The Holy of Holies, the most sacred place in the Jewish temple, was concealed by a veil, which was rent in twain at the crucifixion. That event was typical of those inward spiritual truths which are revealed to the believer by Christ, and in which his hope consists. The promises of grace and the inward witness of the spirit that he is an heir of those promises through faith in Christ are the holding ground of the believers’ anchor, where once bedded it is sure and steadfast.
These are inward spiritual joys of which the believer cannot be deprived except by his own remissness and the letting down of the anchor watch. These promises were the anchor of the apostle’s experience. A rough, stormy life was his--almost always on a lee shore and among the breakers. Very little smooth water did he see, for in every city bonds and imprisonment awaited him; but he had on board the gospel anchor, and shackled to it the chain of a rich and deep experience. The bitter end of that chain was clinched around the riding bits of his soul; and he had no fear that the anchor would come home or the chain part that moored him to it, and he could say: “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”
Life is the sea; the soul is the vessel; the grace, gifts, and experience of the soul make up the priceless cargo with which the ship is freighted. Heaven is the harbor all hope to make. The temptations, labor, and afflictions of life are the tempests we must encounter. It is a stormy sea and a wintry passage. You need good ground tackle and good holding ground. Have you them? If not, it is from negligence, not necessity. It is, my friend, because you have not bestirred yourself to take hold of the promises of grace that have been pressed upon you.
PRAYER OFFERED ON MEMORIAL DAY (May 30, 1883) AT BRUNSWICK, MAINE
O Thou who art equally supreme in the moral and the material universe, guiding the sea-bird to her nest amid the blinding snows, the breaker’s foam, and the driving mist of ocean, who makest small the drops of rain, and a way for the lightning of thunder, and the thing that is hid bringest forth to light, we adore thy power and thy wisdom; we magnify thy grace; we hallow thy name. With penitence we confess our manifold transgressions as individuals and as a nation. Holiness belongeth unto Thee, but unto us shame and confusion of faces.