Husbandry Spiritualized — Chapter 5

Spent barren land you can restore and nourish.

Decayed Christians God can cause to flourish.

Observation.

When land is spent out by [reconstructed: tillage], or for want of manuring, the careful husbandman has many ways to recover and bring it in heart again. He lets it lie fallow to give it rest, and time to recover itself, carries out his sand, lime and compost, to refresh and quicken it again, and in pasture and meadow ground, will wash it (if possible) with a current of water, or the float of the ways after a fall of rain, which is to the earth as a spring of new blood to a consumptive body. He cuts down and kills the weeds that suck it out, and cause them to make restitution of what they have purloined from it, by rotting upon the place where they grew. As careful are they to recover it when it is spent, as an honest physician is of his patient in a languishing condition, [reconstructed: for he knows] his field will be as grateful to him, and fully requite his care and [reconstructed: cost].

Application.

As man's, so God's husbandry is sometimes out of case, not by yielding too many crops, but too few. The mystical husbandman has some fields (I mean particular societies and persons) who were once fragrant and fruitful like a field which God had blessed, but are now decayed and grown barren; whose gleanings formerly, were more than their vintage now; the things that are in them are ready to die (Revelation 3:3). It is possible, indeed, too common for gracious souls to be reduced to a very low ebb, both of graces and comforts; how low I will not say: Our British divines tell us, that grace indeed cannot be totally intermitted; nor finally lost; but there may be an omission of the act, though not an amission of the habit: the act may be perverted, though the faith cannot be subverted; it may be shaken in, though not shaken out; its fruits may fall, but its sap lies hid in its root; they demerit the loss of the kingdom, but lose it not effectively; the effect of justification may be suspended, but the state of the justified cannot be dissolved.

Certain it is, one that like Paul has been rapt up with joy, even to the third heavens, and cried, I am more than a conqueror, who can separate me from the love of God? May at another time lie mourning as at the gates of death, crying, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? One that has walked in sweet communion with God, sunning himself in the light of his countenance, may afterwards walk in darkness, and see no light (Isaiah 50:10). He that has cast anchor within the veil, and rode securely in the peaceful harbour of assurance, may seem to feel his anchor of hope come home to him, and go adrift into the stormy ocean again, crying with the Church (Lamentations 3:18), My hope is perished from the Lord. His calm and clear air may be overcast and clouded, yea filled with storms and tempests, lightnings and thunders; his graces, like under-ground flowers in the winter, may all disappear, and hide their beautiful heads.

To God he may say, I am cast out of your sight; I know you can do much, but will you show wonders to the dead?

To the promises he may say, you are sweet things indeed, but what have I to do with you? I could once indeed rejoice in you, as my portion; but now I doubt I grasped a shadow, a fancy instead of you. To saints he may say, turn away from me, labor not to comfort me, O do not spill your precious ointment of consolation upon my head, for what have I to do with comfort? To former experiences, he may say in his haste, you are all liars. To the light of God's countenance, he may say, farewell sweet light, I shall behold you no more. To [reconstructed: Satan], he may say, O my enemy, you have at last prevailed against me, you are stronger than I, and have overcome. To duties and ordinances, he may say, where is the sweetness I once found in you? You were once sweeter to me than the honeycomb; but now as tasteless, as the white of an egg. O sad relapse? deplored change! quantum mutatus ab illo?

But will God leave his poor creatures helpless in such a case as this? Shall their leaf fall, their branches wither, their joy, their life, their heart depart? Will he see their graces fainting, their hopes gasping, the new creature panting, the things that are in them ready to die, and will he not regard it? Yes, yes, there is hope of a tree if it be cut down, and the root thereof wax old in the earth, yet by the scent of water it will bud, and bring forth boughs, like a plant (Job 14:8-9). This poor declined soul, as sad as it sits at the gates of hell, may rouse up itself at last, and say to Satan that stands triumphing over him, Rejoice not over me, O my enemy, for though I fall, yet I shall arise; though I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me (Micah 7:8). He may raise up himself upon his bed of languishing for all this, and say to God, though you have chastened me sorely, yet you have not given me over to death. He may turn about to the saints, that have mourned for him and with a lightsome countenance say, I shall not die but live, and declare the works of the Lord. He may say to the promises, you are the true and faithful sayings of God, my unbelief did belie you; I said in my haste you were liars, but I eat my words, I am ashamed of my folly. Surely, O soul, there is yet hope in your end, you may be restored (Psalm 23:3). You may yet recover your verdure, and your dew be as the dew of herbs.

Is he not your father, and a father [reconstructed: full] of compassions and bowels? And can a father stand by his dying child, see his fainting fits, hear his melting groans, and pity begging looks; and not help him; especially having restoratives by him that can do it? Surely, as a father pities his own children, so will your God pity you (Psalm 103:12-13). He will spare you, as a father spares his own son that serves him (Malachi 3:17). Hark, how his bowels yearn? I have surely heard Ephraim [reconstructed: bemoaning] himself, [reconstructed: is not] Ephraim my dear son? Is he not a pleasant child? For since I spoke against him, I do earnestly remember him still, I will surely have mercy on him (Jeremiah 31:20).

Does he not know your life would be altogether useless to him, if he should not restore you? What service are you fit to perform to him, in such a condition? Your days will consume like smoke, while your heart is smitten and withered like grass (Psalm 102:3-4). Your months will be months of vanity, they will fly away and see no good (Job 7:3). If he will but quicken you again, then you must call upon his name (Psalm 80:18). But in a dead and languishing condition, you are no more fit for any work of God, than a sick man is for manual labors; and surely he has not put those precious and excellent graces of his Spirit within you for nothing; they were planted there for fruit and service, and therefore doubtless he will revive you again.

Indeed, do you not think he sees your inability to bear such a condition long? He knows your Spirit would fail before him, and the soul which he has made (Isaiah 57:16). David told him as much, in the like condition (Psalm 143:7-8). Hear me speedily, O Lord, for my spirit fails; hide not your face from me, lest I be like those that go down into the pit; q. d. Lord, make haste and recover my languishing soul; otherwise, whereas you have now a sick child, you will shortly have a dead child.

And in like manner Job expostulated with him (Job 6:1-3, 11-12). My grief is heavier than the sand of the sea, my words are swallowed up, for the arrows of the Almighty are within me; and the poison thereof drinks up my spirits: the terrors of God do set themselves in array against me, what is my strength that I should hope? Is my strength the strength of stones? Or are my bones of brass? So (Job 7:12). Am I a sea, or a whale? Etc. Other troubles a man may bear, but this he cannot bear (Proverbs 18:14). And therefore doubtless seasonable and gracious revivings will come. He will not stir up all his wrath, for he remembers you are but flesh; a wind that passes away, and comes not again (Psalm 78:38-39). He has ways enough to do it; if he does but unveil his blessed face and make it shine again upon you, you are saved (Psalm 80:3). The manifestations of his love will be to your soul as showers to the parched grass; your soul that now droops, and hangs the wing, shall then revive and leap for joy (Isaiah 61:1). A new face shall come upon your graces, they shall bud again, and blossom as a rose; if he does but send a spring of auxiliary grace into your soul, to actuate the dull habits of inherent grace, the work is done; then you shall return to your first works again (Revelation 2:4-5), and sing, as in the days of your youth.

REFLECTIONS.

O this is my very case, says many a poor Christian; thus my soul languishes and droops from day to day: it is good news indeed, that God both can and will restore my soul, but sad that I should fall into such a state. How unlike am I to what once I was? Surely, as the old men wept, when they saw how short the second Temple came of the glory of the first, so may I sit down and weep bitterly, to consider how much my first love, and first duties excelled the present. For.

Is my heart so much in heaven now, as it was wont to be? Say, O my soul! Do you not remember, when like the beloved disciple you lay in Jesus' bosom? How did you sweeten communion with him? How restless and impatient were you in his absence! Divine withdrawments were to you as the hell of hell: What a burden was the world to me in those days! Had it not been for conscience of my duty, I could have been willing to let all lie, that communion with Christ might suffer no interruption. When I awaked in the night, how was the darkness enlightened by the heavenly glimpses of the countenance of my God upon me? How did his company shorten those hours, and beguile the tediousness of the night? O my soul, speak your experience, is it now as it was then! No, no, those days are past and gone, and you have become much a stranger to that heavenly life. Are you able with truth to deny this charge? When occasionally I pass by those places, which were once to me as Jacob's Bethel to him; I sigh at the remembrance of former passages between me and heaven there; and say with Job (Job 29), O that it were with me as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me, when his candle shined upon my head, when by his light I walked through darkness, when the Almighty was yet with me, when I put on righteousness and it clothed me, when my glory was fresh in me! When I remember these things, my soul is poured out within me.

Is your obedience to the commands of Christ, and motions to duty, as free and cheerful as they were wont to be? Call to mind, my soul, the times when you were borne down the stream of love to every duty; if the Spirit did but whisper to you, saying, Seek my face, how did my spirit echo to his calls? Saying, Your face, Lord, will I seek (Psalm 27:8). If God had any work to be done, how readily did I offer my service? Here am I, Lord, send me. My soul made me as the chariots of Aminadab; love oiled the wheels of my affection, and his commandments were not grievous (1 John 5:3). Non tardat uncta rota. There were no such quarrellings with the command, no such excuses and delays as there are now. No, such was my love to Christ, and delight to do his will, that I could no more keep back myself from duty, than a man that's carried away in a crowd.

Or lastly, tell me, O my soul, do you bemoan yourself, or grieve so tenderly for sin, and for grieving the holy Spirit of God, as you were accustomed to do? When formerly I had fallen by the hand of a temptation, how was I accustomed to lie in tears at the Lord's feet, bemoaning myself? How did I hasten to my closet, and there cry like Ezra (Ezra 9:6), O my God, I am ashamed, and blush to look up to you. How did I sigh and weep before him, and like Ephraim, smite upon my thigh, saying, What have I done? Ah my soul how did you work, strive, and cast about, how to recover yourself again? Have you forgotten, how you would sometimes look up and sigh bitterly; Ah! what a God have I provoked? What love and goodness have I abused? Sometimes look in and weep, Ah! what motions did I withstand? What a good spirit have I grieved? Ah! my soul you would have abhorred yourself, you could never have borne it, had your heart been as stupid and as relentless then as now. If ever a poor soul had reason to dissolve itself into tears for its sad relapses, I have.

But yet mourn not, O my soul, as one without hope. Remember, there is hope in Israel concerning this thing. As low as your condition is, it is not desperate, it is not a disease that scorns a remedy; many a man that has been stretched out for dead, has revived again, and lived many a comfortable day in the world; many a tree that has cast both leaf and fruit, by the skill of a prudent husbandman, has been recovered again, and made both flourishing and fruitful. Is it not easier, do you think, to recover a languishing man to health, than a dead man to life? And yet this God did for me (Ephesians 2:1). Is anything too hard for the Lord? Though my soul draw near to the pit, and my life to the destroyers, yet he can send me a messenger, one among a thousand, that shall declare to me my uprightness; then shall he deliver me from going down into the pit, my flesh shall be fresher than a child's, and I shall return to the days of my youth (Job 33:21). Though my flourish, and much of my fruit too be gone, and I am a withering tree; yet as long as the root of the matter is in me, there is more hope of such a poor decayed withered tree, than of the hypocrite that wants such a root, in all his glory and bravery. His sun shall set, and never rise again; but I live in expectation of a sweet morning, after this dark night.

Rouse up therefore, O my soul, set your faith to work on Christ for quickening grace, for he has life in himself, and quickens whoever he will (John 7:38). Stir up that little which remains (Revelation 3:2). Have you not seen lively flames proceed from glimmering and dying sparks, when carefully collected and blown up? Get among the most lively and quickening Christians; as iron sharpens iron, so will these set an edge upon your dull affections (Proverbs 27:17; Acts 18:15). But above all, cry mightily to the Lord for quickening, he will not despise your cry. The moans of a distressed child, work upon the bowels of a tender father. And be sure to keep within your view, the great things of eternity, which are ready to be revealed; live in the believing and serious contemplations of them, and be dead if you can. It is true, you have reason enough from your condition, to be forever humbled; but no reason at all from your God, to be in the least discouraged.

The Poem.

You are the Husbandman, and I

A worthless plot of husbandry,

Whom special love did nevertheless

Divide from nature's wilderness.

Then did the sunshine of your face

And sweet illapses of your grace

Like April showers, and warming gleams

Distil its dews, reflect its beams.

My dead affections then were green,

And hopeful buds on them were seen:

These into duties soon were turned

In which my heart within me burned:

O halcyon days! Three times happy state!

Each place was Bethel, heaven's gate.

What sweet discourse! What heavenly talk!

While with you I did daily walk!

Mine eyes o'reflow, my heart does sink;

As often as on those days I think.

For strangeness now is got between

My God and me, as may be seen

By what is now, and what was then;

It is just as if I were two men.

My fragrant branches blasted be,

No fruits like those that I can see.

Some canker-worm lies at my root.

Which fades my leaves, destroys my fruit.

My soul is banished from your sight,

For this it mourns day and night.

Yet why do you desponding lie?

With Jonah cast a backward eye.

Sure in your God help may be had,

There's precious balm in Gilead.

That God that made me spring at first,

When I was barren, and accursed;

Can much more easily restore

My soul to what it was before.

It was Heman's, Job's, and David's case,

Yet all recovered were by grace.

A word, a smile on my poor soul;

Will make it perfect, sound, and whole.

A glance of yours has soon dissolved

A soul in sin, and grief involved.

Lord, if you cannot work the cure,

I am contented to endure.