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John Dickie

Your parcel of most beautiful flowers came safe to hand  last week, and I beg now to thank you for them with all my heart. I got them put in water, and they shed their loveliness and their sweet odours around my corner for many days. But more delightful far, than the loveliness of the flowers, is your kindness and sympathy in thinking of me at all, and taking the trouble to send them... I like exceedingly to hear from, or about beloved friends, and whatever may be interesting them. My world is now become a very small and narrow one; and there is a constant need for me to watch and pray, that I do not permit myself to become the centre of it, the great point of interest in it, to myself.  That would simply be, spiritual death, and I dread it; and so feel thankful for every  little help I can get, to be occupied about others; to think of, and be concerned about, and pray for, beloved ones everywhere... SELF-ABSORPTION would be uttermost ruin.
Indeed, I may say, my little world is the Bible; and increasingly I am finding in it everything that I can need. I have just been digging among the golden nuggets in Gal. ii. 20--a passage which I believe has given me many months (put it all together) of the happiest  enjoyments possible on earth. It seems to me to contain the concentrated essence of the entire Word of God. O, to have the anointed eye, to discover clearly the wonders comprehended in it. My last exercise on it, was taken up with the closing words, "Who loved, ME, and gave Himself for Me." What an exquisitely delightful subject for believing medication is this LOVE OF JESUS! And how fruitful is it! One hungering for a delicious apple or two, with which to comfort himself (Song ii. 3), no sooner attempts to pluck one, than the loaded branches half bury him under a pelting shower of mellow fruit. How wonderful is this LOVE OF JESUS! And how delightful when a hearty faith appropriates it, and enjoys it,  and rests in it! It is wonderful in the fact of it; that such an One would so love creatures like ourselves; and it is equally wonderful in the manner of it.  (1 John iii. 1).  It is wonderful in what it has done, in what it is now doing, and in what it purposes to do for its blessed objects, for evermore.

CHRIST IS EVERYTHING

"Whom have I in heaven but Thee" (Psalm lxxiii. 25)

I feel that one great lesson that God has been teaching me, through the sins and sorrows of my whole life is this: That Jesus must be EVERYTHING to me. I have been slow, slow to believe it, but He has patIently continued His precious lessons, and now I feel that the small measure in which I have been enabled to receive His teaching, is worth more to me than a million of worlds. No thought is so constantly in my mind, and I say to myself, hundreds, yea, thousand of times, "O my soul, see that thou makes JESUS CHRIST THY EVERYTHING."

God has given to us the matchless gift of His Beloved Son. Let us heartily receive the gift, and use it for the end for which God gives it: that is, let Christ be EVERYTHING. We need a WHOLE CHRIST: but we need nothing else whatever! In saying, "Let Jesus Christ be EVERYTHING," I am using the word in its widest possible meaning. It is not enough that Christ be something to us. He is that to everybody. Nor is it enough that He be much, or VERY MUCH; or, that He be the CHIEF good to us, among a number of good things. He must be OUR EVERYTHING. the Blessed Lord has condescended to much, (O how much!) for our sakes, but there is one thing He will never condescend to, and that is, that we place Him as one, among a number of objects of our delight, No, though we make Him the chief object. He will never stoop to that. He who does not for his sake forsake ALL else cannot be his disciple (Luke xiv. 33). But when by the illumination of the Holy Spirit, a soul has really tasted of His love, and seen the loveliness of Jesus, his ravished heart shall be constrained to cry out---"Whom have I in heaven but Thee, and there is none that I desire beside Thee."(Psa lxxiii. 25) And what is this, but just to say in other words, --"O my blessed Lord Jesus Christ, Thou art too me my EVERYTHING."

Yes, God has given us, out of His free love, the very Christ HIMSELF, the Christ in whom all the fullness of the Godhead dwelleth (Col. ii. 9). It is very, very little, if we add, that this unspeakable gift of christ to us includes in it the same "All things" which He had already given to Jesus; for in giving His Son to us, He gives us all that Jesus is, and all that Jesus has. You will not mistake my meaning, if I venture to say, that in giving us Christ, so God has, as it were, put it out of His power to give us anything additional. For, though Eternity shall be filled up with the endless giving's of God to His redeemed children, these ceaseless giving's will not be so much fresh gifts, but the opening up in detail of the infinite and all- comprehensive gift, He has already given to us in Christ, in which gift is "All the fullness of God" (Eph. iii.19)

I am overwhelmed at the thought of this. It fills me with awe and joy. It lifts me to the highest:; it sinks me down to the lowest; and it calls into vigorous exercise every faculty, every emotion, and every affection of which I am capable. May our hearts be kept full of the humble joy which the appropriating faith of this infinite gift is sure to bring, and to l live hour by hour, as those who have need of nothing, desire nothing, delight in nothing, but JESUS ONLY. And this we do, because Christ has now become our EVERYTHING.

A man may profess what he pleases, and may believe all the orthodox doctrines, but if Jesus Christ is not EVERYTHING to him, then He is nothing to him at all. Scripture is very clear about this, but few seem to know anything about it.

God wants to have our hearts, and so does Satan. Both are bidders for them. The grand object of attraction which God seeks to draw to Himself in Christ. Satan's great attraction is the WORLD. But there is this difference between the two---while Satan will be quite content that we have Christ in part, if only we love the world too in part: God insists that we give the whole heart to Christ, else none of it will be accepted. He cannot endure a divided heart. His Name is Jealous, for he is "The Jealous God" (Exod. xxxiv 14). He that is the world's friend, makes himself God's enemy (James iv. 4); and wherever love of the world is cherished, there is no love of the Father (I John ii. 15-16). These are searching words, but they are the words of God, and by them we shall everyone be judged.

The Objects and Channel of Divine Love

God made us for love, and to find our happiness in it. We have fallen from this condition of love, down, down, down into a state of selfishness, and in this selfishness lies our sin and misery. For all that selfishness does is sin; and all that selfishness can accomplish is misery.

But now in recovering us, God has redeemed us for a life of pure love. He has regenerated us into a Divine nature (2 Pet. i. 4), which is LOVE, and He has given us His own Spirit, to strengthen us to walk as Christ walked, which is the Spirit of LOVE and of power (2 Tim 1:7). Heaven is what it is because it is the home of perfect love, and hell is hell, because it is filled with ripe selfishness. For happiness can enter no heart, except through the doorway of LOVE.

In connection with all this, I am greatly touched with the words in Eph. v. 2-3. We are called on to IMITATE God, and this, because we are beloved children, and as such are partakers of His nature. We are called on further, to reproduce in our lives, the wonderful life of Christ, and this, in its manifestation of a love unto death. O, what a lofty mission! God is LOVE, infinite, unutterable LOVE; and while the Christian is to consider himself the object of all this inconceivable wealth of love, he is equally to look on himself as its anointed instrument. God has set us, His beloved ones, down in the midst of sinful, miserable men and women, who are sinful and miserable because they know not, believe not, realize not, the love of God. And God has set us down among them, that we might be both witnesses to them of this love, and also its willing, its self-sacrificing organs. God wants us to pour out on them that love of His, through our hearts and hands, ,and lips and eyes. What a calling is this for dust and ashes like us! We are set apart and anointed, as really as jesus was, though on a lower level, to manifest the holy love of God to sinful men; and to do this so clearly, that though they may have no eyes that can see God, or His love, they may be able to catch a faint glimpse of it, by seeing in us and our lives and ways, a Christ-like LOVE.

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