ISOLATION (1)

ISOLATION (1)

I believe that the Lord in a very peculiar way makes up to one for the privation of not assembling together, when it has been caused by circumstances beyond our control; still it is a privation. I think there is an evident distinction between being hindered by the chastening of the Lord, or by the power of the world. It is distinct mercy when one is not hindered; but when one is hindered, either by chastening or by an adverse power, there is an exercise of soul and heart accordingly.

If it be by chastening, the word, as we hear it, is directed to the removal or washing away of that in us which required it. If it be by the power of the world, the Lord manifests Himself, and encourages and consoles us by His presence. This latter is properly isolation - the only good isolation, and the Lord turns it to the best account.

^[p. 217] Paul in prison, and John at Patmos, are both isolated by the power of man; but the place and time of isolation were used of God to impart to them the deepest purposes of His mind, and I doubt not the nature of the isolation, indicated the line of truth which was committed to each. One was an exile; the other, a prisoner; and neither of them could by any means escape from the isolation to which they were subjected.

There is another isolation still more painful, and one which was experienced by the apostle Paul before the Roman tribunal, as he says, “all men [meaning saints] forsook me” (2 Timothy 4: 16). They left him to shift for himself. It was dangerous to be identified with him; but he adds, “The Lord stood with me”. Now this proves that if the isolation is imposed on one, the Lord does make up for it in a very distinct way by His own presence. But I could not call it imposed if I could free myself. Daniel thrown into the lions’ den is an isolation that is imposed, for he could not escape from it, and the Lord is peculiarly with him; he would have preferred Jerusalem, but he could not get there, and hence in the lions’ den he is better off than if he were at Jerusalem.

Nothing but the Lord’s chastening, or coercion from man, ought ever to induce me to abstain from the circle of divine blessing on earth. But if the isolation be imposed either way, I believe that the lessons taught then are most peculiar, and not the mere lessons, but the manner and way of His love and interest as never known otherwise.

In the isolation of chastening, He comes as the physician to cure. The physician who cures always endears himself to his patient. He probes the heart maladies, and ministers the word of cure. In the isolation from coercion, it is as though you were in prison, and then He comes to you, and in the lonely limits of the prison chamber, He is your companion, not to make you indifferent to liberty, but to acquaint you with the ^[p. 218] compensation of His presence, and to interest your heart in His own interests, in a scene at once so dark and so dreary. His gentleness makes me great. No one is really softened - divinely so, except the one who has learned the sympathy of Christ. Paul seems to me to have acquired this softness in the prison.

An isolation where no one around is of a like mind, as a child in a worldly family, I consider imposed; and according as it is really and truly accepted, the Lord manifests Himself; and then it is that the heart studies, and learns His features, as you see with the bride in Canticles. It learns to have but the one study, and the more it studies the more it is interested in the study. “The eye is not satisfied with seeing” (Ecclesiastes 1: 8). You are in a picture gallery, hung from ceiling to floor on every side with portraits of the one person; but in different circumstances and different aspects; all private, only visible to yourself, only belonging to you in isolation, and the compensation for it; never to make you indifferent to your liberty, but on the contrary to fit you for using it to more advantage when it is given to you.