HEARTS TUNED BY THE PRIEST

^[p. 552] HEARTS TUNED BY THE PRIEST

Nothing separates us from the love of Christ, and it is His love as Priest that is contemplated in this statement (Romans 8: 34, 35). The failure to realise our dependence upon the living Priest in relation to the heavenly calling is a very common one, and accounts for the fact that many who have a large measure of light as to things have not really much experimental access into them. They see what is established in Christ, but they do not see how blessed an office He fills as High Priest of “good things to come” — things that have come spiritually in christianity. All that He brings to us as Mediator He has to bring us into as Priest. We only come up from the wilderness into the sphere of spiritual blessing according as we lean upon our Beloved (Song of Songs 8: 5). Indeed, it is this that makes Christ so precious to the heart — so personally indispensable.

It is not merely that we are introduced to a most wonderful system of grace and glory, but the very One who has inaugurated it all and in whom it is all established puts out His hand, as it were, to take hold individually of each feeble saint that He may conduct us into it. Tenderness and power are exquisitely blended in the touch of that hand. He does not deal with us ‘en masse’, but with perfect consideration of the personal needs and exercises of each one.

The resurrection day with its varied and blessed activities illustrates this in a very perfect way. Mary Magdalene, the two going to Emmaus, Peter, etc. were all taken in hand by that wondrous Priest. Each had the special support which the exercises or weaknesses of each required.

It is in this way that the Living One puts every string in tune of that wondrous instrument on which He loves to sound God’s praises.

Each string must have the touch of the “chief Musician. On stringed instruments” to put it in tune; and then He delights ^[p. 553] to bring His own together in assembly tuned to sound the melody of God’s praise with varied but accordant notes, under the further touches of His own hand.

‘And a song is sweetly thrilling
Every heart within the shrine:
Music which God’s ear is filling,
Notes which could be only Thine’. (161:7)