, but Thy will,” was the motto of this wondrous Being! When He came into the world He thus announced His advent, “Lo, I come, I delight to do Thy will, O my God!” When He left it, we listen to the same prayer of blended agony and acquiescence, “O my Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from me! Nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou wilt.”

Reader! is this mind also in you? Ah, what are your trials compared to His! What the ripples in your tide of woe, compared to the waves and billows which swept over him! If He, the spotless Lamb of God, “murmured not,” how can you murmur? His were the sufferings of a bosom never once darkened with the passing shadow of guilt or sin. Your severest sufferings are deserved, yea, infinitely less than deserved! Are you tempted to indulge in hard suspicions, as to God’s faithfulness and love, in appointing some peculiar trial? Ask yourself, Would Jesus have done this? Should I seek to pry into “the deep things of God,” when He, in the spirit of a weaned child, was satisfied with the solution, “Even so, Father, for so it seems good in Thy sight”?

“Even so, Father!” Afflicted one! “tossed with tempest, and not comforted,” take that word on which thy Lord pillowed His suffering head, and make it, as He did, the secret of thy resignation.

The sick child will take the bitterest draught from a father’s hand. “This cup which Thou, O God, givest me to drink, shall I not drink it?” Be it mine to lie passive in the arms of Thy chastening love, exulting in the assurance that all Thy appointments, though sovereign, are never arbitrary, but that there is a gracious “need be” in them all. “My Father!” my Covenant God! the God who spared not Jesus! It may well hush every repining word.

Drinking deep of his sweet spirit of submission, you will be able thus to meet, yea, even to welcome, your sorest cross, saying, “Yes, Lord, all is well, just because it is Thy blessed will. Take me, use me, chasten me, as seemeth good in Thy sight. My will is resolved into Thine. This trial is dark; I can not see the ‘why and the wherefore’ of it—but ‘not my will, but Thy will!’ The gourd is withered; I can not see the reason of so speedy a dissolution of the loved earthly shelter; sense and sight ask in vain why these leaves of earthly refreshment have been doomed so soon to droop in sadness and sorrow. But it is enough. ‘The Lord prepared the worm;’ ‘not my will, but Thy will!’”

Oh, how does the stricken soul honor God by thus being dumb in the midst of dark and perplexing dealings, recognizing in these, part of the needed discipline and training for a sorrowless, sinless, deathless world; regarding every trial as a link in the chain which draws it to heaven, where the whitest robes will be found to be those here baptized with suffering, and bathed in tears!

“ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND.”

However short man comes of his “chief end,” “Glory to God in the highest” was the motive, the rule, and exponent of every act of that wondrous life. With us, the magnet of the soul, even when truest, is ever subject to partial oscillations and depressions, trembling at times away from its great attraction-point. His never knew one tremulous wavering from its all-glorious center. With Him there were no ebbs and flows, no fits and starts. He could say, in the words of that prophetic psalm which speaks so preëminently of Himself, “I have set the Lord always before me!”

Reader! do you feel that in some feeble measure this lofty life-motto of the sinless Son of God is written on your home and heart, regulating your actions, chastening your joys, quickening your hopes, giving energy and direction to your whole being, subordinating all the affections of your nature to their high destiny? With pure and unalloyed motives, with a single eye, and a single aim, can you say, somewhat in the spirit of His brightest follower, “This one thing I do”? Are you ready to regard all you have—rank, name, talents, riches, influence, distinctions—valuable, only so far as they contribute to promote the glory of Him who is “first and last, and all in all”? Seek to feel that your heavenly Father’s is not only a business; but the business of life. “Whose I am, and whom I serve,”—let this be the superscription written on your thoughts and deeds, your employments and enjoyments, your sleeping and waking. Be not, as the fixed stars, cold and distant; but be ever bathing in the sunshine of conscious nearness to Him who is the sun and center of all happiness and joy.

Each has some appointed work to perform, some little niche in the spiritual temple to occupy. Yours may be no splendid services, no flaming or brilliant actions to blaze and dazzle in the eye of man. It may be the quiet, unobtrusive inner work, the secret prayer, the mortified sin, the forgiven injury, the trifling act of self-sacrifice for God’s glory and the good of others, of which no eye but the Eye which seeth in secret is cognizant. It matters not how small. Remember, with Him, motive dignifies action. It is not what we do, but how we do it. He can be glorified in little things as well as great things, and by nothing more than the daily walk, the daily life.

Beware of any thing that would interfere with a surrender of heart and soul to His service—worldly entanglements, indulged sin, an uneven walk, a divided heart, nestling in creature comforts, shrinking from the cross. How many hazard, if they do not make shipwreck, of their eternal hopes by becoming idlers in the vineyard; lingerers, like Lot; world-lovers, like Demas; “do-nothing Christians,” like the inhabitants of Meroz! The command is, “Go, work!” Words tell what you should be; deeds tell what you are. Let those around you see there is a reality in walking with God, and working for God!

“ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND.”

Many a death-struggle has been made to save a friend. A dying Saviour gathers up His expiring breath to plead for His foes! At the climax of His own woe, and of human ingratitude—man-forsaken, and God-deserted—His faltering voice mingles with the shout of His murderers,—“Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do!” Had the faithless Peter been there, could he have wondered at the reply to a former question,—“Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him,—till seven times?” Jesus said unto him, “I say not unto thee, Until seven times; but, Until seventy times seven.” (Matt. xviii. 21.)

Superiority to insult and ignominy, with some, proceeds from a callous and indifferent temperament,—a cold, phlegmatic, stoical insensibility, alike to kindness or unkindness. It was not so with Jesus. The tender sensibilities of His holy nature rendered Him keenly sensible to ingratitude and injury, whether this was manifested in the malice of undisguised enmity, or the treachery of trusted friendship. Perhaps to a noble nature the latter of these is the more deeply wounding. Many are inclined to forgive an open and unmasked antagonist, who are not so willing to forget or forgive heartless faithfulness, or unrequited love. But see, too, in this respect, the conduct of the blessed Redeemer! Mark how He deals with His own disciples who had basely forsaken him and fled, and that, too, in the hour He most needed their sympathy. No sooner does He rise from the dead than He hastens to disarm their fears and to assure them of an unaltered and unalterable affection. “Go tell my brethren,” is the first message He sends; “Peace be unto you,” is the salutation at the first meeting; “Children!” is the word with which He first greets them on the shores of Tiberias. Even Joseph, (the Old Testament type and pattern of generous forgiveness,) when he makes himself known to his brethren, recalls the bitter thought, “Whom ye sold into Egypt.” The true Joseph, when He reveals Himself to His disciples, buries in oblivion the memory of by-gone faithlessness. He meets them with a benediction. He leaves them at His ascension with the same—“He lifted up His hands and blessed them!”

Reader! follow in all this the spirit of your Lord and Master. In rising from the study of His holy example, seek to feel that with you there shall be no such name, no such word, as enemy! Harbor no resentful thought, indulge in no bitter recrimination. Surrender yourself to no sullen fretfulness. Let “the law of kindness” be in your heart. Put the best construction on the failings of others Make no injurious comments on their frailties; no uncharitable insinuations. “Consider thyself, lest thou also be tempted.” When disposed at any time to cherish an unforgiving spirit towards a brother, think, if thy God had retained His anger for ever, where wouldst thou have been? If He, the Infinite One, who might have spurned thee for ever from His presence, hath had patience with thee, and forgiven thee all, wilt thou, on account of some petty grievance which thy calmer moments would pronounce unworthy of a thought, indulge in the look of cold estrangement, the unrelenting word, or unforgiving deed? “If any man have a quarrel against any, even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.”

“ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND.”

There is often a beautiful blending of majesty and humility, magnanimity and lowliness, in great minds. The mightiest and holiest of all Beings that ever trod our world was the meekest of all. The Ancient of Days was as the “infant of days.” He who had listened to nothing but angel-melodies from all eternity, found, while on earth, melody in the lispings of an infant’s voice, or in an outcast’s tears! No wonder an innocent lamb was His emblem, or that the annointing Spirit came down upon Him in the form of the gentle dove. He had the wealth of worlds at His feet. The hosts of heaven had only to be summoned as His retinue. But all the pageantry of the world, all its dreams of carnal glory, had, for Him, no fascination. The Tempter, from a mountain-summit, showed Him a wide scene of “splendid misery;” but He spurned alike the thought and the adversary away! John and James would call down fire from heaven on a Samaritan village; He rebukes the vengeful suggestion! Peter, on the night of the betrayal, cuts off the ear of an assassin; the intended Victim, again, only challenges His disciple, and heals His enemy!

Arraigned before Pilate’s judgment-seat, how meekly He bears nameless wrongs and indignities! Suspended on the cross—the execrations of the multitude are rising around, but He hears as though He heard them not; they extract no angry look, no bitter word—“Behold the Lamb of God!” Need we wonder that “meekness” and “poverty of spirit” should stand foremost in His own cluster of beatitudes; that He should select this among all His other qualities for the peculiar study and imitation of His disciples, “Learn of Me, for I am meek;” or that an apostle should exhort “by the meekness and gentleness of Christ!”

How different the world’s maxims, and His! The world’s—“Resent the affront, vindicate honor!” His—“Overcome evil with good!” The world’s—“Only let it be when for your faults ye are buffeted that ye take it patiently.” His—“When ye do well and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God.” (1 Pet. ii. 20.)

Reader! strive to obtain, like your adorable Lord, this “ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which, in the sight of God, is of great price.” Be “clothed” with gentleness and humility. Follow not the world’s fleeting shadows that mock you as you grasp them. If always aspiring—ever soaring on the wing—you are likely to become discontented, proud, selfish, time-serving. In whatever position of life God has placed you, be satisfied. What! ambitious to be on a pinnacle of the temple—a higher place in the Church, or in the world?—Satan might hurl you down! “Be not high-minded, but fear.” And with respect to others, honor their gifts, contemplate their excellences only to imitate them. Speak kindly, act gently, “condescend to men of low estate.”

Be assured, no happiness is equal to that enjoyed by the “meek Christian.” He has within him a perpetual inner sunshine, a perennial well-spring of peace. Never ruffled and fretted by real or imagined injuries, he puts the best construction on motives and actions, and by a gentle answer to unmerited reproach often disarms wrath.

“ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND.”

We know in seasons of deep sorrow and trial that every thing wears a gloomy aspect. Dumb Nature herself to the burdened spirit seems as if she partook in the hues of sadness. The life of Jesus was one continuous experience of privation and woe—a “Valley of Baca,” from first to last; yet, amid accents of plaintive sorrow, there are ever heard subdued undertones of thankfulness and joy!

Ah, if He, the suffering “Man of sorrows,” could, during a life of unparalleled woe, lift up His heart in grateful acknowledgment to His Father in heaven, how ought the lives of those to be one perpetual “hymn of thankfulness,” who are from day to day and hour to hour (for all they have, both temporally and spiritually) pensioners on God’s bounty and love!

Reader! cultivate this thankful spirit; it will be to thee a perpetual feast. There is, or ought to be, with us no such thing as small mercies; all are great, because the least are undeserved. Indeed, a really thankful heart will extract motive for gratitude from every thing, making the most even of scanty blessings. St. Paul, when in his dungeon at Rome, a prisoner in chains, is heard to say, “I have all, and abound!”

Guard, on the other hand, against that spirit of continual fretting and moping over fancied ills; that temptation to exaggerate the real or supposed disadvantages of our condition, magnifying the trifling inconveniences of every-day life into enormous evils. Think, rather, how much we have to be thankful for. The world in which we live, in spite of all the scars of sin and suffering upon it, is a happy world. It is not, as many would morbidly paint it, flooded with tears and strewn with wrecks, plaintive with a perpetual dirge of sorrow. True, the “Everlasting Hills” are in glory, but there are numberless eminences of grace, and love, and mercy below; many green spots in the lower valley, many more than we deserve!

God will reward a thankful spirit. Just as on earth, when a man receives with gratitude what is given, we are more disposed to give again, so also, “the Lord loveth” a cheerful “receiver,” as well as a cheerful “giver.”

Let ours, moreover, be a Gospel thankfulness. Let the incense of a grateful spirit rise not only to the Great Giver of all good, but to our Covenant God in Christ. Let it be the spirit of the child exulting in the bounty and beneficence of his Father’s house and home! “Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ!”

While the sweet melody of gratitude vibrates through every successive moment of our daily being, let love to our adorable Redeemer show for whom and for what it is we reserve our notes of loftiest and most fervent praise. Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift!

“ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND.”

Jesus stands out for our imitation a grand solitary exception in the midst of a world of selfishness. His entire life was one abnegation of self; a beautiful living embodiment of that charity which “seeketh not her own.” He who for others turned water into wine, and provided a miraculous supply for the fainting thousands in the wilderness, exerted no such miraculous power for His own necessities. During His forty days’ temptation, no table did He spread for Himself, no booth did He rear for his unpillowed head. Twice do we read of Him shedding tears—on neither occasion were they for Himself. The approach of His cross and passion, instead of absorbing Him in His own approaching suffering, seemed only to elicit new and more gracious promises to His people. When His enemies came to apprehend Him, His only stipulation was for His disciples’ release—“Let these go their way.” In the very act of departure, with all the boundless glories of eternity in sight, they were still all His care.

Ah, how different is the spirit of the world! With how many is day after day only a new oblation to that idol which never darkened with its shadow His Holy heart; pampering their own wishes; “envying and grieving at the good of a neighbor;” unable to brook the praise of a rival; establishing their own reputation on the ruins of another; thus engendering jealousy, discontent, peevishness, and every kindred unholy passion.

“But ye have not so learned Christ!” Reader! have you been sitting at the feet of Him who “pleased not Himself”? Are you “dying daily;”—dying to self as well as to sin? Are you animated with this as the high end and aim of existence—to lay out your time, and talents, and opportunities, for God’s glory, and the good of your fellow-men; not seeking your own interests, but rather ceding these, if, by doing so, another will be made happier, and your Saviour honored? You may not have it in your power to manifest this “mind of Jesus” on a great scale, by enduring great sacrifices; nor is this required. His denial of self had about it no repulsive austerity; but you can evince its holy influence and sway by innumerable little offices of kindness and good-will; taking a generous interest in the welfare and pursuits of others, or engaging and coöperating in schemes for the mitigation of human misery.

Avoid ostentation—another repulsive form of self. Be willing to be in the shade; sound no trumpet before you. The evangelist Matthew made a great feast, which was graced by the presence of Jesus; in his Gospel he says not one word about it!

Seek to live more constantly and habitually under the constraining influence of the love of Jesus. Selfishness withers and dies beneath Calvary.

Ah, believer! if Christ had “pleased Himself,” where wouldst thou have been this day?

“ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND.”

We can not fail to be struck, in the course of the Saviour’s public teaching, with His constant appeal to the word of God. While, at times, He utters, in His own name, the authoritative behest, “Verily, verily, I say unto you,” He as often thus introduces some mighty work, or gives intimation of some impending event in His own momentous life, “These things must come to pass, that the Scriptures be fulfilled, which saith.” He commands His people to “search the Scriptures;” but He sets the example by searching and submitting to them Himself. Whether he drives the money-changers from their sacrilegious traffic in the temple, or foils his great adversary on the mount of temptation, he does so with the same weapon, “It is written.” When He rises from the grave, the theme of His first discourse is one impressive tribute to the value and authority of the same sacred oracles. The disciples on the road to Emmaus listen to nothing but a Bible lesson. “He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.”

How momentous the instruction herein conveyed! The necessity of the absolute subjection of the mind to God’s written Word—making churches, creeds, ministers, books, religious opinion, all subordinate and subservient to this—“How readest thou?” rebuking the philosophy, falsely so called, that would distort the plain statements of Revelation, and bring them to the bar of proud Reason.

If an infallible Redeemer, “a law to Himself,” was submissive in all respects to the “written law,” shall fallible man refuse to sit with the teachableness of a little child, and listen to the Divine message? There may be, there is, in the Bible, what reason staggers at: “we have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep.” But, “Thus saith the Lord,” is enough. Faith does not first ask what the bread is made of, but eats it. It does not analyse the components of the living stream, but with joy draws the water from “the wells of salvation.”

Reader! take that Word as “the lamp to thy feet, and the light to thy path.” In days when false lights are hung out, there is the more need of keeping the eye steadily fixed on the unerring beacon. Make the Bible the arbiter in all difficulties—the ultimate court of appeal. Like Mary, “sit at the feet of Jesus,” willing only to learn of Him. How many perplexities it would save you! how many fatal steps in life it would prevent—how many tears! “It is a great matter,” says the noblest of modern Christian philosophers, “when the mind dwells on any passage of Scripture, just to think how true it is.” (Chalmers’ Life).

In every dubious question, when the foot is trembling on debatable ground, knowing not whether to advance or recede, make this the final criterion, “What saith the Scripture?” The world may remonstrate—erring friends may disapprove—Satan may tempt—ingenious arguments may explain away; but, with our finger on the revealed page, let the words of our Great Example be ever a Divine formula for our guidance:—“This commandment have I received of my Father!”

“ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND.”