bare adequacy, just covering the extent of the need, with no overlapping margin ; it is large beyond expectation, desire, or necessity; so leading onwards to high hopes, and a wider opening of the open mouths of our need that the blessing may pour in.'^
(4) " For thee.'' — Not merely a general sufficiency is spoken of, when our Lord assures His suffering servant of His saving help ; " sufficient for thee" He says. And it is only the assurance of a special adaptation of sympathy and succour to our individual needs that can suffice to allay our fears. In every one's case there is an individuality of character that makes the case peculiar; but the manifoldness of Christ's perfect character touches our specific necessity, and we know that He understands us, and that we have His sympathy. There is also a singu- larity of experience through which we have been called to pass ; but He Himself has trodden the changeful path of life's pilgrimage ; and " hath been in all points tempted like as we are," so that His own experience qualifies Him to understand the experience of His people, while His sovereign control of the vicissitudes of this world's history is the guarantee that He will adjust and adapt it to their good.
^ It is a strange feature of the Pilgrim's Progress that Hopeful, generally so true to his name, is here so diffident. All sorts of questions arise, as to God's willingness to save, the limits within which the atonement operates, the mystery of election and so forth, just as they arose for Bunyan and are recorded in the long struggles of Chrace Aboimding. He receives the book, the same which makes Christian, from the first page of his narrative, distinctly " the man with a book." He prays the Father to reveal Christ to him, grasping here the double truth of revelation — Christ reveals the Father, and the Father reveals Christ. He goes so far as to cry with the boldness of simplicity: "Lord, take this opportunity, and magnify thy grace." Yet the battle swings to and fro for a long time, betwixt hope and despair. The silence of God baffles him, but he continues crying to God. " Oh friends ! " says Bunyan in Grace Abounding, "cry to God to reveal Jesus Christ unto you; there is none that teacheth like Him." He continues, " for thought I with myself. If I leave off I die, and I can but die at the throne of grace." Again we are in Grace Abounding — " Yet, my case being desperate, I thought with myself
' A. M£iclaren.
2 COR. XII. 9 297
I can but die ; and if it must be so it shall once be said, that ' such an one died at the foot of Christ in prayer.' "
But now we are to witness the full daybreak of light upon this tortured soul. He sees Christ at last, " with the eyes of his understanding." It is not a vision, or an access of emotion, or an ecstasy of any kind. It is a man's intellect applied to the promises of God. A flood of texts is poured upon him, but most of all these words, " My grace is sufficient for thee." Yet again Grace Abounding gives the key — " These words did with great power suddenly break in upon me : * My grace is sufficient for thee, my grace is sufficient for thee, my grace is sufficient for thee,' three times together. And oh ! methought that every word was a mighty word unto me ; as ' my,' and ' grace,' and ' sufficient,' and ' for thee ' ; they were then, and sometimes are still, far bigger than others be." ^
Though I am slow to trust Thee, Lord, Slow to believe Thy gracious word, Yet sweet Thy promise is to me, " Sufficient is My grace for thee."
Though trials often here, and care. This weary heart of mine must share, How comforting Thy word to me, "My grace sufficient is for thee,"
Thus I can triumph in distress, And find that even pain can bless. Feeling how sure Thy word to me, " Sufficient is My grace for thee."
Thy love I know, 0 Lord, can shed Its beams o'er every path I tread, Eeviving me and teaching me, " Sufficient is My grace for thee."
For Thou canst feel each grief / feel. Canst sympathise, sustain, and heal, And sweetly bring the truth to me, "Thy grace sufficient is for me."
0 Saviour ! grace on me bestow, Then though my tears may sometimes flow. The precious truth my faith shall see, " My glace sufficient is for thee."
' John Kelmau, The Road, ii. 144.
298 POWER IN WEAKNESS
And wlien I see Thee in the light Thy matchless glory makes so bright, Then shall I own, adoring Thee, "Sufficient was Thy grace for me."^
2, Consider now when it is that we most need this reassurance.
(1) We need it when we are moakened to a sense of sin. — Sooner or later, if one believes in Christ, he is awakened to a sight of his own sin. It may be given him at his first approach to Christ, be the cause that leads him to the Saviour ; or, being brought to Christ in gentler ways, it may visit him further on in his journey. Sometimes he is awakened in the heart by contact with a pure and holy life, sometimes it is by the preaching of the Word or by the singing of a simple hymn. Sometimes it is in the seasons of the night, when a man is alone with his conscience; some- times it is by the reading of the Bible; or it is bom of great sorrow falling, not upon us, but upon another ; there is something in the suffering of our loved ones that makes us feel mysteriously guilty. It is in these ways, as in a hundred others, that the Spirit of God convicts us of our sin. We get a swift glimpse of what we are ; see what we are for ourselves. Now there is no talk of reformation, we want something more radical than that ; and for the first time we cry despairingly, " Lord, be merciful to me a sinner." Is it not in such an hour that this text reveals the richness of its meaning ? It is then that we awaken to the God- head of Christ : " My grace is sufficient for thee." Deeper than our deepest sinfulness is the grace of God in Jesus Christ ; able to forgive and to redeem is the love that was revealed on Calvary. (2) We need it in suffering. — It is a condition of our present life that no one ever is exempt from suffering. That ie a stated part of the agreement on which we get our leasehold of the world. To one suffering is of his body, to another it may come in mind. One it may reach in his material fortiines; another through a brother or a son. In one case it may be »6wif t and sharp, vanishing like a summer tempest, while in another it may be long and slow and may linger through the obscurity of years. There are many to whom God denies success, butfto none He denies