St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1881-03-04
Strength According to Our Day.
BY REV. HENRY J. vANDYKE, D. D

BY REV. HENRY J. VANDYKE, d. D.
How does God give strength to them
that trust in Him at the very time that
they need it? We cannot answer the
question in full but we know in part.
We know that the honest effort to do
and suffer His will according to His
Word develops our own latent strength.
We don't know what we can do till we
try. nor what we can bear till we are
tested. A woman who had been bed
ridden for months and honestly thought
she could not raise her hand to her
head, when an alarm was raised that
the house was on fire, arose and took
up her bed and walked, and got well
from that very hour. A traveller in
Switzerland relates that his companion
fell part way down a precipice, and
clinging to n iutting rock cried out for
help. He went Immediately to the res
cue, and both escaped. But the next
day, when they returned to the scene,
they were astonished and terrified to
find no path or foothold by which they
would dare to descend again to the
point of danger. The excitement and
necessity of the peril had developed in
them a strength of hand and foot and a
steadiness of eye, which forsook them
in their cooler moments. We are al
ways strongest when, under the pres
sure of our need, we are not thinking
of our strength.
The consciousness that we are trust
ing in God is a mighty power in the
soul in the day when the keepers of the
house tremble. 1t transforms fear into
courage and weakness into strength.
God aud one make a majority. Thus
men of old of whom the world was not
worthy stopped the mouths of lions,
quenched the violence of fire, waxed
valiant in fight and turned to flight
the armies of the aliens" God says,
'Fear not, for | am with thee; when
thou passest through the waters | will
be with thee, when thou walkest
through the fire thou shalt not be
burned
In prosperous days, when all men
speak well of us, and we have all our
hearts desire, such promises have little
meaning. But when the floods come,
or the fires are kindled, the waters
quicken them into life, and the flame
burns the consciousness of their fulfil
ment into our memory.
OF course, we do not mean that the
proportiOuing of our strength to our
days is fully explained by this develop
ment of our latent powers and this ex-
peTimental Interpretation of the prom
Uses. These are but the channels
through which God imparts to us a
measure of His own strength--the
means by which He carries out his def
mite plan of our lives. But beyond
and above our efforts and our con-
sciOusness He brings us into living con-
nection with His own almightiness.
He not only works in and through our
faculties but underneath and around
us He puts His everlasting arms. The
wandering sea-bird, and the paper nau-
titus, with its gauzy sails, are borne up
on the bosom of the deep as safely as
the mighty steamship that ploughs its
triumphant way through the waves.
The weakest Christian rests on the
bosom of the Almighty as securely as
the strongest. Our spiritual life is hid
with Christ in God, and from the full
ness of that exhaustless fountain will all
receive grace for grace.
A few years ago | pressed my way
through blind forest paths and over
rocky barriers to the summit of Mount
Marcy and there on the bald noun
tain-top there was a living spring OF
pure water. / asked myself whence
that water came. In that altitude,
above the line of vegetation, there was
no forest from whose secret treasures ii
could be supplied. Among the hun
dreds of mountain peaks that crowded
the view to the distant horizon there
was no higher reservoir from which il
could be forced up through hidden