Miscellanea

When I use the word counseling I don’t mean a Ph.D. in psychotherapy in an office. I mean the way the Bible talks about counseling, which is the effect of the tongue, and the effect of our lives on each other. We are changed by relating to each other when we relate wisely. And that may happen in an office. Every pastor is going to make appointments and there will be times that you sit down with someone, or you just say to a wise friend, “Can we get together?” You talk and counsel happens. Or it could be just the most casual kind of conversation.

In God’s view there is never an inconsequential word that anybody ever says. Every word counts. We are not always aware of that. Jesus says you will be judged for every careless word you utter (Matthew 12:36). That means that when you climb into anything a person ever says you find profound things revealed about what they are about: what they are after, what their intentions are, what their worldview is. Even in small talk there is a revelation of the heart that God is searching out, and he weighs the intentionality of small talk.

Small talk: it is either a way for me to say, “I don’t want to know you and I don’t want you to know you and so I am going to keep it light and make it as quick as possible and see you later.” Or small talk is a way to say, “I care about you. I would like to get to know you.” We can talk about a football team or the weather and it is actually an expression of two human beings making that connection, but it is because we love each other or want to know each other.

Small talk is going to be judged by God for the kind of deep intentionality it is. In other words, small talk is counsel.

The first remedy against this device of Satan is, To dwell more upon one another’s graces than upon one another’s weaknesses and infirmities. It is sad to consider that saints should have many eyes to behold one another’s infirmities, and not one eye to see each other’s graces, that they should use spectacles to behold one another’s weaknesses, rather than looking-glasses to behold one another’s graces.

If a woman were to spend all day long in church, praying and chanting, her style of life would not be as agreeable to God as if she were a wife who patiently performed her duties, feeding her children, caring for them, guiding them and doing all she could to teach and train them.

And it is sometimes the fault of old people to discourage the services of the present age by crying up too much the performances and attainments of the former age.

We must remind ourselves that the Catholic righteousness by good works is vastly preferable to a protestant righteousness by good doctrine. At least righteousness by good works benefits one’s neighbor, whereas righteousness by good doctrine only produces lovelessness and pride.

If aliens were to be called upon, at the discretion of officials, for their registration cards, citizens must be given some means of proving that they are not aliens, and so they must presumably provide themselves with registration cards, too.

And so we shall have a full-fledged European police system established almost before we know it; the American citizen will be required as he goes from place to place to “show his papers” quite in the European style.

And when that happens the real America will be dead.

I would observe farther, that our spiritual exercises are not a little influenced by our constitutional temperament. As you are only an ideal correspondent, I can but conjecture about you upon this head. If your frame is delicate, and your nervous system very sensible and tender, I should probably ascribe some of your apprehensions to this cause.

It is an abstruse subject, and I will not enter into it; but according to the observations I have made, persons of this habit seem to live more upon the confines of the invisible world, if I may so speak, and to be more susceptive of impressions from it, than others. That complaint which, for want of a better name, we call lowness of spirits, may probably afford the enemy some peculiar advantages and occasions of distressing you.

The mind then perceives objects as through a tinctured medium, which gives them a dark and discouraging appearance; and I believe Satan has more influence and address than we are aware of in managing the glass. And when this is not the case at all times, it may be so occasionally, from sickness, or other circumstances. You tell me that you have lately been ill, which, together with your present situation, and the prospect of your approaching hour, may probably have such an effect as I have hinted.

You may be charging yourself with guilt, for what springs from indisposition, in which you are merely passive, and which may be no more properly sinful, than the headache or any of the thousand natural shocks the flesh is heir to. The enemy can take no advantage but what the Lord permits him; and He will permit him none but what He designs to overrule for your greater advantage in the end.

He delights in your prosperity; and you should not be in heaviness for an hour, were there not a need-be for it. Notwithstanding your fears, I have a good hope, that He who you say has helped you in six troubles, will appear for you in the seventh; that you will not die, but live and declare the works of the Lord, and come forth to testify to His praise, that He has turned your mourning into joy.

I am, &c.

[The deacon] is in danger also, perhaps, of promising to the pastor, and not fulfilling. This is justly fatal to character and to usefulness. It prevents confidence and creates contempt.

Men who are possessed with self-love and with prejudice against others will readily count that a fault in their neighbours which yet is no fault, and will allow that in themselves which they condemn in others.

We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.