六月二十五日[mp3_embed playlst=”/downloading/audio/evening/06/0625.mp3″]
经文: 鸽子找不着落脚之地。（创世记八：9）
在基督耶稣以外，你能找到安息吗？若能，那么可以肯定你所信的宗教是无用的。你不明白自己与基督的联合，也对基督不甚感兴趣，你能够满足吗？若能，你的信仰是无价值的。你若自认是基督徒，却完全满足于属世的欢乐与追求，那么你的承认是虚假的。若你的心灵在罪恶之中能感到舒适，那么，你是假冒为善的。你若感到在罪恶中放纵自己虽没有受到惩罚，但其本身就是一种严励的惩罚；你若拥有全世界且能永远住在其中，然而因为没有上帝而感到悲苦，因为祂是你心所渴求的；那么鼓起勇气吧，因为你是上帝的儿女。纵使你有罪，不完全，你仍可以因是上帝的儿女而安慰──你若犯罪心灵却没有平安，你就不是一般的罪人！你若仍然在呼喊渴求一些更美好的事物，基督没有把你遗忘，因为你也没有忘记祂。信徒不能没有主而活。在旷野的沙漠中我们无法生存，我们需要从天降下的吗哪。我们自信的瓶中倒不出一滴水来，但是我们仍饮于那紧随着我们的磐石，那磐石就是基督（参阅林前十：4）。当你靠祂而活时，你的心能高唱：“祂用美物使我所愿的得以知足，以致我如鹰返老还童。”（参阅诗一○三：5）。但是倘若你不属祂，你的财富或成就不能令你知足。有一日，你将悲哀的以智慧者的话说出：“虚空的虚空，凡事都是虚空。”（传一：2）
Evening, June 25
Scripture: “The dove found no rest for the sole of her foot.”(Genesis 8:9)
Reader, can you find rest apart from the ark, Christ Jesus? Then be assured that your religion is vain. Are you satisfied with anything short of a conscious knowledge of your union and interest in Christ? Then woe unto you. If you profess to be a Christian, yet find full satisfaction in worldly pleasures and pursuits, your profession is false. If your soul can stretch herself at rest, and find the bed long enough, and the coverlet broad enough to cover her in the chambers of sin, then you are a hypocrite, and far enough from any right thoughts of Christ or perception of his preciousness. But if, on the other hand, you feel that if you could indulge in sin without punishment, yet it would be a punishment of itself; and that if you could have the whole world, and abide in it for ever, it would be quite enough misery not to be parted from it; for your God－your God－is what your soul craves after; then be of good courage, thou art a child of God. With all thy sins and imperfections, take this to thy comfort: if thy soul has no rest in sin, thou are not as the sinner is! If thou art still crying after and craving after something better, Christ has not forgotten thee, for thou hast not quite forgotten him. The believer cannot do without his Lord; words are inadequate to express his thoughts of him. We cannot live on the sands of the wilderness, we want the manna which drops from on high; our skin bottles of creature confidence cannot yield us a drop of moisture, but we drink of the rock which follows us, and that rock is Christ. When you feed on him your soul can sing, “He hath satisfied my mouth with good things, so that my youth is renewed like the eagle’s,” but if you have him not, your bursting wine vat and well-filled barn can give you no sort of satisfaction: rather lament over them in the words of wisdom, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!”
