Jesus’ Love Smooths the Pathway.
By R. C. Baker
I can still say that my face is toward the heavenly Canaan. My gracious Heavenly Father is brightening up the pathway before me. Those seasons of gloom and despondency, bordering on despair, which I have experienced so many times in the past, have, I hope, forever passed away. I am trying to keep my head above the cloud, and never lose sight of the infinite love that has stooped so low to save a fallen race. God has been so good to me, I feel that it would be sin to doubt his love and care for me again. I have had some faint glimpses of the unutterable glory and surpassing loveliness of the promised inheritance. By faith, I have stood with Bunyan’s Pilgrim on the Delectable Mountains, and caught a view of the Celestial City and the evergreen fields of the land of promise. With such a foretaste of the joys of the world to come, how vain and empty do the pleasures of earth appear. But to know that Jesus loves me, to feel that he is mine, and I am his, affords a joy this world can never give, and which all its malice and its hate can never take away. To have a friend that is ever near, a friend “that sticketh closer than a brother,” a friend who never changes, who is the same, “yesterday, to-day, and forever,”—this is, indeed, a priceless boon. Surely such a friend as this would be the “chiefest among ten thousand, and the One altogether lovely.” To know in the hour of trial that the everlasting Arms are around us, to feel that, though the storm may rage, our hopes are built upon the eternal Rock, this indeed is “joy unspeakable and full of glory.” We have such a friend in Jesus. That same Jesus whose breast supported the head of the beloved disciple, that same Jesus whose heart of love was touched with pity for the woes of all he met, that same beneficent Being is the friend of his people now. He has given the strongest proof of love that it was possible for him to give, in giving his life for us. And now he is testing us, to see if we will prove worthy of the redemption he has purchased for us at such a costly price. Will we stand the test? Can we bear the world’s opposition? Yes, if the love of Jesus burns in our hearts, if the hope of eternal life, like a star, beckons us on, we will not faint nor falter at the narrowness or ruggedness of the way, but press toward the prize.