Daily Devotionals

Music For the Soul

Devotional: February 4th

OUR LORD’S PERFECT MANHOOD

He shall not fail (or burn dimly, marg.) nor be discouraged (bruised, marg.), till He have set judgment in the earth. - Isaiah 42:4

There are no bruises in this reed. That is to say, Christ’s Manhood is free from all scars and wounds of evil or of sin. There is no dimness in this light. That is to say, Christ’s character is perfect, His goodness needs no increase. There is no trace of effort in His holiness, no growth manifest in His God-likeness, from the beginning to the end. There is no outward violence that can be brought to bear upon Him that shall stay Him in His purpose. There is no inward failure of strength that may lead us to fear that His work shall not be completed. And because of all these things, because of His perfect exemption from human infirmity, because in Him was no sin, He is manifested to take away our sins. Because in Him there was goodness incapable of increase, being perfect from the beginning, therefore is He manifested to make us participants of His own unalterable and infinite goodness and purity. Because no outward violence, no inward weakness, can ever stay His course nor make Him abandon His purpose, therefore His Gospel looks upon the world with boundless hopefulness, with calm triumph; will not hear of there being any outcast and irreclaimable classes; declares it to be a blasphemy against God and Christ to say that any man or any nations are incapable of receiving the Gospel and of being redeemed by it, and comes with supreme love and a calm consciousness of infinite power to you, my brother, in your deepest darkness, in your moods most removed from God and purity, and declares to you that it will heal you, and will raise all that in you is feeble to its own strength. Every man may pray to that strong Christ who fails not nor is discouraged -

"What in me is dark, illumine;

"What is low, raise and support "-

in the confidence that He will hear and answer. If you do that you will not do it in vain, but His gentle hand laid upon you will heal the bruises that sin has made. Out of your weakness, as of "a reed shaken with the wind," the Restorer will make a pillar of marble in the temple of His God. And out of your smoking dimness of wavering light - a spark at the best, almost buried in the thick smoke that accompanies it - the fostering Christ will make a brightness which shall flame as the perfect light that "shineth more and more unto the noontide of the day."