To open all its chambers, and to bless
With perfect sympathy and holy peace
Each solitary soul which comes to him. 
So when we feel this loneliness it is
The voice of Jesus saying, “Come to me”;
And ev’ry time we are “not understood,”
It is a call to us to come again: 
For Christ alone can satisfy the soul. 
And those who walk with him from day to day
Can never have “a solitary way.” 
And when beneath some heavy cross you faint
And say, “I can not bear this load alone,”
You say the truth.  Christ made it purposely
So heavy that you must return to him. 
The bitter grief, which “no one understands,”
Conveys a secret message from the King,
Entreating you to come to him again. 
The “Man of sorrows” understands it well,
“In all points tempted,” he can feel with you;
You can not come too often, or too near. 
The Son of God is infinite in grace,
His presence satisfies the longing soul;
And those who walk with him from day to day
Can never have “a solitary way.”

STIRRING THE EAGLE’S NEST.

“As an eagle stirreth up her nest, that fluttereth over her young, he spread abroad his wings, he took them, he bare them on his pinions.”

That picture is full of poetry, full of life and truth and beauty.  Mark it.  Have you ever seen an eagle stir up her nest?  You know what happens.  There in the nest, right upon the rocky heights, are the eaglets.  The mother eagle comes and, taking hold of them, flings them out of the nest.  They were so comfortable there, but she flings them right out of the nest, high above the earth.  They begin to fall straightway.  They never have been in air before; they have always been in the nest.

Is not that mother bird cruel?  Why does she disturb the eaglets?

Watch her and you will understand.  As long as you look upon the struggling eaglets in the air you miss the point.  Watch the eagle.  Having stirred up her nest, “she spreadeth abroad her pinions,” the pinions that beat the air behind her as she rises superior to it.  Where are the eaglets?  Struggling, falling; she is superior; they are falling.  Then what does she do?  “She beareth them on her pinions.”  She swoops beneath them, catches them on her wings, and bears them up.  What is she doing?  Teaching them to fly.  She drops them again, and again they struggle in the air, but this time not so helplessly.  They are finding out what she means.  She spreads her pinions to show them how to fly, and as they fall again, she catches them again.  That is how God deals with you and me.

Has he been stirring up your nest?  Has he flung you out until you feel lost in an element that is new and strange?  Look at him.  He is not lost in that element.  He spreads out the wings of omnipotence to teach us how to soar.  What then?  He comes beneath us and catches us on his wings.  We thought when he flung us out of the nest it was unkind.  No; he was teaching us to fly that we might enter into the spirit of the promise, “They shall mount up with wings as eagles.”  He would teach us how to use the gifts which he has bestowed on us, and which we can not use as long as we are in the nest.