The Project Gutenberg EBook of When the Holy Ghost is Come, by S. L. Brengle This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: When the Holy Ghost is Come Author: S. L. Brengle Posting Date: September 22, 2012 [EBook #6135] Release Date: July, 2004 First Posted: November 17, 2002 Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHEN THE HOLY GHOST IS COME *** Produced by Curtis A. Weyant, Charles Franks, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

BY

COLONEL S. L. BRENGLE,

Edited by BRAMWELL BOOTH.

Foreword.

The Salvation Army, contrary to what has often been thought by surface observers, has owed its existence, its strength, and its success chiefly to our careful attention to the profoundest questions of the soul. And still, as always, we wish to urge upon all the study of those great practical truths, without the proclamation of which our work for men would cease to have any abiding value. We glory in the knowledge of Christ as a perfect Saviour just as much for this, our own time, as for any past generation, or for any generation yet to come. The pretence that this age has reached some superior development, whether mental or moral, for which a new kind of Saviour is needed, seems to us absurd. And we do not believe it can long endure where Christ is really known. To the most thoughtful, therefore, as well as to those who have the least time for thought, I earnestly commend the words of devout and practical men upon those great questions, which I hope to see reproduced in the series of which the present volume is the first. Prayerful reading of their messages cannot but lead to immediate action, to a complete self-abandonment to God, and to a realizing faith in His power to use every one of His sons and daughters for the healing of the world’s open sores and the triumph of His Rule. BRAMWELL BOOTH. LONDON, January, 1909.

Contents.

Foreword Preface

1. Who Is He?
2. Preparing His House
3. Is the Baptism with the Holy Spirit a Third Blessing?
4. The Witness of the Spirit
5. Purity
6. Power
7. Trying the Spirits
8. Guidance
9. The Meek and Lowly Heart
10. Hope
11. The Holy Spirit’s Substitute for Gossip and Evil-Speaking
12. The Sin Against the Holy Ghost
13. Offences Against the Holy Ghost
14. The Holy Spirit and Sound Doctrine
15. Praying in the Spirit
16. Characteristics of the Anointed Preacher
17. Preaching
18. The Sheathed Sword: A Law of the Spirit
19. Vicotry through the Holy Spirit Over Suffering
20. The Overflowing Blessing
21. Importance of the Doctrine and Experience of Holiness to Spiritual Leaders
22. Victory Over Evil Temper by the Power of the Holy Spirit

Preface.

It is no small pleasure to me to commend this book to all who love God, and in particular to those who are labouring to serve Him in the ranks of The Salvation Army. I believe that it will prove useful in the most important ways—­in its bearing, that is, upon many of the practical difficulties and problems of daily life. The writer, Colonel Brengle, gives us not only of the fruit of an orderly and well-stored mind on the great subject before us, but—­ and this is the more important—­he tells us of the actual work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of ordinary men and women, as he has witnessed the results of that work amidst his many labours for the Salvation and Holiness of the people. It is for them he writes. It is to them, living the common life, bound to others by the obligations of ordinary social intercourse, toiling at their secular occupations, and rubbing shoulders with the multitude in the market-place, that his message comes. I venture to hope that his words will make it plain to some of them that the highest intercourse with the Divine is their privilege; that the special province of the Holy Ghost is to lead men into the truest devotion to God, and to the advancement of His Kingdom on earth, even while they are carrying on the common avocations associated with earning their daily bread. The only purpose of God having a practical bearing on our lives is His purpose to save men from sin and its awful consequences, and make them conform to His will in this world as in the next. The work of the Holy Spirit is to help us to achieve that purpose. Without His help we are unable to overcome the difficulties that are in the way, whether we consider them from the standpoint of the world or of the individual. If anyone could have looked at the state of the world at the time of our Lord’s death he would surely have regarded the work which the Apostles were commissioned to attempt as the most utterly wild and impracticable enterprise that the human mind could conceive. And it was so, but for one fact. That fact was the promise of the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, to be the great Helper in the undertaking. And equally in the work of uniting the individual soul with God’s purpose that Spirit is our Helper. In the work of righteousness He is a Partner with us. In the life of faith and prayer He is our unwavering Prompter and Guide. In the submission of our wills to God and the chastening of our spirits He is the great Co-worker with us. In the bearing of burdens and the enduring of trial and sorrow He joins hands with us to lead us on. In the purifying of every power from the taint of sin He is our Sanctifier. All this is practical. It has to do with to-day—­with every bit of to-day. In fact, so far from the sphere of the Holy Spirit being limited to the pulpit or the platform, or to the inward experiences of the religious life, He is just as truly and properly concerned with the affairs of the shop and the street, the nursery and the kitchen, the chamber of suffering and the home of penury, as with preaching the Gospel or healing the sick. Now it is to lead its readers to a personal experience of all this that this book has been written. No mere intellectual assent to the truth it sets forth can satisfy its author, any more than it can benefit his readers. What he seeks, and what I join him in devoutly asking of God, is that you, dear friend, who may take this little volume into your hands, may see what an infinite privilege is yours, and may begin to act with God the Holy Ghost, and to open your whole being to Him, that He may work with you. Bramwell Booth. London, January, 1909.

I.

Who Is He?

“Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.” On that last eventful evening in the upper room, just after the Passover feast, Jesus spoke to His disciples about His departure, and, having commanded them to love one another, He besought them not to be troubled in heart, but to hold fast their faith in Him, assuring them that, though He was to die and leave them, He was but going to the Father’s many-mansioned house to prepare a place for them. But already they were troubled, for what could this death and departure mean but the destruction of all their hopes, of all their cherished plans? Jesus had drawn them away from their fishing-boats, their places of custom and daily employment, and inspired them with high personal and patriotic ambitions, and encouraged them to believe that He was the Seed of David, the promised Messiah; and they hoped that He would cast out Pilate and his hated Roman garrison, restore the kingdom to Israel, and sit on David’s throne, a King, reigning in righteousness and undisputed power and majesty for ever. And then, were they not to be His Ministers of State and chief men in His Kingdom? He was their Leader, directing their labours; their Teacher, instructing their ignorance and solving their doubts and all their puzzling problems; their Defence, stilling the stormy sea and answering for them when questioned by wise and wily enemies. They were poor and unlearned and weak. In Him was all their help, and what would they do, what could they do, without Him? They were without social standing, without financial prestige, without learning or intellectual equipment, without political or military power. He was their All, and without Him they were as helpless as little children, as defenceless as lambs in the midst of wolves. How could their poor hearts be otherwise than troubled? But then He gave them a strange, wonderful, reassuring promise: He said, “If ye love Me, keep My commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever” (John xiv. 15, 16). I am going away, but Another shall come, who will fill My place. He shall not go away, but abide with you for ever, and He “shall be in you.” And later He added: “It is expedient for you”—­that is, better for you-“that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come.” Who is this other One—­this Comforter? He must be some august Divine Person, and not a mere influence or impersonal force, for how else could He take and fill the place of Jesus? How else could it be said that it was better to have Him than to have Jesus remaining in the flesh? He must be strong and wise, and tender and true, to take the place of the Blessed One who is to die and depart. Who is He? John, writing in the Greek language, calls Him “Paraclete,” but we in English call Him Comforter. But Paraclete means more, much more than Comforter. It means “one called in to help: an advocate, a helper.” The same word is used of Jesus in i John ii. i: “We have an Advocate,” a Paraclete, a Helper, “with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” Just as Jesus had gone to be the disciples’ Advocate, their Helper in the Heavens, so this other Paraclete was to be their Advocate, their Helper on earth. He would be their Comforter when comfort was needed; but He would be more; He would be also their Teacher, Guide, Strengthener, as Jesus had been. At every point of need there would He be as an ever-present and all-wise, almighty Helper. He would meet their need with His sufficiency; their weakness with His strength; their foolishness with His wisdom; their ignorance with His knowledge; their blindness and short-sightedness with His perfect, all-embracing vision. Hallelujah! What a Comforter! Why should they be troubled? They were weak, but He would strengthen them with might in the inner man (Eph. iii. 16). They were to give the world the words of Jesus, and teach all nations (Matthew xxviii. 19, 20); and He would teach them all things, and bring to their remembrance whatsoever Jesus had said to them (John xiv. 26). They were to guide their converts in the right way, and He was to guide them into all truth (John xvi. 13). They were to attack hoary systems of evil, and inbred and actively intrenched sin, in every human heart; but He was to go before them, preparing the way for conquest, by convincing the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment (John xvi. 8). They were to bear heavy burdens and face superhuman tasks, but He was to give them power (Acts i. 8). Indeed, He was to be a Comforter, a Strengthener, a Helper. Jesus had been external to them. Often they missed Him. Sometimes He was asleep when they felt they sorely needed Him. Sometimes He was on the mountains, while they were in the valley vainly trying to cast out stubborn devils, or wearily toiling on the tumultuous, wind-tossed sea. Sometimes He was surrounded by vast crowds, and He entered into high disputes with the doctors of the law, and they had to wait till He was alone to seek explanations of His teachings. But they were never to lose this other Helper in the crowd, nor be separated for an instant from Him, for no human being, nor untoward circumstance, nor physical necessity, could ever come between Him and them, for, said Jesus, “He shall be in you.” From the words used to declare the sayings, the doings, the offices and works of the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, we are forced to conclude that He is a Divine Person. Out of the multitude of Scriptures which might be quoted, note this passage, which, as nearly as is possible with human language, reveals to us His personality: “Now there were in the Church that was at Antioch certain prophets and teachers… As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate Me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them. And when they had fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on them, they sent them away. So they, being sent forth by the Holy Ghost, departed into Seleucia” (Acts xiii. 1-4). Further on we read that they “were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia”; and when they would have gone into Bithynia, “the Spirit suffered them not” (Acts xvi. 6, 7). Again, when the messengers of Cornelius, the Roman centurion, were seeking Peter, “the Spirit said unto him, Behold, three men seek thee. Arise, therefore, and get thee down, and go with them, doubting nothing: for I have sent them” (Acts x. 19, 20). These are but a few of the passages of Scripture that might be quoted to establish the fact of His personality—­His power to think, to will, to act, to speak; and if His personality is not made plain in these Scriptures, then it is impossible for human language to make it so. Indeed, I am persuaded that if an intelligent heathen, who had never seen the Bible, should for the first time read the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, he would say that the personality of the Holy Spirit is as clearly revealed in the Acts as is the personality of Jesus Christ in the Gospels. In truth, the Acts of the Apostles are in a large measure the acts of the Holy Spirit, and the disciples were not more certainly under the immediate direction of Jesus during the three years of His earthly ministry than they were under the direct leadership of the Spirit after Pentecost. But, while there are those that admit His personality, yet in their loyalty to the Divine Unity they deny the Trinity, and maintain that the Holy Spirit is only the Father manifesting Himself as Spirit, without any distinction in personality. But this view cannot be harmonised with certain Scriptures. While the Bible and reason plainly declare that there is but one God, yet the Scriptures as clearly reveal that there are three Persons in the Godhead—­Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The form of Paul’s benediction to the Corinthians proves the doctrine:—–­ “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen” (2 Cor. xiii. 14). Again, it is taught in the promise of Jesus, already quoted, “And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter… the Spirit of Truth” (John xiv. 16, 17). Here the three Persons of the Godhead are clearly revealed. The Son prays; the Father answers; the Spirit comes. The Holy Spirit is “another Comforter,” a second Comforter succeeding the first, who was Jesus, and both were given by the Father. Do you say, “I cannot understand it”? Neither do I. Who can understand it? God does not expect us to understand it. Nor would He have us puzzle our heads and trouble our hearts in attempting to understand it or harmonise it with our knowledge of arithmetic. Note this: it is only the fact that is revealed; how there can be three Persons in one Godhead is not revealed. The how is a mystery, and is not a matter of faith at all; but the fact is a matter of revelation, and therefore a matter of faith. I myself am a mysterious trinity of body, mind, and spirit. The fact I believe, but the how is not a thing to believe. It is at this point that many puzzle and perplex themselves needlessly. In the ordinary affairs of life we grasp facts, and hold them fast, without puzzling ourselves over the how of things. Who can explain how food sustains life; how light reveals material objects, how sound conveys ideas to our minds? It is the fact we know and believe, but the how we pass by as a mystery unrevealed. What God has revealed, we believe. We cannot understand how Jesus turned water into wine; how He multiplied a few loaves and fishes and fed thousands; how He stilled the stormy sea; how He opened blind eyes, healed lepers, and raised the dead by a word. But the facts we believe. Wireless telegraphic messages are sent over the vast wastes of ocean. That is a fact, and we believe it. But how they go we do not know. That is not something to believe. It is a matter of pure speculation, and is unexplained. An old servant of God has pointed out that it is the fact of the Trinity, and not the manner of it, which God has revealed, and made a subject for our faith. But while the Scriptures reveal to us the fact of the personality of the Holy Spirit, and it is a subject for our faith, to those in whom He dwells this fact may become a matter of sacred knowledge, of blessed experience. How else can we account for the positive and assured way in which the Apostles and disciples spoke of the Holy Ghost on and after the day of Pentecost, if they did not know Him? Immediately after the fiery baptism, with its blessed filling, Peter stood before the people, and said: “This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel: And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh”; then he exhorted the people and assured them that if they would meet certain simple conditions they should “receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.” He said to Ananias, “Why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost?” He declared to the High Priest and Council that he and his fellow-Apostles were witnesses of the resurrection of Jesus: and added, “And so is also the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey Him.” Without any apology or explanation, or “think so” or “hope so,” they speak of being “filled” (not simply with some new, strange experience or emotion, but) “with the Holy Ghost.” Certainly they must have known Him. And if they knew Him, may not we? Paul says: “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth” (I Cor. ii. 12, 13). And if we know the words, may we not know the Teacher of the words? John Wesley says:—­ “The knowledge of the Three-One God is interwoven with all true Christian faith, with all vital religion. I do not say,” he adds, “that every real Christian can say, with the Marquis de Renty, ’I bear about with me continually an experimental verity, and a fullness of the ever-blessed Trinity. I apprehend that this is not the experience of “babes,” but rather “fathers in Christ.”’ But I know not how anyone can be a Christian believer till he ‘hath the witness in himself,’ till ’the Spirit of God witnesses with his spirit that he is a child of God’; that is, in effect, till God the Holy Ghost witnesses that God the Father has accepted him through the merits of God the Son. “Not that every Christian believer adverts to this; perhaps, at first, not one in twenty; but, if you ask them a few questions, you will easily find it is implied in what he believes.” I shall never forget my joy, mingled with awe and wonder, when this dawned upon my consciousness. For several weeks I had been searching the Scriptures, ransacking my heart, humbling my soul, and crying to God almost day and night for a pure heart and the baptism with the Holy Ghost, when one glad, sweet day (it was January 9th, 1885) this text suddenly opened to my understanding: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness”; and I was enabled to believe without any doubt that the precious blood cleansed my heart, even mine, from all sin. Shortly after that, while reading these words of Jesus to Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth on Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and he that liveth and believeth on Me shall never die,” instantly my heart was melted like wax before fire; Jesus Christ was revealed to my spiritual consciousness, revealed in me, and my soul was filled with unutterable love. I walked in a heaven of love. Then one day, with amazement, I said to a friend: “This is the perfect love about which the Apostle John wrote; but it is beyond all I dreamed of; in it is personality; this love thinks, wills, talks with me, corrects me, instructs and teaches me.” And then I knew that God the Holy Ghost was in this love, and that this love was God, for “God is love.” Oh, the rapture mingled with reverential, holy fear—­for it is a rapturous, yet divinely fearful thing—­to be indwelt by the Holy Ghost, to be a temple of the Living God! Great heights are always opposite great depths, and from the heights of this blessed experience many have plunged into the dark depths of fanaticism. But we must not draw back from the experience through fear. All danger will be avoided by meekness and lowliness of heart; by humble, faithful service; by esteeming others better than ourselves, and in honour preferring them before ourselves; by keeping an open, teachable spirit; in a word, by looking steadily unto Jesus, to whom the Holy Spirit continually points us: for He would not have us fix our attention exclusively upon Himself and His work in us, but also upon the Crucified One and His work for us, that we may walk in the steps of Him whose blood purchases our pardon, and makes and keeps us clean. “Great Paraclete! to Thee we cry: O highest Gift of God most high! O Fount of life! O Fire of love! And sweet Anointing from above! “Our senses touch with light and fire; Our hearts with tender love inspire; And with endurance from on high The weakness of our flesh supply. “Far back our enemy repel, And let Thy peace within us dwell; So may we, having Thee for Guide, Turn from each hurtful thing aside. “Oh, may Thy grace on us bestow The Father and the Son to know, And evermore to hold confessed Thyself of Each the Spirit blest.” “Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?”

II.

Preparing His House

“Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.” Jesus said, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” And Paul wrote to the Romans that, “If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.” So it must be that every child of God, every truly converted person, has the Holy Spirit in some gracious manner and measure, else he would not be a child of God; for it is only “as many as are led by the Spirit of God” that “are the sons of God.” It is the Holy Spirit who convicts us of sin, who makes us feel how good and righteous, and just and patient God is, and how guilty we are, and how unfit for Heaven, and how near to Hell. It is the Holy Spirit who leads us to true repentance and confession and amendment of life; and when our repentance is complete, and our surrender is unconditional, it is He who reasons with us, and calms our fears, and soothes our troubled hearts, and banishes our darkness, and enables us to look to Jesus, and believe on Him for the forgiveness of all our sins and the salvation of our souls. And when we yield and trust, and are accepted of the Lord, and are saved by grace, it is He who assures us of the Father’s favour, and notifies us that we are saved. “The Spirit Himself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.” He is “the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.” “And His that gentle voice we hear, Soft as the breath of even; That checks each thought, that calms each fear, And speaks of Heaven.” It is He who strengthens the new convert to fight against and overcome sin, and it is He who “begets within him a hope of fuller righteousness through faith in Christ.” “And every virtue we possess, And every victory won, And every thought of holiness, Are His alone.” Blessed be God for this work of the Holy Spirit within the heart of every true child of His! But, great and gracious as is this work, it is not the fiery pentecostal baptism with the Spirit which is promised; it is not the fullness of the Holy Ghost to which we are exhorted. It is only the clear dawn of the day, and not the rising of the day-star. This is only the initial work of the Spirit. It is perfect of its kind, but it is preparatory to another and fuller work, about which I wish to write. Jesus said to His disciples, concerning the Holy Spirit, that “the world” (the unsaved, unrepentant) “cannot receive” Him, “because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him”; because they resist Him, and will not permit Him to work in their hearts. And then Jesus added, “but ye know Him; for He dwelleth with you….” He had begun His work in them, but there was more to follow, for Jesus said, “and shall be in you.” When a man is building himself a house, he is in and out of it and round about it. But we do not say he lives in it until it has been completed. And it is in that sense that Jesus said, “He dwelleth with you.” But when the house is finished, the owner sweeps out all the chips and saw-dust, scrubs the floor, lays down his carpets, hangs up his pictures, arranges his furniture, and moves in with his family. Then he is in the fullest sense within it. He abides there. Now, it is in that sense that Jesus meant that the Holy Spirit should be in them. This is fitly expressed in one of our songs:- “Holy Spirit, come, Oh, come! Let Thy work in me be done! All that hinders shall be thrown aside; Make me fit to be Thy dwelling.” Previous to Pentecost He was with them, using the searching preaching of John the Baptist, and the life, the words, the example, the sufferings, and the death and resurrection of Jesus as instruments with which to fashion their hearts for His indwelling. As the truth was declared to them in the words of Jesus, pictured to them in His doings, exemplified in His daily life, and fulfilled in His death and His rising from the dead, the Holy Spirit wrought mightily within them; but He could not yet find perfect rest in their hearts; therefore He did not yet abide within them. They had forsaken all to follow Christ. They had been commissioned to preach the Gospel, to heal the sick, to cleanse the lepers, to raise the dead, to cast out devils. Their names were written in Heaven. They were not of the world, even as Jesus was not of the world, for they belonged to Him and to the Father. They knew the Holy Spirit, for He was with them, working in them, but not yet living in them, for they were yet carnal; that is, they were selfish, each seeking the best place for himself. They disputed among themselves as to which should be the greatest. They were bigoted, wanting to call down fire from Heaven to consume those who would not receive Jesus, and forbidding those who would not follow them to cast out devils in His name. They were positive and loud in their professions of devotion and loyalty to Jesus when alone with Him. They declared they would die with Him. But they were fearful, timid, and false to Him when the testing time came. When the mocking crowd appeared, and danger was near, they all forsook Him, and fled; while Peter cursed and swore, and denied that he knew Him. But the Holy Spirit did not forsake them. He still wrought within them, and, no doubt, used their very mistakes and miserable failures to perfect within them the spirit of humility and perfect self-abasement in order that they might safely be exalted. And on the day of Pentecost His work of preparation was complete, and He moved in to abide for ever. Hallelujah! And this experience of theirs before Pentecost is the common experience of all true converts. Every child of God knows that the Holy Spirit is with him; realises that He is working within, striving to set the house in order. And with many who are properly taught and gladly obedient, this work is done quickly, and the heavenly Dove, the Blessed One, takes up his constant abode within them; the toil and strife with inbred sin is ended by its destruction, and they enter at once into the sabbath of full salvation. Surely this is possible. The disciples could not receive the Holy Spirit till Jesus was glorified; because not until then was the foundation for perfect, intelligent, unwavering faith laid. But since the day of Pentecost, He may be received immediately by those who have repented of all sin, who have believed on Jesus, and been born again. Some have assured me that they were sanctified wholly and filled with the Spirit within a few hours of their conversion. I have no doubt that this was so with many of the three thousand who were converted under Peter’s preaching on the day of Pentecost. But often this work is slow, for He can only work effectually as we work with Him, practising intelligent and obedient faith. Some days the work prospers and seems almost complete, and then peace and joy and comfort abound in the heart; at other times the work is hindered, and oftentimes almost or quite undone, by the strivings and stirrings of inbred sin, by fits of temper, by lightness and frivolity, by neglect of watchfulness and prayer, and the patient, attentive study of His word; by worldliness, by unholy ambitions, by jealousies and envyings, by uncharitable suspicions and harsh judgments and selfish indulgences, and slowness to believe. “The flesh lusteth against the Spirit,” seeks to bring the soul back under the bondage of sin again, while the Spirit wars against the flesh, which is “the old man,” “the carnal mind.” The Spirit seeks to bring every thought into “captivity to the obedience of Christ,” to lead the soul to that point of glad, whole-hearted consecration to its Lord, and that simple, perfect faith in the merits of His blood which shall enable Him to cast out “the old man,” destroy “the carnal mind,” and, making the heart His temple, enthrone Christ within. “Here on earth a temple stands, Temple never built with hands; There the Lord doth fill the place With the glory of His grace. Cleansed by Christ’s atoning blood, Thou art this fair house of God. Thoughts, desires, that enter there, Should they not be pure and fair? Meet for holy courts and blest, Courts of stillness and of rest, Where the soul, a priest in white, Singeth praises day and night; Glory of the love divine, Filling all this heart of mine.” My brother, my sister, what is your experience just now? Are you filled with the Spirit? Or is the old man still warring against Him in your heart? Oh, that you may receive Him fully by faith just now! “Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?”

III.

Is the Baptism with the Holy Spirit a Third Blessing?

“Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.” There is much difference of opinion among many of God’s children as to the time and order of the baptism with the Holy Spirit, and many who believe that entire cleansing is subsequent to salvation, ask if the baptism with the Spirit is not subsequent to cleansing, and, therefore, a third blessing. There are four classes of teachers whose views appear to differ about this subject. There are:- 1. Those who emphasise cleansing; who say much of a clean heart, but little, if anything, about the fullness of the Holy Spirit and power from on High. 2. Those who emphasise the baptism with the Holy Ghost and fullness of the Spirit, but say little or nothing of cleansing from inbred sin and the destruction of the carnal mind. 3. Those who say much of both, but separate them into two distinct experiences, often widely separated in time. 4. Those who teach that the truth is in the union of the two, and that, while we may separate them in their order, putting cleansing first, we cannot separate them as to time, since it is the baptism that cleanses, just as the darkness vanishes before the flash of the electric light when the right button is touched; just as the Augean stables were cleansed, in the fabled story of Grecian mythology, when Hercules turned in the floods of the River Arno; the refuse went out as the rushing waters poured in. There are three very blessed portions of Scripture which show us that this is God’s order, and two that plainly show us that cleansing and the baptism are not separate in time. In Psalm li. 10 and 12, David prays, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me…. Uphold me with Thy free Spirit.” First the cleansing, then the filling that upholds: for as it is my spirit within me that upholds my body, so it is God’s Spirit within that upholds my soul. In Ezekiel xxxvi. 25 and 27, the Lord says, “Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you…. And I will put My Spirit within you.” Here again, the order is first cleansing, then filling. In John xvii. 15-26, Jesus prays for His disciples, and says: “I pray not that Thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldst keep them from the evil…. Sanctify them;… that they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee; that they also may be one in Us;… I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one;… that the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them, and I in them.” Here, again, it is first sanctification (cleansing, being made holy), then filling, divine union with the Father and the Son through the Holy Spirit. These Scriptures make plain the order of God’s work, and if we looked at them alone, without diligently comparing Scripture with Scripture, as God would have us do, we might perhaps conclude that the cleansing and filling were as distinct and separate in time as they are in this order of statement. But other Scriptures give us abundant light on that side of the subject. In Isaiah vi. 1-8, we have the record of the prophet’s sanctification, and we notice that the cleansing and the filling were not separate in time. The cleansing was not before the baptism, but by the baptism. The “live coal” was laid upon his mouth, and touched his lips; and by this fiery baptism his iniquity was taken away and his sin was purged. In Acts x. 44, we read of Peter’s preaching Jesus to Cornelius, the Roman centurion, and his household; and “while Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word”; and in Acts xv. 7-9, at the first Council in Jerusalem, we have Peter’s rehearsal of the experience of Cornelius and his household. Peter says: “Men and brethren, ye know how that a good while ago God made choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the Gospel, and believe. And God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as He did unto us; and put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith.” Here we see that their believing, and the sudden descent of the Holy Ghost with cleansing power into their hearts, constitute one blessed experience. What patient, waiting, expectant faith reckons done, the baptism with the Holy Ghost actually accomplishes. Between the act of faith by which a man begins to reckon himself “dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans vi. 11), and the act of the Holy Spirit, which makes the reckoning good, there may be an interval of time, “a little while” (Hebrews x. 37); but the act and state of steadfastly, patiently, joyously, perfectly believing, which is man’s part, and the act of baptising with the Holy Ghost, cleansing as by fire, which is God’s part, bring about the one experience of entire sanctification, and must not and cannot be logically looked upon as two distinct blessings, any more than the act of the husband and the act of the wife can be separated in the one experience of marriage. There are two works and two workers: God and man. Just as my right arm and my left arm work when my two hands come together, but the union of the two hands constitute one experience. If my left arm acts quickly, my right arm will surely respond. And so, if the soul, renouncing self and sin and the world, with ardour of faith in the precious blood for cleansing, and in the promise of the gift of the Holy Spirit, draws nigh to God, God will draw nigh to that soul, and the blessed union will be effected suddenly: and in that instant, what faith has reckoned done will be done, the death-stroke will be given to “the old man,” sin will die, and the heart will be clean indeed, and wholly alive toward God through our Lord Jesus Christ. It will not be a mere “make-believe” experience, but a gloriously real one. It is possible that some have been led into confusion of thought on this subject by not considering all the Scriptures bearing on it. What is it that cleanses or sanctifies, and how? Jesus prays: “Sanctify them through Thy truth: Thy word is truth.” Here it is the word, or truth, that sanctifies. John says: “The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.” Here it is the blood. Peter says: “God…put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith.” And Paul says: “That they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith.” Here it is by faith. Again, Paul writes: “God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit” (2 Thess. ii. 13). And again, “That the offering up of the Gentiles might be acceptable, being sanctified by the Holy Ghost” (Romans xv. 16). And Peter writes: “To the strangers… elect… through sanctification of the Spirit” (1 Peter i. I, 2). Here it is the Spirit that sanctifies or makes clean and holy. Is there, then, confusion here? Jesus says, “the truth”; John says, “the blood”; Paul and Peter say, “faith,” and “the Holy Ghost.” Can these be reconciled? Let us see. Here is a child in a burning house. A man at the peril of his life rushes to the spot above which the child stands in awful danger, and cries out, “Jump, and I will catch you!” The child hears, believes, leaps, and the man receives him; but just as he turns and places the boy in safety, a falling timber smites him to the ground wounded to death, and his flowing blood sprinkles the boy whom he has saved. A breathless spectator says: “The child’s faith saved him.” Another says: “How quick the lad was! His courageous leap saved him.” Another says: “Bless the child! He was in awful danger, and he just barely saved himself.” Another says: “That man’s word just reached the boy’s ear in the nick of time, and saved him.” Another says: “God bless that man! He saved that child.” And yet another says: “That boy was saved by blood; by the sacrifice of that heroic man!” Now, what saved the child? Without the man’s presence and promise there would have been no faith; and without faith there would have been no saving action, and the boy would have perished. The man’s word saved him by inspiring faith. Faith saved him by leading to proper action. He saved himself by leaping. The man saved him by sacrificing his own life in order to catch him when he leaped out. Not the child himself alone, nor his faith, nor his brave leap, nor his rescuer’s word, nor his blood, nor the man himself saved the boy, but they all together saved him; and the boy was not saved till he was in the arms of the man. And so it is faith and works, and the word and the blood and the Holy Ghost that sanctify. The blood, the sacrifice of Christ, underlies all, and is the meritorious cause of every blessing we receive, but the Holy Spirit is the active Agent by whom the merits of the blood are applied to our needs. During the American Civil War certain men committed some dastardly and unlawful deeds, and were sentenced to be shot. On the day of the execution they stood in a row confronted by soldiers with loaded muskets, waiting the command to fire. Just before the command was given, the commanding officer felt a touch on his elbow, and, turning, saw a young man by his side, who said, “Sir, there in that row, waiting to be shot, is a married man. He has a wife and children. He is their bread-winner. If you shoot him, he will be sorely missed. Let me take his place.” “All right,” said the officer; “take his place, if you wish; but you will be shot.” “I quite understand that,” replied the young man; “but no one will miss me”; and, going to the condemned man, he pushed him aside, and took his place. Soon the command to fire was given. The volley rang out, and the young hero dropped dead with a bullet through his heart, while the other man went free. His freedom came to him by blood. Had he, however, neglected the great salvation, and, despising the blood shed for him, and refusing the sacrifice of the friend and the righteous claims of the law, persisted in the same evil ways, he, too, would have been shot. The blood, though shed for him, would not have availed to set him free. But he accepted the sacrifice, submitted to the law, and went home to his wife and children; but it was by the blood; every breath he henceforth drew, every throb of his heart, every blessing he enjoyed, or possibly could enjoy, came to him by the blood. He owed everything from that day forth to the blood, and every fleeting moment, every passing day, and every rolling year but increased his debt to the blood which had been shed for him. And so we owe all to the blood of Christ, for we were under sentence of death—­”The soul that sinneth it shall die”; and we have all sinned, and God, to be holy, must frown upon sin, and utterly condemn it, and must execute His sentence against it. But Jesus suffered for our sins. He died for us. “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities;… and with His stripes we are healed.” “Ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold… but with the precious blood of Christ” (i Peter i. 18, 19); “Who loved me, and gave Himself for me” (Gal. ii. 20). And now every blessing we ever had, or ever shall have, comes to us by the Divine Sacrifice, by “the precious blood.” And “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?” His blood is the meritorious cause not only of our pardon, but of our cleansing, our sanctification; but the Holy Spirit is the ever-present, living, active Cause. The truth or word which sanctifies is the record God has given us of His will and of that Divine Sacrifice, that “precious blood.” The faith that purifies is that sure confidence in that word which leads to renunciation of all self-righteousness, that utter abandonment to God’s will, and full dependence on the merits of “the precious blood,” the “faith that works by love,” for “faith without works is dead.” And thus we draw nigh to God, and God draws nigh to us, and the Holy Ghost falls upon us, comes into us, and cleanses our hearts by the destruction of sin, and the shedding abroad within us of the love of God. The advocates of entire sanctification as an experience wrought in the soul by the baptism with the Spirit subsequent to regeneration call it “the second blessing.” But many good people object to the term, and say that they have received the first, second, third, and fiftieth blessing; and no doubt they have; and yet the people who speak of “the second blessing” are right, in the sense in which they use the term; and in that sense there are but the two blessings. Some years ago a man heard things about a lady that filled him with admiration for her, and made him feel that they were of one mind and heart. Later, he met her for the first time, and fell in love with her. After some months, following an enlarged acquaintance and much consideration and prayer, he told her of his love, and asked her to become his wife; and after due consideration and prayer on her part she consented, and they promised themselves to each other; they plighted their faith, and in a sense gave themselves to each other. That was the first blessing, and it filled him with great peace and joy, but not perfect peace and joy. Now, there were many blessings following that before the great second blessing came. Every letter he received, every tender look, every pressure of the hand, every tone of her voice, every fresh assurance of enduring and increasing affection was a blessing; but it was not the second blessing. But one day, after patient waiting, which might have been shortened by mutual consent, if they had thought it wise, and after full preparation, they came together in the presence of friends and before a man of God, and in the most solemn and irrevocable manner gave themselves to each other to become one, and were pronounced man and wife. That was the second blessing, an epochal experience, unlike anything which preceded, or anything to follow. And now their peace and joy and rest were full. There had to be the first and second blessings in this relationship of man and wife, but there is no third. And yet in the sense of those who say they have received fifty blessings from the Lord, there have been countless blessings in their wedded life; indeed, it has been a river of blessing, broadening and deepening in gladness and joy and sweet affections and fellowship with the increasing years. But let us not confuse thought by disputing over terms and wrangling about words. The first blessing in Jesus Christ is salvation, with its negative side of remission of sins and forgiveness, and its positive side of renewal or regeneration—­the new birth—­one experience. And the second blessing is entire sanctification, with its negative side of cleansing, and its positive side of filling with the Holy Ghost—­one whole, rounded, glorious, epochal experience. And while there may be many refreshings, girdings, illuminations, and secret tokens and assurances of love and favour, there is no third blessing in this large sense, in this present time. But when time is no more, when the ever-lasting doors have lifted up, and the King of Glory comes in with His Bride, and, for ever redeemed and crowned, He makes us to sit down with Him on His throne, then in eternity we shall have the third blessing—­we shall be glorified. “Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?”

IV.

The Witness of the Spirit

“Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.” How shall I know that I am accepted of God?—­that I am saved or sanctified? The Bible declares God’s love and pity for sinners, including me, and reveals His offer of mercy to me in Jesus Christ, on condition that I fully repent of my sins, and yielding myself to Him, believe on Jesus Christ, and taking up my cross, follow Him. But how shall I know that I have met these conditions in a way to satisfy Him, and that I am myself saved? 1. The Bible cannot tell me this. It tells me what to do, but it does not tell me when I have done it, any more than the sign-board at the country cross-roads, pointing out the road leading to the city, tells me when I have got to the city. 2. My religious teachers and friends cannot tell me, for they cannot read my heart, nor the mind of God toward me. How can they know when I have in my heart repented and believed, and when His righteous anger is turned away? They can encourage me to repent, believe, obey, and can assure me that, if I do, He will accept me, and I shall be saved; but beyond that they cannot go. 3. My own heart, owing to its darkness and deceitfulness and liability to error, is not a safe witness previous to the assurance God Himself gives. If my neighbour is justly offended with me, it is not my own heart, but his testimony that first assures me of his favour once more. How, then, shall I know that I am justified or wholly sanctified? There is but one way, and that is by the witness of the Holy Spirit. God must notify me, and make me to know it; and this He does, when, despairing of my own works of righteousness, I cast my poor soul fully and in faith upon Jesus. “For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear,” says Paul, “but ye have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God” (Romans viii. 15, 16). “And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father” (Gal. iv. 6). Unless He Himself assures me, I shall never know that He accepts me, but must continue in uncertainty all my days. “Come, Holy Ghost, Thyself impress On my expanding heart: And show that in the Father’s grace I share a filial part.” The General says: “Assurance is produced by the revelation of forgiveness and acceptance made by God Himself directly to the soul. This is the witness of the Spirit. It is God testifying in my soul that He has loved me, and given Himself for me, and washed me from my sins in His own blood. Nothing short of this actual revelation, made by God Himself, can make anyone sure of salvation.” John Wesley says: “By the testimony of the Spirit, I mean an inward impression of the soul, whereby the Spirit of God immediately and directly witnesses to my spirit that I am a child of God; that ‘Jesus hath loved me, and given Himself for me’; that all my sins are blotted out, and I, even I, am reconciled to God.” This witness of the Spirit addressed to my consciousness enables me to sing with joyful assurance:—­ “My God is reconciled; His pardoning voice I hear: He owns me for His child; I can no longer fear: With confidence I now draw nigh, And, ‘Father, Abba, Father,’ cry.” When the Holy Spirit witnesses to me that I am saved and adopted into God’s family as His child, then other evidences begin to abound also. For instance:—­ 1. My own spirit witnesses that I am a new creature. I know that old things have passed away, and all things have become new. My very thoughts and desires have been changed. Love and joy and peace reign within me. My heart no longer condemns me. Pride and selfishness, and lust and temper, no longer control my thoughts nor lead captive my will. I am a new creature, and I know it, and I infer without doubt that this is the work of God in me. 2. My conscience bears witness that I am honest and true in all my purposes and intentions; that I am without guile; that my eye is single to the glory of God, and that with all simplicity and sincerity of heart I serve Him; and, since by nature I am only sinful, I again infer that this sincerity of heart is His blessed work in my soul, and is a fruit of salvation. 3. The Bible becomes a witness to my salvation. In it are accurately portrayed the true characteristics of the children of God; and as I study it prayerfully, and find these characteristics in my heart and life, I again infer that I am saved. This is true self-examination, and is most useful. These evidences are most important to guard us against any mistake as to the witness of the Holy Spirit. The witness of the Spirit is not likely to be mistaken for something else, just as the sun is not likely to be mistaken for a lesser light, a glow-worm or a moon. But one who has not seen the sun might mistake some lesser light for the sun. So an unsaved man may mistake some flash of fancy, some pleasant emotion, for the witness of the Spirit. But if he is honest, the absence of these secondary evidences and witnesses will correct him. He must know that so long as sin masters him, reigns within him, and he is devoid of the tempers, graces, and dispositions of God’s people, as portrayed in the Bible, that he is mistaken in supposing that he has the witness of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit cannot witness to what does not exist. He cannot lie. Not until sin is forgiven does He witness to the fact. Not until we are justified from our old sins and born again does He witness that we are children of God; and when He does so witness, these secondary evidences always follow. Charles Wesley expresses this in one of his matchless hymns:—­ “How can a sinner know His sins on earth forgiven? How can my gracious Saviour show My name inscribed in Heaven? “We who in Christ believe That He for us hath died, We all His unknown peace receive, And feel His blood applied. “His love, surpassing far The love of all beneath, We find within our hearts, and dare The pointless darts of death. “Stronger than death and hell The mystic power we prove; And conquerors of the world, we dwell In Heaven, who dwell in love.” The witness of the Spirit is far more comprehensive than many suppose. Multitudes do not believe that there is any such thing, while others confine it to the forgiveness of sins and adoption into the family of God. But the truth is that the Holy Spirit witnesses to much more than this. He witnesses to the sinner that he is guilty, condemned before God, and lost. This we call conviction; but it is none other than the witness of the Spirit to the sinner’s true condition; and when a man realises it, nothing can convince him to the contrary. His friends may point out his good works, his kindly disposition, and try to assure him that he is not a bad man; but, so long as the Spirit continues to witness to his guilt, nothing can console him or reassure his quaking heart. This convicting witness may come to a sinner at any time, but it is usually given under the searching preaching of the Gospel, or the burning testimony of those who have been gloriously saved and sanctified; or in time of danger, when the soul is awed into silence, so that it can hear the “still small voice” of the Holy Spirit. Again, the Holy Spirit not only witnesses to the forgiveness of sins and acceptance with God, but He also witnesses to sanctification. “For by one offering,” says the Apostle, “He” (that is, Jesus) “hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us” (Hebrews x. 14, 15). Indeed, one who has this witness can no more doubt it than a man with two good eyes can doubt the existence of the sun when he steps forth into the splendour of a cloudless noon-day. It satisfies him, and he cries out exultingly, “We know, we know!” Hallelujah! Paul seems to teach that the Holy Spirit witnesses to every good thing God works in us, for he says: “We have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God” (1 Cor. ii. 12). It is for our comfort and encouragement to know our acceptance of God and our rights, privileges, and possessions in Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit is given for this purpose, that we may know. But it is important to bear in mind God’s plan of work in this matter. 1. The witness of the Spirit is dependent upon our faith. God does not give it to those who do not believe in Jesus; and if our faith wavers, the witness will become intermittent; and if faith fails, it will be withdrawn. Owing to the unsteadiness of their faith, many young converts get into uncertainty. Happy are they at such times if some one is at hand to instruct and encourage them to look steadfastly to Jesus. But, alas! many old Christians through unsteady faith walk in gloom and uncertainty, and, instead of encouraging the young, they discourage them. Steadfast faith will keep the inward witness bright. 2. We must not get our attention off Jesus, and the promises of God in Him, and fix it upon the witness of the Spirit. The witness continues only while we look unto Jesus, and trust and obey Him. When we take our eyes off Him, the witness is gone. Many people fail here. Instead of quietly and confidently looking unto Jesus, and trusting Him, they are vainly looking for the witness; which is as though a man should try to realise the sweetness of honey, without receiving it in his mouth; or the beauty of a picture, while having his eyes turned inward upon himself instead of outward upon the picture. Jesus saves. Look to Him, and He will send the Spirit to witness to His work. 3. The witness may be brightened by diligence in the discharge of duty, by frequent seasons of glad prayer, by definite testimony to salvation and sanctification, and by stirring up our faith. 4. The witness may be dulled by neglect of duty, by sloth in prayer, by inattention to the Bible, by indefinite, hesitating testimony, and by carelessness, when we should be careful to walk soberly and steadfastly with the Lord. 5. I dare not say that the witness of the Spirit is dependent upon our health, but there are some forms of nervous and organic disease that seem to so distract or becloud the mind as to interfere with the clear discernment of the witness of the Spirit. I knew a nervous little child who would be so distracted with fear by an approaching carriage, when being carried across the street in her father’s arms, that she seemed to be incapable of hearing or heeding his reassuring voice. It may be that there are some diseases that for the time prevent the sufferer from discerning the reassuring witness of the Heavenly Father. Dr. Asa Mahan told me of an experience of this kind which he had in a very dangerous sickness. And Dr. Daniel Steele had a similar experience while lying at the point of death with typhoid fever. But some of the happiest Christians the world has seen have been racked with pain and tortured with disease. And so there may be seasons of fierce temptation when the witness is not clearly discerned; but we may rest assured that if our hearts cleave to Jesus Christ and duty, He will never leave or forsake us. Blessed be God! 6. But the witness will be lost if we wilfully sin, or persistently neglect to follow where He leads. This witness is a pearl of great price, and Satan will try to steal it from us; therefore, we must guard it with watchful prayer continually. 7. If lost, it may be found again by prayer and faith and a dutiful taking up of the cross which has been laid down. Thousands who have lost it have found it again, and often they have found it with increased brightness and glory. If you have lost it, my brother, look up in faith to your loving God, and He will restore it to you. It is possible to live on the right side of plain duty without the witness, but you cannot be sure of your salvation, joyful in service, or glad in God, without it; and since it is promised to all God’s children, no one who professes to be His should be without it. If you have it not, my brother or sister, seek it now by faith in Jesus. Go to Him, and do not let Him go till He notifies you that you are His. Listen to Charles Wesley:—­ “From the world of sin, and noise, And hurry, I withdraw; For the small and inward voice I wait with humble awe; Silent am I now and still, Dare not in Thy presence move; To my waiting soul reveal The secret of Thy love.” Do you want the witness to abide? Then study the word of God, and live by it; sing and make melody in your heart to the Lord; praise the Lord with your first waking breath in the morning, and thank Him with your last waking breath at night; flee from sin; keep on believing; look to Jesus, cleave to Him, follow Him gladly, trust the efficacy of His blood, and the witness will abide in your heart. Be patient with the Lord. Let Him mould you, and “He will save, He will rejoice over thee with joy; He will rest in His love, He will joy over thee with singing” (Zeph. iii. 17); and you shall no longer doubt, but know that you are His. Hallelujah! “There are in this loud stunning tide Of human care and crime, With whom the melodies abide Of th’ everlasting chime; Who carry music in their heart Through dusky lane and wrangling mart, Plying their task with busier feet Because their secret souls a holy strain repeat.” And that “holy strain” is but the echo of the Lord’s song in their heart, which is the witness of the Spirit. “Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?”

V.

Purity

“Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.” A minister of the Gospel, after listening to an eminent servant of God preaching on entire sanctification through the baptism with the Spirit, wrote to him, saying: “I like your teaching on the baptism with the Holy Ghost. I need it, and am seeking it; but I do not care much for entire sanctification or heart-cleansing. Pray for me that I may be filled with the Holy Ghost.” The brother knew him well, and immediately replied: “I am so glad you believe in the baptism with the Holy Ghost, and are so earnestly seeking it. I join my prayer with yours that you may receive that gift. But let me say to you, that if you get the gift of the Holy Ghost, you will have to take entire sanctification with it, for the first thing the baptism with the Holy Ghost does is to cleanse the heart from all sin.” Thank God, he humbled himself, permitted the Lord to sanctify him, and he was filled with the Holy Spirit, and mightily empowered to work for God. Many have looked at the promise of power when the Holy Ghost is come, the energy of Peter’s preaching on the day of Pentecost, and the marvellous results which followed, and they have hastily and erroneously jumped to the conclusion that the baptism with the Holy Ghost is for work and service only. It does bring power—­the power of God, and it does fit for service, probably the most important service to which any created beings are commissioned, the proclamation of salvation and the conditions of peace to a lost world; but not that alone, nor primarily. The primary, the basal work of the baptism, is that of cleansing. You may turn a flood into your millrace, but until it sweeps away the logs and brushwood and dirt that obstruct the course, you cannot get power to turn the wheels of your mill. The flood first washes out the obstructions, and then you have power. The great hindrance in the hearts of God’s children to the power of the Holy Ghost is inbred sin—­that dark, defiant, evil something within that struggles for the mastery of the soul, and will not submit to be meek and lowly, and patient and forbearing and holy, as was Jesus; and when the Holy Spirit comes, His first work is to sweep away that something, that carnal principle, and make free and clean all the channels of the soul. Peter was filled with power on the day of Pentecost; but evidently the purifying effect of the baptism made a deeper and more lasting impression upon his mind than the empowering effect; for years after, in that first Council in Jerusalem, recorded in the fifteenth chapter of Acts, he stood up and told about the spiritual baptism of Cornelius, the Roman centurion, and his household, and he said: “And God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as He did unto us; and put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith.” Here he calls attention not to power, but to purity, as the effect of the baptism. When the Holy Ghost comes in to abide, “the old man” goes out. Praise the Lord! This destruction of inbred sin is made perfectly plain in that wonderful Old Testament type of the baptism with the Holy Ghost and fire recorded in the sixth chapter of Isaiah. The prophet was a most earnest preacher of righteousness (see Isaiah i. 10-20), yet he was not sanctified wholly. But he had a vision of the Lord upon His Throne, and the seraphims crying one to another: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts: the whole earth is full of His glory.” And the very “posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried”; and how much more should the heart of the prophet be moved! And so it was; and he cried out: “Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.” When unsanctified men have a vision of God, it is not their lack of power, but their lack of purity, their unlikeness to Christ, the Holy One, that troubles them. And so it was with the prophet. But he adds: “Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar. And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.” Here again, it is purity rather than power to which our attention is directed. Again, in the thirty-sixth chapter of Ezekiel, we have another type of this spiritual baptism. In Isaiah the type was that of fire, but here it is that of water; for water and oil, and the wind and rain and dew, are all used as types of the Holy Spirit. The Lord says, through Ezekiel: “Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean; from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes, and ye shall keep My judgments, and do them.” Here again, the incoming of the Holy Spirit means the outgoing of all sin, of “all your filthiness, and of all your idols.” How plainly it is taught! And yet, many of God’s dear children do not believe it is their privilege to be free from sin and pure in heart in this life. But, may we not? Let us consider this. 1. It is certainly desirable. Every sincere Christian—­and none can be a Christian who is not sincere—­wants to be free from sin, to be pure in heart, to be like Christ. Sin is hateful to every true child of God. The Spirit within him cries out against the sin, the wrong temper, the pride, the lust, the selfishness, the evil that lurks within the heart. Surely, it is desirable to be free from sin. “He wills that I should holy be: That holiness I long to feel; That full Divine conformity To all my Saviour’s righteous will.” 2. It is necessary, for “without holiness no man shall see the Lord.” Sometime, somehow, somewhere, sin must go out of our hearts—­all sin—­or we cannot go into Heaven. Sin would spoil Heaven just as it spoils earth; just as it spoils the peace of hearts and homes, of families and neighbourhoods and nations here. Why God in His wisdom allows sin in the world, I do not know, I cannot understand. But this I understand: that He has one world into which He will not let sin enter. He has notified us in advance that no sin, nothing that defiles, can enter Heaven, can mar the blessedness of that holy place. “Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in His holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully” We must get rid of sin to get into Heaven, to enjoy the full favour of God. It is necessary. “Choose I must, and soon must choose Holiness, or Heaven lose. If what Heaven loves I hate, Shut for me is Heaven’s gate! “Endless sin means endless woe; Into endless sin I go If my soul, from reason rent, Takes from sin its final bent. “As the stream its channel grooves, And within that channel moves; So does habit’s deepest tide Groove its bed and there abide. “Light obeyed increaseth light; Light resisted bringeth night; Who shall give me will to choose If the love of light I lose? “Speed, my soul, this instant yield; Let the light its sceptre wield. While thy God prolongs His grace, Haste thee to His holy face.” 3. This purification from sin is promised. Nothing can be plainer than the promise of God on this point. “Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean; from all your filthiness and from all your idols will I cleanse you.” When all is removed, nothing remains. When all filthiness and all idols are taken away, none are left. “But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound; that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans v. 20, 21). Grace reigns, not through sin, but “through righteousness” which has expelled sin. Grace brings in righteousness and sin goes out. “If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John i. 7). Hallelujah! “Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness” (Romans vi. 18). These are sample promises and assurances any one of which is sufficient to encourage us to believe that our Heavenly Father will save us from all sin, if we meet His conditions. 4. And that deliverance is possible. It was for this that Jesus Christ, the Father’s Son, came into the world, and suffered and died, that He might “save His people from their sins” (Matthew i. 21). It was for this that He shed His precious blood: to “cleanse us from all sin.” It was for this that the word of God, with its wonderful promises, was given: “That by these ye might be partakers of the Divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust” (2 Peter i. 4); by which is meant, escape from inbred sin. It was for this that ministers of the Gospel—­Salvation Army Officers—­are given, “for the perfecting of the saints” (Eph. iv. 12), for the saving and sanctifying of men (Acts xxvi. 18). It is primarily for this that the Holy Ghost comes as a baptism of fire: that sin might be consumed out of us, so that we might be “made meet for the inheritance of the saints in light”; that so we might be ready without a moment’s warning to go into the midst of the heavenly hosts in white garments, “washed in the blood of the Lamb.” Glory be to God for ever and ever! And shall all these mighty agents and this heavenly provision, and these gracious purposes of God, fail to destroy sin out of any obedient, believing heart? Is sin omnipotent? No! If you, my brother, my sister, will look unto Jesus just now, trusting the merits of His blood, and receive the Holy Spirit into your heart, you shall be “made free from sin”; it “shall not have dominion over you.” Hallelujah! Under the fiery touch of His holy presence, your iniquity shall be taken away, and your sin shall be purged. And you yourself shall burn as did the bush on the mount of God which Moses saw; yet you, like the bush, shall not be consumed; and by this holy fire, this flame of love, that consumes sin, you shall be made proof against that unquenchable fire that consumes sinners. “Come, Holy Ghost, Thy mighty aid bestowing; Destroy the works of sin, the self, the pride; Burn, burn in me, my idols overthrowing: Prepare my heart for Him, for my Lord crucified.” “Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?”

VI.

Power

“Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.” Just before His ascension, Jesus met His disciples for the last time, and repeated His command that they should “not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father,” and reiterated His promise that they should be “baptised with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.” Then “they asked of Him, saying, Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?” They were still eager for an earthly kingdom. But “He said unto them, It is not for you to know the time or the seasons, which the Father hath put in His own power,” or authority. And then He added, “But ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.” They wanted power, and He assured them that they should have it, but said nothing of its nature, or the work and activities into which it would thrust them, and for which it would equip them, beyond the fact that they should be witnesses unto Him “in Jerusalem and Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth.” After that the Holy Ghost Himself was henceforth to be their Teacher. And then Jesus left them. Earth lost its power to hold Him, and while they beheld Him He began to ascend; a cloud bent low from Heaven, receiving Him out of sight, and they were left alone, with His promise of power ringing in their ears, and His command to “wait for the promise of the Father” checking any impatience that might lead them to “go a-fishing,” as Peter had done some days before, or cause an undue haste to begin their life-work of witnessing for Him before God’s appointed time. For ten days they waited, not listlessly, but eagerly, as a maid for her mistress, or a servant for his master, who is expected to come at any moment; they forgot their personal ambitions; they ceased to judge and criticise one another, and in the sweet unity of brotherly love, “with one accord” they rejoiced, they prayed, they waited; and then on the day of Pentecost, at their early morning prayer meeting, when they were all present, the windows of Heaven were opened, and such a blessing as they could not contain was poured out upon them. “And suddenly there came a sound from Heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.” This was the inaugural day of the Church of God: the dawn of the dispensation of the Holy Spirit; the beginning of the days of power. In the morning of that day there were only a few Christians in the world; the New Testament was not written, and it is doubtful if they had among them all a copy of the Old Testament; they had no church buildings, no colleges, no religious books and papers; they were poor and despised, unlearned and ignorant; but before night they had enrolled three thousand converts from among those who, a few weeks before, had crucified their Lord, and they had aroused and filled all Jerusalem with questionings and amazement. What was the secret? Power. What was the secret? God the Holy Ghost. He had come, and this work was His work, and they were His instruments. When Jesus came, a body was prepared for Him (Hebrews x. 5), and through that body He wrought His wondrous works; but when the other Comforter comes, He takes possession of those bodies that are freely and fully presented to Him, and He touches their lips with grace; He shines peacefully and gloriously on their faces; He flashes beams of pity and compassion and heavenly affection from their eyes; He kindles a fire of love in their hearts, and lights the flame of truth in their minds. They become His temple, and their hearts are a holy of holies in which His blessed presence ever abides, and from that central citadel He works, enduing the man who has received Him with power. If you ask how the Holy Spirit can dwell within us and work through us without destroying our personality, I cannot tell. How can the electric fluid fill and transform a dead wire into a live one, which you dare not touch? How can a magnetic current fill a piece of steel, and transform it into a mighty force which by its touch can raise tons of iron, as a child would lift a feather? How can fire dwell in a piece of iron until its very appearance is that of fire, and it becomes a fire-brand? I cannot tell. Now, what fire and electricity and magnetism do in iron and steel, the Holy Spirit does in the spirits of men who believe on Jesus, follow Him wholly, and trust Him intelligently. He dwells in them, and inspires them, till they are all alive with the very life of God. The transformation wrought in men by the baptism with the Holy Ghost, and the power that fills them, are amazing beyond measure. The Holy Spirit gives—­ 1. Power over the world. They become “Dead to the world and all its toys, Its idle pomps and fading joys.” The world masters and enslaves people who have not the Holy Spirit. To one man it offers money, and he falls down and worships; sells his conscience and character for gold. To another it offers power, and he falls down and worships and sacrifices his principles and sears his conscience for power. To another it offers pleasure; to another learning; to another fame, and they fall down and worship, and sell themselves for these things. But the man filled with the Holy Ghost is free. He can turn from these things without a pang, as he would from pebbles; or, he can take them and use them as his servants for the glory of God and the good of men. What did Peter and James and John care for the great places in the kingdoms of this world after they were filled with the Holy Ghost? They would not have exchanged places with Herod the king or with Cæsar himself. For the gratification of any personal ambition these things were no more attractive to them now than the lordship over a tribe of ants on their tiny hill. They were now kings and priests unto God, and theirs was an everlasting kingdom, and its glory exceeds the glory of the kingdoms of this world as the splendour of the sun exceeds that of the glow-worm. The head of some great business enterprises was making many thousands of dollars every year; but when the Holy Spirit filled him money lost its power over him. He still retained his position, and made vast sums; but, as a steward of the Lord, he poured it into God’s work, and has been doing so for more than thirty years. The disciples in Jerusalem after Pentecost held all their possessions in common, so completely were they freed from the power and love of money. A rising young lawyer got filled with the Spirit, and the next day said to his client: “I cannot plead your case. I have a retainer from the Lord Jesus”; and he became one of the mightiest preachers the world has ever seen. A popular lad got the fiery baptism, and went to his baseball team, and said: “Boys, you swear, and I am now a Christian, and I cannot play with you any more”; and God made him the wonder of all his old friends, and a happy winner of souls. A fashionable woman got the baptism, and God gave her power to break away from her worldly set and surroundings, live wholly for Him, and gave her an influence that girdled the globe. Paul said: “The world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.” Men could whip, and stone, and imprison his body, and cut off his head, but his soul was free. It was enslaved and driven by no unholy or inordinate ambition, by no lust for gold, by no desire for power or fame, by no fear of man, by no shame of worldly censure or adverse public opinion. He had power over the world, and this same power is the birthright of every converted man, and the present possession of every one who is wholly sanctified by the baptism with the Holy Ghost. 2. Power over the flesh. The body which God intended for a “house beautiful” for the soul, and a temple holy unto Himself, is often reduced to a sty, where the imprisoned soul wallows in lusts and passions, and degrades itself below the level of beasts. But this baptism gives a man power over his body. God has given to man such desires and passions as are necessary to secure his continued existence, and not one is in itself evil, but good and only good; and when controlled and used, but not abused, will help to develop and maintain the purest and highest manhood. The appetites for food and drink are necessary to life. Another desire is intended to secure the continuance of the human race. And so all the desires and appetites of the body have useful ends, and were given to us in love by our Heavenly Father for high and essential purposes, and are necessary to us as human beings. But the soul, cut off from fellowship with God, by sin, seeks satisfaction in sensual excesses, and the unlawful gratification of these appetites, and so sinks to depths of degradation to which no beast ever falls. Thus man becomes a slave; swollen and raging passion takes the place of innocent appetites and desires. Now, when the Holy Spirit enters the heart and sanctifies the soul, He does not destroy these desires, but He purifies and regulates them. He reinforces the soul with the fear and love of God, and gives it power, complete power, over the fleshly appetites. He restores it to its full fellowship with God and its kingship over the body. But while these appetites and desires are not in themselves sinful, but are necessary for our welfare and our complete manhood, and while their diseased and abnormal power is cured when we are sanctified, they are still avenues through which we may be tempted. Therefore, they must be guarded with care and ruled in wisdom. Many people stumble at and reject the doctrine of entire sanctification, because they do not understand these things. They mistake that which is natural and essential to a human being for the diseased and abnormal propensity caused by sin, and so miss the blessed truth of full salvation. I knew a doctor, who had used tobacco for over sixty years, delivered from the abnormal appetite instantly through sanctification of the Spirit. I knew an old man, who had been a drunkard for over fifty years, similarly delivered. I knew a young man, the slave of a vicious habit of the flesh, who was set free at once by the fiery baptism. The electric current cannot transform the dead wire into a live one quicker than the Holy Spirit can flood a soul with light and love, destroy the carnal mind, and fill a man with power over all sin. 3. Power over the Devil. The indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit destroys all doubt as to the personality of the Devil. He is discerned, and his malice is felt and known as never before. In the dark a man may be so skilfully attacked that his enemy is not discovered, but not in the day. Many people in these days deny that there is any Devil, only evil; but they are in the dark, so much in the dark that they not only say that there is no Devil, but that there is no personal God, only good. But the day comes with the Holy Spirit’s entrance, and then God is intimately known and the Devil is discovered. And as he assailed Jesus after His baptism with the Spirit, so he does to-day all who receive the Holy Ghost. He comes as an angel of light to deceive, and as a roaring lion to devour and overcome with fear; but the soul filled with the Spirit outwits the Devil, and, clad in the whole armour of God, overcomes the old enemy. “Power over all the power of the enemy” is God’s purpose for all His children. Power to do the will of God patiently and effectively, with naturalness and ease, or to suffer the will of God with patience and good cheer, comes with this blessed baptism. It is power for service or sacrifice, according to God’s will. Have you this power? If not, it is for you. Yield yourself fully to Christ just now, and if you ask in faith you shall receive. “Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?”

VII.

Trying the Spirits

“Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.” Those who have not the Holy Spirit, or who do not heed Him, fall easily and naturally into formalism, substituting lifeless ceremonies, sacraments, genuflections, and ritualistic performances for the free, glad, living worship inspired by the indwelling Spirit. They sing, but not from the heart. They say their prayers, but they do not really pray. “I prayed last night, mother,” said a child. “Why, my child, you pray every night!” replied the mother. “No,” said the child, “I only said prayers, but last night I really prayed.” And his face shone. He had opened his heart to the Holy Spirit, and had at last really talked with God and worshipped. But those who receive the Holy Spirit may fall into fanaticism, unless they follow the command of John to “try the spirits, whether they are of God.” We are commanded to “despise not prophesyings,” but at the same time we are commanded to “prove all things.” “Many false prophets are gone out into the world,” and, if possible, will lead us astray. So we must beware. As some one has written, we must “Believe not every spirit; regard not, trust not, follow not, every pretender to the Spirit of God, or every professor of vision, or inspiration, or revelation from God.” The higher and more intense the life, the more carefully must it be guarded, lest it be endangered and go astray. It is so in the natural world, and likewise in the spiritual world. When Satan can no longer rock people to sleep with religious lullabys, or satisfy them with the lifeless form, then he comes as an angel of light, probably in the person of some professor or teacher of religion, and seeks to usurp the place of the Holy Spirit; but instead of leading “into all truth,” he leads the unwary soul into deadly error; instead of directing him on to the highway of holiness, and into the path of perfect peace, where no ravenous beast ever comes, he leads him into a wilderness where the soul, stripped of its beautiful garments of salvation, is robbed and wounded and left to die, if some good Samaritan, with patient pity and Christlike love, come not that way. 1. When the Holy Spirit comes in His fullness, He strips men of their self-righteousness and pride and conceit. They see themselves as the chief of sinners, and realise that only through the stripes of Jesus are they healed; and ever after, as they live in the Spirit, their boast is in Him and their glory is in the cross. Remembering the hole of the pit from which they were digged, they are filled with tender pity for all who are out of the way; and, while they do not excuse or belittle sin, yet they are slow to believe evil, and their judgments are full of charity. “Judge not; the workings of his brain And of his heart thou canst not see: What looks to thy dim eyes a stain, In God’s pure light may only be A scar, brought from some well-won field, Where thou wouldst only faint and yield.” But the man who has been thus snared by Satan forgets his own past miserable state, and boasts of his righteousness, and thanks God that he was never as other men, and he begins to beat his fellow-servants with heavy denunciations, and thrust them through with sharp criticisms, and pelt them with hard words. He ceases to pity, and begins to condemn; he no longer warns and entreats men in tender love, but is quick to believe evil, and swift to pass judgment, not only upon their actions, but upon their motives as well. True charity has no fellowship with deeds of darkness. It never calls evil good, it does not wink at iniquity, but it is as far removed from this sharp, condemning spirit as light is from darkness, as honey is from vinegar. It is quick to condemn sin, but is full of saving, long-suffering compassion for the sinner. 2. A humble, teachable mind marks those in whom the Holy Spirit dwells. They esteem very highly in love those who are over them in the Lord, and are glad to be admonished by them. They submit themselves one to the other in the fear of the Lord, welcome instruction and correction, and esteem “open rebuke better than secret love” (Proverbs xxvii. 5). They believe that the Lord has yet many things to say unto them, and they are willing and glad for Him to say them by whom He will, but especially by their leaders and their brethren. While they do not fawn and cringe before men, nor believe everything that is said to them, without proving it by the word and Spirit of God, they believe that God “gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ”; and, like Cornelius, they are ready to hear these appointed ministers, and receive the word of the Lord from them. But Satan seeks to destroy all this lowliness of spirit and humbleness of mind. Those in whom his deadly work has begun are “wiser in their own conceit than seven men that can render a reason.” They are wiser than all their teachers, and no man can instruct them. One of these deluded souls, who had previously been marked by modesty and humility, declared of certain of God’s chosen leaders whose spiritual knowledge and wisdom were everywhere recognised, that “the whole of them knew no more about the Holy Ghost than an old goose.” Paul, Luther, and Wesley were much troubled, and their work greatly hurt, by some of these misguided souls, and every great spiritual awakening is likely to be marred more or less by such people; so that we cannot be too much on our guard against false spirits who would counterfeit the work and leadings of the Holy Spirit. It is this huge conceit that has led some men to announce themselves as apostles and prophets to whom all men must listen, or fall under the wrath of God; while others have declared that they were living in resurrection bodies and should not die; and yet others have reached that pitch of fanaticism where they could calmly proclaim themselves to be the Messiah, or the Holy Ghost in bodily form. Such people will be quick to deny the infallibility of the Pope, while they assume their own infallibility, and denounce all who dispute it. The Holy Spirit may lead to a holy rivalry in love and humility and brotherly kindness and self-denial and good works, but He never leads men into the swelling conceit of such exclusive knowledge and superior wisdom that they can no longer be taught by their fellow-men. 3. Again, the man who is filled with the Spirit is tolerant of those who differ from him in opinion, in doctrine. He is firm in his own convictions, and ready at all times with meekness and fear to explain and defend the doctrines which he holds and is convinced are according to God’s word, but he does not condemn and consign to damnation all those who differ from him. He is glad to believe that men are often better than their creed, and may be saved in spite of it; that, like mountains whose bases are bathed with sunshine and clothed with fruitful fields and vineyards, while their tops are covered with dark clouds, so men’s hearts are often fruitful in the graces of charity, while their heads are yet darkened by doctrinal error. Anyway, as “the servant of the Lord,” he will “not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; and that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the Devil” (2 Timothy ii. 24-26). But when Satan comes as an angel of light he will, under guise of love for and loyalty to the truth, introduce the spirit of intolerance. It was this spirit that crucified Jesus; that burned Huss and Cranmer at the stake; that strangled Savonarola; that inspired the massacre of St. Bartholomew and the horrors of the Inquisition; and it is the same spirit, in a milder but possibly more subtle form, that blinds the eyes of many professing Christians to any good in those who differ from them in doctrine, forms of worship or methods of government. They murder love to protect what they often blindly call truth. What is truth without love? A dead thing, an encumbrance, the letter that killeth! The body is necessary to our life in this world, but life can exist in a deformed and even mutilated body; and such a body with life in it is better than the most perfect body that is only a corpse. So, while truth is most precious, and sound doctrine to be esteemed more than silver and gold, yet love can exist where truth is not held in its most perfect and complete forms, and love is the one thing needful. “The love of God is broader Than the measure of man’s mind: And the heart of the Eternal Is most wonderfully kind.” 4. The Holy Ghost begets a spirit of unity among Christians. People who have been sitting behind their sectarian fences in self-complacent ease, or proud indifference, or proselytising zeal, or grim defiance, are suddenly lifted above the fence, and find sweet fellowship with each other, when He comes into their hearts. They delight in each other’s society; they each esteem others better than themselves, and in honour they prefer one another before themselves. They fulfil the Psalmist’s ideal: “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.” Here is a picture of the unity of Christians in the beginning in Jerusalem: “And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness. And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul; neither said any of them that aught of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common.” What an ideal is this! And since it has been attained once, it can be attained again and retained, but only by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. It was for this that Jesus poured out His heart in His great intercessory prayer, recorded in John xvii., just before His arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane. He says, “I pray for them…. Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on Me through their word; that they all may be one.” And what was the standard of unity to which He would have us come? Listen! “As Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee; that they also may be one in Us; that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me.” Such unity has a wondrous power to compel the belief of worldly men. “And the glory which Thou gavest Me I have given them; that they may be one, even as We are one; I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be perfect in one; and that the world may know that Thou hast sent Me, and hast loved them, as Thou hast loved Me.” Wondrous unity! Wondrous love! It is for this His blessed heart eternally yearns, and it is for this that the Holy Spirit works in the hearts of those who receive Him. But Satan ever seeks to destroy this holy love and divine unity. When he comes, he arouses suspicions, he stirs up strife, he quenches the spirit of intercessory prayer, he engenders backbitings, and causes separations. After enumerating various Christian graces, and urging the Colossians to put them on, Paul adds: “And above all these things, put on charity,” or love, “which is the bond of perfectness” (Col. iii. 14). These graces were garments, and love was the girdle which bound and held them together; and so love is the bond that holds true Christians together. Divine love is the great test by which we are to try ourselves and all teachers and spirits. Love is not puffed up. Love is not bigoted. Love is not intolerant. Love is not schismatic. Love is loyal to Jesus and to all His people. If we have this love shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, we shall discern the voice of our Good Shepherd, and we shall not be deceived by the voice of the stranger; and so we shall be saved from both formalism and fanaticism. “Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?”

VIII.

Guidance

“Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.” It is the work of the Holy Spirit to guide the people of God through the uncertainties and dangers and duties of this life to their home in Heaven. When He led the children of Israel out of Egypt, by the hand of Moses, He guided them through the waste, mountainous wilderness, in a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, thus assuring their comfort and safety. And this was but a type of His perpetual spiritual guidance of His people. “But how may I certainly know what God wants of me?” is sure to become the earnest and, oftentimes, the agonising cry of every humble and devoutly zealous young Christian. “How may I know the guidance of the Holy Spirit?” is asked again and again. 1. It is well for us to get it fixed in our minds that we need to be guided always by Him. A ship was wrecked on a rocky coast far out of the course that the captain thought he was taking. On examination, it was found that the compass had been slightly deflected by a bit of metal that had lodged in the box. But the voyage of life on which we each one sail is beset by as many dangers as the ship at sea, and how shall we surely steer our course to our heavenly harbour without Divine guidance? There is a wellnigh infinite number of influences to deflect us from the safe and certain course. We start out in the morning, and we know not what person we may meet, what paragraph we may read, what word may be spoken, what letter we may receive, what subtle temptation may assail or allure us, what immediate decisions we may have to make during the day, that may turn us almost imperceptibly, but none the less surely, from the right way. We need the guidance of the Holy Spirit. 2. We not only need Divine guidance, but we may have it. God’s word assures us of this. Oh! how my heart was comforted and assured one morning by these words: “And the Lord shall guide thee continually” (Isaiah lviii. 11). Not occasionally, not spasmodically, but “continually.” Hallelujah! The Psalmist says: “This God is our God for ever and ever: He will be our Guide even unto death” (Psalm xlviii. 14). Again, he says: “The meek will He guide in judgment: and the meek will He teach His way” (Psalm xxv. 9). And again, “I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with Mine eye” (Psalm xxxii. 8). And again, “Thou shalt guide me with Thy counsel” (Psalm lxxiii. 24). Jesus said of the Holy Spirit: “Howbeit when He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth” (John xvi. 13). And Paul wrote: “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God” (Romans viii. 14). These Scriptures establish the fact that the children of God may be guided always by the Spirit of God. “Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah, Pilgrim through this barren land! I am weak, but Thou art mighty: Hold me with Thy powerful hand.” 3. How does God guide us? Paul says: “We walk by faith, not by sight,” and, “The just shall live by faith,” so we may conclude:—­ (a) That the guidance of the Holy Spirit is such as still to demand the exercise of faith. God never leads us in such a way as to do away with the necessity of faith. When God warned Noah, we read that it was by faith that Noah was led to build the ark. When God told Abraham to go to a land which He would show him, it was by faith that Abraham went (Hebrews xi. 7, 8). If we believe, we shall surely be guided; but if we do not believe, we shall be left to ourselves. Without faith it is impossible to please God, or to follow where He leads. Again, the Psalmist says, “The meek will He guide in judgment,” from which we gather:—­ (b) That the Spirit guides us in such manner as to demand the exercise of our best judgment. He enlightens our understanding and directs our judgment by sound reason and sense. I knew a man who was eager to obey God, and to be led by the Spirit, but who had the mistaken idea that the Holy Spirit sets aside human judgment and common sense, and speaks directly upon the most minute and commonplace matters. He wanted the Holy Spirit to direct him just how much to eat at each meal, and he has been known to take food out of his mouth at what he supposed to be the Holy Spirit’s notification that he had eaten enough, and that if he swallowed that mouthful, it would be in violation of the leadings of the Spirit. No doubt, the Spirit will help an honest man to arrive at a safe judgment even in matters of this kind, but it will doubtless be through the use of his sanctified common sense. Otherwise, he is reduced to a state of mental infancy, and kept in intellectual swaddling clothes. He will guide us in judgment; but it is only as we resolutely, and in the best light we have, exercise judgment. John Wesley said that God usually guided him by presenting reasons to his mind for any given course of action. (c) The Psalmist says, “Thou shalt guide me with Thy counsel,” and “I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way that thou shalt go.” Now, counsel, instruction, and teaching not only imply effort upon the part of the teacher, but also study and close attention on the part of the one being taught. So this guidance of the Holy Spirit is such as will require us to attentively listen, diligently study, and patiently learn the lessons He would teach us. And so we see that the Holy Spirit does not set aside our powers and faculties, but seeks to awaken and stir them into full activity, and develop them into well-rounded perfection, and thus make them channels through which He can intelligently influence and direct us. What He seeks to do is to illuminate our whole spiritual being, as the sun illuminates our physical being, and bring us into such union and sympathy, such oneness of thought, desire, affection, and purpose with God, that we shall, by a kind of spiritual instinct, know at all times the mind of God concerning us, and never be in doubt about His will. 4. The Holy Spirit guides us—­ (a) By opening up to our minds the deep, sanctifying truths of the Bible, and especially by revealing to us the character and spirit of Jesus and His Apostles, and leading us to follow in their footsteps—­the footsteps of their faith and love and unselfish devotion to God and man, even unto the laying down of their lives. (b) By the circumstances and surroundings of our daily life. (c) By the counsel of others, especially of devout, and wise, and experienced men and women of God. (d) By deep inward conviction, which increases as we wait upon Him in prayer and readiness to obey. It is by this sovereign conviction that men are called to preach, to go to foreign fields as missionaries, to devote their time, talents, money, and lives to God’s work for the bodies and souls of men. 5. Why do people seek for guidance and not find it? (a) Because they do not diligently study God’s word, and seek to be filled with its truths and principles. They neglect the cultivation of their minds and hearts in the school of Christ, and so miss Divine guidance. One of the mightiest men of God now living used to carry his Bible with him into the coal mine when only a boy, and spent his spare time filling his mind and heart with its heavenly truths, and so prepared himself to be divinely led in mighty labours for God. (b) They do not humbly accept the daily providences, the circumstances, and conditions of their everyday life as a part of God’s present plan for them; as His school in which He would train them for greater things; as His vineyard in which He would have them diligently labour. A young woman imagined she was called to devote herself entirely to saving souls; but under the searching training through which she had to pass saw her selfishness, and she said she would have to return home, and live a holy life there, and seek to get her family saved—­something which she had utterly neglected—­before she could go into the work. If we are not faithful at home, or in the shop, or mill, or store where we work, we shall miss God’s way for us. (c) Because they are not teachable, and are unwilling to receive instruction from other Christians. They are not humble-minded. (d) Because they do not wait on God, and listen and heed the inner leadings of the Holy Spirit. They are self-willed; they want their own way. Some one has said, “That which is often asked of God is not so much His will and way, as His approval of our way.” And another has said: “God’s guidance is plain, when we are true.” If we promptly and gladly obey, we shall not miss the way. Paul said of himself, “I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.” He obeyed God at all costs, and so the Holy Spirit could guide him. (e) Because of fear and unbelief. It was this fearfulness of unbelief that caused the Israelites to turn back, and not go into Canaan when Caleb and Joshua assured them that God would help them to possess the land. They lost sight of God, and feared the giants and walled cities, and so missed God’s way for them and perished in the wilderness. (f) Because they do not take everything promptly and confidently to God in prayer. Paul tells us to be “instant in prayer”; and I am persuaded that it is slowness and delay to pray, and sloth and sleepiness in prayer, that rob God’s children of the glad assurance of His guidance in all things. (g) Because of impatience and haste. Some of God’s plans for us unfold slowly, and we must patiently and calmly wait on Him in faith and faithfulness, assured that in due time He will make plain His way for us, if our faith fail not. It is never God’s will that we should get into a headlong hurry; but that, with patient steadfastness, we should learn to stand still when the pillar of cloud and fire does not move, and that with loving confidence and glad promptness we should strike our tents and march forward when He leads. “When we cannot see our way, Let us trust and still obey; He who bids us forward go, Cannot fail the way to show. Though the sea be deep and wide, Though a passage seem denied; Fearless, let us still proceed, Since the Lord vouchsafes to lead.” Finally, we may rest assured that the Holy Spirit never leads His people to do anything that is wrong, or that is contrary to the will of God as revealed in the Bible. He never leads anyone to be impolite and discourteous. “Be courteous” is a Divine command. He would have us respect the minor graces of gentle, kindly manners, as well as the great laws of holiness and righteousness. He may sometimes lead us in ways that are hard for flesh and blood, and that bring to us sorrow and loss in this life. He led Jesus into the wilderness to be sore tried by the Devil, and to Pilate’s judgment hall, and to the cross. He led Paul in ways that meant imprisonment, stonings, whippings, hunger and cold, and bitter persecution and death. But He upheld Paul until he cried out: “I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake.” “Yea,” said he, “I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” Hallelujah! Oh, to be thus led by our Heavenly Guide! “He leadeth me! Oh, blessed thought! Oh, words with heavenly comfort fraught! Whate’er I do, where’er I be, Still ’tis God’s hand that leadeth me. “Sometimes ’mid scenes of deepest gloom, Sometimes where Eden’s bowers bloom, By waters still, o’er troubled sea, Still ’tis God’s hand that leadeth me. “Lord, I will clasp Thy hand in mine, Nor ever murmur nor repine, Content, whatever lot I see, Since ’tis my God that leadeth me. “And when my task on earth is done, When by Thy grace the victory’s won, E’en death’s cold wave I will not flee, Since God through Jordan leadeth me.” “Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?”

IX.

The Meek and the Lowly Heart

“Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.” I know a man whose daily prayer for years was that he might be meek and lowly in heart as was his Master. “Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me,” said Jesus; “for I am meek and lowly in heart.” How lowly Jesus was! He was the Lord of life and glory. He made the worlds, and upholds them by His word of power (John i., Hebrews i.). But He humbled Himself, and became man, and was born of the Virgin in a manger among the cattle. He lived among the common people, and worked at the carpenter’s bench. And then, anointed with the Holy Spirit, He went about doing good, preaching the Gospel to the poor, and ministering to the manifold needs of the sick and sinful and sorrowing. He touched the lepers; He was the Friend of publicans and sinners. His whole life was a ministry of mercy to those who most needed Him. He humbled Himself to our low estate. He was a King who came “lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt, the foal of an ass” (Zech. ix. 9). He was a King, but His crown was of thorns, and a cross was His throne. What a picture Paul gives us of the mind and heart of Jesus! He exhorts the Philippians, saying, “Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves”; and then he adds, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” Now, when the Holy Spirit finds His way into the heart of a man, the Spirit of Jesus has come to that man, and leads him to the same meekness of heart and lowly service that were seen in the Master. Ambition for place and power and money and fame vanishes, and in its place is a consuming desire to be good and do good, to accomplish in full the blessed, the beneficent will of God. Some time ago I met a woman who, as a trained nurse in Paris, nursing rich, English-speaking foreigners, received pay that in a few years would have made her independently wealthy; but the spirit of Jesus came into her heart, and she is now nursing the poor, and giving her life to them, and doing for them service the most loathsome and exacting, and doing it with a smiling face, for her food and clothes. Some able men in one of our largest American cities lost their spiritual balance, cut themselves loose from all other Christians, and made for a time quite a religious stir among many good people. They were very clear and powerful in their presentation of certain phases of truth, but they were also very strong, if not bitter, in their denunciations of all existing religious organisations. They attacked the churches and The Salvation Army, pointing out what they considered wrong so skilfully, and with such professions of sanctity, that many people were made most dissatisfied with the churches and with The Army. An Army Captain listened to them, and was greatly moved by their fervour, their burning appeals, their religious ecstasy, and their denunciations of the lukewarmness of other Christians, including The Army. She began to wonder if after all they were not right, and whether or not the Holy Spirit was amongst us. Her heart was full of distress, and she cried to God. And then the vision of our Slum Officers rose before her eyes. She saw their devotion, their sacrifice, their lowly, hidden service, year after year, among the poor and ignorant and vicious, and she said to herself, “Is not this the Spirit of Jesus? Would these men, who denounce us so, be willing to forgo their religious ecstasies and spend their lives in such lowly, unheralded service?” And the mists that had begun to blind her eyes were swept away, and she saw Jesus still amongst us going about doing good in the person of our Slum Officers and of all who for His name’s sake sacrifice their time and money and strength to bless and save their fellow-men. You who have visions of glory and rapturous delight, and so count yourselves filled with the Spirit, do these visions lead you to virtue and to lowly, loving service? If not, take heed to yourselves, lest, exalted like Capernaum to Heaven, you are at last cast down to Hell. Thank God for the mounts of transfiguration where we behold His glory! but down below in the valley are children possessed of devils, and to them He would have us go with the glory of the mount on our faces, and lowly love and vigorous faith in our hearts, and clean hands ready for any service. He would have us give ourselves to them; and if we love Him, if we follow Him, if we are truly filled with the Holy Spirit, we will. A Captain used to slip out of bed early in the morning to pray, and then black his own and his Lieutenant’s boots, and God mightily blessed him. Recently I saw him, now a Commissioner, with thousands of Officers and Soldiers under his command, at an outing in the woods by the lake shore, looking after poor and forgotten Soldiers, and giving them food with his own hand. Like the Lord, his eyes seemed to be in every place beholding opportunities to do good, and his feet and hands always followed his eyes; and this is the fruit of the indwelling Holy Spirit. “Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?”

X.

Hope

“Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.” Are you ever cast down and depressed in spirit? Listen to Paul: “Now, the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost” (Romans xv. 13). What cheer is in those words! They ring like the shout of a triumph. 1. God Himself is “the God of hope.” There is no gloom, no depression, no wasting sickness of deferred hope in Him. He is a brimming fountain and ocean of hope eternally, and He is our God. He is our Hope. 2. Out of His infinite fullness He is to fill us; not half fill us, but fill us with joy, “all joy,” hallelujah! “and peace.” 3. And this is not by some condition or means that is so high and difficult that we cannot perform our part, but it is simply “in believing “—­something which the little child or the aged philosopher, the poor man and the rich man, the ignorant and the learned can do. And the result will be:—­ 4. Abounding “hope through the power of the Holy Ghost.” And what power is that? If it is physical power, then the power of a million Niagaras and flowing oceans and rushing worlds is as nothing compared to it. If it is mental power, then the power of Plato and Bacon and Milton and Shakespeare and Newton is as the light of a fire-fly to the sun when compared to it. If it is spiritual power, then there is nothing with which it can be compared. But suppose it is all three in one, infinite and eternal! This is the power, throbbing with love and mercy, to which we are to bring our little hearts by living faith, and God will fill us with joy and peace and hope by the incoming of the Holy Spirit. God’s people are a hopeful people. They hope in God, with whom there is no change, no weakness, no decay. In the darkest night and the fiercest storm they still hope in Him, though it may be feebly. But He would have His people “abound in hope” so that they should always be buoyant, triumphant. But how can this be in a world such as this? We are surrounded by awful, mysterious, and merciless forces, that at any moment may overwhelm us. The fire may burn us, the water may drown us, the hurricane may sweep us away, friends may desert us, foes may master us. There is the depression that comes from failing health, from poverty, from overwork and sleepless nights and constant care, from thwarted plans, disappointed ambitions, slighted love, and base ingratitude. Old age comes on with its grey hairs, failing strength, dimness of sight, dullness of hearing, tottering step, shortness of breath, and general weakness and decay. The friends of youth die, and a new, strange, pushing generation that knows not the old man, comes elbowing him aside and taking his place. Under some blessed outpouring of the Spirit the work of God revives, vile sinners are saved, Zion puts on her beautiful garments, reforms of all kind advance, the desert blossoms as the rose, the waste place becomes a fruitful field, and the millennium seems just at hand; and then the spiritual tide recedes, the forces of evil are emboldened, they mass themselves and again sweep over the heritage of the Lord, leaving it waste and desolate, and the battle must be fought over again. How can one be always hopeful, always abounding in hope, in such a world? Well, hallelujah! it is possible “through the power of the Holy Ghost,” but only through His power; and this power will not fail so long as we fix our eyes on eternal things and believe. The Holy Spirit, dwelling within, turns our eyes from that which is temporal to that which is eternal; from the trial itself to God’s purpose in the trial; from the present pain to the precious promise. I am now writing in a little city made rich by vast potteries. If the dull, heavy clay on the potter’s wheel and in the fiery oven could think and speak, it would doubtless cry out against the fierce agony; but if it could foresee the purpose of the potter, and the thing of use and beauty he meant to make it, it would nestle low under his hand and rejoice in hope. We are clay in the hand of the Divine Potter, but we can think and speak, and in some measure understand His high purpose in us. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to make us understand. And if we will not be dull and senseless and unbelieving, He will illuminate us and fill us with peaceful, joyous hope. 1. He would reveal to us that our Heavenly Potter has Himself been on the wheel and in the fiery furnace, learning obedience and being fashioned into “the Captain of our salvation” by the things which He suffered. When we are tempted and tried, and tempest-tossed, He raises our hope by showing us Jesus suffering and sympathising with us, tempted in all points as we are, and so able and wise and willing to help us in our struggle and conflict (Hebrews ii. 9-18). He assures us that Jesus, into whose hands is committed all power in Heaven and earth, is our elder Brother, “touched with the feeling of our infirmities” (Hebrews iv. 15), and He encourages us to rest in Him and not be afraid; and so we abound in hope, through His power as we believe. 2. He reveals to us the eternal purpose of God in our trials and difficulties. Listen to Paul: “All things work together for good to them that love God.” “We know this,” says Paul (Romans viii. 28). But how can this be? Ah! there is where faith must be exercised. It is “in believing” that we “abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost.” God’s wisdom and ability to make all things work together for our good are not to be measured by our understanding, but to be firmly held by our faith. My child is in serious difficulty and does not know how to help himself; but I say, “Leave it to me.” He may not understand how I am to help him, but he trusts me, and rejoices in hope. We are God’s dear children, and He knows how to help us, and make all things work together for our good, if we will only commit ourselves to Him in faith. “Thou art as much His care as if beside Nor man nor angel lived in Heaven or earth; Thus sunbeams pour alike their glorious tide, To light up worlds, or wake an insect’s mirth.” Again, afflictions overtake us, and now the Holy Spirit encourages our hope and makes it to abound by such promises as these: “Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Cor. iv. 17, 18). But such a promise as that only mocks us if we do not believe. “In all their affliction He was afflicted, and the angel of His presence saved them: in His love and in His pity He redeemed them; and He bare them, and He carried them all the days of old” (Isaiah lxiii. 9). And He is just the same to-day. To some He says: “I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction” (Isaiah xlviii 10), and nestling down into His will and “believing,” they “abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost.” He turns our eyes back upon Job in his loss and pain; upon Joseph sold into Egyptian slavery; Daniel in the lions’ den; the three Hebrews in the burning fiery furnace, and Paul in prison and shipwreck and manifold perils; and, showing us their steadfastness and their final triumph, He prompts us to hope in God. When weakness of body overtakes us, He encourages us with such assurances as these: “My flesh and my heart faileth; but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever” (Psalm lxxiii. 26), and the words of Paul: “Though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day” (2 Cor. iv. 16). When old age comes creeping on apace, He has promised to meet the need that our hope fail not. Listen to David! He prays: “Cast me not off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength faileth…. Now also when I am old and greyheaded, O God, forsake me not; until I have showed Thy strength unto this generation, and Thy power to every one that is to come” (Psalm lxxi. 9, 18). And through Isaiah the Lord replies: “Even to your old age I am He; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you” (Isaiah xlvi. 4). And David cries out, “The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon. Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing, to show that the Lord is upright” (Psalm xcii. 12-15). These are sample promises of which the Bible is full, and which have been adapted by infinite wisdom and love to meet us at every point of doubt and fear and need, that, in believing them, we may have a steadfast and glad hope in God. He is pledged to help us. He says: “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of My righteousness” (Isaiah xli. 10). When all God’s waves and billows seemed to sweep over David, and his soul was bowed within him, three times he cried out: “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? Hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance” (Psalm xlii. 5). And Jeremiah, remembering the wormwood and the gall, and the deep mire of the dungeon into which they had plunged him, and from which he had scarcely been delivered, said: “It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord” (Lam. iii. 26). When the Holy Spirit is come, He brings to remembrance these precious promises, and makes them living words; and, if we believe, the whole heaven of our soul shall be lighted up with abounding hope. Hallelujah! It is only through ignorance of God’s promises, or through weak and wavering faith, that hope is dimmed. Oh, that we may heed the still small voice of the Heavenly Comforter, and steadfastly, joyously believe! “My hope is built on nothing less Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness; When all around my soul gives way, He then is all my Hope and Stay.” “Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?”

XI.

The Holy Spirit’s Substitute for Gossip and Evil-Speaking

“Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.” The other day I heard a man of God say: “We cannot bridle the tongues of the people among whom we live: they will talk”; and by talk he meant gossip and criticism and fault-finding. “You never can tell when you send a word—­ Like an arrow shot from a bow By an archer blind—­be it cruel or kind, Just where it will chance to go. It may pierce the breast of your dearest friend, Tipped with its poison or balm: To a stranger’s heart in life’s great mart It may carry its pain or its calm.” The wise mother, when she finds her little boy playing with a sharp knife, or the looking-glass, or some dainty dish, does not snatch it away with a slap on his cheek or harsh words, but quietly and gently substitutes a safer and more interesting toy, and so avoids a storm. A sensible father who finds his boy reading a book of dangerous tendency, will kindly point out its character and substitute a better book that is equally interesting. When children want to spend their evenings on the street, thoughtful and intelligent parents will seek to make their evenings at home more healthfully attractive. When a man seeks to rid his mind of evil and hurtful thoughts, he will find it wise to follow Paul’s exhortation to the Philippians: “Brethren, whatsoever things are true,… honest,… just,… pure,… lovely,… of good report;… if there be any praise, think on these things” (Phil. iv. 8). Any man who faithfully, patiently, and persistently accepts this programme of Paul’s will find his evil thoughts vanishing away. And this is the Holy Spirit’s method: He has a pleasant and safe substitute for gossip and fault-finding and slander. Here it is: “Be filled with the Spirit: speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph. v. 18-20). This is certainly a fruit of being filled with the Spirit. Many years ago the Lord gave me a blessed revival in a little village in which nearly every soul in the place, as well as farmers from the surrounding country, were converted. One result was that they now had no time for gossip and doubtful talk about their neighbours. They were all talking about religion and rejoicing in the things of the Lord. If they met each other on the street, or in some shop or store, they praised the Lord, and encouraged each other to press on in the heavenly way. If they met a sinner, they tenderly besought him to be reconciled to God, to give up his sins, “flee from the wrath to come,” and start at once for Heaven. If they met in each other’s houses, they gathered around the organ or the piano and sang hymns and songs, and did not part till they had united in prayer. There was no criticising of their neighbours, no grumbling and complaining about the weather, no fault-finding with their lot in life, or their daily surroundings and circumstances. Their conversation was joyous, cheerful, and helpful to one another. Nor was it forced and out of place, but rather it was the natural, spontaneous outflow of loving, humble, glad hearts filled with the Spirit, in union with Jesus, and in love and sympathy with their fellow-men. And this is, I think, our Heavenly Father’s ideal of social and spiritual intercourse for His children on earth. He would not have us separate ourselves from each other and shut ourselves up in convents and monasteries in austere asceticism on the one hand, nor would He have us light and foolish, or fault-finding and censorious on the other hand, but sociable, cheerful, and full of tender, considerate love. On the day of Pentecost, when they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and a multitude were converted, we read that “they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God, and having favour with all the people” (Acts ii. 46, 47). This is a sample of the brotherly love and unity which our Heavenly Father would have throughout the whole earth; but how the breath of gossip and evil-speaking would have marred this heavenly fellowship and separated these “chief friends”! “Lord! subdue our selfish will; Each to each our tempers suit By Thy modulating skill, Heart to heart, as lute to lute.” Let no one suppose, however, that the Holy Spirit accomplishes this heavenly work by some overwhelming baptism which does away with the need of our co-operation. He does not override us, but works with us; and we must intelligently and determinedly work with Him in this matter. People often fall into idle and hurtful gossip and evil-speaking, not so much from ill-will, as from old habit, as a wagon falls into a rut. Or they drift into it with the current of conversation about them. Or they are beguiled into it by a desire to say something, and be pleasant and entertaining. But when the Holy Spirit comes, He lifts us out of the old ruts, and we must follow Him with care lest we fall into them again, possibly never more to escape. He gives us life and power to stem the adverse currents about us, but we must exercise ourselves not to be swept downward by them. He does not destroy the desire to please, but He subordinates it to the desire to help and bless, and we must stir ourselves up to do this. When Miss Havergal was asked to sing and play before a worldly company, she sang a sweet song about Jesus, and, without displeasing anybody, greatly blessed the company. At a breakfast party John Fletcher told his experience so sweetly and naturally that all hearts were stirred, the Holy Ghost fell upon the company, and they ended with a glorious prayer meeting. William Bramwell used at meals to steadily and persistently turn the conversation into spiritual channels to the blessing of all who were present, so that they had two meals—­one for the body and one for the soul. To do this wisely and helpfully requires thought and prayer and a fixed purpose, and a tender, loving heart filled with the Holy Spirit. I know a mother who seeks to have a brief season of prayer and a text of Scripture just before going to dinner to prepare her heart to guide the conversation along spiritual highways. Are you careful and have you victory in this matter, my comrade? If not, seek it just now in simple, trustful prayer, and the Lord who loves you will surely answer, and will be your helper from this time forth. He surely will. Believe just now, and henceforth “let your conversation be as becometh the gospel of Christ.” “I ask Thee, ever blessed Lord, That I may never speak a word, Of envy born, or passion stirred. “First, true to Thee in heart and mind, Then always to my neighbour kind, By Thy good hand to good inclined. “Oh, save from words that bear a sting, That pain to any brother bring: Inbreathe Thy calm in everything. “Let love within my heart prevail, To rule my words when thoughts assail, That, hid in Thee, I may not fail. “I know, my Lord, Thy power within Can save from all the power of sin; In Thee let every word begin. “Should I be silent? Keep me still, Glad waiting on my Master’s will: Thy message through my lips fulfil. “Give me Thy words when I should speak, For words of Thine are never weak, But break the proud, but raise the meek. “Into Thy lips all grace is poured, Speak Thou through me, Eternal Word, Of thought, of heart, of lips the Lord.” “Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?”

XII.

The Sin Against the Holy Ghost

“Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.” God is love, and the Holy Spirit is ceaselessly striving to make this love known in our hearts, work out God’s purposes of love in our lives, and transform and transfigure our character by love. And so we are solemnly warned against resisting the Spirit, and almost tearfully and always tenderly exhorted to “quench not the Spirit,” and to “grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby,” says the Apostle, “ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.” There is one great sin against which Jesus warned the Jews, as a sin never to be forgiven in this world nor in that which is to come. That was blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. That there is such a sin, Jesus teaches in Matthew xii. 31, 32, Mark iii. 28-30, and Luke xii. 10. And it may be that this is the sin referred to in Hebrews vi. 4-6; x. 29. Since many of God’s dear children have fallen into dreadful distress through fear that they had committed this sin, it may be helpful for us to study carefully as to what constitutes it. Jesus was casting out devils, and Mark tells us that “the scribes which came down from Jerusalem said, He hath Beelzebub, and by the prince of the devils casteth He out devils.” To this Jesus replied with gracious kindness and searching logic: “How can Satan cast out Satan? And if a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house be divided against itself, it cannot stand. And if Satan rise up against himself and be divided, he cannot stand, but hath an end. No man can enter into a strong man’s house and spoil his goods, except he will first bind the strong man; and then he will spoil his house.” In this quiet reply we see that Jesus does not rail against them, nor flatly deny their base assertion that He does His miracles by the power of the Devil, but shows how logically false must be their statement. And then, with grave authority, and, I think, with solemn tenderness in His voice and in His eyes, He adds, “Verily I say unto you, All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme: but he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation”; or, as the Revised Version puts it, “is guilty of an eternal sin”; and then Mark adds, “because they said, He hath an unclean spirit” (Mark iii. 22-30). Jesus came into the world to reveal God’s truth and love to men, and to save them, and men are saved by believing in Him. But how could the men of His day, who saw Him working at the carpenter’s bench, and living the life of an ordinary man of humble toil and daily temptation and trial, believe His stupendous claim to be the only-begotten Son of God, the Saviour of the world, and the final Judge of all men? Any wilful and proud impostor could make such a claim. But men could not and ought not to believe such an assertion unless the claim were supported by ungainsayable evidence. This evidence Jesus began to give, not only in the holy life which He lived and the pure Gospel He preached, but in the miracles He wrought, the blind eyes He opened, the sick He healed, the hungry thousands He fed, the seas He stilled, the dead He raised to life again, and the devils He cast out of bound and harassed souls. The Scribes and Pharisees witnessed these miracles, and were compelled to admit these signs and wonders. Nicodemus, one of their number, said to Jesus, “Rabbi, we know that Thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that Thou doest, except God be with him” (John iii. 2). Would they now admit His claim to be the Son of God, their promised and long-looked-for Messiah? They were thoughtful men and very religious, but not spiritual. The Gospel He preached was Spirit and life; it appealed to their conscience and revealed their sin, and to acknowledge Him was to admit that they themselves were wrong. It meant submission to His authority, the surrender of their wills, and a change of front in their whole inner and outer life. This meant moral and spiritual revolution in each man’s heart and life, and to this they would not submit. And so to avoid such plain inconsistency, they must discredit His miracles; and since they could not deny them, they declared that He wrought them by the power of the Devil. Jesus worked these signs and wonders by the power of the Holy Spirit, that he might win their confidence, and that they might reasonably believe and be saved. But they refused to believe, and in their malignant obstinacy heaped scorn upon Him, accusing Him of being in league with the Devil; and how could they be saved? This was the sin against the Holy Spirit against which Jesus warned them. It was not so much one act of sin, as a deep-seated, stubborn rebellion against God that led them to choose darkness rather than light, and so to blaspheme against the Spirit of truth and light. It was sin full and ripe and ready for the harvest. Some one has said that “this sin cannot be forgiven, not because God is unwilling to forgive, but because one who thus sins against the Holy Spirit has put himself where no power can soften his heart or change his nature. A man may misuse his eyes and yet see; but whosoever puts them out can never see again. One may misdirect his compass, and turn it aside from the North Pole by a magnet or piece of iron, and it may recover and point right again; but whosoever destroys the compass itself has lost his guide at sea.” Many of God’s dear children, honest souls, have been persuaded that they have committed this awful sin. Indeed, I once thought that I myself had done so, and for twenty-eight days I felt that, like Jonah, I was “in the belly of hell.” But God, in love and tender mercy, drew me out of the horrible pit of doubt and fear, and showed me that this is a sin committed only by those who, in spite of all evidence, harden their hearts in unbelief, and to shield themselves in their sins deny and blaspheme the Lord. Dr. Daniel Steele tells of a Jew who was asked, “Is it that you cannot, or that you will not believe?” The Jew passionately replied, “We will not, we will not believe.” This was wilful refusal and rejection of light, and in that direction lies hardness of heart beyond recovery, fullness of sin, and final impenitence, which are unpardonable. Doubtless many through resistance to the Holy Spirit come to this awful state of heart; but those troubled, anxious souls who think they have committed this sin are not usually among the number. An Army Officer in Canada was in the midst of a glorious revival, when one night a gentleman arose and with deep emotion urged the young people present to yield themselves to God, accept Jesus as their Saviour, and receive the Holy Spirit. He told them that he had once been a Christian, but that he had not walked in the light, and, consequently, had sinned against the Holy Spirit, and could never more be pardoned. Then, with all earnest tenderness, he exhorted them to be warned by his sad state, and not to harden their hearts against the gracious influences, and entreated them to yield to the Saviour. Suddenly the scales of doubt dropped from his eyes, and he saw that he had not in his inmost heart rejected Jesus; that he had not committed the unpardonable sin; that “The love of God is broader Than the measure of man’s mind: And the heart of the Eternal Is most wonderfully kind.” And in an instant his heart was filled with light and love and peace, and sweet assurance that Christ Jesus was his Saviour, even his. In one meeting, I have known three people who thought they had committed this sin, and were bowed with grief and fear, to come to the penitent-form and find deliverance. The poet Cowper was plunged into unutterable gloom by the conviction that he had committed this awful sin; but God tenderly brought him into the light and sweet comforts of the Holy Spirit again, and doubtless it was in the sense of such lovingkindness that he wrote: “There is a fountain filled with blood, Drawn from Emanuel’s veins; And sinners plunged beneath that flood Lose all their guilty stains.” John Bunyan was also afflicted with horrible fears that he had committed the unpardonable sin, and in his little book entitled, “Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners” (a book which I would earnestly recommend to all soul-winners), he tells how he was delivered from his doubts and fears and was filled once more with the joy of the Lord. There are portions of his “Pilgrim’s Progress” which are to be interpreted in the light of this grievous experience. Those who think they have committed this sin may generally be assured that they have not. 1. Their hearts are usually very tender, while this sin must harden the heart past all feeling. 2. They are full of sorrow and shame for having neglected God’s grace and trifled with the Saviour’s dying words, but such sorrow could not exist in a heart so fully given over to sin that pardon was impossible. 3. God says, “Whosoever will may come”; and if they find it in their hearts to come, they will not be cast out, but freely pardoned and received with loving kindness through the merits of Jesus’ blood. God’s promise will not fail, His faithfulness is established in the heavens. Bless His holy name! Those who have committed this sin are full of evil, and do not care to come, and will not, and, therefore, are never pardoned. Their sin is eternal. “Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?”

XIII.

Offences Against the Holy Ghost

“Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.” One day, in a fit of boyish temper, I spoke hot words of anger, somewhat unjustly, against another person, and this deeply grieved my mother. She said but little, and though her sweet face has mouldered many years beneath the Southern daisies, her look of grief I can still see across the years of a third of a century. And that is the one sad memory of my childhood. A stranger might have been amused or incensed at my words, but mother was grieved—­grieved to her heart by my lack of generous, self-forgetful, thoughtful love. We can anger a stranger or an enemy, but it is only a friend we grieve. The Holy Spirit is such a Friend, more tender and faithful than a mother; and shall we carelessly offend Him, and estrange ourselves from Him in spite of His love? There is a sense in which every sin is against the Holy Ghost. Of course, not every such sin is unpardonable, but the tendency of all sin is in that direction, and we are only safe as we avoid the very beginnings of sin. Only as we “walk in the Spirit” are we “free from the law of sin and death” (Romans viii. 2). Therefore, it is infinitely important that we beware of offences against the Spirit, “lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin” (Hebrews iii. 13). Grieving the Holy Spirit is a very common and a very sad offence of professing Christians, and it is to this that must be attributed much of the weakness and ignorance and joylessness of so many followers of Christ. And He is grieved, as was my mother, by the unloving speech and spirit of God’s children. In his letters to the Ephesians, Paul says, “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.” And then he adds: “And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil-speaking, be put away from you, with all malice. And be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you. Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; and walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given Himself for us” (Eph. iv. 29-v. 2). What does Paul teach us here? That it is not by some huge wickedness, some Judas-like betrayal, some tempting and lying to the Holy Ghost, as did Ananias and Sapphira (Acts v. 1-9), that we grieve Him, but by that which most people count little and unimportant; by talk that corrupts instead of blessing and building up those that hear, by gossip, by bitterness, and uncharitable criticisms and fault-findings. This was the sin of the elder son when the prodigal returned, and it was by this he pierced with grief the kind old father’s heart. By getting in a rage, by loud, angry talking and evil-speaking and petty malice, by unkindness and hard-heartedness and an unforgiving spirit, we grieve Him. In a word, by not walking through the world as in our Father’s house, and among our neighbours and friends as among His dear children; by not loving tenderly and making kindly sacrifices for one another, He is grieved. And this is not a matter of little importance. It may have sadly momentous consequences. It is a bitter, cruel, and often an irreparable thing to trifle with a valuable earthly friendship. How much more when the friendship is heavenly? when the Friend is our Lord and Saviour, our Creator and Redeemer, our Governor and Judge, our Teacher, Guide, and God? When we trifle with a friend’s wishes—­especially when such wishes are all in perfect harmony with and for our highest possible good—­we may not estrange the friend from us, but we estrange ourselves from our friend. Our hearts grow cold toward him, though his heart may be breaking with longing toward us. The more Saul ill-treated David, the more he hated David. Such estrangement may lead, little by little, to yet greater sin, to strange hardness of heart, to doubts and unbelief, and backslidings and denial of the Lord. The cure for all this is a clean heart full of sweet and gentle, self-forgetful, generous love. Then we shall be “followers of God as dear children,” then we shall “walk in love as Christ loved us, and gave Himself for us.” But there is another offence, that of quenching the Spirit, which accounts for the comparative darkness and deadness of many of God’s children. In I Thess. v. 16-19 the Apostle says: “Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. Quench not the Spirit.” When will the Lord’s dear children learn that the religion of Jesus is a lowly thing, and that it is the little foxes that spoil the vines? Does not the Apostle here teach that it is not by some desperate, dastardly deed that we quench the Spirit, but simply by neglecting to rejoice and pray, and give thanks at all times and for all things? It is not necessary to blot the sun out of the heavens to keep the sunlight out of your house—­just close the blinds and draw the curtains; nor do you pour barrels of water on the flames to quench the fire—­just shut off the draught; nor do you dynamite the city reservoir and destroy all the mains and pipes to cut off your supply of sparkling water, but just refrain from turning on the main. So you do not need to do some great evil, some deadly sin, to quench the Spirit. Just cease to rejoice, through fear of man and of being peculiar; be prim and proper as a white and polished gravestone; let gushing joy be curbed; neglect to pray when you feel a gentle pull in your heart to get alone with the Lord; omit giving hearty thanks for all God’s tender mercies, faithful discipline and loving chastenings, and soon you will find the Spirit quenched. He will no longer spring up joyously like a well of living water within you. But give the Spirit a vent, an opening, a chance, and He will rise within you and flood your soul with light and love and joy. Some years ago a sanctified woman of clear experience went alone to keep her daily hour with God; but, to her surprise, it seemed that she could not find Him, either in prayer or in His word. She searched her heart for evidence of sin, but the Spirit showed her nothing contrary to God in her mind, heart, or will. She searched her memory for any breach of covenant, any broken vows, any neglect, any omission, but could find none. Then she asked the Lord to show her if there were any duty unfulfilled, any command unnoticed, which she might perform, and quick as thought came the often-read words, “Rejoice evermore.” “Have you done that this morning?” She had not. It had been a busy morning, and a well-spent one, but so far there had been no definite rejoicing in her heart, though the manifold riches and ground for joy of all Christians were hers. At once she began to count her blessings and thank the Lord for each one, and rejoice in Him for all the way He had led her, and the gifts He had bestowed, and in a very few minutes the Lord stood revealed to her spiritual consciousness. She had not committed sin, nor resisted the Spirit, but a failure to rejoice in Him who had daily loaded her with benefits (Psalm lxviii. 19) had in a measure quenched the Spirit. She had not turned the main, and so her soul was not flooded with living waters. She had not remembered the command: “Thou shalt rejoice before the Lord thy God in all that thou puttest thine hand unto.” But that morning she learned a lifelong lesson, and she has ever since safeguarded her soul by obeying the many commands to “Rejoice in the Lord.” Grieving and quenching the Spirit will not only leave barren and desolate an individual soul, but it will do so for a Corps, a church, a community, a whole nation or continent. We see this illustrated on a large scale by the long and weary Dark Ages, when the light of the Gospel was almost extinguished, and only here and there was the darkness broken by the torch of truth held aloft by some humble, suffering soul that had wept and prayed, and through painful struggles had found the light. We see it also in those Corps, churches, communities, and countries where revivals are unknown, or are a thing of the past, where souls are not born into the Kingdom, and where there is no joyous shout of victory among the people of God. Grieving and quenching the Spirit may be done unintentionally by lack of thought and prayer and hearty devotion to the Lord Jesus; but they prepare the way and lead to intentional and positive resistance to the Spirit. To resist the Spirit is to fight against Him. The sinner who, listening to the Gospel invitation, and convicted of sin, refuses to submit to God in true repentance and faith in Jesus, is resisting the Holy Spirit. We have bold and striking historical illustrations of the danger of resisting the Holy Spirit in the disasters which befell Pharaoh, and the terrible calamities which came upon Jerusalem, and have for twenty centuries followed the Jews. The ten plagues that came upon Pharaoh and his people were ten opportunities and open doors into God’s favour and fellowship, which they themselves shut by their stubborn resistance, only to be overtaken by dreadful catastrophe. To the Jews, Stephen said: “Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost” (Acts vii. 51); and the siege and fall of Jerusalem, and the butchery and banishment and enslavement of its inhabitants, and all the woes that came upon the Jews, followed their rejection of Jesus and the hardness of heart and spiritual blindness which swiftly overtook them when they resisted all the loving efforts and entreaties of His disciples baptised with the Holy Spirit. And what on a large scale befalls nations and people, on a small scale also befalls individuals. Those that receive and obey the Lord are enlightened and blessed and saved; those that resist and reject Him are sadly left to themselves and surely swallowed up in destruction. Likewise the professing Christian who hears of heart-holiness and cleansing from all sin as a blessing he may now have by faith, and, convicted of his need of the blessing and of God’s desire and willingness to bestow it upon him now, refuses to seek it in whole-hearted affectionate consecration and faith, is resisting the Holy Spirit. And such resistance imperils the soul beyond all possible computation. We see an example of this in the Israelites who were brought out of Egypt with signs and wonders, and led through the Red Sea and the wilderness to the borders of Canaan, but, forgetting, refused to go over into the land. In this they resisted the Holy Spirit in His leadings as surely as did Pharaoh, and with quite as disastrous results to themselves, perishing in their evil way. For their sin was as much greater than his as their light exceeded his. Hundreds of years later, Isaiah, writing of this time, says: “In all their affliction He was afflicted, and the angel of His presence saved them; in His love and in His pity He redeemed them; and He bare them, and carried them all the days of old. But they rebelled, and vexed His Holy Spirit; therefore He was turned to be their enemy, and He fought against them” (Isaiah lxiii. 9, 10). We see from this that Christians must beware and watch and pray and walk softly with the Lord in glad obedience and childlike faith, if they would escape the darkness and dryness that result from grieving and quenching the Spirit, and the dangers that surely come from resisting Him. “Arm me with jealous care, As in Thy sight to live; And, Oh, Thy servant, Lord, prepare, A strict account to give. “Help me to watch and pray, And on Thyself rely, Assured if I my trust betray, I shall for ever die.” “Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?”

XIV.

The Holy Spirit and Sound Doctrine

“Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.” Is Jesus Christ divine? Is the Bible an inspired Book? Is man a fallen creature who can be saved only through the suffering and sacrifice of the Creator? Will there be a resurrection of the dead, and a day in which God will judge all the world by the Man Christ Jesus? Is Satan a personal being, and is there a Hell in which the wicked will be for ever punished? These are great doctrines which have been held and taught by His followers since the days of Jesus and His Apostles, and yet they are ever being attacked and denied. Are they true? Or are they only fancies and falsehoods, or figures of speech and distortions of truth? How can we find truth and know it? Jesus said, “When He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth” (John xvi. 13). What truth? Not the truth of the multiplication table, or of physical science, or art, or secular history, but spiritual truth—­the truth about God and His will and character, and our relations to Him in Christ—­that truth which is necessary to salvation and holiness—­into all this truth the Holy Spirit will guide us. “He shall teach you all things,” said Jesus (John xiv. 26). How, then, shall we escape error and be “sound in doctrine”? Only by the help of the Holy Spirit. How do we know Jesus Christ is divine? Because the Bible tells us so? Infinitely precious and important is this revelation in the Bible; but not by this do we know it. Because the Church teaches it in her creed, and we have heard it from the catechism? Nothing taught in any creed or catechism is of more vital importance; but neither by this do we know it. How then? Listen to Paul: “No man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost” (I Cor. xii. 3). “No man,” says Paul. Then learning it from the Bible or catechism is not to know it except as the parrot might know it; but every man is to be taught this by the Holy Spirit, if he is to really know it. Then it is not a revelation made once for all, and only to the men who walked and talked with Jesus, but it is a spiritual revelation made anew to each believing heart that in penitence seeks Him and so meets the conditions of such a revelation. Then the poor, degraded, ignorant outcast at The Army penitent-form in the slums of London or Chicago, who never heard of a creed, and the ebony African and dusky Indian, who never saw the inside of a Bible, may have Christ revealed in him, and know by the revelation of the Holy Spirit that Jesus is Lord. “It pleased God… to reveal His Son in me,” wrote Paul (Gal. i. 15, 16); and again, “Christ liveth in me” (Gal. ii. 20); and again, “My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you” (Gal. iv. 19); as though Christ is to be spiritually formed in the heart of each believer by the operation of the Holy Spirit, as He was physically formed in the womb of Mary by the same Spirit (Luke i. 35); and again, “The mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to His saints,… which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. i. 26, 27); “That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith” (Eph. iii. 17); “Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates” (2 Cor. xiii. 5)? “At that day,” said Jesus, when making His great promise of the Comforter to His disciples, “At that day ye shall know that I am in My Father, and ye in Me, and I in you” (John xiv. 20); and again, in His great prayer, He said: “I have declared unto them Thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them, and I in them.” It is this ever-recurring revelation to penitent, believing hearts, by the agency of the ever-present Holy Spirit, that makes faith in Jesus Christ living and invincible. “I know He is Lord, for He saves my soul from sin, and He saves me now,” is an argument that rationalism and unbelief cannot answer nor overthrow, and so long as there are men in the world who can say this, faith in the divinity of Jesus Christ is secure; and this experience and witness come by the Holy Ghost. “I worship Thee, O Holy Ghost, I love to worship Thee; My risen Lord for aye were lost But for Thy company.” And so it is by the guidance and teaching of the Holy Spirit that all saving truth becomes vital to us. It is He that makes the Bible a living Book; it is He that convinces the world of judgment (John xvi. 8-11); it is He that makes men certain that there is a Heaven of surpassing and enduring glory and joy, and a Hell of endless sorrow and woe for those who sin away their day of grace and die in impenitence. Who have been the mightiest and most faithful preachers of the gloom and terror and pain of a perpetual Hell? those who have been the mightiest and most effective preachers of God’s compassionate love. In all periods of great revival, when men seemed to live on the borderland, and in the vision of eternity, Hell has been preached. The leaders in these revivals have been men of prayer and faith and consuming love, but they have been men who knew “the terrors of the Lord,” and, therefore, they preached the judgments of God, and they proved that the law with its penalties is a schoolmaster to bring men to Christ (Gal. iii. 24). Fox, the Quaker; Bunyan, the Baptist; Baxter, the Puritan; Wesley and Fletcher, and Whitefield and Caughey, the Methodists; Finney, the Presbyterian; Edwards and Moody, the Congregationalists; and General Booth, the Salvationist, have preached it, not savagely, but tenderly and faithfully, as a mother might warn her child against some great danger that would surely follow careless and selfish wrong-doing. What men have loved and laboured and sacrificed as these men? Their hearts have been a flaming furnace of love and devotion to God, and an over-flowing fountain of love and compassion for men; but just in proportion as they have discovered God’s love and pity for the sinner, so have they discovered His wrath against sin and all obstinate wrong-doing; and as they have caught glimpses of Heaven and declared its joys and everlasting glories to men, so they have seen Hell, with its endless punishment, and with trembling voice and overflowing eyes have they warned men to “flee from the wrath to come.” Were these men, throbbing with spiritual life and consumed with devotion to the Kingdom of God and the everlasting well-being of their fellowmen, led to this belief by the Spirit of Truth, or were they misled? Is it the prophet, weeping and praying and preaching and fighting for God and men, to whom the Spirit has always first spoken and revealed the things of God? Or is it the philosopher, or dry-as-dust theologian, or the popular preacher of smooth things, sitting in his study and among his books, spinning out of his own mind his conceits concerning God’s plan and purpose in the universe? Does Seneca or the Psalmist, Plato or Paul, Rousseau or Wesley, the idolised, high-salaried, soft-raimented preacher of a wide gate and broad way to life and Heaven, or the veteran soul-winner, General Booth, more clearly make known the mind of God in matters that are spiritual? “The things of the Spirit… are spiritually discerned” (I Cor. ii. 14), says Paul. It is not by searching and philosophising that these things are found out, but by revelation. “Flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee,” said Jesus to Peter, “but My Father which is in Heaven” (Matthew xvi. 17). The great teacher of truth is the Spirit of Truth, and the only safe expounders and guardians of sound doctrine are men filled with the Holy Ghost. Study and research have their place, and an important place; but in spiritual things they will be no avail unless prosecuted by spiritual men. As well might men blind from birth attempt to study the starry heavens, and men born deaf undertake to expound and criticise the harmonies of Bach and Beethoven. Men must see and hear to speak and write intelligently on such subjects. And so men must be spiritually enlightened to understand spiritual truth. The greatest danger to any religious organisation is that a body of men should arise in its ranks, and hold its positions of trust, who have learned its great fundamental doctrines by rote out of the catechism, but have no experimental knowledge of their truth inwrought by the mighty anointing of the Holy Ghost, and who are destitute of “an unction from the Holy One,” by which, says John, “ye know all things” (1 John ii. 20, 27). Why do men deny the divinity of Jesus Christ? Because they have never placed themselves in that relation to the Spirit, and met those unchanging conditions that would enable Him to reveal Jesus to them as Saviour and Lord. Why do men dispute the inspiration of the Scriptures? Because the Holy Ghost, who inspired “holy men of God” to write the Book (2 Peter i. 21), hides its spiritual sense from unspiritual and unholy men. Why do men doubt a Day of Judgment, and a state of everlasting doom? Because they have never been bowed and broken and crushed beneath the weight of their sin, and by a sense of guilt and separation from a holy God that can only be removed by faith in His dying Son. A sportsman lost his way in a pitiless storm on a black and starless night. Suddenly his horse drew back and refused to take another step. He urged it forward, but it only threw itself back upon its haunches. Just then a vivid flash of lightning revealed a great precipice upon the brink of which he stood. It was but an instant, and then the pitchy blackness hid it again from view. But he turned his horse and anxiously rode away from the terrible danger. A distinguished professor of religion said to me some time ago, “I dislike, I abhor, the doctrine of Hell”; and then after a while added, “But three times in my life I have seen that there was eternal separation from God and an everlasting Hell for me, if I walked not in the way God was calling me to go.” Into the blackness of the sinner’s night the Holy Spirit, who is patiently and compassionately seeking the salvation of all men, flashes a light that gives him a glimpse of eternal things which, heeded, would lead to the sweet peace and security of eternal day. For when the Holy Spirit is heeded and honoured, the night passes, the shadows flee away, the day dawns, “the Sun of Righteousness arises with healing in His wings,” and, saved and sanctified, men walk in His light in safety and joy. Doctrines which before were repellent to the carnal mind, and but foolishness, or a stumbling-block to the heart of unbelief, now become precious and satisfying to the soul; and truths which before were hid in impenetrable darkness, or seen only as through dense gloom and fog, are now seen clearly as in the light of broad day. “Hold thou the faith that Christ is Lord, God over all, who died and rose; And everlasting life bestows On all who hear the living word. For thee His life-blood He out-poured, His Spirit sets thy spirit free; Hold thou the faith—­He dwells in thee, And thou in Him, and Christ is Lord!” “Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?”

XV.

Praying in the Spirit

“Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.” An important work of the Holy Spirit is to teach us how to pray, instruct us what to pray for, and inspire us to pray earnestly, without ceasing, and in faith, for the things we desire and the things that are dear to the heart of the Lord. In a familiar verse, the poet Montgomery says: “Prayer is the burden of a sigh, The falling of a tear, The upward glancing of the eye, When none but God is near.” And no doubt he is right. Prayer is exceedingly simple. The faintest cry for help, a whisper for mercy, is prayer. But when the Holy Spirit comes and fills the soul with His blessed presence, prayer becomes more than a cry; it ceases to be a feeble request, and often becomes a strife (Romans xv. 30; Col. iv. 12) for greater things, a conflict, an invincible argument, a wrestling with God, and through it men enter into the Divine councils and rise into a blessed and responsible fellowship in some important sense with the Father and the Son in the moral government of the world. It was in this spirit and fellowship that Abraham prayed for Sodom (Genesis xviii. 23-32); that Moses interceded for Israel, and stood between them and God’s hot displeasure (Exodus xxxii. 7-14); and that Elijah prevailed to shut up the heavens for three years and six months, and then again prevailed in his prayer for rain. God would have us come to Him not only as a foolish and ignorant child comes, but as an ambassador to his home government; as a full-grown son who has become of age and entered into partnership with his father; as a bride who is one in all interests and affections with the bridegroom. He would have us “come boldly to the throne of grace” with a well-reasoned and Scriptural understanding of what we desire, and with a purpose to “ask,” “seek,” and “knock” till we get the thing we wish, being assured that it is according to His will; and this boldness is not inconsistent with the profoundest humility and a sense of utter dependence; indeed, it is always accompanied by self-distrust and humble reliance upon the merits of Jesus, else it is but presumption and unsanctified conceit. This union of assurance and humility, of boldness and dependence, can be secured only by the baptism with the Holy Spirit, and only so can one be prepared and fitted for such prayer. Three great obstacles hinder mighty prayer: 1. selfishness; 2, unbelief; 3, the darkness of ignorance and foolishness. The baptism with the Spirit sweeps away these obstacles and brings in the three great essentials to prayer—­1, faith; 2, love, Divine love; 3, the light of heavenly knowledge and wisdom. 1. Selfishness must be cast out by the incoming of love. The ambassador must not be seeking personal ends, but the interests of his government and the people he represents; the son must not be seeking private gain, but the common prosperity of the partnership in which he will fully and lawfully share; the bride must not forget him to whom she belongs, and seek separate ends, but in all ways identify herself with her husband and his interests. So the child of God must come in prayer, unselfishly. It is the work of the Holy Spirit, with our co-operation and glad consent, to search and destroy selfishness out of our hearts, and fill them with pure love to God and man. And when this is done we shall not then be asking for things amiss to consume them upon our lusts, to gratify our appetites, or pride, or ambition, or ease, or vain-glory. We shall seek only the glory of our Lord and the common good of our fellow-men, in which, as co-workers and partners, we shall have a common share. If we ask for success, it is not that we may be exalted, but that God may be glorified; that Jesus may secure the purchase of His blood; that men may be saved, and the Kingdom of Heaven be established upon earth. If we ask for daily bread, it is not that we may be full, but that we may be fitted for daily duty. If we ask for health, it is not alone that we may be free from pain and filled with physical comfort, but that we may be spent “in publishing the sinner’s Friend,” in fulfilling the work for which God has placed us here. 2. Unbelief must be destroyed. Doubt paralyzes prayer. Unbelief quenches the spirit of intercession. Only as the eye of faith sees our Father God upon the Throne guaranteeing to us rights and privileges by the blood of His Son, and inviting us to come without fear, and make our wants known, does prayer rise from the commonplace to the sublime; does it cease to be a feeble, timid cry, and become a mighty spiritual force, moving God Himself in the interests which it seeks. Men, wise with the wisdom of this world, but poor and naked and blind and foolish in matters of faith, ask: “Will God change His plans at the request of man?” And we answer, “Yes,” since many of God’s plans are made contingent upon the prayers of His people, and He has ordered that prayer offered in faith, according to His will, revealed in His word, shall be one of the controlling factors in His government of men. Is it God’s will that the tides of the Atlantic and Pacific should sweep across the Isthmus of Panama? That men should run under the Alps? That thoughts and words should be winged across the ocean without any visible or tangible medium? Yes; it is His will, if men will it, and work to these ends in harmony with His great physical laws. So in the spiritual world there are wonders wrought by prayer, and God wills the will of His people when they come to Him in faith and love. What else is meant by such promises and assurances as these: “Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them” (Mark xi. 24); “The supplication of a righteous man availeth much in its working. Elijah was a man of like passions with us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain; and it rained not on the earth for three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heavens gave rain and the earth brought forth her fruit” (James v. 16-18. American Revision). The Holy Spirit dwelling within the heart helps us to understand the things we may pray for, and the heart that is full of love and loyalty to God only wants what is lawful. This is mystery to people who are under the dominion of selfishness and the darkness of unbelief, but it is a soul-thrilling fact to those who are filled with the Holy Ghost. “What wilt thou that I shall do unto thee?” asked Jesus of the blind man (Luke xviii. 41). He had respect to the will of the blind man, and granted his request, seeing he had faith. And He still has respect to the vigorous, sanctified will of His people—­the will that has been subdued by consecration and faith into loving union with His will. The Lord answered Abraham on behalf of Sodom till he ceased to ask. “The Lord has had His way so long with Hudson Taylor,” said a friend, “that now, Hudson Taylor can have his way with the Lord.” Adoniram Judson lay sick with a fatal illness in far-away Burmah. His wife read to him an account of the conversion of a number of Jews in Constantinople through some of his writings. For a while the sick man was silent, and then he spoke with awe, telling his wife that for years he had prayed that he might be used in some way to bless the Jews, yet never having seen any evidence that his prayers were answered; but now, after many years and from far away, the evidence of answer had come. And then, after further silence, he spoke with deep emotion, saying that he had never prayed a prayer for the glory of God and the good of men but that, sooner or later, even though for the time being he had forgotten, he found that God had not forgotten, but had remembered and patiently worked to answer his prayer. Oh, the faithfulness of God! He means it when He makes promises and exhorts and urges and commands us to pray. It is not His purpose to mock us, but to answer and “to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think.” Bless His holy Name! 3. Knowledge and wisdom must take the place of foolish ignorance. Paul says, “We know not what we should pray for as we ought,” and then adds, “But the Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered” (Romans viii. 26). If my little child asks for a glittering razor, I refuse its request; but when my full-grown son asks for one I grant it. So God cannot wisely answer some prayers, for they are foolish or untimely. Hence, we need not love and faith only, but wisdom and knowledge, that we may ask according to the will of God. It is this that Paul has in mind when he says that he will not only pray with the Spirit, but “I will pray with the understanding also” (I Cor. xiv. 15). Men should think before they pray, and study that they may pray wisely. Now, when the Holy Spirit comes there pours into the soul not only a tide of love and simple faith, but a flood of light as well, and prayer becomes not only earnest, but intelligent also. And this intelligence increases, as, under the leadership of the Holy Spirit, the word of God is studied, and its heavenly truths and principles are grasped and assimilated. It is thus men come to know God and become His friends, whose prayers He will assist and will not deny. Such men talk with God as friend with friend, and the Holy Spirit helps their infirmities; encourages them to urge their prayer in faith; teaches them to reason with God; enables them to come boldly in the name of Jesus, when oppressed with a sense of their own insignificance and unworthiness; and, when words fail them and they scarcely know how to voice their desires, He intercedes within them with unutterable groanings, according to the will of God (Romans viii. 26, 27; 1 Cor. ii. 11). A young man felt called to mission work in China, but his mother offered strong opposition to his going. An agent of the mission, knowing the need of the work, and vexed with the mother, one day laid the case before Hudson Taylor. “Mr. Taylor,” said he, “listened patiently and lovingly to all I had to say, and then gently suggested our praying about it. Such a prayer I have never heard before! It seemed to me more like a conversation with a trusted friend whose advice he was seeking. He talked the matter over with the Friend from every point of view—­from the side of the young man, from the side of China’s needs, from the side of the mother, and her natural feelings, and also from my side. It was a revelation to me. I saw that prayer did not mean merely asking for things, much less asking for things to be carried out by God according to our ideas; but that it means communion, fellowship, partnership, with our Heavenly Father. And when our will is really blended with His, what liberty we may have in asking for what we want!” Hallelujah! “My soul, ask what thou wilt, Thou canst not be too bold; Since His own blood for thee He spilt, What else can He withhold?” “Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?”

XVI.

Characteristics of the Anointed Preacher

“Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.” Since God saves men by “the foolishness of preaching,” the preacher has an infinitely important work, and he must be fitted for it. But what can fit a man for such sacred work? Not education alone, not knowledge of books, not gifts of speech, not winsome manners, nor a magnetic voice, nor a commanding presence, but only God. The preacher must be more than a man—­he must be a man plus the Holy Ghost. Paul was such a man. He was full of the Holy Spirit, and in studying his life and ministry we get a life-sized portrait of an anointed preacher living, fighting, preaching, praying, suffering, triumphing, and dying in the power and light and glory of the indwelling Spirit. In the second chapter of the First of Thessalonians he gives us a picture of his character and ministry which were formed and inspired by the Holy Spirit, a sample of His workmanship, and an example for all Gospel preachers. At Philippi he had been terribly beaten with stripes on his bare back, and roughly thrust into the inner dungeon, and his feet were made fast in the stocks; but that did not break nor quench his spirit. Love burned in his heart, and his joy in the Lord brimmed full and bubbled over, and at midnight, in the damp, dark, loathsome dungeon, he and Silas, his comrade in service and suffering, “prayed and sang praises unto God.” God answered with an earthquake, and the jailer and his household got gloriously converted. Paul was set free and went at once to Thessalonica, where, regardless of the shameful way he had been treated at Philippi, he preached the Gospel boldly, and a blessed revival followed with many converts; but persecution arose, and Paul had again to flee. His heart, however, was continually turning back to these converts, and at last he sat down and wrote them this letter. From this we learn that—­ 1. He was a joyful preacher. He was no pessimist, croaking out doleful prophecies and lamentations and bitter criticisms. He was full of the joy of the Lord. It was not the joy that comes from good health, a pleasant home, plenty of money, wholesome food, numerous and smiling friends, and sunny, favouring skies; but a deep, springing fountain of solemn, gladdening joy that abounded and overflowed in pain and weariness, in filthy, noisome surroundings, in loneliness and poverty, and danger and bitter persecutions. No earth-born trial could quench it, for it was Heaven-born; it was “the joy of the Lord” poured into his heart with the Holy Spirit. 2. He was a bold preacher. Worldly prudence would have constrained him to go softly at Thessalonica, after his experience at Philippi, lest he arouse opposition and meet again with personal violence; but, instead, he says: “We were bold in our God to speak unto you the Gospel of God with much contention.” Personal considerations were all forgotten, or cast to the winds, in his impetuous desire to declare the Gospel and save their souls. He lived in the will of God, and conquered his fears. “The wicked” are fearful, and “flee when no man pursueth; but the righteous are as bold as a lion.” This boldness is a fruit of righteousness, and is always found in those who are full of the Holy Ghost. They forget themselves, and so lose all fear. This was the secret of the martyrs when burned at the stake or thrown to the wild beasts. Fear is a fruit of selfishness. Boldness thrives when selfishness is destroyed. God esteems it, commands His people to be courageous, and makes spiritual leaders only of those who possess courage (Joshua i. 9). Moses feared not the wrath of the king, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, and boldly espoused the cause of his despised and enslaved people. Joshua was full of courage. Gideon fearlessly attacked one hundred and twenty thousand Midianites, with but three hundred unarmed men. Jonathan and his armour-bearer charged the Philistine garrison and routed hundreds singlehanded. David faced the lion and the bear, and inspired all Israel by battling with and killing Goliath. The prophets were men of the highest courage, who fearlessly rebuked kings, and at the risk of life, and often at the cost of life, denounced popular sins, and called the people back to righteousness and the faithful service of God. These men feared God, and so lost the fear of man. They believed God, and so obeyed Him, and found His favour, and were entrusted with His high missions and everlasting employments. “Fear thou not, for I am with thee,” saith the Lord; and this Paul believed, and so says, “We were bold in our God.” God was his high tower, his strength and unfailing defence, and so he was not afraid. His boldness toward man was a fruit of his boldness toward God, and that, in turn, was a fruit of his faith in Jesus as his High Priest, who had been touched with the feeling of his infirmities, and through whom he could “come boldly to the Throne of Grace, and obtain mercy, and find grace to help in every time of need.” It is the timidity and delicacy with which men attempt God’s work that often accounts for their failure. Let them speak out boldly like men, as ambassadors of Heaven, who are not afraid to represent their King, and they will command attention and respect, and reach the hearts and consciences of men. I have read that quaint old Bishop Latimer, who was afterwards burned at the stake, “having preached a sermon before King Henry VIII, which greatly displeased the monarch, was ordered to preach again on the next Sunday, and make apology for the offence given. The day came, and with it a crowded assembly anxious to hear the bishop’s apology. Reading his text, he commenced thus: ’Hugh Latimer, dost thou know before whom thou art this day to speak? To the high and mighty monarch, the king’s most excellent majesty, who can take away thy life if thou offendest. Therefore, take heed that thou speakest not a word that may displease. But, then, consider well, Hugh, dost thou not know from whence thou comest? Upon whose message thou art sent? Even by the great and mighty God, who is all-present, and who beholdeth all thy ways, and who is able to cast thy soul into Hell! Therefore, take care that thou deliver thy message faithfully.’” He then repeated the sermon of the previous Sunday, word for word, but with double its former energy and emphasis. The Court was full of excitement to learn what would be the fate of this plain-dealing and fearless bishop. He was ordered into the king’s presence, who, with a stern voice, asked: “How dared you thus offend me?” “I merely discharged my duty,” was Latimer’s reply. The king arose from his seat, embraced the good man, saying, “Blessed be God I have so honest a servant.” He was a worthy successor of Nathan, who confronted King David with his sin, and said, “Thou art the man.” This Divine courage will surely accompany the fiery baptism of the Spirit. What is it but the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that gives courage to Salvation Army Officers and Soldiers, enabling them to face danger and difficulty and loneliness with joy, and attack sin in its worst forms as fearlessly as David attacked Goliath? “Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord.” “Shall I, for fear of feeble man, The Spirit’s course in me restrain? Awed by a mortal’s frown, shall I Conceal the word of God most high? Shall I, to soothe the unholy throng, Soften Thy truth, or smooth my tongue? “How then before Thee shall I dare To stand, or how Thine anger bear? Yea, let men rage; since Thou wilt spread Thy shadowing wings around my head; Since in all pain Thy tender love Will still my sure refreshment prove.” 3. He was without guile. “For our exhortation was not of deceit, nor of uncleanness, nor in guile; but as we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the Gospel, even so we speak; not as pleasing men, but God, which trieth our hearts.” He was frank and open. He spoke right out of his heart. He was transparently simple and straightforward. Since God had honoured him with this infinite trust of preaching the Gospel, he sought to so preach it that he should please God regardless of men. And yet that is the surest way to please men. People who listen to such a man feel his honesty, and realise that he is seeking to do them good, to save them rather than to tickle their ears and win their applause, and in their hearts they are pleased. But, anyway, whether or not they are pleased, he is to deliver his message as an ambassador, and look to his home government for his reward. He gets his commission from God, and it is God who will try his heart and prove his ministry. Oh, to please Jesus! Oh, to stand perfect before God after preaching His Gospel! 4. He was not a time-server nor a covetous man. “Neither at any time used we flattering words, as ye know, nor a cloak of covetousness; God is witness,” he adds. There are three ways of reaching a man’s purse: (1) Directly. (2) By way of his head with flattering words. (3) By way of his heart with manly, honest, saving words. The first way is robbery. The second way is robbery, with the poison of a deadly, but pleasing, opiate added, which may damn his soul. The third reaches his purse by saving his soul and opening in his heart an unfailing fountain of benevolence to bless himself and the world. It were better for a preacher to turn highwayman, and rob men with a club and a strong hand, than, with smiles and smooth words and feigned and fawning affection, to rob them with flattery, while their poor souls, neglected and deceived, go down to Hell. How will he meet them in the Day of Judgment, and look into their horrorstricken faces, realising that he played and toyed with their fancies and affections and pride to get money, and, instead of faithfully warning them and seeking to save them, with flattering words fattened their souls for destruction! Not so did Paul. “I seek not yours, but you,” he wrote the Corinthians. It was not their money, but their souls he wanted. But such faithful love will be able to command all men have to give. Why, to some of his converts he wrote: “I bear you record, that if it had been possible, ye would have plucked out your own eyes, and have given them to me” (Gal. iv. 15). But he sought not to please them with flattering words, only to save them. So faithful was he in this matter, and so conscious of his integrity, that he called God Himself into the witness-box. “God is witness,” says he. Blessed is the man who can call on God to witness for him; and that man in whom the Holy Spirit dwells in fullness can do this. Can you, my brother? 5. He was not vain-glorious, nor dictatorial, nor oppressive. Some men care nothing for money, but they care mightily for power and place and the glory that men give. But Paul was free from this spiritual itching. Listen to him: “Nor of men sought we glory, neither of you, nor yet of others, when we might have been burdensome” (or “used authority”) “as the Apostles of Christ.” Said Solomon, “For men to seek their own glory is not glory,” it is only vain-glory. “How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only?” asked Jesus. From all this Paul was free, and so is every man who is full of the Holy Ghost. And it is only as we are thus free that with the whole heart and with a single eye we can devote ourselves to the work of saving men. 6. With all his boldness and faithfulness he was gentle. “We were gentle among you,” he says, “as a nurse cherisheth her children.” The fierce hurricane which casts down the giant trees of the forest is not so mighty as the gentle sunshine, which, from tiny seeds and acorns, lifts aloft the towering spires of oak and fir on a thousand hills and mountains. The wild storm that lashes the sea into foam and fury is feeble compared to the gentle, yet immeasurably powerful influence, which twice a day swings the oceans in resistless tides from shore to shore. And as in the physical world the mighty powers are gentle in their vast workings, so it is in the spiritual world. The light that falls on the lids of the sleeping infant and wakes it from its slumber, is not more gentle than the “still small voice” that brings assurance of forgiveness or cleansing to them that look unto Jesus. Oh, the gentleness of God! “Thy gentleness hath made me great,” said David. “I beseech you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ” (2 Cor. x. 1), wrote Paul. And again, “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness” (Gal. v. 22). And as the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are gentle, so will be the servant of the Lord who is filled with the Spirit. I shall never forget the gentleness of a mighty man of God whom I well knew, who on the platform was clothed with zeal as with a garment, and in his overwhelming earnestness was like a lion or a consuming fire; but when dealing with a wounded or broken heart, or with a seeking soul, no nurse with a little babe could be more tender than he. 7. Finally, Paul was full of self-forgetful, self-sacrificing love. “So being affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you, not the Gospel of God only, but also our own souls, because ye were dear unto us.” No wonder he shook those heathen cities, overthrew their idols, had great revivals, that his jailer was converted, and that his converts would have gladly plucked out their eyes for him! Such tender, self-sacrificing love compels attention, begets confidence, enkindles love, and surely wins its object. This burning love led him to labour and sacrifice, and so live and walk before them that he was not only a teacher, but an example of all he taught, and could safely say, “Follow me.” This love led him to preach the whole truth, that he might by all means save them. He kept back no truth because it was unpopular, for it was their salvation and not his own reputation and popularity he sought. He preached not himself, but a crucified Christ, without the shedding of whose blood there is no remission of sins; and through that precious blood he preached present cleansing from all sin, and the gift of the Holy Spirit for all who obediently believe. And this love kept him faithful and humble and true to the end, so that at last in sight of the martyr’s death, he saw the martyr’s crown, and cried out: “I am now ready to be offered,… I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day.” He had been faithful, and now at the end he was oppressed with no doubts and harassed with no bitter regrets, but looked forward with eager joy to meeting his Lord and beholding the blessed face of Him he loved. Hallelujah! “Have you received the Holy Ghost? ’Twill fit you for the fight, ’Twill make of you a mighty host, To put your foes to flight. “Have you received the Holy Power? ’Twill fall from Heaven on you, From Jesus’ throne this very hour, ’Twill make you brave and true. “Oh, now receive the Holy Fire! ’Twill burn away all dross, All earthly, selfish, vain desire, ’Twill make you love the Cross.” “Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?”

XVII.

Preaching

“Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.” “Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?” asks Paul. And then he declares: “After that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.” What kind of preaching is this? He does not say, “foolish preaching,” but the foolishness of such a way as that of preaching. Certainly, it is not the moral essay, or the intellectual, or semi-intellectual, kind of preaching that is most generally heard throughout the world to-day, that is to save men; for thousands of such sermons move and convert no one: nor is it a mere noisy declamation called a sermon—­noisy because empty of all earnest thought and true feeling; but it must be the kind of which Peter speaks when he writes of “them that preached the Gospel … with the Holy Ghost sent down from Heaven” (1 Peter i. 12). No man is equipped to rightly preach the Gospel, and undertake the spiritual oversight and instruction of souls, till he has been anointed with the Holy Ghost. The disciples had been led to Jesus by John the Baptist, whose mighty preaching laid a deep and broad foundation for their spiritual education, and then for three years they had listened to both the public and private teachings of Jesus; they had been “eye-witnesses of His glory,” of His life and death and resurrection, and yet He commanded them to tarry in Jerusalem, and wait for the Holy Spirit. He was to fit them for their ministry. And if they, trained and taught by the Master Himself, had need of the Holy Spirit to enable them to preach and testify with wisdom and power, how much more do you and I need His presence! Without Him they could do nothing. With Him they were invincible, and could continue the work of Jesus. The mighty energy of His working is seen in the preaching of Peter on the day of Pentecost. The sermon itself does not seem to have been very remarkable; indeed, it is principally composed of testimony backed up and fortified by Scripture quotations, followed by exhortation, just as are the sermons that are most effective to-day in the immediate conversion and sanctification of men. “True preaching,” said Horace Bushnell, “is a testimony.” Peter’s Scripture quotations were apt, fitting the occasion and the people to whom they were addressed. The testimony was bold and joyous, the rushing outflow of a warm, fresh throbbing experience; and the exhortation was burning, uncompromising in its demands, and yet tender and full of sympathy and love. But a Divine Presence was at work in that vast, mocking, wondering throng, and it was He who made Peter’s simple words search like fire, and carry such overwhelming conviction to the hearts of the people. And it is still so that whenever and wherever a man preaches “with the Holy Ghost sent down from Heaven,” there will be conviction. Under Peter’s sermon “they were pricked in their hearts.” The truth pierced them as a sword until they said, “What shall we do?” They had been doubting and mocking a short time before, but now they were earnestly inquiring the way to be saved. The speech may be without polish, the manner uncouth, and the matter simple and plain; but conviction will surely follow any preaching in the burning love and power and contagious joy of the Holy Spirit. A few years ago a poor black boy in Africa, who had been stolen for a slave, and most cruelly treated, heard a missionary talking of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and his heart hungered and thirsted for Him. In a strange manner he worked his way to New York to find out more about the Holy Spirit, getting the captain of the ship and several of the crew converted on the way. The brother in New York to whom he came took him to a meeting the first night he was in the city, and left him there, while he went to fulfil another engagement. When he returned at a late hour, he found a crowd of men at the penitent-form, led there by the simple words of this poor black fellow. He took him to his Sunday-school, and put him up to speak, while he attended to some other matters. When he turned from these affairs that had occupied his attention for only a little while, he found the penitent-form full of teachers and scholars, weeping before the Lord. What the black boy had said he did not know; but he was bowed with wonder and filled with joy, for it was the power of the Holy Spirit. Men used to fall as though cut down in battle under the preaching of Wesley, Whitefield, Finney, and others. And while there may not be the same physical manifestation at all times, there will surely be the same opening of eyes to spiritual things, breaking of hearts, and piercing of consciences. The Spirit under the preaching of a man filled with the Holy Ghost will often come upon a congregation like a wind, and heads will droop, eyes will brim with tears, and hearts will break under His convicting power. I remember a proud young woman who had been mercilessly criticising us for several nights smitten in this way. She was smiling when suddenly the Holy Spirit winged a word to her heart, and instantly her countenance changed, her head drooped, and for an hour or more she sobbed and struggled while her proud heart broke, and she found her way with true repentance and faith to the feet of Jesus, and her Heavenly Father’s favour. How often have we seen such sights as this under the preaching of The General! And it ought to be a common sight under the preaching of all servants of God, for what are we sent for but to convict men of their sin and their need, and by the power of the Spirit to lead them to the Saviour? And not only will there be conviction under such preaching, but generally, if not always, there will be conversion and sanctification. Three thousand people accepted Christ under Peter’s Pentecostal sermon, and later five thousand were converted, and a multitude of the priests were obedient to the faith. And it was so under the preaching of Philip in Samaria, of Peter in Lydda and Saron and in Cæsarea, and of Paul in Ephesus and other cities. To be sure, the preaching of Stephen in its immediate effect only resulted in enraging his hearers until they stoned him to death; but it is highly probable that the ultimate result was the conversion of Paul, who kept the clothes of those who stoned him, and through Paul the evangelisation of the Gentiles. One of the greatest of American evangelists sought with agonising prayers and tears the baptism with the Holy Spirit, and received it; and then he said he preached the same sermons; but where before it had been as one beating the air, now hundreds were saved. It is this that has made Salvation Army Officers successful. Young, inexperienced, without special gifts, and without learning, but with the baptism, they have been mighty to win souls. The hardest hearts have been broken, the darkest minds illuminated, the most stubborn wills subdued, and the wildest natures tamed by them. Their words have been with power, and have convicted and converted and sanctified men, and whole communities have been transformed by their labours. But without this Presence great gifts and profound and accurate learning are without avail in the salvation of men. We often see men with great natural powers, splendidly trained, and equipped with everything save this fiery baptism, and they labour and preach year after year without seeing a soul saved. They have spent years in study; but they have not spent a day, much less ten days, fasting and praying and waiting upon God for His anointing that should fill them with heavenly wisdom and power for their work. They are like a great gun loaded and primed, but without a spark of fire to turn the powder and ball into a resistless lightning bolt. It is fire men need, and that they get from God in agonising, wrestling, listening prayer that will not be denied; and when they get it, and not till then, will they preach with the Holy Ghost sent down from Heaven, and surely men shall be saved. Such preaching is not foolish. The Holy Spirit makes the word alive. He brings it to the remembrance of the preachers in whom He abides, and He applies it to the heart of the hearers, lightening up the soul as with a sun until sin is seen in all its hideousness, or cutting as a sharp sword, piercing the heart with resistless conviction of the guilt and shame of sin. Peter had no time to consult the Scriptures and prepare a sermon on the morning of Pentecost; but the Holy Spirit quickened his memory, and brought to his mind the Scriptures appropriate to the occasion. Hundreds of years before, the Holy Spirit, by the mouth of the prophet Joel, had foretold that in the last days the Spirit should be poured out upon all flesh, and that their sons and daughters should prophesy. And the same Spirit that spoke through Joel now made Peter to see and declare that this Pentecostal baptism was that of which Joel spoke. By the mouth of David He had said: “Thou wilt not leave My soul in hell, neither wilt Thou suffer Thy Holy One to see corruption”; and now Peter, by the inspiration of the same Spirit, applies this Scripture to the resurrection of Jesus, and so proves to the Jews that the One they had condemned and killed was the Holy One foretold in prophecy and psalm. And so to-day the Holy Spirit inspires men who receive Him to use the Scriptures to awaken, convict, and save men. When Finney was a young preacher, he was invited to a country school-house to preach. On the way there he became much distressed in soul, and his mind seemed blank and dark, when all at once this text, spoken to Lot in Sodom by the angels, came to his mind: “Up, get you out of this place; for the Lord will destroy this city.” He explained the text, told the people about Lot, and the wickedness of Sodom, and applied it to them. While he spoke they began to look exceedingly angry, and then, as he earnestly exhorted them to give up their sins and seek the Lord, they began to fall from their seats as though stricken down in battle, and to cry to God for mercy. A great revival followed; many were converted, and a number of the converts became ministers of the Gospel. To Finney’s amazement, he learned afterwards that the place was called Sodom, because of its extreme wickedness, and the old man who had invited him to preach was called Lot, because he was the only God-fearing man in the place. Evidently the Holy Spirit worked through Finney to accomplish these results. And such inspiration is not uncommon with those who are filled with the Spirit. But this reinforcement of the mind and memory by the Holy Spirit does not do away with the need of study. The Spirit quickens that which is already in the mind and memory, as the warm sun and rains of spring quicken the sleeping seeds that are in the ground, and only those. The sun does not put the seed in the soil, nor does the Holy Spirit without our attention and study put the word of God in our minds. For that we should prayerfully and patiently study. “We will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word,” said the Apostles. “Study to show thyself approved of God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed; rightly dividing the word of truth,” wrote Paul to Timothy. Those men have been best able to rightly divide the word, and have been most mightily used by the Holy Spirit, who have most carefully and prayerfully studied the word of God, and most constantly and lovingly meditated upon it. 4. This preaching is healing and comforting. Preaching “with the Holy Ghost sent down from Heaven” is indescribably searching in its effects. But it is also edifying, strengthening, comforting to those who are wholly the Lord’s. It cuts, but only to cure. It searches, but only to save. It is constructive, as well as destructive. It tears down sin and pride and unbelief, but it builds up faith and righteousness and holiness and all the graces of a Christian character. It warms the heart with love, strengthens faith, and confirms the will in all holy purposes. Every preacher baptised with the Holy Ghost can say with Jesus: “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me; because the Lord hath anointed Me to preach good tidings unto the meek; He hath sent Me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn.” Seldom is there a congregation in which there are only those who need to be convicted. There will also be meek and gentle ones to whom should be brought a message of joy and good tidings; broken-hearted ones to be bound up; wounded ones to heal; tempted ones to be delivered; and those whom Satan has bound by some fear or habit to be set free; and the Holy Spirit who knows all hearts will inspire the word that shall bless these needy ones. The preacher filled with the Holy Spirit, who is instant in prayer, constant in the study of God’s word, and steadfast and active in faith, will surely be so helped that he can say with Isaiah: “The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary” (Isaiah i. 4). And as with little Samuel, the Lord will “let none of his words fall to the ground” (1 Samuel iii. 19). He will expect results, and God will make them follow his preaching as surely as corn follows the planting and cultivating of the farmer. “Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?”

XVIII.

The Holy Spirit’s Call to the Work

“Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.” “THE Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me; because the Lord hath anointed Me to preach good tidings unto the meek; He hath sent Me” (Isaiah lxi. 1), is the testimony of the workman God sends. God chooses His own workmen, and it is the office of the Holy Spirit to call whom He will to preach the Gospel. I doubt not He calls men to other employments for His glory, and would still more often do so, if men would but listen and wait upon Him to know His will. He called Bezaleel and Aholiab to build the tabernacle. He called and commissioned the Gentile king, Cyrus, to rebuild Jerusalem and restore His chastised and humbled people to their own land. And did He not call Joan of Arc to her strange and wonderful mission? And Washington and Lincoln? And, no doubt, He leads most men by His providence to their life-work; but the call to preach the Gospel is more than a providential leading; it is a distinct and imperative conviction. Bishop Simpson, in his “Lectures on Preaching,” says:—­ “Even in its faintest form there is this distinction between a call to the ministry and a choice of other professions: a young man may wish to be a physician; he may desire to enter the navy; he would like to be a farmer; but he feels he ought to be a minister. It is this feeling of ought, or obligation, which in its feeblest form indicates the Divine call. It is not in the aptitude, taste, or desire, but in the conscience, that its root is found. It is the voice of God to the human conscience, saying, ‘You ought to preach.’” Sometimes the call comes as distinctly as though a voice had spoken from the skies into the depths of the heart. A young man who was studying law was converted. After a while he was convicted for sanctification, and while seeking he heard, as it were, a voice, saying, “Will you devote all your time to the Lord?” He replied: “I am to be a lawyer, not a preacher, Lord.” But not until he had said, “Yes, Lord,” could he find the blessing. A thoughtless, godless young fellow was working in the corn-field when a telegram was handed him announcing the death of his brother, a brilliant and devoted Salvation Army Field Officer; and there and then, unsaved as he was, God called him, showed him a vast Army with ranks broken, where his brother had fallen, and made him to feel that he should fill the breach in the ranks. Fourteen months later he took up the sword, and entered the Fight from the same platform from which his brother fell, and is to-day one of our most successful and promising Field Officers. Again, the call may come as a quiet suggestion, a gentle conviction, as though a gossamer bridle were placed upon the heart and conscience to guide the man into the work of the Lord. The suggestion gradually becomes clearer, the conviction strengthens until it masters the man, and if he seeks to escape it, he finds the silken bridle to be one of stoutest thongs and firmest steel. It was so with me. When but a boy of eleven, I heard a man preaching, and I said to myself, “Oh, how beautiful to preach!” Two years later I was converted, and soon the conviction came upon me that I should preach. Later, I decided to follow another profession; but the conviction increased in strength, while I struggled against it, and turned away my ears and went on with my studies. Yet in every crisis, or hour of stillness, when my soul faced God, the conviction that I must preach burned itself deeper into my conscience. I rebelled against it. I felt I would almost rather (but not quite) go to Hell than to submit. Then at last a great “Woe is me, if I preach not the Gospel,” took possession of me, and I yielded, and God won. Hallelujah! The first year He gave me three revivals, with many souls; and now I would rather preach Jesus to poor sinners and feed His lambs than to be an archangel before the Throne. Some day, some day, He will call me into His blessed presence, and I shall stand before His face, and praise Him for ever for counting me worthy, and calling me to preach His glad Gospel, and share in His joy of saving the lost. The “woe” is lost in love and delight through the baptism of the Spirit and the sweet assurance that Jesus is pleased. Occasionally, the call comes to a man who is ready and responds promptly and gladly. When Isaiah received the fiery touch that purged his life and purified his heart, he “heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” And in the joy and power of his new experience, he cried out, “Here am I; send me!” (Isaiah vi. 5-8). When Paul received his call, he says, “Immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood” (Gal. i. 16), and he got up and went as the Lord led him. But more often it seems the Lord finds men preoccupied with other plans and ambitions, or encompassed with obstacles and difficulties, or oppressed with a deep sense of unworthiness or unfitness. Moses argued that he could not talk. “O Lord!” he said, “I am not eloquent, neither heretofore nor since Thou hast spoken unto Thy servant; but I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue.” And then the Lord condescended, as He always does, to reason with the backward man. “Who hath made man’s mouth?” He asks, “or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the Lord? Now, therefore, go, and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say” (Exodus iv. 10-12). When the call of God came to Jeremiah, he shrank back, and said, “Ah, Lord God! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child.” But the Lord replied, “Say not, I am a child: for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak. Be not afraid of their faces, for I am with thee to deliver thee” (Jeremiah i. 6-8). And so the call of God comes to-day to those who shrink and feel that they are the most unfit, or most hedged in by insuperable difficulties. I know a man, who, when converted, could not tell A from B. He knew nothing whatever about the Bible, and stammered so badly that, when asked his own name, it would usually take him a minute or so to tell it; added to this, he lisped badly, and was subject to a nervous affliction which seemed likely to unfit him for any kind of work whatever. But God poured light and love into his heart, called him to preach, and to-day he is one of the mightiest soul-winners in the whole round of my acquaintance. When he speaks the house is always packed to the doors, and the people hang on his words with wonder and joy. He was converted at a Camp meeting, and sanctified wholly in a cornfield. He learned to read; but, being too poor to afford a light in the evening, he studied a large-print Bible by the light of the full moon. To-day, he has the Bible almost committed to memory, and when he speaks he does not open the Book, but reads his lesson from memory, and quotes proof texts from Genesis to Revelation without mistake, and gives chapter and verse for every quotation. When he talks his face shines, and his speech is like honey for sweetness, and like bullets fired from a gun for power. He is one of the weak and foolish ones God has chosen to confound the wise and mighty (1 Cor. i. 27). If God calls a man, He will so corroborate the call in some way, that men may know that there is a prophet among them. It will be with him as it was with Samuel. “And Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him, and did let none of His words fall to the ground. And all Israel, from Dan even to Beersheba, knew that Samuel was established to be a prophet of the Lord” (1 Samuel iii. 19, 20). If the man himself is uncertain about the call, God will deal patiently with him, as He did with Gideon, to make him certain. His fleece will be wet with dew when the earth is dry, or dry when the earth is wet; or he will hear of some tumbling barley cake smiting the tents of Midian, that will strengthen his faith, and make him to know that God is with him (Judges vi. 36-40; vii. 9-15). If the door is shut and difficulties hedge the way, God will go before the man He calls, and open the door and sweep away the difficulties (Isaiah xlv. 2, 3). If others think the man so ignorant and unfit that they doubt his call, God will give him such grace or such power to win souls that they shall have to acknowledge that God has chosen him. It was in this way that God made a whole National Headquarters, from the Commissioner downwards, to know that He had chosen the elevator boy for His work. The boy got scores of his passengers on the elevator saved, and then he was commissioned and sent into the Field to devote all his time to saving men. The Lord will surely let the man’s comrades and brethren know, as surely as He did the Church at Antioch, when “the Holy Ghost said, Separate Me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them” (Acts xiii. 2). Sometimes the one who is called will try to hide it in his heart, and then God stirs up some Officer or minister, some Soldier or mother in Israel, to lay a hand on his shoulders, and ask, “Are you not called to the work?” and he finds he cannot hide himself nor escape from the call, any more than could Adam hide himself from God behind the trees of the garden, or Jonah escape God’s call by taking ship for Tarshish. Happy is the man who does not try to escape, but, though trembling at the mighty responsibility, assumes it, and, with all humility and faithfulness, sets to work by prayer and patient, continuous study of God’s word, to fit himself for God’s work. He will need to prepare himself, for the call to the work is also a call to preparation, continuous preparation of the fullest possible kind. The man whom God calls cannot safely neglect or despise the call. He will find his mission on earth, his happiness and peace, his power and prosperity, his reward in Heaven, and probably Heaven itself, bound up with that call and dependent upon it. He may run away from it, as did Jonah, and find a waiting ship to favour his flight; but he will also find fierce storms and bellowing seas overtaking him, and big-mouthed fishes of trouble and disaster ready to swallow him. But if he heeds the call, and cheerfully goes where God appoints, God will go with him; he shall nevermore be left alone. The Holy Spirit will surely accompany him, and he may be one of the happiest men on earth, one of the gladdest creatures in God’s universe. “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world,” said Jesus, as He commissioned His disciples to go to all nations and preach the Gospel. “My presence shall go with thee,” said Jehovah to Moses, when sending him to face Pharaoh and free Israel, and lead them to the Promised Land. And to the boy Jeremiah, He said, “Be not afraid of their faces: for I am with thee to deliver thee…. And they shall fight against thee; but they shall not prevail against thee; for I am with thee” (Jeremiah i. 8, 19). I used to read these words with a great and rapturous joy, as I realised by faith that they were also meant for me, and for every man sent of God, and that His blessed presence was with me every time I spoke to the people or dealt with an individual soul, or knelt in prayer with a penitent seeker after God; and I still read them so. Has He called you into the work, my brother? And are you conscious of His helpful, sympathising, loving presence with you? If so, let no petty offence, no hardship, nor danger, nor dread of the future, cause you to turn aside or draw back. Stick to the work till He calls you out, and when He so calls you can go with open face and a heart abounding with love, joy, and peace, and He will still go with you. “Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?”

XIX.

The Sheathed Sword: A Law of the Spirit

“Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.” Just as the moss and the oak are higher in the order of creation than the clod of clay and the rock, the bird and beast than the moss and the oak, the man than the bird and the beast, so the spiritual man is a higher being than the natural man. The sons of God are a new order of being. The Christian is a “new creation.” Just as there are laws governing the life of the plant, and other and higher laws that of the bird and beast, so there are higher laws for man, and still higher for the Christian. It was with regard to one of these higher laws that govern the heavenly life of the Christian that Jesus said to Peter, “Put up thy sword.” Jesus said to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world; if My kingdom were of this world, then would My servants fight.” The natural man is a fighter. It is the law of his carnal nature. He fights with fist and sword, tongue and wit. His kingdom is of this world, and he fights for it with such weapons as this world furnishes. The Christian is a citizen of Heaven, and is subject to its law, which is universal, wholehearted love. In his kingdom he conquers not by fighting, but by submitting. When an enemy takes his coat, he overcomes him, not by going to law, but by generously giving him his cloak also. When his enemy compels him to go a mile with him, he vanquishes the enemy by cheerfully going two miles with him. When he is smitten on one cheek, he wins his foe by meekly turning the other cheek. This is the law of the new life from Heaven, and only by recognising and obeying it can that new life be sustained and passed on to others. This is the narrow way which leads to life eternal, “and few there be that find it,” or, finding it, are willing to walk in it. A Russian peasant, Sutajeff, could get no help from the religious teachers of his village, so he learned to read, and while studying the Bible he found this narrow way, and walked gladly in it. One night neighbours of his stole some of his grain, but in their haste or carelessness they left a bag. He found it, and ran after them to restore it, “for,” said he, “fellows who have to steal must be hard up.” And by this Christlike spirit he saved both himself and them, for he kept the spirit of love in his own heart, and they were converted and became his most ardent disciples. A beggar woman, to whom he gave lodging, stole the bedding and ran away with it. She was pursued by the neighbours, and was just about to be put in prison when Sutajeff appeared, became her advocate, secured her acquittal, and gave her food and money for her journey. He recognised the law of his new life and gladly obeyed it, and so was not overcome of evil, but persistently and triumphantly overcame evil with good (Romans xii. 21). This is the spirit and method of Jesus; and by men filled with this spirit and following this method He will yet win the world. He came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many. His spirit is not one of self-seeking, but of self-sacrifice. Some mysterious majesty of His presence or voice so awed and overcame His foes that they went back and fell to the ground before Him in the Garden of His agony, but He meekly submitted Himself to them; and when Peter laid to with his sword, and cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant, Jesus said to him, “Put up thy sword into the sheath; the cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?” This was the spirit of Isaac. When he digged a well, the Philistines strove with his servants for it; so he digged another; and when they strove for that, he removed and digged yet another, “and for that they strove not: and he called the name of it Rehoboth” (margin, room): “and he said, For now the Lord hath made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land…. And the Lord appeared unto him the same night, and said, I am the God of Abraham, thy father: fear not, for I am with thee, and will bless thee, and multiply thy seed” (Genesis xxvi. 22, 24). This was the spirit of David, when Saul was hunting for his life; twice David could have slain him, and when urged to do so, he said, “As the Lord liveth, the Lord shall smite him; or his day shall come to die; or he shall descend into battle and perish. The Lord forbid that I should stretch forth my hand against the Lord’s anointed” (1 Samuel xxvi. 10, 11). This was the spirit of Paul. He says, “Being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it; being defamed, we intreat” (1 Cor. iv. 12, 13). “The servant of the Lord must not strive,” wrote Paul to Timothy, “but be gentle unto all men.” This is the spirit of our King, this is the law of His Kingdom. Is this your spirit? When you are reviled, bemeaned and slandered, and are tempted to retort, He says to you, “Put up thy sword into the sheath.” When you are wronged and illtreated, and men ride rough-shod over you, and you feel it but just to smite back, He says, “Put up thy sword into the sheath.” “Live peaceably with all men.” Your weapons are not carnal, but spiritual, now that you belong to Him, and have your citizenship in Heaven. If you fight with the sword; if you retort and smite back when you are wronged, you quench the Spirit; you get out of the narrow way, and your new life from Heaven will perish. An Officer went to a hard Corps, and after a while found that his predecessor was sending back to friends for money which his own Corps much needed. He felt it to be an injustice, and, losing sight of the Spirit of Jesus, he made a complaint about it, and the money was returned. But he got lean in his soul. He had quenched the Spirit. He had broken the law of the Kingdom. He had not only refused to give his cloak, but had fought for and secured the return of the coat. He had lost the smile of Jesus, and his poor heart was sad and heavy within him. He came to me with anxious inquiry as to what I thought of his action. I had to admit that the other man had transgressed, and that the money ought to be returned, but that he should have been more grieved over the unchristlike spirit of his brother than over the loss of the five dollars, and that like Sutajeff he should have said, “Poor fellow! he must be hard up; I will send him five dollars myself. He has taken my coat, he shall have my cloak too.” When I told him that story, he came to himself very quickly, and was soon back in the narrow way and rejoicing in the smile of Jesus once again. “But will not people walk over us, if we do not stand up for our rights?” you ask. I do not argue that you are not to stand up for your rights; but that you are to stand up for your higher rather than your lower rights, the rights of your heavenly life rather than your earthly life, and that you are to stand up for your rights in the way and spirit of Jesus rather than in the way and spirit of the world. If men wrong you intentionally, they wrong themselves far worse than they wrong you; and if you have the spirit of Jesus in your heart you will pity them more than you pity yourself. They nailed Jesus to the cross and hung Him up to die; they gave Him gall and vinegar to drink; they cast votes for His seamless robe, and divided His garments between them, while the crowd wagged their heads at Him and mocked Him. Great was the injustice and wrong they were inflicting upon Him, but He was not filled with anger, only pity. He thought not of the wrong done Him, but of the wrong they did themselves, and their sin against His Heavenly Father, and He prayed not for judgment upon them, but that they might be forgiven, and He won them, and is winning and will win the world. Bless God! “By mercy and truth iniquity is purged,” wrote Solomon. “Put up thy sword into the sheath, “and take mercy and truth for your weapons, and God will be with you and for you, and great shall be your victory and joy. Hallelujah! “Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?”

XX.

Victory Through the Holy Spirit Over Suffering

“Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.” Had there been no sin our Heavenly Father would have found other means by which to develop in us passive virtues, and train us in the graces of meekness, patience, long-suffering, and forbearance, which so beautify and display the Christian character. But since sin is here, with its contradictions and falsehoods, its darkness, its wars, brutalities and injustices, producing awful harvests of pain and sorrow, God, in wonderful wisdom and lovingkindness, turns even these into instruments by which to fashion in us beautiful graces. Storm succeeds sunshine, and darkness the light; pain follows hard on the heels of pleasure, while sorrow peers over the shoulder of joy; gladness and grief, rest and toil, peace and war, interminably intermingled, follow each other in ceaseless succession in this world. We cannot escape suffering while in the body. But we can receive it with a faith that robs it of its terror, and extracts from it richest blessing; from the flinty rock will gush forth living waters, and the carcase of the lion will furnish the sweetest honey. This is so even when the suffering is a result of our own folly or sin. It is intended not only in some measure as a punishment, but also as a teacher, a corrective, a remedy, a warning; and it will surely work for good, if, instead of repining and vainly regretting the past, we steadily look unto Jesus and learn our lesson in patience and thankfulness. “If all the skies were sunshine, Our faces would be fain To feel once more upon them The cooling plash of rain. “If all the world were music, Our hearts would often long For one sweet strain of silence To break the endless song. “If life were always merry, Our souls would seek relief And rest from weary laughter In the quiet arms of grief.” Doubtless all our suffering is a result of sin, but not necessarily the sin of the sufferer. Jesus was the sinless One, but He was also the Chief of sufferers. Paul’s great and lifelong sufferings came upon him, not because of his sins, but rather because he had forsaken sin, and was following Jesus in a world of sin, and seeking the salvation of his fellows. In this path there is no escape from suffering, though there are hidden and unspeakable consolations. “In the world ye shall have tribulation,” said Jesus. “All that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution,” wrote Paul. Sooner or later, suffering in some form comes to each of us. It may come through broken health, or pain and weariness of body; or through mental anguish, moral distress, spiritual darkness and uncertainty. It may come through the loss of loved ones, through betrayal by trusted friends; or through deferred or ruined hopes, or base ingratitude; or perhaps in unrequited toil and sacrifice and ambitions all unfulfilled. Nothing more clearly distinguishes the man filled with the Spirit from the man who is not than the way each receives suffering. One with triumphant faith and shining face and strong heart glories in tribulation, and counts it all joy. To this class belong the Apostles, who, beaten and threatened, “departed from the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His Name” (Acts v. 41). The other with doubts and fears, murmurs and complains, and to his other miseries adds that of a rebellious heart and discontented mind. One sees the enemy’s armed host, and unmixed distress and danger; the other sees the angel of the Lord, with abundant succour and safety (2 Kings vi. 15-17). An evangelist of my acquaintance told a story that illustrates this. When a pastor he went one morning to visit two sisters who were greatly afflicted. They were about the same age, and had long been professing Christians and members of the Church. He asked the first one upon whom he called, “How is it with you this morning?” “Oh, I have not slept all night,” she replied. “I have so much pain. It is so hard to have to lie here. I cannot see why God deals so with me.” Evidently, she was not filled with the Spirit, but was in a controversy with the Lord about her sufferings, and would not be comforted. Leaving her he called immediately upon the other sister, and asked, “How are you to-day?” “Oh, I had such a night of suffering!” she replied. “Then,” said he, “there came out upon her worn face, furrowed and pale, a beautiful radiance, and she added, “but Jesus was so near and helped me so, that I could suffer this way and more, if my Father thinks best”; and on she went with like words of cheer and triumph that made the sick room a vestibule of glory. No lack of comfort in her heart, for the Comforter Himself, the Holy Spirit, had been invited and had come in. One had the Comforter in fullness, the other had not. Probably, no man ever suffered more than Paul, but with soldier-like fortitude he bore his heavy burdens, faced his constant and exacting labours, endured his sore trials, disappointments, and bitter persecutions by fierce and relentless enemies; he stood unmoved amid shipwrecks, stripes and imprisonments, cold, hunger, and homelessness without a whimper that might suggest repining or discouragement, or an appeal for pity. Indeed, he went beyond simple uncomplaining fortitude, and said, “we glory in tribulation” (Romans v. 3); “I am exceeding joyful in all our tribulation” (2 Cor. vii. 4); “I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake” (2 Cor. xii. 10). After a terrible scourging upon his bare back, he was thrust into a loathsome inner dungeon, his feet fast in the stocks, with worse things probably awaiting him on the morrow. Nevertheless, we find him and Silas, his companion in suffering, at midnight praying and singing praises unto God (Acts xvi. 25). What is his secret? Listen to him: “Because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us” (Romans v. 5). His prayer for his Ephesian brethren had been answered in his own heart: “That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.” And this inner strength and consciousness, through faith, in an indwelling Christ enabled him to receive suffering and trial, not stoically as the Red Indian, nor hilariously, in a spirit of bravado, but cheerfully and with a thankful heart. Arnold of Rugby has written something about his “most dear and blessed sister” that illustrates the power flowing from exhaustless fountains of inner joy and strength through the working of the Holy Spirit. He says:—­ “I never saw a more perfect instance of the spirit and power of love, and of a sound mind. Her life was a daily martyrdom for twenty years, during which she adhered to her early-formed resolution of never talking about herself; she was thoughtful about the very pins and ribands of my wife’s dress, about the making of a doll’s cap for a child—­but of herself, save only as regarded her ripening in all goodness, wholly thoughtless, enjoying everything lovely, graceful, beautiful, high-minded, whether in God’s works or man’s, with the keenest relish; inheriting the earth to the very fullness of the promise, though never leaving her crib, nor changing her posture; and preserved, through the very valley of the shadow of death, from all fear or impatience, and from every cloud of impaired reason, which might mar the beauty of Christ’s and the Spirit’s work.” It is not by hypnotising the soul, nor by blessing it into a state of ecstatic insensibility, that the Lord enables the man filled with the Spirit to thus triumph over suffering. Rather it is by giving the soul a sweet, constant, and unshaken assurance through faith: First, that it is freely and fully accepted in Christ. Second, that whatever suffering comes, it is measured, weighed, and permitted by love infinitely tender, and guided by wisdom that cannot err. Third, that however difficult it may be to explain suffering now, it is nevertheless one of the “all things” which “work together for good to them that love God,” and that in a “little while” it will not only be swallowed up in the ineffable blessedness and glory, but that in some way it is actually helping to work out “a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” (2 Cor. iv. 7). Fourth, that though the furnace has been heated seven times hotter than was wont, yet “the Form… like unto the Son of God” is walking with us in the fire; though triumphant enemies have thrust us into the lions’ den, yet the angel of the Lord arrived first and locked the lions’ jaws; though foes may have formed against us sharp weapons, yet they cannot prosper, for His shield and buckler defend us; though all things be lost, yet “Thou remainest”; and though “my flesh and my heart may fail, God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever.” Not all God’s dear children thus triumph over their difficulties and sufferings, but this is God’s standard, and they may attain unto it, if, by faith, they will open their hearts and “be filled with the Spirit.” Here is the testimony of a Salvation Army Officer up to date:—­ “Viewed from the outside, my life as a sinner was easy and untroubled, over which most of my friends expressed envy; while these same friends thought my life as a Christian full of care, toil, hardship, and immense loss. This, however, was only an outside view, and the real state of the case was exactly the opposite of what they supposed. For in all the pleasure-seeking, idleness, and freedom from responsibility of my life apart from God, I carried an immeasurable burden of fear, anxiety, and constantly recurring disappointment; trifles weighed upon me, and the thought of death haunted me with vague terrors. “But when I gave myself wholly to God, though my lot became at once one of toil, responsibility, comparative poverty and sacrifice, yet I could not feel pain in any storm that broke over my head, because of the presence of God. It was not so much that I was insensible to trouble, as sensible of His presence and love; and the worst trials were as nothing in my sight, nor have been for over twenty-two years. While as for death, it appears only as a doorway into more abundant life, and I can alter an old German hymn, and sing with joy: “‘Oh, how my heart with rapture dances. To think my dying hour advances! Then, Lord, with Thee! My Lord, with Thee!’” This is faith’s triumph over the worst the world can offer through the blessed fullness of the indwelling Comforter. Bless His Name! “Here speaks the Comforter, Light of the straying, Hope of the penitent, Advocate sure, Joy of the desolate, tenderly saying, ‘Earth has no sorrow My grace cannot cure.’” “Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?”

XXI.

The Overflowing Blessing

“Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.” The children of Israel were instructed by Moses to give tithes of all they had to the Lord, and in return God promised to richly bless them, making their fields and vineyards fruitful and causing their flocks and herds to safely multiply. But they became covetous and unbelieving, and began to rob God by withholding their tithes, and then God began to withhold His blessing from them. But still God loved and pitied them, and sent to them again and again by His prophets; and finally by the prophet Malachi He said: “Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in Mine house, and prove Me now herewith, saith the Lord of Hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it” (Malachi iii. 10). He promised to make their barns overflow, if they would be faithful, if they would pay their tithes and discharge their obligations to Him. Now, this overflow of barns and granaries is a type of overflowing hearts and lives when we give ourselves fully to God, and the blessed Holy Ghost comes in, and Jesus becomes all and in all to us. The blessing is too big to contain, but just bursts out and overflows through the life, the looks, the conversation, the very tones of the voice, and gladdens and refreshes and purifies wherever it goes. Jesus calls it “rivers of living water” (John vii. 38). There is an overflow of love. Sin brings in an overflow of hate, so that the world is filled with wars and murders, slanders, oppression, and selfishness. But this blessing causes love to overflow. Schools, colleges, and hospitals are built; shelters, rescue homes, and orphanages are opened; even war itself is in some measure humanised by the Red Cross Society and Christian commissions. Sinners love their own, but this blessing makes us to love all men—­strangers, the heathen, and even our enemies. There is an overflow of peace. It settles old quarrels and grudges. It makes a different atmosphere in the home. The children know it when father and mother get the Comforter. Kindly words and sweet goodwill take the place of bitterness and strife. I suspect that even the dumb beasts realise the overflow. I heard a laughable story of a man whose cow would switch her tail in his face, and then kick over the pail when he was milking her, after which he would always give her a beating with the stool on which he sat. But he got the blessing, and his heart was overflowing with peace. The next morning he went to milk that cow, and when the pail was nearly full, swish! came the tail in his face, and with a vicious kick she knocked over the pail, and then ran across the barn-yard. The blessed man picked up the empty pail and stool and went over to the cow, which stood trembling, awaiting the usual kicks and beating; but instead he patted her gently, and said, “You may kick over that pail as often as you please, but I am not going to beat you any more”; and the cow seemed to understand, for she dropped her head and quietly began to eat, and never kicked again! That story is good enough to be true, and I doubt not it is, for certainly when the Comforter comes a great peace fills the heart and overflows through all the life. There is an overflow of joy. It makes the face to shine; it glances from the eye, and bubbles out in thanksgiving and praise. You never can tell when one who has the blessing will shout out, “Glory to God! Praise the Lord! Hallelujah! Amen!” I have sometimes seen a whole congregation wakened up and refreshed and made glad by the joyous overflow from one clean-hearted soul. A Salvation Soldier or Officer with an overflow of genuine joy is worth a whole company of ordinary folks. He is a host within himself, and is a living proof of the text, “The joy of the Lord is your strength.” There is an overflow of patience and long-suffering. A man got this blessing, and his wicked wife was so enraged that she left him, and went across the way and lived as the wife of his unmarried brother. He was terribly tempted to take his gun and go over and kill them both. But he prayed about it, and the Lord gave him the patience and long-suffering of Jesus, who bears long with the backslider who leaves Him and joins himself with the world; and he continued to treat them with the utmost kindness, as though they had done him no wrong. Some people might say the man was weak, but I should say he was unusually “strong in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,” and a neighbour of his told me that all his neighbours believed in his religion. There is an overflow of goodness and generosity. I read the other day of a poor man who supports eight workers in the foreign mission field. When asked how he did it, he replied that he wore celluloid collars, did his own washing, denied himself, and managed his affairs in order to do it. Do you ask, “How can I get such a blessing?” You will get it by bringing in all the tithes, by giving yourself in love and obedience and wholehearted, joyous consecration to Jesus, as a true bride gives herself to her husband. Do not try to bargain with the Lord and buy it of Him, but wait on Him in never-give-in prayer and confident expectation, and He will give it to you. And then you must not hold it selfishly for your own gratification, but let it overflow to the hungry, thirsty, fainting world about you. God bless you even now, and do for you exceeding abundantly above all you ask or think! A comrade went from one of my meetings recently with a heart greatly burdened for the blessing, and for two or three days and nights did little else but read the Bible, and pray and cry to God for a clean heart filled with the Spirit. At last the Comforter came, and with Him fullness of peace and joy and soul-rest, and that day this comrade led a number of others into the blessing. Hallelujah! “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him” (Luke xi. 13). “Ask,… seek,… knock.” “Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?”

XXII.

Importance of the Doctrine and Experience of Holiness to Spiritual Leaders

“Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.” A mighty man inspires and trains other men to be mighty. We wonder and exclaim often at the slaughter of Goliath by David, and we forget that David was the forerunner of a race of fearless, invincible warriors and giant-killers. If we would in this light but study and remember the story of David’s mighty men, it would be most instructive to us. Moses inspired a tribe of cowering, toiling, sweat-begrimed, spiritless slaves to lift up their heads, straighten their backs, and throw off the yoke; and he led them forth with songs of victory and shouts of triumph from under the mailed hand and iron bondage of Pharaoh. He fired them with a national spirit, and welded and organised them into a distinct and compact people that could be hurled with resistless power against the walled cities and trained warriors of Canaan. But what was the secret of David and Moses? Whence the superiority of these men? David was only a stripling shepherd-boy when he immortalised himself. What was his secret? To be sure, Moses was “instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians,” and, doubtless, had been trained in all the civil, military, and scientific learning of his day, but he was so weak in himself that he feared and fled at the first word of questioning and disparagement that he heard (Exodus ii. 14), and spent the next forty years feeding sheep for another man in the rugged wilderness of Sinai. What, then, was his secret? Doubtless, they were men cast in a kinglier mould than most men; but their secret was not in themselves. Joseph Parker declared that great lives are built on great promises, and so they are. These men had so far humbled themselves that they found God. They got close to Him, and He spoke to them. He gave them promises. He revealed His way and truth to them, and trusting Him, believing His promises, and fashioning their lives according to His truth—­His doctrine—­ everything else followed. They became “workers together with God,” heroes of faith, leaders of men, builders of empire, teachers of the race, and, in an important sense, saviours of mankind. Their secret is an open one; it is the secret of every truly successful spiritual leader from then till now, and there is no other way to success in spiritual leadership. 1. They had an experience. They knew God. 2. This experience, this acquaintance with God, was maintained and deepened and broadened in obedience to God’s teaching, or truth, or doctrine. 3. They patiently yet urgently taught others what they themselves had learned, and declared, so far as they saw it, the whole counsel of God. They were abreast of the deepest experiences and fullest revelations God had yet made to men. They were leaders, not laggards. They were not in the rear of the procession of God’s warriors and saints; they were in the forefront. Here we discover the importance of the doctrine and experience of holiness through the baptism of the Holy Spirit to Salvation Army leaders. We are to know God and glorify Him and reveal Him to men. We are to finish the work of Jesus, and “fill up that which is behind of the sufferings of Christ” (Col. i. 24). We are to rescue the slaves of sin, to make a people, to fashion them into a holy nation, and inspire and lead them forth to save the world. How can we do this? Only by being in the forefront of God’s spiritual hosts; not in name and in titles only, but in reality; by being in glad possession of the deepest experiences God gives, and the fullest revelations He makes to men. The astonishing military and naval successes of the Japanese are said to be due to their profound study, clear understanding, and firm grasp of the theory, the principles, the doctrines of war; their careful and minute preparation of every detail of their campaigns; the scientific accuracy and precision with which they carry out all their plans, and their splendid and utter personal devotion to their cause. Our war is far more complex and desperate than theirs, and its issues are infinitely more far-reaching, and we must equip ourselves for it; and nothing is so vital to our cause as a mastery of the doctrine and an assured and joyous possession of the Pentecostal experience of holiness through the indwelling Spirit. I. The Doctrine.—­What is the teaching of God’s word about holiness? 1. If we carefully study God’s word, we find that He wants His people to be holy, and the making of a holy people, after the pattern of Jesus, is the crowning work of the Holy Spirit. He commands us to “cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord” (2 Cor. vii. 1). It is prayed that we may “increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men… to the end He may stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God” (1 Thess. iii. 12, 13). He says: “As He which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; because it is written, Be ye holy, for I am holy” (1 Peter i. 15, 16). And in the most earnest manner we are exhorted to “follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord” (Hebrews xii. 14). 2. As we further study the word, we discover that holiness is more than simple freedom from condemnation for wrong-doing. A helpless invalid lying on his bed of sickness, unable to do anything wrong, may be free from the condemnation of actual wrong-doing, and yet it may be in his heart to do all manner of evil. Holiness on its negative side is a state of heart purity; it is heart cleanness—­cleanness of thought and temper and disposition, cleanness of intention and purpose and wish; it is a state of freedom from all sin, both inward and outward (Romans vi. 18). On the positive side it is a state of union with God in Christ, in which the whole man becomes a temple of God and filled with the fruit of the Spirit, which is “love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.” It is moral and spiritual sympathy and harmony with God in the holiness of His nature. We must not, however, confound purity with maturity. Purity is a matter of the heart, and is secured by an instantaneous act of the Holy Spirit; maturity is largely a matter of the head and results from growth in knowledge and experience. In one, the heart is made clean, and is filled with love; in the other, the head is gradually corrected and filled with light, and so the heart is enlarged and more firmly established in faith; consequently, the experience deepens and becomes stronger and more robust in every way. It is for this reason that we need teachers after we are sanctified, and to this end we are exhorted to humbleness of mind. Importance of the Doctrine. With a heart full of sympathy and love for his father my little boy may voluntarily go into the garden to weed the vegetables; but, being yet ignorant, lacking light in his head, he pulls up my sweet corn with the grass and weeds. His little heart glows with pleasure and pride in the thought that he is “helping papa,” and yet he is doing the very thing I don’t want him to do. But if I am a wise and patient father, I shall be pleased with him; for what is the loss of my few stalks of corn compared to the expression and development of his love and loyalty? And I shall commend him for the love and faithful purpose of his little heart, while I patiently set to work to enlighten the darkness of his little head. His heart is pure toward his father, but he is not yet mature. In this matter of light and maturity holy people often widely differ, and this causes much perplexity and needless and unwise anxiety. In the fourteenth chapter of Romans, Paul discusses and illustrates the principle underlying this distinction between purity and maturity. 3. As we continue to study the word under the illumination of the Spirit, who is given to lead us into all truth, we further learn that holiness is not a state which we reach in conversion. The Apostles were converted, they had forsaken all to follow Jesus (Matthew xix. 27-29), their names were written in Heaven (Luke x. 20), and yet they were not holy. They doubted and feared, and again and again were they rebuked for the slowness and littleness of their faith. They were bigoted, and wanted to call down fire from Heaven to consume those who would not receive Jesus (Luke ix. 51-56); they were frequently contending among themselves as to which should be the greatest, and when the supreme test came they all forsook Him and fled. Certainly, they were not only afflicted with darkness in their heads, but, far worse, carnality in their hearts; they were His, and they were very dear to Him, but they were not yet holy, they were yet impure of heart. Paul makes this point very clear in his Epistle to the Corinthians. He tells them plainly that they were yet only babes in Christ, because they were carnal and contentious (I Cor. iii. I). They were in Christ, they had been converted, but they were not holy. It is of great importance that we keep this truth well in mind that men may be truly converted, may be babes in Christ, and yet not be pure in heart; we shall then sympathise more fully with them, and see the more clearly how to help them and guide their feet into the way of holiness and peace. Those who hold that we are sanctified wholly in conversion will meet with much to perplex them in their converts, and are not intelligently equipped to bless and help God’s little children. 4. A continued study of God’s teaching on this subject will clearly reveal to us that purity of heart is obtained after we are converted. Peter makes this very plain in his address to the Council in Jerusalem, where he recounts the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon Cornelius and his household. After mentioning the gift of the Holy Ghost, he adds, “and put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith” (Acts xv. 9). Among other things, then, the baptism of the Holy Ghost purifies the heart; but the disciples were converted before they received this Pentecostal experience, so we see that heart purity, or holiness, is a work wrought in us after conversion. Again, we notice that Peter says, “purifying their hearts by faith.” If it is by faith, then it is not by growth, nor by works, nor by death, nor by purgatory after death. It is God’s work. He purifies the heart, and He does it for those, and only those who, devoting all their possessions and powers to Him, seek Him by simple, prayerful, obedient, expectant, unwavering faith through His Son our Saviour. Unless we grasp these truths, and hold them firmly, we shall not be able to “rightly divide the word of truth,” we shall hardly be “workmen that need not be ashamed, approved unto God” (2 Tim. ii. 15). Some one has written that “the searcher in science knows that if he but stumble in his hypothesis—­that if he but let himself be betrayed into prejudice or undue leaning toward a pet theory, or anything but absolute uprightness of mind—­his whole work will be stultified and he will fail ignominiously. To get anywhere in science he must follow truth with absolute rectitude.” THE HOLY SPIRIT. And is there not a science of salvation, of holiness, of eternal life, that requires the same absolute loyalty to “the Spirit of Truth”? How infinitely important, then, that we know what that truth is, that we may understand and hold that doctrine. A friend of mine who finished his course with joy, and was called into the presence of his Lord to receive his crown some time ago, has pointed out some mistakes which we must carefully avoid. Here they are:—­ “It is a great mistake to substitute repentance for Bible consecration. The people whom Paul exhorted to full sanctification were those who had turned from their idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for His Son sent down from Heaven (I Thess. i. 9, 10; iii. 10-13; v. 23). “Only people who are citizens of His kingdom can claim His sanctifying power. Those who still have idols to renounce may be candidates for conversion, but not for the baptism with the Holy Ghost and fire. “It is a mistake in consecration to suppose that the person making it has anything of his own to give. We are not our own, but we are bought with a price, and consecration is simply taking our hands off from God’s property. To wilfully withhold anything from God is to be a God-robber. “It is a mistake to substitute a mere mental assent to God’s proprietorship and right to all we have, while withholding complete devotion to Him. This is theoretical consecration—­a rock on which we fear multitudes are being wrecked. Consecration which does not embrace the crucifixion of self and the funeral of all false ambitions is not the kind which will bring the Holy Fire. A consecration is imperfect which does not embrace the speaking faculty” (the tongue), “and the believing faculty” (the heart), “the imagination, and every power of mind, soul, and body, and give all absolutely and for ever into the hands of Jesus, turning a deaf ear to every opposing voice. “Reader, have you made such a consecration as this? It must embrace all this, or it will prove a bed of quicksand to sink your soul, instead of a full salvation balloon, which will safely bear you above the fog and malaria and turmoil of the world, where you can triumphantly sing: “’I rise to float in realms of light, Above the world and sin. With heart made pure and garments white, And Christ enthroned within.’ “It is a mistake to teach seekers to ‘only believe,’ without complete abandonment to God at every point, for they can no more do it than an anchored ship can sail. “It is a mistake to substitute mere verbal assent for obedient trust. ‘Only believe’ is a fatal snare to all who fall into these traps. “It is a mistake to believe that the altar sanctifies the gift without the assurance that all is on the altar. If even the end of your tongue, or one cent of your money, or a straw’s weight of false ambition, or spirit of dictation, or one ounce of your reputation, or will, or believing powers be left off the altar, you can no more believe than a bird without wings can fly. “‘Only believe’ is only for those seekers of holiness who are truly converted, fully consecrated, and crucified to everything but the whole will of God. Teachers who apply this to people who have not yet reached these stations need themselves to be taught. All who have reached them may believe, and if they do believe, may look God in the face, and triumphantly sing: “’The blood, the blood is all my plea, Hallelujah, for it cleanseth me.’” II. The Experience.—­Simply to be skilled in the doctrine is not sufficient for us as leaders. We may be as orthodox as St. Paul himself, and yet be only as “sounding brass and clanging cymbals,” unless we are rooted in the blessed experience of holiness. If we would save ourselves and them that follow us, if we would make havoc of the Devil’s kingdom and build up God’s kingdom, we must not only know and preach the truth, but we must be living examples of the saving and sanctifying power of the truth. We are to be “living epistles, known and read of all men”; we must be able to say with Paul, “follow me as I follow Christ”; and “those things which ye learned and received and heard and saw in me, do; and the God of peace shall be with you.” We must not forget that—­ 1. We are ourselves simple Christians, individual souls struggling for eternal life and liberty, and we must by all means save ourselves. To this end we must be holy, else we shall at last experience the awful woe of those who, having preached to others, are yet themselves castaways. 2. We are leaders upon whom multitudes depend. It is a joy and an honour to be a leader, but it is also a grave responsibility. James says: “We shall receive the heavier judgment” (James iii. i, R.V.). How unspeakable shall be our blessedness, and how vast our reward, if, wise in the doctrine, and rich and strong and clean in the experience of holiness, we lead our people into their full heritage in Jesus! But how terrible shall be our condemnation, and how great our loss, if, in spiritual slothfulness and unbelief, we stop short of the experience ourselves and leave them to perish for want of the gushing waters and heavenly food and Divine direction we should have brought them! We need the experience for ourselves, and we need it for our work and for our people. What the roof is to a house, that the doctrine is to our system of truth. It completes it. What sound and robust health is to our bodies, that the experience is to our souls. It makes us every whit whole, and fits us for all duty. Sweep away the doctrine, and the experience will soon be lost. Lose the experience, and the doctrine will surely be neglected, if not attacked and denied. No man can have the heart, even if he has the head, to fully and faithfully and constantly preach the doctrine unless he has the experience. Spiritual things are spiritually discerned, and as this doctrine deals with the deepest things of the Spirit, it is only clearly understood and is best recommended, explained, defended, and enforced by those who have the experience. Without the experience, the presentation of the doctrine will be faulty and cold and lifeless, or weak and vacillating, or harsh and sharp and severe. With the experience, the preaching of the doctrine will be with great joy and assurance, and will be strong and searching, but at the same time warm and persuasive and tender. I shall never forget the shock of mingled surprise and amusement and grief with which I heard a Captain loudly announce in one of my meetings many years ago that he was “going to preach holiness now,” and his people “have to get it,” if he had to “ram it down their throats.” Poor fellow! He did not possess the experience himself, and never pressed into it and soon forsook his people. A man in the clear experience of the blessing will never think of “ramming” it down people; but will, with much secret prayer, constant meditation and study, patient instruction, faithful warning, loving persuasion, and burning, joyful testimony, seek to lead them into that entire and glad consecration and that fullness of faith that never fail to receive the blessing. Again, the most accurate and complete knowledge of the doctrine, and the fullest possession of the experience, will fail us at last unless we carefully guard ourselves at several points, and unless we watch and pray. 3. We must not judge ourselves so much by our feelings as by our volitions. It is not my feelings, but the purpose of my heart, the attitude of my will, that God looks at, and it is that to which I must look. “If our heart condemns us not, then have we confidence toward God.” A friend of mine who had firmly grasped this thought, and walked continually with God, used to testify: “I am just as good when I don’t feel good as when I do feel good.” Another mighty man of God said that all the feeling he needed to enable him to trust God was the consciousness that he was fully submitted to all the known will of God. We must not forget that the Devil is “the accuser of the brethren” (Rev. xii. 10), and that he seeks to turn our eyes away from Jesus, who is our Surety and our Advocate, to ourselves, our feelings, our infirmities, our failures; and if he succeeds in this, gloom will fill us, doubts and fears will spring up within us, and we shall soon fail and fall. We must be wise as the conies, and build our nest in the cleft of the Rock of Ages. Hallelujah! 4. We must not divorce conduct from character, or works from faith. Our lives must square with our teaching. We must live what we preach. We must not suppose that faith in Jesus excuses us from patient, faithful, laborious service. We must “live by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God”; that is, we must fashion our lives, our conduct, our conversation by the principles laid down in His word, remembering His searching saying, “Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in Heaven.” This subject of faith and works is very fully discussed by James (chap. ii. 14-26), and Paul is very clear in his teaching that, while God saves us not by our works, but by His mercy through faith, yet it is that we may “maintain good work” (Titus iii. 14); and “we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them” (Eph. ii. 8-10). Faith must “work by love,” and emotion must be transmitted into action, and joy must lead to work, and love to faithful, self-sacrificing service, else they become a kind of pleasant and respectable, but none the less deadly, debauchery, and at last ruin us. 5. However blessed and satisfactory our present experience may be, we must not rest in it, but remember that our Lord has yet many things to say unto us, as we are able to receive them. We must stir up the gift of God that is in us, and say with Paul, “One thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward” (as a racer) “to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. iii. 13, 14, R.V.). It is at this point that many fail. They seek the Lord, they weep and struggle and pray, and then they believe; but, instead of pressing on, they sit down to enjoy the blessing, and, lo! it is not. The children of Israel must needs follow the pillar of cloud and fire. It made no difference when it moved—­by day or by night, they followed; and when the Comforter comes we must follow, if we would abide in Him and be filled with all the fullness of God. And, Oh, the joy of following Him! Finally, if we have the blessing—­not the harsh, narrow, unprogressive exclusiveness which often calls itself by the sweet, heavenly term of holiness, but the vigorous, courageous, self-sacrificing, tender, Pentecostal experience of perfect love —­we shall both save ourselves and enlighten the world, our converts will be strong, our Candidates for the work will multiply, and will be able, dare-devil men and women, and our people will come to be like the brethren of Gideon, of whom it was said, “Each one resembled the children of a king.” “Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?”

XXIII.

Victory Over Evil Temper by the Power of the Holy Spirit

“Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.” Two letters recently reached me, one from Oregon, and one from Massachusetts, inquiring if I thought it possible to have temper destroyed. The comrade from Oregon wrote: “I have been wondering if the statement is correct when one says, ’My temper is all taken away.’ Do you think the temper is destroyed or sanctified? It seems to me that if one’s temper were actually gone he would not be good for anything.” The comrade from Massachusetts wrote: “Two of our Corps Cadets have had the question put to them: ’Is it possible to have all temper taken out of our hearts?’ One claims it is possible. The other holds that the temper is not taken out, but God gives power to overcome it.” Evidently these are questions that perplex many people, and yet the answer seems to me simple. Temper, as usually spoken of, is not a faculty or power of the soul, but is rather an irregular, passionate, violent expression of selfishness. When selfishness is destroyed by love, by the incoming of the Holy Spirit, revealing Jesus to us as an uttermost Saviour, and creating within us a clean heart, of course such evil temper is gone, just as the friction and consequent wear and heat of two wheels is gone when the cogs are perfectly adjusted to each other. The wheels are far better off without friction, and just so man is far better off without such temper. We do not destroy the wheels to get rid of the friction, but we readjust them; that is, we put them into just or right relations to each other, and then noiselessly and perfectly they do their work. So, strictly speaking, sanctification does not destroy self, but it destroys selfishness—­the abnormal and mean and dis-ordered manifestation and assertion of self. I myself am to be sanctified, rectified, purified, brought into harmony with God’s will as revealed in His word, and united to Him in Jesus, so that His life of holiness and love flows continually through all the avenues of my being, as the sap of the vine flows through all parts of the branch. “I am the Vine, ye are the branches,” said Jesus. When a man is thus filled with the Holy Spirit he is not made into a putty man, a jelly fish, with all powers of resistance taken out of him; he does not have any less force and “push” and “go” than before, but rather more, for all his natural energy is now reinforced by the Holy Spirit, and turned into channels of love and peace instead of hate and strife. He may still feel indignation in the presence of wrong, but it will not be rash, violent, explosive, and selfish, as before he was sanctified, but calm and orderly, and holy, and determined, like that of God. It will be the wholesome, natural antagonism of holiness and righteousness to all unrighteousness and evil. Such a man will feel it when he is wronged, but it will be much in the same way that he feels when others are wronged. The personal, selfish element will be absent. At the same time there will be pity and compassion and yearning love for the wrong-doer and a greater desire to see him saved than to see him punished. A sanctified man was walking down the street the other day with his wife, when a filthy fellow on a passing wagon insulted her with foul words. Instantly the temptation came to the man to want to get hold of him and punish him, but as instantly the indwelling Comforter whispered, “If ye will forgive men their trespasses;” and instantly the clean heart of the man responded, “I will, I do forgive him, Lord;” and instead of anger a great love filled his soul, and instead of hurling a brick or hot words at the poor Devil-deceived sinner, he sent a prayer to God in Heaven for him. There was no friction in his soul. He was perfectly adjusted to his Lord; his heart was perfectly responsive to his Master’s word, and he could rightly say, “My temper is gone.” A man must have his spiritual eyes wide open to discern the difference between sinful temper and righteous indignation. Many a man wrongs and robs himself by calling his fits of temper “righteous indignation;” while, on the other hand, there is here and there a timid soul who is so afraid of sinning through temper as to suppress the wholesome antagonism that righteousness, to be healthy and perfect, must express towards all unrighteousness and sin. It takes the keen-edged word of God, applied by the Holy Spirit, to cut away unholy temper without destroying righteous antagonism; to enable a man to hate and fight sin with spiritual weapons (2 Cor. x. 3-5), while pitying and loving the sinner; to so fill him with the mind of Jesus that he will feel as badly over a wrong done to a stranger as though it were done to himself; to help him to put away the personal feeling and be as calm and unselfish and judicial in opposing wrong as is the judge upon the bench. Into this state of heart and mind is one brought who is entirely sanctified by the indwelling Holy Spirit. Hallelujah! Dr. Asa Mahan, the friend and co-worker of Finney, had a quick and violent temper in his youth and young manhood; but one day he believed, and God sanctified him, and for fifty years he said he never felt but one uprising of temper, and that was but for an instant, about five years after he received the blessing. For the following forty-five years, though subjected to many trials and provocations, he felt only love and peace and patience and good-will in his heart. A Christian woman was confined to her bed for years with nervous and other troubles, and was very cross and touchy and petulant. At last she became convinced that the Lord had a better experience for her, and she began to pray for a clean heart full of patient, holy, humble love; and she prayed so earnestly, so violently, that her family became alarmed lest she should wear her poor, frail body out in her struggle for spiritual freedom. But she told them she was determined to have the blessing, if it cost her her life, and so she continued to pray, until one glad, sweet day the Comforter came; her heart was purified, and from that day forth, in spite of the fact that she was still a nervous invalid, suffering constant pain, she never showed the least sign of temper or impatience, but was full of meekness, and patient, joyous thankfulness. “Love took up the harp of life, and smote on all the chords with might—­ Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight.” Such is the experience of one in whom Jesus lives without a rival, and in whom grace has wrought its perfect work. “No form of vice, not worldliness, not greed of gold, not drunkenness itself, does more to un-Christianise society than evil temper,” says a distinguished and thoughtful writer. If this be true, it must be God’s will that we be saved from it. And it is provided for in the uttermost salvation that Jesus offers. Do you want this blessing, my brother, my sister? If so, be sure of this: God has not begotten such a desire in your heart to mock you; you may have it. God is able to do even this for you. With man it is impossible, but not with God. Look at Him just now for it. It is His work, His gift. Look at your past failures, and acknowledge them; look at your present and future difficulties, count them up and face them every one, and admit that they are more than you can hope to conquer; but then look at the dying Son of God, your Saviour—­the Man with the seamless robe, the crown of thorns, and the nail-prints; look at the fountain of His Blood; look at His word; look at the Almighty Holy Ghost, who will dwell within you, if you but trust and obey, and cry out: “It shall be done! The mountain shall become a plain; the impossible shall become possible. Hallelujah!” Quietly, intelligently, abandon yourself to the Holy Spirit just now in simple, glad, obedient faith, and the blessing shall be yours. Glory to God! “Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Abiding Presence of the Holy Ghost in
the Soul, by Bede Jarrett

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
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with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net


Title: The Abiding Presence of the Holy Ghost in the Soul

Author: Bede Jarrett

Release Date: January 5, 2011 [EBook #34855]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ABIDING PRESENCE OF HOLY GHOST ***




Produced by Michael Gray, Diocese of San Jose

BY BEDE JARRETT, O.P.

THE NEWMAN BOOKSHOP Westminster, Maryland NIHIL OBSTAT A. R. P. RAPHAEL MOSS, O.P., S.T.L. R. P. AELRED WHITACRE, O.P., S.T.L. NIHIL OBSTAT ARTHUR J. SCANLAN, D.D. Censor Deputatus Printed in the United States of America

PREFACE

In English-speaking countries the Church has been at a disadvantage in the way in which she has had to expound her doctrine, for she has been forced for many years to limit her attention just to those parts of her teaching wherein the Protestant bodies parted company from her. Without any desire to stir up barren controversy, she has naturally in self-defence been at pains most precisely to define those portions of her gospel most likely to be misunderstood. This has resulted, unfortunately, in her leaving in the background the other mysteries of faith, often richer in themselves, more helpful to her children. Now, however, that she is becoming more able to realize herself to the modern world, an opportunity opens for explaining hidden doctrines, of which the value to the Catholic in the development of his inner life is considerable. It is to further this development that these meditations have been drawn up, since hardly anything can render us more sensible of our worth and Christian dignity than does the teaching of Our Lord on the indwelling of the Spirit of God. Cardinal Manning has indeed made this the subject of two volumes, The Internal Working of the Holy Ghost and The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost, which are still obtainable, and there are also such books as Sermons on the Holy Ghost (Cathedral Library Association). But as yet in English there is no such direct exposition of Catholic teaching as Père Barthélemy Froget, O. P., has attempted in his De l’Inhabitation du S. Esprit dans les ames justes (Lethielleux, Paris, 1890). Like nearly all the doctrinal works of French origin, this treatise seems at times to suppose among the laity a deeper knowledge of the rudiments of scholastic philosophy than usually obtains among us, though the author has endeavored to help this out by occasional notes or explanations. To avoid this difficulty (which a mere translation would not lessen, but increase), the material of the book has been rearranged in a series of meditations which will, it is hoped, bring out in an easier form what might otherwise be too abstruse to be of general interest. The wonderful beauty of the Church’s teaching on this abiding presence of the Holy Ghost, while it deepens our acquaintance with His mysterious governance of the universe and discovers to us the hidden beauties of our soul’s life, should bring also its measure of comfort, for whatever makes us conscious of the intimacy of God’s dealing with us lessens life’s greatest trouble, its loneliness. BEDE JARRETT, O. P. THE RECTORY OF OUR LADY OF LOURDES, New York, February 11, 1918

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE  ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF LEO XIII, 9TH MAY, 1897  GOD’S PRESENCE  DEGREES OF GOD’S PRESENCE  GOD’S SPECIAL PRESENCE IN THE JUST  NATURE OF THIS PRESENCE  MODE OF THIS PRESENCE, KNOWLEDGE  MODE OF THIS PRESENCE, LOVE  THIS PRESENCE IS OF THE SAME NATURE AS THAT IN HEAVEN  THIS PRESENCE COMMON TO THE WHOLE TRINITY  THIS PRESENCE HAS CERTAIN EFFECTS  FORGIVENESS OF SIN  JUSTIFICATION  DEIFICATION  ADOPTED SONSHIP  HEIRS OF GOD  GUIDANCE IN SPIRITUAL LIFE  GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT  BEATITUDES  FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT  KNOWLEDGE  UNDERSTANDING  WISDOM  COUNSEL  FORTITUDE  PIETY  FEAR OF THE LORD  GRACE

THE ABIDING PRESENCE OF THE HOLY GHOST IN THE SOUL

ENCYCLICAL LETTER FOR PENTECOST, 1897 ¹

TO OUR VENERABLE BRETHREN, THE PATRIARCHS, PRIMATES, ARCHBISHOPS, BISHOPS, AND OTHER LOCAL ORDINARIES HAVING PEACE AND COMMUNION WITH THE HOLY SEE

LEO XIII, POPE

¹ This translation is the official form that appeared in the London Tablet, June 5, 1897. VENERABLE BRETHREN, HEALTH AND APOSTOLIC BENEDICTION That divine office which Jesus Christ received from His Father for the welfare of mankind, and most perfectly fulfilled, had for its final object to put men in possession of the eternal life of glory, and proximately during the course of ages to secure to them the life of divine grace, which is destined eventually to blossom into the life of heaven. Wherefore, our Saviour never ceases to invite, with infinite affection, all men, of every race and tongue, into the bosom of His Church: “Come ye all to Me,” “I am the Life,” “I am the Good Shepherd.” Nevertheless, according to His inscrutable counsels, He did not will entirely to complete and finish this office Himself on earth, but as He had received it from the Father, so He transmitted it for its completion to the Holy Ghost. It is consoling to recall those assurances which Christ gave to the body of His disciples a little before He left the earth: “It is expedient to you that I go: for if I go not, the Paraclete will not come to you: but if I go, I will send Him to you” (1 John 16.7). In these words He gave as the chief reason of His departure and His return to the Father, the advantage which would most certainly accrue to His followers from the coming of the Holy Ghost, and, at the same time, He made it clear that the Holy Ghost is equally sent by—and therefore proceeds from—Himself and the Father; that He would complete, in His office of Intercessor, Consoler, and Teacher, the work which Christ Himself had begun in His mortal life. For, in the redemption of the world, the completion of the work was by Divine Providence reserved to the manifold power of that Spirit who, in the creation, “adorned the heavens” (Job 26.13), and “filled the whole world” (Wisdom 1.7). THE TWO PRINCIPAL AIMS OF OUR PONTIFICATE Now We have earnestly striven, by the help of His grace, to follow the example of Christ, Our Saviour, the Prince of Pastors, and the Bishop of our Souls, by diligently carrying on His office, entrusted by Him to the Apostles and chiefly to Peter, “whose dignity faileth not, even in his unworthy successor” (St. Leo the Great, Sermon 2, On the Anniversary of his Election). In pursuance of this object We have endeavored to direct all that We have attempted and persistently carried out during a long pontificate towards two chief ends: in the first place, towards the restoration, both in rulers and peoples, of the principles of the Christian life in civil and domestic society, since there is no true life for men except from Christ; and, secondly, to promote the reunion of those who have fallen away from the Catholic Church either by heresy or by schism, since it is most undoubtedly the will of Christ that all should be united in one flock under one Shepherd. But now that We are looking forward to the approach of the closing days of Our life, Our soul is deeply moved to dedicate to the Holy Ghost, who is the life-giving Love, all the work We have done during Our pontificate, that He may bring it to maturity and fruitfulness. In order the better and more fully to carry out this Our intention, We have resolved to address you at the approaching sacred season of Pentecost concerning the indwelling and miraculous power of the Holy Ghost; and the extent and efficiency of His action, both in the whole body of the Church and in the individual souls of its members, through the glorious abundance of His divine graces. We earnestly desire that, as a result, faith may be aroused in your minds concerning the mystery of the adorable Trinity, and especially that piety may increase and be inflamed towards the Holy Ghost, to whom especially all of us owe the grace of following the paths of truth and virtue; for, as St. Basil said, “Who denieth that the dispensations concerning man, which have been made by the great God and our Saviour, Jesus Christ, according to the goodness of God, have been fulfilled through the grace of the Spirit?” (Of the Holy Ghost, c. 16, v. 39.) THE CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF THE BLESSED TRINITY Before we enter upon this subject, it will be both desirable and useful to say a few words about the Mystery of the Blessed Trinity. This dogma is called by the doctors of the Church “the substance of the New Testament,” that is to say, the greatest of all mysteries, since it is the fountain and origin of them all. In order to know and contemplate this mystery, the angels were created in Heaven and men upon earth. In order to teach more fully this mystery, which was but foreshadowed in the Old Testament, God Himself came down from the angels unto men: “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him” (John 1.18). Whosoever then writes or speaks of the Trinity must keep before his eyes the prudent warning of the Angelic Doctor: “When we speak of the Trinity, we must do so with caution and modesty, for, as St. Augustine saith, nowhere else are more dangerous errors made, or is research more difficult, or discovery more fruitful” (Summ. Th. 1a, q. 31. De Trin. 1. 1, c. 3). The danger that arises is lest the Divine Persons be confounded one with the other in faith or worship, or lest the one Nature in them be separated: for “This is the Catholic Faith, that we should adore one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity.” Therefore Our predecessor Innocent XII absolutely refused the petition of those who desired a special festival in honor of God the Father. For, although the separate mysteries connected with the Incarnate Word are celebrated on certain fixed days, yet there is no special feast on which the Word is honored according to His Divine Nature alone. And even the Feast of Pentecost was instituted in the earliest times, not simply to honor the Holy Ghost in Himself, but to commemorate His coming, or His external mission. And all this has been wisely ordained, lest from distinguishing the Persons men should be led to distinguish the Divine Essence. Moreover, the Church, in order to preserve in her children the purity of faith, instituted the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity, which John XXII afterwards extended to the Universal Church. He also permitted altars and churches to be dedicated to the Blessed Trinity, and, with the divine approval, sanctioned the Order for the Ransom of Captives, which is specially devoted to the Blessed Trinity and bears Its name. Many facts confirm this truth. The worship paid to the saints and angels, to the Mother of God, and to Christ Himself, finally redounds to the honor of the Blessed Trinity. In prayers addressed to one Person, there is also mention of the others; in the litanies after the individual Persons have been separately invoked, a common invocation of all is added: all psalms and hymns conclude with the doxology to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; blessings, sacred rites, and sacraments are either accompanied or concluded by the invocation of the Blessed Trinity. This was already foreshadowed by the Apostle in those words: “For of Him, and by Him, and in Him, are all things: to Him be glory for ever” (Rom. 11.36), thereby signifying both the Trinity of Persons and the Unity of Nature: for as this is one and the same in each of the Persons, so to each is equally owing supreme glory, as to one and the same God. St. Augustine, commenting upon this testimony, writes: “The words of the Apostle, of Him, and by Him, and in Him, are not to be taken indiscriminately; of Him refers to the Father, by Him to the Son, in Him to the Holy Ghost” (De Trin. 1. vi, c. 10; 1. i, c. 6). The Church is accustomed most fittingly to attribute to the Father those works of the Divinity in which power excels, to the Son those in which wisdom excels, and those in which love excels to the Holy Ghost. Not that all perfections and external operations are not common to the Divine Persons; for “the operations of the Trinity are indivisible, even as the essence of the Trinity is indivisible” (St. Aug. De Trin., 1. 1, cc. 4-5); because as the three Divine Persons “are inseparable, so do they act inseparably” (St. Aug., ib). But by a certain comparison, and a kind of affinity between the operations and the properties of the Persons, these operations are attributed or, as it is said, “appropriated” to One Person rather than to the others. “Just as we make use of the traces of similarity or likeness which we find in creatures for the manifestation of the Divine Persons, so do we use Their essential attributes; and this manifestation of the Persons by Their essential attributes is called appropriation” (St. Th. 1a, q. 39, xxxix, a. 7). In this manner the Father, who is “the principle of the whole God-head” (St. Aug., De Trin., 1. iv, c. 20), is also the efficient cause of all things, of the Incarnation of the Word, and the sanctification of souls; “of Him are all things”: of Him, referring to the Father. But the Son, the Word, the Image of God, is also the exemplar cause, whence all creatures borrow their form and beauty, their order and harmony. He is for us the Way, the Truth, and the Life; the Reconciler of man with God. “By Him are all things”: by Him, referring to the Son. The Holy Ghost is the ultimate cause of all things, since, as the will and all other things finally rest in their end, so He, who is the Divine Goodness and the Mutual Love of the Father and Son, completes and perfects, by His strong yet gentle power, the secret work of man’s eternal salvation. “In Him are all things”: in Him, referring to the Holy Ghost. THE HOLY GHOST AND THE INCARNATION Having thus paid due tribute of faith and worship owing to the Blessed Trinity, which ought to be more and more inculcated upon the Christian people, we now turn to the exposition of the power of the Holy Ghost. And, first of all, we must look to Christ, the Founder of the Church and the Redeemer of our race. Among the external operations of God, the highest of all is the mystery of the Incarnation of the Word, in which the splendor of the divine perfections shines forth so brightly that nothing more sublime can even be imagined, nothing else could have been more salutary to the human race. Now this work, although belonging to the whole Trinity, is still appropriated especially to the Holy Ghost, so that the Gospels thus speak of the Blessed Virgin: “She was found with child of the Holy Ghost,” and “that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost” (Matt. 1.18, 20). And this is rightly attributed to Him who is the love of the Father and the Son, since this “great mystery of piety” (1 Tim. 3.16) proceeds from the infinite love of God towards man, as St. John tells us: “God so loved the world as to give His only begotten Son” (John 3.16). Moreover, human nature was thereby elevated to a personal union with the Word; and this dignity is given, not on account of any merits, but entirely and absolutely through grace, and therefore, as it were, through the special gift of the Holy Ghost. On this point St. Augustine writes: “This manner in which Christ was born of the Holy Ghost, indicates to us the grace of God, by which humanity, with no antecedent merits, at the first moment of its existence, was united with the Word of God, by so intimate a personal union, that He, who was the Son of Man, was also the Son of God, and He who was the Son of God was also the Son of Man” (Enchir., c. xl; St. Th., 3a, q. xxxii, a. 1). By the operation of the Holy Spirit, not only was the conception of Christ accomplished, but also the sanctification of His soul, which, in Holy Scripture, is called His “anointing” (Acts 10.38). Wherefore all His actions were “performed in the Holy Ghost” (St. Basil de Sp. S., c. xvi), and especially the sacrifice of Himself: “Christ, through the Holy Ghost, offered Himself without spot to God” (Heb. 9.14). Considering this, no one can be surprised that all the gifts of the Holy Ghost inundated the soul of Christ. In Him resided the absolute fullness of grace, in the greatest and most efficacious manner possible; in Him were all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, graces gratis datae, virtues, and all other gifts foretold in the prophecies of Isaias (Is. 4.1, 11.23), and also signified in that miraculous dove which appeared at the Jordan, when Christ, by His baptism, consecrated its waters for a new sacrament. On this the words of St. Augustine may appropriately be quoted: “It would be absurd to say that Christ received the Holy Ghost when He was already thirty years of age, for He came to His baptism without sin, and therefore not without the Holy Ghost. At this time, then (that is, at His baptism), He was pleased to prefigure His Church, in which those especially who are baptized receive the Holy Ghost” (De Trin., 1. xv, c. 26). Therefore, by the conspicuous apparition of the Holy Ghost over Christ and by His invisible power in His soul, the twofold mission of the Spirit is foreshadowed, namely, His outward and visible mission in the Church, and His secret indwelling in the souls of the just. THE HOLY GHOST AND THE CHURCH The Church which, already conceived, came forth from the side of the second Adam in His sleep on the Cross, first showed herself before the eyes of men on the great day of Pentecost. On that day the Holy Ghost began to manifest His gifts in the mystic body of Christ, by that miraculous outpouring already foreseen by the prophet Joel (2.28-29), for the Paraclete “sat upon the apostles as though new spiritual crowns were placed upon their heads in tongues of fire” (S. Cyril Hier. Catech. 17). Then the apostles “descended from the mountain,” as St. John Chrysostom writes, “not bearing in their hands tables of stone like Moses, but carrying the Spirit in their mind, and pouring forth the treasure and the fountain of doctrines and graces” (In Matt. Hom. I, 2 Cor. 3.3). Thus was fully accomplished that last promise of Christ to His apostles of sending the Holy Ghost, who was to complete and, as it were, to seal the deposit of doctrine committed to them under His inspiration. “I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now; but when He, the Spirit of Truth, shall come, He will teach you all truth” (John 16.12- 13). For He who is the Spirit of Truth, inasmuch as He proceedeth both from the Father, who is the eternally True, and from the Son, who is the substantial Truth, receiveth from each both His essence and the fullness of all truth. This truth He communicates to His Church, guarding her by His all powerful help from ever falling into error, and aiding her to foster daily more and more the germs of divine doctrine and to make them fruitful for the welfare of the peoples. And since the welfare of the peoples, for which the Church was established, absolutely requires that this office should be continued for all time, the Holy Ghost perpetually supplies life and strength to preserve and increase the Church. “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Paraclete, that He may abide with you for ever, the Spirit of Truth” (John 16. 16, 17). By Him the bishops are constituted, and by their ministry are multiplied not only the children, but also the fathers that is to say, the priests to rule and feed the Church by that Blood wherewith Christ has redeemed Her. “The Holy Ghost hath placed you bishops to rule the Church of God, which He hath purchased with His own Blood” (Acts 20. 28). And both bishops and priests, by the miraculous gift of the Spirit, have the power of absolving sins, according to those words of Christ to the Apostles: “Receive ye the Holy Ghost; whose sins you shall forgive they are forgiven them, and whose sins you shall retain they are retained” (John 20.22, 23). That the Church is a divine institution is most clearly proved by the splendor and glory of those gifts with which she is adorned, and whose author and giver is the Holy Ghost. Let it suffice to state that, as Christ is the Head of the Church, so is the Holy Ghost her soul. “What the soul is in our body, that is the Holy Ghost in Christ’s body, the Church” (St. Aug., Serm. 187, de Temp.). This being so, no further and fuller “manifestation and revelation of the Divine Spirit” may be imagined or expected; for that which now takes place in the Church is the most perfect possible, and will last until that day when the Church herself, having passed through her militant career, shall be taken up into the joy of the saints triumphing in heaven. THE HOLY GHOST IN THE SOULS OF THE JUST The manner and extent of the action of the Holy Ghost in individual souls is no less wonderful, although somewhat more difficult to understand, inasmuch as it is entirely invisible. This outpouring of the Spirit is so abundant, that Christ Himself, from whose gift it proceeds, compares it to an overflowing river, according to those words of St. John: “He that believeth in Me, as the Scripture saith, out of his midst shall flow rivers of living water”; to which testimony the Evangelist adds the explanation: “Now this He said of the Spirit which they should receive who believed in Him” (John 7.38, 39). It is indeed true that in those of the just who lived before Christ, the Holy Ghost resided by grace, as we read in the Scriptures concerning the prophets, Zachary, John the Baptist, Simeon, and Anna; so that on Pentecost the Holy Ghost did not communicate Himself in such a way “as then for the first time to begin to dwell in the saints, but by pouring Himself forth more abundantly; crowning, not beginning His gifts; not commencing a new work, but giving more abundantly” (St. Leo the Great, Hom. iii, de Pentec.). But if they also were numbered among the children of God, they were in a state like that of servants, for “as long as the heir is a child he differeth nothing from a servant, but is under tutors and governors” (Gal. 4.1, 2). Moreover, not only was their justice derived from the merits of Christ who was to come, but the communication of the Holy Ghost after Christ was much more abundant, just as the price surpasses in value the earnest and the reality excels the image. Wherefore St. John declares: “As yet the Spirit was not given, because Jesus was not yet glorified” (John 7.39). So soon, therefore, as Christ, “ascending on high,” entered into possession of the glory of His Kingdom which He had won with so much labor, He munificently opened out the treasures of the Holy Ghost: “He gave gifts to men” (Eph. 4.8). For “that giving or sending forth of the Holy Ghost after Christ’s glorification was to be such as had never been before; not that there had been none before, but it had not been of the same kind” (St. Aug., De Trin., 1. iv, c. 20). Human nature is by necessity the servant of God: “The creature is a servant; we are the servants of God by nature” (St. Cyr. Alex., Thesaur., 1. v, c. 5). On account, however, of original sin, our whole nature had fallen into such guilt and dishonor that we had become enemies of God. “We were by nature the children of wrath” (Eph. 2.3). There was no power which could raise us and deliver us from this ruin and eternal destruction. But God, the Creator of mankind and infinitely merciful, did this through His only begotten Son, by whose benefit it was brought about that man was restored to that rank and dignity whence he had fallen, and was adorned with still more abundant graces. No one can express the greatness of this work of divine grace in the souls of men. Wherefore, both in Holy Scripture and in the writings of the fathers, men are styled regenerated, new creatures, partakers of the Divine Nature, children of God, godlike, and similar epithets. Now these great blessings are justly attributed as especially belonging to the Holy Ghost. He is “the Spirit of adoption of sons, whereby we cry: Abba, Father.” He fills our hearts with the sweetness of paternal love: “The Spirit Himself giveth testimony to our spirit that we are the sons of God” (Rom. 8.15, 16). This truth accords with the similitude observed by the Angelic Doctor between both operations of the Holy Ghost; for through Him “Christ was conceived in holiness to be by nature the Son of God,” and “others are sanctified to be the sons of God by adoption” (St. Th. 3a, q. xxxii, a. 1). This spiritual generation proceeds from love in a much more noble manner than the natural: namely, from the uncreated Love. The beginnings of this regeneration and renovation of man are by Baptism. In this sacrament, when the unclean spirit has been expelled from the soul, the Holy Ghost enters in and makes it like to Himself. “That which is born of the Spirit, is spirit” (John 3.6). The same Spirit gives Himself more abundantly in Confirmation, strengthening and confirming Christian life; from which proceeded the victory of the martyrs and the triumph of the virgins over temptations and corruptions. We have said that the Holy Ghost gives Himself: “the charity of God is poured out into our hearts by the Holy Ghost who is given to us” (Rom. 5.5). For He not only brings to us His divine gifts, but is the Author of them and is Himself the supreme Gift, who, proceeding from the mutual love of the Father and the Son, is justly believed to be and is called “Gift of God most High.” To show the nature and efficacy of this gift it is well to recall the explanation given by the doctors of the Church of the words of Holy Scripture. They say that God is present and exists in all things, “by His power, in so far as all things are subject to His power; by His presence, inasmuch as all things are naked and open to His eyes; by His essence, inasmuch as He is present to all as the cause of their being” (St. Th. 1a, q. viii, a. 3). But God is in man, not only as in inanimate things, but because He is more fully known and loved by him, since even by nature we spontaneously love, desire, and seek after the good. Moreover, God by grace resides in the just soul as in a temple, in a most intimate and peculiar manner. From this proceeds that union of affection by which the soul adheres most closely to God, more so than the friend is united to his most loving and beloved friend, and enjoys God in all fullness and sweetness. Now this wonderful union, which is properly called “indwelling,” differing only in degree or state from that with which God beatifies the saints in heaven, although it is most certainly produced by the presence of the whole Blessed Trinity—”We will come to Him and make our abode with Him” (John 14.23)—nevertheless is attributed in a peculiar manner to the Holy Ghost. For, whilst traces of divine power and wisdom appear even in the wicked man, charity, which, as it were, is the special mark of the Holy Ghost, is shared in only by the just. In harmony with this, the same Spirit is called Holy, for He, the first and supreme Love, moves souls and leads them to sanctity, which ultimately consists in the love of God. Wherefore the apostle, when calling us the temple of God, does not expressly mention the Father or the Son, but the Holy Ghost: “Know ye not that your members are the temple of the Holy Ghost, who is in you, whom you have from God?” (1 Cor. 6.19). The fullness of divine gifts is in many ways a consequence of the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in the souls of the just. For, as St. Thomas teaches, “when the Holy Ghost proceedeth as love, He proceedeth in the character of the first gift; whence St. Augustine saith that, through the gift which is the Holy Ghost, many other special gifts are distributed among the members of Christ” (Summ. Th., 1a, q. xxxviii, a. 2. St. Aug., de Trin., 1. xv, c. 19). Among these gifts are those secret warnings and invitations, which from time to time are excited in our minds and hearts by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. Without these there is no beginning of a good life, no progress, no arriving at eternal salvation. And since these words and admonitions are uttered in the soul in an exceedingly secret manner, they are sometimes aptly compared in Holy Writ to the breathing of a coming breeze, and the Angelic Doctor likens them to the movements of the heart which are wholly hidden in the living body. “Thy heart has a certain hidden power, and therefore the Holy Ghost, who invisibly vivifies and unites the Church, is compared to the heart” (Summ. Th., 3a, q. vii, a. 1, ad 3). More than this, the just man, that is to say, he who lives the life of divine grace, and acts by the fitting virtues as by means of faculties, has need of those seven gifts which are properly attributed to the Holy Ghost. By means of them the soul is furnished and strengthened so as to be able to obey more easily and promptly His voice and impulse. Wherefore these gifts are of such efficacy that they lead the just man to the highest degree of sanctity; and of such excellence that they continue to exist even in heaven, though in a more perfect way. By means of these gifts the soul is excited and encouraged to seek after and attain the evangelical beatitudes, which, like the flowers that come forth in the spring time, are the signs and harbingers of eternal beatitude. Lastly, there are those blessed fruits, enumerated by the Apostle (Gal. 5.22), which the Spirit, even in this mortal life, produces and shows forth in the just; fruits filled with all sweetness and joy, inasmuch as they proceed from the Spirit, “who is in the Trinity the sweetness of both Father and Son, filling all creatures with infinite fullness and profusion” (St. Aug. de Trin., 1. vi, c. 9). The Divine Spirit, proceeding from the Father and the Word in the eternal light of sanctity, Himself both Love and Gift, after having manifested Himself through the veils of figures in the Old Testament, poured forth all His fullness upon Christ and upon His mystic Body, the Church; and called back by His presence and grace men who were going away in wickedness and corruption with such salutary effect that, being no longer of the earth earthy, they relished and desired quite other things, becoming of heaven heavenly. ON DEVOTION TO THE HOLY GHOST These sublime truths, which so clearly show forth the infinite goodness of the Holy Ghost towards us, certainly demand that we should direct towards Him the highest homage of our love and devotion. Christians may do this most effectually if they will daily strive to know Him, to love Him, and to implore Him more earnestly; for which reason may this Our exhortation, flowing spontaneously from a paternal heart, reach their ears. Perchance there are still to be found among them, even nowadays, some who, if asked, as were those of old by St. Paul the Apostle, whether they have received the Holy Ghost, might answer in like manner: “We have not so much as heard whether there be a Holy Ghost” (Acts 19.2). At least there are certainly many who are very deficient in their knowledge of Him. They frequently use His name in their religious practices, but their faith is involved in much darkness. Wherefore all preachers and those having care of souls should remember that it is their duty to instruct their people more diligently and more fully about the Holy Ghost—avoiding, however, difficult and subtle controversies, and eschewing the dangerous folly of those who rashly endeavor to pry into divine mysteries. What should be chiefly dwelt upon and clearly explained is the multitude and greatness of the benefits which have been bestowed, and are constantly bestowed, upon us by this Divine Giver, so that errors and ignorance concerning matters of such moment may be entirely dispelled, as unworthy of “the children of light.” We urge this, not only because it affects a mystery by which we are directly guided to eternal life, and which must therefore be firmly believed; but also because the more clearly and fully the good is known the more earnestly it is loved. Now we owe to the Holy Ghost, as we mentioned in the second place, love, because He is God: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole strength” (Deut. 6.5). He is also to be loved because He is the substantial, eternal, primal Love, and nothing is more lovable than love. And this all the more because He has overwhelmed us with the greatest benefits, which both testify to the benevolence of the Giver and claim the gratitude of the receiver. This love has a twofold and most conspicuous utility. In the first place, it will excite us to acquire daily a clearer knowledge about the Holy Ghost; for, as the Angelic Doctor says, “the lover is not content with the superficial knowledge of the beloved, but striveth to inquire intimately into all that appertains to the beloved, and thus to penetrate into the interior; as is said of the Holy Ghost, Who is the Love of God, that He searcheth even the profound things of God” (1 Cor. 2.19; Summ. Theol., 1a, 2ae, q. 28, a. 2). In the second place, it will obtain for us a still more abundant supply of heavenly gifts; for whilst a narrow heart contracteth the hand of the giver, a grateful and mindful heart causeth it to expand. Yet we must strive that this love should be of such a nature as not to consist merely in dry speculations or external observances, but rather to run forward towards action, and especially to fly from sin, which is in a more special manner offensive to the Holy Spirit. For whatever we are, that we are by the divine goodness; and this goodness is specially attributed to the Holy Ghost. The sinner offends this his Benefactor, abusing His gifts; and taking advantage of His goodness becomes more hardened in sin day by day. Again, since He is the Spirit of Truth, whosoever faileth by weakness or ignorance may perhaps have some excuse before Almighty God; but he who resists the truth through malice and turns away from it, sins most grievously against the Holy Ghost. In our days this sin has become so frequent that those dark times seem to have come which were foretold by St. Paul, in which men, blinded by the just judgment of God, should take falsehood for truth, and should believe in “the prince of this world,” who is a liar and the father thereof, as a teacher of truth: “God shall send them the operation of error, to believe lying” (2 Thess. 2.10). “In the last times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to spirits of error and the doctrines of devils” (1 Tim. 4.1). But since the Holy Ghost, as We have said, dwells in us as in His temple, We must repeat the warning of the Apostle: “Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby you are sealed” (Eph. 4.30). Nor is it enough to fly from sin; every Christian ought to shine with the splendor of virtue so as to be pleasing to so great and so beneficent a guest; and first of all with chastity and holiness, for chaste and holy things befit the temple. Hence the words of the Apostle: “Know you not that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? But if any man violate the temple of God, him shall God destroy. For the temple of God is holy, which you are” (1 Cor. 3.16-17): a terrible, indeed, but a just warning. Lastly, we ought to pray to and invoke the Holy Spirit, for each one of us greatly needs His protection and His help. The more a man is deficient in wisdom, weak in strength, borne down with trouble, prone to sin, so ought he the more to fly to Him who is the never-ceasing fount of light, strength, consolation, and holiness. And chiefly that first requisite of man, the forgiveness of sins, must be sought for from Him: “It is the special character of the Holy Ghost that He is the Gift of the Father and the Son. Now the remission of sins is given by the Holy Ghost as by the Gift of God” (Summ. Th., 3a, q. iii, a. 8, ad 3m). Concerning this Spirit the words of the Liturgy are very explicit: “For He is the remission of all sins” (Roman Missal, Tuesday after Pentecost). How He should be invoked is clearly taught by the Church, who addresses Him in humble supplication, calling upon Him by the sweetest of names: “Come, Father of the poor! Come, Giver of gifts! Come, Light of our hearts! O, best of Consolers, sweet Guest of the soul, our refreshment!” (Hymn, Veni Sancte Spiritus). She earnestly implores Him to wash, heal, water our minds and hearts, and to give to us who trust in Him “the merit of virtue, the acquirement of salvation, and joy everlasting.” Nor can it be in any way doubted that He will listen to such prayer, since we read the words written by His own inspiration: “The Spirit Himself asketh for us with unspeakable groanings” (Rom. 8.26). Lastly, we ought confidently and continually to beg of Him to illuminate us daily more and more with His light and inflame us with His charity: for, thus inspired with faith and love, we may press onward earnestly towards our eternal reward, since He “is the pledge of our inheritance” (Eph. 1.14). Such, Venerable Brethren, are the teachings and exhortations which We have seen good to utter, in order to stimulate devotion to the Holy Ghost. We have no doubt that, chiefly by means of your zeal and earnestness, they will bear abundant fruit among Christian peoples. We Ourselves shall never in the future fail to labor towards so important an end; and it is even Our intention, in whatever ways may appear suitable, to further cultivate and extend this admirable work of piety. Meanwhile, as two years ago, in Our Letter Provida Matris, We recommended to Catholics special prayers at the Feast of Pentecost, for the Reunion of Christendom, so now We desire to make certain further decrees on the same subject. AN ANNUAL NOVENA DECEEED Wherefore, We decree and command that throughout the whole Catholic Church, this year and in every subsequent year, a Novena shall take place before Whit-Sunday, in all parish churches, and also, if the local Ordinaries think fit, in other churches and oratories. To all who take part in this Novena and duly pray for Our intention, We shall grant for each day an Indulgence of seven years and seven quarantines; moreover, a Plenary Indulgence on any one of the days of the Novena, or on Whit-Sunday itself, or on any day during the Octave; provided they shall have received the Sacraments of Penance and the Holy Eucharist, and devoutly prayed for Our intention. We will that those who are legitimately prevented from attending the Novena, or who are in places where the devotions cannot, in the judgment of the Ordinary, be conveniently carried out in church, shall equally enjoy the same benefits, provided they make the Novena privately and observe the other conditions. Moreover, We are pleased to grant, in perpetuity, from the Treasury of the Church, that whosoever, daily, during the Octave of Pentecost up to Trinity Sunday inclusive, offer again publicly or privately any prayers, according to their devotion, to the Holy Ghost, and satisfy the above conditions, shall a second time gain each of the same Indulgences. All these Indulgences We also permit to be applied to the suffrage of the souls in Purgatory. And now Our mind and heart turn back to those hopes with which We began, and for the accomplishment of which We earnestly pray, and will continue to pray, to the Holy Ghost. Unite, then, Venerable Brethren, your prayers with Ours, and at your exhortation let all Christian peoples add their prayers also, invoking the powerful and ever-acceptable intercession of the Blessed Virgin. You know well the intimate and wonderful relations existing between her and the Holy Ghost, so that she is justly called His Spouse. The intercession of the Blessed Virgin was of great avail both in the mystery of the Incarnation and in the coming of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles. May she continue to strengthen our prayers with her suffrages, that, in the midst of all the stress and trouble of the nations, those divine prodigies may be happily revived by the Holy Ghost, which were foretold in the words of David: “Send forth Thy Spirit and they shall be created, and Thou shalt renew the face of the earth” (Ps. 103.30). As a pledge of Divine favor and a testimony of Our affection, Venerable Brethren, to you, to your Clergy and people, We gladly impart in the Lord the Apostolic Benediction. Given at St. Peter’s, in Rome, on the 9th day of May, 1897, in the 20th year of Our Pontificate. LEO XIII, POPE.

GOD’S PRESENCE

1. Scripture is very full of the idea of the nearness of God to His creation, the Old Testament is alive with that inspiration, for there is hardly a chapter or verse that does not insist upon that truth. Naturally the New Testament, teaching so tenderly the Fatherhood of God, is even more explicit and more beautiful in its references to this intimate relationship. To the Athenians, St. Paul can develop no other point than this, and he finds in moving accents an eloquent appeal voiced by the touching dedication of an altar to the Unknown God. Now this notion of God’s nearness to His world depends for its full appreciation on the central doctrine of creation. He has made the world, in consequence it is impressed with His personality; the more vigorous the artificer—the more vigorous that he is in character, will and personality, the more is his work stamped with his individuality; hence, the tremendous personality of God must be everywhere traceable in the things He has made. 2. When we say God is everywhere, we mean that He is in all things because He made all things. Not only does the whole world lie outstretched before His eye and is governed by His power, but He Himself lurks at the heart of everything. By Him things have come into existence, and so wholly is that existence of theirs His gift, that were He to withdraw His support they would sink back into nothingness. It is a perpetual remark about man’s works that they outlast him. Organizations we have toiled to establish outgrow our fostering care, perhaps grow tired of our interference and long to be free of our regulations. Wordsworth tells how a monk in Spain, pointing to the pictures on the walls of the monastery, which remained while the generations looking at them passed away, judged: “We are the shadows, they the substance.” But the relationship established by creation is of a far greater dependence, so that nothing God has made can exist without His support. Out of human acts it is only music that bears some resemblance to this, for when the voice is silent there is no longer any song. 3. God, then, is within all creation, because He is its cause. He is within every stone and leaf and child. Nothing, with life or without, evil or good, can fail to contain Him as the source of its energy, its power, its existence; He is “the soul’s soul.” Not only, therefore, must I train myself to see with reverence that everything contains Him, but I must especially realize His intimacy and relationship to myself. Religion, indeed, in practice is little else than my personal expression of that relationship. I have in my prayers, in my troubles, in my temptations, to turn to God, not without but within, not to some one above me or beneath supporting me, but right at the core of my being. I can trace up to its source every power of my soul, my intelligence, my will, my love, my anger, my fear, and I shall find Him there. Nothing but opens its doors to Him as innermost in its shrine. Wholly is God everywhere, not as some immense being that with its hugeness fills the world, but as something that is within every creature He has made.

DEGREES OF GOD’S PRESENCE

1. God is intimate with all creation because He made it, for creation implies that God remains within, supporting, upholding. God is within everything, and therefore He is everywhere. But while we thus believe that God is wholly everywhere, we also believe something which seems the exact opposite, for we believe that God is more in some places than in others, more in some people than in others. How is it if God is wholly everywhere that He can be more here than there? To understand this we must also understand that every created thing shares somehow in God’s being. He communicates Himself to it in some fashion, for apart from Him it could have no perfections. We have a way of saying that we reflect God’s greatness and that we are “broken lights” of Him. But that is far short of the truth; we do more than reflect, we actually have some participation in God, so that St. Thomas boldly takes over a saying of Plato: “The individual nature of a thing consists in the way it participates in the perfections of God” (Summa 1, 14.6). Not, of course, that there is any community of being, but a direct participation. 2. Now since everything participates in God and since some things are more excellent than others, it stands to reason that some things express God better than others. The eyes of a dog often are pitiful to see, because we can note its evident desire and yet its impossibility to express its feelings. The whole of nature has to seeing minds the same pitifulness. It is always endeavoring to express God, the inexpressible. Yet the higher a thing is in the scale of being the more of God it expresses, for it participates more in God’s being. The more life a thing has and the more freedom it acquires, then the nearer does it approach to God and the more divinity it holds. Man, by his intelligence, his deeper and richer life, his finer freedom, stands at the head of visible creation, and, in consequence, is more fully a shrine of God than lower forms of life. He bears a closer resemblance to the Divine intelligence and will and has a greater share in them. It is then in that sense that we arrange in ascending order inanimate creation, the vegetable kingdom, the animal kingdom, and man. 3. Consequently we can now see in what sense God is said to be more in one thing than in another. He is more in it because He exercises Himself more in one thing than in another; one thing expresses more than another the perfections of God because it shares more deeply than another that inner being of God. The more nearly anything or anyone is united to God the more does His power exercise itself in them, so that, since God’s gifts are variously distributed and are of various degrees, we are justified in saying that though He is wholly everywhere, He may be more fully here than there, just as, though my soul is in every part of my being, it is more perfectly in the brain than elsewhere, because there it exercises itself more fully and with more evidence of expression. Thus we say God is more in a man’s soul than anywhere else in creation, since in a man’s soul God is more perfectly expressed. It is therefore with great reverence that I should regard all creation, but with especial reverence that I should look to the dignity of every human soul.

GOD’S SPECIAL PRESENCE IN THE JUST

1. While God is in everything in creation, He dwells in the just by grace. Scripture quite noticeably uses the word dwelling when it wishes to express the particular way in which God is present in the souls of the just. He is in all things; in the just He dwells. The same word actually is applied to the presence of God in the souls of those in grace as is used when speaking of God’s presence in the Temple. But here again it is necessary to say that God’s dwelling in the Temple never implied He was not elsewhere, but did imply that somehow His presence in the Temple was quite different from the way in which He was present elsewhere. Just then the same kind of difference between the presence of God in all created nature and His presence in the souls of the just is intended by the careful use in Scripture of the word dwelling, viz., that God has, over and above His ordinary presence in every single created thing, a further and especial presence in the hearts of those in friendship with Him by grace, and this new presence is a fuller and richer presence whereby God’s excellencies and perfections are more openly displayed. 2. Another way in which the same idea is pressed home in the New Testament is by the word sent or given. Frequently, in the last discourse of Our Lord on the night before He suffered, He spoke to the Apostles of the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, the Comforter who was to be sent or given. Now, ordinarily, by using the expression, “sending some one,” we imply that now the person sent is where he was not before, that he has passed from here to there. Obviously Our Lord cannot really mean that only after His crucifixion and ascension would the Holy Ghost be found in the hearts of the Apostles, for we have already insisted that in every creature there must be, by virtue of its very creation, the Holy Spirit at the heart of it. Hence the only possible meaning is that the Holy Spirit will descend upon the Apostles and become present within them after some new fashion in which He was not before. “Because you are His children God has sent into your hearts the spirit of His Son whereby you cry Abba: Father” (Gal. 4.6). From the beginning the Holy Ghost had been within them; now His presence there is new and productive of new effects. 3. By God’s indwelling, then, effected by grace, the Holy Spirit now is present in the soul differently from the way in which He is present by creation. By creation He is wholly everywhere, yet more in the higher forms than in the lower, for He is able to express more of Himself in them. Among these highest forms of visible creation, namely, man, there are again degrees of His presence, so that even among men He is more in one than in another. This gradation is in proportion to their grace. The more holy and sanctified they become, the more does the Holy Spirit dwell in them, the more fully is He sent, the more completely given, while the Book of Wisdom says expressly that God does not dwell in sinners. As soon as I am in a state of grace the Holy Ghost dwells in me in this new and wonderful way, takes up His presence in me in this new fashion. It is precisely, then, by our faith and hope and love that this is effected, so that the individual soul under God’s own movement does help on this union of God and man. In all the rest of creation God is present by His action; in the souls of the just it is true to say that He is present by theirs.

NATURE OF THIS PRESENCE

1. We have taken it for granted that God then is present somehow in the soul by grace. We have now to consider what sort of a presence this really is. Do we mean absolutely that God the Holy Ghost, is truly in the soul Himself, or do we, by some metaphor or vague expression, mean that He is merely exerting Himself there in some new and especial way? Perhaps it is only that by means of the sevenfold gifts He has got a tighter hold of us and can bring us more completely under the sweet dominion of His will. All that is true, but all that is not enough, for we do absolutely mean what we say when we declare that by grace the Holy Spirit of God is present within the soul. Scripture is exceedingly full of the truth of this and is always insisting on this presence of the Holy Ghost. St. Paul, especially, notes it over and over again, and in his epistle to the Romans repeats it in very forcible language: “But you are not in the flesh but in the spirit, if so be that the spirit of God dwell in you” (Romans 8.9), and he goes on in that same chapter to imply that this presence is a part of grace. 2. To some it will seem curious to find that the Fathers of the Church in earliest ages were not only convinced of the fact of this presence, but appealed triumphantly to it as accepted even by heretics. When, in the early days, a long controversy raged as to whether the Holy Ghost was really God or not, the Fathers argued that since this indwelling of the Spirit was acknowledged on all hands, and since it was proper to God only to dwell in the heart of man, the only possible conclusion was that the Holy Ghost was Divine. The value of the argument is not here in question, but it is interesting to find that this presence was so generally believed in as part of the Christian Faith. In the acts of the martyrs, too, there are frequent references to this, as when St. Lucy declared to the judge that the Spirit of God dwelt in her, and that her body was in very truth the temple and shrine of God. Again, Eusebius relates in his history that Leonidas, the father of Origen, used to kneel by the bedside of the sleeping boy and devoutly and reverently kiss his breast as the tabernacle wherein God dwelt. The child in his innocence and grace is indeed the fittest home on earth for God. 3. This presence, then, of God in the soul is a real, true presence, as real and as true as the presence of Our Lord Himself in the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist. We look on all that mystery as very wonderful, and indeed it is, that day by day we can be made one with God the Son by receiving His Body and Blood; we know the value to be got out of visits to His hidden presence, the quiet and calm peace such visits produce in our souls; yet so long as we are in a state of grace the same holds true of the Holy Spirit within us. We are not indeed made one with the Holy Ghost in a substantial union such as united together in the Sacred Incarnation God and man; nor is there any overpowering of our personality so that it is swamped by a Divine Person, but we retain it absolutely. The simplest comparison is our union with Our Lord in the Holy Eucharist, wherein we receive Him really and truly and are made partakers of His divinity. By grace, then, we receive really and truly God the Holy Ghost and are made partakers of His divinity. If, then, we genuflect to the tabernacle in which the Blessed Sacrament is reserved and treat our Communions as the most solemn moments of our day, then equally we must hold in reverence every simple soul in a state of grace, the souls of others and our own.

THE MODE OF THIS PRESENCE: OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE

1. The fact, then, of this presence has been established and its nature explained. It is a real presence, a real union between the soul and God the Holy Ghost. We have, however, a further point to elucidate, the mode whereby this presence is effected. Now this is twofold in so far as this presence of the Spirit affects the mind and heart of man. First, then, we take the knowledge of God that by this presence is generated in the soul. By natural knowledge we can argue not only to the existence of God, but in some way also to His nature. Not only do we know from the world which He has made that He certainly must Himself have a true existence, but we can even, gradually and carefully, though certainly with some vagueness, argue to God’s own divine attributes. His intelligence is evident, His power, His wisdom, His beauty, His providence, His care for created nature. The pagans merely from the world about them painfully, and after many years and with much admixture of error, could yet in the end have their beautiful thoughts about God, and by some amazing instinct have stumbled upon truths which Christianity came fully to establish. The writings of Plato and Aristotle, of some Eastern teachers, of some of the Kings and priests of Egypt, are evidences of the possibility of the natural knowledge about God. 2. Faith, then, came as something over and above the possibilities of nature, not merely as regards the contents, but also as regards the kind of knowledge. Reason argues to God, and, therefore, attains God indirectly. It is like getting an application by letter from an unknown person and guessing his character from the handwriting, the paper, the ink, the spelling, the style. Possibly by this means a very fair estimate may be formed of his capacities and his fitness for the position which we desire him to fill. But faith implies a direct contact with the person who has written the letter. Before us is spread what Longfellow has called “the manuscript of God,” and from it we argue to God’s character. Then faith comes and puts us straight into connection with God Himself. Theological virtues are the names given to faith, hope, and charity, because they all have God for their direct and proper object. Faith then attains to the very substance of God. It is indeed inadequate in so far as all human forms of thought can only falteringly represent God as compared with the fullness that shall be revealed hereafter, still for all that it gives us, not indirect but direct knowledge of Him. I do not argue by faith to what God is like from seeing His handiwork; but I know what He is like from His descriptions of Himself. 3. Now the indwelling of the Spirit of God gives us a knowledge of God even more wonderful than faith gives, for even faith has to be content with God’s descriptions of Himself. In faith I am indeed listening to a Person Who is telling me all about Himself. He is the very truth and all He says is commended to me by the most solemn and certain of motives; but I am still very far from coming absolutely into direct and absolute experience of God. That, indeed, fully and absolutely, can be achieved only in Heaven. It is only there in the beatific vision that the veils will be wholly torn aside and there will be a face to face sight of God, no longer by means of created, and therefore limited, ideas, but an absolute possession of God Himself. Yet though absolutely I must wait for Heaven before I can achieve this, it is none the less true that I can begin it on earth by means of this indwelling of the Spirit of God. This real presence of God in my soul can secure for me what is called an experimental knowledge of God, such as undoubtedly I do have. It is not only that I believe, but I know. Not only have I been told about God, but, at least, in passing glimpses, I have seen Him. We may almost say to the Church what the men of Sichar said to the woman of Samaria, “We now believe, not for thy saying, for we ourselves have heard and know” (John 4.42). “For the Spirit Himself giveth testimony to our spirit that we are the sons of God” (Romans 8.16).

MODE OF THIS PRESENCE: OBJECT OF LOVE

1. There is something that unites us more closely to our friends than knowledge does, and this is love. Knowledge may teach us about them, may unlock for us gradually throughout life ever more wonderful secrets of their goodness and strength and loyalty. But knowledge of itself pushes us irresistibly on to something more. The more we know of that which is worth knowing, the more we must love it. Now love is greater than knowledge whenever knowledge itself does not really unite us to the object of our knowledge, so that St. Paul can deliberately put charity above faith, since faith is the knowledge of God by means of ideas which are themselves created and limited and inadequate, while charity sweeps us up and carries us right along to God Himself. Hence it was an axiom among the mediæval theologians that love is more unifying than knowledge, so that in the real indwelling of the Holy Spirit in our hearts we must expect to find not only that He is the object of our intelligence, but also that He has a place in our hearts. Indeed, it is impossible to conceive any experimental knowledge which does not also include in it the notion of love. 2. This love or friendship between ourselves and the Holy Spirit, if by friendship we mean anything like that of which we have experience in our human relations, implies three things. First of all, friendship implies that we do not love people for what we can get out of them, for that would be an insult to a friend, for it would mean selfishness or even animal passion. Friendship implies that we come for what we can give far more than that we come for what we can get. We love because we have helped is more often the true order of the origins of friendship than we help because we have loved. Secondly, friendship to be complete must be mutual. There may indeed be love when some poor, forlorn soul is here never requited in its affection, but that is not what we mean by a friend or by friendship. Friendship implies action, a fellow feeling, a desire for each other, a sympathy. Thirdly, friendship also implies necessarily a common bond of likeness, or similarity of condition or life, some equality. Of course it is evident from classic instances that friendship may exist between a shepherd lad and the son of a king (though perhaps Jonathan’s princedom was very little removed from shepherd life), yet the very friendship itself must produce equality between them. Said the Latin proverb: “Friendship either finds, or makes men equal.” 3. Now, therefore, to be perfectly literal in our use of the word, we must expect to find these things reproduced in our friendship with the Spirit of God; and, wonderful as it is, these things are reproduced. For God certainly loves us for no benefit that He can obtain from His love. He certainly had no need of us, nor do we in any sense fill up anything that is wanting to His life. Before we were, or the world was created, the Ever Blessed Three in One enjoyed to the full the complete peace and joy and energy of existence. We are no late development of His being, but only came because of His inherent goodness that was always prodigal of itself. He is our friend, not for His need, but for ours. He is our friend, not for what He could get, but for what He could give—His life. Again, His friendship is certainly mutual, for as St. John tells: “Let us therefore love God because God first hath loved us” (John 4.19). There is no yearning on our part which is not more than paralleled on His. I can say not only that I love God, but that He is my friend. Thirdly, I may even dare to assert that there is a common bond of likeness and equality between myself and Him. He has stooped to my level only that He may lift me to His own. He became Man that He might make man God, and so, equally, the Holy Spirit dwells in me that I may dwell in Him. “Friendship either finds, or makes men equal.” It found us apart, it makes us one. He came divine, perfect, to me, human, imperfect. By grace I am raised to a supernatural level. I know Him in some sort as He is; I am immediately united to Him by the bond of love.

THIS PRESENCE IS OF THE SAME NATURE AS THAT IN HEAVEN

1. This union, then, between God and my soul, effected by grace, is real and true. It is something more than faith can secure, a nearer relationship, a deeper, more personal knowledge, a more ardent and personal love. Indeed, so wonderful is the union effected that the teaching of the Church has been forcibly expressed in Pope Leo XIII’s Encyclical, by saying that the only difference between it and the Vision of Heaven is a difference of condition or state, a difference purely accidental, not essential. Heaven, with all its meaning, its wonders of which eye and ear and heart are ignorant, can be begun here. Moreover, it must be insisted upon, that this is not merely given to chosen souls whose sanctity is so heroic as to qualify them for canonization; it is the heritage of every soul in a state of grace. When I step outside the confessional box after due repentance and the absolution of the priest, I am in a state of grace. At once, then, this blessed union takes effect. Within me is the Holy Spirit, dwelling there, sent, given. As the object of knowledge He can be experienced by me in a personal and familiar way. I can know Him even as I am known. As the object of love He becomes my friend, stooping to my level, lifting me to His. At once, then, though still in a merely rudimentary way, can dawn upon me the glories of my ultimate reward. Even already, upon earth, I have crossed the threshold of Heaven. 2. In order for me to enjoy that ultimate vision of God, two things will be necessary for me. First, I shall need to be strengthened so as to survive the splendor and joy of it. No man can see God and live, for like St. Paul on the road to Damascus, the splendor of the vision would wholly obscure the sight. Just as a tremendous noise will strain the hearing of the ear, or an overbright light will dazzle the eyes to blindness, or an overwhelming joy will break the heart with happiness, so would the vision of God strike with annihilation the poor weak soul. Hence the light of glory, as it is called by the theologians, has to be brought into use. By this is meant that strengthening of the human faculties which enables them without harm to confront the Truth, Goodness, Power, Beauty of God. Secondly, this vision implies an immediate contact with God. It is no question simply of faith or hope, but of sight and possession, so that there should be no more veils, no more reproductions or reflections of God, but God Himself. Those two things sum up what we mean by the Beatific Vision. Now, then, if there is a similarity of kind between that union in heaven and the union that can be reflected on earth, then grace in this life must play the part of the light of glory in the next, and I must be able in consequence to enter into personal relations and immediate contact with God. 3. Such, then, is the likeness between the indwelling of the Spirit on earth, and the beatific vision. Wherein comes the difference? The difference one may say is largely a difference of consciousness. Here on earth I have so much to distract me that I cannot possibly devote myself in the same way as then I shall be able to do. There are things here that have got to be done, and there is the body itself which can only stand a certain amount of concentration and intensity. If strained too much it just breaks down and fails. All this complicates and hampers me. But in heaven I shall take on something (of course a great deal intensified) of the consciousness and alertness of youth. A child can thoroughly enjoy itself, for it has got the happy faculty of forgetting the rest of life, all its troubles, anxieties, fears. Heaven, then, means the lopping off of all those menaces, and the consequent full appreciation of God in knowledge and love. Hence I must not be disturbed if here on earth all these wonderful things which I learn about concerning the indwelling of the Holy Spirit do not seem to take place. It is very unfortunate that I do not appreciate them, but it is something at least to know that they are there. It is a nuisance that I do not see Him, but it is something at least to be certain He is within me.

THIS PRESENCE COMMON TO THE WHOLE TRINITY

1. So far it has been taken for granted that this indwelling is proper to the Holy Spirit, but it must now be added that indeed it is really an indwelling of the Blessed Trinity. It is true that very seldom does Scripture speak of the Three Persons as dwelling in the soul, still less of Their being given or sent. But every reason for which we attribute this to the Holy Ghost would hold equally well of the other Two Persons. By grace we are made partakers of God’s Divine nature; He comes to us as the object of our knowledge and our love. Why should we suppose that this Divine Presence applies directly only to the Spirit of God? The only reason, of course, is the impressive wording of the New Testament. But even here there are equally strong indications that more than the Holy Ghost is implied: “If any man will love Me he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him, and will make Our abode with him. . . . But the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things and bring all things to your mind whatsoever I shall have said to you.” Here, then, it is clearly stated that after Our Lord has died His teaching will be upheld by the Spirit, but that this indwelling will include also the abiding presence of Father and Son. 2. Why, then, is it repeated so often that the Holy Ghost is to be sent into our hearts, is to be given to us, is to dwell in our midst? It is for the same reason precisely that we allocate or attribute certain definite acts to the Blessed Persons of the Trinity so as the more easily to discern and appreciate the distinction between Them. In the Creed itself we attribute creation to God, the Father Almighty, though we know that Son and Spirit, also with the Father, called the world out of nothingness. Eternity is often, too, looked upon as peculiarly of the Father, though naturally it is common to the Trinity. Note how frequently in the liturgical prayers of the Church comes the expression, “O, Eternal Father.” So again to the Son we attribute Wisdom and Beauty, turning in our imagination to Him as the Word of God, the Figure of His substance, the brightness of His glory, and to the Holy Spirit we more often attribute God’s love and God’s joy. All these attributions are attempts to make that high mystery and the Three Persons of It alive and distinctive to the human spirit. It is not indeed wholly fancy, but it is the ever active reason endeavoring, for its own better understanding of sacred truths, to give some hint, or find some loophole, whence it shall not be overwhelmed with the greatness of its faith. 3. Consequently, it must be noted that this indwelling of the Spirit of God is not so absolutely and distinctly proper to God, the Holy Ghost, as the Incarnation is proper to God, the Son. There the Son, and He alone, became man. It was His personality alone to which was joined, in a substantial union, human nature. But in this present case there is no such unique connection between the soul and the Spirit of God, but it is rather the Ever Blessed Trinity itself that enters into occupation, and dwells in the heart. Of course that makes the wonder not less, but greater. To think that within the borders of my being is conducted the whole life of the Ever Blessed Three in One; that the Father is for ever knowing Himself in the Son, and that Father and Son are forever loving Themselves in the Spirit; that the power and eternity of the Father, whereby creation was called into being, and by whose fiat the visible world will one day break up and fall to pieces; that the wisdom and beauty of the Son, which catch the soul of man as in the meshes of a net, and drove generations of men to a wandering pilgrimage, at the peril of life, to rescue an empty tomb in the wild fury of a crusade; that the love of the Holy Spirit which completes the life of God, and was typified in the tongues of fire and the rush of a great wind at Pentecost; that the power and eternity of the Father, the wisdom and beauty of the Son, the love and joy of the Spirit, are for all time in my heart. O, what reverence for my human home of God, reverence alike for soul and body!

THIS PRESENCE HAS CERTAIN EFFECTS

1. It is very clear that so tremendous a presence as this indwelling implies must have tremendous results. If, as I believe, Father, and Son, and Spirit, are always within me by grace, the effect upon my soul should be considerable. To begin with, the very nearness to God which this indwelling secures must make a great difference to my outlook on life. To have within me the Ever Blessed Trinity is more than an honor, it is a responsibility; it is more than responsibility, for it is the greatest grace of all. To my faith, it makes the whole difference in my attitude to the Mother of God that within her womb for those silent months lay the Incarnate Wisdom. If to touch pitch is to ensure defilement, to be so close to God is to catch the infection of His Divinity. Or, again, I may have envied, times out of number, the wonderful grace whereby, upon the breast of his Master, St. John, the Beloved Disciple, could lovingly lay his head, the joy of so close and so familiar an intimacy with the most beautiful sons of men; or I may have pictured the charming scene when on His knees He took the dear children of His country and spoke to them and fondled them so that in His eyes they could see reflected their own countenances. How life ever after must have been transfigured for them by the memory of that glorious time! Great graces indeed for them all. But what if all life long, by grace, I too can be sure of a union even more splendid, an intimacy more lasting, a friendship surpassing the limits of faith and hope? 2. By grace, then, I receive this indwelling of the Spirit of God, and thereby come into a new and wonderful union with the Ever Blessed Trinity. Now such a union must have its purpose. Our Lord told us that He was going to send to our hearts the Holy Spirit, an embassy from Heaven to earth conducted by a Divine ambassador. The news of the Incarnation, the offer of the Motherhood of God, were made by means of an angel. But here, in my case, to no created official is this wonderful thing confided, only to God Himself. That just shows me the importance of the undertaking. In the political world the interests that turn on a diplomatic mission may be easily guessed to be very great, when the personnel of the staff is found to contain the highest personages in the country. What deep and abiding interests must then be in question when to my soul comes God, the Holy Ghost, sent as the messenger of the Three! I must consequently expect that the results of this indwelling are judged by God to be considerable, and that it is of much moment to me that, one by one, I should discover them. The Incarnation brought its train of attendant effects which I have to study: the redemption, the sacraments, the sanctifying of all immaterial creation by its union through man with the divinity. This indwelling also must therefore have its effects, the knowledge of which must necessarily make a difference to me in life. 3. By Baptism the beginning comes of this great grace. As a child, with my senses hardly at all awake to external life, I had God in my midst. Do I wonder now at the charm of early innocence, when a soul sits silently holding God as its centre? It is not that there are dim memories of a preexistence before birth, but there are always haunting dreams of a true friendship on earth. Baptism then begins that early work. At the moment of conversion, when suddenly I was drawn into a tender realization of God’s demands and my own heart’s hunger, the indwelling of the Spirit became more consciously operative with its flood of light and love. Since then the sacraments have poured out on me fuller measures of God’s grace and that divine Presence therefore should assume larger proportions in my life. I am now the dwelling place of God. When, then, my heart is young, eager, enthusiastic, let me make Him welcome; nor wait till the only habitation I can offer is in ruins, leaking through an ill-patched roof. A dwelling place for God! How reverently, then, shall I treat and treasure my body and soul, for they must be as fit as I can make them for the great Guest. By reason we learn of Him, by faith we know Him, but by His indwelling we taste the sweetness of His presence.

FORGIVENESS OF SIN

1. To understand this first and great effect of grace I must know what sin is, and to grasp sin in its fullness I must comprehend God. To see the heinousness of what is done against Him I must first realize what He is Himself. I have to go through all my ideas of God, my ideas of His majesty, His power, His tenderness, His justice, His mercy. I have got to realize all that He has done for man before I can take in the meaning of man’s actions against God. I have to be conscious of the Incarnation, of the story of that perfect life, the privations of it, the culminating horror of the Passion and Death, then of the Resurrection, the patient teaching of those forty days when He spoke of the Kingdom of God which He was setting up on earth, the Ascension, which did not mean an end, but only the beginning of His work for men on earth. At once there opened the wonderful stream of graces which flow through the sacraments, and which therefore make continuous upon the world till its consummation, His abiding presence, for the tale of the Blessed Sacrament only adds to the wonders of the tenderness and mercy of God. In Heaven, by ever trying to make intercession for us, on earth, by holding out through the sacraments countless ways of grace, It shows to us something at least of the perfect character of God. Now it is against one so perfect, so tender, so divine, that sin is committed, a wanton, brutal outrage against an almost overfond love. Ingratitude, treachery, disloyalty, united in the basest form. 2. God is just, as well as merciful, so that there had to be an immediate result of sin. Man might see no difference between himself before and after he had sinned; but for all that a great difference was set up. His soul had been on terms of friendship with God, for it had turned irresistibly to Him, as a flower growing in a dark place turns irresistibly to where the hardy daylight makes its way into the gloom. That friendship is at once broken, for sin means that the soul has deliberately turned its back upon God and is facing the other way, and thus it has been able by some fatal power to prevent God’s everlasting love having any effect upon it. God cannot hate; but we can stop His love from touching us. At once, then, by grievous sin the soul becomes despoiled of its supernatural goods: sanctifying grace, which is the pledge and expression of God’s friendship, naturally is banished; charity, which is nothing else than the love of God, the infused virtues, the gifts, are all taken away. Faith only and hope survive, but emptied of their richness of life. Externally no difference, but internally friendship with God, the right to the eternal heritage, the merits heretofore stored up—all lost. Even God Himself goes out from the midst of the soul, as the Romans heard the voice crying from the Temple just before its destruction: Let us go hence. Let us go hence. 3. Grace, then, operates to restore all these lost wonders. Sin itself is forgiven, all the ingratitude and disloyalty put one side; not simply in the sense that God forgets them, or chooses not to consider them, but in the sense that they are completely wiped away. It is the parable of the Good Shepherd where the sheep is brought back again into the fold, and mixes freely with the others who have never left the presence of their Master. It is the parable of the prodigal son taken back into his father’s embrace. That is what the forgiveness of sin implies. God is once more back again in the soul. He had always been there as the Creator without Whose supporting hand the soul would be back in its nothingness; but He is now there again as Father, and Master, and Friend. Not the saints only who have been endowed with a genius for divine things, but every simple soul that has had its sins forgiven, comes at once into that embrace. We are far too apt to look upon forgiveness as a merely negative thing, a removal, a cleansing, and not enough as a return to something great and good and beautiful, the triumphant entrance into our souls of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.

JUSTIFICATION

1. There is something in the forgiveness of sin which implies an element of positive good, and this is called justification. It means that the attitude of God towards forgiven sin is believed by the Catholic Church to be no mere neglect or forgetfulness of its evil, but an actual and complete forgiveness. At the time of the Protestant Reformation a long controversy was waged over this very point, in which the Reformers took up the curious position that forgiveness implied nothing more than that God did not impute sin. He covered up the iniquities of the soul with the Blood of His Son, and no longer peered beneath the depths of that sacred and saving sign. The problem has probably hardly any meaning now, since the original doctrinal principles of Protestantism, the ostensible reasons for the sixteenth century revolt, have been abandoned long since as hopeless of defence. In fact all that was really positive in Protestantism has been ruined by its basic negative principle of private judgment. Against such a battering ram Christianity itself is powerless. But that long-forgotten discussion had this much of value, that it brought out in clear perspective the fullness of the Catholic teaching on the central doctrine of justification and showed its depth and meaning. 2. Briefly, then, it may be stated that it is not simply that God does not impute evil, but that He forgives it. It is as though a rebellion had taken place and its leader had been captured and brought before his offended sovereign. Now the king might do either of two things, if he wished not to punish the culprit. He might simply bid him go off and never appear again, or he might go even further by actually forgiving the rebellion and receiving back into favor the rebel. It is one thing to say that no punishment will be awarded, it is another to say that the crime is forgiven, and that everything is to go on as though nothing had happened. In the first case we might say that the king chose not to impute the sin, in the other that he forgave and justified the sinner. It is just this, then, that the Catholic Church means when she teaches justification as implied in the idea of forgiveness. It is just this, too, that Our Lord meant when He detailed His beautiful parable about the prodigal son. The boy’s return home does not mean merely that the father refrains from punishment, but rather that there is a welcome so hearty and so complete that the serious-minded elder brother, coming in from his long labor in the fields, is rather scandalized by its suddenness and its intensity. Such is indeed God’s treatment of the soul. He is so generous, so determined not to be outdone by any sorrow on the part of the sinner, that He overwhelms with the most splendid favors the recently converted soul. 3. But in this connection we must see in justification a process by which the Presence of God is again achieved by man. By sin grace was lost, and with grace went out the Divine Three in One, the temple was desecrated, the veil of the Holy of Holies was utterly rent. Then sin is forgiven and, once more, the Sacred home is occupied by God. Moreover, when God comes to the soul He comes with His full strength of love, and thereby gives a new energy and life to man. We love because of some beauty, goodness, excellence, that we see in others. We love, then, because of what is in them. It is their gifts that cause or ignite our love. But God, Who is the only cause Himself, creates excellences by love. We are not loved because we are good; we are good because we are loved, so that this indwelling itself fashions us after God’s own heart. “It is the love of God,” says St. Thomas (Summa theologica, i, 20.2), “that produces and creates goodness in things.” The divine presence, then, of God in the soul, effected by sanctifying grace, makes the soul more worthy a temple, more fit a home. God does not come to us because we are fit, but we are fit because God comes to us.

DEIFICATION

1. This very strong expression is used by St. Augustine and many of the Fathers to describe one of the effects of grace. By grace we are deified, i. e., made into gods. Right at the beginning of all the woes of humanity when, in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve first were tempted, the lying spirit promised that the reward of disobedience would be that they should become “as gods.” The result of sin could hardly be that, so man, made only a little lower than the angels, can at times find himself rebuked by the very beasts. Yet the promise became in the end fulfilled, since the Incarnation really affected that transformation, and God, by becoming human, made man himself divine. St. Peter, in his second epistle (4.1), insinuates the same truth when he describes the great promises of Christ making us “partakers of the Divine Nature.” The work, then, of grace is something superhuman and divine. Creation pours into us the divine gift of existence and therefore makes us partakers in the divine being, for existence implies a participation in the being of God. The indwelling of the Blessed Trinity, then, does even more, for by it we participate not only in the divine being, but in the divine nature, and fulfill the prophecy of Our Lord: “Ye are gods.” Justification, therefore, is a higher gift than creation, since it does more for us. 2. This divine participation is what is implied in many texts which allude to the sacrament of Baptism, for the purpose of Baptism is just that, to make us children of God. The phrases concerning “new birth” and “being born again” all are intended to convey the same idea, that the soul by means of this sacrament is lifted above its normal existence and lives a new life. This life is lived “with Christ in God,” i. e., it is a sort of entrance within the charmed circle of the Trinity, or, more accurately, it is that the Blessed Trinity inhabits our soul and enters into our own small life, which at once therefore takes on a new and higher importance. In it henceforth there can be nothing small or mean. For the same reason Our Lord speaks of it to the Samaritan woman as “the gift of God,” beside which all His other benefactions fade into nothingness. Again, it is a “fountain of living water,” it is a “refreshment,” it is “life” itself. Not the stagnant water that remains in a pool in some dark wood, but a stream gushing out from its source, fertilizing the ground on every side, soaking through to all the thirsting roots about it, giving freshness and vitality to the whole district through which it wanders. Life indeed it bears as its great gift; and so does sanctifying grace carry within it the fertilizing power needed by the soul. 3. The participation in the Divine Nature is therefore no mere metaphor, but is a real fact. The indwelling of God makes the soul like to God. I find myself influenced by the people with whom I live, picking up their expressions, copying their tricks and habits, following out their thoughts, absorbing their principles, growing daily like them. With God at the centre of my life the same effect is produced, and slowly, patiently, almost unconsciously, I find myself infected by His spirit. What He loves becomes my ideal; what He hates, my detestation. But it is even closer than this, no mere concord of wills nor harmony of ideas, a real and true elevation to the life of God. Grace is formally in God, at the back, so to say, of His divine nature, the inner essence of Himself. By receiving it, therefore, I receive something of God, and begin to be able to perform divine actions. I can begin to know God even as I am known, to taste His sweetness, and by His favor to have personal, experimental knowledge of Himself. To act divinely is only possible to those who are made divine. This, then, becomes the formal union with God, its terms, its end, its purpose. Deified, therefore, we become in our essence by grace, in our intelligence by its light, in our will by charity.

ADOPTED SONSHIP

1. Here again we have to realize that the sonship of God is no mere metaphor, no mere name, but a deep and true fact of huge significance: “Behold what manner of charity the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called and should be the sons of God!” (1 John 3). We become the sons of God. St. Paul very gladly quotes the saying of a Greek poet that men are the offspring of God, making use of a particular word which necessarily implies that both the begetter and the begotten are of the same nature. A sonship indeed is what Our Lord is Himself incessantly teaching the Apostles to regard as their high privilege, for God is not only His Father, but theirs: “Thus shalt thou pray, Our Father.” With the Gospels it is in constant use as the view of God that Christianity came especially to teach. The Epistles are equally insistent on the same view, for St. Paul is perpetually calling to mind the wonderful prerogatives whereby we cry, “Abba: Father.” We are spoken of as co-heirs of Christ, as children of God. St. John, St. Peter, and St. James repeat the same message as the evident result of the Incarnation, for by it we learn that God became the Son of Man, and man the son of God. 2. Yet it must also be admitted that this sonship of God, which is the common property of all just souls, and is the result of the indwelling of God in the soul, does not mean that we are so by nature, but only by adoption. Now adoption, as it is practiced by law, implies that the child to be adopted is not already the son, that the new relationship is entered upon entirely at the free choice of the person adopting, that the child becomes the legal heir to the inheritance of the adopting father. It is perfectly evident that all these conditions are fulfilled in the case of God’s adoption, for we were certainly no children of His before His adoption of us as sons; strangers we were, estranged indeed by the absence of grace and the high gifts of God. Naturally we were made by Him, but had put ourselves far from Him: “You were as sheep going astray.” Then this adoption of us by God was indeed and could only have been at His free choice, through no merits of ours, but solely according to the deliberate action of His own will, for “you have not chosen Me but I have chosen you.” “So that it is not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy.” Finally, the inheritance is indeed ours by right and title of legal inheritance. We are co-heirs with Christ, and our human nature is lifted up to the level of God; not, of course, that we supplant Him who is by nature the true Son of God, but that we are taken into partnership with Him, and share in Him the wonderful riches of God. 3. Here, then, I may learn the worth and dignity of the Christian name. I am a true son of God, and what else matters upon earth? I have indeed to go about my life with its vocation and all that is entailed in it. I have to work for my living, it may be, or take my place in the family, or lead my own solitary existence. I have to strive to be efficient and effective in the material things of life that fall to my share to be done. But it is this sonship of God that alone makes any matter in the world. In our own time we have heard a very great deal about culture and the ultimate value of the world; but we have seen also to what evil ends so fine a truth may lead men. True culture is not a question of scientific attainments, or mechanical progress, or the discovery of new inventions of destruction, or even of medical and useful sciences; but it is the perfect and complete development of the latent powers of the soul. True culture may indeed make use of sciences and art; perhaps in its most complete sense science and art are needed for the most finished culture of which man is capable; but it is in its very essence the deepening of his truest desire, the full stretch of his widest flights of fancy, the achievement of his noblest ideals. What nobler ideal, or fancy, or desire, can a man have than to be called and to be the son of God; to know that he has been drawn into the close union of God; to feel within his very essence the presence of God; to have personal experience as the objects of his knowledge and love of the Father, Son, and Spirit?

HEIRS OF GOD

1. One of the conditions of adoption is that the newly chosen son should become the legal heir of the new father. Without this legal result or consequence adoption has no meaning. Merely to get a boy to enter a family circle does not imply adoption, for this last has a distinct meaning with a distinct purpose. If, then, we are the heirs of God we are really possessed of a right to His Divine Inheritance. Heaven has been made indeed our home. We speak of it in our hymns as patria, which we can translate as the “land of our fathers.” We claim it thereby in virtue of our parentage, and our parentage is of God. If, then, He is our Father, not by nature, but by adoption, i. e., by grace, we are none the less His heirs and have some sort of right over His possessions and riches. A father cannot without leave of his adopted son alienate any of the family heirlooms; the adopted son now, by the father’s own free act acquires, not indeed dominion over the riches of the home, but, at any rate, an embargo on the father’s free exercise of those riches. He could even demand, as against his father, a legal investigation into the due use and investment of them. His signature is required for every document that relates to them. He has become almost a part-owner of his father’s possessions, since he is their legal heir. All this is implied by adoption in its true sense, and therefore it must be intended to apply to us when we are spoken of as God’s adopted sons. 2. I can, therefore, truthfully speak of myself as an heir of God. Of course I cannot mean that there is any possible question of “the death of the testator,” i. e., of God. That is quite clearly of no significance here. But adoption does give me some sort of claim to the heritage of God. Now the law defines a heritage as that by which a man is made rich. It includes not the riches only, but the source of the riches, so that if I have a claim to God’s riches, I have a claim also upon the source of those riches. For the heir is entitled not merely to a legacy, but to the whole of the fortune. I have a right to the whole fortune of God, to the whole universe. At once, as soon as I realize it, the whole of the world is mine. It is the doctrine of the mystics that, misunderstood, led astray the communists of the Middle Ages. These claimed a common ownership of the wealth of all the world, whereas what was intended was that we should look upon the whole world as ours. To me, then, in life, nothing can be strange or distant or apart. No places can there be where my mind cannot enter and roam at will and feel itself at home; no things can be profane, no people who are not tabernacles of God, no part of life that is not steeped in that living presence. The only possible boundary is the love and the grace of God. There will indeed come evil frontiers beyond which my soul could never dwell. But all else is of God and is therefore my right. All creation is mine; the wonder and beauty of it, life and death, pleasure alike and pain, yield up to me their secrets and disclose the hidden name of God. 3. Here, then, I can find that divine wealth, to inherit which has been the purpose of the adoption by God. Wherever I turn I shall find Him. Whether life has smooth ways or rough, whether she hangs my path with lights or hides me in gloom, I am the heir to all that earth or sea or sky can boast of as their possession. Indeed, these are only the rich things of God, whereas I have a claim upon even more. I have a claim upon the very source of this wealth, that is, upon God Himself, for He is the sole source of all His greatness. I have a right to God Himself. He is mine. He Who holds in the hollow of His hands the fabric of the world, Who with His divine power supports, and with His providence directs, the intricate pattern of the world, has Himself by creation entered deeply into the world; at the heart of everything He lies hid. But even more by grace He comes in a fuller, richer way into the depths of the soul. Here in me are Father, and Son, and Spirit. Dear God, teach me to understand the wonder of this indwelling, to appreciate its worth, to be thankful for its condescension, to reverence its place of choice, to be conscious of its perpetual upholding. By it I am an heir to the fullness of the divine riches. By it I, a creature, possess in His fullness my Creator, Redeemer, Lord.

GUIDANCE IN SPIRITUAL LIFE

1. I have God the Holy Spirit with me. He comes to me in order that I may surrender myself to Him. Of course I cannot merge my personality in His to the extent of having no power of my own, but God has such infinite dominion over the heart of man that He is able to move the will, without in any sense whatever violating its freedom. In the liturgy of the Church there are two or three prayers which speak about God “compelling our rebellious wills.” Now for anyone else to “compel my will” would be to destroy it as a will, since, as even Cromwell freely confessed, “the will suffereth no compulsion”; I cannot be made to will against my will. That would be a contradiction, though I can be made to act against my will, for my actions do not necessarily imply that my will is in them. Whereas, then, no one else can move my will without utterly destroying my moral freedom, God can, for He is intimate to the will and moves it, not really as an external but as an internal power. St. Thomas Aquinas repeatedly refers to this and says over and over again the same thing, namely, that God is so intimately united to man, and so powerful, that not only can He move man to will, but move him to will freely by affecting, not only the action of man, but the very mode of the action. 2. Such is man, whether in a state of grace or not, that his will is in the hands of God, to be moved by man freely, but not so as to exclude God’s movement. Naturally enough it is far easier to say this than to explain it. Indeed the mere statement is all that is actually binding upon faith, and the particular explanation favored by St. Thomas in his general acceptance of St. Augustine’s teaching, comes to us largely as of deep and abiding moment on account of the very clear reasons given and the great authority of his name; but in any case there is something far more special in the guidance of the Holy Spirit sought for by the soul in its endeavor to “live godly in Christ Jesus.” It has to yield itself to the promptings of God, be eager to catch His every whisper, and quick in its obedience to His every call. For this to be achieved, the first work is an emptying out of the soul. Every obstacle has to be got rid of; any attachment to creatures that obscures God’s light has to be broken through (though not every attachment to creatures, since unless I love man whom I see, I cannot possibly know what love means when applied to God, nor can I suppose myself to be able to understand or love God, whom I do not see). First, then, to cleanse my soul by leveling and smoothing and clearing its surface and depths. 3. Then I must yield myself into His arms. I shall not know very often the way He wishes me to go. It may be only one step at a time, and then darkness again; or I may be taken swiftly and surely and openly along a clear road. That is His business, not mine, only I must be prepared not to be able to follow always the meaning of what He wants of me. It is not necessary at all that I should know. If I am faithful and loyal and full of trust, things will gradually settle themselves, and I shall at least be able to look back and understand the significance and purpose of many things that at first appeared accidental, and even in opposition to the end I considered God had in view for me. Thus by looking back I can sometimes get a shrewd idea of what is to follow; but often it is only a guess, nothing more than that. Still, generally, it would seem that people who surrender themselves to God do get a sense or a feeling which leads them right and makes them sure. It is the divine tenderness stooping to poor muddled humanity and making it transfigured with God’s own glory. The advance, then, whether consciously grasped or not, is in due proportion to the purity and fidelity of the soul, purity in its act of cleansing, fidelity in its subjection to the promptings of the Holy Spirit.

GIFTS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

1. To live the spiritual life to its fullness we need the instinctive governances of the Holy Ghost. All day long, and even all through the hours when consciousness is asleep, the Holy Spirit is speaking to us in many ways. He is offering us His heavenly counsel, enlightening our minds to an ever more complete understanding of the deep truths of faith, and generally imparting to us that deep knowledge without which we cannot make advance. Reason and common sense have their own contribution to make in opening our minds and hearts to a proper interpretation of all that is about us and within us; but reason and common sense have themselves also to be supernaturalized, to be illumined by the light of a far higher plane of truth. Hence the need of this divine instinct is patent to anyone who considers the purpose and destiny of the soul. But it is difficult at times to understand and to grasp surely the words of divine wisdom, since by sin’s coarseness the refinement of the soul is dulled and rendered but little responsive; or, rather, it is not so much a matter of being responsive to a message as primarily of hearing and understanding it. It seems to be very obvious that God must be speaking to me almost without ceasing; it is equally obvious that very little of this is noticed. 2. Here, then, am I in the world and needing the governance of God’s instinct. Here, too, is this whispered counsel and enlightenment of God, perpetually being made to me. Yet, though made by God, and needed by me, this counsel and enlightenment, I can be certain, must frequently be entirely lost to me. It is as though I lived in a perfectly beautiful country, with stretching landscape about, and beautiful glimpses of hills and woodland, and yet never saw or appreciated the view; as though heavenly music were about me, to which I never paid the slightest attention; as though my best loved friend stood by me and I never lifted my eyes, and so did not know of his presence. Of course it is really a great deal worse than that, for I do not need with an absolute necessity the view, or the music, or the friend; whereas I do most certainly need this divinely offered help, guidance, enlightenment. Hence it is clear that neither my need nor God’s instinct suffice. Something else is required by means of which I am able to make use of that instinct, to hear its message, to discover its meaning, to apply its advice to myself; else am I no better than a general who possesses the full plan of his allies, in all its details, but written in a cypher that he cannot read. 3. To produce this reaction or perception is the work of the sevenfold gifts. They are habits infused into the soul, which strengthen its natural powers, and make them responsive to every breath of God and capable of heroic acts of virtue. By the gifts my eyes are made able to see what had else been hidden, my ears quick to catch what had else not been heard; the gifts do not, so to say, supply eye or ear, but make more delicate, refined, sensitive, the eye and ear already there. Their business is to intensify rather than to create powers established in me by grace. Less excellent necessarily than the theological virtues which unite me to God, they are yet more excellent than the other virtues, though, being rooted in charity and thereby linked up among themselves, they are also part of the dowry that charity brings in her train. On this account it is clear that from the moment of Baptism the sevenfold gifts are the possession of the soul, and whosoever holds one holds all; yet by the sacrament of Confirmation it would appear certain that something further is added, some more delicate perception, some livelier sensitiveness; or it may be, as other theologians point out, that by Confirmation they are more steadily fixed in the soul, more fully established, more firmly held. But in any case it is clear what they are to me, habits whereby I am perfected to obey the Holy Spirit of God.

BEATITUDES

1. The possession of the sevenfold gifts results in the performance of certain virtuous acts, for it is perfectly obvious that if I am so blest by the gifts that I find my reason, will, emotions, made increasedly perceptive of divine currents previously lost to me, I can hardly help acting in a new way. I now discover the view about me, and the music, and, consequently, my manner of life must in some ways be different from before. The Vision has come; it cannot simply open my eyes to new things in life without thereby altering that very life itself. Not only shall I find that what seemed to me before to be evil now appears to me to be a blessing; but on that very account what before I tried to avoid, or, having got, tried to be rid of, I shall now accept, perhaps even seek. Similarly, whereas then I was weak, now I am strong; and increase of strength means new activities, new energy put into the old work and finding its way out into works altogether new. My emotions, finally, which perilled and dominated my life, slip now into a subordinate position, and while thereby as actively employed as before, are held under discipline. It is clear, therefore, that the gifts will not leave me where I was before, but will influence my actions as well as alter my vision. 2. I find, then, that these new habits will develop into new activities. But this means also that I have a new idea as to the means of achieving the full happiness of life. Once upon a time I thought happiness meant comfort, now I see that it means something quite different. My view of happiness has changed. I am therefore obliged to change also my idea as to the means and conditions whereby, and in which, happiness can be found. I had attempted to climb out of my valley over the hills in the west; I now attempt to climb out over the hills to the east. The steps by which once I clambered are useless to me. I must try new ones in the opposite hills. Just that is what Our Lord meant by promulgating His eight Beatitudes. These are just the new blessedness, so to say, which results from finding that happiness now means the knowledge and love of God. Things that previously I fled from, I now seek; things once my bugbear, are now the objects of my delight. Poverty, meekness, mourning, the hunger and thirst after justice, cleanness of heart, the making of peace, mercy, the suffering of persecution for justice’s sake, are now found to be the steps to be passed over, the conditions to be secured before happiness can be finally secured. 3. These things, then, are beatitudes to me. They are acts which I finally achieve by means of the new enlightenment gained through the gifts of God. Actively I am merciful and meek and clean of heart. I perform these actions, and they are the result of visions seen, and counsels heard, through the new sensitiveness to the divine instinctive guidance that of old passed me by without finding in my heart any response. To be forever pursuing now peace and sorrow, and, at whatever cost, justice, is an energizing state of life which is due entirely to the new perception of the value of these things, so that we are right in asserting that the beatitudes are nothing else than certain actions, praised by Our Lord and practiced by us as a result of the establishment in our souls of seven definite habits. But not only are they actions, they produce as an effect joy in the heart; for which reason it is that we call them beatitudes. They show me what is truly blessed and thereby give me, even here on earth, a foretaste of the bliss of final happiness.

THE FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT

1. Besides the beatitudes there are other acts that follow from the gifts when properly used by the soul. The beatitudes are means which, under the light infused by God, are valued at their true worth as leading finally to happiness in its more complete sense. But when these are thus put into practice, for the soul understands the new meaning life gathers, they do not end the wonders of the action of grace. As a boy I met life and found it full of interest and dawning with the glories of success. The world in its aspect of nature had such manifest beauties that these quickly entranced and thrilled the soul. The sun and grass and flowers and woods and waters, make no secret of their kinship with their creator; Francis Thompson found them “garrulous of God,” so garrulous in our youth that we see that life is full of very good things. Then comes the reaction (to many even before full manhood), when life is found to be full of illusion. Life is now judged a melancholy business, apt to fail you just when the need of it is most discovered, hard to be certain of; it is the age of romantic melancholy when most people put into verse their sorrow at the disappointment to be found in all things of beauty. Every tree and flower and “dear gazelle” is no sooner loved than it is lost through death or misunderstanding. 2. Then, finally, the balance is set right. The two phases pass. They are both true only as half truths. There is no denying that life is good and beautiful and thrilling. The boy’s vision is correct. Yet it is equally true to say that there is sorrow and suffering and death and disappointment in all human things. But a new phase, blessedly a last phase, dawns upon the soul. Sorrow and pain are real, but the old happiness of boyhood is made to fit in and triumph over them by the sudden realization that strength is the lesson to be learned. Sorrow comes that discipline may be born in the soul, self-restraint, humility. Life is hard, but its very hardness is no evil, but our means of achieving good. That is the very atmosphere of the beatitudes, the message they bring, the teaching they imparted from the Sermon on the Mount. Poverty, cleanness of heart, mercy, meekness, are all things difficult to acquire; but they give a real, true blessedness to the soul that will see their value. Life is no longer a disappointment, but the training ground of all good. 3. Finally, there follow other acts, too many to number, though there are twelve usually given, which result from gifts and beatitudes. These are called the fruits of the Holy Ghost, for they represent in that metaphorical sense the ultimate result of the gifts. They are the last and sweetest consequences of the sevenfold habits infused by the Spirit. Indeed, just as trees are grown in an orchard because of their fruits, and, therefore, just as it can be said that the fruit is, from the gardener’s point of view, the purpose for which the tree is cultivated (for of the fruitless fig Our Lord asked why it cumbered the ground), so these fruits of the Holy Ghost (charity, joy, peace, patience, benignity, goodness, longanimity, mildness, faith, modesty, continency, chastity—Gal. 5.22) can be looked upon as the very purpose for which the gifts were given, that I might, by seeing a new blessedness in life’s very troubles, begin to find joy and peace and patience and faith, where else I had found only sorrow. Endlessly could the list of these be extended, for St. Paul has chosen only a very few; but these that he names are what a man delights in when he has received the gifts, and has understood and valued the beatitudes. Sweetness is what they add to virtue, ease, comfort. I not only hunger and thirst after justice, but enjoy the very pain of the pursuit.

KNOWLEDGE

1. This gift of God illumines and perfects the intelligence. The purpose of the gifts, it has been already explained, is to make the soul more alive to, and more appreciative of, the whispered instinct of God; not to create new faculties, but to increase the power of those already existing. My mind, then, has to be supernaturalized and refined to that pitch of perception which will enable it to grasp and to understand God’s message. Now the mind itself works upon a great variety of subjects. It has whole worlds to conquer, planes of thought which are very clearly distinguishable; yet in its every activity it needs this divine refinement, so that in all four gifts are allotted to perform this complete enlightenment of the mind. Knowledge overcomes ignorance and is concerned with the facts, visible and sense- perceived, in creation; for by the council of the Vatican it is laid down as part of the deposit of faith that human reason can prove the existence of God altogether apart from the supernatural motives which grace supplies. The visible world is held to contain ample proofs which in themselves are adequate logically to convince human understanding of the existence of God. Individual reason may fail to satisfy itself. People may declare truthfully that they are not convinced; the Church insists only that it can be done. 2. Knowledge, however, in this sense is a gift of God whereby we discover Him in His own creation and in the works of man. It is here no mere task set to reason for detecting the Creator in His handiwork, but an actual vision by which the soul is supernaturalized and sees Him patently everywhere. The beauteous face of nature is merely seen as a veil, hiding a beauty more sublime. Things of dread as well as things of loveliness come into the scheme, things trivial and things tremendous, things majestic and things homely, all that God has made. Even man’s work, who is himself only one of the greater masterpieces of the Great Artificer, is affected by this new light with which the world is flooded. The delicate pieces of machinery constructed by human ingenuity, that gain in wonder and in power, are themselves still God’s work at one remove; they are the fruits of a mind that He has constructed, and they do not exhaust the capacity of that mind. They reveal hidden potentialities as well as express actual achievements. Weapons of destruction, with all the horror they rightly inspire, are yet witnesses again to that parent-intelligence whence was begotten man himself. All this, of course, as soon as considered, is admitted by every believer in God, but the gift of knowledge makes it realized and seen steadfastly. 3. Life, then, of itself is full of illusion. That is the cry, desolating and pitiful, which arises from the higher followers of every religious faith. Man is bound to the wheel, his mind is compassed with infirmity, he is born into ignorance. Desire tumultuously hustles all his days. He needs, therefore, some light whereby he may find the true inner meaning of all with which he comes in contact. Here, then, in the gift of Knowledge is such a true vision, understanding, vouchsafed him of the visible things of creation. He will realize as much, perhaps, even more than before the attraction of beauty, only it will be no snare, but a beckoning light. He will find in it now no illusion, but the perfect image of a greater beauty. The charm of the world about him will become greater, the wonders of nature, the intricate pattern of mechanical appliances, the fury of storms, the tumult of the wind, the terrific force of pestilence, the psychological facts of man’s mind, the construction of his frame, the grouping of his social instincts, all now will be alive with God, shot through with the divine splendor, elevated to His order of life, eloquent of His name—a deepening knowledge of God achieved through a knowledge of His creatures.

UNDERSTANDING

1. There is another gift required to perfect the intelligence when it is engaged upon the principles of truth. The mind was created by God to exercise itself upon truth, primarily, the Supreme Truth; secondarily, all truths which by their essence must themselves be radiations from the Supreme Truth. These truths are of endless variety, both in their relationship to each other and in the particular line in which they operate. They are the truths of arts and science, the intricate yet unchanging laws that govern the growth and development of matter, the complicated processes whereby organic beings build up their tissues and multiply themselves by means of the cell principle. There are again the curious laws, as they are called, that effect gravitation, that have to be counted upon in the science of architecture, and in all the various kindred crafts of man. There are principles, too, that underlie the whole series of the arts, principles of truth and life and beauty. Upon these the mind must feed, and in them all the mind must be able to trace the character and being of God. But there are also far higher truths which are taught only by revelation, safeguarded by authority, grouped under the title of faith. These truths are higher than the others, since they directly concern a higher being, i. e., God. All truths are truths about God, but the truths of faith concern themselves immediately with the being, life, and actions of God. Understanding, therefore, is the gift perfecting the mind for these. 2. It might seem, perhaps, that the light of faith is itself sufficient, and that no further gift were needed, since it is the very purpose of faith to make us accept this revelation of God, enlightening and strengthening the intelligence till under the dominion of the will it says: I believe. It is true that faith suffices for this, but we require something more than faith, or at least if we do not absolutely require more, we shall progress more rapidly and further when we are not only able to believe but to understand. In every article of faith there is always something which is mysterious or hidden, some obscurity due not to the entanglement of facts, but to the weakness of the human mind. Of course this must to some extent always exist, for man can never hope to comprehend God till by the beatific vision he sees Him face to face; but a good deal of the obscurity can be lifted by the mere operation of the mind under the light of God, not arising purely from study, but from the depth of love enkindled by God. It is a commonplace in the lives of the saints that without instruction they do yet manage to learn the deep mysteries of God; the same is true of many simple souls whom we meet from time to time in the world. They not only believe, but penetrate the truths of faith. 3. Here, then, I have ready to hand a most useful gift of God. I desire not only to believe, but to absorb and to penetrate the mysteries of God. I want to taste to the full the meaning of life as a whole, to develop every power that lies in me, to make the truths of revelation blossom out ever more fully, till their hidden and mystical significance becomes gradually more clear. The pages of Holy Scripture are full of instruction, but they will not yield up their secrets save to a soul attuned by God. That can be effected by the gift of understanding. I shall find by its means that these treasures are inexhaustible, that from mere abstract teaching the sayings of the Master and His Apostles become full of practical meaning, that all life about me takes on a new and richer significance. History and social life open their doors to whoever has this blessed gift, and it becomes clearly seen that their maker and builder is God. The dullness of souls who will not believe, or only believe and then stop short, becomes painful to note and bothersome to put up with, but this is the price one has to pay for so fine a vision. By this, then, we peer into the depths of faith, and find them gradually and steadily growing more and more clear and penetrable.

WISDOM

1. All writers on the gifts of the Holy Ghost place wisdom as the highest gift of all. It takes this high position partly because its work is done in the intelligence, which is man’s highest power, and partly because it is that highest power occupied to its highest capacity. Like knowledge and understanding, its business is to make us see God everywhere, in the material and spiritual creation of God, in the concrete facts of existence, and in the revealed truths of faith. It produces in a soul a sense of complete certainty and hope. Hence it is sometimes described as neighbor to hope; indeed, its finest side is often just that determined and resolute conviction with which the soul rises superior to every possible disaster, and is prepared to brave every contingency in its sureness of God’s final power and the efficacy of His will. It comes closer, therefore, to God Himself than do either understanding or knowledge. These do, indeed, enable the soul to be continuously conscious of the divine presence, of God immanent as well as transcendent, God in the heart of the world as well as wholly above the world, and they affect this consciousness by enabling the soul to see Him everywhere. They lift the veil. They show His footprints. They trace everywhere the marks of His power, wisdom, love. But it is noticeable that they lead to God from the world. I see a flower, and by the gift of knowledge I am immediately aware of the author of its loveliness; by understanding I perceive with clearness the wonder of God’s working in the world. By them I lift my eyes from earth to Heaven, by wisdom I look from Heaven to see the earth. 2. Wisdom, therefore, implies an understanding of the world through God, whereas knowledge and understanding suppose a perception of God through the world. Wisdom takes its stand upon causes, the other two on effects. They work from creatures to Creator; wisdom looks upon all the world through the eyes of God. Consequently the effect of wisdom is that the soul sees life as a whole. Matter and truth are to it no longer separate planes of thought, but one. There is at once no distinction between them in the eyes of God, for both are manifestations of Himself and creatures of His making. Hence the soul that is dowered with wisdom climbs up to God’s own height, and looking down upon the world sees it “very good,” noticing how part fits in with part, and how truths of faith, and truths of science and sunset, and flower and Hell, are linked one with another to form the pattern of God’s design. Each has its place in the divine economy of God’s plan, each is equally of God, equally sharing in His purposes, though some more than others able to express God better. The effect, then, is largely that the whole of life is co-ordinated, and equality, fraternity, liberty, become not the motto of a revolution, but of the ordered government of God. 3. The opposite to this gift is folly, for a man who fails in wisdom loses all true judgment of the values of human life. He is perpetually exchanging the more for the less valuable, bestowing huge gifts in just barter, as he imagines, for what is merely showy and trivial. Not by causes, but by effect does he consider life and its activities. The wise man, then, estimates everything by its highest cause. He compares and discovers, gleans the reason of God’s providence, its purpose, its fitness. First principles are his guide, not the ready and practical proverbs that display the wit and worldly wisdom of the lesser man. Eternity becomes of larger moment than time, since time is merely for eternity. God’s law is more convincing than man’s, for man’s enactments are not laws at all when they come in conflict with divine commands. Faith is so deeply in him that he judges between propositions, and discovers truth against heresy. He has climbed to the heights of God and sees all the world at his feet, and knows it as God knows it, the world and its Lord and the glory of it.

COUNSEL

1. The fourth gift that perfects the intelligence acts rather as a moderating than as a stimulating influence. The soul is often impetuous in its decisions, moved by human feelings and passions, urged by desire, love, hatred, prejudice. Quickly stirred to action, it dashes into its course without any real attention to, or understanding of, its better wisdom. Frequently in life my lament has to be that I acted on the impulse of the moment. There is so much that I am sorry for, not merely because now I see what has actually resulted, but because even then I had quite sufficient reason to let me be certain what would result. I was blind, not because my eyes could not have seen, but because I gave them no leave to see. I would not carefully gaze at the difficulties, not puzzle out in patience what would most likely be the result. Even my highest powers are often my most perilous guides, since, moved by generosity, I engaged myself to do what I have no right to perform, and find that I have in the end been generous not only of what is my own, but sometimes of what belongs to another, not as though I deliberately gave away what belonged to another, but just because I had no deliberation at all. I need, then, the Holy Spirit of God to endow me with the gift of counsel which corresponds to prudence. 2. Now prudence, which counsel helps and protects, is eminently a practical gift of God, not so high as wisdom, not so wonderful in the beauty of its vision as knowledge or understanding, yet for all a most important and homely need. The other intellectual gifts of the Spirit are more abstract. They give us just the whisper of God that enables us to see the large ways of God in the world. They give, in consequence, the great principles that are to govern us in life. Hence their importance is very great. We do so seriously need to know by what principles we are to measure life’s activities, on what basis to build up the fabric of our souls, to be sure that God’s laws are very clearly and definitely made manifest to us. But, after all, that is only one-half of the difficulty, for even after I know the principles of action, I have still the trouble, in some ways more full of possibilities of mistake, of applying them to concrete experience. I know that sacrifice is the law of life, I know that meekness overindulged may be cowardice, I know that I may sin by not having anger; that is all evident, a series of platitudes. But here, and now, have I come to the limit of meekness? Must I manifest my angry protests? Am I obliged to attend to my own needs and renounce the idea of sacrifice? There daily are questions that puzzle, torture, bruise me with scruples. 3. Just here, then, I have intense need for this practical gift of God in order with nicety and precision to apply principles to concrete cases; often I am precipitate or perhaps dilatory. I am in a hurry or cannot make up my mind—shall I answer those who attack me, or shall I be silent? Our Lord was silent and made answer by turns. Counsel, then, is my need from God, the instinct whereby a practical judgment is quickly and safely made. All the more have I a tremendous need for this if my life is full of activity, if pressure of work, or social life, or the demands of good and useful projects, or the general tendency of my family surroundings, make my day crowded and absorbed, for the very combined and concentrated essence of life will need some exceedingly moderate influence to produce any sense of balance or proportion in my judgment. The people about me I notice to become more and more irritable, mere creatures of impulse. I feel some such malign influence invading the peaceful sanctuary of my soul, disturbing its even outlook on things, driving out my serene calm. I must anchor on to this gift of God, become prudent, detached, filling the mind with the counsel of the Holy Spirit.

FORTITUDE

1. After the intelligence comes the will which also, because of the very large part it plays in all human action, needs to be perfected by a gift of the Spirit. It is necessary to repeat that the Holy Spirit does not by His gifts bestow on the soul new powers and new faculties, but develops, refines, perfects faculties already there. It is not the creation of new eyes to see new visions, but the strengthening of the eyes of the soul so as to see more clearly and with a longer sight. The will, then, has also to be strengthened, for it is the will that lies at the very heart of all heroism. Merely to have a glimpse of greatness is but part of a hero’s need. No doubt it is a larger part, for very many of us never by instinct at all touch on the borders of greatness, we do not see or understand how in our little lives we can be great, we have not the imagination lit up by God, no vision; yet “when the vision fails, the people shall perish.” But even when that sudden showing does by God’s mercy come to us, we still fall far short of it. It is too high, too ideal, too far removed from weak human nature to seem possible to us. That is to say, our will has failed us. We are faced by some huge obstacle, or even by a persistent refusal to budge on behalf of some one (ourselves or another) to go forward and to do; we struggle, fail, lose heart, surrender, cease our efforts. What do we want? Fortitude, that “persistive constancy” that to Shakespeare was the greatest quality of human wills. 2. How is this achieved? By appreciating the nearness of God to us. The gifts make us responsive to God with an ease and instantaneousness that operates smoothly and without friction. That is God’s doing, not ours. He gives us this wonderful power of being able to register at once every passing inspiration. The gifts that refine the intelligence allow it to perceive sights which else were hidden. The gift that refines the will must do this by some kindred action. Now the difficulties that beset the will must necessarily be difficulties for whose overcoming strength is needed. Therefore the will must be refined by being made strong. How can it be made strong by the Holy Spirit? What exactly happens to its mechanism to secure for it the power of endurance? The easiest way of understanding how this effect is brought about is to suppose that the soul by its refinement, by that delicacy whereby it responds instantly to a divine impression, is quickly aware of God’s nearness to it. It perceives how close it is to the Spirit of God, and the sense of this nearness makes it better able to hold on to its duty. In the old style of warfare we often read of wives and mothers coming to the field of battle that their presence might awake their men to the topmost pitch of courage. Even in the modern methods of fighting, the moral effect of the presence of the emperor or king is considered to have an effect upon the troops. Of course here it is more homely, since the familiar presence of the Holy Spirit strengthens and inspires by love, trust, sympathy. 3. For this reason the name Comforter was given to the Holy Spirit, in its original sense of strengthening, becoming the fort of the soul; and the result is that the recipient is able to hold on or, in our modern slang, to “carry on.” By nature so many of us are prone to seek our own comforts at the expense of what we know to be the higher side of us. Human respect makes us again cowardly, or the sheer monotony of perseverance dulls and wearies the soul. We get so depressed with the strain of making efforts that we are very much inclined to let the spiritual side of life go under, or at least be rendered as little heroic as possible, for it is real heroism even just to “go on.” The “silent pressure” of temptations, when their passion and fury have died down, is a constant worry, an unconscious weight on the mind, like the thought of war that lies heavily at the back of the consciousness of those whose external lives seem empty of war-reminders. We want to be courageous and fearless, to undergo. Then we must hold fast to God’s nearness to us, and feel the virtue going out from Him to us, though He does but touch the hem of our garments by His indwelling.

PIETY

1. Besides our intelligence and will we have other faculties that go by a diversity of names; sometimes they are called the emotions, sometimes the passions, sometimes they are alluded to as the sentimental side of our nature; but by whatever name we may happen to call them, it is clear that they represent just those movements of our being which are not really rational in themselves, though they can be controlled by the reason. It is simplest to divide them into two classes and to realize that they lie just on the borderline between spirit and matter, partly of soul, partly of body. These two classes are arranged according as the emotion attracts or repels man. The repelled emotions are fear, anger, hatred, etc.; the attracted are love, desire, joy, etc. This gift of piety enables even the emotions to be made responsive to God. It is always the notion of some perfect instrument to be made harmonious that perhaps most clearly shows us the work of the Holy Spirit in the gifts of God, some perfect instrument, which needs to be so nicely at tuned that its every string shall give out a distinct note, and shall require the least movement from the fingers of God’s right hand to make its immediate response. Here, then, we have first to record the fact that the purpose of this gift is to make the emotions or passions so refined, so perfectly strung, that at once the slightest pressure of the Divine instinct moves them to turn their love, desire, joy, towards God, finding in Him the satisfaction of their inmost heart. 2. Piety, in its Latin significance (and here in theology, of course, we get almost all our terms through the Latin tongue), means the filial spirit of reverence towards parents. Virgil gives to the hero of his Roman epic the repeated title of pius, because he wishes always to emphasize Æneas’ devotion to his aged father. Hence it is clear that what is primarily intended here is that we should be quickly conscious of the Fatherhood of God. The mediæval mystics, especially our homely English ones like Richard Rolle of Hampole, and Mother Julianna of Norwich, curiously enough were fond of talking about the Motherhood of God in order to bring out the protective and devoted side of God’s care for us; of course God surpasses both a mother’s and father’s love in His ineffable love for us. But then it is just that sweetness of soul in its attitude towards God, that this gift produces in me a readiness to perceive His love in every turn of fortune, and to discover His gracious pity in His treatment of my life. It requires a divine indwelling of the Spirit of God to effect this in my soul, for though I may be by nature easily moved to affection, prompt to see and profit by every opening for friendship, yet I must, no less, have a difficulty in turning this into my religious life without God’s movement in my soul. 3. Perhaps the most unmistakable result of this is in the general difference between Catholic and non-Catholic nations, in their ideas of religion. Even if one takes a non-Catholic nation at its best and a Catholic nation at its worst, the gulf between them is enormous, for at its lowest the religion of the Catholic nation will be attractive at least with its joy, and the non-Catholic repellent with its gloom. There is a certain hardness about all other denominations of Christianity, a certain restrained attitude of awe towards God, which though admirable in itself, is perfectly hateful when it is made the dominant note in religion. Better joyous superstition than gloomy correctness of worship; better, far better, to find happy children who have little respect, and much comradeship, towards their parents, than neat and quiet children who are in silent awe of their parents. It is, then, to develop this side of religion that the gift of piety is given. The result then is a sweetness, a gracefulness, a natural lovingness towards God and all holy persons and things, as opposed to a gloomy, respectable, awkward, self-conscious hardness towards our Father in Heaven. Clever, trained people have most to be on their guard, for the intellectual activities of the soul are apt to crowd out the gentler, simpler side of character.

FEAR

1. Catholics as a whole, then, we claim to be not in awe of God, but holding themselves to Him rather by love than fear; yet for all that there must come into our religion a notion also of fear, else God will be made of little account, dwarfed by His hero-followers, the saints. It is possible that familiarity with God may breed something which seems very like contempt. The majesty of God has got to be considered just as much as His love, for either without the other would really give a false idea of Him. Just as there are people who would give up all belief in Hell, because they prefer to concentrate upon His mercy, and, as a result, have no real love of God as He is in Himself, so there are people also who do not sufficiently remember the respect due to His awfulness, people who think of Him as a Redeemer, which indeed He is, but not as a Judge, which is equally His prerogative. Hence this side of our character is also to be made perfect by the indwelling of the Spirit of God, our fear, anger, hate, have got to be sanctified by finding a true object for their due exercise. No single talent must be wrapped away in uselessness; I must fear God, be angry with, and hate sin. Fear, then, as well as piety is a gift of the Spirit. 2. The chief way in which the absence of this gift of fear manifests itself is in the careless and slipshod way we perform our duties. We are sure to believe in God’s justice and majesty; but we are not so sure to act up to our belief. Accuracy in devotion, in prayer, in life, is the result of a filial fear of God, and if I have to confess a very chaotic and uncertain procedure in my spiritual duties, then I can tell quite easily which gift I most need to make use of. What are my times for prayer like? Are they as regularly kept to as my circumstances permit? How about my subject for meditation, how about my following of the Mass, my watchfulness in prayer, my days for confession and communion? Again, my duties at home, in my profession, in the work I have undertaken? Are they on the whole punctually performed, accurately, with regard to details? That is where my fear for God should come in, for fear here is part of love and love is enormously devoted to little things, indeed finds that where it is concerned there are no little things, but time and place and manner and thoroughness have all got faithfully to be noted and carried out. Here, then, is where I shall find I need a reverential fear of God. 3. Yes, of course, pride and laziness will protest all the while, by urging that all this is a great deal of fuss about nothing, that God is our Father, that He perfectly understands, that we should not worry ourselves too much over trifles. Now pride and laziness often speak true things, or rather half-truths. It is true that God is my Father and understands; but it is equally true that I am His child and that love demands my thoroughness. Horror of sin, devotion to the sacrament of confession, the Scripture saying about a severe judgment for every idle word, all these things have got to be taken into account as well as the first set of principles. Piety needs fear for its perfect performance. The boy at first may have to be scolded into obedience to his mother. He does not at first realize, and is punished; but watch him when he is a grown man, no longer in subjection or under obedience; see how charmingly he cares for her by anticipating her wishes, how much he is at her beck and call, proudly foreseeing for her, protecting, caring. That is love, no doubt, but a love of reverence. They are comrades in a sense, but she is always his mother to him, some one to be idolized, reverenced, yes, and, really, feared, in the fullest sense of love.

GRACE

1. The indwelling, then, of the Holy Spirit is a true and magnificent phrase. It means that we become living Temples of God. Elsewhere indeed He is in tree, flower, sky, earth, water; up in the Heavens, down to the depths of the lower places, in the cleft wood and lifted stone, in the heart of all creation by the very fact of its creation. Yet the higher a thing is in the scale of being the more nearly is it after God’s image and likeness, so that man by his sheer intelligence is more representative of God, as the highest masterpiece is more representative of the author of it. Yet over and above this intelligent life of man is another life in him, which secures God’s presence within him in some nobler fashion, for it is noticeable that Scripture repeatedly speaks of God’s dwelling in His saints, and not dwelling in sinners. Now He is even in sinners by the title of their Creator, so that dwelling must be a deliberate phrase chosen by the Inspired author of Scripture to represent some presence above the mere general presence of God everywhere. Consequently we are driven to the conclusion that the saints, in virtue of their sainthood, become dwelling places of God, temples, special places set apart, where in a more perfect way, with richer expression and more true representation, God is. Sanctity, therefore, constitutes something wholly supernatural, attracting God’s indwelling, or rather resulting from this indwelling of God. 2. Now sanctity itself cannot mean that one man is able to make himself so alluring to God that he draws God to himself, for in that case God’s action of indwelling would be motived by a creature, and God would have found some finite reason for His act. This cannot be, since the only sufficient motive for God can be God Himself. “He hath done all things on account of Himself,” say the Scriptures. We can be sure, therefore, that the indwelling of the spirit is the cause and not the effect of the goodness that is in man, for the Saints are not born, but made by God. Hence we understand what is meant by saying that the justice of the Saints, their justification, is effected by grace, i. e., by God’s free gift. It is not from them, but from Him: “Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to Thy name give Glory.” Grace, therefore, is the name given to that divine habit whereby the soul is made one with Him. It is clear, then, also, why in the catechism grace is called the supernatural life of the soul, and why mortal sin is called the death of the soul, since it kills the soul by depriving it of sanctifying grace. 3. This leads us to the last notion of grace, that it is in the supernatural order what the soul is in the natural order. My soul is everywhere in my body and gives evidence of its presence by the life there manifest; cut off a portion of the body, amputate a limb. It dies. The soul is no longer in it. So does grace work. It is right in the very essence of the soul, at the heart of it, and works through into all the faculties and powers by means of the virtues. It is the life of the whole assemblage of these habits of goodness. As soon as it is withdrawn, then at once charity goes, for we are out of friendship with God, and charity is nothing other than the love of God. Hope still and faith in some form remain, but without any inner life or energy to quicken them. All else is a crumbled ruin, without shape or life, a sight to fill those that can see it with horror and disgust. With grace the soul is once more thronged with vital activities, for grace is life. Grace it is that gives the same charm to the soul as life gives to the body; it imparts a freshness, an alertness, an elasticity, a spontaneous movement, a fragrance, a youth. By grace we are children in God’s eyes, with the delicate coloring and sweetness of a child; without it we are old, worn, dead, not only useless to ourselves, but a pollution to others. Need one wonder if all life is different to the soul in sin? Religion, God, Heaven, Mass, prayers, have lost all attraction and are full of drudgery. Outwardly we feel the same; but our attraction to these higher gifts has gone, a prodigal as yet content with the husks of life’s fruitage, relishing only the food of swine, without grace, spiritually dead.

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Project Gutenberg’s The Practice of the Presence of God, by Brother Lawrence This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at http://www.gutenberg.org ** This is a COPYRIGHTED Project Gutenberg eBook, Details Below ** ** Please follow the copyright guidelines in this file. ** Title: The Practice of the Presence of God Author: Brother Lawrence Posting Date: August 21, 2012 [EBook #5657] Release Date: May, 2004 Language: English *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRACTICE OF PRESENCE OF GOD *** Copyright (C) 2002 by Lightheart. Brother Lawrence’s THE PRACTICE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD 2002 Edition edited by Lightheart at PracticeGodsPresence.com Includes: Editor’s Preface Conversations and Letters Editor’s Preface Brother Lawrence was born Nicholas Herman around 1610 in Herimenil, Lorraine, a Duchy of France. His birth records were destroyed in a fire at his parish church during the Thirty Years War, a war in which he fought as a young soldier. It was also the war in which he sustained a near fatal injury to his sciatic nerve. The injury left him quite crippled and in chronic pain for the rest of his life. The details of his early life are few and sketchy. However, we know he was educated both at home and by his parish priest whose first name was Lawrence and who was greatly admired by the young Nicolas. He was well read and, from an early age, drawn to a spiritual life of faith and love for God. We also know that in the years between the abrupt end of his duties as a soldier and his entry into monastic life, he spent a period of time in the wilderness living like one of the early desert fathers. Also, prior to entering the monastery, and perhaps as preparation, he spent time as a civil servant. In his characteristic, self deprecating way, he mentions that he was a “footman who was clumsy and broke everything”. At mid-life he entered a newly established monastery in Paris where he became the cook for the community which grew to over one hundred members. After fifteen years, his duties were shifted to the sandal repair shop but, even then, he often returned to the busy kitchen to help out. In times as troubled as today, Brother Lawrence, discovered, then followed, a pure and uncomplicated way to walk continually in God’s presence. For some forty years, he lived and walked with Our Father at his side. Yet, through his own words, we learn that Brother Lawrence’s first ten years were full of severe trials and challenges. A gentle man of joyful spirit, Brother Lawrence shunned attention and the limelight, knowing that outside distraction “spoils all”. It was not until after his death that a few of his letters were collected. Joseph de Beaufort, representative and counsel to the local archbishop, first published the letters in a small pamphlet. The following year, in a second publication which he titled, ‘The Practice of the Presence of God’, de Beaufort included, as introductory material, the content of four conversations he had with Brother Lawrence. In this small book, through letters and conversations, Brother Lawrence simply and beautifully explains how to continually walk with God – not from the head but from the heart. Brother Lawrence left the gift of a way of life available to anyone who seeks to know God’s peace and presence; that anyone, regardless of age or circumstance, can practice -anywhere, anytime. Brother Lawrence also left the gift of a direct approach to living in God’s presence that is as practical today as it was three hundred years ago. Brother Lawrence died in 1691, having practiced God’s presence for over forty years. His quiet death was much like his monastic life where each day and each hour was a new beginning and a fresh commitment to love God with all his heart. Edited by Lightheart at PracticeGodsPresence.com October 2002

CONVERSATIONS

Introduction: At the time of de Beaufort’s interviews, Brother Lawrence was in his late fifties. Joseph de Beaufort later commented that the crippled brother, who was then in charge of the upkeep of over one hundred pairs of sandals, was “rough in appearance but gentle in grace”. First Conversation: The first time I saw Brother Lawrence was upon the 3rd of August, 1666. He told me that God had done him a singular favor in his conversion at the age of eighteen. During that winter, upon seeing a tree stripped of its leaves and considering that within a little time the leaves would be renewed and after that the flowers and fruit appear, Brother Lawrence received a high view of the Providence and Power of God which has never since been effaced from his soul. This view had perfectly set him loose from the world and kindled in him such a love for God, that he could not tell whether it had increased in the forty years that he had lived since. Brother Lawrence said he had been footman to M. Fieubert, the treasurer, and that he was a great awkward fellow who broke everything. He finally decided to enter a monastery thinking that he would there be made to smart for his awkwardness and the faults he would commit, and so he would sacrifice his life with its pleasures to God. But Brother Lawrence said that God had surprised him because he met with nothing but satisfaction in that state. Brother Lawrence related that we should establish ourselves in a sense of God’s Presence by continually conversing with Him. It was a shameful thing to quit His conversation to think of trifles and fooleries. We should feed and nourish our souls with high notions of God which would yield us great joy in being devoted to Him. He said we ought to quicken and enliven our faith. It was lamentable we had so little. Instead of taking faith for the rule of their conduct, men amused themselves with trivial devotions which changed daily. He said that faith was sufficient to bring us to a high degree of perfection. We ought to give ourselves up to God with regard both to things temporal and spiritual and seek our satisfaction only in the fulfilling of His will. Whether God led us by suffering or by consolation all would be equal to a soul truly resigned. He said we need fidelity in those disruptions in the ebb and flow of prayer when God tries our love to Him. This was the time for a complete act of resignation, whereof one act alone could greatly promote our spiritual advancement. He said that as far as the miseries and sins he heard of daily in the world, he was so far from wondering at them, that, on the contrary, he was surprised there were not more considering the malice sinners were capable of. For his part, he prayed for them. But knowing that God could remedy the mischief they did when He pleased, he gave himself no further trouble. Brother Lawrence said to arrive at such resignation as God requires, we should carefully watch over all the passions that mingle in spiritual as well as temporal things. God would give light concerning those passions to those who truly desire to serve Him. At the end of this first conversation Brother Lawrence said that if my purpose for the visit was to sincerely discuss how to serve God, I might come to him as often as I pleased and without any fear of being troublesome. If this was not the case, then I ought visit him no more. Second Conversation: Brother Lawrence told me he had always been governed by love without selfish views. Since he resolved to make the love of God the end of all his actions, he had found reasons to be well satisfied with his method. He was pleased when he could take up a straw from the ground for the love of God, seeking Him only, and nothing else, not even His gifts. He said he had been long troubled in mind from a certain belief that he should be damned. All the men in the world could not have persuaded him to the contrary. This trouble of mind had lasted four years during which time he had suffered much. Finally he reasoned: I did not engage in a religious life but for the love of God. I have endeavored to act only for Him. Whatever becomes of me, whether I be lost or saved, I will always continue to act purely for the love of God. I shall have this good at least that till death I shall have done all that is in me to love Him. From that time on Brother Lawrence lived his life in perfect liberty and continual joy. He placed his sins between himself and God to tell Him that he did not deserve His favors yet God still continued to bestow them in abundance. Brother Lawrence said that in order to form a habit of conversing with God continually and referring all we do to Him, we must at first apply to Him with some diligence. Then, after a little care, we would find His love inwardly excite us to it without any difficulty. He expected after the pleasant days God had given him, he would have his turn of pain and suffering. Yet he was not uneasy about it. Knowing that, since he could do nothing of himself, God would not fail to give him the strength to bear them. When an occasion of practicing some virtue was offered, he addressed himself to God saying, “Lord, I cannot do this unless Thou enablest me”. And then he received strength more than sufficient. When he had failed in his duty, he only confessed his fault saying to God, “I shall never do otherwise, if You leave me to myself. It is You who must hinder my falling and mend what is amiss.” Then, after this, he gave himself no further uneasiness about it. Brother Lawrence said we ought to act with God in the greatest simplicity, speaking to Him frankly and plainly, and imploring His assistance in our affairs just as they happen. God never failed to grant it, as Brother Lawrence had often experienced. He said he had been lately sent into Burgundy to buy the provision of wine for the community. This was a very unwelcome task for him because he had no turn for business and because he was lame and could not go about the boat but by rolling himself over the casks. Yet he gave himself no uneasiness about it, nor about the purchase of the wine. He said to God, it was His business he was about, and that he afterwards found it very well performed. He mentioned that it had turned out the same way the year before when he was sent to Auvergne. So, likewise, in his business in the kitchen (to which he had naturally a great aversion), having accustomed himself to do everything there for the love of God and asking for His grace to do his work well, he had found everything easy during the fifteen years that he had been employed there. He was very pleased with the post he was now in. Yet he was as ready to quit that as the former, since he tried to please God by doing little things for the love of Him in any work he did. With him the set times of prayer were not different from other times. He retired to pray according to the directions of his superior, but he did not need such retirement nor ask for it because his greatest business did not divert him from God. Since he knew his obligation to love God in all things, and as he endeavored to do so, he had no need of a director to advise him, but he greatly needed a confessor to absolve him. He said he was very sensible of his faults but not discouraged by them. He confessed them to God and made no excuses. Then, he peaceably resumed his usual practice of love and adoration. In his trouble of mind, Brother Lawrence had consulted no one. Knowing only by the light of faith that God was present, he contented himself with directing all his actions to Him. He did everything with a desire to please Him and let what would come of it. He said that useless thoughts spoil all – that the mischief began there. We ought to reject them as soon as we perceived their impertinence and return to our communion with God. In the beginning he had often passed his time appointed for prayer in rejecting wandering thoughts and falling right back into them. He could never regulate his devotion by certain methods as some do. Nevertheless, at first he had meditated for some time, but afterwards that went off in a manner that he could give no account of. Brother Lawrence emphasized that all bodily mortifications and other exercises are useless unless they serve to arrive at the union with God by love. He had well considered this. He found that the shortest way to go straight to God was by a continual exercise of love and doing all things for His sake. He noted that there was a great difference between the acts of the intellect and those of the will. Acts of the intellect were comparatively of little value. Acts of the will were all important. Our only business was to love and delight ourselves in God. All possible kinds of mortification, if they were void of the love of God, could not efface a single sin. Instead, we ought, without anxiety, to expect the pardon of our sins from the blood of Jesus Christ only endeavoring to love Him with all our hearts. And he noted that God seemed to have granted the greatest favors to the greatest sinners as more signal monuments of His mercy. Brother Lawrence said the greatest pains or pleasures of this world were not to be compared with what he had experienced of both kinds in a spiritual state. As a result he feared nothing, desiring only one thing of God – that he might not offend Him. He said he carried no guilt. “When I fail in my duty, I readily acknowledge it, saying, I am used to do so. I shall never do otherwise if I am left to myself. If I fail not, then I give God thanks acknowledging that it comes from Him.” Third Conversation: Brother Lawrence told me that the foundation of the spiritual life in him had been a high notion and esteem of God in faith. When he had once well established his faith he had no other care but to reject every other thought so he might perform all his actions for the love of God. He said when sometimes he had not thought of God for a good while he did not disquiet himself for it. Having acknowledged his wretchedness to God, he simply returned to Him with so much the greater trust in Him. He said the trust we put in God honors Him much and draws down great graces. Also, that it was impossible not only that God should deceive but that He should long let a soul suffer which is perfectly resigned to Him and resolved to endure everything for His sake. Brother Lawrence often experienced the ready succors of Divine Grace. And because of his experience of grace, when he had business to do, he did not think of it beforehand. When it was time to do it, he found in God, as in a clear mirror, all that was fit for him to do. When outward business diverted him a little from the thought of God a fresh remembrance coming from God invested his soul and so inflamed and transported him that it was difficult for him to contain himself. He said he was more united to God in his outward employments than when he left them for devotion in retirement. Brother Lawrence said that the worst that could happen to him was to lose that sense of God which he had enjoyed so long. Yet the goodness of God assured him He would not forsake him utterly and that He would give him strength to bear whatever evil He permitted to happen to him. Brother Lawrence, therefore, said he feared nothing. He had no occasion to consult with anybody about his state. In the past, when he had attempted to do it, he had always come away more perplexed. Since Brother Lawrence was ready to lay down his life for the love of God, he had no apprehension of danger. He said that perfect resignation to God was a sure way to heaven, a way in which we have always sufficient light for our conduct. In the beginning of the spiritual life we ought to be faithful in doing our duty and denying ourselves and then, after a time, unspeakable pleasures followed. In difficulties we need only have recourse to Jesus Christ and beg His grace with which everything became easy. Brother Lawrence said that many do not advance in the Christian progress because they stick in penances and particular exercises while they neglect the love of God which is the end. This appeared plainly by their works and was the reason why we see so little solid virtue. He said there needed neither art nor science for going to God, but only a heart resolutely determined to apply itself to nothing but Him and to love Him only. Fourth Conversation: Brother Lawrence spoke with great openness of heart concerning his manner of going to God whereof some part is related already. He told me that all consists in one hearty renunciation of everything which we are sensible does not lead to God. We might accustom ourselves to a continual conversation with Him with freedom and in simplicity. We need only to recognize God intimately present with us and address ourselves to Him every moment. We need to beg His assistance for knowing His will in things doubtful and for rightly performing those which we plainly see He requires of us, offering them to Him before we do them, and giving Him thanks when we have completed them. In our conversation with God we should also engage in praising, adoring, and loving Him incessantly for His infinite goodness and perfection. Without being discouraged on account of our sins, we should pray for His grace with a perfect confidence, as relying upon the infinite merits of our Lord. Brother Lawrence said that God never failed offering us His grace at each action. It never failed except when Brother Lawrence’s thoughts had wandered from a sense of God’s Presence, or he forgot to ask His assistance. He said that God always gave us light in our doubts, when we had no other design but to please Him. Our sanctification did not depend upon changing our works. Instead, it depended on doing that for God’s sake which we commonly do for our own. He thought it was lamentable to see how many people mistook the means for the end, addicting themselves to certain works which they performed very imperfectly by reason of their human or selfish regards. The most excellent method he had found for going to God was that of doing our common business without any view of pleasing men but purely for the love of God. Brother Lawrence felt it was a great delusion to think that the times of prayer ought to differ from other times. We are as strictly obliged to adhere to God by action in the time of action, as by prayer in its season. His own prayer was nothing else but a sense of the presence of God, his soul being at that time insensible to everything but Divine Love. When the appointed times of prayer were past, he found no difference, because he still continued with God, praising and blessing Him with all his might. Thus he passed his life in continual joy. Yet he hoped that God would give him somewhat to suffer when he grew stronger. Brother Lawrence said we ought, once and for all, heartily put our whole trust in God, and make a total surrender of ourselves to Him, secure that He would not deceive us. We ought not weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed. We should not wonder if, in the beginning, we often failed in our endeavors, but that at last we should gain a habit which will naturally produce its acts in us without our care and to our exceeding great delight. The whole substance of religion was faith, hope, and charity. In the practice of these we become united to the will of God. Everything else is indifferent and to be used as a means that we may arrive at our end and then be swallowed up by faith and charity. All things are possible to him who believes. They are less difficult to him who hopes. They are more easy to him who loves, and still more easy to him who perseveres in the practice of these three virtues. The end we ought to propose to ourselves is to become, in this life, the most perfect worshippers of God we can possibly be, and as we hope to be through all eternity. We must, from time to time, honestly consider and thoroughly examine ourselves. We will, then, realize that we are worthy of great contempt. Brother Lawrence noted that when we directly confront ourselves in this manner, we will understand why we are subject to all kinds of misery and problems. We will realize why we are subject to changes and fluctuations in our health, mental outlook, and dispositions. And we will, indeed, recognize that we deserve all the pain and labors God sends to humble us. After this, we should not wonder that troubles, temptations, oppositions, and contradictions happen to us from men. We ought, on the contrary, to submit ourselves to them and bear them as long as God pleases as things highly advantageous to us. The greater perfection a soul aspires after, the more dependent it is upon Divine Grace. Being questioned by one of his own community (to whom he was obliged to open himself) by what means he had attained such an habitual sense of God, Brother Lawrence told him that, since his first coming to the monastery, he had considered God as the end of all his thoughts and desires, as the mark to which they should tend, and in which they should terminate. He noted that in the beginning of his novitiate he spent the hours appointed for private prayer in thinking of God so as to convince his mind and impress deeply upon his heart the Divine existence. He did this by devout sentiments and submission to the lights of faith, rather than by studied reasonings and elaborate meditations. By this short and sure method he exercised himself in the knowledge and love of God, resolving to use his utmost endeavor to live in a continual sense of His Presence, and, if possible, never to forget Him more. When he had thus, in prayer, filled his mind with great sentiments of that Infinite Being, he went to his work appointed in the kitchen (for he was then cook for the community). There having first considered severally the things his office required, and when and how each thing was to be done, he spent all the intervals of his time, both before and after his work, in prayer. When he began his business, he said to God with a filial trust in Him, “O my God, since Thou art with me, and I must now, in obedience to Thy commands, apply my mind to these outward things, I beseech Thee to grant me the grace to continue in Thy Presence; and to this end do Thou prosper me with Thy assistance. Receive all my works, and possess all my affections.” As he proceeded in his work, he continued his familiar conversation with his Maker, imploring His grace, and offering to Him all his actions. When he had finished, he examined himself how he had discharged his duty. If he found well, he returned thanks to God. If otherwise, he asked pardon and, without being discouraged, he set his mind right again. He then continued his exercise of the presence of God as if he had never deviated from it. “Thus,” said he, “by rising after my falls, and by frequently renewed acts of faith and love, I am come to a state wherein it would be as difficult for me not to think of God as it was at first to accustom myself to it.” As Brother Lawrence had found such an advantage in walking in the presence of God, it was natural for him to recommend it earnestly to others. More strikingly, his example was a stronger inducement than any arguments he could propose. His very countenance was edifying with such a sweet and calm devotion appearing that he could not but affect the beholders. It was observed, that in the greatest hurry of business in the kitchen, he still preserved his recollection and heavenly-mindedness. He was never hasty nor loitering, but did each thing in its season with an even uninterrupted composure and tranquillity of spirit. “The time of business,” said he, “does not with me differ from the time of prayer. In the noise and clutter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Supper.” Letters Introduction: Brother Lawrence’s letters are the very heart and soul of what is titled ‘The Practice of the Presence of God’. All of these letters were written during the last ten years of his life. Many of them were to long-time friends, a Carmelite sister and a sister at a nearby convent. One or both of these friends were from his native village, perhaps relatives. The first letter was probably written to the prioress of one of these convents. The second letter was written to Brother Lawrence’s own spiritual adviser. Note that the fourth letter is written in the third person where Brother Lawrence describes his own experience. The letters follow the tradition of substituting M— for specific names. First Letter: You so earnestly desire that I describe the method by which I arrived at that habitual sense of God’s presence, which our merciful Lord has been pleased to grant me. I am complying with your request with my request that you show my letter to no one. If I knew that you would let it be seen, all the desire I have for your spiritual progress would not be enough to make me comply. The account I can give you is: Having found in many books different methods of going to God and divers practices of the spiritual life, I thought this would serve rather to puzzle me than facilitate what I sought after, which was nothing but how to become wholly God’s. This made me resolve to give the all for the All. After having given myself wholly to God, to make all the satisfaction I could for my sins, I renounced, for the love of Him, everything that was not He, and I began to live as if there was none but He and I in the world. Sometimes I considered myself before Him as a poor criminal at the feet of his judge. At other times I beheld Him in my heart as my Father, as my God. I worshipped Him the oftenest I could, keeping my mind in His holy presence and recalling it as often as I found it wandered from Him. I made this my business, not only at the appointed times of prayer but all the time; every hour, every minute, even in the height of my work, I drove from my mind everything that interrupted my thoughts of God. I found no small pain in this exercise. Yet I continued it, notwithstanding all the difficulties that occurred. And I tried not to trouble or disquiet myself when my mind wandered. Such has been my common practice ever since I entered religious life. Though I have done it very imperfectly, I have found great advantages by it. These, I well know, are to be imputed to the mercy and goodness of God because we can do nothing without Him; and I still less than any. When we are faithful to keep ourselves in His holy presence, and set Him always before us, this hinders our offending Him, and doing anything that may displease Him. It also begets in us a holy freedom, and, if I may so speak, a familiarity with God, where, when we ask, He supplies the graces we need. Over time, by often repeating these acts, they become habitual, and the presence of God becomes quite natural to us. Please give Him thanks with me, for His great goodness towards me, which I can never sufficiently express, and for the many favors He has done to so miserable a sinner as I am. May all things praise Him. Amen. Second Letter: Not finding my manner of life described in books, although I have no problem with that, yet, for reassurance, I would appreciate your thoughts about it. In conversation some days ago a devout person told me the spiritual life was a life of grace, which begins with servile fear, which is increased by hope of eternal life, and which is consummated by pure love; that each of these states had its different steps, by which one arrives at last at that blessed consummation. I have not followed these methods at all. On the contrary, I instinctively felt they would discourage me. Instead, at my entrance into religious life, I took a resolution to give myself up to God as the best satisfaction I could make for my sins and, for the love of Him, to renounce all besides. For the first years, I commonly employed myself during the time set apart for devotion with thoughts of death, judgment, hell, heaven, and my sins. Thus I continued some years applying my mind carefully the rest of the day, and even in the midst of my work, to the presence of God, whom I considered always as with me, often as in my heart. At length I began to do the same thing during my set time of prayer, which gave me joy and consolation. This practice produced in me so high an esteem for God that faith alone was enough to assure me. Such was my beginning. Yet I must tell you that for the first ten years I suffered a great deal. During this time I fell often, and rose again presently. It seemed to me that all creatures, reason, and God Himself were against me and faith alone for me. The apprehension that I was not devoted to God as I wished to be, my past sins always present to my mind, and the great unmerited favors which God did me, were the source of my sufferings and feelings of unworthiness. I was sometimes troubled with thoughts that to believe I had received such favors was an effect of my imagination, which pretended to be so soon where others arrived with great difficulty. At other times I believed that it was a willful delusion and that there really was no hope for me. Finally, I considered the prospect of spending the rest of my days in these troubles. I discovered this did not diminish the trust I had in God at all. In fact, it only served to increase my faith. It then seemed that, all at once, I found myself changed. My soul, which, until that time was in trouble, felt a profound inward peace, as if she were in her center and place of rest. Ever since that time I walk before God simply, in faith, with humility, and with love. I apply myself diligently to do nothing and think nothing which may displease Him. I hope that when I have done what I can, He will do with me what He pleases. As for what passes in me at present, I cannot express it. I have no pain or difficulty about my state because I have no will but that of God. I endeavor to accomplish His will in all things. And I am so resigned that I would not take up a straw from the ground against His order or from any motive but that of pure love for Him. I have ceased all forms of devotion and set prayers except those to which my state requires. I make it my priority to persevere in His holy presence, wherein I maintain a simple attention and a fond regard for God, which I may call an actual presence of God. Or, to put it another way, it is an habitual, silent, and private conversation of the soul with God. This gives me much joy and contentment. In short, I am sure, beyond all doubt, that my soul has been with God above these past thirty years. I pass over many things that I may not be tedious to you. Yet, I think it is appropriate to tell you how I perceive myself before God, whom I behold as my King. I consider myself as the most wretched of men. I am full of faults, flaws, and weaknesses, and have committed all sorts of crimes against his King. Touched with a sensible regret I confess all my wickedness to Him. I ask His forgiveness. I abandon myself in His hands that He may do what He pleases with me. My King is full of mercy and goodness. Far from chastising me, He embraces me with love. He makes me eat at His table. He serves me with His own hands and gives me the key to His treasures. He converses and delights Himself with me incessantly, in a thousand and a thousand ways. And He treats me in all respects as His favorite. In this way I consider myself continually in His holy presence. My most usual method is this simple attention, an affectionate regard for God to whom I find myself often attached with greater sweetness and delight than that of an infant at the mother’s breast. To choose an expression, I would call this state the bosom of God, for the inexpressible sweetness which I taste and experience there. If, at any time, my thoughts wander from it from necessity or infirmity, I am presently recalled by inward emotions so charming and delicious that I cannot find words to describe them. Please reflect on my great wretchedness, of which you are fully informed, rather than on the great favors God does one as unworthy and ungrateful as I am. As for my set hours of prayer, they are simply a continuation of the same exercise. Sometimes I consider myself as a stone before a carver, whereof He is to make a statue. Presenting myself thus before God, I desire Him to make His perfect image in my soul and render me entirely like Himself. At other times, when I apply myself to prayer, I feel all my spirit lifted up without any care or effort on my part. This often continues as if it was suspended yet firmly fixed in God like a center or place of rest. I know that some charge this state with inactivity, delusion, and self-love. I confess that it is a holy inactivity. And it would be a happy self-love if the soul, in that state, were capable of it. But while the soul is in this repose, she cannot be disturbed by the kinds of things to which she was formerly accustomed. The things that the soul used to depend on would now hinder rather than assist her. Yet, I cannot see how this could be called imagination or delusion because the soul which enjoys God in this way wants nothing but Him. If this is delusion, then only God can remedy it. Let Him do what He pleases with me. I desire only Him and to be wholly devoted to Him. Please send me your opinion as I greatly value and have a singular esteem for your reverence, and am yours. Third Letter: We have a God who is infinitely gracious and knows all our wants. I always thought that He would reduce you to extremity. He will come in His own time, and when you least expect it. Hope in Him more than ever. Thank Him with me for the favors He does you, particularly for the fortitude and patience which He gives you in your afflictions. It is a plain mark of the care He takes of you. Comfort yourself with Him, and give thanks for all. I admire also the fortitude and bravery of M—. God has given him a good disposition and a good will; but he is still a little worldly and somewhat immature. I hope the affliction God has sent him will help him do some reflection and inner searching and that it may prove to be a wholesome remedy to him. It is a chance for him to put all his trust in God who accompanies him everywhere. Let him think of Him as much as he can, especially in time of great danger. A little lifting up of the heart and a remembrance of God suffices. One act of inward worship, though upon a march with sword in hand, are prayers which, however short, are nevertheless very acceptable to God. And, far from lessening a soldier’s courage in occasions of danger, they actually serve to fortify it. Let him think of God as often as possible. Let him accustom himself, by degrees, to this small but holy exercise. No one sees it, and nothing is easier than to repeat these little internal adorations all through the day. Please recommend to him that he think of God the most he can in this way. It is very fit and most necessary for a soldier, who is daily faced with danger to his life, and often to his very salvation. I hope that God will assist him and all the family, to whom I present my service, being theirs and yours. Fourth Letter: I am taking this opportunity to tell you about the sentiments of one of our society concerning the admirable effects and continual assistance he receives from the presence of God. May we both profit by them. For the past forty years his continual care has been to be always with God; and to do nothing, say nothing, and think nothing which may displease Him. He does this without any view or motive except pure love of Him and because God deserves infinitely more. He is now so accustomed to that Divine presence that he receives from it continual comfort and peace. For about thirty years his soul has been filled with joy and delight so continual, and sometimes so great, that he is forced to find ways to hide their appearing outwardly to others who may not understand. If sometimes he becomes a little distracted from that Divine presence, God gently recalls Himself by a stirring in his soul. This often happens when he is most engaged in his outward chores and tasks. He answers with exact fidelity to these inward drawings, either by an elevation of his heart towards God, or by a meek and fond regard to Him, or by such words as love forms upon these occasions. For instance, he may say, “My God, here I am all devoted to You,” or “Lord, make me according to Your heart.” It seems to him (in fact, he feels it) that this God of love, satisfied with such few words, reposes again and rests in the depth and center of his soul. The experience of these things gives him such certainty that God is always in the innermost part of his soul that he is beyond doubting it under any circumstances. Judge by this what content and satisfaction he enjoys. While he continually finds within himself so great a treasure, he no longer has any need to search for it. He no longer has any anxiety about finding it because he now has his beautiful treasure open before him and may take what he pleases of it. He often points out our blindness and exclaims that those who content themselves with so little are to be pitied. God, says he, has infinite treasure to bestow, and we take so little through routine devotion which lasts but a moment. Blind as we are, we hinder God, and stop the current of His graces. But when He finds a soul penetrated with a lively faith, He pours into it His graces and favors plentifully. There they flow like a torrent, which, after being forcibly stopped against its ordinary course, when it has found a passage, spreads itself with impetuosity and abundance. Yet we often stop this torrent by the little value we set upon it. Let us stop it no more. Let us enter into ourselves and break down the bank which hinders it. Let us make way for grace. Let us redeem the lost time, for perhaps we have but little left. Death follows us close so let us be well prepared for it. We die but once and a mistake there is irretrievable. I say again, let us enter into ourselves. The time presses. There is no room for delay. Our souls are at stake. It seems to me that you are prepared and have taken effectual measures so you will not be taken by surprise. I commend you for it. It is the one thing necessary. We must always work at it, because not to persevere in the spiritual life is to go back. But those who have the gale of the Holy Spirit go forward even in sleep. If the vessel of our soul is still tossed with winds and storms, let us awake the Lord who reposes in it. He will quickly calm the sea. I have taken the liberty to impart to you these good sentiments that you may compare them with your own. May they serve to re-kindle them, if at any time they may be even a little cooled. Let us recall our first favors and remember our early joys and comforts. And, let us benefit from the example and sentiments of this brother who is little known by the world, but known and extremely caressed by God. I will pray for you. Please pray also for me, as I am yours in our Lord. Fifth Letter: Today I received two books and a letter from Sister M—, who is preparing to make her profession. She desires the prayers of your holy society, and yours in particular. I think she greatly values your support. Please do not disappoint her. Pray to God that she may take her vows in view of His love alone, and with a firm resolution to be wholly devoted to Him. I will send you one of those books about the presence of God; a subject which, in my opinion, contains the whole spiritual life. It seems to me that whoever duly practices it will soon become devout. I know that for the right practice of it, the heart must be empty of all other things; because God will possess the heart alone. As He cannot possess it alone, without emptying it of all besides, so neither can He act there and do in it what He pleases unless it be left vacant to Him. There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful than that of a continual conversation with God. Only those can comprehend it who practice and experience it. Yet I do not advise you to do it from that motive. It is not pleasure which we ought to seek in this exercise. Let us do it from a principle of love, and because it is God’s will for us. Were I a preacher, I would above all other things preach the practice of the presence of God. Were I a director, I would advise all the world to do it, so necessary do I think it, and so easy too. Ah! knew we but the want we have of the grace and assistance of God, we would never lose sight of Him, no, not for a moment. Believe me. Immediately make a holy and firm resolution never more to forget Him. Resolve to spend the rest of your days in His sacred presence, deprived of all consolations for the love of Him if He thinks fit. Set heartily about this work, and if you do it sincerely, be assured that you will soon find the effects of it. I will assist you with my prayers, poor as they are. I recommend myself earnestly to you and those of your holy society. Sixth Letter: I have received from M— the things which you gave her for me. I wonder that you have not given me your thoughts on the little book I sent to you and which you must have received. Set heartily about the practice of it in your old age. It is better late than never. I cannot imagine how religious persons can live satisfied without the practice of the presence of God. For my part I keep myself retired with Him in the depth and center of my soul as much as I can. While I am with Him I fear nothing; but the least turning from Him is insupportable. This practice does not tire the body. It is, however, proper to deprive it sometimes, nay often, of many little pleasures which are innocent and lawful. God will not permit a soul that desires to be devoted entirely to Him to take pleasures other than with Him. That is more than reasonable. I do not say we must put any violent constraint upon ourselves. No, we must serve God in a holy freedom. We must work faithfully without trouble or disquiet, recalling our mind to God mildly and with tranquillity as often as we find it wandering from Him. It is, however, necessary to put our whole trust in God. We must lay aside all other cares and even some forms of devotion, though very good in themselves, yet such as one often engages in routinely. Those devotions are only means to attain to the end. Once we have established a habit of the practice of the presence of God, we are then with Him who is our end. We have no need to return to the means. We may simply continue with Him in our commerce of love, persevering in His holy presence with an act of praise, of adoration, or of desire or with an act of resignation, or thanksgiving, and in all the ways our spirits can invent. Be not discouraged by the repugnance which you may find in it from nature. You must sacrifice yourself. At first, one often thinks it a waste of time. But you must go on and resolve to persevere in it until death, notwithstanding all the difficulties that may occur. I recommend myself to the prayers of your holy society, and yours in particular. I am yours in our Lord. Seventh Letter: I pity you much. It will be a great relief if you can leave the care of your affairs to M— and spend the remainder of your life only in worshipping God. He requires no great matters of us; a little remembrance of Him from time to time, a little adoration. Sometimes to pray for His grace. Sometimes to offer Him your sufferings. And sometimes to return Him thanks for the favors He has given you, and still gives you, in the midst of your troubles. Console yourself with Him the oftenest you can. Lift up your heart to Him at your meals and when you are in company. The least little remembrance will always be pleasing to Him. You need not cry very loud. He is nearer to us than we are aware. And we do not always have to be in church to be with God. We may make an oratory of our heart so we can, from time to time, retire to converse with Him in meekness, humility, and love. Every one is capable of such familiar conversation with God, some more, some less. He knows what we can do. Let us begin then. Perhaps He expects but one generous resolution on our part. Have courage. We have but little time to live. You are nearly sixty-four, and I am almost eighty. Let us live and die with God. Sufferings will be sweet and pleasant while we are with Him. Without Him, the greatest pleasures will be a cruel punishment to us. May He be blessed by all. Gradually become accustomed to worship Him in this way; to beg His grace, to offer Him your heart from time to time; in the midst of your business, even every moment if you can. Do not always scrupulously confine yourself to certain rules or particular forms of devotion. Instead, act in faith with love and humility. You may assure M— of my poor prayers, and that I am their servant, and yours particularly. Eighth Letter: You tell me nothing new. You are not the only one who is troubled with wandering thoughts. Our mind is extremely roving. But the will is mistress of all our faculties. She must recall our stray thoughts and carry them to God as their final end. If the mind is not sufficiently controlled and disciplined at our first engaging in devotion, it contracts certain bad habits of wandering and dissipation. These are difficult to overcome. The mind can draw us, even against our will, to worldly things. I believe one remedy for this is to humbly confess our faults and beg God’s mercy and help. I do not advise you to use multiplicity of words in prayer. Many words and long discourses are often the occasions of wandering. Hold yourself in prayer before God, like a dumb or paralytic beggar at a rich man’s gate. Let it be your business to keep your mind in the presence of the Lord. If your mind sometimes wanders and withdraws itself from Him, do not become upset. Trouble and disquiet serve rather to distract the mind than to re-collect it. The will must bring it back in tranquillity. If you persevere in this manner, God will have pity on you. One way to re-collect the mind easily in the time of prayer, and preserve it more in tranquillity, is not to let it wander too far at other times. Keep your mind strictly in the presence of God. Then being accustomed to think of Him often, you will find it easy to keep your mind calm in the time of prayer, or at least to recall it from its wanderings. I have told you already of the advantages we may draw from this practice of the presence of God. Let us set about it seriously and pray for one another. Ninth Letter: The enclosed is an answer to that which I received from M—. Please deliver it to her. She is full of good will but she would go faster than grace! One does not become holy all at once. I recommend her to your guidance. We ought to help one another by our advice, and yet more by our good example. Please let me hear of her from time to time and whether she is very fervent and obedient. Let us often consider that our only business in this life is to please God, that perhaps all besides is but folly and vanity. You and I have lived over forty years in the monastic life. Have we employed them in loving and serving God, who by His mercy has called us to this state and for that very end? I am sometimes filled with shame and confusion when I reflect, on the one hand, upon the great favors which God has done and continues to do for me; and, on the other, upon the ill use I have made of them and my small advancement in the way of perfection. Since, by His mercy, He gives us yet a little time, let us begin in earnest. Let us repair the lost time. Let us return with full assurance to that Father of mercies, who is always ready to receive us affectionately. Let us generously renounce, for the love of Him, all that is not Himself. He deserves infinitely more. Let us think of Him perpetually. Let us put all our trust in Him. I have no doubt that we shall soon receive an abundance of His grace, with which we can do all things, and, without which we can do nothing but sin. We cannot escape the dangers which abound in life without the actual and continual help of God. Let us pray to Him for it constantly. How can we pray to Him without being with Him? How can we be with Him but in thinking of Him often? And how can we often think of Him, but by a holy habit which we should form of it? You will tell me that I always say the same thing. It is true, for this is the best and easiest method I know. I use no other. I advise all the world to do it. We must know before we can love. In order to know God, we must often think of Him. And when we come to love Him, we shall then also think of Him often, for our heart will be with our treasure. Tenth Letter: I have had a good deal of difficulty bringing myself to write to M.—. I do it now purely because you desire me to do so. Please address it and send it to him. It is pleasing to see all the faith you have in God. May He increase it in you more and more. We cannot have too much trust in so good and faithful a Friend who will never fail us in this world nor in the next. If M.— takes advantage of the loss he has had and puts all his confidence in God, He will soon give him another friend more powerful and more inclined to serve him. He disposes of hearts as He pleases. Perhaps M.— was too attached to him he has lost. We ought to love our friends, but without encroaching upon the love of God, which must always be first. Please keep my recommendation in mind that you think of God often; by day, by night, in your business, and even in your diversions. He is always near you and with you. Leave Him not alone. You would think it rude to leave a friend alone who came to visit you. Why, then, must God be neglected? Do not forget Him but think on Him often. Adore Him continually. Live and die with Him. This is the glorious work of a Christian; in a word, this is our profession. If we do not know it, we must learn it. I will endeavor to help you with my prayers, and am yours in our Lord. Eleventh Letter: I do not pray that you may be delivered from your pains; but I pray earnestly that God gives you strength and patience to bear them as long as He pleases. Comfort yourself with Him who holds you fastened to the cross. He will loose you when He thinks fit. Happy are those who suffer with Him. Accustom yourself to suffer in that manner, and seek from Him the strength to endure as much, and as long, as He judges necessary for you. Worldly people do not comprehend these truths. It is not surprising though, since they suffer like what they are and not like Christians. They see sickness as a pain against nature and not as a favor from God. Seeing it only in that light, they find nothing in it but grief and distress. But those who consider sickness as coming from the hand of God, out of His mercy and as the means He uses for their salvation, commonly find sweetness and consolation in it. I pray that you see that God is often nearer to us and present within us in sickness than in health. Do not rely completely on another physician because He reserves your cure to Himself. Put all your trust in God. You will soon find the effects in your recovery, which we often delay by putting greater faith in medicine than in God. Whatever remedies you use, they will succeed only so far as He permits. When pains come from God, only He can ultimately cure them. He often sends sickness to the body to cure diseases of the soul. Comfort yourself with the Sovereign Physician of both soul and body. I expect you will say that I am very much at ease, and that I eat and drink at the table of the Lord. You have reason. But think how painful it would be to the greatest criminal in the world to eat at the king’s table and be served by him, yet have no assurance of pardon? I believe he would feel an anxiety that nothing could calm except his trust in the goodness of his sovereign. So I assure you, that whatever pleasures I taste at the table of my King, my sins, ever present before my eyes, as well as the uncertainty of my pardon, torment me. Though I accept that torment as something pleasing to God. Be satisfied with the condition in which God places you. However happy you may think me, I envy you. Pain and suffering would be a paradise to me, if I could suffer with my God. The greatest pleasures would be hell if I relished them without Him. My only consolation would be to suffer something for His sake. I must, in a little time, go to God. What comforts me in this life is that I now see Him by faith. I see Him in such a manner that I sometimes say, I believe no more, but I see. I feel what faith teaches us, and, in that assurance and that practice of faith, I live and die with Him. Stay with God always for He is the only support and comfort for your affliction. I shall beseech Him to be with you. I present my service. Twelfth Letter: If we were well accustomed to the practice of the presence of God, bodily discomforts would be greatly alleviated. God often permits us to suffer a little to purify our souls and oblige us to stay close to Him. Take courage. Offer Him your pain and pray to Him for strength to endure them. Above all, get in the habit of often thinking of God, and forget Him the least you can. Adore Him in your infirmities. Offer yourself to Him from time to time. And, in the height of your sufferings, humbly and affectionately beseech Him (as a child his father) to make you conformable to His holy will. I shall endeavor to assist you with my poor prayers. God has many ways of drawing us to Himself. He sometimes seems to hide Himself from us. But faith alone ought to be our support. Faith is the foundation of our confidence. We must put all our faith in God. He will not fail us in time of need. I do not know how God will dispose of me but I am always happy. All the world suffers and I, who deserve the severest discipline, feel joys so continual and great that I can scarcely contain them. I would willingly ask God for a part of your sufferings. I know my weakness is so great that if He left me one moment to myself, I would be the most wretched man alive. And yet, I do not know how He could leave me alone because faith gives me as strong a conviction as reason. He never forsakes us until we have first forsaken Him. Let us fear to leave Him. Let us always be with Him. Let us live and die in His presence. Do pray for me, as I pray for you. Thirteenth Letter: I am sorry to see you suffer so long. What gives me some ease and sweetens the feeling I have about your griefs, is that they are proof of God’s love for you. See your pains in that view and you will bear them more easily. In your case, it is my opinion that, at this point, you should discontinue human remedies and resign yourself entirely to the providence of God. Perhaps He waits only for that resignation and perfect faith in Him to cure you. Since, in spite of all the care you have taken, treatment has proved unsuccessful and your malady still increases, wait no longer. Put yourself entirely in His hands and expect all from Him. I told you in my last letter that He sometimes permits bodily discomforts to cure the distempers of the soul. Have courage. Make a virtue of necessity. Do not ask God for deliverance from your pain. Instead, out of love for Him, ask for the strength to resolutely bear all that He pleases, and as long as He pleases. Such prayers are hard at first, but they are very pleasing to God, and become sweet to those that love Him. Love sweetens pains. And when one loves God, one suffers for His sake with joy and courage. Do so, I beseech you. Comfort yourself with Him. He is the only physician for all our illnesses. He is the Father of the afflicted and always ready to help us. He loves us infinitely more than we can imagine. Love Him in return and seek no consolation elsewhere. I hope you will soon receive His comfort. Adieu. I will help you with my prayers, poor as they are, and shall always be yours in our Lord. Fourteenth Letter: I give thanks to our Lord for having relieved you a little as you desired. I have often been near death and I was never so much satisfied as then. At those times I did not pray for any relief, but I prayed for strength to suffer with courage, humility, and love. How sweet it is to suffer with God! However great your sufferings may be, receive them with love. It is paradise to suffer and be with Him. If, in this life, we might enjoy the peace of paradise, we must accustom ourselves to a familiar, humble, and affectionate conversation with God. We must hinder our spirits wandering from Him on all occasions. We must make our heart a spiritual temple so we can constantly adore Him. We must continually watch over ourselves so we do not do anything that may displease Him. When our minds and hearts are filled with God, suffering becomes full of unction and consolation. I well know that to arrive at this state, the beginning is very difficult because we must act purely on faith. But, though it is difficult, we know also that we can do all things with the grace of God. He never refuses those who ask earnestly. Knock. Persevere in knocking. And I answer for it, that, in His due time, He will open His graces to you. He will grant, all at once, what He has deferred during many years. Adieu. Pray to Him for me, as I pray to Him for you. I hope to see Him soon. Fifteenth Letter: God knows best what we need. All that He does is for our good. If we knew how much He loves us, we would always be ready to receive both the bitter and the sweet from His Hand. It would make no difference. All that came from Him would be pleasing. The worst afflictions only appear intolerable if we see them in the wrong light. When we see them as coming from the hand of God and know that it is our loving Father who humbles and distresses us, our sufferings lose their bitterness and can even become a source of consolation. Let all our efforts be to know God. The more one knows Him, the greater one desires to know Him. Knowledge is commonly the measure of love. The deeper and more extensive our knowledge, the greater is our love. If our love of God were great we would love Him equally in pain and pleasure. We only deceive ourselves by seeking or loving God for any favors which He has or may grant us. Such favors, no matter how great, can never bring us as near to God as can one simple act of faith. Let us seek Him often by faith. He is within us. Seek Him not elsewhere. Are we not rude and deserve blame if we leave Him alone to busy ourselves with trifles which do not please Him and perhaps even offend Him? These trifles may one day cost us dearly. Let us begin earnestly to be devoted to Him. Let us cast everything else out of our hearts. He wants to possess the heart alone. Beg this favor of Him. If we do all we can, we will soon see that change wrought in us which we so greatly desire. I cannot thank Him enough for the relief He has given you. I hope to see Him within a few days. Let us pray for one another. Brother Lawrence died peacefully within days of this last letter. ———- Visit: PracticeGodsPresence.com Home of Brother Lawrence’s Practice of the Presence of God End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Practice of the Presence of God, by Brother Lawrence *** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRACTICE OF PRESENCE OF GOD *** ***** This file should be named 5657.txt or 5657.zip ***** This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: http://www.gutenberg.org/5/6/5/5657/ Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed. Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Secret Power, by Dwight L. Moody This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Secret Power        or the Secret of Success in Christian Life and Work Author: Dwight L. Moody Release Date: August 3, 2010 [EBook #33341] Language: English Character set encoding: ASCII *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SECRET POWER *** Produced by Keith G. Richardson

Title Page Preface Chapter I. POWER—ITS SOURCE. Chapter II. POWER “IN” AND “UPON.” Chapter III. WITNESSING IN POWER. Chapter IV. POWER IN OPERATION. Chapter V. POWER HINDERED.

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SECRET  POWER OR THE SECRET OF SUCCESS IN CHRISTIAN LIFE AND WORK. By D. L. MOODY FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY New York       :   :       Chicago       :   :       Toronto Publishers of Evangelical Literature

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Copyrighted 1881, by Fleming H. Revell.

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PREFACE.

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One man may have “zeal without knowledge,” while another may have knowledge without zeal. If I could have only the one, I believe I should choose the first; but, with an open Bible, no one need be without knowledge of God’s will and purpose; and the object of this book is to help others to know the source of true power, that both their zeal and their knowledge may be of increased service in the Master’s work. Paul says, “all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable;” but I believe one portion, and that the subject of this book, has been too much overlooked, as though it were not practical, and the result is lack of power in testimony and work. If we would work, “not as one that beateth the air,” but to some definite purpose, we must have this power from on high. Without this power, our work will be drudgery. With it, it becomes a joyful task, a refreshing service. May God make this book a blessing to many. This is my prayer. D. L. MOODY. Northfield, Mass., May 1st, 1881.

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CHAPTER I.

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POWER—ITS SOURCE

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In vain do the inhabitants of London go to their conduits for supply unless the man who has the master-key turns the water on; and in vain do we think to quench our thirst at ordinances, unless God communicates the living water of His Spirit.—Anon. It was the custom of the Roman emperors, at their triumphal entrance, to cast new coins among the multitudes; so doth Christ, in His triumphal ascension into heaven, throw the greatest gifts for the good of men that were ever given.—T. Goodwin. To unconverted persons, a great part of the Bible resembles a letter written in cipher. The blessed Spirit’s office is to act as God’s decipherer, by letting His people into the secret of celestial experience, as the key and clew to those sweet mysteries of grace which were before as a garden shut up, or as a fountain sealed, or as a book written in an unknown character.—Toplady. The greatest, strongest, mightiest plea for the Church of God in the world is the existence of the Spirit of God in its midst, and the works of the Spirit of God are the true evidences of Christianity. They say miracles are withdrawn, but the Holy Spirit is the standing miracle of the Church of God to-day. I will not say a word against societies for Christian evidences, nor against those weighty and learned brethren who have defended the outworks of the Christian Church. They have done good service, and I wish them every blessing, but as to my own soul, I never was settled in my faith in Christ by Paley’s Evidences, nor by all the evidence ever brought from history or elsewhere; the Holy Spirit has taken the burden off my shoulders, and given me peace and liberty. This to me is evidence, and as to the externals which we can quote to others, it was enough for Peter and John that the people saw the lame man healed, and they needed not to speak for themselves.—Spurgeon.

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POWER—ITS SOURCE.

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“Without the soul, divinely quickened and inspired, the observances of the grandest ritualism are as worthless as the motions of a galvanized corpse.”—Anon. I quote this sentence, as it leads me at once to the subject under consideration. What is this quickening and inspiration? What is this power needed? From whence its source? I reply: The Holy Spirit of God. I am a full believer in “The Apostles’ Creed,” and therefore “I believe in the Holy Ghost.” A writer has pointedly asked: “What are our souls without His grace?—as dead as the branch in which the sap does not circulate. What is the Church without Him?—as parched and barren as the fields without the dew and rain of heaven.” There has been much inquiry of late on the subject of the Holy Spirit. In this and other lands thousands of persons have been giving attention to the study of this grand theme. I hope it will lead us all to pray for a greater manifestation of His power upon the whole Church of God. How much we have dishonored Him in the past! How ignorant of His grace, and love and presence we have been? True, we have heard of Him and read of Him, but we have had little intelligent knowledge of His attributes, His offices and His relations to us. I fear He has not been to many professed Christians an actual existence, nor is He known to them as a personality of the Godhead. The first work of the Spirit is to give life; spiritual life. He gives it and He sustains it. If there is no life, there can be no power; Solomon says: “A living dog is better than a dead lion.” When the Spirit imparts this life, He does not leave us to droop and die, but constantly fans the flame. He is ever with us. Surely we ought not to be ignorant of His power and his work. IDENTITY AND PERSONALITY. In John v, 7, we read: “There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one.” By the Father is meant the first Person, Christ, the Word is the second, and the Holy Spirit, perfectly fulfilling His own office and work in union with the Father and the Son, is the third. I find clearly presented in my Bible, that the One God who demands my love, service and worship, has there revealed Himself, and that each of those three names of Father, Son and Holy Ghost has personality attached to them. Therefore we find some things ascribed to God as Father, some to God as Saviour, and some to God as Comforter and Teacher. It has been remarked that the Father plans, the Son executes, and the Holy Spirit applies. But I also believe they plan and work together. The distinction of persons is often noted in Scripture. In Matt. iii, 16-17, we find Jesus submitting to baptism, the Spirit descending upon Him, while the Father’s voice of approval is heard saying: “This is my Beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” Again in John xiv, 16, we read: “I (i. e. Jesus) will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter.” Also in Eph. i, 18: “Through Him (i. e. Christ Jesus) we both (Jews and Gentiles) have access by one Spirit unto the Father.” Thus we are taught the distinction of persons in the Godhead, and their inseparable union. From these and other scriptures also we learn the identity and actual existence of the Holy Spirit. If you ask do I understand what is thus revealed in Scripture, I say “no.” But my faith bows down before the inspired Word and I unhesitatingly believe the great things of God when even reason is blinded and the intellect confused. In addition to the teaching of God’s Word, the Holy Spirit in His gracious work in the soul declares His own presence. Through His agency we are “born again,” and through His indwelling we possess superhuman power. Science, falsely so called, when arrayed against the existence and presence of the Spirit of God with His people, only exposes its own folly to the contempt of those who have become “new creatures in Christ Jesus.” The Holy Spirit who inspired prophets, and qualified apostles, continues to animate, guide and comfort all true believers. To the actual Christian, the personality of the Holy Spirit is more real than any theory science has to offer, for so-called science is but calculation based on human observation, and is constantly changing its inferences. But the existence of the Holy Spirit is to the child of God a matter of Scripture revelation and of actual experience. Some skeptics assert that there is no other vital energy in the world but physical force, while contrary to their assertions, thousands and tens of thousands who can not possibly be deceived have been quickened into spiritual life by a power neither physical or mental. Men who were dead in sins—drunkards who lost their will, blasphemers who lost their purity, libertines sunk in beastliness, infidels who published their shame to the world, have in numberless instances become the subjects of the Spirit’s power, and are now walking in the true nobility of Christian manhood, separated by an infinite distance from their former life. Let others reject, if they will, at their own peril, this imperishable truth. I believe, and am growing more into this belief, that divine, miraculous creative power resides in the Holy Ghost. Above and beyond all natural law, yet in harmony with it, creation, providence, the Divine government, and the upbuilding of the Church of God are presided over by the Spirit of God. His ministration is the ministration of life more glorious than the ministration of law, (2 Cor. iii, 6-10). And like the Eternal Son, the Eternal Spirit having life in Himself, is working out all things after the counsel of His own will, and for the everlasting glory of the Triune Godhead. The Holy Spirit has all the qualities belonging to a person; the power to understand, to will, to do, to call, to feel, to love. This can not be said of a mere influence. He possesses attributes and qualities which can only be ascribed to a person, as acts and deeds are performed by Him which can not be performed by a machine, an influence, or a result. AGENT AND INSTRUMENT. The Holy Spirit is closely identified with the words of the Lord Jesus. “It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing, the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life.” The Gospel proclamation can not be divorced from the Holy Spirit. Unless He attend the word in power, vain will be the attempt in preaching it. Human eloquence or persuasiveness of speech are the mere trappings of the dead, if the living Spirit be absent; the prophet may preach to the bones in the valley, but it must be the breath from Heaven which will cause the slain to live. In the third chapter of the First Epistle of Peter, it reads, “For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit.” Here we see that Christ was raised up from the grave by this same Spirit, and the power exercised to raise Christ’s dead body must raise our dead souls and quicken them. No other power on earth can quicken a dead soul, but the same power that raised the body of Jesus Christ out of Joseph’s sepulcher. And if we want that power to quicken our friends who are dead in sin, we must look to God, and not be looking to man to do it. If we look alone to ministers, if we look alone to Christ’s disciples to do this work, we shall be disappointed; but if we look to the Spirit of God and expect it to come from Him and Him alone, then we shall honor the Spirit, and the Spirit will do His work. SECRET OF EFFICIENCY. I can not help but believe there are many Christians who want to be more efficient in the Lord’s service, and the object of this book is to take up this subject of the Holy Spirit, that they may see from whom to expect this power. In the teaching of Christ, we find the last words recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, the 28th chapter and 19th verse, “Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” Here we find that the Holy Spirit and the Son are equal with the Father—are one with Him, “teaching them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” Christ was now handing His commission over to His Apostles. He was going to leave them. His work on earth was finished, and He was now just about ready to take His seat at the right hand of God, and He spoke unto them and said: “All power is given unto Me in heaven and on earth.” All power, so then He had authority. If Christ was mere man, as some people try to make out, it would have been blasphemy for Him to have said to the disciples, go and baptize all nations in the name of the Father, and in His own name, and in that of the Holy Ghost, making Himself equal with the Father. There are three things: All power is given unto Me; go teach all nations. Teach them what? To observe all things. There are a great many people now that are willing to observe what they like about Christ, but the things that they don’t like they just dismiss and turn away from. But His commission to His disciples was, “Go teach all nations to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.” And what right has a messenger who has been sent of God to change the message? If I had sent a servant to deliver a message, and the servant thought the message didn’t sound exactly right—a little harsh—and that servant went and changed the message, I should change servants very quickly; he could not serve me any longer. And when a minister or a messenger of Christ begins to change the message because he thinks it is not exactly what it ought to be, and thinks he is wiser than God, God just dismisses that man. They haven’t taught “all things.” They have left out some of the things that Christ has commanded us to teach, because they didn’t correspond with man’s reason. Now we have to take the Word of God just as it is; and if we are going to take it, we have no authority to take out just what we like, what we think is appropriate, and let dark reason be our guide. It is the work of the Spirit to impress the heart and seal the preached word. His office is to take of the things of Christ and reveal them unto us. Some people have got an idea that this is the only dispensation of the Holy Ghost; that He didn’t work until Christ was glorified. But Simeon felt the Holy Ghost when he went into the temple. In 2d Peter, i, 21, we read: “Holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” We find the same Spirit in Genesis as is seen in Revelation. The same Spirit that guided the hand that wrote Exodus inspired also the epistles, and we find the same Spirit speaking from one end of the Bible to the other. So holy men in all ages have spoken as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. HIS PERSONALITY. I was a Christian a long time before I found out that the Holy Ghost was a person. Now this is something a great many don’t seem to understand, but if you will just take up the Bible and see what Christ had to say about the Holy Spirit, you will find that He always spoke of Him as a person—never spoke of Him as an influence. Some people have an idea that the Holy Spirit is an attribute of God, just like mercy—just an influence coming from God. But we find in the fourteenth chapter of John, sixteenth verse, these words: “And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter that He may abide with you forever.” That He may abide with you forever. And, again, in the same chapter, seventeenth verse: “Even the Spirit of Truth, whom the world can not receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him; but ye know Him; for He dwelleth with you and shall be in you.” Again, in the twenty-sixth verse of the same chapter: “But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you.” Observe the pronouns “He” and “Him.” I want to call attention to this fact that whenever Christ spoke of the Holy Ghost He spoke of Him as a person, not a mere influence; and if we want to honor the Holy Ghost, let us bear in mind that He is one of the Trinity, a personality of the Godhead. THE RESERVOIR OF LOVE. We read that the fruit of the Spirit is love. God is love, Christ is love, and we should not be surprised to read about the love of the Spirit. What a blessed attribute is this. May I call it the dome of the temple of the graces. Better still, it is the crown of crowns worn by the Triune God. Human love is a natural emotion which flows forth towards the object of our affections. But Divine love is as high above human love as the heaven is above the earth. The natural man is of the earth, earthy, and however pure his love may be, it is weak and imperfect at best. But the love of God is perfect and entire, wanting nothing. It is as a mighty ocean in its greatness, dwelling with and flowing from the Eternal Spirit. In Romans v, 5, we read: “And hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given to us.” Now if we are co-workers with God, there is one thing we must possess, and that is love. A man may be a very successful lawyer and have no love for his clients, and yet get on very well. A man may be a very successful physician and have no love for his patients, and yet be a very good physician; a man may be a very successful merchant and have no love for his customers, and yet he may do a good business and succeed; but no man can be a co-worker with God without love. If our service is mere profession on our part, the quicker we renounce it the better. If a man takes up God’s work as he would take up any profession, the sooner he gets out of it the better. We can not work for God without love. It is the only tree that can produce fruit on this sin-cursed earth, that is acceptable to God. If I have no love for God nor for my fellow man, then I can not work acceptably. I am like sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. We are told that “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost.” Now, if we have had that love shed abroad in our hearts, we are ready for God’s service; if we have not, we are not ready. It is so easy to reach a man when you love him; all barriers are broken down and swept away. Paul when writing to Titus, second chapter and first verse, tells him to be sound in faith, in charity, and in patience. Now in this age, ever since I can remember, the Church has been very jealous about men being unsound in the faith. If a man becomes unsound in the faith, they draw their ecclesiastical sword and cut at him; but he may be ever so unsound in love, and they don’t say anything. He may be ever so defective in patience; he may be irritable and fretful all the time, but they never deal with him. Now the Bible teaches us, that we are not only to be sound in the faith, but in charity and in patience. I believe God can not use many of his servants, because they are full of irritability and impatience; they are fretting all the time, from morning until night. God can not use them; their mouths are sealed; they can not speak for Jesus Christ, and if they have not love, they can not work for God. I do not mean love for those that love me; it don’t take grace to do that; the rudest Hottentot in the world can do that; the greatest heathen that ever lived can do that; the vilest man that ever walked the earth can do that. It don’t take any grace at all. I did that before I ever became a Christian. Love begets love; hatred begets hatred. If I know a man loves me first, I know my love will be going out towards him. Suppose a man comes to me, saying, “Mr. Moody, a certain man told me to-day that he thought you were the meanest man living.” Well, if I didn’t have a good deal of the grace of God in my heart, then I know there would be hard feelings that would spring up in my heart against that man, and it would not be long before I would be talking against him. Hatred begets hatred. But suppose a man comes to me and says, “Mr. Moody, do you know that such a man that I met to-day says that he thinks a great deal of you?” and though I may never have heard of him, there would be love springing up in my heart. Love begets love; we all know that; but it takes the grace of God to love the man that lies about me, the man that slanders me, the man that is trying to tear down my character; it takes the grace of God to love that man. You may hate the sin he has committed; there is a difference between the sin and the sinner; you may hate the one with a perfect hatred, but you must love the sinner. I can not otherwise do him any good. Now you know the first impulse of a young convert is to love. Do you remember the day you were converted? Was not your heart full of sweet peace and love? THE RIGHT OVERFLOW. I remember the morning I came out of my room after I had first trusted Christ, and I thought the old sun shone a good deal brighter than it ever had before; I thought that the sun was just smiling upon me, and I walked out upon Boston Common, and I heard the birds in the trees, and I thought that they were all singing a song for me. Do you know I fell in love with the birds? I never cared for them before; it seemed to me that I was in love with all creation. I had not a bitter feeling against any man, and I was ready to take all men to my heart. If a man has not the love of God shed abroad in his heart, he has never been regenerated. If you hear a person get up in prayer-meeting, and he begins to speak and find fault with everybody, you may know that his is not a genuine conversion; that it is counterfeit; it has not the right ring, because the impulse of a converted soul is to love, and not to be getting up and complaining of every one else, and finding fault. But it is hard for us to live in the right atmosphere all the time. Some one comes along and treats us wrongly, perhaps we hate him; we have not attended to the means of grace and kept feeding on the word of God as we ought; a root of bitterness springs up in our hearts, and perhaps we are not aware of it, but it has come up in our hearts; then we are not qualified to work for God. The love of God is not shed abroad in our hearts as it ought to be by the Holy Ghost. But the work of the Holy Ghost is to impart love. Paul could say, “The love of Christ constraineth me.” He could not help going from town to town and preaching the Gospel. Jeremiah at one time said: “I will speak no more in the Lord’s name; I have suffered enough; these people don’t like God’s word.” They lived in a wicked day, as we do now. Infidels were creeping up all around him, who said the word of God was not true; Jeremiah had stood like a wall of fire, confronting them, and he boldly proclaimed that the word of God was true. At last they put him in prison, and he said: “I will keep still; it has cost me too much.” But a little while after, you know, he could not keep still. His bones caught fire; he had to speak. And when we are so full of the love of God, we are compelled to work for God, then God blesses us. If our work is sought to be accomplished by the lash, without any true motive power, it will come to nought. Now the question comes up, have we the love of God shed abroad in our hearts, and are we holding the truth in love? Some people hold the truth, but in such a cold stern way that it will do no good. Other people want to love everything, and so they give up much of the truth; but we are to hold the truth in love; we are to hold the truth even if we lose all, but we are to hold it in love, and if we do that, the Lord will bless us. There are a good many people trying to get this love; they are trying to produce it of themselves. But therein all fail. The love implanted deep in our new nature will be spontaneous. I don’t have to learn to love my children. I can not help loving them. I said to a young miss some time ago, in an inquiry meeting, who said that she could not love God; that it was very hard for her to love Him—I said to her, “Is it hard for you to love your mother? Do you have to learn to love your mother?” And she looked up through her tears, and said, “No; I can’t help it; that is spontaneous.” “Well,” I said, “when the Holy Spirit kindles love in your heart, you can not help loving God; it will be spontaneous.” When the Spirit of God comes into your heart and mine, it will be easy to serve God. The fruit of the Spirit, as you find it in Galatians, begins with love. There are nine graces spoken of in the sixth chapter, and of the nine different graces Paul puts love at the head of the list; love is the first thing—the first in that precious cluster of fruit. Some one has put it in this way: that all the other eight can be put in the word love. Joy is love exulting; peace is love in repose; long suffering is love on trial; gentleness is love in society; goodness is love in action; faith is love on the battlefield; meekness is love at school; and temperance is love in training. So it is love all the way; love at the top; love at the bottom, and all the way along down these graces; and if we only just brought forth the fruit of the Spirit, what a world we would have; there would be no need of any policemen; a man could leave his overcoat around without some one stealing it; men would not have any desire to do evil. Says Paul, “Against such there is no law;” you don’t need any law. A man who is full of the Spirit don’t need to be put under law; don’t need any policemen to watch him. We could dismiss all our policemen; the lawyers would have to give up practicing law, and the courts would not have any business. THE TRIUMPHS OF HOPE. In the fifteenth chapter of Romans, thirteenth verse, the Apostle says: “Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost.” The next thing then is hope. Did you ever notice this, that no man or woman is ever used by God to build up His kingdom who has lost hope? Now, I have been observing this throughout different parts of the country, and wherever I have found a worker in God’s vineyard who has lost hope, I have found a man or woman not very useful. Now, just look at these workers. Let your mind go over the past for a moment. Can you think of a man or woman whom God has used to build His kingdom who has lost hope? I don’t know of any; I never heard of such an one. It is very important to have hope in the Church; and it is the work of the Holy Ghost to impart hope. Let Him come into some of the churches where there have not been any conversions for a few years, and let Him convert a score of people, and see how hopeful the Church becomes at once. He imparts hope; a man filled with the Spirit of God will be very hopeful. He will be looking out into the future, and he knows that it is all bright, because the God of all grace is able to do great things. So it is very important that we have hope. If a man has lost hope, he is out of communion with God; he has not the Spirit of God resting upon him for service; he may be a son of God, and disheartened so that he can not be used of God. Do you know there is no place in the Scriptures where it is recorded that God ever used even a discouraged man. Some years ago, in my work I was quite discouraged, and I was ready to hang my harp on the willow. I was very much cast down and depressed. I had been for weeks in that state, when one Monday morning a friend, who had a very large Bible class, came into my study. I used to examine the notes of his Sunday-school lessons, which were equal to a sermon, and he came to me this morning and said, “Well, what did you preach about yesterday?” and I told him. I said, “What did you preach about?” and he said that he preached about Noah. “Did you ever preach about Noah?” “No, I never preached about Noah.” “Did you ever study his character?” “No, I never studied his life particularly.” “Well,” says he, “he is a most wonderful character. It will do you good. You ought to study up that character.” When he went out, I took down my Bible, and read about Noah; and then it came over me that Noah worked 120 years and never had a convert, and yet he did not get discouraged; and I said, “Well, I ought not to be discouraged,” and I closed my Bible, got up and walked down town, and the cloud had gone. I went down to the noon prayer-meeting, and heard of a little town in the country where they had taken into the church 100 young converts; and I said to myself, I wonder what Noah would have given if he could have heard that; and yet he worked 120 years and didn’t get discouraged. And then a man right across the aisle got up and said, “My friends, I wish you to pray for me; I think I’m lost;” and I thought to myself, “I wonder what Noah would have given to hear that.” He never heard a man say, “I wish you to pray for me; I think I am lost,” and yet he didn’t get discouraged! Oh, children of God, let us not get discouraged; let us ask God to forgive us, if we have been discouraged and cast down; let us ask God to give us hope, that we may be ever hopeful. It does me good sometimes to meet some people and take hold of their hands; they are so hopeful, while other people throw a gloom over me because they are all the time cast down, and looking at the dark side, and looking at the obstacles and difficulties that are in the way. THE BOON OF LIBERTY. The next thing the Spirit of God does is to give us liberty. He first imparts love; He next inspires hope, and then gives liberty, and that is about the last thing we have in a good many of our churches at the present day. And I am sorry to say there must be a funeral in a good many churches before there is much work done, we shall have to bury the formalism so deep that it will never have any resurrection. The last thing to be found in many a church is liberty. If the Gospel happens to be preached, the people criticise, as they would a theatrical performance. It is exactly the same, and many a professed Christian never thinks of listening to what the man of God has to say. It is hard work to preach to carnally-minded critics, but “Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” Very often a woman will hear a hundred good things in a sermon, and there may be one thing that strikes her as a little out of place, and she will go home and sit down to the table and talk right out before her children and magnify that one wrong thing, and not say a word about the hundred good things that were said. That is what people do who criticise. God does not use men in captivity. The condition of many is like Lazarus when he came out of the sepulcher bound hand and foot. The bandage was not taken off his mouth, and he could not speak. He had life, and if you had said Lazarus was not alive, you would have told a falsehood, because he was raised from the dead. There are a great many people, the moment you talk to them and insinuate they are not doing what they might, they say: “I have life. I am a Christian.” Well, you can’t deny it, but they are bound hand and foot. May God snap these fetters and set His children free, that they may have liberty. I believe He comes to set us free, and wants us to work for Him, and speak for Him. How many people would like to get up in a social prayer-meeting to say a few words for Christ, but there is such a cold spirit of criticism in the Church that they dare not do it. They have not the liberty to do it. If they get up, they are so frightened with these critics that they begin to tremble and sit down. They can not say anything. Now, that is all wrong. The Spirit of God comes just to give liberty, and wherever you see the Lord’s work going on, you will see that Spirit of liberty. People won’t be afraid of speaking to one another. And when the meeting is over they will not get their hats and see how quick they can get out of the church, but will begin to shake hands with one another, and there will be liberty there. A good many go to the prayer-meeting out of a mere cold sense of duty. They think “I must attend because I feel it is my duty.” They don’t think it is a glorious privilege to meet and pray, and to be strengthened, and to help some one else in the wilderness journey. What we need to-day is love in our hearts. Don’t we want it? Don’t we want hope in our lives? Don’t we want to be hopeful? Don’t we want liberty? Now, all this is the work of the Spirit of God, and let us pray God daily to give us love, and hope, and liberty. We read in Hebrews, “Having, therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus.” If you will turn to the passage and read the margin—it says: “Having, therefore, brethren, liberty to enter into the holiest.” We can go into the holiest, having freedom of access, and plead for this love and liberty and glorious hope, that we may not rest until God gives us the power to work for Him. If I know my own heart to-day, I would rather die than live as I once did, a mere nominal Christian, and not used by God in building up His kingdom. It seems a poor empty life to live for the sake of self. Let us seek to be useful. Let us seek to be vessels meet for the Master’s use, that God, the Holy Spirit, may shine fully through us. “Know, my soul, thy full salvation; Rise o’er sin, and fear, and care; Joy to find, in every station, Something still to do or bear. Think what Spirit dwells within thee; Think what Father’s smiles are thine; Think that Jesus died to win thee: Child of heaven, canst thou repine? Haste thee on from grace to glory, Armed by faith, and winged by prayer, Heaven’s eternal day’s before thee: God’s own hand shall guide thee there. Soon shall close thy earthly mission, Soon shall pass thy pilgrim days, Hope shall change to glad fruition, Faith to sight, and prayer to praise.”

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“I am so weak, dear Lord! I can not stand One moment without Thee; But oh, the tenderness of Thy enfolding, And oh, the faithfulness of Thine upholding, And oh, the strength of Thy right hand! That strength is enough for me. I am so needy, Lord! and yet I know All fullness dwells in Thee; And hour by hour that never-failing treasure Supplies and fills in overflowing measure My last and greatest need. And so Thy grace is enough for me. It is so sweet to trust Thy word alone! I do not ask to see The unveiling of Thy purpose, or the shining Of future light on mysteries untwining; Thy promise-roll is all my own— Thy word is enough for me. There were strange soul-depths, restless, vast, and broad, Unfathomed as the sea, An infinite craving for some infinite stilling; But now Thy perfect love is perfect filling! Lord Jesus Christ, my Lord, my God, Thou, Thou art enough for me!”

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CHAPTER II.

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POWER “IN” AND “UPON.”

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You remember that strange, half-involuntary “forty years” of Moses in the “wilderness” of Midian, when he had fled from Egypt. You remember, too, the almost equally strange years of retirement in “Arabia” by Paul, when, if ever, humanly speaking, instant action was needed. And pre-eminently you remember the amazing charge of the ascending Lord to the disciples, “Tarry at Jerusalem.” Speaking after the manner of men, one could not have wondered if out-spoken Peter, or fervid James had said: “Tarry, Lord! How long?” “Tarry, Lord! is there not a perishing world, groaning for the ‘good news?’” “Tarry! did we hear Thee aright, Lord? Was the word not haste?” “Nay;” “Being assembled together with them, He commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father.” (Acts 1:4.)—Grosart.

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POWER—“IN” AND “UPON.”

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The Holy Spirit dwelling in us, is one thing; I think this is clearly brought out in Scripture; and the Holy Spirit upon us for service, is another thing. Now there are only three places we find in Scripture that are dwelling-places for the Holy Ghost. In the 40th chapter of Exodus, commencing with the 33d verse, are these words: “And he (that is Moses) reared up the court round about the tabernacle and the altar, and set up the hanging of the court gate. So Moses finished the work. Then a cloud covered the tent of the congregation, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter into the tent of the congregation, because the cloud abode thereon, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.” The moment that Moses finished the work, the moment that the tabernacle was ready, the cloud came, the Shekinah glory came and filled it so that Moses was not able to stand before the presence of the Lord. I believe firmly, that the moment our hearts are emptied of pride and selfishness and ambition and self-seeking, and everything that is contrary to God’s law, the Holy Ghost will come and fill every corner of our hearts; but if we are full of pride and conceit, and ambition and self-seeking, and pleasure and the world, there is no room for the Spirit of God; and I believe many a man is praying to God to fill him when he is full already with something else. Before we pray that God would fill us, I believe we ought to pray Him to empty us. There must be an emptying before there can be a filling; and when the heart is turned upside down, and everything is turned out that is contrary to God, then the Spirit will come, just as He did in the tabernacle, and fill us with His glory. We read in 2d Chronicles, 5th chapter and 13th verse: “It came even to pass, as the trumpeters and singers were as one to make one Sound, to be heard in praising and thanking the Lord, and when they lifted up their voice with the trumpets and cymbals and instruments of music, and praised the Lord, saying, For He is good; for His mercy endureth forever; that then the house was filled with a cloud, even the house of the Lord. So that the priests could not stand to minister by reason of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord had filled the house of God.” PRAISING WITH ONE HEART. We find, the very moment that Solomon completed the Temple, when all was finished, they were just praising God with one heart—the choristers and the singers and the ministers were all one; there was not any discord; they were all praising God, and the glory of God came and just filled the Temple as the Tabernacle. Now, as you turn over into the New Testament, you will find, instead of coming to Tabernacles and Temples, believers are now the Temple of the Holy Ghost. When, on the day of Pentecost, before Peter preached that memorable sermon, as they were praying, the Holy Ghost came, and came in mighty power. We now pray for the Spirit of God to come, and we sing: “Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly dove, With all thy quickening power; Kindle a flame of heavenly love In these cold hearts of ours,” I believe, if we understand it, it is perfectly right; but if we are praying for Him to come out of heaven down to earth again, that is wrong, because He is already here; He has not been out of this earth for 1800 years; He has been in the Church, and He is with all believers; the believers in the Church are the called-out ones; they are called out from the world, and every true believer is a Temple for the Holy Ghost to dwell in. In the 14th chapter of John, 17th verse, we have the words of Jesus: “The Spirit of Truth, whom the world can not receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him; but ye know Him, for He dwelleth in you.” “Greater is He that is in you than He that is in the world.” If we have the Spirit dwelling in us, He gives us power over the flesh and the world, and over every enemy. “He is dwelling with you, and shall be in you.” Read 1st Corinthians iii, 16: “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” There were some men burying an aged saint some time ago, and he was very poor, like many of God’s people, poor in this world, but they are very rich, they have all the riches on the other side of life—they have them laid up there where thieves can not get them, and where sharpers can not take them away from them, and where moth can not corrupt—so this aged man was very rich in the other world, and they were just hastening him off to the grave, wanting to get rid of him, when an old minister, who was officiating at the grave, said, “Tread softly, for you are carrying the temple of the Holy Ghost.” Whenever you see a believer, you see a temple of the Holy Ghost. In 1 Cor. vi, 19, 20, we read again: “Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own for ye are bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.” Thus are we taught that there is a divine resident in every child of God. I think it is clearly taught in the Scripture that every believer has the Holy Ghost dwelling in him. He may be quenching the Spirit of God, and he may not glorify God as he should, but if he is a believer on the Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost dwells in him. But I want to call your attention to another fact. I believe to-day, that though Christian men and women have the Holy Spirit dwelling in them, yet He is not dwelling within them in power; in other words, God has a great many sons and daughters without power. WHAT IS NEEDED. Nine-tenths, at least, of the church members never think of speaking for Christ. If they see a man, perhaps a near relative, just going right down to ruin, going rapidly, they never think of speaking to him about his sinful course and of seeking to win him to Christ. Now certainly there must be something wrong. And yet when you talk with them you find they have faith, and you can not say they are not children of God; but they have not the power, they have not the liberty, they have not the love that real disciples of Christ should have. A great many people are thinking that we need new measures, that we need new churches, that we need new organs, and that we need new choirs, and all these new things. That is not what the Church of God needs to-day. It is the old power that the Apostles had; that is what we want, and if we have that in our churches, there will be new life. Then we will have new ministers—the same old ministers renewed with power; filled with the Spirit. I remember when in Chicago many were toiling in the work, and it seemed as though the car of salvation didn’t move on, when a minister began to cry out from the very depths of his heart, “Oh, God, put new ministers in every pulpit.” On next Monday I heard two or three men stand up and say, “We had a new minister last Sunday—the same old minister, but he had got new power,” and I firmly believe that is what we want to-day all over America. We want new ministers in the pulpit and new people in the pews. We want people quickened by the Spirit of God, and the Spirit coming down and taking possession of the children of God and giving them power. Then a man filled with the Spirit will know how to use “the sword of the Spirit.” If a man is not filled with the Spirit, he will never know now to use the Book. We are told that this is the sword of the Spirit; and what is an army good for that does not know how to use its weapons? Suppose a battle going on, and I were a general and had a hundred thousand men, great, able-bodied men, full of life, but they could not one of them handle a sword, and not one of them knew how to use his rifle, what would that army be good for? Why, one thousand well-drilled men, with good weapons, would rout the whole of them. The reason why the Church can not overcome the enemy is, because she don’t know how to use the sword of the Spirit. People will get up and try to fight the devil with their experiences, but he don’t care for that, he will overcome them every time. People are trying to fight the devil with theories and pet ideas, but he will get the victory over them likewise. What we want is to draw the sword of the Spirit. It is that which cuts deeper than anything else. Turn in your Bibles to Eph. vi, 14: “Stand, therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all (or over all), taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.” THE GREATEST WEAPON. The sword of the Spirit is the Word of God, and what we need specially is to be filled with the Spirit, so we shall know how to use the Word. There was a Christian man talking to a skeptic, who was using the Word, and the skeptic said, “I don’t believe, sir, in that Book.” But the man went right on and he gave him more of the Word; and the man again remarked, “I don’t believe the Word,” but he kept giving him more, and at last the man was reached. And the brother added, “When I have proved a good sword which does the work of execution, I would just keep right on using it.” That is what we want. Skeptics and infidels may say they don’t believe in it. It is not our work to make them believe in it; that is the work of the Spirit. Our work is to give them the Word of God; not to preach our theories and our ideas about it, but just to deliver the message as God gives it to us. We read in the Scriptures of the sword of the Lord and Gideon. Suppose Gideon had gone out without the Word, he would have been defeated. But the Lord used Gideon; and I think you find all through the Scriptures, God takes up and uses human instruments. You can not find, I believe, a case in the Bible where a man is converted without God calling in some human agency—using some human instrument; not but what He can do it in His independent sovereignty; there is no doubt about that. Even when by the revealed glory of the Lord Jesus, Saul of Tarsus was smitten to the earth, Annanias was used to open his eyes and lead him into the light of the Gospel. I heard a man once say, if you put a man on a mountain peak, higher than one of the Alpine peaks, God could save him without a human messenger; but that is not His way; that is not His method; but it is “the sword of the Lord and Gideon”; and the Lord and Gideon will do the work; and if we are just willing to let the Lord use us, He will. “NONE OF SELF.” Then you will find all through the Scriptures, when men were filled with the Holy Spirit, they preached Christ and not themselves. They preached Christ and Him crucified. It says in the first chapter of Luke, 67th verse, speaking of Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist: “And his father, Zacharias, was filled with the Holy Ghost, and prophesied, saying: Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for He hath visited and redeemed His people, and hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of His servant David. As He spake by the mouth of His Holy prophets, which have been since the world began.” See, he is talking about the Word. If a man is filled with the Spirit, he will magnify the Word; he will preach the Word, and not himself; he will give this lost world the Word of the living God. “And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest; for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways. To give knowledge of salvation unto His people by the remission of their sins, through the tender mercy of our God, whereby the day-spring from on high hath visited us. To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. And the child grew and waxed strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till the day of his showing unto Israel.” And so we find again that when Elizabeth and Mary met, they talked of the Scriptures, and they were both filled with the Holy Ghost, and at once began to talk of their Lord. We also find that Simeon, as he came into the temple and found the young child Jesus there, at once began to quote the Scriptures, for the Spirit was upon him. And when Peter stood up on the day of Pentecost, and preached that wonderful sermon, it is said he was filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to preach the Word to the multitude, and it was the Word that cut them. It was the sword of the Lord and Peter, the same as it was the sword of the Lord and Gideon. And we find it says of Stephen, “They were not able to resist the spirit and wisdom by which he spake.” Why? Because he gave them the Word of God. And we are told that the Holy Ghost came on Stephen, and none could resist his word. And we read, too, that Paul was full of the Holy Spirit, and that he preached Christ and Him crucified, and that many people were added to the Church. Barnabas was full of faith and the Holy Ghost; and if you will just read and find out what he preached, you will find it was the Word, and many were added to the Lord. So that when a man is full of the Spirit, he begins to preach, not himself, but Christ, as revealed in the Holy Scriptures. The disciples of Jesus were all filled with the Spirit, and the Word was published; and when the Spirit of God comes down upon the Church, and we are anointed, the Word will be published in the streets, in the lanes, and in the alleys; there will not be a dark cellar nor a dark attic, nor a home where the Gospel will not be carried by some loving heart, if the Spirit comes upon God’s people in demonstration and in power. SPIRITUAL IRRIGATION. It is possible a man may just barely have life and be satisfied; and I think that a great many are in that condition. In the 3d chapter of John we find that Nicodemus came to Christ and that he received life. At first this life was feeble. You don’t hear of him standing up confessing Christ boldly, and of the Spirit coming upon him in great power, though possessing life through faith in Christ. And then turn to the 4th chapter of John, and you will find it speaks of the woman coming to the well of Samaria, and Christ held out the cup of salvation to her and she took it and drank, and it became in her “a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” That is better than in the 3d chapter of John; here it came down in a flood into her soul; as some one has said, it came down from the throne of God, and like a mighty current carried her back to the throne of God. Water always rises to its level, and if we get the soul filled with water from the throne of God it will bear us upward to its source. But if you want to get the best class of Christian life portrayed, turn to the 7th chapter and you will find that it says he that receiveth the Spirit, through trusting in the Lord Jesus, “out of him shall flow rivers of living water.” Now there are two ways of digging a well. I remember, when a boy, upon a farm, in New England, they had a well, and they put in an old wooden pump, and I used to have to pump the water from that well upon wash-day, and to water the cattle; and I had to pump and pump and pump until my arm got tired, many a time. But they have a better way now; they don’t dig down a few feet and brick up the hole and put the pump in, but they go down through the clay and the sand and the rock, and on down until they strike what they call a lower stream, and then it becomes an artesian well, which needs no labor, as the water rises spontaneously from the depths beneath. Now I think God wants all His children to be a sort of artesian well; not to keep pumping, but to flow right out. Why, haven’t you seen ministers in the pulpit just pumping, and pumping and pumping? I have, many a time, and I have had to do it, too. I know how it is. They stand in the pulpit and talk and talk and talk, and the people go to sleep, they can’t arouse them. What is the trouble? Why, the living water is not there; they are just pumping when there is no water in the well. You can’t get water out of a dry well; you have to get something in the well, or you can’t get anything out. I have seen these wooden pumps where you had to pour water into them before you could pump any water out, and so it is with a good many people; you have to get something in them before you can get any out. People wonder why it is that they have no Spiritual power. They stand up and talk in meeting, and don’t say anything; they say they haven’t anything to say, and you find it out soon enough; they need not state it; but they just talk, because they feel it is a duty, and say nothing. Now I tell you when the Spirit of God is on us for service, resting upon us, we are anointed, and then we can do great things. “I will pour water on him that is thirsty,” says God. O, blessed thought—“He that hungers and thirsts after righteousness shall be filled!” OUTFLOWING STREAMS. I would like to see some one just full of living water; so full that they couldn’t contain it; that they would have to go out and publish the Gospel of the grace of God. When a man gets so full that he can’t hold any more, then he is just ready for God’s service. When preaching in Chicago, Dr. Gibson remarked in the inquiry meeting, “Now, how can we find out who is thirsty?” Said he, “I was just thinking how we could find out. If a boy should come down the aisle, bringing a good pail full of clear water, and a dipper, we would soon find out who was thirsty; we would see thirsty men and women reach out for water; but if you should walk down the aisle with an empty bucket, you wouldn’t find it out. People would look in and see that there was no water, and say nothing.” So said he, “I think that is the reason we are not more blessed in our ministry; we are carrying around empty buckets, and the people see that we have not anything in them, and they don’t come forward.” I think that there is a good deal of truth in that. People see that we are carrying around empty buckets, and they will not come to us until they are filled. They see we haven’t any more than they have. We must have the Spirit of God resting upon us, and then we will have something that gives the victory over the world, the flesh, and the devil; something that gives the victory over our tempers, over our conceits, and over every other evil, and when we can trample these sins under our feet, then people will come to us and say, “How did you get it? I need this power; you have something that I haven’t got; I want it.” O, may God show us this truth. Have we been toiling all night? let us throw the net on the right side; let us ask God to forgive our sins, and anoint us with power from on high. But remember, He is not going to give this power to an impatient man; He is not going to give it to a selfish man; He will never give it to an ambitious man whose aim is selfish, till first emptied of self; emptied of pride and of all worldly thoughts. Let it be God’s glory and not our own that we seek, and when we get to that point, how speedily the Lord will bless us for good. Then will the measure of our blessing be full. Do you know what heaven’s measure is? Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over. If we get our heart filled with the Word of God, how is Satan going to get in? How is the world going to get in, for heaven’s measure is good measure, full measure, running over. Have you this fullness? If you have not, then seek it; say by the grace of God you will have it, for it is the Father’s good pleasure to give us these things. He wants us to shine down in this world; He wants to lift us up for His work; He wants us to have the power to testify for His Son. He has left us in this world to testify for Him. What did He leave us for? Not to buy and sell and to get gain, but to glorify Christ. How are you going to do it without the Spirit? That is the question. How are you to do it without the power of God? WHY SOME FAIL. We read in John xx, 22: “And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost.” Then see Luke xxiv, 49: “And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you; but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from on high.” The first passage tells us He had raised those pierced and wounded hands over them and breathed upon them and said, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost.” And I haven’t a doubt they received it then, but not in such mighty power as afterward when qualified for their work. It was not in fullness that He gave it to them then, but if they had been like a good many now, they would have said, “I have enough now; I am not going to tarry; I am going to work.” Some people seem to think they are losing time if they wait on God for his power, and so away they go and work without unction; they are working without any anointing, they are working without any power. But after Jesus had said “Receive ye the Holy Ghost,” and had breathed on them, He said: “Now you tarry in Jerusalem until you be endued with power from on high.” Read in the 1st chapter of Acts, 8th verse: “But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.” Now, the Spirit had been given them certainly or they could not have believed, and they could not have taken their stand for God and gone through what they did, and endured the scoffs and frowns of their friends, if they had not been converted by the power of the Holy Ghost. But now just see what Christ said: “Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you; and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth.” Then, the Holy Spirit in us is one thing, and the Holy Spirit on us is another; and if these Christians had gone out and went right to preaching then and there, without the power, do you think that scene would have taken place on the day of Pentecost? Don’t you think that Peter would have stood up there and beat against the air, while these Jews would have gnashed their teeth and mocked him? But they tarried in Jerusalem; they waited ten days. What! you say. What, the world perishing and men dying! Shall I wait? Do what God tells you. There is no use in running before you are sent; there is no use in attempting to do God’s work without God’s power. A man working without this unction, a man working without this anointing, a man working without the Holy Ghost upon him, is losing his time after all. So we are not going to lose anything if we tarry till we get this power. That is the object of true service, to wait on God, to tarry till we receive this power for witness-bearing. Then we find that on the day of Pentecost, ten days after Jesus Christ was glorified, the Holy Spirit descended in power. Do you think that Peter and James and John and those apostles doubted it from that very hour? They never doubted it. Perhaps some question the possibility of having the power of God now, and that the Holy Spirit never came afterward in similar manifestation, and will never come again in such power. FRESH SUPPLIES. Turn to Acts iv, 31, and you will find He came a second time, and at a place where they were, so that the earth was shaken, and they were filled with this power. The fact is, we are leaky vessels, and we have to keep right under the fountain all the time to keep full of Christ, and so have a fresh supply. I believe this is a mistake a great many of us are making; we are trying to do God’s work with the grace God gave us ten years ago. We say, if it is necessary, we will go on with the same grace. Now, what we want is a fresh supply, a fresh anointing and fresh power, and if we seek it, and seek it with all our hearts, we will obtain it. The early converts were taught to look for that power. Philip went to Samaria, and news reached Jerusalem that there was a great work being done in Samaria, and many converts; and John and Peter went down, and they laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost for service. I think that is what we Christians ought to be looking for—the Spirit of God for service—that God may use us mightily in the building up of His Church and hastening His glory. In Acts xix we read of twelve men at Ephesus, who, when the inquiry was made if they had received the Holy Ghost since they believed, answered: “We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost.” I venture to say there are very many, who, if you were to ask them, “Have you received the Holy Ghost since you believed?” would reply, “I don’t know what you mean by that.” They would be like the twelve men down at Ephesus, who had never understood the peculiar relation of the Spirit to the sons of God in this dispensation. I firmly believe that the Church has just laid this knowledge aside, mislaid it somewhere, and so Christians are without power. Sometimes you can take one hundred members into the Church, and they don’t add to its power. Now that is all wrong. If they were only anointed by the Spirit of God, there would be great power if one hundred saved ones were added to the Church. GREEN FIELDS. When I was out in California, the first time I went down from the Sierra Nevada Mountains and dropped into the Valley of the Sacramento, I was surprised to find on one farm that everything about it was green—all the trees and flowers, everything was blooming, and everything was green and beautiful, and just across the hedge everything was dried up, and there was not a green thing there, and I could not understand it; I made inquiries, and I found that the man that had everything green, irrigated; he just poured the water right on, and he kept everything green, while the fields that were next to his were as dry as Gideon’s fleece without a drop of dew; and so it is with a great many in the Church to-day. They are like these farms in California—a dreary desert, everything parched and desolate, and apparently no life in them. They can sit next to a man who is full of the Spirit of God, who is like a green bay tree, and who is bringing forth fruit, and yet they will not seek a similar blessing. Well, why this difference? Because God has poured water on him that was thirsty; that is the difference. One has been seeking this anointing, and he has received it; and when we want this above everything else God will surely give it to us. The great question before us now is, Do we want it? I remember when I first went to England and gave a Bible reading, I think about the first that I gave in that country, a great many ministers were there, and I didn’t know anything about English theology, and I was afraid I should run against their creeds, and I was a little hampered, especially on this very subject, about the gift of the Holy Spirit for service. I remember particularly a Christian minister there who had his head bowed on his hand, and I thought the good man was ashamed of everything I was saying, and of course that troubled me. At the close of my address he took his hat and away he went, and then I thought, “Well, I shall never see him again.” At the next meeting I looked all around for him and he wasn’t there, and at the next meeting I looked again, but he was absent; and I thought my teaching must have given him offense. But a few days after that, at a large noon prayer meeting, a man stood up and his face shone as if he had been up in the mountain with God, and I looked at him, and to my great joy it was this brother. He said he was at that Bible reading, and he heard there was such a thing as having fresh power to preach the Gospel; he said he made up his mind that if that was for him he would have it; he said he went home and looked to the Master, and that he never had such a battle with himself in his life. He asked that God would show him the sinfulness of his heart that he knew nothing about, and he just cried mightily to God that he might be emptied of himself and filled with the Spirit, and he said, “God has answered my prayer.” I met him in Edinburgh six months from that date, and he told me he had preached the Gospel every night during that time, that he had not preached one sermon but that some remained for conversation, and that he had engagements four months ahead to preach the Gospel every night in different churches. I think you could have fired a cannon ball right through his church and not hit any one before he got this anointing; but it was not thirty days before the building was full and aisles crowded. He had his bucket filled full of fresh water, and the people found it out and came flocking to him from every quarter. I tell you, you can’t get the stream higher than the fountain. What we need very specially is power. There was another man whom I have in my mind, and he said, “I have heart disease, I can’t preach more than once a week,” so he had a colleague to preach for him and do the visiting. He was an old minister, and he couldn’t do any visiting. He had heard of this anointing, and said, “I would like to be anointed for my burial. I would like before I go hence to have just one more privilege to preach the Gospel with power.” He prayed that God would fill him with the Spirit, and I met him not long after that, and he said, “I have preached on an average eight times a week, and I have had conversions all along.” The Spirit came on him. I don’t believe that man broke down at first with hard work, so much as with using the machinery without oil, without lubrication. It is not the hard work breaks down ministers, but it is the toil of working without power. Oh, that God may anoint His people! Not the ministry only, but every disciple. Do not suppose pastors are the only laborers needing it. There is not a mother but needs it in her house to regulate her family, just as much as the minister needs it in the pulpit or the Sunday-school teacher needs it in his Sunday-school. We all need it together, and let us not rest day nor night until we possess it; if that is the uppermost thought in our hearts, God will give it to us if we just hunger and thirst for it, and say, “God helping me, I will not rest until endued with power from on high.” MASTER AND SERVANT. There is a very sweet story of Elijah and Elisha, and I love to dwell upon it. The time had come for Elijah to be taken up, and he said to Elisha, “You stay here at Gilgal, and I will go up to Bethel.” There was a theological seminary there, and some young students, and he wanted to see how they were getting along; but Elisha said, “As the Lord liveth, and thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee.” And so Elisha just kept close to Elijah. They came to Bethel, and the sons of the prophets came out and said to Elisha, “Do you know that your master is to be taken away?” And Elisha said, “I know it; but you keep still.” Then Elijah said to Elisha, “You remain at Bethel until I go to Jericho.” But Elisha said, “As the Lord liveth and my soul liveth, I will not leave thee.” “You shall not go without me,” says Elisha; and then I can imagine that Elisha just put his arm in that of Elijah, and they walked down together. I can see those two mighty men walking down to Jericho, and when they arrived there, the sons of the prophets came and said to Elisha, “Do you know that your master is to be taken away?” “Hush! keep still,” says Elisha, “I know it.” And then Elijah said to Elisha, “Tarry here awhile; for the Lord hath sent me to Jordan.” But Elisha said, “As the Lord liveth and my soul liveth, I will not leave thee. You shall not go without me.” And then Elisha came right close to Elijah, and as they went walking down, I imagine Elisha was after something; when they came to the Jordan, Elijah took off his mantle and struck the waters, and they separated hither and thither, and the two passed through like giants, dry-shod, and fifty sons of the prophets came to look at them and watch them. They didn’t know but Elijah would be taken up right in their sight. As they passed over Jordan, Elijah said to Elisha, “Now, what do you want?” He knew he was after something. “What can I do for you. Just make your request known.” And he said, “I would like a double portion of thy Spirit.” I can imagine now that Elijah had given him a chance to ask; he said to himself, “I will ask for enough.” Elisha had a good deal of the Spirit, but, says he, “I want a double portion of thy Spirit.” “Well,” says Elijah, “if you see me when I am taken up, you shall have it.” Do you think you could have enticed Elisha from Elijah at that moment? I can almost see the two arm in arm, walking along, and as they walked, there came along the chariot of fire, and before Elisha knew it, Elijah was caught up, and as he went sweeping towards the throne, the servant cried, “My Father! My Father! The chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof!” Elisha saw him no more. He picked up Elijah’s fallen mantle, and returning with that old mantle of his master’s, he came to the Jordan and cried for Elijah’s God, and the waters separated hither and thither, and he passed through dry-shod. Then the watching prophets lifted up their voices and said, “The Spirit of Elijah is upon Elisha;” and so it was, a double portion of it. May the Spirit of Elijah, beloved reader, be upon us. If we seek for it we will have it. Oh, may the God of Elijah answer by fire, and consume the spirit of worldliness in the churches, burn up the dross, and make us whole-hearted Christians. May that Spirit come upon us; let that be our prayer in our family altars and in our closets. Let us cry mightily to God that we may have a double portion of the Holy Spirit, and that we may not rest satisfied with this worldly state of living, but let us, like Sampson, shake ourselves and come out from the world, that we may have the power of God.

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CHAPTER III.

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WITNESSING IN POWER.

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A man may as well hew marble without tools, or paint without colors or instruments, or build without materials, as perform any acceptable service without the graces of the Spirit, which are both the materials and the instruments in the work.—Alleine. If we do not have the Spirit of God, it were better to shut the churches, to nail up the doors, to put a black cross on them, and say, “God have mercy on us!” If you ministers have not the Spirit of God, you had better not preach, and you people had better stay at home. I think I speak not too strongly when I say that a church in the land without the Spirit of God is rather a curse than a blessing. If you have not the Spirit of God, Christian worker, remember that you stand in somebody else’s way; you are as a tree bearing no fruit standing where another fruitful tree might grow. This is solemn work; the Holy Spirit or nothing, and worse than nothing. Death and condemnation to a church that is not yearning after the Spirit, and crying and groaning until the Spirit has wrought mightily in her midst. He is here; He has never gone back since He descended at Pentecost. He is often grieved and vexed, for He is peculiarly jealous and sensitive, and the one sin never forgiven has to do with His blessed person; therefore let us be very tender towards Him, walk humbly before Him, wait on Him very earnestly, and resolve that about us there should be nothing knowingly continued which should prevent Him dwelling in us, and being with us henceforth and for, ever. Brethren, peace be unto you and your spirit!—Spurgeon.

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WITNESSING IN POWER.

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The subject of witness-bearing in the power of the Holy Ghost is not sufficiently understood by the Church. Until we have more intelligence on this point we are laboring under great disadvantage. Now, if you will take your Bible and turn to the 15th chapter of John and the 26th verse, you will find these words: “But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of Truth, which proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of me; and ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning.” Here we find what the Spirit is going to do, or what Christ said He would do when He came; namely, that He should testify of Him. And if you will turn over to the second chapter of Acts you will find that when Peter stood up on the day of Pentecost, and testified of what Christ had done, the Holy Spirit came down and bore witness to that fact, and men were convicted by hundreds and by thousands. So then man can not preach effectively of himself. He must have the Spirit of God to give ability, and study God’s Word in order to testify according to the mind of the Spirit. WHAT IS THE TESTIMONY? If we keep back the Gospel of Christ and do not bring Christ before the people, then the Spirit has not the opportunity to work. But the moment Peter stood up on the day of Pentecost and bore testimony to this one fact, that Christ died for sin, and that He had been raised again, and ascended into heaven—the Spirit came down to bear witness to the Person and Work of Christ. He came down to bear witness to the fact that Christ was in heaven, and if it was not for the Holy Ghost bearing witness to the preaching of the facts of the Gospel, do you think that the Church would have lived during these last eighteen centuries? Do you believe that Christ’s death, resurrection and ascension would not have been forgotten as soon as His birth, if it had not been for the fact that the Holy Spirit had come? Because it is very clear, that when John made his appearance on the borders of the wilderness, they had forgotten all about the birth of Jesus Christ. Just thirty short years. It was all gone. They had forgotten the story of the Shepherds; they had forgotten the wonderful scene that took place in the temple, when the Son of God was brought into the temple and the older prophets and prophetesses were there; they had forgotten about the wise men coming to Jerusalem to inquire where He was that was born King of the Jews. That story of His birth seemed to have just faded away; they had forgotten all about it, and when John made his appearance on the borders of the wilderness it was brought back to their minds. And if it had not been for the Holy Ghost coming down to bear witness to Christ, to testify of His death and resurrection, these facts would have been forgotten as soon as His birth. GREATER WORK. The witness of the Spirit is the witness of power. Jesus said, “The works that I do shall ye do also, and greater works than these shall ye do because I go to the Father.” I used to stumble over that. I didn’t understand it. I thought, what greater work could any man do than Christ had done? How could any one raise a dead man who had been laid away in the sepulcher for days, and who had already begun to turn back to dust; how with a word could he call him forth? But the longer I live the more I am convinced it is a greater thing to influence a man’s will; a man whose will is set against God; to have that will broken and brought into subjection to God’s will—or, in other words, it is a greater thing to have power over a living, sinning, God-hating man, than to quicken the dead. He who could create a world could speak a dead soul into life; but I think the greatest miracle this world has ever seen was the miracle at Pentecost. Here were men who surrounded the Apostles, full of prejudice, full of malice, full of bitterness, their hands, as it were, dripping with the blood of the Son of God, and yet an unlettered man, a man whom they detested, a man whom they hated, stands up there and preaches the Gospel, and three thousand of them are immediately convicted and converted, and become disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, and are willing to lay down their lives for the Son of God. It may have been on that occasion that Stephen was converted, the first martyr, and some of the men who soon after gave up their lives for Christ. This seems to me the greatest miracle this world has ever seen. But Peter did not labor alone; the Spirit of God was with him; hence the marvelous results. The Jewish law required that there should be two witnesses, and so we find that when Peter preached there was a second witness. Peter testified of Christ, and Christ says when the Holy Spirit comes He will testify of Me. And they both bore witness to the verities of our Lord’s incarnation, ministry, death, and resurrection, and the result was that a multitude turned as with one heart unto the Lord. Our failure now is, that preachers ignore the Cross, and veil Christ with sapless sermons and superfine language. They don’t just present Him to the people plainly, and that is why, I believe, that the Spirit of God don’t work with power in our churches. What we need is to preach Christ and present Him to a perishing world. The world can get on very well without you and me, but the world can not get on without Christ, and therefore we must testify of Him, and the world, I believe, to-day is just hungering and thirsting for this divine, satisfying portion. Thousands and thousands are sitting in darkness, knowing not of this great Light, but when we begin to preach Christ honestly, faithfully, sincerely and truthfully; holding Him up, not ourselves; exalting Christ and not our theories; presenting Christ and not our opinions; advocating Christ and not some false doctrine; then the Holy Ghost will come and bear witness. He will testify that what we say is true. When He comes He will confirm the Word with signs following. This is one of the strongest proofs that our Gospel is Divine; that it is of Divine origin; that not only did Christ teach these things, but when leaving the world He said, “He shall glorify Me,” and “He will testify of Me.” If you will just look at the second chapter of Acts—to that wonderful sermon that Peter preached—the thirty-sixth verse, you read these words: “Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus whom ye crucified, both Lord and Christ.” And when Peter said this the Holy Ghost descended upon the people and testified of Christ—bore witness in signal demonstration that all this was true. And again, in the fortieth verse, “And with many other words did He testify and exhort, saying, Save yourselves from this untoward generation.” With many other words did He testify, not only these words that have been recorded, but many other words. THE SURE GUIDE. Turn to the sixteenth chapter of John, in the thirteenth verse, and read: “Howbeit, when He, the Spirit of Truth is come, He will guide you into all truth; for He shall not speak of Himself; but whatsoever He shall hear that shall He speak; and He will show you things to come.” He will guide you into all truth. Now there is not a truth that we ought to know but the Spirit of God will guide us into it if we will let Him; if we will yield ourselves up to be directed by the Spirit, and let Him lead us, He will guide us into all truth. It would have saved us from a great many dark hours if we had only been willing to let the Spirit of God be our counsellor and guide. Lot never would have gone to Sodom if he had been guided by the Spirit of God. David never would have fallen into sin and had all that trouble with his family if he had been guided by the Spirit of God. There are many Lots and Davids now-a-day. The churches are full of them. Men and women are in total darkness, because they have not been willing to be guided by the Spirit of God. “He shall guide you into all truth. He shall not speak of Himself.” He shall speak of the ascended glorified Christ. What would be thought of a messenger, entrusted by an absent husband with a message for his wife or mother who, on arrival, only talked of himself, and his conceits, and ignored both the husband and the message? You would simply call it outrageous. What then must be the crime of the professed teacher who speaks of himself, or some insipid theory, leaving out Christ and His Gospel? If we witness according to the Spirit, we must witness of Jesus. The Holy Spirit is down here in this dark world to just speak of the Absent One, and He takes the things of Christ and brings them to our mind. He testifies of Christ; He guides us into the truth about Him. RAPPINGS IN THE DARK. I want to say right here, that I think in this day a great many children of God are turning aside and committing a grievous sin. I don’t know as they think it is a sin, but if we examine the Scriptures, I am sure we will find that it is a great sin. We are told that the Comforter is sent into the world to “guide us into all truth,” and if He is sent for that purpose, do we need any other guide? Need we hide in the darkness, consulting with mediums, who profess to call up the spirits of the dead? Do you know what the Word of God pronounces against that fearful sin? I believe it is one of the greatest sins we have to contend with at the present day. It is dishonoring to the Holy Spirit for me to go and summon up the dead and confer with them, even if it were possible. I would like you to notice the 10th chapter of 1st Chronicles, and 13th verse: “So Saul died for his transgression which he had committed against the Lord, even against the Word of the Lord, which he kept not, and also for asking counsel of one that had a familiar spirit, to inquire of it; and inquired not of the Lord: therefore He slew him, and turned the kingdom unto David the son of Jesse.” God slew him for this very sin. Of the two sins that are brought against Saul here, one is that he would not listen to the Word of God, and the second is that he consulted a familiar spirit. He was snared by this great evil, and sinned against God. Saul fell right here, and there are a great many of God’s professed children to-day who think there is no harm in consulting a medium who pretends to call up some of the departed to inquire of them. But how dishonoring it is to God who has sent the Holy Spirit into this world to guide us “into all truth.” There is not a thing that I need to know, there is not a thing that is important for me to know; there is not a thing that I ought to know but the Spirit of God will reveal it to me through the Word of God, and if I turn my back upon the Holy Spirit, I am dishonoring the Spirit of God, and I am committing a grievous sin. You know we read in Luke, where that rich man in the other world wanted to have some one sent to his father’s house to warn his five brothers, Christ said They have Moses and the prophets, and if they will not hear them, they will not hear one though he rose from the dead. Moses and the prophets, the part of the Bible then completed, that is enough. But a great many people now want something besides the Word of God, and are turning aside to these false lights. SPIRITS THAT PEEP AND MUTTER. There is another passage which reads, “And when they shall say unto you, seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep and mutter: Should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead?” What is that but table-rapping, and cabinet-hiding? If it was a message from God, do you think you would have to go into a dark room and put out all the lights? In secret my Master taught nothing. God is not in that movement, and what we want, as children of God, is to keep ourselves from this evil. And then notice, the verse following, quoted so often out of its connection. “To the law and to the testimony; if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” Any man, any woman, who comes to us with any doctrine that is not according to the law and the testimony, let us understand that they are from the evil one, and that they are enemies of righteousness. They have no light in them. Now you will find these people who are consulting familiar spirits, first and last, attack the Word of God. They don’t believe it. Still a great many people say, you must hear both sides—but if a man should write me a most slanderous letter about my wife, I don’t think I would have to read it; I should tear it up and throw it to the winds. Have I to read all the infidel books that are written, to hear both sides? Have I to take up a book that is a slander on my Lord and Master, who has redeemed me with His blood? Ten thousand times No; I will not touch it. “Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils.” 1 Tim., iv, 1. That is pretty plain language, isn’t it? “Doctrines of devils.” Again, “speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their consciences seared with a hot iron.” There are other passages of Scripture warning against every delusion of Satan. Let us ever remember the Spirit has been sent into the world to guide us into all truth. We don’t want any other guide; He is enough. Some people say, “Is not conscience a safer guide than the Word and the Spirit?” No, it is not. Some people don’t seem to have any conscience, and don’t know what it means. Their education has a good deal to do with conscience. There are persons who will say that their conscience did not tell them that they had done wrong until after the wrong was done; but what we want, is something to tell us a thing is wrong before we do it. Very often a man will go and commit some awful crime, and after it is done his conscience will wake up and lash and scourge him, and then it is too late, the act is done. THE UNERRING GUIDE. I am told by people who have been over the Alps, that the guide fastens them, if they are going in a dangerous place, right to himself, and he just goes on before; they are fastened to the guide. And so should the Christian be linked to His unerring Guide, and be safely upheld. Why, if a man was going through the Mammoth Cave, it would be death to him if he strayed away from his guide—if separated from him, he would certainly perish; there are pitfalls in that cave and a bottomless river, and there would be no chance for a man to find his way through that cave without a guide or a light. So there is no chance for us to get through the dark wilderness of this world alone. It is folly for a man or woman to think that they can get through this evil world without the light of God’s Word and the guidance of the Divine Spirit. God sent Him to guide us through this great journey, and if we seek to work independent of Him, we shall stumble into the deep darkness of eternity’s night. But bear in mind the Words of the Spirit of God; if you want to be guided, you must study the Word; because the Word is the light of the Spirit. In the 14th chapter of John and 26th verse, we read: “But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” Again in John xvi, 13: “Howbeit when He, the Spirit of Truth is come, He will guide you into all truth: for He shall not speak of Himself; but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak: and He will show you things to come.” “He will show you things to come.” A great many people seem to think that the Bible is out of date, that it is an old book, and they think it has passed its day. They say it was very good for the dark ages, and that there is some very good history in it; but then it was not intended for the present time; that we are living in a very enlightened age, and that men can get on very well without the old book; that we have outgrown it. They think we have no use for it, because it is an old book. Now you might just as well say that the sun, which has shone so long, is now so old that it is out of date, and that whenever a man builds a house he need not put any windows in it, because we have got a newer light and a better light; we have gaslight and this new electric light. These are something new; and I would advise people, if they think the Bible is too old and worn out, when they build houses, not to put any windows in them, but just to light them with this new electric light; that is something new, and this is what they are anxious for. People talk about this Book as if they understood it; but we don’t know much about it yet. The press gives us the daily news of what has taken place. This Bible, however, tells us what is about to take place. This is new; we have the news here in this Book; this tells us of the things that will surely come to pass; and that is a great deal newer than anything in the newspapers. It tells us that the Spirit shall teach us all things; not only guide us into all truth, but teach us all things; He teaches us how to pray, and I don’t think there has ever been a prayer upon this sin-cursed earth that has been indicted by the Holy Spirit but was answered. There is much praying that is not indicted by the Holy Spirit. In former years I was very ambitious to get rich; I used to pray for one hundred thousand dollars; that was my aim, and I used to say, “God does not answer my prayer; He does not make me rich.” But I had no warrant for such a prayer; yet a good many people pray in that way; they think that they pray, but they do not pray according to the Scriptures. The Spirit of God has nothing to do with their prayers, and such prayers are not the product of His teaching. It is the Spirit who teaches us how to answer our enemies. If a man strikes me, I should not pull out a revolver and shoot him. The Spirit of the Lord don’t teach me revenge; He don’t teach me that it is necessary to draw the sword and cut a man down in order to defend my rights. Some people say, You are a coward if you don’t strike back. Christ says, turn the other cheek to him who smites. I would rather take Christ’s teaching than any other. I don’t think a man gains much by loading himself down with weapons to defend himself. There has been life enough sacrificed in this country to teach men a lesson in this regard. The Word of God is a much better protection than the revolver. We had better take the Word of God to protect us, by accepting its teaching, and living out its precepts. AN AID TO MEMORY. It is a great comfort to us to remember that another office of the Spirit is to bring the teaching of Jesus to our remembrance. This was our Lord’s promise, “He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance.” Jno. xiv, 26. How striking that is. I think there are many Christians who have had that experience. They have been testifying, and found that while talking for Christ the Spirit has just brought into mind some of the sayings of the Lord Jesus Christ, and their mind was soon filled with the Word of God. When we have the Spirit resting upon us, we can speak with authority and power, and the Lord will bless our testimony and bless our work. I believe the reason why God makes use of so few in the Church, is because there is not in them the power that God can use. He is not going to use our ideas, but we must have the Word of God hid in our hearts, and then, the Holy Spirit inflaming us, we will have the testimony which will be rich, and sweet, and fresh, and the Lord’s Word will vindicate itself in blessed results. God wants to use us; God wants to make us channels of blessing; but we are in such a condition He does not use us. That is the trouble; there are so many men who have no testimony for the Lord; if they speak, they speak without saying anything, and if they pray, their prayer is powerless; they do not plead in prayer; their prayer is just a few set phrases that you have heard too often. Now what we want, is to be so full of the Word, that the Spirit coming upon us shall bring to mind—bring to our remembrance—the words of the Lord Jesus. In 1 Cor. ii, 9, it is written: “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.” We hear that quoted so often in prayer—many a man weaves it into his prayer and stops right there. And the moment you talk about Heaven, they say, “Oh, we don’t know anything about Heaven it hath not entered into the heart of man; eye hath not seen; it is all speculation; we have nothing to do with it; and they say they quote it as it is written.” “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard; neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.” What next—“but God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit.” You see the Lord hath revealed them unto us: “For the Spirit searches all things—yea, the deep things of God.” That is just what the Spirit does. LONG AND SHORT SIGHT. He brings to our mind what God has in store for us. I heard a man, some time ago, speaking about Abraham. He said “Abraham was not tempted by the well-watered plains of Sodom, for Abraham was what you might call a long-sighted man; he had his eyes set on the city which had foundation—‘whose Builder and Maker is God.’” But Lot was a short-sighted man; and there are many people in the Church who are very short-sighted; they only see things right around them they think good. Abraham was long-sighted; he had glimpses of the celestial city. Moses was long-sighted, and he left the palaces of Egypt and identified himself with God’s people—poor people, who were slaves; but he had something in view yonder; he could see something God had in store. Again there are some people who are sort of long-sighted and shortsighted, too. I have a friend who has one eye that is long-sighted and the other is short-sighted; and I think the Church is full of this kind of people. They want one eye for the world and the other for the Kingdom of God. Therefore, everything, is blurred, one eye is long and the other is short, all is confusion, and they “see men as trees walking.” The Church is filled with that sort of people. But Stephen was long-sighted; he looked clear into heaven; they couldn’t convince him even when he was dying, that Christ had not ascended to heaven. “Look, look yonder,” he says, “see Him over there; He is on the throne, standing at the right hand of God;” and he looked clear into heaven; the world had no temptation for him; he had put the world under his feet. Paul was another of those long-sighted men; he had been caught up and seen things unlawful for him to utter; things grand and glorious. I tell you when the Spirit of God is on us the world looks very empty; the world has a very small hold upon us, and we begin to let go our hold of it. When the Spirit of God is on us we will just let go the things of time and lay hold of things eternal. This is the Church’s need to-day; we want the Spirit to come in mighty power, and consume all the vile dross there is in us. Oh! that the Spirit of fire may come down and burn everything in us that is contrary to God’s blessed Word and Will. In John xiv, 16, we read of the Comforter. This is the first time He is spoken of as the Comforter. Christ had been their Comforter. God had sent Him to comfort the sorrowing. It was prophesied of Him, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor; He has sent me to heal the broken-hearted.” You can’t heal the brokenhearted without the Comforter; but the world would not have the first Comforter, and so they rose up and took Him to Calvary and put him to death; but on going away He said, “I will send you another Comforter; you shall not be comfortless; be of good cheer, little flock; it is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” All these sweet passages are brought to the remembrance of God’s people, and they help us to rise out of the fog and mist of this world. O, what a comforter is the Holy Spirit of God! THE FAITHFUL FRIEND. The Holy Spirit tells a man of his faults in order to lead him to a better life. In John xvi, 8, we read: “He is to reprove the world of sin.” Now, there are a class of people who don’t like this part of the Spirit’s work. Do you know why? Because He convicts them of sin; they don’t like that. What they want is some one to speak comforting words and make everything pleasant; keep everything all quiet; tell them there is peace when there is war; tell them it is light when it is dark, and tell them everything is growing better; that the world is getting on amazingly in goodness; that it is growing better all the time; that is the kind of preaching they seek for. Men think they are a great deal better than their fathers were. That suits human nature, for it is full of pride. Men will strut around and say, “Yes, I believe that; the world is improving; I am a good deal better man than father was; my father was too strict; he was one of those old Puritanical men who was so rigid. O, we are getting on; we are more liberal; my father wouldn’t think of going out riding on Sunday, but we will; we will trample the laws of God under our feet; we are better than our fathers.” That is the kind of preaching which some dearly love, and there are preachers who tickle such itching ears. When you bring the Word of God to bear upon them, and when the Spirit drives it home, then men will say: “I don’t like that kind of preaching; I will never go to hear that man again;” and sometimes they will get up and stamp their way out of church before the speaker gets through; they don’t like it. But when the Spirit of God is at work he convicts men of sin. “When He comes He will reprove the world of sin, of righteousness and of judgment; of sin”—not because men swear and lie and steal and get drunk and murder—“of sin because they believe not on Me.” THE CLIMAX SIN. That is the sin of the world. Why, a great many people think that unbelief is a sort of misfortune, but do not know, if you will allow me the expression, it is the damning sin of the world to-day; that is what unbelief is, the mother of all sin. There would not be a drunkard walking the streets, if it were not for unbelief; there would not be a harlot walking the streets, if it were not for unbelief; there would not be a murderer, if it was not for unbelief; it is the germ of all sin. Don’t think for a moment that it is a misfortune, but just bear in mind it is an awful sin, and may the Holy Spirit convict every reader that unbelief is making God a liar. Many a man has been knocked down on the streets because some one has told him he was a liar. Unbelief is giving God the lie; that is the plain English of it. Some people seem to boast of their unbelief; they seem to think it is quite respectable to be an infidel and doubt God’s Word, and they will vainly boast and say, “I have intellectual difficulties; I can’t believe.” Oh that the Spirit of God may come and convict men of sin! That is what we need—His convicting power, and I am so thankful that God has not put that into our hands. We have not to convict men; if we had I would get discouraged, and give up preaching, and go back to business within the next forty-eight hours. It is my work to preach and hold up the Cross and testify of Christ; but it is His work to convict men of sin and lead them to Christ. One thing I have noticed, that some conversions don’t amount to anything; that if a man professes to be converted without conviction of sin, he is one of those stony-ground hearers who don’t bring forth much fruit. The first little wave of persecution, the first breath of opposition, and the man is back in the world again. Let us pray, dear Christian reader, that God may carry on a deep and thorough work, that men may be convicted of sin so that they can not rest in unbelief. Let us pray God it may be a thorough work in the land. I would a great deal rather see a hundred men thoroughly converted, truly born of God, than to see a thousand professed conversions where the Spirit of God has not convicted of sin. Don’t let us cry “Peace, peace, when there is no peace.” Don’t go to the man who is living in sin, and tell him all he has to do is to stand right up and profess, without any hatred for sin. Let us ask God first to show every man the plague of his own heart, that the Spirit, may convict them of sin. Then will the work in our hands be real, and deep, and abide the fiery trial which will try every man’s labor. Thus far, we have found the work of the Spirit is to impart life, to implant hope, to give liberty, to testify of Christ, to guide us into all truth, to teach us all things, to comfort the believers, and to convict the world of sin. “Holy Spirit, faithful guide, Ever near the Christian’s side; Gently lead us by the hand, Pilgrims in a desert land; Weary souls for e’er rejoice, While they hear that sweetest voice, Whisp’ring softly, wanderer come! Follow Me, I’ll guide thee home. Ever present, truest Friend, Ever near Thine aid to lend, Leave us not to doubt and fear, Groping on in darkness drear, When the storms are raging sore, Hearts grow faint, and hopes give o’er; Whisp’ring softly, wanderer come! Follow Me, I’ll guide thee home. When our days of toil shall cease, Waiting still for sweet release, Nothing left but heaven and prayer, Wond’ring if our names were there, Wading deep the dismal flood, Pleading nought but Jesus’ blood; Whisp’ring softly, wanderer come! Follow Me, I’ll guide thee home.”

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“Oh! Spirit of God, whose voice I hear, Sweeter than sweetest music, appealing In tones of tenderness and love; Whose comforts delight my soul, and Fills the temple of my heart with joy beyond compare. I need Thee day by day, and each day’s moment, Lord. I sigh for greater likeness To Him who loved me unto death, and loves me still. ’Tis Thine to lead me to Him; ’tis Thine to ope the eye, To manifest His royal glories to my longing heart; ’Tis Thine the slumbering saint to waken And discipline this blood-touched ear To hearken to my heavenly Lover’s voice, And quickly speed His summons to obey. Oh! Spirit of the Mighty God, uplift my faith Till heaven’s precious light shall flood my soul, And the shining of my face declare That I have seen the face of God.”

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CHAPTER IV.

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POWER IN OPERATION.

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“Ye are not your own.” “Your bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost.” Is that an unmeaning metaphor, or an over-worded expression? When the Holy Spirit enters the soul, heaven enters with Him. The heart is compared to a temple. God never enters without His attendants; repentance cleanses the house; faith provides for the house; watchfulness, like the porter, takes care of it; prayer is a lively messenger, learns what is wanted, and then goes for it; faith tells him where to go, and he never goes in vain; joy is the musician of this temple, tuning to the praises of God and the Lamb; and this terrestrial temple shall be removed to the celestial world, for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised.—Rowland Hill.

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POWER IN OPERATION.

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The power we have been considering is the Presence of the Holy Spirit. He is omnipotent. Power in operation is the actions of the Spirit or the fruit of the Spirit. This we shall now consider. Paul writes in Gal. v, 16, etc.: “This I say then, walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary, the one to the other; so that ye can not do the things that ye would. But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law.”  *  *  *  “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance; against such there is no law. And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not be desirous of vainglory, provoking one another, envying one another.” Now there is a life of perfect peace, perfect joy, and perfect love, and that ought to be the aim of every child of God; that ought to be their standard; and they should not rest until having attained to that position. That is God’s standard, where He wants all His children. These nine graces mentioned in this chapter in Galatians can be divided in this way: Love and peace and joy are all to God. God looks for that fruit from each one of His children, and that is the kind of fruit which is acceptable with Him. Without that we can not please God. He wants, above everything else that we possess, love, peace and joy. And then the next three—goodness, long-suffering and gentleness—are towards man. That is our outward life to those that we are coming in contact with continually—daily, hourly. The next three—faith, temperance, meekness—are in relation to ourselves; and in that way we can just take the three divisions, and it will be of some help to us. The first thing that meets us as we enter the kingdom of God, you might say are these first three graces, LOVE, PEACE, AND JOY. When a man who has been living in sin turns from his sins, and turns to God with all his heart, he is met on the threshold of the divine life by these sister graces. The love of God is shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost. The peace of God comes at the same time, and also the joy of the Lord. We can all put the test to ourselves, if we have them. It is not anything that we can make. The great trouble with many is that they are trying to make these graces. They are trying to make love; they are trying to make peace; they are trying to make joy. But they are not creatures of human planting. To produce them of ourselves is impossible. That is an act of God. They come from above. It is God who speaks the word and gives the love; it is God who gives the peace; it is God who gives the joy, and we possess all by receiving Jesus Christ by faith into the heart; for when Christ comes by faith into the heart, then the Spirit is there, and if we have the Spirit, we will have the fruit. If the whole Church of God could live as the Lord would have them live, why Christianity would be the mightiest power this world has ever seen. It is the low standard of Christian life that is causing so much trouble. There are a great many stunted Christians in the Church; their lives are stunted; they are like a tree planted in poor soil—the soil is hard and stony, and the roots can not find the rich loamy soil needed. Such believers have not grown in these sweet graces. Peter, in his second epistle, 1st chapter and 5th verse, writes: “And besides this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, charity. For if these things be in you and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Now, if we have these things in us, I believe that we will be constantly bringing forth fruit that will be acceptable with God. It won’t be just a little every now and then, when we spur ourselves up and work ourselves up into a certain state of mind or into an excited condition, and work a little while and then become cold, and discouraged, and disheartened, but we shall be neither unfruitful nor barren, bringing forth fruit constantly, we will grow in grace and be filled with the Spirit of God. WHAT WINS. A great many parents have inquired of me how to win their children. They say they have talked with them, and sometimes they have scolded them and have lectured them, and signally failed. I think there is no way so sure to win our families and our neighbors, and those about whom we are anxious, to Christ, than just to adorn the doctrine of Jesus Christ in our lives, and grow in all these graces. If we have peace and joy and love and gentleness and goodness and temperance; not only being temperate in what we drink, but in what we eat, and temperate in our language, guarded in our expressions; if we just live in our homes as the Lord would have us, an even Christian life day by day, we shall have a quiet and silent power proceeding from us, that will constrain them to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. But an uneven life, hot to-day and cold tomorrow, will only repel. Many are watching God’s people. It is just the very worst thing that can happen to those whom we want to win to Christ, to see us, at any time, in a cold, backslidden state. This is not the normal condition of the Church; it is not God’s intention; He would have us growing in all these graces, and the only true, happy, Christian life is to be growing, constantly growing in the love and favor of God, growing in all those delightful graces of the Spirit. Even the vilest, the most impure, acknowledge the power of goodness; they recognize the fruit of the Spirit. It may condemn their lives and cause them to say bitter things at times, but down deep in their hearts they know that the man or woman who is living that kind of life, is superior to them. The world don’t satisfy them, and if we can show the world that Jesus Christ does satisfy us in our present life, it will be more powerful than the eloquent words of professional reformers. A man may preach with the eloquence of an angel, but if he don’t live what he preaches, and act out in his home and his business what he professes, his testimony goes for naught, and the people say it is all hypocrisy after all; it is all a sham. Words are very empty, if there is nothing back of them. Your testimony is poor and worthless, if there is not a record back of that testimony consistent with what you profess. What we need is to pray to God to lift us up out of this low, cold, formal state that we have been living in, that we may live in the atmosphere of God continually, and that the Lord may lift upon us the light of his countenance, and that we may shine in this world, reflecting His grace and glory. The first of the graces spoken of in Galatians, and the last mentioned in Peter, is charity or love. We can not serve God, we can not work for God unless we have love. That is the key which unlocks the human heart. If I can prove to a man that I come to him out of pure love; if a mother shows by her actions that it is pure love that prompts her advising her boy to lead a different life, not a selfish love, but that it is for the glory of God, it won’t be long before that mother’s influence will be felt by that boy, and he will begin to think about this matter, because true love touches the heart quicker than anything else. POWER OF LOVE. Love is the badge that Christ gave His disciples. Some put on one sort of badge and some another. Some put on a strange kind of dress, that they may be known as Christians, and some put on a crucifix, or something else, that they may be known as Christians. But love is the only badge by which the disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ are known. “By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one toward another.” Therefore, though a man stand before an audience and speak with the eloquence of a Demosthenes, or of the greatest living orator, if there is no love back of his words, it is like sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. I would recommend all Christians to read the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians constantly, abiding in it day and night, not spending a night or a day there, but just go in there and spend all our time—summer and winter, twelve months in the year, then the power of Christ and Christianity would be felt as it never has been in the history of the world. See what this chapter says: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.” A great many are praying for faith; they want extraordinary faith; they want remarkable faith. They forget that love exceeds faith. The Charity spoken of in the above verses, is Love, the fruit of the Spirit, the great motive-power of life. What the Church of God needs to-day is love—more love to God and more love to our fellow-men. If we love God more, we will love our fellow-men more. There is no doubt about that. I used to think that I should like to have lived in the days of the prophets; that I should like to have been one of the prophets, to prophesy, and to see the beauties of heaven and describe them to men; but, as I understand the Scriptures now, I would a good deal rather live in the thirteenth chapter of 1st Corinthians and have this love that Paul is speaking of, the love of God burning in my soul like an unquenchable flame, so that I may reach men and win them for heaven. A man may have wonderful knowledge, that may unravel the mysteries of the Bible, and yet be as cold as an icicle. He may glisten like the snow in the sun. Sometimes you have wondered why it was that certain ministers who have had such wonderful magnetism, who have such a marvelous command of language, and who preach with such mental strength, haven’t had more conversions. I believe, if the truth was known, you would find no divine love back of their words, no pure love in their sermons. You may preach like an angel, Paul says, “with the tongues of men and of angels,” but if you have not love, it amounts to nothing. “And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor,”—a man may be very charitable, and give away all his goods; a man may give all he has, but if it is not the love of God which prompts the gift, it will not be acceptable with God. “And though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity”—have not love—“it profiteth me nothing.” A man may go to the stake for his principles; he may go to the stake for what he believes, but if it is not love to God which actuates him, it will not be acceptable to God. LOVE’S WONDERFUL EFFECTS. “Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up. Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil.” That’s the work of love. It is not easily provoked. Now if a man has no love of God in his heart, how easy it is to become offended; perhaps with the church because some members of the church don’t treat him just right, or some men of the church don’t bow to him on the street, he takes offense, and that is the last you see of him. Love is long-suffering. If I love the Lord Jesus Christ, these little things are not going to separate me from His people. They are like the dust in the balance. Nor will the cold, formal treatment of hypocrites in the church quench that love I have in my heart for Him. If this love is in the heart, and the fire is burning on the altar, we will not be all the time finding fault with other people and criticising what they have done. CRITICS BEWARE. Love will rebuke evil, but will not rejoice in it. Love will be impatient of sin, but patient with the sinner. To form the habit of finding fault constantly, is very damaging to spiritual life; it is about the lowest and meanest position that a man can take. I never saw a man who was aiming to do the best work, but there could have been some improvement; I never did anything in my life, I never addressed an audience, that I didn’t think I could have done better, and I have often upbraided myself that I had not done better; but to sit down and find fault with other people when we are doing nothing ourselves, not lifting our hands to save some one, is all wrong, and is the opposite of holy, patient, divine love. Love is forbearance; and what we want is to get this spirit of criticism and fault finding out of the Church and out of our hearts and let each one of us live as if we had to answer for ourselves, and not for the community, at the last day. If we are living according to the 13th chapter of Corinthians, we will not be all the time finding fault with other people. “Love suffereth long, and is kind.” Love forgets itself, and don’t dwell upon itself. The woman who came to Christ with that alabaster box, I venture to say, never thought of herself. Little did she know what an act she was performing. It was just her love for the Master. She forgot the surroundings, she forgot everything else that was there; she broke that box and poured the ointment upon Him, and filled the house with its odor. The act, as a memorial, has come down these 1800 years. It is right here—the perfume of that box is in the world today. That ointment was worth $40 or $50; no small sum of those days for a poor woman. Judas sold the Son of God for about $15 or $20. But what this woman gave to Christ was everything that she had, and she became so occupied with Jesus Christ that she didn’t think what people were going to say. So when we act with a single eye for the glory of our Lord, not finding fault with everything about us, but doing what we can in the power of this love, then will our deeds for God speak, and the world will acknowledge that we have been with Jesus, and that this glorious love has been shed abroad in our hearts. If we don’t love the Church of God, I am afraid it won’t do us much good; if we don’t love the blessed Bible, it will not do us much good. What we want, then, is to have love for Christ, to have love for His word, and to have love for the Church of God, and when we have love, and are living in that spirit, we will not be in the spirit of finding fault and working mischief. AFTER LOVE, WHAT? After love comes peace. I have before remarked, a great many people are trying to make peace. But that has already been done. God has not left it for us to do; all that we have to do is to enter into it. It is a condition, and instead of our trying to make peace and to work for peace, we want to cease all that, and sweetly enter into peace. If I discover a man in the cellar complaining because there is no light there, and because it is cold and damp, I say: “My friend, come up out of the cellar. There is a good warm sun up here, a beautiful spring day, and it is warm, it is cheerful and light; come up, and enjoy it.” Would he reply, “O, no, sir; I am trying to see if I can make light down here; I am trying to work myself into a warm feeling.” And there he is working away, and he has been at it for a whole week. I can imagine my reader smile; but you may be smiling at your own picture; for this is the condition of many whom I daily meet who are trying to do this very thing—they are trying to work themselves into peace and joyful feelings. Peace is a condition into which we enter; it is a state; and instead of our trying to make peace, let us believe what God’s Word declares, that peace has already been made by the blood of the Cross. Christ has made peace for us, and now what He desires is that we believe it and enter into it. Now, the only thing that can keep us from peace is sin. God turneth the way of the wicked upside down. There is no peace for the wicked, saith my God. They are like the troubled sea that can not rest, casting up filth and mire all the while; but peace with God by faith in Jesus Christ—peace through the knowledge of forgiven sin, is like a rock; the waters go dashing and surging past it, but it abides. When we find peace, we shall not find it on the ground of innate goodness; it comes from without ourselves, but into us. In the 16th chapter of John and the 33d verse we read: “These things have I spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace.” In me ye might have peace. Jesus Christ is the author of peace. He procured peace. His gospel is the gospel of peace. “Behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be unto all people; for unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour,” and then came that chorus from heaven “Glory to God in the highest; peace on earth.” He brought peace. “In the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” How true that in the world we have tribulation. Are you in tribulation? Are you in trouble? Are you in sorrow? Remember this is our lot. Paul had tribulation, and others shared in grief. Nor shall we be exempt from trial. But within, peace may reign undisturbed. If sorrow is our lot, peace is our legacy. Jesus gives peace; and do you know there is a good deal of difference between His peace and our peace? Any one can disturb our peace, but they can’t disturb His peace. That is the kind of peace He has left us. Nothing can offend those who trust in Christ. NOT EASILY OFFENDED. In the 119th Psalm and the 165th verse, we find “Great peace have they who love Thy law; and nothing shall offend them.” The study of God’s Word will secure peace. You take those Christians who are rooted and grounded in the Word of God, and you find they have great peace; but it is these who don’t study their Bible, and don’t know their Bible, who are easily offended when some little trouble comes, or some little persecution, and their peace is all disturbed; just a little breath of opposition, and their peace is all gone. Sometimes I am amazed to see how little it takes to drive all peace and comfort from some people. Some slandering tongue will readily blast it. But if we have the peace of God, the world can not take that from us. It can not give it; it can not destroy it. We have to get it from above the world; it is peace which Christ gives. “Great peace have they which love Thy law, and nothing shall offend them.” Christ says “blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in Me.” Now, if you will notice, wherever there is a Bible-taught Christian, one who has the Bible well marked, and daily feeds upon the Word by prayerful meditation, he will not be easily offended. Such are the people who are growing and working all the while. But it is these people who never open their Bibles, these people who never study the Scriptures, who become offended, and are wondering why they are having such a hard time. They are the persons who tell you that Christianity is not what it has been recommended to them; that they have found it was not all that we claim it to be. The real trouble is, they have not done as the Lord has told them to do. They have neglected the Word of God. If they had been studying the Word of God, they would not be in that condition. If they had been studying the Word of God, they would not have wandered these years away from God, living on the husks of the world. But the trouble is, they have neglected to care for the new life; they haven’t fed it, and the poor soul, being starved, sinks into weakness and decay, and is easily stumbled or offended. I met a man who confessed his soul had fed on nothing for forty years. “Well,” said I, “that is pretty hard for the soul—giving it nothing to feed on!” And that man is but a type of thousands and tens of thousands to-day; their poor souls are starving. This body that we inhabit for a day, and then leave, we take good care of; we feed it three times a day, and we clothe it, and take care of it, and deck it, and by and by it is going into the grave to be eaten up by the worms; but the inner man, that is to live on and on, and on forever, is lean and starved. SWEET WORDS. In the 6th chapter of Numbers and 22d verse we read: “And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying: Speak unto Aaron and unto his sons, saying, on this wise ye shall bless the children of Israel, saying unto them: The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make His face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee. The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.” I think these are about as sweet verses as we find in the Old Testament. I marked them years ago in my Bible, and many times I have turned over and read them. “The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.” They remind us of the loving words of Jesus to his troubled disciples, “Peace, be still.” The Jewish salutation used to be, as a man went into a house, “Peace be upon this house,” and as he left the house the host would say, “Go in peace.” Then again, in the 14th chapter of John and the 27th verse, Jesus said: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” This is the precious legacy of Jesus to all His followers. Every man, every woman, every child, who believes in Him, may share in this portion. Christ has willed it to them, and His peace is theirs. This then is our Lord’s purpose and promise. My peace I give unto you. I give it, and I am not going to take it away again; I am going to leave it to you. “Not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” But you know, when some men make their wills and deed away their property, there are some sharp, shrewd lawyers who will get hold of that will and break it all to pieces; they will go into court and break the will, and the jury will set the will aside, and the money goes into another channel. Now this will that Christ has made, neither devil nor man can break it. He has promised to give us peace, and there are thousands of witnesses who can say: “I have my part of that legacy. I have peace; I came to Him for peace, and I got it; I came to Him in darkness; I came to Him in trouble and sorrow; I was passing under a deep cloud of affliction, and I came to Him and He said, ‘Peace, be still.’ And from that hour peace reigned in my soul.” Yes, many have proved the invitation true, “Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” They found rest when they came. He is the author of rest, He is the author of peace, and no power can break that will; yea, unbelief may question it, but Jesus Christ rose to execute His own will, and it is in vain for man to contest it. Infidels and skeptics may tell us that it is all a myth, and that there isn’t anything in it, and yet the glorious tidings is ever repeated, “Peace on earth, good will to man,” and the poor and needy, the sad and sorrowful, are made partakers of it. So, my reader, you need not wait for peace any longer. All you have to do is to enter into it to-day. You need not try to make peace. It is a false idea; you can not make it. Peace is already made by Jesus Christ, and is now declared unto you. PEACE DECLARED. When France and England were at war, a French vessel had gone off on a long voyage, a whaling voyage; and when they came back, the crew were short of water, and being now near an English port, they wanted to get water; but they were afraid that they would be taken if they went into that port; and some people in the port saw them, saw their signal of distress, and sent word to them that they need not be afraid, that the war was over, and peace had been declared. But they couldn’t make those sailors believe it, and they didn’t dare to go into port, although they were out of water; but at last they made up their minds that they had better go in and surrender up their cargo and surrender up their lives to their enemies than to perish at sea without water; but when they got in, they found out that peace had been declared, and that what had been told them was true. So there are a great many people who don’t believe the glad tidings that peace has been made. Jesus Christ made peace on the Cross. He satisfied the claims of the law; and this law which condemns you and me has been fulfilled by Jesus Christ. He has made peace, and now He wants us just to enjoy it, just to believe it. Nor is there a thing to hinder us from doing it, if we will. We can enter into that blessing now, and have perfect peace. The promise is: “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee. Trust ye in the Lord forever, for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength.” Now, as long as our mind is stayed on our dear selves, we will never have peace. Some people think more of themselves than of all the rest of the world. It is self in the morning, self at noon, and self at night. It is self when they wake up, and self when they go to bed; and they are all the time looking at themselves and thinking about themselves, instead of “looking unto Jesus.” Faith is an outward look. Faith does not look within; it looks without. It is not what I think, nor what I feel, nor what I have done, but it is what Jesus Christ is and has done, and so we should trust in Him who is our strength, and whose strength will never fail. After Christ rose from the grave, three times, John tells us, He met His disciples and said unto them, “Peace be unto you.” There is peace for the conscience through His blood, and peace for the heart in His love. SECRET OF JOY. Remember, then, that love is power, and peace is power; but now I will call attention to another fruit of the Spirit, and this too is power—the grace of joy. It is the privilege, I believe, of every Christian to walk in the light, as God is in the light, and to have that peace which will be flowing unceasingly as we keep busy about His work. And it is our privilege to be full of the joy of the Lord. We read, that when Philip went down to Samaria and preached, there was great joy in the city. Why? Because they believed the glad tidings. And that is the natural order, joy in believing. When we believe the glad tidings, there comes a joy into our souls. Also we are told that our Lord sent the seventy out, and that they went forth preaching salvation in the name of Jesus Christ, and the result was that there were a great many who were blessed; and the seventy returned, it says, with great joy, and when they came back they said that the very devils were subject to them, through His name. The Lord seemed to just correct them in this one thing when He said, “Rejoice not that the devils are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” There is assurance for you. They had something to rejoice in now. God don’t ask us to rejoice over nothing, but He gives us some ground for our joy. What would you think of a man or woman who seemed very happy to-day and full of joy, and couldn’t tell you what made them so? Suppose I should meet a man on the street, and he was so full of joy that he should get hold of both my hands and say, “Bless the Lord, I am so full of joy!” “What makes you so full of joy?” “Well, I don’t know.” “You don’t know?” “No, I don’t; but I am so joyful that I just want to get out of the flesh.” “What makes you feel so joyful?” “Well, I don’t know.” Would we not think such a person unreasonable? But there are a great many people who feel—who want to feel—that they are Christians before they are Christians; they want the Christian’s experience before they become Christians; they want to have the joy of the Lord before they receive Jesus Christ. But this is not the Gospel order. He brings joy when He comes, and we can not have joy apart from Him; there is no joy away from Him; He is the author of it, and we find our joy in Him. JOY IS UNSELFISH. Now, there are three kinds of joy; there is the joy of one’s own salvation. I thought, when I first tasted that, it was the most delicious joy I had ever known, and that I could never get beyond it. But I found, afterward, there was something more joyful than that, namely, the joy of the salvation of others. Oh, the privilege, the blessed privilege, to be used of God to win a soul to Christ, and to see a man or woman being led out of bondage by some act of ours toward them. To think that God should condescend to allow us to be co-workers with Him. It is the highest honor we can wear. It surpasses the joy of our own salvation, this joy of seeing others saved. And then John said, He had no greater joy than to see His disciples walking in the truth. Every man who has been the means of leading souls to Christ understands what that means. Young disciples, walk in the truth and you will have joy all the while. I think there is a difference between happiness and joy. Happiness is caused by things which happen around me, and circumstances will mar it, but joy flows right on through trouble; joy flows on through the dark; joy flows in the night as well as in the day; joy flows all through persecution and opposition; it flows right along, for it is an unceasing fountain bubbling up in the heart; a secret spring which the world can’t see and don’t know anything about; but the Lord gives His people perpetual joy when they walk in obedience to Him. This joy is fed by the Divine Word. Jeremiah says in chapter xv, 16: “Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and Thy Word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of my heart; for I am called by Thy name, O Lord.” He ate the words, and what was the result? He said they were the joy and rejoicing of his heart. Now people should look for joy in the Word, and not in the world; they should look for the joy which the Scriptures furnish, and then go work in the vineyard; because a joy that don’t send me out to some one else, a joy that don’t impel me to go and help the poor drunkard, a joy that don’t prompt me to visit the widow and the fatherless, a joy that don’t cause me to go into the Mission Sunday-school or other Christian work, is not worth having, and is not from above; a joy that does not constrain me to go and work for the Master, is purely sentiment and not real joy. JOY IN PERSECUTION. Then it says in Luke vi, 22: “Blessed are ye when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of Man’s sake. Rejoice ye in that day and leap for joy, for behold your reward is great in heaven for in like manner did their fathers unto the prophets.” Christians do not receive their reward down here. We have to go right against the current of the world. We may be unpopular, and we may go right against many of our personal friends if we live godly in Christ Jesus; and at the same time, if we are persecuted for the Master’s sake, We will have this joy bubbling up; it just comes right up in our hearts all the while—a joy that is unceasing—that flows right on. The world can not choke that fountain. If we have Christ in the heart, by and by the reward will come. The longer I live the more I am convinced that godly men and women are not appreciated in our day. But their work will live after them, and there will be a greater work done after they are gone, by the influence of their lives, than when they were living. Daniel is doing a thousand times more than when he was living in Babylon. Abraham is doing more to-day than he did on the plain with his tent and altar. All these centuries he has been living, and so we read, “Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord, from henceforth; yea saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors, and their works do follow them.” Let us set the streams running that shall flow on after we have gone. If we have to-day persecution and opposition, let us press forward, and our reward will be great by and by. Oh! think of this; the Lord Jesus, the Maker of heaven and earth, who created the world, says, “Great shall be thy reward.” He calls it great. If some friend should say it is great, it might be very small; but when the Lord, the great and mighty God, says it is great, what must it be? Oh! the reward that is in store for those who serve Him! We have this joy, if we serve Him. A man or woman is not fit to work for God who is cast down, because they go about their work with a tell-tale face. “The joy of the Lord is your strength.” What we need to-day is a joyful church. A joyful church will make inroads upon the works of Satan, and we will see the Gospel going down into dark lanes and dark alleys, and into dark garrets and cellars, and we will see the drunkards reached and the gamblers and the harlots come pressing into the kingdom of God. It is this carrying a sad countenance, with so many wrinkles on our brows, that retards Christianity. Oh may there come great joy upon believers everywhere, that we may shout for joy and rejoice in God day and night. A joyful church—let us pray for that, that the Lord may make us joyful, and when we have joy, then we will have success; and if we don’t have the reward we think we should have here, let us constantly remember the rewarding time will come hereafter. Some one has said, if you had asked men in Abraham’s day who their great man was, they would have said Enoch, and not Abraham. If you had asked in Moses’ day who their great man was, they would not have said it was Moses; he was nothing, but it would have been Abraham. If you had asked in the days of Elijah or Daniel, it wouldn’t have been Daniel or Elijah; they were nothing; but it would have been Moses. And in the days of Jesus Christ—if you had asked in the days of Jesus Christ about John the Baptist or the apostles, you would hear they were mean and contemptible in the sight of the world, and were looked upon with scorn and reproach; but see how mighty they have become. And so we will not be appreciated in our day, but we are to toil on and work on, possessing this joy all the while. And if we lack it, let us cry: “Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation, and uphold me with Thy free Spirit; then will I teach transgressors Thy ways, and sinners shall be converted unto Thee.” Again, the 15th chapter of John, and 11th verse, reads: “These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.” And in the 16th chapter and 22d verse: “And ye now therefore have sorrow; but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.” I am so thankful that I have a joy that the world can not rob me of; I have a treasure that the world can not take from me; I have something that it is not in the power of man or devil to deprive me of, and that is the joy of the Lord. “No man taketh it from you.” In the second century, they brought a martyr before a king, and the king wanted him to recant and give up Christ and Christianity, but the man spurned the proposition. But the king said: “If you don’t do it, I will banish you.” The man smiled and answered: “You can’t banish me from Christ, for He says He will never leave me nor forsake me.” The king got angry, and said: “Well, I will confiscate your property and take it all from you.” And the man replied: “My treasures are laid up on high; you can not get them.” The king became still more angry, and said: “I will kill you.” “Why,” the man answered, “I have been dead forty years; I have been dead with Christ; dead to the world, and my life is hid with Christ in God, and you can not touch it.” And so we can rejoice, because we are on resurrection ground, having risen with Christ. Let persecution and opposition come, we can rejoice continually, and remember that our reward is great, reserved for us unto the day when He who is our Life shall appear, and we shall appear with Him in glory.

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“The Spirit, oh, sinner, In mercy doth move Thy heart, so long hardened, Of sin to reprove; Resist not the Spirit, Nor longer delay; God’s gracious entreaties may end with to-day. Oh, child of the kingdom, From sin service cease; Be filled with the Spirit, With comfort and peace. Oh, grieve not the Spirit, Thy Teacher is He, That Jesus, thy Saviour, may glorified be. Defiled is the temple, Its beauty laid low, On God’s holy altar The embers faint glow, By love yet rekindled, A flame may be fanned; Oh, quench not the Spirit, the Lord is at hand!” —P. P. Bliss.

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CHAPTER V.

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POWER HINDERED.

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The strokes of the “Sword of the Spirit” alight only on the conscience, and its edge is anointed with a bairn to heal every wound it may inflict.—Dr. J. Harris. Every vain thought and idle word, and every wicked deed, is like so many drops to quench the Spirit of God. Some quench Him with the lust of the flesh; some quench Him with cares of the mind; some quench Him with long delays, that is, not plying the motion when it cometh, but crossing the good thoughts with bad thoughts, and doing a thing when the Spirit saith not. The Spirit is often grieved before He be quenched.—H. Smith. In times when vile men held the high places of the land, a roll of drums was employed to drown the martyr’s voice, lest the testimony of truth from the scaffold should reach the ears of the people,—an illustration of how men deal with their own consciences, and seek to put to silence the truth-telling voice of the Holy Spirit.—Arnot.

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POWER HINDERED.

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Israel, we are told, limited the Holy One of Israel. They vexed and grieved the Holy Spirit, and rebelled against His authority, but there is a special sin against Him, which we may profitably consider. The first description of it is in Matthew xii, 22d verse: THE UNPARDONABLE SIN. “Then was brought unto Him one possessed with a devil, blind and dumb; and He healed him, insomuch that the blind and dumb both spake and saw. And all the people were amazed, and said, Is not this the son of David? But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, This fellow doth not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub the prince of the devils. And Jesus knew their thoughts, and said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand. And if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself; how shall then his kingdom stand? And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your children cast them out? therefore they shall be your judges. But if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you. Or else how can one enter into a strong man’s house, and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong man? and then he will spoil his house. He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me, scattereth abroad. Wherefore I say unto you, all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men; but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.” That is Matthew’s account. Now let us read Mark’s account in chapter iii, 21, etc.: “And when His friends heard of it, they went out to lay hold on Him, for they said: He (that is Christ) is beside Himself. And the scribes which came down from Jerusalem said, He hath Beelzebub, and by the prince of the devils casteth He out devils.” The word Beelzebub means the Lord of Filth. They charged the Lord Jesus with being possessed not only with an evil spirit, but with a filthy spirit. “And He called them unto Him, and said unto them in parables, How can Satan cast out Satan? And if a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom can not stand. And if a house be divided against itself, that house can not stand. And if Satan rise up against himself, and be divided, he can not stand, but hath an end. No man can enter into a strong man’s house, and spoil his goods, except he will first bind the strong man; and then he will spoil his house. Verily I say unto you, all sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme: But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation.” Now, if it stopped there, we would be left perhaps in darkness, and we would not exactly understand what the sin against the Holy Ghost is; but the next verse of this same chapter of Mark just throws light upon the whole matter, and we need not be in darkness another minute if we really want light; for observe, the verse reads: “Because they said, He hath an unclean spirit.” Now, I have met a good many atheists and skeptics and deists and infidels, both in this country and abroad, but I never in my life met a man or woman who ever said that Jesus Christ was possessed of an unclean devil. Did you? I don’t think you ever met such a person. I have heard men say bitter things against Christ, but I never heard any man stand up and say that he thought Jesus Christ was possessed with the devil, and that he cast out devils by the power of the devil; and I don’t believe any man or woman has any right to say they have committed the unpardonable sin, unless they have maliciously, and wilfully and deliberately said that they believe that Jesus Christ had a devil in Him, and that He was under the power of the devil, and that He cast out devils by the power of the devil. Because you perhaps have heard some one say that there is such a thing as grieving the Spirit of God, and resisting the Spirit of God until He has taken His flight and left you, then you have said “That is the unpardonable sin.” WHAT IT IS NOT. I admit there is such a thing as resisting the Spirit of God, and resisting till the Spirit of God has departed; but if the Spirit of God has left any, they will not be troubled about their sins. The very fact that they are troubled, shows that the Spirit of God has not left them. If a man is troubled about his sins, it is the work of the Spirit; for Satan never yet told him he was a sinner. Satan makes us believe that we are pretty good; that we are good enough without God, safe without Christ, and that we don’t need salvation. But when a man wakes up to the fact that he is lost, that he is a sinner, that is the work of the Spirit; and if the Spirit of God had left him, he would not be in that state; and just because men and women want to be Christians, is a sign that the Spirit of God is drawing them. If resisting the Spirit of God is an unpardonable sin, then we have all committed it, and there is no hope for any of us; for I do not believe there is a minister, or a worker in Christ’s vineyard, who has not, some time in his life, resisted the Holy Ghost; who has not some time in his life rejected the Spirit of God. To resist the Holy Ghost is one thing, and to commit that awful sin of blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, is another thing; and we want to take the Scripture and just compare them. Now, some people say, “I have such blasphemous thoughts; there are some awful thoughts that come into my mind against God,” and they think that is the unpardonable sin. We are not to blame for having BAD THOUGHTS come into our minds. If we harbor them, then we are to blame. But if the devil comes and darts an evil thought into my mind, and I say, “Lord help me,” sin is not reckoned to me. Who has not had evil thoughts come into his mind, flash into his heart, and been called to fight them! One old divine says, “You are not to blame for the birds that fly over your head, but if you allow them to come down and make a nest in your hair, then you are to blame. You are to blame if you don’t fight them off.” And so with these evil thoughts that come flashing into our minds; we have to fight them, we are not to harbor them; we are not to entertain them. If I have evil thoughts come into my mind, and evil desires, it is no sign that I have committed the unpardonable sin. If I love these thoughts and harbor them, and think evil of God, and think Jesus Christ a blasphemer, I am responsible for such gross iniquity; but if I charge Him with being the prince of devils, then I am committing the unpardonable sin. THE FAITHFUL FRIEND. Let us now consider the sin of “Grieving the Spirit.” Resisting the Holy Ghost is one thing, grieving Him is another. Stephen charged the unbelieving Jews in the 7th chapter of Acts, “Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost as your fathers did, so do ye.” The world has always been resisting the Spirit of God in all ages. That is the history of the world. The world is to-day resisting the Holy Spirit. “Faithful are the wounds of a friend.” The Divine Spirit as a friend reveals to this poor world its faults, and the world only hates Him for it. He shows them the plague of their hearts. He convinces or convicts them of sin, therefore they fight the Spirit of God. I believe there is many a man resisting the Holy Ghost; I believe there is many a man to-day fighting against the Spirit of God. In the 4th chapter of Ephesians, in the 30th, 31st, and 32d verses, we read: “And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be ye kind, one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” Now, mark you, that was written to the Church at Ephesus. “Grieve not the Holy Spirit, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.” I believe today the Church all over Christendom is guilty of grieving the Holy Spirit. There are a good many believers in different churches wondering why the work of God is not revived. THE CHURCH GRIEVES THE SPIRIT. I think that if we search, we will find something in the Church grieving the Spirit of God; it may be a mere schism in the church; it may be some unsound doctrine; it may be some division in the Church. There is one thing I have noticed as I have traveled in different countries; I never yet have known the Spirit of God to work where the Lord’s people were divided. There is one thing that we must have if we are to have the Holy Spirit of God to work in our midst, and that is unity. If a church is divided, the members should immediately seek unity. Let the believers come together and get the difficulty out of the way. If the minister of a church can not unite the people, if those that were dissatisfied will not fall in, it would be better for that minister to retire. I think there are a good many ministers in this country who are losing their time; they have lost, some of them, months and years; they have not seen any fruit, and they will not see any fruit, because they have a divided church. Such a church can not grow in divine things. The Spirit of God don’t work where there is division, and what we want to-day is the spirit of unity amongst God’s children, so that the Lord may work. WORLDLY AMUSEMENTS. Then, another thing, I think, that grieves the Spirit, is the miserable policy of introducing questionable entertainments. There are the lotteries, for instance, that we have in many churches. If a man wants to gamble, he doesn’t have to go to some gambling den; he can stay in the church. And there are fairs—bazaars, as they call them—where they have rafflings and grab-bags. And if he wants to see a drama, he don’t need to go to the theater, for many of our churches are turned into theaters; he may stay right in the church and witness the acting. I believe all these things grieve the Spirit of God. I believe when we bring the Church down to the level of the world to reach the world, we are losing all the while and grieving the Spirit of God. But some say, if we take that standard and lift it up high, it will drive away a great many members from our churches. I believe it, and I think the quicker they are gone the better. The world has come into the Church like a flood, and how often you find an ungodly choir employed to do the singing for the whole congregation; the idea that we need an ungodly man to sing praises to God! It was not long ago I heard of a church where they had an unconverted choir, and the minister saw something about the choir that he didn’t like, and he spoke to the chorister, but the chorister replied: “You attend to your end of the church, and I will attend to mine.” You can not expect the Spirit of God to work in a church in such a state as that. UNCONVERTED CHOIRS. Paul tells us not to speak in an unknown tongue, and if we have choirs who are singing in an unknown tongue, why is not that just as great an abomination? I have been in churches where they have had a choir, who would rise and sing, and sing, and it seemed as if they sung five or ten minutes, and I could not understand one solitary word they sung, and all the while the people were looking around carelessly. There are, perhaps, a select few, very fond of fine music, and they want to bring the opera right into the church, and so they have opera music in the church, and the people, who are drowsy and sleepy, don’t take part in the singing. They hire ungodly men, unconverted men, and these men will sometimes get the Sunday paper, and get back in the organ loft, and the moment the minister begins his sermon, they will take out their papers and read them all the while that the minister is preaching. The organist, provided he does not go out for a walk—if he happens to keep awake, will read his paper, or, perhaps, a novel, while the minister is preaching; and the minister wonders why God don’t revive His work; he wonders why he is losing his hold on the congregation; he wonders why people don’t come crowding into the church; why people are running after the world instead of coming into the church. The trouble is that we have let down the standard; we have grieved the Spirit of God. One movement of God’s power is worth more than all our artificial power, and what the Church of God wants to-day is to get down in the dust of humiliation and confession of sin, and go out and be separated from the world; and then see if we do not have power with God and with man. WHAT IS SUCCESS? The Gospel has not lost its power; it is just as powerful to-day as it ever has been. We don’t want any new doctrine. It is still the old Gospel with the old power, the Holy Ghost power; and if the churches will but confess their sins and put them away, and lift the standard instead of pulling it down, and pray to God to lift us all up into a higher and holier life, then the fear of the Lord will come upon the people around us. It was when Jacob put away strange gods and set his face toward Bethel that the fear of God fell upon the nations around. And when the churches turn towards God, and we cease grieving the Spirit, so that He may work through us, we will then have conversions all the while. Believers will be added to the Church daily. It is sad when you look over Christendom and see how desolate it is, and see how little spiritual life, spiritual power, there is in the Church of God to-day, many of the church members not even wanting this Holy Ghost power. They don’t desire it; they want intellectual power; they want to get some man who will just draw; and a choir that will draw; not caring whether any one is saved. With them that is not the question. Only fill the pews, have good society, fashionable people, and dancing; such persons are found one night at the theater and the next night at the opera. They don’t like the prayer-meetings; they abominate them; if the minister will only lecture and entertain, that would suit them. I said to a man some time ago, “How are you getting on at your church?” “Oh, splendid.” “Many conversions?” “Well—well, on that side we are not getting on so well. But,” he said, “we rented all our pews and are able to pay all our running expenses; we are getting on splendidly.” That is what the godless call “getting on splendidly;” because they rent the pews, pay the minister, and pay all the running expenses. Conversions! that is a strange thing. There was a man being shown through one of the cathedrals of Europe; he had come in from the country, and one of the men belonging to the cathedral was showing him around, when he inquired, “Do you have many conversions here?” “Many what?” “Many conversions here?” “Ah, man, this is not a Wesleyan chapel.” The idea of there being conversions there! And you can go into a good many churches in this country and ask if they have many conversions there, and they would not know what it meant, they are so far away from the Lord; they are not looking for conversions, and don’t expect them. SHIPWRECKS. Alas! how many young converts have made shipwreck against such churches. Instead of being a harbor of delight to them, they have proved false lights, alluring them to destruction. Isn’t it time for us to get down on our faces before God and cry mightily to Him to forgive us our sins. The quicker we own it the better. You may be invited to a party, and it may be made up of church members, and what will be the conversation? Oh, I got so sick of such parties that I left years ago; I would not think of spending a night that way; it is a waste of time; there is hardly a chance to say a word for the Master. If you talk of a personal Christ, your company becomes offensive; they don’t like it; they want you to talk about the world, about a popular minister, a popular church, a good organ, a good choir, and they say, “Oh, we have a grand organ, and a superb choir,” and all that, and it suits them; but that don’t warm the Christian heart. When you speak of a risen Christ and a personal Saviour, they don’t like it; the fact is, the world has come into the church and taken possession of it, and what we want to do is to wake up and ask God to forgive us for “Grieving the Spirit.” Dear reader, search your heart and inquire, Have I done anything to grieve the Spirit of God? If you have, may God show it to you to-day; if you have done any thing to grieve the Spirit of God, you want to know it to-day, and get down on your face before God and ask Him to forgive you and help you to put it away. I have lived long enough to know that if I can not have the power of the Spirit of God on me to help me to work for Him, I would rather die, than live just for the sake of living. How many are there in the church to-day, who have been members for fifteen or twenty years, but have never done a solitary thing for Jesus Christ? They can not lay their hands upon one solitary soul who has been blessed through their influence; they can not point to-day to one single person who has ever been lifted up by them. QUENCH NOT. In 1st Thessalonians, 5th chapter, we are told not to Quench the Spirit. Now, I am confident the cares of the world are coming in and quenching the Spirit with a great many. They say: “I don’t care for the world;” perhaps not the pleasures of the world so much after all as thecares of this life; but they have just let the cares come in and quench the Spirit of God. Anything that comes between me and God—between my soul and God—quenches the Spirit. It may be my family. You may say: “Is there any danger of my loving my family too much?” Not if we love God more; but God must have the first place. If I love my family more than God, then I am quenching the Spirit of God within me; if I love wealth, if I love fame, if I love honor, if I love position, if I love pleasure, if I love self, more than I love God who created and saved me, then I am committing a sin; I am not only grieving the Spirit of God, but quenching Him, and robbing my soul of His power. EMBLEMS OF THE SPIRIT. But I would further call attention to the emblems of the Holy Spirit. An emblem is something that represents an object; the same as a balance is an emblem of justice, and a crown an emblem of royalty, and a scepter is an emblem of power; so we find in the 17th chapter of Exodus and 6th verse, that water is an emblem of the Holy Spirit. You find in the Smitten Rock, in the wilderness, the work of the Trinity illustrated. “Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb; and thou shall smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink. And Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel.” Paul declares, in Corinthians, that the rock was Christ; it represented Christ. God says: “I will stand upon the rock,” and as Moses smote the rock the water came out, which was an emblem of the Holy Spirit; and it flowed out along through the camp; and they drank of the water. Now water is cleansing; it is fertilizing; it is refreshing; it is abundant, and it is freely given; and so the Spirit of God is the same: cleansing, fertilizing, refreshing, reviving, and He was freely given when the smitten Christ was glorified. Then, too, fire is an emblem of the Spirit; it is purifying, illuminating, searching. We talk about searching our hearts. We can not do it. What we want is to have God search them. O that God may search us and bring out the hidden things, the secret things that cluster there and bring them to light. The wind is another emblem. It is independent, powerful, sensible in its effects, and reviving; how the Spirit of God revives when He comes to all the drooping members of the Church. Then the rain and the dew—fertilizing, refreshing, abundant; and the dove, gentle—what more gentle than the dove; and the lamb?—gentle, meek, innocent, a sacrifice. We read of the wrath of God; we read of the wrath of the Lamb, but nowhere do we read of the wrath of the Holy Spirit—gentle, innocent, meek, loving; and that Spirit wants to take possession of our hearts. And He comes as a voice, another emblem—speaking, guiding, warning, teaching; and the seal—impressing, securing, and making us as His own. May we know Him in all His wealth of blessing. This is my prayer for myself—for you. May we heed the words of the grand Apostle: “My speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit, and of power: that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.”

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of How to Succeed in The Christian Life, by  Reuben Archer Torrey This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: How to Succeed in The Christian Life Author: Reuben Archer Torrey Release Date: October 13, 2017 [EBook #55743] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOW TO SUCCEED *** Produced by Heiko Evermann and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Books project.)

WORKS BY R. A. TORREY Superintendent of the Moody Bible Institute, Chicago How to Succeed in the Christian Life. 12mo, cloth, 50 cents, net: paper, 25 cents, net. The Bible and Its Christ. Being noon day talks with Business Men on faith and unbelief. 12mo, cloth, 75 cents, net; paper, 25 cents, net. Revival Addresses. 12mo, cloth, net $1.00. Real Salvation and Whole-Hearted Service. Being a Second Volume of Revival Addresses. 12mo, cloth, net $1.00. What the Bible Teaches. A thorough and comprehensive study on what the Bible has to say concerning the great doctrines of which it treats. Large 8vo, 560 pages, $2.50. How to Work for Christ. A compendium of effective methods. Uniform with “What the Bible Teaches,” 8vo, cloth, $2.50. How to Promote and Conduct a Successful Revival. Edited by Mr. Torrey. 12mo, cloth, 353 pages, gilt top, $1.00, net. How to Bring Men to Christ. 12mo, cloth, 75 cents; paper, 25 cents, net. How to Study the Bible for Greatest Profit. The methods and fundamental conditions of Bible study that yield the largest results. 12mo, cloth, 75 cents. How to Pray. The need of prayer and the need of revival; their relation and effect. 12mo, cloth, 50 cents; paper, 15 cents. How to Obtain Fullness of Power in Christian Life and Service. 12mo, cloth, 50 cents. The Divine Origin of the Bible. Its authority and power demonstrated and difficulties solved. 12mo, cloth, 50 cents. The Gist of the Lesson (Annually.) A vest-pocket exposition of the Sunday-school lessons. Leather, net, 25 cents. The Baptism with the Holy Spirit. 12mo, cloth, 50 cents. A Vest-Pocket Companion for Christian Workers. Long 18mo, flexible leather, net, 25 cents; interleaved, gilt edges, net, 50 cents. Ten Reasons Why I Believe the Bible is Word of God. 16mo, paper, 15 cents. Ought Christians to Keep the Sabbath? Paper, net, 10 cents.

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[3] How to Succeed in The Christian Life By R. A. TORREY Author of “How to Bring Men to Christ,” “What the Bible Teaches,” “Talks to Men,” etc., etc.

New York Chicago Toronto Fleming H. Revell Company London and Edinburgh [4] Copyright, 1906, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 80 Wabash Avenue Toronto: 27 Richmond Street, W. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street

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[5] Dedicated to the many thousands in many lands who have professed Christ in our meetings [6]

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[7]

CONTENTS

I.	Beginning Right	11
II.	The Open Confession of Christ	19
III.	Assurance of Salvation	22
IV.	Receiving the Holy Spirit	29
V.	Looking Unto Jesus	35
VI.	Church Membership	41
VII.	Bible Study	46
VIII.	Difficulties in the Bible	64
IX.	Prayer	74
X.	Working for Christ	82
XI.	Foreign Missions	90
XII.	Companions	98
XIII.	Amusements	103
XIV.	Persecution	108
XV.	Guidance	113

[8]

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[9]

INTRODUCTION

I have for years felt the need of a book to put in the hands of those beginning the Christian life that would tell them just how to make a complete success of this new life upon which they were entering. I could find no such book, so I have been driven to write one. This book aims to tell the young convert just what he most needs to know. I hope that pastors and evangelists and other Christian workers may find it a good book to put in the hands of young converts. I hope that it may also prove a helpful book to many who have long been Christians but have not made that headway in the Christian life that they long for. [10]

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[11]

How to Succeed in the Christian Life

I BEGINNING RIGHT

There is nothing more important in the Christian life than beginning right. If we begin right we can go on right. If we begin wrong the whole life that follows is likely to be wrong. If any one who reads these pages has begun wrong, it is a very simple matter to begin over again and begin right. What the right beginning in the Christian life is we are told in John 1: 12, “But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name.” The right way to begin the Christian life is by receiving Jesus Christ. To any one who receives Him, He at once gives power to become a child of God. If the reader of this book should be the wickedest man on earth and should at this moment receive Jesus Christ, that very instant he would become a child of God. God says so in the most unqualified way in the verse quoted above. No one can become a child of God in[12] any other way. No man, no matter how carefully he has been reared, no matter how well he has been sheltered from the vices and evils of this world, is a child of God until he receives Jesus Christ. We are “sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3: 26, r. v.), and in no other way. What does it mean to receive Jesus Christ? It means to take Christ to be to yourself all that God offers Him to be to everybody. Jesus Christ is God’s gift. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3: 16). Some accept this wondrous gift of God. Every one who does accept this gift becomes a child of God. Many others refuse this wondrous gift of God, and every one who refuses this gift of God perishes. He is condemned already. “He that believeth on the Son is not condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (John 3: 18). What does God offer His Son to be to us? 1. First of all, God offers Jesus to us to be our sin-bearer. We have all sinned. There is not a man or woman or a boy or a girl who has not sinned (Romans 3: 22, 23). If any of us say that we have not sinned we are deceiving ourselves and giving the lie to God (1 John 1: 8, 10).[13] Now we must each of us bear our own sin or some one else must bear it in our place. If we were to bear our own sins, it would mean we must be banished forever from the presence of God, for God is holy. “God is light and in Him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). But God Himself has provided another to bear our sins in our place so that we should not need to bear them ourselves. This sin-bearer is God’s own Son, Jesus Christ, “For He hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21). When Jesus Christ died upon the cross of Calvary He redeemed us from the curse of the law by being made a curse in our stead (Gal. 3:13). To receive Christ then is to believe this testimony of God about His Son, to believe that Jesus Christ did bear our sins in His own body on the cross (1 Pet. 2:24), and to trust God to forgive all our sins because Jesus Christ has borne them in our place. “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Is. 53:6). Our own good works, past, present or future have nothing to do with the forgiveness of our sins. Our sins are forgiven, not because of any good works that we do, they are forgiven because of the atoning work of Christ upon the cross of[14] Calvary in our place. If we rest in this atoning work we shall do good works, but our good works will be the outcome of our being saved and the outcome of our believing on Christ as our sin-bearer. Our good works will not be the ground of our salvation, but the result of our salvation, and the proof of it. We must be very careful not to mix in our good works at all as the ground of salvation. We are not forgiven because of Christ’s death and our good works, we are forgiven solely and entirely because of Christ’s death. To see this clearly is the right beginning of the true Christian life. 2. God offers Jesus to us as our deliverer from the power of sin. Jesus not only died, He rose again. To-day He is a living Saviour. He has all power in heaven and on earth (Matt. 28: 18). He has power to keep the weakest sinner from falling (Jude 24). He is able to save not only from the uttermost but “to the uttermost” all that come unto the Father through Him. (Wherefore He is able to save to the uttermost them that draw near unto God through Him, seeing that He ever liveth to make intercession for them.—Heb. 7: 25, r. v.) “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (John 8: 36). To receive Jesus is to believe this that God tells us in His Word[15] about Him, to believe that He did rise from the dead, to believe that He does now live, to believe that He has power to keep us from falling, to believe that He has power to keep us from the power of sin day by day, and just trust Him to do it. This is the secret of daily victory over sin. If we try to fight sin in our own strength, we are bound to fail. If we just look up to the risen Christ to keep us every day and every hour, He will keep us. Through the crucified Christ we get deliverance from the guilt of sin, our sins are all blotted out, we are free from all condemnation; but it is through the risen Christ that we get daily victory over the power of sin. Some receive Christ as a sin-bearer and thus find pardon, but do not get beyond that, and so their life is one of daily failure. Others receive Him as their risen Saviour also, and thus enter into an experience of victory over sin. To begin right we must take Him not only as our sin-bearer, and thus find pardon; but we must also take Him as our risen Saviour, our Deliverer from the power of sin, our Keeper, and thus find daily victory over sin. 3. But God offers Jesus to us, not only as our sin-bearer and our Deliverer from the power of sin, but He also offers Him to us as our Lord and King. We read in Acts 2: 36, “Let all the[16] house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.” Lord means Divine Master, and Christ means anointed King. To receive Jesus is to take Him as our Divine Master, as the One to whom we yield the absolute confidence of our intellects, the One whose word we believe absolutely, the One whom we will believe though many of the wisest of men may question or deny the truth of His teachings; and as our King to whom we gladly yield the absolute control of our lives, so that the question from this time on is never going to be, what would I like to do or what do others tell me to do, or what do others do, but the whole question is what would my King Jesus have me do? A right beginning involves an unconditional surrender to the Lordship and Kingship of Jesus. The failure to realize that Jesus is Lord and King, as well as Saviour, has led to many a false start in the Christian life. We begin with Him as our Saviour, as our sin-bearer and our Deliverer from the power of sin, but we must not end with Him merely as Saviour, we must know Him as Lord and King. There is nothing more important in a right beginning of the Christian life than an unconditional surrender, both of the thoughts and the conduct to Jesus. Say from your heart and say it again and again, “All for[17] Jesus.” Many fail because they shrink back from this entire surrender. They wish to serve Jesus with half their heart, and part of themselves and part of their possessions. To hold back anything from Jesus means a wretched life of stumbling and failure. The life of entire surrender is a joyous life all along the way. If you have never done it before, go alone with God to-day, get down on your knees and say, “All for Jesus,” and mean it. Say it very earnestly; say it from the bottom of your heart. Stay there until you realize what it means and what you are doing. It is a wondrous step forward when one really takes it. If you have taken it already, take it again, take it often. It always has fresh meaning and brings fresh blessedness. In this absolute surrender is found the key to the truth. Doubts rapidly disappear for one who surrenders all (John 7: 17). In this absolute surrender is found the secret of power in prayer (1 John 3: 22). In this absolute surrender is found the supreme condition of receiving the Holy Ghost (Acts 5: 32). Taking Christ as your Lord and King involves obedience to His will as far as you know it in each smallest detail of life. There are those who tell us that they have taken Christ as their Lord and King who at the same time are disobeying Him daily in business, in domestic life, in social[18] life and in personal conduct Such persons are deceiving themselves. You have not taken Jesus as your Lord and King if you are not striving to obey Him in everything each day. He Himself says, “Why call ye Me ‘Lord, Lord!’ and do not the things that I say?” (Luke 6: 46). To sum it all up, the right way to begin the Christian life is to accept Jesus Christ as your sin-bearer and to trust God to forgive your sins because Jesus Christ died in your place; to accept Him as your risen Saviour who ever lives to make intercession for you, and who has all power to keep you, and to trust Him to keep you from day to day; and to accept Him as your Lord and King to whom you surrender the absolute control of your thoughts and of your life. This is the right beginning, the only right beginning of the Christian life. If you have made this beginning, all that follows will be comparatively easy. If you have not made this beginning, make it now.

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[19]

II THE OPEN CONFESSION OF CHRIST

Having begun the Christian life right by taking the proper attitude towards Christ in a private transaction between Himself and yourself, the next step is an open confession of the relationship that now exists between yourself and Jesus Christ. Jesus says in Matt. 10: 32, “Whosoever therefore shall confess Me before men, him will I confess also before My Father which is in heaven.” He demands a public confession. He demands it for your own sake. This is the path of blessing. Many attempt to be disciples of Jesus and not let the world know it. No one has ever succeeded in that attempt. To be a secret disciple means to be no disciple at all. If one really has received Christ he cannot keep it to himself. “For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh” (Matt. 12: 34). So important is the public confession of Christ that Paul puts it first in his statement of the conditions of salvation. He says, “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For[20] with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Rom. 10: 9, 10). The life of confession is the life of full salvation. Indeed, the life of confession is the life of the only real salvation. When we confess Christ before men down here, He confesses us before the Father in heaven and the Father gives us the Holy Spirit as the seal of our salvation. It is not enough that we confess Christ just once, as, for example, when we are confirmed, or when we unite with the church, or when we come forward in a revival meeting. We should confess Christ constantly. We should not be ashamed of our Lord and King. We should let people know that we are on His side. In the home, in the church, at our work, and at our play, we should let others know where we stand. Of course, we should not parade our Christianity or our piety, but we should leave no one in doubt whether we belong to Christ. We should let it be seen that we glory in Him as our Lord and King. The failure to confess Christ is one of the most frequent causes of backsliding. Christians get into new relationships where they are not known as Christians and where they are tempted to conceal the fact; they yield to the temptation and they soon find themselves drifting. The more[21] you make of Jesus Christ, the more He will make of you. It will save you from many a temptation if the fact is clearly known that you are one who acknowledges Christ as Lord in all things.

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[22]

III ASSURANCE OF SALVATION

If one is to have the fullest measure of joy and power in Christian service, he must know that his sins are forgiven, that he is a child of God, and that he has eternal life. It is the believer’s privilege to know that he has eternal life. John says in 1 John 5: 13, r. v., “These things have I written unto you, that ye may know that ye have eternal life, even unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God.” John wrote this first epistle for the express purpose that any one who believes on the name of the Son of God might know that he has eternal life. There are those who tell us that no one can know that he has eternal life until he is dead and has been before the judgment seat of God, but God Himself tells us that we may know. To deny the possibility of the believer’s knowing that he has eternal life is to say that the First Epistle of John was written in vain, and it is to insult the Holy Spirit who is its real author. Again Paul tells us in Acts 13: 39, r. v., “By Him (that is by Christ) every one that believeth is justified from all things.” So every one that believeth in Jesus[23] may know that he is justified from all things. He may know it because the Word of God says so. Again John tells us in John 1: 12, r. v., “But as many as received Him (that is Jesus Christ) to them gave He the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on His name.” Here is a definite and unmistakable declaration that every one who receives Jesus becomes a child of God. Therefore every believer in Jesus may know that he is a child of God. He may know it on the surest of all grounds, i. e., because the Word of God asserts that he is a child of God. But how may any individual know that he has eternal life? He may know it on the very best ground of knowledge, that is through the testimony of God Himself as given in the Bible. The testimony of Scripture is the testimony of God. What the Scriptures say is absolutely sure. What the Scriptures say God says. Now in John 3: 36 the Scriptures say, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life.” Any one of us may know whether we believe on the Son or not. Whether we have that real faith in Christ that leads us to receive Him. If we have this faith in Christ we have God’s own written testimony that we have eternal life, that our sins are forgiven, that we are the children of God. We may feel forgiven, or we may not feel forgiven,[24] but that does not matter. It is not a question of what we feel but of what God says. God’s Word is always to be believed. Our own feelings are oftentimes to be doubted. There are many who are led to doubt their sins are forgiven, to doubt that they have everlasting life, to doubt that they are saved, because they do not feel forgiven, or do not feel that they have everlasting life, or do not feel that they are saved. Because you do not feel it is no reason why you should doubt it. Suppose that you were sentenced to imprisonment and that your friends secured a pardon for you. The legal document announcing your pardon is brought to you. You read it and know you are pardoned because the legal document says so, but the news is so good and so sudden that you are dazed by it. You do not realize that you are pardoned. Some one comes to you and says, “Are you pardoned?” What would you reply? You would say, “Yes, I am pardoned.” Then he asks, “Do you feel pardoned?” You reply, “No, I do not feel pardoned. It is so sudden, it is so wonderful, I cannot realize it.” Then he says to you, “But how can you know that you are pardoned if you do not feel it?” You would hold out the document and you would say, “This says so.” The time would come, after you had read the document[25] over and over again and believed it, when you would not only know you were pardoned because the document said so but you would feel it. Now the Bible is God’s authoritative document declaring that every one that believeth in Jesus is justified; declaring that every one that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; declaring that every one who receives Jesus is a child of God. If any one asks you if your sins are all forgiven, reply, “Yes, I know they are because God says so.” If they ask you if you know that you are a child of God, reply, “Yes, I know I am a child of God because God says so.” If they ask you if you have everlasting life, reply, “Yes, I know I have everlasting life because God says so. God says, ‘He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life.’ I know I believe on the Son, and therefore I know I have eternal life—because God says so.” You may not feel it yet but if you will keep meditating upon God’s statement and believing what God says, the time will come when you will feel it. For one who believes on the Son of God to doubt that he has eternal life is for him to make God a liar. “He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in him. He that believeth not God, hath made Him a liar because he hath not believed in the witness that God hath borne[26] concerning His Son and the witness is this, that God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath the life: he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life” (1 John 5: 10-12, r. v.). Any one who does not believe God’s testimony that He has given unto us eternal life and that this life is in His Son and that he that hath the Son hath the life, makes God a liar. It is sometimes said “it is presumption for any one to say that he knows he is saved, or to say that he knows that he has eternal life.” But is it presumption to believe God? Is it not rather presumption not to believe God, to make God a liar? When you who believe on the Son of God and yet doubt that you have eternal life, you make God a liar. When Jesus said to the woman who was a sinner, “Thy sins are forgiven” (Luke 7: 48), was it presumption for her to go out and say, “I know my sins are all forgiven”? Would it not have been presumption for her to have doubted for a moment that her sins were all forgiven? Jesus had said that they were forgiven. For her to doubt it would have been for her to give the lie to Jesus. Is it then any more presumption for the believer to-day to say, “My sins are all forgiven, I have eternal life,” when God says in His written testimony to every one that believeth, “You are justified from all things” (Acts[27] 13: 39), “You have eternal life” (John 3: 36; 1 John 5: 13)? Be very sure first of all that you really do believe on the name of the Son of God; that you really have received Jesus. If you are sure of this then never doubt for a moment that your sins are all forgiven, never doubt for a moment that you are a child of God, never doubt for a moment that you have everlasting life. If Satan comes and whispers, “Your sins are not forgiven,” point Satan to the Word of God and say, “God says my sins are forgiven and I know they are.” If Satan whispers, “Well perhaps you don’t believe on Him,” then say, “Well if I never did before I will now.” And then go out rejoicing, knowing that your sins are forgiven, knowing that you are a child of God, knowing that you have everlasting life. There are doubtless many who say they know they have eternal life who really do not believe on the name of the Son of God, who have not really received Jesus. This is not true assurance. It has no sure foundation in the Word of God who cannot lie. If we wish to get assurance of salvation we must first get saved. The reason why many have not the assurance that they are saved is because they are not saved. They ought not to have assurance. What they need first is salvation. But if you have received Jesus[28] in the way described in the first chapter, you are saved, you are a child of God, your sins are forgiven. Believe it, know it. Rejoice in it. Having settled it, let it remain settled. Never doubt it. You may make mistakes, you may stumble, you may fall, but even if you do, if you have really received Jesus, know that your sins are forgiven and rise from your fall and go forward in the glad assurance that there is nothing between you and God.

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[29]

IV RECEIVING THE HOLY SPIRIT

When the Apostle Paul came to Ephesus, he found a little group of twelve disciples of Christ. There was something about these twelve disciples that struck Paul unfavourably. We are not told what it was. It may be that he did not find in them that overflowing joyfulness that one learns to expect in all Christians who have really entered into the fullness of blessing that there is for them in Christ. It may be that Paul was troubled at the fact that there were only twelve of them, thinking that if these twelve were what they ought to be, there would certainly have been more than twelve of them by this time. Whatever it may have been that impressed Paul unfavourably, he went right to the root of the difficulty at once by putting to them the question, “Did ye receive the Holy Ghost when ye believed?” (Acts 19: 2, r. v.). It came out at once that they had not received the Holy Ghost, that in fact they did not know that the Holy Ghost had been given. Then Paul told them that the Holy Ghost had been given, and also showed them just what they must do to receive the Holy[30] Ghost then and there, and before that gathering was over the Holy Ghost came upon them. From that day on there was a different state of affairs in Ephesus. A great revival sprang up at once so that the whole city was shaken, “So mightily grew the Word of God and prevailed” (Acts 19: 20). Paul’s question to these young disciples in Ephesus should be put to young disciples everywhere, “Have ye received the Holy Ghost?” In receiving the Holy Spirit is the great secret of joyfulness in our own hearts, of victory over sin, of power in prayer, and of effective service. Every one who has truly received Jesus must have the Holy Spirit dwelling in him in some sense; but in many believers, though the Holy Spirit dwells in them, He dwells way back in some hidden sanctuary of their being, back of consciousness. It is something quite different, something far better than this, to receive the Holy Spirit in the sense that Paul meant in his question. To receive the Holy Spirit in such a sense that one knows experimentally that he has received the Holy Spirit, to receive the Holy Spirit in such a sense that we are conscious of the joy with which He fills our hearts different from any joy that we have ever known in the world; to receive the Holy Spirit in such a sense that He rules our life and produces within us in[31] ever increasing measure the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance; to receive the Holy Spirit in such a sense that we are conscious of His drawing our hearts out in prayer in a way that is not of ourselves; to receive the Holy Spirit in such a sense that we are conscious of His help when we witness for Christ, when we speak to others individually and try to lead them to accept Christ, or when we teach a Sunday-school class, or speak in public, or do any other work for the Master. Have you received the Holy Spirit? If you have not, let me tell you how you may. 1. First of all in order to receive the Holy Spirit, one must be resting in the death of Christ on the cross for us as the sole and all-sufficient ground upon which God pardons all our sins and forgives us. 2. In order to receive the Holy Spirit we must put away every known sin. We should go to our heavenly Father and ask Him to search us through and through and bring to light anything in our life, our outward life or our inward life, that is wrong in His sight, and if He does bring anything to light that is displeasing to Him, we should put it away, no matter how dear it is to us. There must be a complete renunciation of all sin in order to receive the Holy Spirit. [32] 3. In the third place, in order to receive the Holy Spirit, there must be an open confession of Christ before the world. The Holy Spirit is not given to those who are trying to be disciples in secret, but to those who obey Christ and publicly confess Him before the world. 4. In the fourth place, in order to receive the Holy Spirit, there must be an absolute surrender of our lives to God. You must go to Him and say, “Heavenly Father, here I am. Thou hast bought me with a price. I am Thy property. I renounce all claim to do my own will, all claim to govern my own life, all claim to have my own way. I give myself up unreservedly to Thee—all I am and all I have. Send me where Thou wilt, use me as Thou wilt, do with me what Thou wilt—I am Thine.” If we hold anything back from God, no matter how small it may seem, that spoils it all. But if we surrender all to God, then God will give all that He has to us. There are some who shrink from this absolute surrender to God, but absolute surrender to God is simply absolute surrender to infinite love. Surrender to the Father, to the Father whose love is not only wiser than any earthly father’s, but more tender than any earthly mother’s. 5. In order to receive the Holy Spirit there should be definite asking for the Holy Spirit.[33] Our Lord Jesus says in Luke 11: 13, “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?” Just ask God to give you the Holy Spirit and expect Him to do it, because He says He will. 6. Last of all, in order to receive the Holy Spirit, there must be faith, simply taking God at His Word. No matter how positive any promise of God’s Word may be, we enjoy it personally only when we believe. Our Lord Jesus says, “All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye have received them, and ye shall have them” (Mark 11: 24, r. v.). When you pray for the Holy Spirit you have prayed for something according to God’s will and therefore you may know that your prayer is heard and that you have what you asked of Him (1 John 5: 14, 15). You may feel no different, but do not look at your feelings but at God’s promise. Believe the prayer is heard, believe that God has given you the Holy Spirit and you will afterwards have in actual experience what you have received in simple faith on the bare promise of God’s Word. It is well to go often alone and kneel down and look up to the Holy Spirit and put into His hands anew the entire control of your life. Ask[34] Him to take the control of your thoughts, the control of your imagination, the control of your affections, the control of your desires, the control of your ambitions, the control of your choices, the control of your purposes, the control of your words, the control of your actions, the control of everything, and just expect Him to do it. The whole secret of victory in the Christian life is letting the Holy Spirit who dwells within you, have undisputed right of way in the entire conduct of your life.

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[35]

V LOOKING UNTO JESUS

If we are to run with patience the race that is set before us, we must always keep looking unto Jesus (Heb. 12: 1-3). One of the simplest and yet one of the mightiest secrets of abiding joy and victory is to never lose sight of Jesus. 1. First of all we must keep looking at Jesus as the ground of our acceptance before God. Over and over again Satan will make an attempt to discourage us by bringing up our sins and failures and thus try to convince us that we are not children of God, or not saved. If he succeeds in getting us to keep looking at and brooding over our sins, he will soon get us discouraged, and discouragement means failure. But if we will keep looking at what God looks at, the death of Jesus Christ in our place that completely atones for every sin that we ever committed, we will never be discouraged because of the greatness of our sins. We shall see that while our sins are great, very great, that they have all been atoned for. Every time Satan brings up one of our sins, we shall see that Jesus Christ has redeemed us from its curse by being made a curse[36] in our place (Gal. 3: 13). We shall see that while in ourselves we are full of unrighteousness, nevertheless in Christ we are made the righteousness of God, because Christ was made to be sin in our place (2 Cor. 5: 21). We will see that every sin that Satan taunts us about has been borne and settled forever (1 Pet. 2: 24; Is. 53: 6). We shall always be able to sing,“Jesus paid my debt,All the debt I owe;Sin had left a crimson stain,He washed it white as snow.” If you are this moment troubled about any sin that you have ever committed, either in the past or in the present, just look at Jesus on the cross; believe what God tells you about Him, that this sin which troubles you was laid upon Him (Is. 53: 6). Thank God that the sin is all settled; be full of gratitude to Jesus who bore it in your place and trouble about it no more. It is an act of base ingratitude to God to brood over sins that He in His infinite love has cancelled. Keep looking at Christ on the cross and walk always in the sunlight of God’s favour. This favour of God has been purchased for you at great cost. Gratitude demands that you should always believe in it and walk in the light of it. [37] 2. In the second place, we must keep looking at Jesus as our risen Saviour, who has all power in heaven and on earth and is able to keep us every day and every hour. Are you tempted to do some wrong at this moment? If you are, remember that Jesus rose from the dead, remember that at this moment He is living at the right hand of God in the glory; remember that He has all power in heaven and on earth, and that, therefore, He can give you victory right now. Believe what God tells you in His Word that Jesus has power to save you this moment “to the uttermost” (Heb. 7: 25). Believe that He has power to give you victory over this sin that now besets you. Ask Him to give you victory, expect Him to do it. In this way by looking unto the risen Christ for victory you may have victory over sin every day, every hour, every moment. “Remember Jesus Christ risen from the dead” (2 Tim. 2: 8, r. v.). God has called every one of us to a victorious life, and the secret of this victorious life is always looking to the risen Christ for victory. Through looking to Christ crucified we obtain pardon and enjoy peace. Through looking to the risen Christ we obtain present victory over the power of sin. If you have lost sight of the risen Christ and have yielded to temptation, confess your sin and know that it is forgiven because God says so[38] (1 John 1: 9) and look to Jesus, the risen One, again to give you victory now and keep looking to Him. 3. In the third place, we must keep looking to Jesus as the One whom we should follow in our daily conduct. Our Lord Jesus says to us, His disciples to-day, as He said to His early disciples, “Follow Me.” The whole secret of true Christian conduct can be summed up in these two words “Follow Me.” “He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself so to walk even as He walked” (1 John 2: 6). One of the commonest causes of failure in Christian life is found in the attempt to follow some good man, whom we greatly admire. No man and no woman, no matter how good, can be safely followed. If we follow any man or woman, we are bound to go astray. There never has been but one absolutely perfect Man upon this earth—the Man Christ Jesus. If we try to follow any other man we are more sure to imitate his faults than his excellencies. Look at Jesus and Jesus only as your Guide. If at any time you are in any perplexity as to what to do, simply ask the question, What would Jesus do? Ask God by His Holy Spirit to show you what Jesus would do. Study your Bible to find out what Jesus did do and follow Jesus. Even though no one else seems to be following[39] Jesus, be sure that you follow Him. Do not spend your time or thought in criticising others because they do not follow Jesus. See that you follow Him yourself. When you are wasting your time criticising others for not following Jesus, Jesus is always saying to you, “What is that to thee; follow thou Me” (John 21: 22). The question for you is not what following Jesus may involve for other people. The question is what does following Jesus mean for you? This is the really simple life, the life of simply following Jesus. Many perplexing questions will come to you, but the most perplexing question will soon become as clear as day if you determine with all your heart to follow Jesus in everything. Satan will always be ready to whisper to you, “Such and such a good man does it,” but all you need to do is to answer, “It matters not to me what this or that man may do or not do. The only question to me is, What would Jesus do?” There is wonderful freedom in this life of simply following Jesus. This path is straight and plain. But the path of the one who tries to shape his conduct by observing the conduct of others is full of twists and turns and pitfalls. Keep looking at Jesus. Follow on trustingly where He leads. This is the path of the just which shineth more and more unto the perfect day (Prov. 4: 18). He is the Light of the World,[40] any one who follows Him shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life all along the way (John 8: 12).

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[41]

VI CHURCH MEMBERSHIP

No young Christian and no old Christian can have real success in the Christian life without the fellowship of other believers. The church is a divine institution, built by Jesus Christ Himself. It is the one institution that abides. Other institutions come and go; they do their work for their day and disappear, but the church will continue to the end. “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16: 18). The church is made up of men and women, imperfect men and women, and consequently is an imperfect institution, but none the less it is of divine origin and God loves it, and every believer should realize that he belongs to it and should openly take his place in it and bear his responsibilities regarding it. The true church consists of all true believers, all who are united to Jesus Christ by a living faith in Himself. In its outward organization at the present time, it is divided into numberless sects and local congregations, but in spite of these divisions the true church is one. It has one Lord, Jesus Christ. It has one faith, faith[42] in Him as Saviour, Divine Lord and only King; one baptism, the baptism in the one Spirit into the one body (Eph. 4: 4, 5; 1 Cor. 12: 13). But each individual Christian needs the fellowship of individual fellow believers. The outward expression of this fellowship is in membership in some organized body of believers. If we hold aloof from all organized churches, hoping thus to have a broader fellowship with all believers belonging to all the churches, we deceive ourselves. We will miss the helpfulness that comes from intimate union with some local congregation. I have known many well-meaning persons who have held aloof from membership in any specific organization, and I have never known a person who has done this, whose own spiritual life has not suffered by it. On the day of Pentecost the three thousand who were converted were at once baptized and were added to the church (Acts 2: 41, 47), and “They continued steadfastly in the apostle’s doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread and in prayers.” Their example is the one to follow. If you have really received Jesus Christ, hunt up as soon as possible some company of others who have received Jesus Christ and unite yourself with them. In many communities there may be no choice of churches, for there is only one. In other communities one will be faced with the question,[43] “With what body of believers shall I unite?” Do not waste your time looking for a perfect church. There is no perfect church. If you wait until you find a perfect church before you unite with any, you will unite with none, and thus you will belong to a church in which you are the only member and that is the most imperfect church of all. I would rather belong to the most imperfect Christian church I ever knew than not to belong to any church at all. The local churches in Paul’s day were very imperfect institutions. Let one read the epistles to the Corinthians and see how imperfect was the church in Corinth, see how much there was that was evil in it, and yet Paul never thought of advising any believer in Corinth to get out of this imperfect church. He did tell them to come out of heathenism, to come out from fellowship with infidels (2 Cor. 6: 14-18), but not a word on coming out of the imperfect church in Corinth. He did tell the church in Corinth to separate from their membership certain persons whose lives were wrong (1 Cor. 5: 11, 12), but he did not tell the individual members of the church in Corinth to get out of the church because these persons had not yet been separated from their fellowship. As you cannot find a perfect church, find the best church you can. Unite with a church where[44] they believe in the Bible and where they preach the Bible. Avoid the churches where words are spoken open or veiled that have a tendency to undermine your faith in the Bible as a reliable revelation from God Himself, the all-sufficient rule of faith and practice. Unite with a church where there is a spirit of prayer, where the prayer-meetings are well kept up. Unite with a church that has a real active interest in the salvation of the lost, where young Christians are looked after and helped, where minister and people have a love for the poor and outcast, a church that regards its mission in this world to be the same as the mission of Christ, “to seek and to save the lost.” As to denominational differences, other things being equal, unite with that denomination whose ideas of doctrine and of government and of the ordinances are most closely akin to your own. But it is better to unite with a live church of some other denomination than to unite with a dead church of your own. We live in a day when denominational differences are becoming ever less and less, and oftentimes they are of no practical consequence whatever; and one will often feel more at home in a church of some other denomination than in any accessible church of his own denomination. The things that divide the denominations are insignificant[45] compared with the great fundamental truths and purposes and faith that unite them. If you cannot find the church that agrees with the pattern set forth above, find the church that comes nearest to it. Go into that church and by prayer and by work try to bring that church as nearly as you can to the pattern of what you think a church of Christ ought to be. But do not waste your strength in criticism against either church or minister. Seek for what is good in the church and in the minister and do your best to strengthen it. Hold aloof firmly, though unobtrusively, from what is wrong and seek to correct it. Do not be discouraged if you cannot correct it in a day or a week or a month or a year. Patient love and prayer and effort will tell in time. Drawing off by yourself and snarling and grumbling will do no good. They will simply make you and the truths for which you stand repulsive.

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[46]

VII BIBLE STUDY

There is nothing more important for the development of the spiritual life of the Christian than regular, systematic Bible study. It is as true in the spiritual life as it is in the physical life that health depends upon what we eat and how much we eat. The soul’s proper food is found in one book, the Bible. Of course, a true minister of the gospel will feed us on the Word of God, but that is not enough. He feeds us but one or two days in the week and we need to be fed every day. Furthermore, it will not do to depend upon being fed by others. We must learn to feed ourselves. If we study the Bible for ourselves as we ought to study it, we shall be in a large measure independent of human teachers. Even if we are so unfortunate as to have for our minister a man who is himself ignorant of the truth of God we shall still be safe from harm. We live in a day in which false doctrine abounds on every hand and the only Christian who is safe from being led into error is the one who studies his Bible for himself daily. The[47] Apostle Paul warned the elders of the church in Ephesus that the time was soon coming when grievous wolves should enter in among them not sparing the flock and when of their own selves men should arise speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them, but he told them how to be safe even in such perilous times as these. He said, “I commend you to God and to the Word of His grace, which is able to build you up and to give you an inheritance among them which are sanctified.” Through meditation on the Word of God’s grace they would be safe even in the midst of abounding error on the part of the leaders in the church (Acts 20: 29-32). Writing later to the Bishop of the church in Ephesus Paul said, “But evil men and impostors shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived” (2 Tim. 3: 13, r. v.) but he goes on to tell Bishop Timothy how he and his fellow believers could be safe even in such times of increasing peril as were coming. That way was through the study of the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make wise unto salvation (2 Tim. 3: 14, 15). “All Scripture,” he adds, “is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” That is to say, through the study of[48] the Bible one will be sound in doctrine, will be led to see his sins and put them away, will find discipline in the righteous life and attain unto complete equipment for all good works. Our spiritual health, our growth, our strength, our victory over sin, our soundness in doctrine, our joy and peace in Christ, our cleansing from inward and outward sin, our fitness for service, all depend upon the study of the Word of God. The one who neglects his Bible is bound to make a failure of the Christian life. The one who studies his Bible in the right spirit and by a true method is bound to make a success of the Christian life. This brings us face to face with the question, “What is the right way to study the Bible?” 1. First of all, we should study it daily (Acts 17: 11). This is of prime importance. No matter how good the methods of Bible study that one follows may be, no matter how much time one may put into Bible study now and then, the best results can only be secured when one makes it a matter of principle never to let a single day go by without earnest Bible study. This is the only safe course. Any day that is allowed to pass without faithful Bible study is a day thrown open to the advent into our hearts and lives of error or of sin. The writer has been a Christian for more than a quarter of a[49] century and yet to-day he would not dare to allow even a single day to pass over his head without listening to the voice of God as it speaks to him through the pages of His Book. It is at this point that many fall away. They grow careless and let a day pass, or even several days pass, without going alone with God and letting Him speak to them through His Word. Mr. Moody once wisely said, “In prayer we talk to God. In Bible study, God talks to us, and we had better let God do most of the talking.” A regular time should be set apart each day for the study of the Bible. I do not think it is well as a rule to say that we shall study so many chapters in a day, for that leads to undue haste and skimming and thoughtlessness, but it is well to set apart a certain length of time each day for Bible study. Some can give more time to Bible study than others, but no one ought to give less than fifteen minutes a day. I set the time so low in order that no one may be discouraged at the outset. If a young Christian should set out to give an hour or two hours a day to Bible study, there is a strong probability that he would not keep to the resolution and he might become discouraged. Yet I know of many very busy people who have given the first hour of every day for years to Bible study and some who have given even two hours a day. The late Earl Cairns,[50] Lord Chancellor of England, was one of the busiest men of his day, but Lady Cairns told me a few months ago that no matter how late he reached home at night he always arose at the same early hour for prayer and Bible study. She said, “We would sometimes get home from Parliament at two o’clock in the morning, but Lord Cairns would always arise at the same early hour to pray and study the Bible.” Lord Cairns is reported as saying, “If I have had any success in life, I attribute it to the habit of giving the first two hours of each day to Bible study and prayer.” It is important that one choose the right time for this study. Wherever it is possible, the best time for this study is immediately after arising in the morning. The worst time of all is the last thing at night. Of course, it is well to give a little while just before we retire to Bible reading, in order that God’s voice may be the last to which we listen, but the bulk of our Bible study should be done at an hour when our minds are clearest and strongest. Whatever time is set apart for Bible study should be kept sacredly for that purpose. 2. We should study the Bible systematically. Much time is frittered away in random study of the Bible. The same amount of time put into systematic study would yield far larger results.[51] Have a definite place where you are studying and have a definite plan of study. A good way for a young Christian to begin the study of the Bible is to read the Gospel of John. When you have read it through once, begin and read it again until you have gone over the Gospel five times. Then read the Gospel of Luke five times in the same way; then read the Acts of the Apostles five times, then 1 Thessalonians five times, then 1 John five times, then Romans five times, then Ephesians five times. By this time you will be ready to take up a more thorough method of Bible study. A good method is to begin at Genesis and read the Bible through chapter by chapter. Read each chapter through several times and then answer the following questions on the chapter: (1) What is the principal subject of the chapter? (State the principal contents of the chapter in a single phrase or sentence.) (2) What is the truth most clearly taught and most emphasized in the chapter? (3) What is the best lesson? (4) What is the best verse? (5) Who are the principal people mentioned? (6) What does the chapter teach about Jesus Christ? Go through the entire Bible in this way. Another and more thorough method of Bible[52] chapter study, which cannot be applied to every chapter in the Bible, but which will yield excellent results when applied to some of the more important chapters of the Bible, is as follows: (1) Read the chapter for to-day’s study five times, reading it aloud at least once. Each new reading will bring out some new point. (2) Divide the chapter into its natural divisions and find headings for each division that describes in the most striking way the contents of that division. For example, suppose the chapter studied is 1 John 5. You might divide it in this way: First division, verses 1-3, The Believer’s Noble Parentage. Second division, verses 4, 5, The Believer’s Glorious Victory. Third division, verses 6-10, The Believer’s Sure Ground of Faith. Fourth division, verses 11, 12, The Believer’s Priceless Possession. Fifth division, verse 13, The Believer’s Blessed Assurance. Sixth division, verses 14, 15, The Believer’s Unquestioning Confidence. Seventh division, verses 16, 17, The Believer’s Great Power and Responsibility. Eighth division, verses 18, 19, The Believer’s Perfect Security. Ninth division, verse 20, The Believer’s Precious Knowledge. Tenth division, verse 21, The Believer’s Constant Duty. (3) Note the important differences between the Authorized Version and the Revised. [53] (4) Write down the leading facts of the chapter in their proper order. (5) Make a note of the persons mentioned in the chapter and of any light thrown upon their character. (6) Note the principal lessons of the chapter. It would be well to classify these. For instance lessons about God; lessons about Christ, lessons about the Holy Spirit, etc. (7) Find the central truth of the chapter. (8) The key verse of the chapter, if there is one. (9) The best verse in the chapter. Mark it and memorize it. (10) Write down what new truth you have learned from the chapter. (11) Write down what truth already known has come to you with new power. (12) What definite thing have you resolved to do as a result of studying this chapter. It would be well to study in this way, all the chapters in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Acts; the first eight chapters of Romans; 1 Cor. 12, 13 and 15; first six chapters of 2 Corinthians; all the chapters in Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, First Thessalonians and First Epistle of John. It would be well at times to vary this by taking up other methods of study for a time. Another profitable method of Bible study is the[54] topical method. This was Mr. Moody’s favourite method of study. Take up the great topics of which the Bible teaches such as, the Holy Spirit, Prayer, the Blood of Christ, Sin, Judgment, Grace, Justification, the New Birth, Sanctification, Faith, Repentance, the Character of Christ, the Resurrection of Christ, the Ascension of Christ, the Second Coming of Christ, Assurance, Love of God, Love (to God, to Christ, to Christians, to all men), Heaven, Hell. Get a Bible text-book and go through the Bible on each one of these topics. (Other methods of Bible study, and more thorough methods for the advanced student, will be found in the author’s book “How to Study the Bible for Greatest Profit.”) 3. We should study the Bible comprehensively—the whole Bible. Many who read their Bibles make the great mistake of confining all their reading to certain portions of the Bible that they enjoy, and in this way they get no knowledge of the Bible as a whole. They miss altogether many of the most important phases of Bible truth. Begin and go through the Bible again and again—a certain portion each day from the Old Testament and a portion from the New Testament. Read carefully at least one Psalm every day. It is well oftentimes to read a whole book of the Bible through at a single sitting. Of course,[55] with a few books of the Bible this would take one or two hours, but with most of the books of the Bible it can be done in a few minutes. With the shorter books of the Bible they should be read through again and again at a single sitting. 4. Study the Bible attentively. Do not hurry. One of the worst faults in Bible study is haste and heedlessness. The Bible only does good by the truth that it contains. It has no magic power. It is better to read one verse attentively than to read a dozen chapters thoughtlessly. Sometimes you will read a verse that takes hold of you. Don’t hurry on. Linger and ponder that verse. As you read, mark in your Bible what impresses you most. One does not need an elaborate system of Bible marking, simply mark what impresses you. Meditate upon what you mark. God pronounces that man blessed who “meditates” in God’s law day and night (Ps. 1: 2). It is wonderful how a verse of Scripture will open if one reads it over and over again and again, paying attention to each word as he reads it, trying to get its exact meaning and its full meaning. Memorize the passages that impress you most (Ps. 119: 11, r. v.). When you memorize a passage of Scripture, memorize its location as well as its words. Fix in your mind chapter and verse where the words are found. A busy but spiritually-minded man[56] who was hurrying to catch a train once said to me, “Tell me in a word how to study my Bible.” I replied, “Thoughtfully.” 5. Study your Bible comparatively. That is compare Scripture with Scripture. The best commentary on the Bible is the Bible itself. Wherever you find a difficult passage in the Bible, there is always some passage elsewhere that explains its meaning. The best book to use in this comparison of Scripture with Scripture is “The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge.” On every verse in the Bible this book gives a large number of references. It is well to take up some book of the Bible and go through that book verse by verse, looking up carefully and studying every reference given in “The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge.” This is a very fruitful method of Bible study. It is also well in studying the Bible by chapters to look up the references on the more important verses in the chapter. One will get more light on passages of Scripture by looking up the references given in “The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge,” than in any other way I know. 6. Study your Bible believingly. The Apostle Paul in writing to the Christians in Thessalonica says, “For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the Word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as[57] the Word of men, but as it is in truth, the Word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe” (1 Thess. 2: 13). Happy is the one who receives the Word of God as these believers in Thessalonica received it, who receives it as what it really is, the Word of God. In such a one it “works effectually.” The Bible is the Word of God and we get the most out of any book by studying it as what it really is. It is often said that we should study the Bible just as we study any other book. That principle contains a truth, but it also contains a great error. The Bible, it is true, is a book as other books are books, the same laws of grammatical and literary construction hold here as in other books, but the Bible is a unique book. It is what no other book is, the Word of God. This can be easily proven to any candid man.[1] The Bible ought then to be studied as no other book is. It should be studied as the Word of God. This involves five things: (1) A greater eagerness and more careful and candid study to find out just what it teaches than is bestowed upon all other books. It is important to know the mind of man. It is absolutely essential to know the mind of God. The place[58] to discover the mind of God is the Bible. This is the book in which God reveals His mind. (2) A prompt and unquestioning acceptance of, and submission to its teachings when definitely ascertained. These teachings may appear to us unreasonable or impossible, nevertheless we should accept them. If this book is the Word of God, how foolish it is to submit its teachings to the criticism of our finite reasoning. A little boy who discredits his wise father’s statements simply because to his infant mind they appear unreasonable, is not a philosopher, but a fool. But the greatest of human thinkers is only an infant compared with the infinite God. And to discredit God’s statements found in His Word because they appear unreasonable to our infantile minds is not to act the part of the philosopher, but the part of a fool. When we are once satisfied that the Bible is the Word of God, its clear teachings must be for us the end of all controversy and discussion. (3) Absolute reliance upon all its promises in all their length and breadth and depth and height. The one who studies the Bible as the Word of God will say of any promise, no matter how vast and beyond belief it appears, “God who cannot lie has promised this, so I will claim it for myself.” Mark the promise you thus claim. Look each day for some new promise from your[59] infinite Father. He has put “His riches in glory” at your disposal (Phil. 4: 19). I know of no better way to grow rich spiritually than to search daily for promises, and when you find them appropriate them to yourself. (4) Obedience. Be a doer of the Word and not a hearer only deceiving your own soul (James 1: 22). Nothing goes farther to help one understand the Bible than the purpose to obey it. Jesus said, “If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know of the teaching” (John 7: 17 r. v.). The surrendered will means the clear eye. If our eye is single (that is, our will is absolutely surrendered to God) our whole body shall be full of light. But if our eye be evil (that is, if we are trying to serve two masters and are not absolutely surrendered to one Master, God) our whole body shall be full of darkness (Matt. 6: 22-24). Many a passage that looks obscure to you now would become as clear as day if you were willing to obey in all things what the Bible teaches. Each commandment discovered in the Bible that is really intended as a commandment to us should be obeyed instantly. It is remarkable how soon one loses his relish for the Bible and how soon the mind becomes obscured to its teachings when we disobey the Bible at any point. Many a time I have known persons who have loved their Bibles and have been useful in[60] God’s service and clear in their views of the truth who have come to something in the Bible that they were unwilling to obey, some sacrifice was demanded that they were unwilling to make, and their love for the Bible has rapidly waned, their faith in the Bible began to weaken, and soon they were drifting farther and farther away from clear views of the truth. Nothing clears the mind like obedience; nothing darkens the mind like disobedience. To obey a truth you see prepares you to see other truths. To disobey a truth you see darkens your mind to all truths. Cultivate prompt, exact, unquestioning, joyous obedience to every command that it is evident from its context applies to you. Be on the lookout for new orders from your King. Blessing lies in the direction of obedience to them. God’s commands are but sign-boards that mark the road to present success and blessedness and to eternal glory. (5) Studying the Bible as the Word of God involves studying it as His own voice speaking directly to you. When you open the Bible to study realize that you have come into the very presence of God and that now He is going to speak to you. Realize that it is God who is talking to you as much as if you saw Him standing there. Say to yourself, “God is now going[61] to speak to me.” Nothing goes farther to give a freshness and gladness to Bible study than the realization that as you read God is actually talking to you. In this way Bible study becomes personal companionship with God Himself. That was a wonderful privilege that Mary had one day, of sitting at the feet of Jesus and listening to His voice, but if we will study the Bible as the Word of God and as if we were in God’s very presence, then we shall enjoy the privilege of sitting at the feet of God and having Him talk to us every day. How often what would otherwise be a mere mechanical performance of a duty would become a wonderfully joyous privilege if one would say as he opens the Bible, “Now God, my Father, is going to speak to me.” Oftentimes it helps us to a realization of the presence of God to read the Bible on our knees. The Bible became in some measure a new book to me when I took to reading it on my knees. 7. Study the Bible prayerfully. God, who is the author of the Bible, is willing to act as interpreter of it. He does so when you ask Him to. The one who prays with earnestness and faith the Psalmist’s prayer, “Open Thou mine eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy law” (Ps. 119: 18) will get his eyes opened to see new beauties and wonders in the Word of God that he never dreamed of before. Be very[62] definite about this. Each time you open the Bible to study it, even though it is but for a few minutes, ask God to give you an open and discerning eye, and expect Him to do it. Every time you come to a difficulty in the Bible, lay it before God and ask an explanation and expect it. How often we think as we puzzle over hard passages, “Oh, if I only had some great Bible teacher here to explain this to me!” God is always present. He understands the Bible better than any human teacher. Take your difficulty to Him and ask Him to explain it. Jesus said, “When He the Spirit of Truth is come, He shall guide you into all the truth” (John 16: 13, r. v.). It is the privilege of the humblest believer in Christ to have the Holy Spirit for his guide in his study of the Word. I have known many very humble people, people with almost no education, who got more out of their Bible study than most of the great theological teachers that I have known; simply because they had learned that it was their privilege to have the Holy Spirit for their teacher as they studied the Bible. Commentaries on the Bible are oftentimes of great value, but one will learn more of real value from the Bible by having the Holy Spirit for his teacher when he studies his Bible than he will from all the commentaries that were ever published. [63] 8. Improve spare moments for Bible study. In almost every man’s life many minutes each day are lost, while waiting for meals, riding on trains, going from place to place in street-cars and so forth. Carry a pocket Bible or Testament with you and save these golden moments by putting them to the very best use, listening to the voice of God. 9. Store away the Scripture in your mind and heart. It will keep you from sin (Ps. 119: 11, r. v.); from false doctrine (Acts 20: 29, 30, 32; 2 Tim. 3: 13-15). It will fill your heart with joy (Jer. 15: 16); and peace (Ps. 85: 8). It will give you victory over the evil one (1 John 2: 14); it will give you power in prayer (John 15: 7); it will make you wiser than the aged and your enemies (Ps. 119: 98, 100, 130); it will make you “complete, furnished completely unto every good work” (2 Tim. 3: 16, 17, r. v.). Try it. Do not memorize at random but memorize Scripture in a connected way; memorize texts bearing on various subjects in proper order; memorize by chapter and verse that you may know where to put your finger on the text if any one disputes it. You should have a good Bible for your study. One of the best is “The Oxford Two Version Bible, Workers’ Edition.”

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[64]

VIII DIFFICULTIES IN THE BIBLE

Sooner or later every young Christian comes across passages in the Bible which are hard to understand and difficult to believe. To many a young Christian, these difficulties become a serious hindrance in the development of their Christian life. For days and weeks and months oftentimes faith suffers partial or total eclipse. At just this point wise counsel is needed. We have no desire to conceal the fact that these difficulties exist. We rather desire to frankly face and consider them. What shall we do concerning these difficulties that every thoughtful student of the Bible will sooner or later encounter. 1. The first thing we have to say about these difficulties is that from the very nature of the case difficulties are to be expected. Some people are surprised and staggered because there are difficulties in the Bible. I would be more surprised and more staggered if there were not. What is the Bible? It is a revelation of the mind and will and character and being of the infinitely great, perfectly wise, and absolutely holy God.[65] But to whom is this revelation made? To men and women like you and me, to finite beings. To men who are imperfect in intellectual development and consequently in knowledge, and in character and consequently in spiritual discernment. There must, from the very necessities of the case, be difficulties in such a revelation made to such persons. When the finite tries to understand the infinite there is bound to be difficulty. When the ignorant contemplate the utterances of one perfect in knowledge there must be many things hard to be understood and some things which to their immature and inaccurate minds appear absurd. When sinful beings listen to the demands of an absolutely holy being they are bound to be staggered at some of His demands, and when they consider His dealings they are bound to be staggered at some of His dealings. These dealings will necessarily appear too severe, stern, harsh, terrific. It is plain that there must be difficulties for us in such a revelation as the Bible is proven to be. If some one should hand me a book that was as simple as the multiplication table and say, “This is the Word of God, in which He has revealed His whole will and wisdom,” I would shake my head and say, “I cannot believe it. That is too easy to be a perfect revelation of infinite wisdom.” There must be[66] in any complete revelation of God’s mind and will and character and being, things hard for a beginner to understand, and the wisest and best of us are but beginners. 2. The second thing to be said about these difficulties is that a difficulty in a doctrine, or a grave objection to a doctrine, does not in any wise prove the doctrine to be untrue. Many thoughtless people fancy that it does. If they come across some difficulty in the way of believing in the divine origin and absolute inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible, they at once conclude that the doctrine is exploded. That is very illogical. Stop a moment and think and learn to be reasonable and fair. There is scarcely a doctrine in science commonly believed to-day that has not had some great difficulty in the way of its acceptance. When the Copernican theory, now so universally accepted, was first proclaimed, it encountered a very grave difficulty. If this theory were true the planet Venus should have phases as the moon has. But no phases could be discovered by the best glass then in existence. But the positive argument for the theory was so strong that it was accepted in spite of this apparently unanswerable objection. When a more powerful glass was made, it was discovered that Venus had phases after all. The whole difficulty arose, as[67] all those in the Bible arise, from man’s ignorance of some of the facts in the case. According to the common sense logic recognized in every department of science, if the positive proof of a theory is conclusive, it is believed by rational men, in spite of any number of difficulties in minor details. Now the positive proof that the Bible is the Word of God, that it is an absolutely trustworthy revelation from God Himself of Himself, His purposes and His will, of man’s duty and destiny, of spiritual and eternal realities, is absolutely conclusive. Therefore every rational man and woman must believe it in spite of any number of difficulties in minor details. He is a shallow thinker who gives up a well-attested truth because of some facts which he cannot reconcile with that truth. And he is a very shallow Bible scholar who gives up the divine origin and inerrancy of the Bible because there are some supposed facts that he cannot reconcile with that doctrine. 3. The third thing to be said about the difficulties in the Bible is that there are many more and much greater difficulties in the way of a doctrine that holds the Bible to be of human origin, and hence fallible, than are in the way of the doctrine that holds the Bible to be of divine origin and hence altogether trustworthy. A man may bring you some difficulty and say, “How[68]do you explain that if the Bible is the Word of God?” and perhaps you may not be able to answer him satisfactorily. Then he thinks he has you, but not at all. Turn on him and ask him how do you account for the fulfilled prophecies of the Bible if it is of human origin? How do you account for the marvellous unity of the Book? How do you account for its inexhaustible depth? How do you account for its unique power in lifting men up to God? How do you account for the history of the Book, its victory over all men’s attacks, etc., etc., etc. For every insignificant objection he can bring to your view, you can bring many deeply significant objections to his view, and no candid man will have any difficulty in deciding between the two views. The difficulties that confront one who denies that the Bible is of divine origin and authority are far more numerous and weighty than those that confront the ones who believes it is of divine origin and authority. 4. The fourth thing to be said about the difficulties in the Bible is the fact that you cannot solve a difficulty does not prove that it cannot be solved, and the fact that you cannot answer an objection does not prove at all that it cannot be answered. It is passing strange how often we overlook this very evident fact. There are many who, when they meet a difficulty in the Bible and[69] give it a little thought and can see no possible solution, at once jump at the conclusion that a solution is impossible by any one, and so throw up their faith in the reliability of the Bible and in its divine origin. A little more of that modesty that is becoming in beings so limited in knowledge as we all are would have led them to say, “Though I see no possible solution to this difficulty, some one a little wiser than I might easily find one.” Oh! if we would only bear in mind that we do not know everything, and that there are a great many things that we cannot solve now that we could easily solve if we only knew a little more. Above all, we ought never to forget that there may be a very easy solution to infinite wisdom of that which to our finite wisdom—or ignorance—appears absolutely insoluble. What would we think of a beginner in algebra who, having tried in vain for half an hour to solve a difficult problem, declared that there was no possible solution to the problem because he could find none? A man of much experience and ability once left his work and came a long distance to see me in great perturbation of spirit because he had discovered what seemed to him a flat contradiction in the Bible. It had defied all his attempts at reconciliation, but in a few moments he was shown a very simple and satisfactory solution of the difficulty. [70] 5. The fifth thing to be said about the difficulties in the Bible is that the seeming defects in the book are exceedingly insignificant when put in comparison with its many and marvellous excellencies. It certainly reveals great perversity of both mind and heart that men spend so much time expatiating on the insignificant points that they consider defects in the Bible, and pass by absolutely unnoticed the incomparable beauties and wonders that adorn and glorify almost every page. What would we think of any man, who in studying some great masterpiece of art, concentrated his entire attention upon what looked to him like a fly-speck in the corner. A large proportion of what is vaunted as “critical study of the Bible” is a laborious and scholarly investigation of supposed fly-specks and an entire neglect of the countless glories of the book. 6. The sixth thing to be said about the difficulties in the Bible is that the difficulties in the Bible have far more weight with superficial readers of it than with profound students. Take a man who is totally ignorant of the real contents and meaning of the Bible and devotes his whole strength to discovering apparent inconsistencies in it, to such superficial students of the Bible these difficulties seem of immense importance; but to the one who has learned to meditate on the Word of God day and night they have scarce[71] any weight at all. That mighty man of God, George Müller, who had carefully studied the Bible from beginning to end more than a hundred times, was not disturbed by any difficulties he encountered. But to the one who is reading it through carefully for the first or second time there are many things that perplex and stagger. 7. The seventh thing to be said about the difficulties in the Bible is that they rapidly disappear upon careful and prayerful study. How many things there are in the Bible that once puzzled us and staggered us that have been perfectly cleared up, and no longer present any difficulty at all! Is it not reasonable to suppose that the difficulties that still remain will also disappear upon further study? How shall we deal with the difficulties which we do find in the Bible? 1. First of all, honestly. Whenever you find a difficulty in the Bible, frankly acknowledge it. If you cannot give a good honest explanation, do not attempt as yet to give any at all. 2. Humbly. Recognize the limitations of your own mind and knowledge, and do not imagine there is no solution just because you have found none. There is in all probability a very simple solution. You will find it some day, though at present you can find no solution at all. [72] 3. Determinedly. Make up your mind that you will find the solution if you can by any amount of study and hard thinking. The difficulties in the Bible are your heavenly Father’s challenge to you to set your brains to work. 4. Fearlessly. Do not be frightened when you find a difficulty, no matter how unanswerable it appears upon first glance. Thousands have found such before you. They were seen hundreds of years ago and still the Old Book stands. You are not likely to discover any difficulty that was not discovered and probably settled long before you were born, though you do not know just where to lay your hand upon the solution. The Bible which has stood eighteen centuries of rigid examination and incessant and awful assault, is not going under before any discoveries that you make or any attacks of modern infidels. All modern infidel attacks upon the Bible are simply a revamping of old objections that have been disposed of a hundred times in the past. These old objections will prove no more effective in their new clothes than they did in the cast-off garments of the past. 5. Patiently. Do not be discouraged because you do not solve every problem in a day. If some difficulty defies your best effort, lay it aside for awhile. Very likely when you come back to it, it will have disappeared and you will wonder[73] how you were ever perplexed by it. The writer often has to smile to-day when he thinks how sorely he was perplexed in the past over questions which are now as clear as day. 6. Scripturally. If you find a difficulty in one part of the Bible, look for other Scripture to throw light upon it and dissolve it. Nothing explains Scripture like Scripture. Never let apparently obscure passages of Scripture darken the light that comes from clear passages, rather let the light that comes from the clear passage illuminate the darkness that seems to surround the obscure passage. 7. Prayerfully. It is wonderful how difficulties dissolve when one looks at them on his knees. One great reason why some modern scholars have learned to be destructive critics is because they have forgotten how to pray.

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[74]

IX PRAYER

The one who would succeed in the Christian life must lead a life of prayer. Very much of the failure in Christian living to-day, and in Christian work, results from neglect of prayer. Very few Christians spend as much time in prayer as they ought. The Apostle James told believers in his day that the secret of the poverty and powerlessness of their lives and service was neglect of prayer. “Ye have not,” says God through the Apostle James, “because ye ask not.” So it is to-day. Why is it, many a Christian is asking, that I make such poor headway in my Christian life? Why do I have so little victory over sin? Why do I accomplish so little by my effort? and God answers, “You have not because you ask not.” It is easy enough to lead a life of prayer if one only sets about it. Set apart some time each day for prayer. The rule of David and of Daniel is a good one; three times a day. “Evening and morning and at noon,” says David, “will I pray and cry aloud and He shall hear my voice” (Ps. 55: 17). Of Daniel we read, “Now when[75] Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house; and his windows being open in his chamber towards Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God as he did aforetime” (Dan. 6: 10). Of course, one can pray while walking the street, or riding in the car, or sitting at his desk, and one should learn to lift his heart to God right in the busiest moments of his life, but we need set times of prayer, times when we go alone with God, shut to the door and talk to our Father in the secret place (Matt. 6: 6). God is in the secret place and will meet with us there and listen to our petitions. Prayer is a wonderful privilege. It is an audience with the King. It is talking to our Father. How strange it is that people should ask the question, “How much time ought I to spend in prayer?” When a subject is summoned to an audience with his king, he never asks, “How much time must I spend with the king?” His question is rather, “How much time will the king give me?” And with any true child of God who realizes what prayer really is, that it is an audience with the King of Kings, the question will never be, “How much time must I spend in prayer,” but “How much time may I spend in prayer with a due regard to other duties and privileges?” [76] Begin the day with thanksgiving and prayer. Thanksgiving for the definite mercies of the past, prayer for the definite needs of the present day. Think of the temptations that you are likely to meet during the day; ask God to show you the temptations that you are likely to meet and get from God strength for victory over these temptations before the temptations come. The reason why many fail in the battle is because they wait until the hour of battle. The reason why others succeed is because they have gained their victory on their knees long before the battle came. Jesus conquered in the awful battles of Pilate’s judgment hall and of the cross because He had the night before in prayer anticipated the battle and gained the victory before the struggle really came. He had told His disciples to do the same. He had bidden them “Pray that ye enter not into temptation” (Luke 22: 40), but they had slept when they ought to have prayed, and when the hour of temptation came they fell. Anticipate your battles, fight them on your knees before temptation comes and you will always have victory. At the very outset of the day, get counsel and strength from God Himself for the duties of the day. Never let the rush of business crowd out prayer. The more work that any day has to do, the more time must be spent in prayer in [77]preparation for that work. You will not lose time by it, you will save time by it. Prayer is the greatest time saver known to man. The more the work crowds you the more time take for prayer. Stop in the midst of the bustle and hurry and temptation of the day for thanksgiving and prayer. A few minutes spent alone with God at midday will go far to keep you calm in the midst of the worries and anxieties of modern life. Close the day with thanksgiving and prayer. Review all the blessings of the day and thank God in detail for them. Nothing goes farther to increase faith in God and in His Word than a calm review at the close of each day of what God has done for you that day. Nothing goes further towards bringing new and larger blessings from God than intelligent thanksgiving for blessings already granted. The last thing you do each day ask God to show you if there has been anything in the day that has been displeasing in His sight. Then wait quietly before God and give God an opportunity to speak to you. Listen. Do not be in a hurry. If God shows you anything in the day that has been displeasing in His sight, confess it fully and frankly as to a holy and loving Father. Believe that God forgives it all, for He says He does (1 John 1: 9). Thus at the close of each[78] day all your accounts with God will be straightened out. You can lie down and sleep in the glad consciousness that there is not a cloud between you and God. You can arise the next day to begin life anew with a clean balance sheet. Do this and you can never backslide for more than twenty-four hours. Indeed, you will not backslide at all. It is very hard to straighten out accounts in business that have been allowed to get crooked through a prolonged period. No bank ever closes its business day until its balance is found to be absolutely correct. And no Christian should close a single day until his accounts with God for that day have been perfectly adjusted alone with Him. There should be special prayer in special temptation—that is when we see the temptation approaching. If you possibly can, get at once alone somewhere with God and fight your battle out. Keep looking to God. “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5: 17). It is not needful to be on your knees all the time but the heart should be on its knees all the time. We should be often on our knees or on our faces literally. This is a joyous life, free from worry and care. “In nothing be anxious; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be made known unto God, and the peace of God which passeth all understanding[79] shall guard your hearts and thoughts in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4: 6, 7, r. v.). There are three things for which one who would succeed in the Christian life must especially pray. 1. For wisdom. “If any of you lack wisdom (and we all do) let him ask of God” (James 1: 5). 2. For strength. “For they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength” (Is. 40: 31). 3. For the Holy Spirit. “Your heavenly Father shall give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him” (Luke 11: 13). Even if you have received the Holy Spirit, you should constantly pray for a new filling with the Holy Spirit and definitely expect to receive it. We need a new filling with the Spirit for every new emergency of Christian life and Christian service. The Apostle Peter was baptized and filled with the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2: 1-4) but he was filled anew in Acts 4: 8 and Acts 4: 31. There are many Christians in the world who once had a very definite baptism with the Holy Spirit and had great joy and were wonderfully used, but who have tried to go ever since in the power of that baptism received years ago, and to-day their lives are comparatively joyless and powerless. We need constantly to get new supplies of oil for our lamps. We get these new supplies of oil by asking for them. [80] It is not enough that we have our times of secret prayer to God alone with Him, we also need fellowship with others in prayer. If they have a prayer-meeting in your church attend it regularly. Attend it for your own sake; attend it for the sake of the church. If it is a prayer-meeting only in name and not in fact, use your influence quietly and constantly (not obtrusively) to make it a real prayer-meeting. Keep the prayer-meeting night sacredly for that purpose. Refuse all social engagements for that night. A major-general in the United States army once took command of the forces in a new district. A reception was arranged for him for a certain night in the week. When he was informed of this public reception he replied that that was prayer-meeting night and everything else had to give way for prayer-meeting, that he could not attend the reception on that night. That general had proved himself a man that can be depended upon. The Church of Christ in America owes more to him than to almost any other officer in the American army. Ministers learn to depend upon their prayer-meeting members. The prayer-meeting is the most important meeting in the church. If your church has no prayer-meeting, use your influence to have one. It does not take many members to make a good[81] prayer-meeting. You can start with two but work for many. It is well to have a little company of Christian friends with whom you are in real sympathy and with whom you meet regularly every week simply for prayer. There has been nothing of more importance in the development of my own spiritual life of recent years than a little prayer-meeting of less than a dozen friends who have met every Saturday night for years. We met and together we waited upon God. If my life has been of any use to the Master, I attribute it largely to that prayer-meeting. Happy is the young Christian that has a little band of friends like that that meet together regularly for prayer.[2]

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[82]

X WORKING FOR CHRIST

One of the important conditions of growth and strength in the Christian life is work. No man can keep up his physical strength without exercise and no man can keep up his spiritual strength without spiritual exercise, i. e., without working for his Master. The working Christian is the happy Christian. The working Christian is the strong Christian. Some Christians never backslide because they are too busy about their Master’s business to backslide. Many professed Christians do backslide because they are too idle to do anything but backslide. Jesus said to the first disciples, “Follow Me and I will make you fishers of men” (Matt. 4: 19). Any one who is not a fisher of men is not following Christ. Bearing fruit in bringing others to the Saviour is the purpose for which Jesus has chosen us and is one of the most important conditions of power in prayer. Jesus says in John 15: 16, “Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you and ordained you that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in My[83] name He may give it you.” These words of Jesus are very plain. They tell us that the one who is bearing fruit is the one who can pray in the name of Christ and get what he asks in that name. In the same chapter Jesus tells us that bearing fruit in His strength is the condition of fullness of joy. He says, “These things have I spoken unto you (that is, the things about abiding in Him and bearing fruit in His strength) that My joy might remain in you and that your joy might be full” (John 15: 11). Experience abundantly proves the truth of these words of our Master. Those who are full of activity in winning others to Christ are those who are full of joy in Christ Himself. If you wish to be a happy Christian; if you wish to be a strong Christian, if you wish to be a Christian who is mighty in prayer, begin at once to work for the Master and never let a day pass without doing some definite work for Him. But how can a young Christian work for Him? How can a young Christian bear fruit? The answer is very simple and very easy to follow. You can bear fruit for your Master by going to others and telling them what your Saviour has done for you, and by urging them to accept this same Saviour and showing them how to do it. There is no other work in the world that is so easy to do, so joyous, and so abundant in its[84] fruitfulness, as personal hand to hand work. The youngest Christian can do personal work. Of course, he cannot do it so well as he will do it later, after he has had more practice. But the way to learn how to do it is by doing it. I have known thousands of Christians all around the world who have begun to work for Christ, and to bring others to Christ, the very day that they were converted. How often young men and young women, yes, and old men and old women too, have come to me and said, “I accepted Jesus Christ last night as my Saviour, my Lord and my King, and to-night I have led a friend to Christ.” Then the next day they would come and tell me of some one else they had led to Christ. When we were in Sheffield, a young man working in a warehouse accepted Christ. Before the month’s mission in Sheffield was over he had led thirty others to Christ, many of them in the same warehouse where he himself worked. This is but one instance among many. There are many books that tell how to do personal work.[3] But one does not need to wait until they have read some book on the subject before they begin. One of the commonest and greatest mistakes that[85] is made is that of frittering one’s life away in getting ready to get ready to get ready. Some never do get ready. The way to get ready is to begin at once. Make up your mind that you will speak about accepting Christ to at least one person every day. Early in his Christian life Mr. Moody made this resolution that he would never let a day pass over his head without speaking to at least one person about Christ. One night he was returning late from his work. As he got near home it occurred to him that he had not spoken to any one that day. He said to himself, “It is too late now. I will not get an opportunity. Here will be one day gone without my speaking to any one about Christ.” But a little ways ahead of him he saw a man standing under a lamp-post. He said, “Here is my last opportunity.” The man was a stranger to him, though he knew who Mr. Moody was. Mr. Moody hurried up to him and asked him, “Are you a Christian?” The man replied, “That is none of your business. If you were not a sort of a preacher I would knock you into the gutter.” But Mr. Moody spoke a few faithful words to him and passed on. The next day this man called on one of Mr. Moody’s business friends in Chicago in great indignation. He said, “That man Moody of yours over on the Northside is doing more harm than he is good. He has zeal[86] without knowledge. He came up to me last night, a perfect stranger, and asked me if I was a Christian. He insulted me. I told him if he had not been a sort of preacher I would have knocked him into the gutter.” Mr. Moody’s friend called him in and said to him, “Moody, you are doing more harm than good. You have zeal without knowledge. You insulted a friend of mine on the street last night.” Mr. Moody went out somewhat crestfallen, feeling that perhaps he was doing more harm than good, that perhaps he did have zeal without knowledge. But some weeks after, late at night, there was a great pounding on his door. Mr. Moody got out of bed and rushed to the door supposing that the house was on fire. That same man stood at the door. He said, “Mr. Moody, I have not had a night’s rest since you spoke to me that night under the lamp-post and I have come around for you to tell me what to do to be saved.” Mr. Moody had the joy that night of leading that man to Christ. It is better to have zeal without knowledge than to have knowledge without zeal, but it is better yet to have zeal with knowledge, and any one may have this. The way to get knowledge is by experience, and the way to get experience is by doing the work. The man who is so afraid of making blunders that he never does anything, never learns anything.[87] The man who goes ahead and does his best and is willing to risk the blunders, is the man who learns to avoid the blunders in the future. Some of the most gifted men I have ever known have never really accomplished anything, they were so fearful of making blunders. Some of the most useful men I have ever known were men who at the outset were the least promising, but who had a real love for souls and went on, at first in a blundering way, but they blundered on until they learned by experience to do things well. Do not be discouraged by your blunders. Pitch in and keep pegging away. Every honest mistake is but a stepping-stone to future success. Try every day to lead some one else to Christ. Of course, you will not succeed every day, but the work will do you good any way, and years after you will often find that where you thought you have made the greatest blunders, you have accomplished the best results. The man who gets angriest at you, will often turn out in the end the man who is most grateful to you. Be patient and hope on. Never be discouraged. Make a prayer list. Go alone with God. Write down at the top of a sheet of paper, “God helping me, I promise to pray daily and to work persistently for the conversion of the following persons.” Then kneel down and ask[88] God to show you who to put on that list. Do not make the list so long that your prayer and work become mechanical and superficial. After you have made the list keep your covenant, really pray for them every day. Watch for opportunities to speak to them—improve these opportunities. You may have to watch long for your opportunities with some of them, and you may have to speak often, but never give up. I prayed about fifteen years for one man, one of the most discouraging men I ever met, but I saw that man converted at last, and I saw him a preacher of the gospel, and many others were converted through his preaching, and now he is in the Glory. Learn to use tracts. Get a few good tracts that are fitted to meet the needs of different kinds of people. Then hand these tracts out to the people whose needs they are adapted to meet. Follow your tracts up with prayer and with personal effort. Go to your pastor and ask him if there is some work he would like to have you do for him in the church. Be a person that your pastor can depend upon. We live in a day in which there are many kinds of work going on outside the church, and many of these kinds of work are good and you should take part in them as you are able, but never forget that your first duty is[89] to the church of which you are a member. Be a person that your pastor can count on. It may be that your pastor may not want to use you, but at least give him the chance of refusing you. If he does refuse you, don’t be discouraged, but find work somewhere else. There is plenty to do and few to do it. It is as true to-day as it was in the days of our Saviour, “The harvest truly is plenteous but the labourers are few” (Matt. 9: 37), “Pray therefore the Lord of the harvest that He will send forth labourers into His harvest,” and pray that He will send you (Matt. 9: 38). The right kind of men are needed in the ministry. The right kind of men and women are needed for foreign mission work, but you may not be the right kind of a man or woman for foreign missionary work, but none the less there is work for you to do just as important in its place as the work of the minister or the missionary is. See that you fill your place and fill it well.[4]

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XI FOREIGN MISSIONS

In order to have the largest success in the Christian life one must be interested in foreign missions. The last command of our Lord before leaving this earth was, “Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and lo, I am with you alway even unto the end of the world” (Matt. 28: 19, 20, r. v.). Here is a command and a promise. It is one of the sweetest promises in the Bible. But the enjoyment of the promise is conditioned upon obedience to the command. Our Lord commands every one of His disciples to go and “make disciples” of all the nations. This command was not given to the apostles alone, but to every member of Christ’s church in all ages. If we go, then Christ will be with us even unto the end of the age; but, if we do not go, we have no right to count upon His companionship. Are you going? How can we go? There are three ways in which we can go, and in at least two of these ways we must go if[91] we are to enjoy the wonderful privilege of the personal companionship of Jesus Christ every day unto the end of the age. 1. First, many of us can go in our own persons. Many of us ought to go. God does not call every one of us to go as foreign missionaries, but He does call many of us to go who are not responding to the call. Every Christian should offer himself for the foreign field and leave the responsibility of choosing him or refusing him to the all-wise One, God Himself. No Christian has a right to stay at home until he has gone and offered himself definitely to God for the foreign field. If you have not done it before, do it to-day. Go alone with God and say, “Heavenly Father, here I am, Thy property, purchased by the precious blood of Christ. I belong to Thee. If Thou dost wish me in the foreign field, make it clear to me and I will go.” Then keep watching for the leading of God. God’s leading is clear leading. He is light and in Him is no darkness at all (1 John 1: 5). If you are really willing to be led, He will make it clear as day. Until He does make it clear as day, you need have no morbid anxiety that perhaps you are staying at home when you ought to go to the foreign field. If He wants you, He will make it clear as day in His own way and time. If He does make it clear, then prepare to go step by[92] step as He leads you. And when His hour comes, go, no matter what it costs. If He does not make it clear that you ought to go in your own person, stay at home and do your duty at home and go in the other ways that will now be told. 2. We all can go, and all ought to go to the foreign field by our gifts. There are many who would like to go to the foreign field in their own person, but whom God providentially prevents, but who are still going in the missionaries they support or help to support. It is possible for you to preach the Gospel in the remotest corners of the earth by supporting or helping to support a foreign missionary or a native worker in that place. Many who read this book are able financially to support a foreign missionary out of their own pocket. If you are able to do it, do it. If you are not able to support a foreign missionary, you may be able to support a native helper—do it. You may be able to support one missionary in Japan and another in China, and another in India and another in Africa and another somewhere else—do it. Oh! the joy of preaching the Gospel in lands that we shall never see with our own eyes. How few in the church of Christ to-day realize their privilege of preaching the Gospel and saving men and women and children in distant lands by sending substitute missionaries to[93] them, that is, by sending some one that goes for you where you cannot go yourself. They could not go but for your gifts by which they are supported and you could not go but for them, by their going in your place. You may be able to give but very little to foreign missions, but every little counts. Many insignificant streams together make a mighty river. If you cannot be a river, at least be a stream. Learn to give largely. The large giver is the happy Christian. “The liberal soul shall be made fat” (Prov. 11: 25). “He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly, and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully,” and “God is able to make all grace abound towards you, that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things may abound to every good work” (2 Cor. 9: 8, 9). Success and growth in the Christian life depend upon few things more than upon liberal giving. The stingy Christian cannot be a growing Christian. It is wonderful how a Christian man begins to grow when he begins to give. Power in prayer depends on liberality in giving. One of the most wonderful statements about prayer and its answers is 1 John 3: 22. John says there that, whatsoever he asked of God he received; and he tells us why, because he on his part, kept God’s commandments and did those things which were pleasing in His sight, and the[94] immediate context shows that the special commandments he was keeping were the commandments about giving. He tells us in the twenty-first verse that when our heart condemns us not in the matter of giving then have we confidence in our prayers to God. God’s answers to our prayers come in through the same door that our gifts go out to others, and some of us open the door such a little ways by our small giving that God is not able to pass in to us any large answers to our prayers. One of the most remarkable promises in the Bible is that found in Phil. 4: 19, “My God shall supply (r. v., fulfill, that is fill full) all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus,” but this promise was made to believers who had distinguished themselves above their fellows by the largeness and the frequency of their giving (Cf. vs. 14-18). Of course, we should not confine our giving to foreign missions. We should give to the work of the home church: we should give to rescue work in our large cities. We should do good to all men as we have opportunity, especially to those who are of the household of faith (Gal. 6: 10). But foreign missions should have a large part in our gifts. Give systematically. Set aside for Christ a fixed proportion of all the money or goods you get. Be exact and honest about it. Don’t use that part of your income for yourself under any[95] circumstances. The Christian is not under law, and there is no law binding on the Christian that he should give a tenth of his income, but as a matter of free choice and glad gratitude a tenth is a good proportion to begin with. Don’t let it be less than a tenth. God required that of the Jews and the Christian ought not to be more selfish than a Jew. After you have given your tenth, you will soon learn the joy of giving free will offerings in addition to the tenth. 3. But there is another way in which we can go to the foreign field, that is by our prayers. We can all go in this way. Any hour of the day or night you can reach any corner of the earth by your prayers. I go to Japan, to China and to Australia and to Tasmania and to New Zealand and to India and to Africa and to other parts of the earth every day, by my prayers. And prayer really brings things to pass where you go. Do not make prayer an excuse for not going in your own person if God wishes you, and do not make prayer an excuse for small giving. There is no power in that kind of prayer. If you are ready to go yourself if God wishes you, and if you are actually going by your gifts as God gives you ability, then you can go effectually by your prayers also. The greatest need of the work of Jesus Christ to-day is prayer. The greatest need of foreign missions to-day is prayer. Foreign[96] missions are a success, but they are no such success as they ought to be and might be. They are no such success as they would be if Christians at home, as well as abroad, were living up to the full measure of their opportunity in prayer. Be definite in your prayers for foreign missions. Pray first of all that God will send forth labourers into His harvest, the right sort of labourers. There are many men and women in the foreign field that ought never to have gone there. There was not enough prayer about it. More foreign missionaries are greatly needed, but only more of the right kind of missionaries. Pray to God daily and believingly to send forth labourers into the harvest. Pray for the labourers who are already on the field. No class of men and women need our prayers more than foreign missionaries. No class of men and women are objects of more bitter hatred from Satan than they. Satan delights to attack the reputation and the character of the brave men and women who have gone to the front in the battle for Christ and the Truth. No persons are subjected to so numerous and to such subtle and awful temptations as foreign missionaries. We owe it to them to support them by our prayers. Do not merely pray for foreign missionaries in general. Have a few special missionaries of whose work you[97] make a study that you may pray intelligently for them. Pray for the native converts. We Christians at home think we have difficulties and trials and temptations and persecutions, but the burdens that we have to bear are nothing to what the converts in heathen lands have to bear. The obstacles oftentimes are enormous and discouragements crushing. Christ alone can make them stand, but He works in answer to the prayers of His people. Pray often, pray earnestly, pray intensely and pray believingly for native converts. How wonderfully God has answered prayer for native converts we are beginning to learn from missionary literature. It is well to be definite here again and to have some definite field about whose needs you keep yourself informed and pray for the converts of that field. Do not have so many that you become confused and mechanical. Pray for conversions in the foreign field. Pray for revivals in definite fields. The last few years have been years of special prayer for special revival in foreign fields and from every corner of the earth tidings have come of how amazingly God is answering these prayers. But the great things that God is beginning to do are small indeed in comparison with what He will do if there is more prayer.

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XII COMPANIONS

Our companions have a great deal to do with determining our character. The companionships that we form create an intellectual, moral and spiritual atmosphere that we are constantly breathing, and our spiritual health is helped or hindered by it. Every young Christian should have a few wisely chosen friends, intimate friends, with whom he can talk freely. Search out for yourself a few persons of about your own age with whom you can associate intimately. Be sure that they are spiritual persons in the best sense. Persons who love to study the Bible, persons who love to converse on spiritual themes, persons who know how to pray and do pray, persons who are really working to bring others to Christ. Do not be at all uneasy about the fact that some Christian people are more agreeable to you than others. God has made us in that way. Some are attracted to some persons and some to others, and it proves nothing against the others and nothing against yourself that you are not attracted to them as you are to some people.[99] Cultivate the friendship of those whose friendship you find helpful to your own spiritual life. On the other hand avoid the companionships that you find spiritually and morally hurtful. Of course, we are not to withdraw ourselves utterly from unconverted people, or even of very bad people. We are to cultivate oftentimes the acquaintance of unspiritual people, and even of very bad people, in order that we may win them for Christ; but we must always be on our guard in such companionships to bear always in mind to seek to lift them up or else they will be sure to drag us down. If you find in spite of all your best effort that any companionship is doing harm to your own spiritual life, then give it up. Some people are surrounded with such an atmosphere of unbelief or cynicism or censoriousness or impurity or greed or some other evil thing that it is impossible to associate with them to any large extent without being contaminated. In such a case, the path of wisdom is plain; stop associating with them to any large extent. Stop associating with them at all except in so far as there is some prospect of helping them. But there are other companionships that mould our lives besides the companionships of living persons. The books that we read are our companions. They exert a tremendous influence for good or for evil. There is nothing that[100] will help us more than a good book, and there is nothing that will hurt us more than a bad book. Among the most helpful books are the biographies of good men. Read again and again the lives of such good and truly great men as Wesley and Finney and Moody. We live in a day in which good biographies abound. Read them. Well written histories are good companions. No study is more practical and instructive than the study of history, and it is not only instructive but spiritually helpful if we only watch to see the hand of God in history, to see the inevitable triumph of right and the inevitable punishment of wrong in individuals and in nations. Some few books of fiction are helpful, but here one needs to be very much on his guard. A large portion of modern fiction is positively pernicious morally. Books of fiction that are not positively bad, at least give false views of life and unfit one for life as it really is. Much reading of fiction is mentally injurious. The inveterate novel reader ruins his powers of close and clear thinking. Fiction is so fascinating that it always tends to drive out other reading that is more helpful mentally and morally. We should be on our guard in even reading good literature, that the good does not crowd out the best; that is that the best of man’s literature does not crowd[101] out the very best of all—God’s Book. God’s Book, the Bible, must always have the first place. Then there is another kind of companionship that has a tremendous influence over our lives, that is the companionship of pictures. The pictures that we see every day of our lives, and the pictures that we see only occasionally, have a tremendous power in the shaping of our lives. A mother had two dearly loved sons. It was her dream and ambition that these sons should enter the ministry, but both of them went to sea. She could not understand it until a friend one day called her attention to the picture of a magnificent ship in full sail careening through the ocean that hung above the mantel in the dining-room. Every day of their lives her boys had gazed upon that picture, had been thrilled by it, and an unconquerable love for the sea and longing for it had thus been created and this had determined their lives. How many a picture that is a masterpiece of art, but in which there is an evil suggestion, has sent some young men on the road to ruin. Many of our art collections are so polluted with improper pictures that it is not safe for a young man or a young woman to visit them. The evil thought that they suggest may be but for a moment, and yet Satan will know how to bring that picture back again and again and work injury by it. Don’t look for a[102] moment at any picture, no matter how praised by art critics, that taints your imagination with evil suggestion. Avoid as you would poison every painting, or engraving, every etching, every photograph that leaves a spot of impurity on your mind, but feast your soul upon the pictures that make you holier, kinder, more sympathetic and more tender.

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XIII AMUSEMENTS

Young people need recreation. Our Saviour does not frown upon wholesome recreation. He was interested in the games of the children when He was here upon earth. He watched the children at their play (Matt. 12: 16-19), and He watches the children at their play to-day, and delights in their play when it is wholesome and elevating. In the stress and strain of modern life older people too need recreation if they are to do their very best work. But there are recreations that are wholesome, and there are amusements that are pernicious. It is impossible to take up amusements one by one, and it is unnecessary. A few principles can be laid down. 1. Do not indulge in any form of amusement about whose propriety you have any doubts. Whenever you are in doubt, always give God the benefit of the doubt. There are plenty of recreations about which there can be no question. “He that doubteth is condemned: for whatsoever is not of faith is sin” (Rom. 14: 32, r. v.). Many a young Christian will say, “I am not sure that[104] this amusement is wrong.” Are you sure it is right? If not, leave it alone. 2. Do not indulge in any amusement that you cannot engage in to the glory of God. “Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10: 31). Whenever you are in doubt as to whether you should engage in any amusement ask yourself, Can I do this at this time to the glory of God? 3. Do not engage in any amusement that will hurt your influence with anybody. There are amusements, which perhaps are all right in themselves, but which we cannot engage in without losing our influence with some one. Now every true Christian wishes his life to tell with everybody to the utmost. There is so much to be done and so few to do it that every Christian desires every last ounce of power for good that he can have with everybody, and, if any amusement will injure your influence for good with any one, the price is too great. Do not engage in it. A Christian young lady had a great desire to lead others to Christ. She made up her mind that she would speak to a young friend of hers about coming to Christ, and while resting between the figures of a dance she said to the young man who was her companion in the dance, “George, are you a Christian?” “No,” he said, “I am not, are you?” “Yes,” she[105] replied, “I am.” “Then,” he said, “what are you doing here?” Whether justly or unjustly the world discounts the professions of those Christians who indulge in certain forms of the world’s own amusements. We cannot afford to have our professions thus discounted. 4. Do not engage in any amusement that you cannot make a matter of prayer, that you cannot ask God’s blessing upon. Pray before your play just as much as you would pray before your work. 5. Do not go to any place of amusement where you cannot take Christ with you, and where you do not think Christ would feel at home. Christ went to places of mirth when He was here upon earth. He went to the marriage feast in Cana (John 2), and contributed to the joy of the occasion, but there are many modern places of amusement where Christ would not be at home. Would the atmosphere of the modern stage be congenial to that holy One whom we call “Lord”? If it would not, don’t you go. 6. Don’t engage in any amusement that you would not like to be found enjoying if the Lord should come. He may come at any moment. Blessed is that one whom when He cometh, He shall find watching and ready, and glad to open to Him immediately (Luke 12: 36, 40). I have a friend who was one day walking down the[106] street thinking upon the return of his Lord. As he thought he was smoking a cigar. The thought came to him, “Would you like to meet Christ now with that cigar in your mouth?” He answered honestly, “No, I would not.” He threw that cigar away and never lighted another. 7. Do not engage in any amusement, no matter how harmless it would be for yourself, that might harm some one else. Take for example card playing. It is probable that thousands have played cards moderately all their lives and never suffered any direct moral injury from it, but every one who has studied the matter knows that cards are the gamblers’ chosen tools. He also knows that most, if not all, gamblers took their first lessons in card playing at the quiet family card table. He knows that if a young man goes out into the world knowing how to play cards and indulging at all in this amusement that before long he is going to be put into a place where he is going to be asked to play cards for money, and if he does not consent he will get into serious trouble. Card playing is a dangerous amusement for the average young man. It is pretty sure to lead to gambling on a larger or a smaller scale, and one of the most crying social evils of our time is the evil of gambling. Some young man may be encouraged to play cards by your playing who will afterwards become a gambler[107] and part of the responsibility will lie at your door. If I could repeat all the stories that have come to me from broken-hearted men whose lives have been shipwrecked at the gaming table; if I could tell of all the broken-hearted mothers who have come to me, some of them in high position, whose sons have committed suicide at Monte Carlo and other places, ruined by the cards, I think that all thoughtful and true Christians would give them up forever. For most of us the recreations that are most helpful are those that demand a considerable outlay of physical energy. Recreations that take us into the open air, recreations that leave us refreshed in body and invigorated in mind. Physical exercises of the strenuous kind, but not over-exercise, is one of the great safeguards of the moral conduct of boys and young men. There is very little recreation in watching others play the most vigorous game of football but there is real health for the body and for the soul in a due amount of physical exercise for yourself.

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XIV PERSECUTION

One of the discouragements that meets every true Christian before he has gone very far in the Christian life is persecution. God tells us in His Word that “All that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution” (2 Tim. 3: 12). Sooner or later every one who surrenders absolutely to God and seeks to follow Jesus Christ in everything will find that this verse is true. We live in a God-hating world and in a compromising age. The world’s hatred of God in our day is veiled. It does not express itself in our land in the same way that it expressed itself in Palestine in the days of Jesus Christ, but the world hates God to-day as much as it ever did, and it hates the one who is loyal to Christ. It may not imprison him or kill him but in some way it will persecute him. Persecution is inevitable for a loyal follower of Jesus Christ. Many a young Christian when he meets with persecution is surprised and discouraged and not a few fall away. Many a one seems to run well for a few days but like those of whom Jesus spoke, “They have no root in themselves, but endure[109] for a while; then when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the Word straightway they stumble” (Mark 4: 17). I have seen many an apparently promising Christian life brought to an end in this way. But if persecution is rightly received, it is no longer a hindrance to the Christian life but a help to it. Do not be discouraged when you are persecuted. No matter how fierce and hard the persecution may be, be thankful for it. Jesus says, “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for My sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you” (Matt. 5: 10-12). It is a great privilege to be persecuted for Christ and for the truth. Peter found this out and wrote to the Christians of his day: “Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you. But rejoice, inasmuch, as ye are partakers of Christ’s suffering; that, when His glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy. If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye; for the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you: on their part He[110] is evil spoken of, but on your part He is glorified” (1 Peter 4: 12-14). Be very sure that the persecution is really for Christ’s sake and not because of some eccentricity of your own, or because of your stubbornness. There are many who bring upon themselves the displeasure of others because they are stubborn and cranky and then flatter themselves that they are being persecuted for Christ’s sake and for righteousness’ sake. Be considerate of the opinions of others and be considerate of the conduct of others. Be sure that you do not push your opinions upon others in an unwarrantable way, or make your conscience a rule of life for other people. But never yield a jot of principle. Stand for what you believe to be the truth. Do it in love, but do it at any cost. And if when you are standing for conviction and principle you are disliked for it and slandered for it and treated with all manner of unkindness because of it, do not be sad but rejoice. Do not speak evil of those who speak evil of you, “because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow His steps: who, when He was reviled, reviled not again, when He suffered, He threatened not; but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously” (1 Peter 2: 21, 23). At this point many a Christian makes a mistake. He stands loyally for the truth, but he receives[111] the persecution that comes for the truth with harshness, he grows bitter, he gets to condemning every one but himself. There is no blessing in bearing persecution in that way. Persecution should be borne meekly, lovingly, serenely. Don’t talk about your own persecutions. Rejoice in them. Thank God for them, and go on obeying God. And don’t forget to love and pray for them who persecute you (Matt. 5: 44). If at any time the persecution seems harder than you can bear, remember how abundant the reward is, “If we suffer, we shall also reign with Him. If we deny Him, He also will deny us” (2 Tim. 2: 12). Every one must enter into the kingdom of God through much tribulation (Acts 14: 22), but do not go back on that account. Remember always however fiercely the fire of persecution may burn, “That the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us” (Rom. 8: 18). Remember too that your light affliction is but for the moment, and that it worketh out for you “a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” (2 Cor. 4: 17). Keep looking, not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen, for the things which are seen are but for a time, but the things which are not seen are for eternity (2 Cor. 4: 18). When the[112] apostles were persecuted, even unto imprisonment and stripes, they departed from the presence of the council that had ordered their terrible punishment, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for the name of Jesus, and they continued daily in the temple and every house teaching and preaching Jesus Christ (Acts 5: 40-42). The time may come when you think that you are being persecuted more than others, but you do not know what others may have to endure. Even if it were true,—that you were being persecuted more than any one else, you ought not to complain but to humbly thank God that He has bestowed upon you such an honour. Keep your eyes fixed upon “Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him that endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your mind” (Heb. 12: 2, 3). I was once talking with an old coloured man who in the slave days had found his Saviour. The cruel master had him flogged again and again for his loyalty to Christ but he said to me, “I simply thought of my Saviour dying on the cross in my place, and I rejoiced to suffer persecution for Him.”

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XV GUIDANCE

I have met a great many who are trying to lead a Christian life who are much troubled over the question of guidance. They wish to do the will of God in all things, but what puzzles them is to tell what the will of God may be in every case. When any one starts out with the determination to obey God in everything and to be led by the Holy Spirit, Satan seeks to trouble him by perplexing him as to what the will of God is. Satan comes and suggests that something is the will of God that is probably not the will of God at all, and then when he does not do it, Satan says, “There you disobeyed God.” In this way, many a conscientious young Christian gets into a very morbid and unhappy state of mind, fearing that he has disobeyed God and has lost His favour. This is one of the most frequent devices of the devil to keep Christians from being cheerful. How may we know the will of God? First of all let me say that a true Christian life is not a life governed by a whole lot of rules about what one shall eat, and what one shall drink, and[114] what one shall do, and what one shall not do. A life governed by a lot of rules is a life of bondage. One is sure sooner or later to break some of these man-made rules and to get into condemnation. Paul tells us in Rom. 8: 15, “Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the spirit of adoption (placing us a son), whereby we cry, Abba, Father.” The true Christian life is the life of a trusting, glad, fear-free child; not led by rules, but led by the personal guidance of the Holy Spirit who dwells within us. “As many as are led by the Spirit of God these are sons of God” (Rom. 8: 14, r. v.). If you have received the Holy Spirit, He dwells within you and is ready to lead you at every turn of life. A life governed by a multitude of rules is a life of bondage and anxiety. A life surrendered to the control of the Holy Spirit is a life of joy and peace and freedom. There is no anxiety in such a life, there is no fear in the presence of God. We trust God and rejoice in His presence just as a true child trusts his earthly father and rejoices in his presence. If we make a mistake at any point, even if we disobey God, we go and tell Him all about it as trustfully as a child and know that He forgives us and that we are restored at once to His full favour (1 John 1: 9). But how can we tell the Holy Spirit’s guidance[115] that we may obey Him and thus have God’s favour at every turn of life? This question is answered in James 1: 5-7, r. v., “But if any of you lacketh wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all liberally and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him, but let him ask in faith, nothing doubting: for he that doubteth is like the surge of the sea driven by the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord.” This is very simple. It includes five points. (1) That you recognize your own ignorance and your own inability to guide your own life—that you lack wisdom. (2) The surrender of your will to God, and a real desire to be led by Him. (3) Definite prayer to Him for guidance. (4) Confident expectation that God will guide you. You “ask in faith, nothing doubting.” (5) That you follow step by step as He guides. God may only show you a step at a time. That is enough. All you need to know is the next step. It is here that many make a mistake. They wish God to show them the whole way before they take the first step. A university student once came to me over the question of guidance. He said, “I cannot find out the will of God. I have been praying but God does not show me His will.” This was in[116] the month of July. I said, “About what is it that you are seeking to know the will of God?” “About what I should do next summer.” I said, “Do you know what you ought to do to-morrow?” “Yes.” “Do you not know what you ought to do next autumn?” “Yes, finish my course. But what I want to know is what I ought to do when my university course is over.” He was soon led to see that all he needed to know for the present was what God had already shown him. That when he did that, God would show him the next step. Do not worry about what you ought to do next week. Do what God shows you you ought to do to-day. Next week will take care of itself. Indeed, to-morrow will take care of itself. Obey the Spirit of God for to-day. “Be not therefore anxious for the morrow; for the morrow will be anxious for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” (Matt. 6: 34, r. v.). It is enough to live a day at a time, if we do our very best for that day. God’s guidance is clear guidance, “God is light and in Him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1: 5). Do not be anxious over obscure leadings. Do not let your soul be ruffled by the thought, “Perhaps this obscure leading is what God wants me to do.” Obscure leadings are not divine leadings. God’s path is as clear as day. Satan’s[117] path is full of obscurity and uncertainty and anxiety and questioning. If there comes some leading of which you are not quite sure whether it is the will of God or not, simply go to your Heavenly Father and say, “Heavenly Father, I desire to know Thy will. I will do Thy will if Thou wilt make it clear. But Thou art light and in Thee is no darkness at all. If this is Thy will make it clear as day and I will do it.” Then wait quietly upon God and do not act until God makes it clear, but the moment it is made clear, act at once. The whole secret of guidance is an absolutely surrendered will, a will that is given up to God and ready to obey Him at any cost. Many of our uncertainties about God’s guidance are simply because we are not really willing to do what God is really guiding us to do. We are tempted to say, “I cannot find out what God’s will is,” when the real trouble is we have found out His will and it is something we do not wish to do and we are trying to make ourselves think that God wants us to do something else. All supposed leadings of God should be tested by the Word of God. The Bible is God’s revealed will. Any leading that contradicts the plain teaching of the Bible is certainly not the leading of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit does not contradict Himself. A man once came[118] to me and said that God was leading him to marry a certain woman. He said that she was a very devoted Christian woman and they had been greatly drawn towards one another and they felt that God was leading them to be married. But I said to the man, “You already have a wife.” “Yes,” he said, “but we have never lived happily and we have not lived together for years.” “But,” I replied, “that does not alter the case. God in His Word has told us distinctly the duty of the husband to the wife and how wrong it is in His sight for a husband to divorce his wife and marry another.” “Yes,” said the man, “but the Holy Spirit is leading us to one another.” I indignantly replied that “Whatever spirit is leading you to marry one another, it is certainly not the Holy Spirit but the spirit of the evil one. The Holy Spirit never leads any one to disobey the Word of God.” In seeking to know the guidance of the Spirit always search the Scriptures, study them prayerfully. Do not make a book of magic out of the Bible. Do not ask God to show you His will and then open your Bible at random and put your finger upon some text and take it out of its connection without any relation to its real meaning and decide the will of God in that way. This is an irreverent and improper use of Scripture.[119] You may open your Bible at just the right place to find right guidance, but if you do, it will not be by some fanciful interpretation of the passage you find. It will be by taking the passage in its context and interpreting it to mean just what it says as seen in its context. All sorts of mischief has arisen from using the Bible in this perverse way. I knew an earnest Christian woman once who was somewhat concerned about the predictions made by a false prophetess that Chicago was to be destroyed on a certain day. She opened her Bible at random. It opened to the twelfth chapter of Ezekiel, “Son of man, eat thy bread with quaking, and drink thy water with trembling and with carefulness.… And the cities that are inhabited shall be laid waste, and the land shall be desolate” (Ezek. 12: 18, 20). Now this seemed to exactly fit the case and the woman was considerably impressed, but if the verses had been studied in their connection, it would have been evident at once that God was not speaking about Chicago and that they were not applicable to Chicago. It was not an intelligent study of the Word of God and therefore led to a false conclusion. To sum up, lead a life not led by rules but by the personal guidance of the Holy Spirit. Surrender your will absolutely to God. Whenever you are in doubt as to His guidance, go to Him[120] and ask Him to show you His will, expect Him to do it, follow step by step as He leads. Test all the leadings by the plain and simple teachings of the Bible. Live free from anxiety and worry lest in some unguarded moment you have not done the right thing. After you have done what you think God led you to do, do not be always going back and wondering whether you did the right thing. You will get into a morbid state if you do. If you really wished to do God’s will and sought His guidance, and did what you thought He guided you to do, you may rest assured you did the right thing, no matter what the outcome has been. Satan is bound that we shall not be happy, cheerful Christians if he can prevent it, but God wishes us to be happy, cheerful, bright Christians every day and every hour. He does not wish us to brood but to rejoice (Phil. 4: 4). A most excellent Christian man came to me one Monday morning in great gloom over the failures of the work of the preceding day. He said to me, “I made wretched work of teaching my Sunday-school class yesterday.” I said, “Did you honestly seek wisdom from God before you went to your class?” He said, “I did.” I said, “Did you expect to receive it?” He said, “I did.” “Then,” I said, “in the face of God’s promise what right have you to doubt that God[121] did give you wisdom?” (James 1: 5-7). His gloom disappeared and he looked up with a smile and said, “I had no right to doubt.” Let us learn to trust God. Let us remember that if our wills are surrendered to Him He is ever more willing to guide us than we are to be guided. Let us trust that He does guide us at every step and even though what we do does not turn out as we expected, let us never brood over it but trust God. Let us walk in the light of simple trust in God. In this way we shall be glad and peaceful and strong and useful at every turn of life.

---

FOOTNOTES

[1]The author has given some of the proofs that the Bible is the Word of God in his book, “Talks to Men.” [2]If any reader desires more full and definite instruction on the subject of prayer he is referred to the author’s book, “How to Pray.” [3]The author has written a little book on this line named “How to Bring Men to Christ” that has proved helpful to many. [4]The author’s book, “How to Work for Christ,” is a large work describing at length many ways of working for our Master.

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Master's Indwelling, by Andrew Murray

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
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Title: The Master's Indwelling

Author: Andrew Murray

Release Date: July 8, 2004 [EBook #12854]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MASTER'S INDWELLING ***




Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Bob McKillip and PG Distributed
Proofreaders

[pg 1]

The MASTER’S INDWELLING

ANDREW MURRAY

1953

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[pg 3] The following papers were in substance delivered by the author in a series of addresses at the Northfield Conference of 1895, but later rewritten and revised by him for this permanent and authorized publication.

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[pg 5]

CONTENTS

1. CARNAL CHRISTIANS
2. THE SELF LIFE
3. WAITING ON GOD
4. ENTRANCE INTO REST
5. THE KINGDOM FIRST
6. CHRIST OUR LIFE
7. CHRIST’S HUMILITY OUR SALVATION
8. THE COMPLETE SURRENDER
9. DEAD WITH CHRIST
10. JOY IN THE HOLY GHOST
11. TRIUMPH OF FAITH
12. THE SOURCE OF POWER IN PRAYER
13. THAT GOD MAY BE ALL IN ALL

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[pg 7]

CARNAL CHRISTIANS.

I.

1 Corinthians 3: 1.—And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal.

The apostle here speaks of two stages of the Christian life, two types of Christians: “I could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.” They were Christians, in Christ, but instead of being spiritual Christians, they were carnal. “I have fed you with milk, and not with meat, for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet are ye able, for ye are yet carnal.” Here is that word a second time. “For whereas”—this is the proof—”there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men? For while one saith, I am of Paul, and another, I am of Apollos, are ye not carnal?” Four times the apostle uses that word carnal. In the wisdom which the Holy Ghost gives him, Paul feels:—I can not write to these Corinthian Christians unless I know their state, and unless I tell them of it. If I give spiritual [pg 8]food to men who are carnal Christians, I am doing them more harm than good, for they are not fit to take it. I cannot feed them with meat, I must feed them with milk. And so he tells them at the very outset of the epistle what he sees to be their state. In the two previous chapters he had spoken about his ministry being by the Holy Spirit; now he begins to tell them what must be the state of a people in order to accept spiritual truth, and he says: “I have not liberty to speak to you as I would, for you are carnal, and you cannot receive Spiritual truth.” That suggests to us the solemn thought, that in the Church of Christ there are two classes of Christians. Some have lived many years as believers, and yet always remain babes; others are spiritual men, because they have given themselves up to the power, the leading and to the entire rule of the Holy Ghost. If we are to obtain a blessing, we must first decide to which of these classes we belong. Are we, by the grace of God, in deep humility living a spiritual life, or are we living a carnal life? Then, let us first try to understand what is meant by the carnal state in which believers may be living. We notice from what we find in Corinthians, four marks of the carnal state. First: It is simply a condition of protracted infancy. You know what that means. Suppose a beautiful babe, six months old. It cannot speak, it cannot walk, but we do not [pg 9]trouble ourselves about that; it is natural, and ought to be so. But suppose a year later we find the child not grown at all, and three years later still no growth; we would at once say: “There must be some terrible disease;” and the baby that at six months old was the cause of joy to every one who saw him, has become to the mother and to all a source of anxiety and sorrow. There is something wrong; the child can not grow. It was quite right at six months old that it should eat nothing but milk; but years have passed by, and it remains in the same weakly state. Now this is just the condition of many believers. They are converted; they know what it is to have assurance and faith; they believe in pardon for sin; they begin to work for God; and yet, somehow, there is very little growth in spirituality, in the real heavenly life. We come into contact with them, and we feel at once there is something wanting; there is none of the beauty of holiness or of the power of God’s Spirit in them. This is the condition of the carnal Corinthians, expressed in what was said to the Hebrews: “You have had the Gospel so long that by this time you ought to be teachers, and yet you need that men should teach you the very rudiments of the oracles of God.” Is it not a sad thing to see a believer who has been converted five, ten, twenty years, and yet no growth, and no strength, and no joy of holiness?[pg 10] What are the marks of a little child? One is, a little child cannot help himself, but is always keeping others occupied to serve him. What a tyrant a baby in a house often is! The mother cannot go out, there must be a servant to nurse it; it needs to be cared for constantly. God made a man to care for others, but the baby was made to be cared for and to be helped. So there are Christians who always want help. Their pastor and their Christian friends must always be teaching and comforting them. They go to church, and to prayer-meetings, and to conventions, always wanting to be helped,—a sign of spiritual infancy. The other sign of an infant is this: he can do nothing to help his fellow-man. Every man is expected to contribute something to the welfare of society; every one has a place to fill and a work to do, but the babe can do nothing for the common weal. It is just so with Christians. How little some can do! They take a part in work, as it is called, but there is little of exercising spiritual power and carrying real blessing. Should we not each ask, “Have I outgrown my spiritual infancy?” Some must reply, “No, instead of having gone forward, I have gone backward, and the joy of conversion and the first love is gone.” Alas! They are babes in Christ; they are yet carnal. The second mark of the carnal state is this: [pg 11]that there is sin and failure continually. Paul says: “Whereas there is strife and division among you, and envying, are ye not carnal?” A man gives way to temper. He may be a minister, or a preacher of the Gospel, or a Sunday-school teacher, most earnest at the prayer-meeting, but yet strife or bitterness or envying is often shown by him. Alas! Alas! In Gal. 3:5 we are told that the works of the flesh are specially hatred and envy. How often among Christians, who have to work together, do we see divisions and bitterness! God have mercy upon them, that the fruit of the Spirit, which is love, is so frequently absent from His own people. You ask, “Why is it, that for twenty years I have been fighting with my temper, and can not conquer it?” It is because you have been fighting with the temper, and you have not been fighting with the root of the temper. You have not seen that it is all because you are in the carnal state, and not properly given up to the Spirit of God. It may be that you never were taught it; that you never saw it in God’s Word; that you never believed it. But there it is; the truth of God remains unchangeable. Jesus Christ can give us the victory over sin, and can keep us from actual transgression. I am not telling you that the root of sin will be eradicated, and that you will have no longer any natural tendency to sin; but when the Holy Spirit comes not only with His [pg 12]power for service as a gift, but when He comes in Divine grace to fill the heart, there is victory over sin; power not to fulfill the lusts of the flesh. And you see a mark of the carnal state not only in unlovingness, self-consciousness and bitterness, but in so many other sins. How much worldliness, how much ambition among men, how much seeking for the honor that comes from man—all the fruit of the carnal life—to be found in the midst of Christian activity! Let us remember that the carnal state is a state of continual sinning and failure, and God wants us not only to make confession of individual sins, but to come to the acknowledgment that they are the sign that we are not living a healthy life,—we are yet carnal. A third mark which will explain further what I have been saying, is that this carnal state may be found in existence in connection with great spiritual gifts. There is a difference between gifts and graces. The graces of the Spirit are humility and love, like the humility and love of Christ. The graces of the Spirit are to make a man free from self; the gifts of the Spirit are to fit a man for work. We see this illustrated among the Corinthians. In the first chapter Paul says, “I thank God that you are enriched unto all utterance, and all knowledge, and all wisdom.” In the 12th and 14th chapters we see that the gifts of prophecy and of working miracles were in great power [pg 13]among them; but the graces of the Spirit were noticeably absent. And this may be in our days as well as in the time of the Corinthians. I may be a minister of the Gospel; I may teach God’s Word beautifully; I may have influence, and gather a large congregation, and yet, alas! I may be a carnal man; a man who may be used by God, and may be a blessing to others, and yet the carnal life may still mark me. You all know the law that a thing is named according to what is its most prominent characteristic. Now, in these carnal Corinthians there was a little of God’s Spirit, but the flesh predominated; the Spirit had not the rule of their whole life. And the spiritual men are not called so because there is no flesh in them, but because the Spirit in them has obtained dominance, and when you meet them and have intercourse with them, you feel that the Spirit of God has sanctified them. Ah, let us beware lest the blessing God gives us in our work deceive us and lead us to think that because he has blessed us, we must be spiritual men. God may give us gifts that we use, and yet our lives may not be wholly in the power of the Holy Ghost. My last mark of the carnal state is that it makes a man unfit for receiving spiritual truths. That is what the apostle writes to the Corinthians: “I could not preach to you as unto spiritual; you are [pg 14]not fit for spiritual truth after being Christians so long; you can not yet bear it; I have to feed you with milk.” I am afraid that in the church of the nineteenth century we often make a terrible mistake. We have a congregation in which the majority are carnal men. We give these men spiritual teaching, and they admire it, understand it, and rejoice in such ministry; yet their lives are not practically affected. They work for Christ in a certain way, but we can scarce recognize the true sanctification of the Spirit; we dare not say they are spiritual men, full of the Holy Spirit. Now, let us recognize this with regard to ourselves. A man may become very earnest, may take in all the teaching he hears; he may be able to discern, for discernment is a gift; he may say, “That man helps me in this line, and that man in another direction, and a third man is remarkable for another gift;” yet, all the time, the carnal life may be living strongly in him, and when he gets into trouble with some friend, or Christian worker, or worldly man, the carnal root is bearing its terrible fruit, and the spiritual food has failed to enter his heart. Beware of that. Mark the Corinthians and learn of them. Paul did not say to them, “You can not bear the truth as I would speak it to you,” because they were ignorant or a stupid people. The Corinthians prided themselves on their wisdom, and sought it above everything, and [pg 15]Paul said: “I thank God that you are enriched in utterance, in knowledge, and in wisdom; nevertheless, you are yet carnal, your life is not holy; your life is not sanctified unto the humility of the life of the Lamb of God, you can not yet take in real spiritual truth.” We find the carnal state not only at Corinth, but throughout the Christian world to-day. Many Christians are asking, “What is the reason there is so much feebleness in the Church?” We can not ask this question too earnestly, and I trust that God Himself will so impress it upon our hearts that we shall say to Him, “It must be changed. Have mercy upon us.” But, ah! that prayer and that change can not come until we have begun to see that there is a carnal root ruling in believers; they are living more after the flesh than the Spirit; they are yet carnal Christians. There is a passage “from carnal to spiritual.” Did Paul find any spiritual believers? Undoubtedly he did. Just read the 6th chapter of the Epistle to the Galatians! That was a church where strife, and bitterness, and envy were terrible. But the apostle says in the first verse: “Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual restore such an one in the spirit of meekness.” There we see that the marks of the spiritual man are that he will be a meek man; and that he will have power, and love to help and restore those that are [pg 16]fallen. The carnal man can not do that. If there is a true spiritual life that can be lived, the great question is: Is the way open, and how can I enter into the spiritual state? Here, again, I have four short answers. First, we must know that there is such a spiritual life to be lived by men on earth. Nothing cuts the roots of the Christian life so much as unbelief. People do not believe what God has said about what He is willing to do for His children. Men do not believe that when God says, “Be filled with the Spirit,” He means it for every Christian. And yet Paul wrote to the Ephesians each one: “Be filled with the Spirit, and do not be drunk with wine.” Just as little as you may be drunk with wine, so little may you live without being filled with the Spirit. Now, if God means that for believers, the first thing that we need is to study, and to take home God’s Word, to our belief until our hearts are filled with the assurance that there is such a life possible which it is our duty to live; that we can be spiritual men. God’s Word teaches us that God does not expect a man to live as he ought for one minute unless the Holy Spirit is in him to enable him to do it. We do not want the Holy Spirit only when we go to preach, or when we have some special temptation of the devil to meet, or some great burden to bear; God says: “My child can not live a [pg 17]right life unless he is guided by my Spirit every minute.” That is the mark of the child of God: “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.” In Romans V. we read: “The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit given unto us.” That is to be the common, every-day experience of the believer, not his life at set times only. Did ever a father or mother think, “For to-day I want my child to love me?” No, they expect the love every day. And so God wants His child every moment to have a heart filled with love of the Spirit. In the eyes of God, it is most unnatural to expect a man to love as he should if he is not filled with the Spirit. Oh, let us believe a man canbe a spiritual man. Thank God, there is now the blessing waiting us. “Be filled with the Spirit.” “Be led by the Spirit.” There isthe blessing. If you have to say, “Oh, God, I have not this blessing,” say it; but say also, “Lord, I know it is my duty, my solemn obligation to have it, for without it I can not live in perfect peace with Thee all the day; without it I can not glorify Thee, and do the work Thou wouldst have me do.” This is our first step from carnal to spiritual,—to recognize a spiritual life, a walk in the Spirit, is within our reach. How can we ask God to guide us into spiritual life, if we have not a clear, confident conviction that there is such a life to be had?[pg 18] Then comes the second step; a man must see the shame and guilt of his having lived such a life. Some people admit there is a spiritual life to live, and that they have not lived it, and they are sorry for themselves, and pity themselves, and think, “How sad that I am too feeble for it! How sad that God gives it to others, but has not given it to me!” They have great compassion upon themselves, instead of saying, “Alas! it has been our unfaithfulness, our unbelief, our disobedience, that has kept us from giving ourselves utterly to God. We have to blush and to be ashamed before God that we do not live as spiritual men.” A man does not get converted without having conviction of sin. When that conviction of sin comes, and his eyes are opened, he learns to be afraid of his sin, and to flee from it to Christ, and to accept Christ as a mighty deliverer. But a man needs a second conviction of sin; a believer must be convicted of his peculiar sin. The sins of an unconverted man are different from the sins of a believer. An unconverted man, for instance, is not ordinarily convicted of the corruption of his nature; he thinks principally about external sins,—”I have sworn, been a liar, and I am on the way to hell.” He is then convicted for conversion. But the believer is in quite a different condition. His sins are far more blamable, for he has had the light and the love and the Spirit of God [pg 19]given to him. His sins are far deeper. He has striven to conquer them and he has grown to see that his nature is utterly corrupt, that the carnal mind, the flesh, within him, is making his whole state utterly wretched. When a believer is thus convicted by the Holy Spirit, it is specially his life of unbelief that condemns him, because he sees that the great guilt connected with this has kept him from receiving the full gift of God’s Holy Spirit. He is brought down in shame and confusion of face, and he begins to cry: “Woe is me, for I am undone. I have heard of God by the hearing of the ear; I have known a great deal of Him and preached about Him, but now mine eye seeth Him.” God comes near him. Job, the righteous man, whom God trusted, saw in himself the deep sin of self and its righteousness that he had never seen before. Until this conviction of the wrongness of our carnal state as believers comes to each one of us; until we are willing to get this conviction from God, to take time before God to be humbled and convicted, we never can become spiritual men. Then comes the third mark, which is that out of the carnal state into the spiritual is only one step. One step; oh, that is a blessed message I bring to you—it is only one step. I know many people will refuse to admit that it is only one step; they think it too little for such a mighty change. But was not conversion only one step?[pg 20] So it is when a man passes from carnal to spiritual. You ask if when I talk of a spiritual man I am not thinking of a man of spiritual maturity, a real saint, and you say: “Does that come in one day? Is there no growth in holiness?” I reply that spiritual maturity cannot come in a day. We can not expect it. It takes growth, until the whole beauty of the image of Christ is formed in a man. But still I say that it needs but one step for a man to get out of the carnal life into the spiritual life. It is when a man utterly breaks with the flesh; when he gives up the flesh into the crucifixion death of Christ; when he sees that everything about it is accursed and that he can not deliver himself from it; and then claims the slaying power of Christ’s cross within him,—it is when a man does this and says: “This spiritual life prepared for me is the free gift of my God in Christ Jesus,” that he understands how one step can bring him out of the carnal into the spiritual state. In that spiritual life there will be much still to be learned. There will still be imperfections. Spiritual life is not perfect; but the predominant characteristic will be spiritual. When a man has given himself up to the real, living, acting, ruling power of God’s Spirit, he has got into the right position in which he can grow. You never think of growing out of sickness into health; you may grow out of feebleness into strength, as the little [pg 21]babe can grow to be a strong man; but where there is disease, there must healing come if there is to be a cure effected. There are Christians who think that they must grow out of the carnal state into the spiritual state. You never can. What could help those carnal Corinthians? To give them milk could not help them, for milk was a proof they were in the wrong state. To give them meat would not help them, for they were unfit to eat it. What they needed was the knife of the surgeon. Paul says that the carnal life must be cut out. “They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh.” When a man understands what that means, and accepts it in the faith of what Christ can do, then one step can bring him from carnal to spiritual. One simple act of faith in the power of Christ’s death, one act of surrender to the fellowship of Christ’s death as the Holy Spirit can make it ours, will make it ours, will bring deliverance from the power of your efforts. What brought deliverance to that poor condemned sinner who was most dark and wretched in his unconverted state? He felt he could do nothing good of himself. What did he do? He saw set before him the almighty Saviour and he cast himself into His arms; he trusted himself to that omnipotent love and cried, “Lord, have mercy upon me.” That was salvation. It was not for what he did that Christ accepted him. Oh, [pg 22]believers, if any of us who are conscious that the carnal state predominates have to say: “It marks me; I am a religious man, an earnest man, a friend of missions; I work for Christ in my church, but, alas! temper and sin and worldliness have still the mastery over my soul,” hear the word of God. If any will come and say: “I have struggled, I have prayed, I have wept, and it has not helped me,” then you must do one other thing. You must see that the living Christ is God’s provision for your holy, spiritual life. You must believe that that Christ who accepted you once, at conversion, in His wonderful love is now waiting to say to you that you may become a spiritual man, entirely given up to God. If you will believe that, your fear will vanish and you will say: “It can be done; if Christ will accept and take charge, it shall be done.” Then, my last mark. A man must take that step, a solemn but blessed step. It cost some of you five or ten years before you took the step of conversion. You wept and prayed for years, and could not find peace until you took that step. So, in the spiritual life, you may go to teacher after teacher, and say, “Tell me about the spiritual life, the baptism of the Spirit, and holiness,” and yet you may remain just where you were. Many of us would love to have sin taken away. Who loves to have a hasty temper? Who loves to have [pg 23]a proud disposition? Who loves to have a worldly heart? No one. We go to Christ to take it away, and he does not do it; and we ask, “Why will he not do it? I have prayed very earnestly.” It is because you wanted Him to take away the ugly fruits while the poisonous root was to stay in you. You did not ask Him that the flesh should be nailed to His cross, and that you should henceforth give up self entirely to the power of His Spirit. There is deliverance, but not in the way we seek it. Suppose a painter had a piece of canvas, on which he desired to work out some beautiful picture. Suppose that piece of canvas does not belong to him, and any one has a right to take it and to use it for any other purpose; do you think the painter would bestow much work on that? No. Yet people want Jesus Christ to bestow His trouble upon them in taking away this temper, or that other sin, though in their hearts they have not yielded themselves utterly to His command and His keeping. It can not be. But if you will come and give your whole life into His charge, Christ Jesus is mighty to save; Christ Jesus waits to be gracious; Christ Jesus waits to fill you with His Spirit. Will you not take the step? God grant that we may be led by His Spirit to a yielding up of ourselves to Him as never before. Will you not come in humble confession that, alas! the carnal life has predominated too much, has altogether marked you, [pg 24]and that you have a bitter consciousness that with all the blessing God has bestowed, He has not made you what you want to be—a spiritual man? It is the Holy Spirit alone who by His indwelling can make a spiritual man. Come then and cast yourself at God’s feet, with this one thought, “Lord, I give myself an empty vessel to be filled with Thy Spirit.” Each one of you sees every day at the tea table an empty cup set there, waiting to be filled with tea when the proper time comes. So with every dish, every plate. They are cleansed and empty, ready to be filled. Emptied and cleansed. Oh, come! and just as a vessel is set apart to receive what it is to contain, say to Christ that you desire from this hour to be a vessel set apart to be filled with His Spirit, given up to be a spiritual man. Bow down in the deepest emptiness of soul, and say, “Oh, God, I have nothing!” and then surely as you place yourself before Him you have a right to say, “My God will fulfill His promise! I claim from Him the filling of the Holy Spirit to make me, instead of a carnal, a spiritual Christian.” If you place yourself at His feet, and tarry there; if you abide in that humble surrender and that childlike trust, as sure as God lives the blessing will come. Oh, have we not to bow [pg 25]in shame before God, as we think of His whole Church and see so much of the carnal prevailing? Have we not to bow in shame before God, as we think of so much of the carnal in our hearts and lives? Then let us bow in great faith in God’s mercy. Deliverance is nigh, deliverance is coming, deliverance is waiting, deliverance is sure. Let us trust; God will give it.[pg 26]

THE SELF LIFE.

II.

Matt. 16: 24.—If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.

In the 13th verse we read that Jesus at Caesarea Philippi asked His disciples, “Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?” When they had answered, He asked them, “But whom say ye that I am?” And in verse 16 Peter answered and said, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” Jesus answered and said unto him: “Blessed art thou, Simon Barjonas, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in Heaven. And I say also unto thee that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Then in verse 21 we read how Jesus began to tell His disciples of His approaching death; and in verse 22 how Peter began to rebuke Him, saying, “Be it far from Thee, Lord; this shall not be unto Thee.” But Jesus turned and said unto Peter, “Get thee behind me, Satan; thou art an offense unto me, for thou savorest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.” Then said [pg 27]Jesus unto His disciples, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me.” We often hear about the compromise life and the question comes up What lies at the root of it? What is the reason that so many Christians are wasting their lives in the terrible bondage of the world instead of living in the manifestation and the privilege and the glory of the child of God? And another question perhaps comes to us: What can be the reason that when we see a thing is wrong and strive against it we cannot conquer it? What can be the reason that we have a hundred times prayed and vowed, yet here we are still living a mingled, divided, half-hearted life? To those two questions there is one answer: it is self that is the root of the whole trouble. And therefore, if any one asks me, “How can I get rid of this compromise life?” the answer would not be, “You must do this, or that, or the other thing,” but the answer would be, “A new life from above, the life of Christ, must take the place of the self-life; then alone can we be conquerors.” We always go from the outward to the inward; let us do so here; let us consider from these words of the text the one word, “self.” Jesus said to Peter: “If any man will come after me let him deny himself, his own self, and take up the cross and follow me.” That is a mark of the disciple; [pg 28]that is the secret of the Christian life—deny self and all will come right. Note that Peter was a believer, and a believer who had been taught by the Holy Spirit. He had given an answer that pleased Christ wonderfully: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Do not think that that was nothing extraordinary. We learn it in our catechisms; Peter did not; and Christ saw that the Holy Spirit of the Father had been teaching him and He said: “Blessed art thou, Simon Barjonas.” But note how strong the carnal man still is in Peter. Christ speaks of His cross; He could understand about the glory, “Thou art the Son of God;” but about the cross and the death he could not understand, and he ventured in his self-confidence to say, “Lord, that shall never be; Thou canst not be crucified and die.” And Christ had to rebuke him: “Get thee behind me, Satan. Thou savorest not the things that be of God.” You are talking like a mere carnal man, and not as the Spirit of God would teach you. Then Christ went on to say, “Remember, it is not only I who am to be crucified, but you; it is not only I who am to die, but you also. If a man would be my disciple, he must deny self, and he must take up his cross and follow me.” Let us dwell upon this one word, “self.” It is only as we learn to know what self is that we really know what is at the root of all our failure, and are prepared to go to Christ for deliverance.[pg 29] Let us consider, first of all, the nature of this self life, then denote some of its works and then ask the question: “How may we be delivered from it?” Self is the power with which God has created and endowed every intelligent creature. Self is the very center of a created being. And why did God give the angels or man a self? The object of this self was that we might bring it as an empty vessel unto God; that He might put into it His life. God gave me the power of self-determination, that I might bring this self every day and say: “Oh, God, work in it; I offer it to thee.” God wanted a vessel into which He might pour out His divine fullness of beauty, wisdom and power; and so He created the world, the sun, and the moon, and the stars, the trees, and the flowers, and the grass, which all show forth the riches of His wisdom, and beauty, and goodness. But they do it without knowing what they do. Then God created the angels with a self and a will, to see whether they would come and voluntarily yield themselves to Him as vessels for Him to fill. But alas! they did not all do that. There was one at the head of a great company, and he began to look upon himself, and to think of the wonderful powers with which God had endowed him, and to delight in himself. He began to think: “Must such a being as I always remain dependent on God?” [pg 30]He exalted himself, pride asserted itself in separation from God, and that very moment he became, instead of an angel in Heaven, a devil in hell. Self turned to God is the glory of allowing the Creator to reveal Himself in us. Self turned away from God is the very darkness and fire of hell. We all know the terrible story of what took place further; God created man, and Satan came in the form of a serpent and tempted Eve with the thought of becoming as God, having an independent self, knowing good and evil. And while he spoke with her, he breathed into her, in those words, the very poison and the very pride of hell. His own evil spirit, the very poison of hell, entered humanity, and it is this cursed self that we have inherited from our first parents. It was that self that ruined and brought destruction upon this world, and all that there has been of sin, and of darkness, and of wretchedness, and of misery; and all that there will be throughout the countless ages of eternity in hell, will be nothing but the reign of self, the curse of self, separating man and turning him away from his God. And if we are to understand fully what Christ is to do for us, and are to become partakers of a full salvation, we must learn to know, and to hate, and to give up entirely this cursed self. Now what are the works of self? I might mention [pg 31]many, but let us take the simplest words that we are continually using,—self-will, self-confidence, self-exaltation. Self-will, pleasing self, is the great sin of man, and it is at the root of all that compromising with the world which is the ruin of so many. Men can not understand why they should not please themselves and do their own will. Numbers of Christians have never gotten hold of the idea that a Christian is a man who is never to seek his own will, but is always to seek the will of God, as a man in whom the very spirit of Christ lives. “Lo, I come to do Thy will, oh, my God!” We find Christians pleasing themselves in a thousand ways, and yet trying to be happy, and good, and useful; and they do not know that at the root of it all is self-will robbing them of the blessing. Christ said to Peter, “Peter, deny yourself.” But instead of doing that, Peter said, “I will deny my Lord and not myself.” He never said it in words, but Christ said to him in the last night, “Thou shalt deny Me,” and he did it. What was the cause of this? Self-pleasing. He became afraid when the woman servant charged him with belonging to Jesus, and three times said, “I know not this man, I have nothing to do with Him.” He denied Christ. Just think of it! No wonder Peter wept those bitter tears. It was a choice between self, that ugly, cursed self, and that beautiful, blessed Son of God; and Peter [pg 32]chose self. No wonder that he thought: “Instead of denying myself, I have denied Jesus; what a choice I have made!” No wonder that he wept bitterly. Christians, look at your own lives in the light of the words of Jesus. Do you find there self-will, self-pleasing? Remember this: every time you please yourself, you deny Jesus. It is one of the two. You must please Him only, and deny self, or you must please yourself and deny Him. Then follows self-confidence, self-trust, self-effort, self-dependence. What was it that led Peter to deny Jesus? Christ had warned him; why did he not take warning? Self-confidence. He was so sure: “Lord, I love Thee. For three years I have followed Thee. Lord, I deny that it ever can be. I am ready to go to prison and to death.” It was simply self-confidence. People have often asked me, “What is the reason I fail? I desire so earnestly, and pray so fervently, to live in God’s will.” And my answer generally is, “Simply because you trust yourself.” They answer me: “No, I do not; I know I am not good; and I know that God is willing to keep me, and I put my trust in Jesus.” But I reply, “No, my brother; no; if you trusted God and Jesus, you could not fall, but you trust yourself.” Do let us believe that the cause of every failure in the Christian life is nothing but this. I trust this [pg 33]cursed self, instead of trusting Jesus. I trust my own strength, instead of the almighty strength of God. And that is why Christ says, “This self must be denied.” Then there is self-exaltation, another form of the works of self. Ah, how much pride and jealousy is there in the Christian world; how much sensitiveness to what men say of us or think of us; how much desire of human praise and pleasing men, instead of always living in the presence of God, with the one thought: “Am I pleasing to Him?” Christ said, “How can ye believe who receive honor one of another?” Receiving honor of one another renders a life of faith absolutely impossible. This self started from hell, it separated us from God, it is a cursed deceiver that leads us astray from Jesus. Now comes the third point. What are we to do to get rid of it? Jesus answers us in the words of our text: “If any man will come after me, let him take up his cross and follow me.” Note it well.—I must deny myself and take Jesus himself as my life,—I must choose. There are two lives, the self life and the Christ life; I must choose one of the two. “Follow me,” says our Lord, “make me the law of your existence, the rule of your conduct; give me your whole heart; follow me, and I will care for all.” Oh, friends, it is a solemn exchange to have set before us; to [pg 34]come and, seeing the danger of this self, with its pride and its wickedness, to cast ourselves before the Son of God, and to say, “I deny my own life, I take Thy life to be mine.” The reason why Christians pray and pray for the Christ life to come in to them, without result, is that the self life is not denied. You ask, “How can I get rid of this self life?” You know the parable: the strong man kept his house until one stronger than he came in and cast him out. Then the place was garnished and swept, but empty, and he came back with seven other spirits worse than himself. It is only Christ Himself coming in that can cast out self, and keep out self. This self will abide with us to the very end. Remember the Apostle Paul; he had seen the Heavenly vision, and lest he should exalt himself, the thorn in the flesh was sent to humble him. There was a tendency to exalt himself, which was natural, and it would have conquered, but Christ delivered him from it by His faithful care for His loving servant. Jesus Christ is able, by His divine grace, to prevent the power of self from ever asserting itself or gaining the upper hand; Jesus Christ is willing to become the life of the soul; Jesus Christ is willing to teach us so to follow Him, and to have heart and life set upon Him alone, that He shall ever and always be the light of our souls. Then we come to what the apostle Paul says; “Not I, but Christ [pg 35]liveth in me.” The two truths go together. First “Not I,” then, “but Christ liveth in me.” Look at Peter again. Christ said to him, “Deny yourself, and follow me.” Whither had he to follow? Jesus led him, even though he failed; and where did he lead him? He led him on to Gethsemane, and there Peter failed, for he slept when he ought to have been awake, watching and praying; He led him on towards Calvary, to the place where Peter denied Him. Was that Christ’s leading? Praise God, it was. The Holy Spirit had not yet come in His power; Peter was yet a carnal man; the Spirit willing, but not able to conquer; the flesh weak. What did Christ do? He led Peter on until he was broken down in utter self-abasement, and humbled in the depths of sorrow. Jesus led him on, past the grave, through the Resurrection, up to Pentecost, and the Holy Spirit came, and in the Holy Spirit Christ with His divine life came, and then it was, “Christ liveth in me.” There is but one way of being delivered from this life of self. We must follow Christ, set our hearts upon Him, listen to His teachings, give ourselves up every day, that He may be all to us, and by the power of Christ the denial of self will be a blessed, unceasing reality. Never for one hour do I expect the Christian to reach a stage at which he can say, “I have no self to deny;” never [pg 36]for one moment in which he can say, “I do not need to deny self.” No, this fellowship with the cross of Christ will be an unceasing denial of self every hour and every moment by the grace of God. There is no place where there is full deliverance from the power of this sinful self. We are to be crucified with Christ Jesus. We are to live with Him as those who have never been baptized into His death. Think of that! Christ had no sinful self, but He had a self and that self He actually gave up unto death. In Gethsemane He said, “Father, not My will.” That unsinning self He gave up unto death that He might receive it again out of the grave from God, raised up and glorified. Can we expect to go to Heaven in any other way than He went? Beware! remember that Christ descended into death and the grave, and it is in the death of self, following Jesus to the uttermost, that the deliverance and the life will come. And now, what is the use that we are to make of this lesson of the Master? The first lesson will be that we should take time, and that we should humble ourselves before God, at the thought of what this self is in us; put down to the account of the self every sin, every shortcoming, all failure, and all that has been dishonoring to God, and then say, “Lord, this is what I am;” and then let us allow the blessed Jesus Christ to take entire control [pg 37]of our life, in the faith that His life can be ours. Do not think it is an easy thing to get rid of self. At a consecration meeting, it is easy to make a vow, and to offer a prayer, and to perform an act of surrender, but as solemn as the death of Christ was on Calvary—His giving up of His unsinning self life to God,—just as solemn must it be between us and our God—the giving up of self to death. The power of the death of Christ must come to work in us every day. Oh, think what a contrast between that self-willed Peter, and Jesus giving up His will to God! What a contrast between that self-exaltation of Peter, and the deep humility of the Lamb of God, meek and lowly in heart before God and man! What a contrast between that self-confidence of Peter, and that deep dependence of Jesus upon the Father, when He said: “I can do nothing of myself.” We are called upon to live the life of Christ, and Christ comes to live His life in us; but one thing must first take place; we must learn to hate this self, and to deny it. As Peter said, when he denied Christ, “I have nothing to do with him,” so we must say, “I have nothing to do with self,” that Christ Jesus may be all in all. Let us humble ourselves at the thought of what this self has done to us and how it has dishonored Jesus; and let us pray very fervently: “Lord, by Thy light discover this self; we beseech Thee to [pg 38]discover it to us. Open our eyes, that we may see what it has done, and that it is the only hindrance that has been keeping us back.” Let us pray that fervently, and then let us wait upon God until we get away from all our religious exercises, and from all our religious experience, and from all our blessings, until we get close to God, with this one prayer: “Lord God, self changed an archangel into a devil, and self ruined my first parents, and brought them out of Paradise into darkness and misery, and self has been the ruin of my life and the cause of every failure; oh, discover it to me.” And then comes the blessed exchange, that a man is made willing and able to say: “Another will live the life for me, another will live with me, another will do all for me,” Nothing else will do. Deny self; take up the cross, to die with Jesus; follow Him only. May He give us the grace to understand, and to receive, and to live the Christ life.[pg 39]

WAITING ON GOD

III.

Psalms 62: 5.—My soul, wait thou only upon God, for my expectation is from Him.

The solemn question comes to us, “Is the God I have, a God that is to me above all circumstances, nearer to me than any circumstance can be?” Brother, have you learned to live your life having God so really with you every moment, that in circumstances the most difficult He is always more present and nearer than anything around you? All our knowledge of God’s Word will help us very little, unless that comes to be the question to which we get an answer. What can be the reason that so many of God’s beloved children complain continually: “My circumstances separate me from God; my trials, my temptations, my character, my temper, my friends, my enemies, anything can come between my God and me?” Is God not able so to take possession that He can be nearer to me than anything in the world? Must riches or poverty, joy or sorrow, have a power over me that my God has not? No. But why, then, do God’s children so often complain [pg 40]that their circumstances separate them from Him? There can be but one answer, “They do not know their God.” If there is trouble or feebleness in the Church of God, it is because of this. We do not know the God we have. That is why in addition to the promise, “I will be thy God,” the promise is so often added, “And ye shall know that I am your God.” If I know that, not through man’s teaching, not with my mind or my imagination; but if I know that, in the living evidence which God gives in my heart, then I know that the divine presence of my God will be so wonderful, and my God Himself will be so beautiful, and so near, that I can live all my days and years a conqueror through Him that loved me. Is not that the life which we need? The question comes again: Why is it that God’s people do not know their God? And the answer is: They take anything rather than God,—ministers, and preaching, and books, and prayers, and work, and efforts, any exertion of human nature, instead of waiting, and waiting long if need be, until God reveals Himself. No teaching that we may get, and no effort that we may put forth, can put us in possession of this blessed light of God, all in all to our souls. But still it is attainable, it is within reach, if God will reveal Himself. That is the one necessity. I would to God that every one would ask his heart whether he has [pg 41]said, and is saying every day: “I want more of God. Do not speak to me only of the beautiful truth there is in the Bible. That can not satisfy me. I want God.” In our inner Christian life, in our every-day prayers, in our Christian living, in our churches, in our prayer-meetings, in our fellowship, it must come to that—that God always has the first place; and if that be given Him, He will take possession. Oh, if in our lives as individuals every eye were set upon God, upon the living God, every heart were crying, “My soul thirsteth for God,” what power, what blessing and what presence of the everlasting God would be revealed to us! Let me use an illustration. When a man is giving an illustrated lecture he often uses a long pointer to indicate places on a map or chart. Do the people look at that pointer? No, that only helps to show them the place on the map, and they do not think of it,—it might be of fine gold; but the pointer can not satisfy them. They want to see what the pointer points at. And this Bible is nothing but a pointer, pointing to God; and,—may I say it with reverence—Jesus Christ came to point us, to show us the way, to bring us to God. I am afraid there are many people who love Christ and who trust in Him, but who fail of the one great object of His work; they have never learned to understand what the Scripture saith: “He died, that He might bring us unto God.”[pg 42] There is a difference between the way and the end which I am aiming at. I might be traveling amid most beautiful scenery, in the most delightful company; but if I have a home to which I want to go, all the scenery, and all the company, and all the beauty and happiness around me can not satisfy me; I want to reach the end; I want my home. And God is meant to be the home of our souls. Christ came into the world to bring us back to God, and unless we take Christ for what God intended we should, our religion will always be a divided one. What do we read in Hebrews vii? “He is able to save to the uttermost.”—Whom? “Them that come to God by Him;” not them that only come to Christ. In Christ—bless His name—we have the graciousness, the condescension, and the tenderness of God. But we are in danger of standing there, and being content with that, and Christ wants to bring us back to rejoice as much as in the glory of God Himself, in His righteousness, His holiness, His authority, His presence and His power. He can save completely those who come to God through Him! Now, just a very few thoughts on the way by which I can come to know God as this God above all circumstances, filling my heart and life every day. The one thing needful is: I must wait upon God. The original is,—it is in our Dutch version, and it is in the margin, too,—”My soul is silent [pg 43]into God.” What ought to be the silence of the soul unto God? A soul conscious of its littleness, its ignorance, its prejudices and its dangers from passion, from all that is human and sinful,—a soul conscious of that, and saying, “I want the everlasting God to come in and to take hold of me and to take such hold of me that I may be kept in the hollow of His hand for my life long; I want Him to take such possession of me that every moment He may work all in all in me.” That is what is implied in the very nature of our God. How we ought to be silent unto Him, and wait upon Him! May I ask, with reverence: What is God for? A God is for this: to be the light and the life of creation, the source and power of all existence. The beautiful trees, the green grass, the bright sun, God created that they might show forth His beauty, His wisdom and His glory. The tree of one hundred years old—when it was planted God did not give it a stock of life by which to carry on its existence. Nay, verily, God clothes the lilies every year afresh with their beauty; every year God clothes the tree with its foliage and its fruit. Every day and every hour it is God who maintains the life of all nature. And God created us, that we might be the empty vessels in which He could work out His beauty, His will, His love, and the likeness of His blessed Son. That is [pg 44]what God is for, to work in us by His mighty operation, without one moment’s ceasing. When I begin to get hold of that, I no longer think of the true Christian life as a high impossibility, and an unnatural thing, but I say, “It is the most natural thing in creation that God should have me every moment, and that my God should be nearer to me than all else.” Just think, for a moment, what folly it is to imagine that I can not expect God to be with me every moment. Just look at the sunshine; have you ever had any trouble as you were working or as you were studying or reading a book in the light the sun gives? Have you ever said, “Oh, how can I keep that light, how can I hold it fast, how can I be sure that I shall continue to have it to use?” You never thought that. God has taken care that the sun itself should provide you with light; and without your care; the light comes unbidden. And I ask you: What think you? Has God arranged that the light of that sun that will one day be burned up, can come to you unconsciously and abide in you blessedly and mightily; and is God not willing, or is He not able, to let His light and His presence so shine through you that you can walk all the day with God nearer to you than anything in nature? Praise God for the assurance; He can do it. And why does He not do it? Why so seldom, and why in such feeble measure? There is [pg 45]but one answer: you do not let Him. You are so occupied and filled with other things, religious things, preaching and praying, studying and working, so occupied with your religion, that you do not give God the time to make Himself known, and to enter in and to take possession. Oh, brother, listen to the word of the man who knew God so well, and begin to say: “My soul, wait thou only upon God.” I might show that this is the very glory of the Creator, the very life Christ brought into the world, the life He lived, and the very life Christ wants to lift us up to in its entire dependence on the Father. The very secret of the Christ-life is this: such a consciousness of God’s presence that whether it was Judas, who came to betray Him, or Caiaphas, who condemned Him unjustly, or Pilate, who gave Him up to be crucified, the presence of the Father was upon Him, and within Him, and around Him, and man could not touch His spirit. And that is what God wants to be to you and to me. Does not all your anxious restlessness, and futile effort, prove that you have not let God do His work? God is drawing you to Himself. This is not your own wish, and the stirring of your own heart, but the everlasting Divine magnet is drawing you. These restless yearnings and thirstings, remember, are the work of God. Come and be still, and wait upon God. He will reveal Himself.[pg 46] And how am I to wait on God? In answer I would say: first of all, in prayer take more time to be still before God without saying one word. What is, in prayer, the most important thing? That I catch the ear of Him to whom I speak. We are not ready to offer our petition until we are fully conscious of having secured the attention of God. You tell me you know all that. Yes, you know it; but you need to have your heart filled by the Holy Spirit with the holy consciousness that the everlasting, almighty God is indeed come very near you. The loving one is longing to have you for His own. Be still before God, and wait, and say: “Oh, God, take possession. Reveal Thyself, not to my thoughts or imaginations, but by the solemn, awe-bringing, soul-subduing consciousness that God is shining upon me bring me to the place of dependence and humility.” Prayer may be indeed waiting upon God, but there is a great deal of prayer that is not waiting upon God. Waiting on God is the first and the best beginning for prayer. When we bow in the humble, silent acknowledgment of God’s glory and nearness, ere we begin to pray there will be the very blessing that we often get only at the end. From the very beginning I come face to face with God; I am in touch with the everlasting omnipotence of love and I know my God will bless me. Let us never be afraid to be still before [pg 47]God; we shall then carry that stillness into our work; and when we go to church on Sunday, or to the prayer-meeting on week-days, it will be with the one desire that nothing may stand betwixt us and God, and that we may never be so occupied with hearing and listening as to forget the presence of God. Oh, that God might make every minister what Moses was at the foot of Mount Sinai; “Moses led the people out to meet God,” and they did meet Him until they were afraid. Let every minister ask with all the earnestness his soul can command, that God may deliver him from the sin of preaching and teaching without making the people feel first of all: “The man wants to bring us to God Himself.” It can be felt, not only in the words, but in the very disposition of the humble, waiting, worshiping heart. We must carry this waiting into all our worship; we will have to make a study of it; we will have to speak about it; we will have to help each other, for the truth has been too much lost in the Church of Christ; we must wait upon God about it. Then we shall be able to carry it out into our daily life. There are so many Christians who wonder that they fail; but think of the ease with which they talk and join in conversation, spending hours in it, never thinking that all this may be dissipating the soul’s power and leading them to spend hours not in the immediate [pg 48]presence of God. I am afraid this is the great difficulty: that we are not willing to make the needed sacrifice for a life of continual waiting upon God. Are there not some of us who would feel it an impossibility to spend every moment under the covering of the Most High, “in the secret of His pavilion?” Beloved, do not think it too high, or too difficult. It is too difficult for you and me to attain, but our God will give it to us. Let us begin even now to wait more earnestly and intensely upon God. Let us in our homes sometimes bow a little in silence; let us in our closets wait in silence, and make a covenant, it may be, without words, that with our whole hearts we will seek God’s presence to come in upon us. What is religion? Just as much as you have of God working in you, that alone is religion. And if you want more religion, more grace, more strength and more fruitfulness, you must have more of God. Let that be the cry of our hearts,—More of God! More of God! More of God! And let us say to our souls, “My soul, wait thou upon God, for my expectation is from Him.”[pg 49]

ENTRANCE INTO REST.

IV.

Hebrews 4: 1.—Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into His rest, any of you should seem to come short of it.

Hebrews 4: 11.—Let us labor therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.

I want, in the simplest way possible, to answer the question: “How does a man enter into that rest?” and to point out the simple steps that he takes, all included in the one act of surrender and faith. And the first step, I think, is this: that a man learns to say, “I believe, heartily, there is rest in a life of faith.” Israel passed through two stages. This is beautifully expressed in the fifth of Deuteronomy: “He brought us out, that He might bring us in”—two parts of God’s work of redemption—”He brought us out from Egypt, that He might bring us into Canaan.” And that is applicable to every believer. At your conversion, God brought you out of Egypt, and the same almighty God is longing to bring you into the Canaan life. You know how God brought the Israelites out, but they would not let Him bring them in and they had to wander for forty years in the wilderness—the type, alas! of so many Christians. God brings them out in conversion, but they will not let Him bring [pg 50]them in into all that He has prepared for them. To a man who asks me, “How can I enter into the rest?” I say, first of all, speak this word, “I do believe that there is a rest into which Jesus, our Joshua, can bring a trusting soul.” And if you would know what the difference is between the two lives—the life you have been leading, and the life you now want to lead, just look at the wilderness and Canaan. What are the points of difference? In the wilderness, wandering for forty years, backward and forward; in Canaan, perfect rest in the land that God gave them. That is the difference between the life of a Christian who has, and one who has not entered into Canaan. In wandering backward and forward; going after the world, and coming back and repenting; led astray by temptation, and returning only to go off again;—a life of ups and downs. In Canaan, on the other hand, a life of rest, because the soul has learned to trust: “God keeps me every hour in His mighty power.” There is the second difference: the life in the wilderness was a life of want; in Canaan, a life of plenty. In the wilderness there was nothing to eat; there was often no water. God graciously supplied their wants by [pg 51]the manna, and the water from the rock. But, alas! they were not content with this, and their life was one of want and murmurings. But in Canaan God gave them vineyards that they had not planted, and the old corn of the land was there waiting for them; a land flowing with milk and honey; a land that lived by the rain of Heaven and had the very care of God Himself. Oh, Christian, come and say to-day, “I believe there is a possibility of such a change out of that life of spiritual death, and darkness, and sadness, and complaining, that I have often lived, into the land of supply of every want; where the grace of Jesus is proved sufficient every day, every hour.” Say to-day: “I believe in the possibility that there is such a land of rest for me.” And then, the third difference: In the wilderness there was no victory. When they tried, after they had sinned at Kadesh, to go up against their enemies, they were defeated. In the land they conquered every enemy; from Jericho onward, they went from victory to victory. And so God waits, and Christ waits, and the Holy Spirit waits, to give victory every day; not freedom from temptation; no, not that; but in union with Christ a power that can say, “I can do all things through Him that strengtheneth me.” “We are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.” May God help every heart to say that.[pg 52] Then comes the second step. I want you to say not only, “I believe there is such a life,” but, second, “I have not had it yet.” Say that. “I have never yet got that.” Some may say, “I have sought it;” some may say, “I have never heard about it;” some may say, “At times I thought I had found it, but I lost it again.” Let every one be honest with God. And now, will all who have never yet found it honestly, begin to say, “Lord, up to this time I have never had it?” And why is it of such consequence to speak thus? Because, dear friends, some people want to glide into this life of rest gradually; and just quietly to steal in; and God won’t have it. Your life in the wilderness has not only been a life of sadness to yourself, but of sin and dishonor to God. Every deeper entrance into salvation must always be by the way of conviction and confession; therefore, let every Christian be willing to say: “Alas! I have not lived that life, and I am guilty; I have dishonored God; I have been like Israel; I have provoked Him to wrath by my unbelief and disobedience. God have mercy upon me!” Oh, let it go up before God—the secret confession: “I haven’t it; alas! I have not glorified God by a life in the land of rest.” Then comes the third word I want you to speak and that is: “Thank God, that life is for me.” Some [pg 53]say, “I believe there is such a life, but not for me.” There are people who continually say: “Oh, my character is so unstable; my will is naturally very weak; my temperament is nervous and excitable, it is impossible for me always to live without worry, resting in God.” Beloved brother, do not say that. You say so only for one reason: You do not know what your God will do for you. Do begin to look away from self, and to look up to God, Take that precious word: “He brought them out that he might bring them in.” The God who took them through the Red Sea was the God who took them through Jordan into Canaan. The God who converted you is the God who is able to give you every day this blessed life. Oh, begin to say, with the beginnings of a feeble faith, even before you claim it, begin even intellectually to say: “It is for me; I do believe that. God does not disinherit any of His children. What He gives is for every one. I believe that blessed life is waiting for me. It is meant for me. God is waiting to bestow it, and to work it in me. Glory be to His blessed name! My soul says it is for me, too.” Oh, take that little word “me,” and looking up in the very face of God dare to say: “This inestimable treasure—it is for me, the weakest and the unworthiest; it is for me.” Have you said that? Say it now: “This life is possible to me, too.”[pg 54] And then comes the next step, and that is: “I can never, by any effort of mine, grasp it; it is God must bestow it on me.” I want you to be very bold in saying, “It is for me.” But then I want you to fall down very low and say, “I can not seize it; I can not take it to myself.” And how can you then get it? Praise God, if once He has brought you down in the consciousness of utter helplessness and self-despair, then comes the time that He can draw nigh and ask you, “Will you trust your God to work this in you?” Dearly beloved Christians, say in your heart: “I never, by any effort, can take hold of God, or seize this for myself; it is God must give it.” Cherish this blessed impotence. It is He who brought us out, who Himself must bring us in. It is your greatest happiness to be impotent. Pray God by the Holy Spirit to reveal to you this true impotence, and that will open the way for your faith to say, “Lord, Thou must do it, or it will never be done.” God will do it. People wonder, when they hear so many sermons about faith, and such earnest pleading to believe, and ask why it is they can not believe. There is just one answer: It is self. Self is working; is trying; is struggling, and self must fail. But when you come to the end of self and can only cry, “Lord, help me! Lord, help me!”—then the deliverance is nigh; believe that. It was God brought the people in. It is God who will bring you in.[pg 55] One should be willing, for the sake of this rest, to give up everything. The grace of God is very free. It is given without money and without price. And yet, on the other hand, Jesus said that every man who wants the pearl of great price must sacrifice his all, must sell all that he has to buy that pearl. It is not enough to see the beauty, the attractiveness and the glory, and almost to taste the gladness and the joy of this wonderful life as it has been set before you. You must become the possessor, the owner of the field. The man who found the field with a treasure, and the man who found the great pearl, were both glad; but they had not yet got it. They had found it, seen it, desired it, rejoiced in it; but they had not yet got it. Not until they went and sold all, gave up everything, and bought the ground, and bought the pearl. Ah, friends, there is a great deal that has to be given up: the world, its pleasures, its favor, its good opinion. You are to stand to the world in the same relation as Jesus did. The world rejected Him, and cast Him out, and you are to take up the position of your Lord, to whom you belong, and to follow with the rejected Christ. You have to give up everything. You have to give up all that is good in yourself and to be humbled in the dust of death. And that is not all. Your past religious life and experience and successes—you have to give all up and become [pg 56]nothing, that God alone may have the glory. God has brought you out in conversion; it was God’s own life given you: but you defiled it with disobedience and with unbelief. Give it all up. Give up all your own wisdom, and your own thoughts about God’s work. How hard it is for the minister of the Gospel to give up all his wisdom, and to lay it at the feet of Jesus, to become a fool and to say: “Lord, I know nothing as I should know it. I have been preaching the Gospel, and how little I have seen of the glory of the blessed land, and the blessed life!” Why is it that the blessed Spirit can not teach us more effectually? No reason but this: the wisdom of man prevents it; the wisdom of man prevents the light of God from shining in. And so we could say of other things; give up all. Some may have an individual sin to give up. There may be a Christian man who is angry with his brother. There may be a Christian woman who has quarreled with her neighbor. There may be friends who are not living as they should. There may be Christians holding fast some little doubtful thing, not willing to surrender and leave behind the whole of the wilderness life and lust. Oh, do take this step and say: “I am ready to give up everything to have this pearl of great price; my time, my attention, my business, I count all subordinate to this rest of God as the first thing in my life; I yield all to walk in perfect fellowship with God.” You can not get that and live every day in perfect fellowship with [pg 57]God, without giving up time to it. You take time for everything. How many hours a day has a young lady spent for years and years that she may become proficient on the piano? How many years does a young man study to fit himself for the profession of the law or medicine? Hours, and days, and weeks, and months, and years, gladly given up to perfect himself for his profession. And do you expect that religion is so cheap that without giving time you can find close fellowship with God? You can not. But, oh, my brothers and sisters, the pearl of great price is worth everything. God is worth everything. Christ is worth everything. Oh, come to-day, and say, “Lord, at any cost help me; I do want to live this life.” And if you find it difficult to say this, and if there is a struggle within the heart, never mind; say to God, “Lord, I thought I was willing, but I see how much unwillingness there is; come and discover what the evil is still in the heart.” By His grace, if you will lie at His feet and trust Him you may depend upon it deliverance will come. Then comes the next step, and that is to say: “I do now give up myself to the holy and everlasting God, for Him to lead me into this perfect rest.” Ah, friends, we must learn to meet God face to face. My sin has been against God. [pg 58]David felt that when he said, “Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned.” It is God on the judgment seat whose face you will have to meet personally. It is God Himself, personally, who met you to pardon your sins. Come to-day and put yourself into the hands of the living God. God is love. God is near. God is waiting to give you His blessing. The heart of God is yearning over you. “My child,” God says, “you think you are longing for rest; it is I that am longing for you, because I desire to rest in your heart as My home, as My temple.” You need your God. Yes, but your God needs you, to find the full satisfaction of His Father heart in Christ in you. Come to-day and say: “I do now give up myself to Christ. I have made the choice. I deliberately say, ‘Lord God, I am the purchaser of the pearl of great price. I give up everything for it. In the name of Jesus I accept that life of perfect rest.'” And then comes my last thought. When you have said that, then add: “And now, I trust God to make it all real to me in my experience. Whether I am to live one year, or thirty years, I have heard it to-day again: ‘God is Jehovah, the great I AM of the everlasting future, the eternal One; and thirty years hence is to Him just the same as now;’ and that God gives Himself to me, not according to my power to hold Him, but according [pg 59]to His almighty power of love to hold me.” Will you trust God to-day for the future? Oh, will you look up to God in Christ Jesus once again? A thousand times you have heard, and thought, and thanked—”God has given us His Son;” but will you not to-day say, “How shall He not with Him give me all things, every moment and every day of my life?” Say that in faith. “How shall God not be willing to keep me in the light of His countenance, in the full experience of Christ’s saving power? Did God make the sun to shine so brightly, and is the light so willing to pour itself into every nook and corner where it can find entrance? And will not my God, who is love, be willing all the day to shine into this heart of mine, from morning to night, from year’s end to year’s end?” God is love, and longs to give Himself to us. Oh, come, Christians, you have hitherto lived a life in your own strength. Will you not begin to-day? Will you not choose a life in which God shall be all, and in which you rest in Him for all? Will you not choose a life in which you shall say: “Oh, God, I ask, I expect, I trust Thee for it. I enter this day into the rest of God to let God keep me; to let God keep me every hour. I enter into the rest of God.” Are you ready to say that? Be of good courage; fear not, you can trust God. He brings into rest. Listen to God’s word in the [pg 60]Prophets once again: “Take heed, and be quiet. Fear not, neither be faint-hearted.” Joshua brought Israel into the land. God did it through Joshua; and Joshua is Jesus, your Jesus, who washed you in His blood; your Jesus, whom you have learned to know as a precious Saviour. Trust Him to-day afresh: “O my Joshua, take me, bring me in and I will trust Thee, and in Thee the Father.” You may count upon it. He will take you and the work will be done.[pg 61]

THE KINGDOM FIRST.

V.

Matt 6: 33.—Seek ye first the kingdom of God.

You have heard what need there is of unity in Christian life and Christian work. And where is the bond of unity between the life of the Church, the life of the individual believer and the work to be done among the heathen? One of the expressions for that unity is: “Seek first the Kingdom of God,” That does not mean, as many people take it, “Seek salvation; seek to get into the Kingdom, and then thank God, and rest there.” Ah, no; the meaning of that word is entirely different and infinitely larger. It means: Let the Kingdom of God, in all its breadth and length, in all its Heavenly glory and power; let the Kingdom of God be the one thing you live for, and all other things will be added unto you. “Seek first the Kingdom of God.” Let me just try to answer two very simple questions; the one: “Why should the Kingdom of God be first?” and the other: “How can it be?” The one, “Why should it be so?” God has created us as reasonable beings, so that the more clearly we see that according to the law of [pg 62]nature, according to the fitness of things, something that is set before us is proper, and an absolute necessity, we so much the more willingly accept it, and aim after it. And now, why does Christ say this: “Seek first the Kingdom of God?” If you want to understand the reason, look at God, and look at man. Look at God. Who is God? The great Being for whom alone the universe exists; in whom alone it can have its happiness. It came from Him. It can not find any rest or joy but in Him. Oh, that Christians understood and believed that God is a fountain of happiness, perfect, everlasting blessedness! What would the result be? Every Christian would say, “The more I can have of God, the happier. The more of God’s will, and the more of God’s love, and the more of God’s fellowship, the happier.” How Christians, if they believed that with their whole heart, would, with the utmost ease, give up everything that would separate them from God! Why is it that we find it so hard to hold fellowship with God? A young minister once said to me, “Why is it that I have so much more interest in study than in prayer, and how can you teach me the art of fellowship with God?” My answer was: “Oh, my brother, if we have any true conception of what God is, the art of fellowship with Him will come naturally, and will be a delight.” Yes, if we believed God to be only joy to the one [pg 63]who comes to Him, only a fountain of unlimited blessing, how we should give up all for Him! Has not joy a far stronger attraction than anything in the world? Is it not in every beauty, or in every virtue, in every pursuit, the joy that is set before us that draws? And if we believe that God is a fountain of joy, and sweetness, and power to bless, how our hearts will turn aside from everything, and say: “Oh, the beauty of my God! I rejoice in Him alone.” But, alas! the Kingdom of God looks to many as a burden, and as something unnatural. It looks like a strain, and we seek some relaxation in the world, and God is not our chief joy. I come to you with a message. It is right, on account of what God is as Infinite Love, as Infinite Blessing; it is right and more, it is our highest privilege to listen to Christ’s words, and to seek God and His Kingdom first and above everything. And then look at man again; man’s nature. What was man created for? To live in the likeness of God, and as His image. Now, if we have been created in the image and likeness of God, we can find our happiness in nothing except that in which God finds His happiness. The more like Him we are the happier. And in what does God find His happiness? In two things: Everlasting righteousness and everlasting beneficence. God is righteousness everlasting. “He is Light, [pg 64]and in Him is no darkness.” The Kingdom, the domination, the rule of God will bring us nothing but righteousness. “Seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.” If men but knew what sin is, and if men really longed to be free from everything like sin, what a grand message this would be! Jesus comes to lead me to God and His righteousness. We were created to be like God, in His perfect righteousness and holiness. What a prospect! And in His love too. The Kingdom of God means this: that there is in God a rule of universal love. He loves, and loves, and never ceases to love; and He longs to bless all who will yield to His pleadings. God is Light, and God is Love. And now the message comes to man. Can you think of a higher nobility; can you think of anything grander than to take the position that God takes, and to be one with God in His Kingdom; i.e., to have His Kingdom fill your heart; to have God Himself as your King and portion? Yes, my friends, let us remember that we must not just try to get here and there one and another of the blessings of the Kingdom. But the glory of the Kingdom is this: that it is the Kingdom of God where God is all in all. The French Empire, when Napoleon lived, had military glory as the ideal. Every Frenchman’s heart thrilled at the name of Napoleon as the man who had given the empire its glory. If we realized [pg 65]what it means,—our God takes us up into His Kingdom and puts His Kingdom into us and with the Kingdom we have God Himself, that blessed One, possessing us—surely there would be nothing that could move our hearts to enthusiasm like this. The Kingdom of God first! Blessed be His name I Look at man. I don’t speak about man’s sins, and about man’s wretchedness, and about man’s seeking everywhere for pleasure, and for rest, and for deliverance from sin, but I just say: Think what man is by creation and think what man is now by redemption; and let every heart say: “It is right. There is no blessedness or glory like that of the Kingdom. The Kingdom of God ought to be first in my whole life and being.” But now comes the important question, “How can I attain this?” Here we come to the great question that is troubling the lives of tens of thousands of Christians throughout the world. And it is strange that it is so very difficult for them to find the answer; that tens of thousands are not able to give an answer; and others, when the answer [pg 66]is given, can not understand it; The day the centurion found his joy in being devoted to the Roman Empire, it took charge of him with all its power and glory. Dear friends, how are we to attain to this blessed position in which the Kingdom of God shall fill our hearts with such enthusiasm that it will spontaneously be first every day? The answer is, first of all give up everything for it. You have heard of the Roman soldier who gave up his soul, his affection, his life, who gave up everything, to be a soldier; and you have often seen, in history ancient and modern, how men who were not soldiers gave up their lives in sacrifice for a king or a country. You have heard how in the South African Republic not many years ago the war of liberty was fought. After three years of oppression by the English the people said they would endure it no longer, and so they gathered together to fight for their liberty. They knew how weak they were, as compared with the English power, but they said, “We must have our liberty.” They bound themselves together to fight for it, and when that vow had been made, they went to their homes to prepare for the struggle. Such a thrill of enthusiasm passed through that country that in many cases women, when their husbands might have been allowed to stay at home, said to them: “No, go, even though you have not been commanded.” And there were mothers who, when one son was called out to the front, said: “No, take two, three.” Every man and woman was ready to die. It was in very deed “Our country first, before everything.” And even so, friends, must it be with you if you want this wonderful Kingdom of God to take possession of you. I pray you by the mercies of God, give up everything [pg 67]for it. You do not know at once what that may mean, but take the words and speak them out at the footstool of God: “Anything, everything, for the Kingdom of God.” Persevere in that, and by the Holy Spirit your God will begin to open to you the double blessing: on the one hand, the blessedness of the Kingdom which comes to possess your heart; and on the other hand, the blessedness of being surrendered to Him, and sacrificing and giving up all for Him. “The Kingdom of God first!” How am I to reach that blessed life? The answer is: “Give up everything for it.” And then a second answer would be this: Live every day and hour of your life in the humble desire to maintain that position. There are people who hear this test, and who say it is true, and that they want to obey it. But if you were to ask them how much time they spend with God day by day, you would be surprised and grieved to hear how little time they give up to Him. And yet they wonder that the blessedness of the divine life disappears. We prove the value we attach to things by the time we devote to them. The Kingdom should be first every day, and all the day. Let the Kingdom be first every morning. Begin the day with God, and God Himself will maintain His Kingdom in your heart. Do believe that. Rome did its utmost to maintain the authority of the man who gave himself to live for [pg 68]it. And God, the living God, will He not maintain His authority in your soul if you submit to Him? He will, indeed. Come to Him; only come, and give yourself up to Him in fellowship through Christ Jesus. Seek to maintain that fellowship with God all the day. Ah, friends, a man cannot have the Kingdom of God first, and at times, by way of relaxation, throw it off and seek his enjoyment in the things of this world. People have a secret idea life will become too solemn, too great a strain; it will be too difficult every moment of the day, from morning to evening, to have the Kingdom of God first. One sees at once how wrong it is to think thus. The presence of the love of God must every moment be our highest joy. Let us say: “By the help of God, it shall ever be the Kingdom of God first.” And then, my last remark, in answer to that question, “How can it be?” is this: it can be only by the power of the Holy Ghost. Let us remember that God’s Word comes to us with the language, “Be filled with the Spirit;” and if you are content with less of the Spirit than God offers, not utterly and entirely yielding to be filled with the Spirit, you do not obey the command. But listen: God has made a wonderful provision. Jesus Christ came preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, and proclaimed “The Kingdom is at hand.” “Some,” He said, “are standing here who will not see death [pg 69]until they see the Kingdom come in power.” He said to the disciples, “The Kingdom is within you.” And when did the Kingdom come—that Kingdom of God upon earth? When the Holy Ghost descended. On Ascension Day the King went and sat down upon the throne at the right hand of God, and the Kingdom of God, in Christ, the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth, was inaugurated. When the Holy Ghost came down He brought God into the heart, and Christ, and established the rule of God in power. I am afraid sometimes, that in speaking of the Holy Spirit we forget one thing. The Holy Spirit is very much spoken of in connection with power; and it is right that we should seek power. It is not so much spoken of in connection with the graces. And yet these are always more important than the gifts of power—the holiness, the humility, the meekness, the gentleness, and the lovingness; these are the true marks of the Kingdom. We speak rightly of the Holy Spirit as the only one who can breathe all this into us. But I think there is a third thing almost more important, that we forget, and that is: in the Spirit, the Father and the Son themselves come. When Christ first promised the Holy Spirit, and spoke about His approaching coming, He said: “In that day ye shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in me, and I in you. He that loveth me keepeth my commandments; and my [pg 70]Father will love him, and we will come and make our abode with him.” Brother, would you have the Kingdom of God first in your life, you must have the Kingdom in your hearts. If my heart be set upon a thing I may be bound with chains, but the moment the chains are loosened I fly towards the object of my affection and desire. And just so the Kingdom must be within us, and then it is easy to say: “The Kingdom first.” But to have the Kingdom within us in truth, we must have God the Father, and Christ the Son, by the Holy Ghost within us too. No Kingdom without the King. You are called to likeness with Christ. Oh, how many Christians strive after this part and that part of the likeness of Christ, and forget the root of the whole! What is the root of all? That Christ gave Himself up utterly to God, and His Kingdom and glory. He gave His life, that God’s Kingdom might be established. Do you the same to-day and give your life to God to be every moment a living sacrifice, and the Kingdom will come with power into your heart. Give yourself up to Christ. Let Christ the King reign in your heart, and the heavenly Kingdom will come there and the Presence and the Rule of God be known in power. Oh, think of that wonderful thing that is going to happen in the great eternity. We read of it in 1st Corinthians: God has entrusted Christ [pg 71]with the Kingdom, but there is coming a day when Christ shall come Himself again to be subjected unto the Father, and He shall give up the Kingdom to the Father, that God may be all, and in that day Christ shall say before the universe: “This is my glory, I give back the Kingdom to the Father!” Christians, if your Christ finds His glory here on earth in dying and sacrificing Himself for the Kingdom and then in eternity again in giving the Kingdom to God, shall not you and I come to God to do the same and count anything we have as loss, that the Kingdom of God may be made manifest, and that God may be glorified.[pg 72]

CHRIST OUR LIFE.

VI.

Colossians 3: 4.—Christ who is our life.

One question that rises in every mind is this: “How can I live that life of perfect trust in God?” Many do not know the right answer, or the full answer. It is this: “Christ must live it in me.” That is what He became man for; as a man to live a life of trust in God, and so to show to us how we ought to live. When He had done that upon earth, He went to heaven, that He might do more than show us, might give us, and live in us that life of trust. It is as we understand what the life of Christ is and how it becomes ours, that we shall be prepared to desire and to ask of Him that He would live it Himself in us. When first we have seen what the life is, then we shall understand how it is that He can actually take possession, and make us like Himself. I want especially to direct attention to that first question. I wish to set before you the life of Christ as He lived it, that we may understand what it is that He has for us and that we can expect from Him. Christ Jesus lived a life upon earth that He expects us [pg 73]literally to imitate. We often say that we long to be like Christ. We study the traits of His character, mark His footsteps, and pray for grace to be like Him, and yet, somehow, we succeed but very little. And why? Because we are wanting to pluck the fruit while the root is absent. If we want really to understand what the imitation of Christ means, we must go to that which constituted the very root of His life before God. It was a life of absolute dependence, absolute trust, absolute surrender, and until we are one with Him in what is the principle of His life, it is in vain to seek here or there to copy the graces of that life. In the Gospel story we find five great points of special importance; the birth, the life on earth, the death, the resurrection, and the ascension. In these we have what an old writer has called “the process of Jesus Christ;” the process by which He became what He is to-day—our glorified King, and our life. In all this life process we must be made like unto Him. Look at the first. What have we to say about His birth? This: He received His life from God. What about His life upon earth? He lived that life in dependence upon God. About His death? He gave up His life to God. About His resurrection? He was raised from the dead by God. And about His ascension? He lives His life in glory with God. First, He received His life from God. And [pg 74]why is it of consequence that we should look to that? Because Christ Jesus had in that the starting-point of His whole life. He said: “The Father sent me;” “The Father hath given the Son all things;” “The Father hath given the Son to have life in Himself.” Christ received it as His own life, just as God has His life in Himself. And yet, all the time it was a life given and received. “Because the Father almighty has given this life unto me, the Son of man on earth, I can count upon God to maintain it and to carry me through all.” And that is the first lesson we need. We need often to meditate on it, and to pray, and to think, and to wait before God, until our hearts open to the wonderful consciousness that the everlasting God has a divine life within us which can not exist but through Him. I believe God has given His life, it roots in Him. I shall feel it must be maintained by Him. We often think that God has given us a life which is now our own, a spiritual life, and that we are to take charge; and then we complain that we can not keep it right. No wonder. We must learn to live, learn to live as Jesus did. I have a God-given treasure in this earthen vessel. I have the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. I have the life of God’s Son within me given me by God Himself, and it can only be maintained by God Himself as I live in fellowship with Him.[pg 75] What does the Apostle Paul teach us in Romans VI.; there where he has just told us that we must reckon ourselves dead unto sin, and alive unto God in Christ Jesus? He goes on at once to say: “Therefore yield, present yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead.” How often a Christian hears solemn words about his being alive to God, and his having to reckon himself dead indeed to sin, and alive to God in Christ! He does not know what to do; he immediately casts about: “How can I keep it, this death and this life?” Listen to what Paul says. The moment that you reckon yourself dead to sin and alive to God, go with that life to God Himself, and present yourself as alive from the dead, and say to God: “Lord, Thou hast given me this life. Thou alone canst keep it. I bring it to Thee. I cannot understand all. I hardly know what I have got, but I come to God to perfect what He has begun.” To live like Christ, I must be conscious every moment that my life has come from God, and He alone can maintain it. Then, secondly, how did Christ live out His life during the thirty-three years in which He walked here upon earth? He lived it in dependence on God. You know how continually He says: “The Son can do nothing of Himself. The words that I speak, I speak not of Myself.” He waited unceasingly for the teaching, and the commands, and the guidance [pg 76]of the Father. He prayed for power from the Father. Whatever He did, He did in the name of the Father. He, the Son of God, felt the need of much prayer, of persevering prayer, of bringing down from heaven and maintaining the life of fellowship with God in prayer. We hear a great deal about trusting God. Most blessed! And we may say: “Ah, that is what I want,” and we may forget what is the very secret of all,—that God, in Christ, must work all in us. I not only need God as an object of trust, but I must have Christ within as the power to trust; He must live His own life of trust in me. Look at it in that wonderful story of Paul, the Apostle, the beloved servant of God. He is in danger of self-confidence, and God in heaven sends that terrible trial in Asia to bring him down, lest he trust in himself and not in the living God. God watched over his servant that he should be kept trusting. Remember that other story about the thorn in the flesh, in 2 Corinthians XII., and think what that means. He was in danger of exalting himself, and the blessed Master came to humble him, and to teach him: “I keep thee weak, that thou mayest learn to trust not in thyself, but in Me.” If we are to enter into the rest of faith, and to abide there; if we are to live the life of victory in the land of Canaan, it must begin here. We must be broken down from all self-confidence and learn like Christ [pg 77]to depend absolutely and unceasingly upon God. There is a greater work to be done in that than we perhaps know. We must be broken down, and the habit of our souls must be unceasingly: “I am nothing; God is all. I cannot walk before God as I should for one hour, unless God keep the life He has given me.” What a blessed solution God gives then to all our questions and our difficulties, when He says: “My child, Christ has gone through it all for thee. Christ hath wrought out a new nature that can trust God; and Christ the Living One in heaven will live in thee, and enable thee to live that life of trust.” That is why Paul said: “Such confidence have we toward God, through Christ.” What does that mean? Does it only mean through Christ as the mediator, or intercessor? Verily, no. It means much more; through Christ living in and enabling us to trust God as He trusted Him. Then comes, thirdly, the death of Christ. What does that teach us of Christ’s relation to the Father? It opens up to us one of the deepest and most solemn lessons of Christ life, one which the Church of Christ understands all too little. We know what the death of Christ means as an atonement, and we never can emphasize too much that blessed substitution and bloodshedding, by which redemption was won for us. But let us remember, that is only half the meaning of His death. The [pg 78]other half is this: just as much as Christ was my substitute, who died for me, just so much He is my head, in whom, and with whom, I die; and just as He lives for me, to intercede, He lives in me, to carry out and to perfect His life. And if I want to know what that life is which He will live in me, I must look at His death. By His death He proved that He possessed life only to hold it, and to spend it, for God. To the very uttermost; without the shadow of a moment’s exception, He lived for God,—every moment, everywhere, He held life only for His God. And so, if one wants to live a life of perfect trust, there must be the perfect surrender of his life, and his will, even unto the very death. He must be willing to go all lengths with Jesus, even to Calvary. When a boy twelve years of age Jesus said: “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” and again when He came to Jordan to be baptized: “It becometh us to fulfill all righteousness.” So on through all His life, He ever said: “It is my meat and drink to do the will of my Father. I come not to do my own will, but the will of Him that sent me.” “Lo, I am come to do Thy will, O God.” And in the agony of Gethsemane, His words were: “Not my will, but Thine, be done.” Some one says: “I do indeed desire to live the life of perfect trust; I desire to let Christ live it in [pg 79]me; I am longing to come to such an apprehension of Christ as shall give me the certainty that Christ will forever abide in me; I want to come to the full assurance that Christ, my Joshua, will keep me in the land of victory.” What is needful for that? My answer is: “Take care that you do not take a false Christ, an imaginary Christ, a half Christ.” And what is the full Christ? The full Christ is the man who said, “I give up everything to the death that God may be glorified. I have not a thought; I have not a wish; I would not live a moment except for the glory of God.” You say at once, “What Christian can ever attain that?” Do not ask that question, but ask, “Has Christ attained it and does Christ promise to live in me?” Accept Him in His fullness and leave Him to teach you how far He can bring you and what He can work in you. Make no conditions or stipulations about failure, but cast yourself upon, abandon yourself to this Christ who lived that life of utter surrender to God that He might prepare a new nature which He could impart to you and in which He might make you like Himself. Then you will be in the path by which He can lead you on to blessed experience and possession of what He can do for you. Christ Jesus came into the world with a commandment from the Father that He should lay down His life, and He lived with that one thought in His bosom His [pg 80]whole life long. And the one thought that ought to be in the heart of every believer is this: “I am in the death with Christ; absolutely, unchangeably given up to wait upon God, that God may work out His purpose and glory in me from moment to moment.” Few attain the victory and the enjoyment and the full experience at once. But this you can do: Take the right attitude and as you look to Jesus and what He was, say: “Father, Thou hast made me a partaker of the divine nature, a partaker of Christ. It is in the life of Christ given up to Thee to the death, in His power and indwelling, in His likeness, that I desire to live out my life before Thee.” Death is a solemn thing, an awful thing. In the Garden it cost Christ great agony to die that death; and no wonder it is not easy to us. But we willingly consent when we have learned the secret; in death alone the life of God will come; in death there is blessedness unspeakable. It was this made Paul so willing to bear the sentence of death in himself; he knew the God who quickeneth the dead. The sentence of death is on everything that is of nature. But are we willing to accept it, do we cherish it? and are we not rather trying to escape the sentence or to forget it? We do not believe fully that the sentence of death is on us. Whatever is of nature must die. Ask God to make you willing to believe with your heart that to die with Christ is the only way to [pg 81]live in Him. You ask, “But must it then be dying every day?” Yes, beloved; Jesus lived every day in the prospect of the cross, and we, in the power of His victorious life, being made conformable to His death, must rejoice every day in going down with Him into death. Take an illustration. Take an oak of some hundred years’ growth. How was that oak born? In a grave. The acorn was planted in the ground, a grave was made for it that the acorn might die. It died and disappeared; it cast roots downward, and it cast shoots upward, and now that tree has been standing a hundred years. Where is it standing? In its grave; all the time in the very grave where the acorn died; it has stood there stretching its roots deeper and deeper into that earth in which its grave was made, and yet, all the time, though it stood in the very grave where it had died, it has been growing higher, and stronger, and broader, and more beautiful. And all the fruit it ever bore, and all the foliage that adorned it year by year, it owed to that grave in which its roots are cast and kept. Even so Christ owes everything to His death and His grave. And we, too, owe everything to that grave of Jesus. Oh! let us live every day rooted in the death of Jesus. Be not afraid, but say: “To my own will I will die; to human wisdom, and human strength, and to the world I will die; for it is in the grave of my Lord that His life [pg 82]has its beginning, and its strength and its glory.” This brings us to our next thought. First, Christ received life from the Father; second, Christ lived it in dependence on the Father; third, Christ gave it up in death to the Father; and now, fourth, Christ received it again raised by the Father, by the power of the glory of the Father. Oh, the deep meaning of the resurrection of Christ! What did Christ do when He died? He went down into the darkness and absolute helplessness of death. He gave up a life that was without sin; a life that was God-given; a life that was beautiful and precious; and He said, “I will give it into the hands of my Father if He asks it;” and He did it; and He was there in the grave waiting on God to do His will; and because He honored God to the uttermost in His helplessness, God lifted Him up to the very uttermost of glory and power. Christ lost nothing by giving up His life in death to the Father. And so, if you want the glory and the life of God to come upon you, it is in the grave of utter helplessness that that life of glory will be born. Jesus was raised from the dead, and that resurrection power, by the grace of God, can and will work in us. Let no one expect to live a right life until he lives a full resurrection life in the power of Jesus. Let me state in a different way what this resurrection means. Christ had a perfect life, given by God. The Father [pg 83]said: “Will you give up that life to me? Will you part with it at my command?” And He parted with it, but God gave it back to Him in a second life ten thousand times more glorious than that earthly life. So God will do to every one of us who willingly consents to part with his life. Have you ever understood it? Jesus was born twice. The first time He was born in Bethlehem. That was a birth into a life of weakness. But the second time, He was born from the grave; He is the “first-born from the dead.” Because He gave up the life that He had by His first birth, God gave him the life of the second birth, in the glory of heaven and the throne of God. Christians, that is exactly what we need to do. A man may be an earnest Christian; a man may be a successful worker; he may be a Christian that has had a measure of growth and advance; but if he has not entered this fullness of blessing, then he needs to come to a second and deeper experience of God’s saving power; he needs, just as God brought him out of Egypt, through the Red Sea, to come to a point where God brings him through Jordan into Canaan. Beloved, we have been baptized into the death of Christ. It is as we say: “I have had a very blessed life, and I have had many blessed experiences, and God has done many things for me; but I am conscious there is something wrong still; I am conscious that this life of rest and victory is [pg 84]not really mine.” Before Christ got His life of rest and victory on the throne, He had to die and give up all. Do you it, too, and you shall with Him share His victory and glory. It is as we follow Jesus in His death, that His resurrection, power and joy will be ours. And then comes our last point. The fifth step in His wondrous path was: He was lifted up to be forever with the Father. Because He humbled Himself, therefore God highly exalted Him. Wherein cometh the beauty and the blessedness of that exaltation of Jesus? For Himself perfect fellowship with the Father; for others participation in the power of God’s omnipotence. Yes, that was the fruit of His death. Scripture promises not only that God will, in the resurrection life, give us joy, and peace that passeth all understanding, victory over sin, and rest in God, but He will baptize us with the Holy Ghost; or, in other words, will fill us with the Holy Ghost. Jesus was lifted to the throne of heaven, that He might there receive from the Father the Spirit in His new, divine manifestation, to be poured out in His fullness. And as we come to the resurrection life, the life in the faith of Him who is one with us, and sits upon the throne—as we come to that, we too may be partakers of the fellowship with Christ Jesus as He ever dwells in God’s presence, and the Holy Spirit will fill us, to work in us, and out of us in a way that we have never yet known.[pg 85] Jesus got this divine life by depending absolutely upon the Father all His life long, depending upon Him even down into death. Jesus got that life in the full glory of the Spirit to be poured out, by giving Himself up in obedience and surrender to God alone, and leaving God even in the grave to work out His mighty power; and that very Christ will live out His life in you and me. Oh, the mystery! Oh, the glory! And oh, the Divine certainty. Jesus Christ means to live out that life in you and me. What think you, ought we not to humble ourselves before God? Have we been Christians so many years, and realized so little what we are? I am a vessel set apart, cleansed, emptied, consecrated; just standing, waiting every moment for God, in Christ, by the Holy Spirit, to work out in me as much of the holiness and the life of His Son as pleases Him. And until the Church of Christ comes to go down into the grave of humiliation, and confession, and shame; until the Church of Christ comes to lay itself in the very dust before God, and to wait upon God to do something new, and something wonderful, something supernatural, in lifting it up, it will remain feeble in all its efforts to overcome the world. Within the Church what lukewarmness, what worldliness, what disobedience, what sin! How can we ever fight this battle, or meet these difficulties? The answer is: Christ, the risen One, [pg 86]the crowned One, the almighty One, must come, and live in the individual members. But we can not expect this except as we die with Him. I referred to the tree grown so high and beautiful, with its roots every day for a hundred years in the grave in which the acorn died. Children of God, we must go down deeper into the grave of Jesus. We must cultivate the sense of impotence, and dependence, and nothingness, until our souls walk before God every day in a deep and holy trembling. God keep us from being anything. God teach us to wait on Him, that He may work in us all He wrought in His Son, till Christ Jesus may live out His life in us! For this may God help us![pg 87]

CHRIST’S HUMILITY OUR SALVATION.

VII.

Philippians 2: 5-8.—”Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus. He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”

All are familiar with this wonderful passage. Paul is speaking about one of the most simple, practical things in daily life,—humility; and in connection with that, he gives us a wonderful exhibition of divine truth. In this chapter we have the eternal Godhead of Jesus—He was in the form of God, and one with God. We have His incarnation—He came down, and was found in the likeness of man. We have his death with the atonement—He became obedient unto death. We have His exaltation—God hath highly exalted Him. We have the glory of His Kingdom,—that every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess Him. And in what connection? Is it a theological study? No. Is it a description of what Christ is? No; it is in connection with a simple, downright call to a life of humility in our intercourse with each other. Our life on earth is linked to all the eternal glory of the Godhead as revealed in the [pg 88]exaltation of Jesus. The very looking to Jesus, the very bowing of the knee to Jesus, ought to be inseparably connected with a spirit of the very deepest humility. Consider the humility of Jesus. First of all, that humility is our salvation; then, that humility is just the salvation we need; and again, that humility is the salvation which the Holy Spirit will give us. Humility is the salvation that Christ brings. That is our first thought. We often have very vague,—I might also say visionary—ideas of what Christ is; we love the person of Christ, but that which makes up Christ, which actually constitutes Him the Christ, that we do not know or love. If we love Christ above everything, we must love humility above everything, for humility is the very essence of His life and glory, and the salvation He brings. Just think of it. Where did it begin? Is there humility in heaven? You know there is, for they cast their crowns before the throne of God and the Lamb. But is there humility on the throne of God? Yes, what was it but heavenly humility that made Jesus on the throne willing to say: “I will go down to be a servant, and to die for man; I will go and live as the meek and lowly Lamb of God?” Jesus brought humility from heaven to us. It was humility that brought Him to earth, or He never would have come. In accordance with this, just as Christ became a man in this divine [pg 89]humility, so His whole life was marked by it. He might have chosen another form in which to appear; He might have come in the form of a king, but He chose the form of a servant. He made Himself of no reputation; He emptied Himself; He chose the form of a servant. He said: “The Son of Man is not come to be ministered unto, to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” And you know, in the last night, He took the place of a slave, and girded Himself with a towel, and went to wash the feet of Peter and the other disciples. Beloved, the life of Jesus upon earth was a life of the deepest humility. It was this gave His life its worth and beauty in God’s sight. And then His death—possibly you haven’t thought of it much in this connection—but His death was an exhibition of unparalleled humility. “He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” My Lord Christ took a low place all the time of His walk upon earth; He took a very low place when He began to wash the disciples’ feet; but when He went to Calvary, He took the lowest place there was to be found in the universe of God, the very lowest, and He let sin, and the curse of sin, and the wrath of God, cover Him. He took the place of a guilty sinner, that He might bear our load, that He might serve us in saving us from our wretchedness, that He might by His precious blood win deliverance for us, that He might by that blood wash us from our [pg 90]stain and our guilt. We are in danger of thinking about Christ, as God, as man, as the atonement, as the Saviour, and as exalted upon the throne, and we form an image of Christ, while the real Christ, that which is the very heart of His character, remains unknown. What is the real Christ? Divine humility, bowed down into the very depths for our salvation. The humility of Jesus is our salvation. We read, “He humbled Himself, therefore God hath highly exalted Him.” The secret of His exaltation to the throne is this: He humbled Himself before God and man. Humility is the Christ of God, and now in Heaven, to-day, that Christ, the Man of humility, is on the throne of God. What do I see? A Lamb standing, as it had been slain, on the throne; in the glory He is still the meek and gentle Lamb of God. His humility is the badge He wears there. You often use that name—the Lamb of God—and you use it in connection with the blood of the sacrifice. You sing the praise of the Lamb, and you put your trust in the blood of the Lamb. Praise God for the blood. You never can trust that too much. But I am afraid you forget that the word “Lamb” must mean to us two things: it must mean not only a sacrifice, the shedding of blood, but it must mean to us the meekness of God, incarnate upon earth, the meekness [pg 91]of God represented in the meekness and gentleness of a little Lamb. But the salvation that Christ brought is not only a salvation that flows out of humility; it also leads to humility. We must understand that this is not only the salvation which Christ brought; but that it is exactly the salvation which you and I need. What is the cause of all the wretchedness of man? Primarily pride; man seeking his own will and his own glory. Yes, pride is the root of every sin, and so the Lamb of God comes to us in our pride, and brings us salvation from it. We need above everything to be saved from our pride and our self-will. It is good to be saved from the sins of stealing, murdering, and every other evil; but a man needs above all to be saved from what is the root of all sin, his self-will and his pride. It is not until man begins to feel that this is exactly the salvation he needs, that he really can understand what Christ is, and that he can accept Him as his salvation. This is the salvation that we as Christians and believers specially need. We know the sad story of Peter and John; what their self-will and pride brought upon them. They needed to be saved from nothing except themselves, and that is the lesson which we must learn, if we are to enter the life of rest. And how can we enter that life, and dwell there in the bosom of the Lamb of [pg 92]God, if pride rules? Have we not often heard complaints of how much there is of pride in the Church of Christ? What is the cause of all the division, and strife, and envying, that is often found even among God’s saints? Why is it that often in a family there is bitterness—it may be only for half an hour, or half a day; but what is the cause of hard judgments and hasty words? What is the cause of estrangement between friends? What is the cause of evil speaking? What is the cause of selfishness and indifference to the feelings of others? Simply this: the pride of man. He lifts himself up, and he claims the right to have his opinions and judgments as he pleases. The salvation we need is indeed humility, because it is only through humility that we can be restored to our right relation to God. “Waiting upon God,”—that is the only true expression for the real relation of the creature to God; to be nothing before God. What is the essential idea of a creature made by God? It is this: to be a vessel in which He can pour out His fullness, in which He can exhibit His life, His goodness, His power, and His love. A vessel must be empty if it is to be filled, and if we are to be filled with the life of God we must be utterly empty of self. This is the glory of God, that He is to fill all things, and more especially His redeemed people. And as this is the glory of the creature, so this is [pg 93]the only redemption, and the only glory of every redeemed soul, to be empty and as nothing before God; to wait upon Him, and to let God be all in all. Humility has a prominent place in almost every epistle of the New Testament. Paul says: “Walk with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love; endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” The nearer you get to God, and the fuller of God, the lowlier you will be; and equally before God and man, you will love to bow very low. We know of Peter’s early self-confidence; but in his epistles what a different language he speaks! He wrote there: “Let the younger be subject to the elder, and all of you be subject one to another; humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in His own time.” He understood, and he dared to preach, humility to all. It is indeed the salvation we need. What is it that prevents people from coming to that entire surrender that we speak of? Simply that they dare not abandon themselves, and trust themselves, to God; that they are not willing to be nothing, to give up their wishes, and their will, and their honor to Christ. Shall we not accept the salvation that Jesus offers? He gave up His own will; He gave up His own honor; He gave up any confidence in Himself; [pg 94]He lived dependent upon God as a servant whom the Father had sent. There is the salvation we need, the Spirit of humility that was in Christ. What is it that often disturbs our hearts, and our peace? It is pride seeking to be something. And God’s decree is irreversible, “God resisteth the proud; He gives grace only to the humble.” How often Jesus had to speak to his disciples about it! You will find repeatedly in the Gospel those simple words: “He that humbleth Himself shall be exalted; he that exalteth himself shall be humbled.” He taught His disciples: “He that would be chiefest among you, let him be the servant of all.” This should be our one cry before God: “Let the power of the Holy Ghost come upon me, with the humility of Jesus, that I may take the place that He took.” Brother, do you want a better place than Jesus had? Are you seeking a higher place than Jesus? Or will you say: “Down, down, as deep as ever I can go. By the help of God I will be nothing before God; I will be where Jesus was.” And now comes the third thought,—This is the salvation the Holy Ghost brings. You know what a change took place in those disciples. Let us praise God for it; the Holy Spirit means this: the life, the disposition, the temper, and the inclinations of Jesus, brought down from heaven into our hearts. That is the Holy Ghost. He has [pg 95]His mighty workings to bestow as gifts; but the fullness of the Holy Ghost is this: Jesus Christ in His humility coming to dwell in us. When Christ was teaching His disciples, all His instructions may have helped in the way of preparation, breaking them down, and making them conscious of what was wrong, and awakening desire; but the instruction could not do it, and all their love to Jesus and their desire to please Him could not do it, until the Holy Ghost came. That is the promise Christ gave. He says, in connection with the coming of the Holy Ghost: “I will come again to you.” Christ said to His disciples: “I have been three years with you, and you have been in the closest contact with me, and I have done the utmost to reach your hearts; I have sought to get into your hearts, yet I have failed; but fear not, I will come again. In that day ye shall see me, and your hearts shall rejoice, and no man shall take your joy from you. I will come again to dwell in you, and live my life in you.” Christ went to heaven that He might get a power which He never had before. And what was that? The power of living in men. God be praised for this! It was because Jesus, the humble One, the Lamb of God, the meek, the lowly and gentle One, came down in the Holy Spirit into the hearts of His disciples, that the pride was expelled, and that the very breath of Heaven [pg 96]breathed through Him in the love that made them one heart and one soul. Dear friends, Christ is yours. Christ as He comes in the power of the Holy Spirit is yours. Are you longing to have Him, to have the perfect Christ Jesus? Come, then, and see how, amid the glories of His Godhead—His having been in the form of God, and equal to God; amid the glories of His incarnation—His having become a man; amid the glories of His atonement—His having been obedient to death; and amid the glories of His exaltation, which is the chief and brightest glory, He humbled Himself from Heaven down to earth and on earth down to the cross. He humbled Himself to bear the name and show the meekness, and die the death of the Lamb of God. And what is it we now need to do? How are we to be saved by this humility of Jesus? It is a solemn question, but, thank God, the answer can be given. First we must desire it above everything. Let us learn to pray God to deliver us from every vestige of pride, for this is a cursed thing. Let us learn to set aside for a time other things in the Christian life, and begin to plead with the Lamb of God day by day, “O Lamb of God, I know Thy love, but I know so little of Thy meekness.” Come day after day, and lay your heart against His heart, and say to Him with strong desire: “Jesus, Lamb of God, give, oh, give me Thyself, with Thy meekness [pg 97]and humility,” and He will fulfill the desire of them that fear Him. It is not enough to desire it and to pray for it; claim and accept it as yours. This humility is given you in Christ Jesus. Christ is our life. What does that mean? Oh, that God might give you and me a vision of what that means. The air is our life, and the air is everywhere, universal. We breathe without difficulty because God surrounds us with the air; and is the air nearer to me than Christ is? The sun gives light to every green leaf and every blade of grass, shining hour by hour and moment by moment. And is the sun nearer to the blade of grass than Christ is to man’s soul? Verily, no; Christ is around us on every side; Christ is pressing on us to enter, and there is nothing in heaven, or earth, or hell, that can keep the light of Christ from shining into the heart that is empty and open. If the windows of your room were closed with shutters, the light could not enter; it would be on the outside of the building, streaming and streaming against the shutters; but it could not enter. But leave the windows without shutters, and the light comes, it rejoices to come in and fill the room. Even so, children of God, Jesus and His light, Jesus and His humility, are around you on every side, longing to enter into your hearts. Come and take Him to-day in His blessed meekness and gentleness. Do not be afraid of Him; He is [pg 98]the Lamb of God. He is so patient with you, He is so kindly towards you, He is so tender and loving. Take courage to-day and trust Jesus to come into your heart and take possession of it. And when He has taken possession, there will be a life day by day of blessed fellowship with Him, and you will feel a necessity ever deeper for your quiet time with Him, and for worshiping and adoring Him, and for just sinking down before Him in helplessness and humility, and saying: “Jesus, I am nothing, and Thou art all.” It will be a blessed life, because you will be conscious of being at the feet of Jesus. At this moment you can claim Jesus in His divine humility as the life of your soul. Will you? Will you not open your heart, and say: “Come in; come in?” Come to-day, and take Him up afresh in this blessed power of His wonderful humility, and say to Him: “Oh, Thou who didst say, ‘Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls,’ my Lord, I know why it is that I have not the perfect life; it is my pride, but to-day, come Thou and dwell in my heart. Thou who didst lead even Peter and John into the blessedness of Thy heavenly humility; Thou wilt not refuse me. Lord, here I am; do Thou, who by Thy wonderful humility alone canst save, come in. O Lamb of God, I believe in Thee; take possession of my heart, and dwell in me.” When [pg 99]you have said that, go out in quiet, and retire, walking gently as holding the Lamb of God in your heart, and say: “I have received the Lamb of God; He makes my heart His care; He breathes His humility and dependence on God in me, and so brings me to God. His humility is my life and salvation.”[pg 100]

THE COMPLETE SURRENDER.

VIII.

Genesis 39: 1-3.—Joseph was brought down to Egypt; and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, captain of the guard, an Egyptian, bought him at the hands of the Ishmaelites, which had brought him down thither. And the Lord was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man; and he was in the house of his master, the Egyptian, and his master saw that the Lord was with him.

We have in this passage an object lesson which teaches us what Christ is to us. Note: Joseph was a slave, but God was with him so distinctly that his master could see it. “And his master saw the Lord was with him, and that the Lord made all that he did prosper in his hands; and Joseph found grace in his sight, and he served him,”—that is to say, he was his slave about his person,—”and he made him overseer over his house,”—that was something new. Joseph had been a slave, but now he becomes a master. “And he made him overseer over his house, and all that he had he put into his hands. And it came to pass, from the time that he had made him overseer in his house, and over all that he had, that the Lord blessed the Egyptian’s house for Joseph’s [pg 101]sake, and the blessing of the Lord was upon all that he had in the house and in the field. And he left all that he had in Joseph’s hand; and he knew not all he had, save the bread which he did eat.” We find Joseph in two characters in the house of Potiphar: first as a servant and a slave, one who is trusted and loved, but still entirely a servant; second, as master. Potiphar made him overseer over his house and his lands, and all that he had, so that we read afterward that he left everything in his hands, and he knew of nothing except the bread that came upon his table. I want to call your attention to Joseph as a type of Christ. We sometimes speak in the Christian life, of entire surrender, and rightly, and here we have a beautiful illustration of what it is. First, Joseph was in Potiphar’s house to serve him and to help him, and he did that, and Potiphar learned to trust him, so that he said, “All that I have I will give into his hands.” Now, that is exactly what is to take place with a great many Christians. They know Christ, they trust Him, they love Him, but He is not Master, He is a sort of helper. When there is trouble they come to Him, when they sin they ask Him for pardon in His precious blood, when they are in darkness they cry to Him; but often and often they live according to their own will, and they seek help from themselves. But how blessed is the man who comes and, like Potiphar, [pg 102]says, “I will give up everything to Jesus!” There are many who have accepted Christ as their Lord, but have never yet come to the final, absolute surrender of everything. Christians, if you want perfect rest, abiding joy, strength to work for God, oh, come and learn from that poor heathen Egyptian what you ought to do. He saw that God was with Joseph and he said, “I will give up my house to him.” Oh, learn you to do that. There are some who have never yet accepted Christ, some who are seeking after Him, thirsting and hungering, but they do not know how to find Him. Let me direct your attention to four thoughts regarding this surrender to Christ: First, its motives; second, its measures; third, its blessedness; lastly, its duration. First of all, its motives. What moved Potiphar to do this? I think the answer is very easy: he was a trusted servant of the king and he had the king’s work to take care of, and he very likely could not take care of his own house. All his time and attention were required at the court of Pharaoh. He had his duty there; he was in high honor; but his own house got neglected. Very likely he had had other overseers, one slave appointed to rule the others, and perhaps that one had been unfaithful, or dishonest, and somehow his house was not as he would have it. [pg 103]So he buys another slave, just as he had formerly done, but in this case he sees what he had never seen before. There is something unusual about the man. He walks so humbly, he serves so faithfully and so lovingly, and withal so successfully. Potiphar begins to look into the reason for this, and finally concludes that God is with him. It is a grand thing to have a man with whom God is, to entrust one’s business to. The heathen realized this, and between the need of his own house and what he saw in Joseph, he decided to make him overseer. I ask you, do not these two motives plead most urgently that you should say: “I will make Jesus master over my whole being?” Your house, Christian, your spiritual life, the dwelling, the temple of God in your heart,—in what state is that? Is it not often like the temple of old, in Jerusalem, that had been defiled and made a house of merchandise, and afterwards a den of thieves? Your heart, meant to be the home of Jesus, is it not often full of sin and darkness, full of sadness, full of vexation? You have done your very best to get it changed, and you have called in the help of man, and the help of means; you have used every method you could think of for getting it put right; but it will not come right until He whose it is, comes in to take charge. If there is any trouble in your heart, if you are [pg 104]in darkness, or in the power of sin, I bring to you the Son of God, with the promise that He will come in and take charge. As Potiphar took Joseph, will you not take Jesus? Has He not proven Himself worthy to be trusted? Come and say, “Jesus shall have entire charge; He is worthy.” Think not only of His Divine power, but think of His wonderful love; think of His coming from heaven to save you; think of His dying on Calvary and shedding His blood out of intense love for you. Oh, think of it; Christ in heaven loves every one who is given to Him, and whom He has made a child of God. “Having loved His own that were in the world, He loved them unto the end.” Must I plead in the name of the love of the crucified Jesus; must I plead with you Christians, and say, Look at Jesus, the Son of God, your Redeemer, and ask you to make Him overseer over all? Give Him charge of your temper, your heart’s affections, your thoughts, your whole being, and He will prove Himself worthy of it. Joseph had been for a time just a common slave, and with the other slaves had served Pharaoh. Alas! many a Christian has used Christ for his own advancement and comfort, just as he uses everything in the world. He uses father and mother, minister, money, and all else the world will give, to comfort and make him happy; there is danger of his using Christ [pg 105]Jesus in the same way. But oh, brethren, this is not right. You are His house, and He has a right to dwell therein. Will you not come and surrender all, and say, “Lord Jesus, I have made Thee overseer over all?” But now, secondly, the measure of that surrender. We read in the 4th verse: “All that he had he put into his hands.” Then in verse 5: “And it came to pass from the time that he made him overseer over all that he had”—there you have it the second time—”the Lord blessed the Egyptian’s house, and the blessing of the Lord was upon all that he had”—there the third time. Then in verse 6: “And he left all that he had”—there you have the words the fourth time—”in Joseph’s hand, and he knew not all he had, save the bread which he did eat.” What do I see here? That Potiphar actually gave everything into Joseph’s hands. He made him master over his slaves. All the money was put into Joseph’s hands, for we read that Potiphar had care of nothing. When dinner was brought upon the table, he ate of it, and that was all he knew of what was going on in his house. Is not this entire surrender?—he gives up everything into the hands of Joseph. Ah, beloved Christians, I want you to ask yourselves: “Have I done that?” You have offered more than one consecration prayer, and you have more than once said: “Jesus, all I have I give [pg 106]to Thee.” You have said it, and meant it; but very probably you did not realize fully what it meant. With the word surrender there seems always to be a larger and more comprehensive meaning. We do not succeed in carrying out our intentions, and afterward we take back one thing and another until we have lost sight of our original intention. Beloved Christians, let Christ Jesus have all. Let Him have your whole heart, with its affections; He Himself loves, with more than the love of Jonathan. Let Him have your whole heart, saying, “Jesus, every fiber of my being, ever power of my soul, shall be devoted to Thee.” He will accept that surrender. He spoke a solemn word: “You must hate father and mother.” Say you to-day: “Lord Jesus, the love to father and mother, to wife and child, to brother and sister, I give up to Thee. Teach Thou me how to love Thee. I have only one desire, which is to love Thee. I want to give my whole heart to be full of Thy love.” But when you have given your heart, there is yet more to give. There is the head—the brain with its thoughts. I believe Christians do not know how much they rob Christ of in reading so much of the literature of the world. They are often so occupied with their newspapers that the Bible gets a very small place. Oh, friends, I beseech you bring this noble power which God has given you, the power of a mind that can think heavenly, [pg 107]eternal, and infinite things, and lay it at the feet of Jesus, saying, “Lord Jesus, every faculty of my being I want to surrender to Thee, that Thou shouldst teach me what to think, and how to think, for Thee and Thy Kingdom.” Bless God, there are men who have given their intellect to Jesus, and it has been accepted by Him. And in this connection there is my whole outer life. There is my relation to society, my position among men, my intercourse in my own home, with friends and family; there is my money, my time, my business; all these should be put in the hands of Jesus. One cannot know beforehand the blessedness of this surrender, but blessed it surely is. Come, because He is worthy; come because you know you can not keep things right yourself, and make Christ master over all you have. Give father and mother, wife and child, house and land, and money, all to Jesus, and you will find that in giving all you receive it back an hundred fold. Thirdly, look at the blessing of the entire surrender. You have here the remarkable words: “And it came to pass from the time that Potiphar made Joseph overseer over all that he had, that the Lord blessed the Egyptian’s house for Joseph’s sake, and the blessing of the Lord was upon all that he had in the house, and in the field.” I ask you Christians, If God did this to that heathen man, because he honored Joseph; if God, for [pg 108]Joseph’s sake, blessed that Egyptian in this wonderful way, may a Christian not venture to say: “If I put my life into the hands of Jesus, I am sure God will bless all that I have?” Oh, dare to say it. Potiphar trusted Joseph implicitly and absolutely, and there was prosperity everywhere, because God was with Joseph. Beloved friends, if you but surrender everything, depend upon it, the blessing from that time will be yours. There will be a blessing within your own inner life, and a blessing in your outer life. He blessed Potiphar in the house, in the field, everywhere. Oh, Christian, what is that blessing you will get? I can not tell all, but I can tell you this: if you will come to Christ Jesus and surrender all, the blessing of God will be on all that you have. There will be a blessing for your own soul. “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee.” Try that; trust Jesus for everything, and trust everything to Him, and the blessing of God will come upon you—the sweet rest, the rest of faith. It is all in the hands of Jesus; He will guide you; He will teach you; He will work in you; He will keep you; He will be everything to you. What a blessed rest and freedom from responsibility and from care, because it is all in the hands of Jesus! I do not say trouble and trial will never come; but in the midst of trial and trouble you will have the all-sufficiency of the presence of Jesus to be your comfort, your [pg 109]help, and your guide. Joseph was sold by his brethren, but he saw God in it, and he was quite content. Christ was betrayed by Judas, condemned by Caiaphas, and given over to execution by Pilate; but in all that, Christ saw God, and He was content. Give over your life, in all its phases, into the hands of Jesus; remembering that the very hairs of your head are numbered, and not a sparrow falls to earth without the Father’s notice. Consent now and say: “I will give up everything into the hands of Jesus. Whatever happens is His will regarding me. Whether He comes in the light or in the dark, in the storm or on the troubled sea, I will rest in that blessed assurance. I give up my whole life entirely to Him.” In reading the Book of Jonah, we find God’s hand in each step of Jonah’s experience. It was God who sent the storm when Jonah went aboard the ship, who appointed a whale to swallow him, who ordered the whale to cast him out; and then afterwards it was God who caused the hot wind to blow when the sun was sending down its scorching rays, until the soul of Jonah was grieved, and made the gourd to grow, and sent the worm to kill the gourd, and set a sea-wind to dry the gourd up quickly. Do we not thus see that every circumstance of our living, every comfort and every trial, comes from God in Christ? There is nothing can touch a hair of my head. Not a sharp word [pg 110]comes against me; not an unexpected flurry surrounds me, but it is all Jesus. With my life in His hands, I need care for nothing. I can be content with what Jesus gives. God blessed Potiphar in the field; in the visible life outside of his house; and God will bless you, that, in your intercourse with men, you may be a blessing; that by your holy, humble, respectful, quiet walk, you may carry comfort; that by your loving readiness to be a servant and a helper to all, you may prove what the Spirit of God has done within you. Oh, my brother, my sister, you have no conception of it,—I have not—how God is willing to bless the soul utterly given up to Jesus. God can delight in nothing but Jesus. God delights infinitely in Jesus. God longs to see nothing in us but Jesus, and if I give up my heart and life to Jesus, and say, “My God, I want that Thou shouldst see in me nothing but Jesus,” then I bring to the Father the sacrifice that is the most acceptable of all. Oh, believers, come to-day; come out of all your troubles, and all your self-efforts and your self-confidence, and let the blessed Son of God take possession. Let me direct your thoughts, lastly, to the duration of this surrender. I want to emphasize this—because in many cases the surrender does not last. Some go away, and for a time have much gladness and joy, but it soon begins to decrease, [pg 111]and in a few weeks or perhaps months is all gone. Others who do not lose it entirely, complain sadly at times, that it goes away and comes again. They say: “My life has been very much blessed since that surrender I made to God, but it has not always been on the same level.” What did Potiphar do? We read in the 4th verse: “He made him overseer over his house, and all that he had he left in Joseph’s hands.” What a simple word! He left it there. And oh, children of God, if you will only get to that point and say, “For all eternity I leave it in the hands of Jesus,” you will find what a blessing it is. Potiphar found now that he could do the king’s business with two hands and an undivided heart. I might try to rescue a drowning man by holding fast somewhere with one hand, while I reached out the other hand to the man, but it is a grand thing for a person to be able to stretch out both hands, and that person is the one who has left all with Jesus—all his inner life, all his cares and troubles, and has given himself up entirely to do the will of God. Will you leave it there? I must press this, because I know temptations will come. One temptation will be that the feelings you had in your act of surrender will pass away; they will not be so bright; another, that circumstances will tempt you. Beloved, temptations will come; God means it for your good. [pg 112]Every temptation brings you a blessing. Do understand that. Learn the lesson of giving up everything to Jesus, and letting Jesus take charge of everything. Leave all with Jesus. Do not think that by a surrender to-day or on any day, however powerful, however mighty, things will keep right themselves. You need every morning afresh, when God wakes you up out of sleep, to put your heart, and your life, and your house, and your business, into the hands of Jesus. Wait on Him, if need be, in silence, or in prayer, until He gives you the assurance, “My child, for to-day all is safe; I take charge.” And morning by morning He will renew to you the blessing, and morning by morning you will go out from your quiet time in the consciousness, “To-day I have had fellowship with my King, and it is all right.” Jesus has taken charge. And so, day by day, you can have grace to leave all in the hands of Jesus. In conclusion let me speak to two classes. There are times when your heart is restless; there are times when you are afraid to die. There are some true believers who have perhaps never yet understood that it was their duty to give up everything to Christ. Beloved fellow Christians, I come with a message from your Father, to come and to-day take that word into your hearts and upon your lips, even though you do not understand it. “Jesus, I make Thee Master of [pg 113]everything and I will wait at Thy feet, that Thou wilt show me what Thou wouldst have me be and do.” Do it now. And let me say to believers who have done it before, and who long with an unutterable longing to do it fully and perfectly,—Child of God, you can do it, for the Holy Spirit has been sent down from Heaven for this one purpose, to glorify Jesus; to glorify Jesus in your heart, by letting you see how perfectly Jesus can take possession of the whole heart; to glorify Jesus by bringing Him into your very life, that your whole life may shine out with the glory of Jesus. Depend upon it, the Father will give it to you by the Holy Spirit, if you are ready. Oh, come, and let your intercourse with God be summed up in a simple prayer and answer—”My God, as much as Thou wilt have of me to fill with Christ, Thou shalt have to-day.” “My child, as much of Christ as thy heart longeth to have, thou shalt have; for it is My delight that My Son be in the hearts of My children.”[pg 114]

DEAD WITH CHRIST.

IX.

Gal. 2: 20.—I am crucified with Christ.

The Revised Version properly has the above text “I have been crucified with Christ.” In this connection, let us read the story of a man who was literally crucified with Christ. We may use all the narrative of Christ’s work upon earth in the flesh as a type of His spiritual work. Let us take in this instance the story of the penitent thief, Luke 23: 39-43, for I think we may learn from him how to live as men who are crucified with Christ. Paul says: “I have been crucified with Christ.” And again: “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom I have been crucified to the world, and the world to me.” We often ask earnestly: How can I be free from the self life? The answer is, “Get another life.” We often speak about the power of the Holy Spirit coming upon us, but I doubt if we fully realize that the Holy Spirit is a heavenly life come to expel the selfish, and fleshly, and the earthly life. If we want, in very deed, to enjoy fully the rest that there is in Jesus, we [pg 115]can only have it as He comes in, in the power of His death, to slay what is in us of nature, and to take possession, and to live His own life in the fullness of the Holy Ghost. God’s Word takes us to the cross of Christ, and it teaches us about that cross, two things. It tells us that Christ died for sin. We understand what that means, that in His atonement He died as I never die, as I never can die, as I never need die; He died for sin and for me. But what gave His death such power to atone? It was this: the spirit in which He died, not the physical suffering, not the external act of death, but the spirit in which He died. And what was that spirit? He died unto sin. Sin had tempted Him, and surrounded Him, and had brought Him very nigh to saying, “I cannot die.” In Gethsemane He cried: “Father, is it not possible that the cup pass from me?” But God be praised, He gave up His life rather than yield to sin. He died to sin, and in dying He conquered. And now, I can not die for sin like Christ, but I can and I must die to sin like Christ. Christ died for me. In that He stands alone. Christ died to sin, and in that I have fellowship with Him. I have been crucified, I am dead. And here is the great subject to which I want to lead you.—What it is to be dead with Christ, and how it is that I can practically enter into this death with Christ. We know that the great characteristic [pg 116]of Christ is His death. From eternity He came with the commandment of the Father that He should lay down His life on earth. He gave Himself up to it, and He set His face towards Jerusalem. He chose death, and He lived and walked upon earth to prepare Himself to die. His death is the power of redemption; death gave Him His victory over sin; death gave Him His resurrection, His new life, His exaltation, and His everlasting glory. The great mark of Christ is His death. Even in Heaven, upon the throne, He stands as the Lamb that was slain, and through eternity they ever sing, “Thou art worthy, for Thou wast slain.” Beloved brother, your Boaz, your Christ, your all-sufficient Saviour, is a Man of whom the chief mark and the greatest glory is this: He died. And if the Bride is to live with her husband as His wife, then she must enter into His state, and into His spirit, and into His disposition, and ever be as He is. If we are to experience the full power of what Christ can do for us, we must learn to die with Christ. I ought not, perhaps, to use that expression, “We must learn to die with Christ;” I ought, rather, to say, “We must learn that we are dead with Christ.” That is a glorious thought in the 6th chapter of Romans; to every believer in the Church of Rome—not to the select ones, or the advanced ones, but to every believer in the Church of Rome, however [pg 117]feeble, Paul writes, “You are dead with Christ.” On the strength of that he says, “Reckon yourselves dead unto sin.” What does that mean—You are dead to sin? We can not see it more clearly than by referring to Adam. Christ was the second Adam. What happened in the first Adam? I died, in the first Adam; I died to God; I died in sin. When I was born, I had in me the life of Adam, which had all the characteristics of the life of Adam after he had fallen. Adam died to God, and Adam died in sin, and I inherit the life of Adam, and so I am dead in sin as he was, and dead unto God. But at the very moment I begin to believe in Jesus, I become united to Christ, the second Adam, and as really as I am united by my birth to the first Adam, I am made partaker of the life of Christ. What life? That life which died unto sin on Calvary, and which rose again; therefore God by his apostle tells us: “Reckon yourselves indeed dead unto sin and alive unto God in Christ Jesus.” You are to reckon it as true, because God says it—for your new nature is indeed, in virtue of your vital union to Christ, actually and utterly dead to sin. If we want to have the real Christ that God has given us, the real Christ that died for us, in the power of His death and resurrection, we must take our stand here. But many Christians do not understand what the 6th chapter of the Epistle to the [pg 118]Romans teaches us. They do not know that they are dead to sin. They do not know it, and therefore Paul instructs them: “Know ye not that as many of you as are baptized into Christ Jesus, are baptized into His death.” How can we who are dead to sin in Christ live any longer therein? We have indeed the death and the life of Christ working within us. But, alas! most Christians do not know this, and therefore do not experience or practice it. They need to be taught that their first need is to be brought to the recognition, to the knowledge, of what has taken place in Christ on Calvary, and what has taken place in their becoming united to Christ. The man must begin to say, even before he understands it, “In Christ I am dead to sin.” It is a command: “Reckon ye yourselves indeed to be dead unto sin.” Get hold of your union to Christ; believe in the new nature within you, that spiritual life which you have from Christ, a life that has died and been raised again. A man’s acts are always in accordance with his idea of his state. A king acts like a king, otherwise we say, “That man has forgotten his kingship,” but if a man is conscious of being a king, he behaves like a king. And so I cannot live the life of a true believer unless I am filled with a consciousness of this every day: “I thank God that I am dead in Christ. Christ died unto sin, and I am united with Christ, and Christ lives in me and [pg 119]I am dead to sin.” What is the life Christ lives in me? Ask what is the life Adam lives in me? Adam lives in me the death life, a life that has fallen under the power of sin and death, death to God. That life Adam lives in me by nature as an unconverted man. And Christ, the second Adam, has come to me with a new life, and I now live in His life, the death-life of Christ. As long as I do not know it, I can not act according to it, though it be in me. Praise God, when a man begins to see what it is, and begins in obedience to say, “I will do what God’s Word says; I am dead, I reckon myself dead,” he enters upon a new life. On the strength of God’s everlasting Word, and your union to Christ, and the great fact of Calvary, reckon, know yourself as dead indeed unto sin. A man must see this truth; this is the first step. The second is—he must accept it in faith. And what then? When he accepts it in faith, then there comes in him a struggle, and a painful experience, for that faith is still very feeble, and he begins to ask, “But why, if I am dead to sin, do I commit so much sin?” And the answer God’s Word gives is simply this: You do not allow the power of that death to be applied by the Holy Spirit. What we need is to understand that the Holy Spirit came from Heaven, from the glorified Jesus, to bring His death and His life into us. The two are inseparably connected. That [pg 120]Christ died, He died unto sin, and that He liveth, He liveth unto God. The death and the life in Him are inseparable; and even so in us the life to God in Christ is inseparably connected with the death to sin. And that is what the Holy Ghost will teach us and work in us. If I have accepted Christ in faith by the Holy Ghost, and yield myself to Him, Christ every day keeps possession, and reveals the full power of my fellowship in His death and life in my heart. To some this comes undoubtedly in one moment of supreme power and blessing; all at once they see and accept it, and enter in, and there is death to sin as a Divine experience. It is not that the tendency to evil is rooted out. No; but the power of Christ’s death keeps from sin, and destroys the power of sin; the power of Christ’s death can be manifested in the Holy Spirit’s unceasingly mortifying the deeds of the body. Some one asks me if there is still growth needed. Undoubtedly. By the Holy Spirit a man can now begin to live and grow, deeper and deeper, into the fellowship of Christ’s death. New things are discovered by him in spheres of which he never thought. A man may at times be filled with the Holy Ghost, and yet there may be great imperfections in him. Why? For this reason: because his heart, perhaps, had not been fully prepared by a complete discovery of sin. There [pg 121]may be pride, or self-consciousness, or forwardness, or other qualities of this nature which he has never noticed. The Holy Spirit does not always cast these out at once. No. There are different ways of entering into the blessed life. One man enters into the blessed life with the idea of power for service; another with the idea of rest from worry and weariness; another with the idea of deliverance from sin. In all these aspects there is something limited, and therefore every believer is to give himself up after he knows the power of Christ’s death, and say continually: “Lord Jesus, let the power of Thy death work through, let it penetrate my whole being.” As the man gives himself unreservedly up, he will begin to bear the marks of a crucified man. The apostle says: “I have been crucified,” and he lives like a crucified man. What are the marks of a crucified man? The first is, deep, absolute humility. Christ humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. When the death to sin begins to work mightily, that is one of its chief and most blessed proofs. It breaks a man down, down, and the great longing of his heart is, “Oh, that I could get deeper down before my God, and be nothing at all, that the life of Christ might be exalted. I deserve nothing but the cursed cross; I give myself over to it.” Humility is one of the great marks of a crucified man.[pg 122] Another mark is impotence, helplessness. When a man hangs on the cross, he is utterly helpless, he can do nothing. As long as we Christians are strong, and can work, or struggle, we do not get into the blessed life of Christ; but when a man says, “I am a crucified man, I am utterly helpless, every breath of life and strength must come from my Jesus,” then we learn what it is to sink into our own impotence, and say, “I am nothing.” Still another mark of crucifixion is restfulness. Yes. Christ was crucified, and went down into the grave, and we are crucified and buried with Him. There is no place of rest like the grave; a man can do nothing there, “My flesh shall rest in hope,” said David, and said the Messiah. Yes, and when a man goes down into the grave of Jesus, it means this: that he just cries out, “I have nothing but God, I trust God; I am waiting upon God; my flesh rests in Him; I have given up everything, that I may rest, waiting upon what God is to do to me.” Remember, the crucifixion, and the death, and the burial are inseparably one. And remember the grave is the place where the mighty resurrection power of God will be manifested. And remember those precious words in the 11th of John: “Said I not unto thee”—when did Christ say that? It was at the grave of Lazarus—”that if thou believest, thou shalt see the glory of God?” Where shall I see the glory of God [pg 123]most brightly? Beside the grave. Go down into death believing, and the glory of God will come upon thee, and fill thy heart. Dear friends, we want to die. If we are to live in the rest, and the peace, and the blessedness of our great Boaz; if we are to live a life of joy and of fruitfulness, of strength and of victory, we must go down into the grave with Christ, and the language of our life must be: “I am a crucified man. God be praised, though I have nothing but sin in myself, I have an everlasting Jesus, with His death and His life, to be the life of my soul.” How can I enter into this fellowship of the cross? We find an illustration in the story of the penitent thief. Thomas said, before Christ’s death, “Let us go and abide with Him.” And Peter said, “Lord, I am ready to go with Thee to prison, or to death.” But the disciples all failed, and our Lord took a man who was the offscouring of the earth, and he hung him upon the cross of Calvary beside Himself, and He said to Peter, and to all: “I will let you see what it is to die with Me.” And He says that word to-day, to the weakest and the humblest; if you are longing to know what it is to enter into death with Jesus, come and look at the penitent thief. And what do we see there? First of all, we see there the state of a heart prepared to die with Christ. We see in that penitent thief, a humble, whole-hearted [pg 124]confession of sin. There he hung upon the cursed tree, and the multitudes were blaspheming that man beside him, but he was not ashamed publicly to make confession: “I am dying a death that I have deserved; I am suffering justly; this cross is what I have deserved.” Here is one of the reasons why the Church of Christ enters so little into the death of Christ; men do not want to believe that the curse of God is upon everything in them that has not died with Christ. People talk about the curse of sin, but they do not understand that the whole nature has been infected by sin, and that the curse is on everything. My intellect, has that been defiled by sin? Terribly, and the curse of sin is on it, and therefore my intellect must go down into the death. Ah, I believe that the Church of Christ suffers more to-day from trusting in intellect, in sagacity, in culture, and in mental refinement, than from almost anything else. The Spirit of the world comes in, and men seek by their wisdom, and by their knowledge, to help the Gospel, and they rob it of its crucifixion mark. Christ directed Paul to go and preach the Gospel of the cross, but to do it not with wisdom of words. The curse of sin is on all that is of nature. If there be a minister who has delighted in preaching, who has done his very best, who has given his very best in the way of talent and of thought, and who asks, “Must that go down into [pg 125]the grave?” I say, “Yes, my brother, the whole man must be crucified.” And so with the heart’s affection. What is more beautiful than the love of a child to his mother? In that lovely nature there is something unsanctified, and it must be given up to die. God will raise it from the dead and give it back again, sanctified and made alive unto God. So I might go through the whole of our life. People often say to me: “But has God made all things so beautiful, and is it not right that we should enjoy them? Are not His gifts all good?” I answer, yes, but remember what it says; they are good, if sanctified by the Word of God and prayer. The curse of sin is on them; the blight of sin is on everything most beautiful, and it takes much of God’s Word, and much of prayer to sanctify them. It is very hard to give up a thing to the death, and it is hardest of all to give up my life to the death, and I never will until I have learned that everything about that life is stamped by sin, and let it go down into the death as the only way to have it quickened and sanctified. The penitent thief confessed his sin, and that he deserved death. Then, next, he had faith in the almighty power of Christ. A wonderful faith. It has no parallel in the Bible. There hangs the cursed malefactor with Jesus of Nazareth, and he dares speak, and say: “I am dying here, under the just curse of my sins, but I believe Thou [pg 126]canst take me into Thy heart, and remember me when Thou comest into Thy Kingdom.” Oh, that we might learn to believe in the almighty power of Christ! That man believed that Christ was a King, and had a Kingdom, and that He would take him up in His arms, and in His heart, and remember him when He came into His Kingdom. He believed that, and believing that, he died. Brother, you and I need to take time to come to a much larger and deeper faith in the power of Christ, that the almighty Christ will indeed take us in His arms and carry us through this death life, revealing the power of His death in us. I cannot live it without personal contact with Christ every hour of the day. Christ must do it; Christ can do it. Come therefore and say: “Is He not the Almighty One; did He not come from the throne of God; did He not prove His omnipotence, and did the Father not prove it when He rose from the dead?” Would you be afraid, now that Christ is on the throne, of doing what the malefactor did when Christ was upon the cross, and entrusting yourself to Him to live as one dead with Him? Christ will carry you through the very process He went through; will make His death work in you every day of your life. I note one thing more in the penitent thief—his prayer. There was his conviction of sin, and his faith, but there was, further, the utterance of his [pg 127]faith in prayer. He turned to Jesus. Remember that the whole world, with perhaps the exception of Mary and the women, was turned against Christ that day. Of the whole world of men as far as I know, there was but that one praying to Christ. Do not wait to see what others do; if you wait for that,—alas! I desire to say it in love and tenderness,—you will not find much company in the Church of Christ. Pray incessantly: “Lord Christ, let the power of Thy death come into me.” For God’s sake, pray the prayer. If you want to live the life of Heaven, there must be death to sin in the power of Jesus. There must be personal entrustment of the soul into His death to sin, personal acceptance of Jesus to do the mighty work. We have seen what the preparation is on the part of this man; let us look, secondly, at how Christ met him. He met him, you know, with that wonderful promise, with its three wonderful parts: “To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise.” A promise of fellowship with Christ,—”Thou shalt be with me;” a promise of rest in eternity, in the Paradise from which sin had cast man out,—”With me in Paradise;” a promise of immediate blessing,—”To-day shalt thou be with Me.” With that three-fold blessing Jesus comes to you and me, and He says: “Believer, are you longing to live the Paradise life, where I give souls to eat of the Tree [pg 128]of Life, in the Paradise of God, day by day? Are you longing for that uninterrupted communion with God that there was in Paradise before Adam fell? Are you longing for perfect fellowship with me, longing to live where I am living, in the love of the Father? To-day, to-day; even as the Holy Ghost says: ‘To-day shalt thou be with me!’ Longest thou for Me? I long more for thee. Longest thou for fellowship? I long unceasingly for thy fellowship, for I need thy love, my child, to satisfy my heart. Nothing can prevent My receiving thee into fellowship. I have taken possession of Heaven for thee, as the Great High Priest, that thou mightest live the Heavenly life, that thou mightest have access into the holiest of all and an abiding dwelling place there. To-day, if thou wilt, thou shalt be with me in Paradise.” Thank God, the Jesus of the penitent thief is my Jesus. Thank God, the cross of the penitent thief is my cross. I must confess my sinfulness if I want to come into the closest communion with my blessed Lord. There was not a man upon earth during the thirty-three years of Christ’s life that had such wonderful fellowship with the Son of God, as the penitent thief, for with the Son of God he entered the glory. What made him so separate from others? He was on the cross with Jesus and entered Paradise with Him. And if I live upon the cross with Jesus, the Paradise life shall be mine every day.[pg 129] And now, if Jesus gives me that promise, what have I to do? Let go. When a ship is moored alongside the dock, with everything ready for the start and all standing on the quay, the last bell is rung and the order is given, “Let go.” Then the last rope is loosened, and the steamer moves. There are things that tie us to the earth, to the flesh-life, and to the self-life; but to-day the message comes: “If thou wouldst die with Jesus, let go.” Thou needst not understand all. It may not be perfectly clear; the heart may appear dull, but never mind; Jesus carried that penitent thief through death to life. The thief did not know where he was going, he did not know what was to happen, but Jesus, the mighty conqueror, took him in His arms, and landed him, in his ignorance, in Paradise. Oh, I have sometimes said in my soul, bless God for the ignorance of that penitent thief. He knew nothing about what was going to happen, but he trusted Christ; and if I can not understand all about this crucifixion with Christ, and the death to sin, and the life to God, and the glory that comes into the heart, never mind, I trust my Lord’s promise, I cast myself helpless into His arms, I maintain my position on the cross. Given up to Jesus, to die with Him, I can trust Him to carry me through. Shall we not each one take the blessed opportunity of doing what Ruth did when she, in obedience to the advice of her mother, just cast [pg 130]herself at the feet of the great Boaz, the Redeemer, to be His? Shall we not come into personal contact with Jesus, and shall not each one of us just speak before the world these simple words: “Lord, here is this life; there is much in it still of self, and sinfulness, and self-will, but I come to Thee; I long to enter fully into Thy death; I long to know fully that I have been crucified with Thee; I long to live Thy life every day.” Then say: “Lord Jesus, I have seen Thy glory, what Thou didst for the penitent one at Thy side on the cross; I am trusting Thee, that Thou wilt do it for me. Lord, I cast myself into Thy arms.”[pg 131]

JOY IN THE HOLY GHOST.

X.

Romans 14: 17.—For the Kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.

In this text we have the earthly revelation of the work of the Trinity. The Kingdom of God is righteousness; that represents the work of the Father. The foundations of His throne are justice and judgment. Then comes the work of the Son: He is our peace, our Shiloh, our rest. The Kingdom of God is peace; not only the peace of pardon for the past, but the peace of perfect assurance as to the future. Not only the work of atonement is finished, but the work of sanctification is finished in Christ, and I may receive and enjoy what is prepared for me. The new man has been created, and I may in Him live out my life; if a kingdom is established in righteousness, if the rule is perfect, there can be perfect rest. If there be peace, no war from without, and no civil dissension within, a nation can be happy and prosperous. And so there comes here, after righteousness and peace, the joy, the blessed happiness in which a man can live; “The [pg 132]Kingdom of God is righteousness and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.” May we regard this joy of the Holy Ghost, not only as a beautiful thing to admire, not only as a thing to have beautiful thoughts about, but as a blessing that we are going to claim. We often see a fruiterer’s or confectioner’s shop, with beautiful fruit or cake temptingly displayed in the window. There is a great pane of plate glass before it, and the hungry little boys stand there and look, and long, but they cannot reach it. If you were to say to one, “Now, little boy, take that fruit,” he would look at you in surprise. He has learned that there is something between. If he had never known of glass he might attempt it. The plate glass is sometimes so clear that even a grown man might for a moment be deceived and stretch out his hand. But he soon finds there is something invisible between him and the fruit. This represents exactly the life of many Christians; they see, but they cannot take. And what now is this invisible pane of plate glass, that hinders my taking the beautiful things I see? It is nothing but the self-life; I see divine things but cannot reach them, the self-life is the invisible plate glass. We are willing, we are working, we are striving, and yet we are holding back something; we are afraid to give up everything to God. We do not know what the consequences may be. We have not yet [pg 133]comprehended that God and Christ Jesus are worth everything. Whatever is told us of the blessed life of peace and joy, we say, “Praise God; God’s Word is true; I believe the Word;” and yet, day by day, we stand back. When some one says, “Take it,” we say, “I can’t take it; there is something between.” Would we were willing to give up the self-life; would we had the courage to give up to-day, and let the joy of the Holy Ghost be our religion. That is the religion God has prepared for us; that is the religion we can claim; not only righteousness, not only peace, but the joy of the Holy Ghost. That is the Kingdom of God. What is this joy? First of all, it is the joy of the presence of Jesus. We are often inclined to speak most of two other things, the power for sanctification, and the power for service. But I find there is a thing more important than either of those two, and that is that the Holy Ghost came from Heaven to be the abiding presence of Christ in His disciples, in the Church, and in the heart of every believer. The Lord Jesus was going away, and His disciples were very sad; their hearts was sorrowful; but He said to them, “I will come back again, and I will come to you. Your hearts shall rejoice, and your joy no man shall take from you.” What took place with them, may take place with us too. The Holy Spirit is given to make the presence of Jesus an abiding reality, a [pg 134]continual experience. And what was that joy that no man could ever touch? It was the joy of Pentecost. And what was Pentecost? The coming of the Lord Jesus in the Holy Ghost to dwell with His disciples. While Jesus was with His disciples on earth, He could not get into their hearts in the right way. They loved Him, but they could not take in His teaching, they could not partake of His disposition, and they could not receive His very spirit into their being. But when He had ascended to Heaven, He came back in the Spirit to dwell in their hearts. It is this alone that will help us to go, the minister to his congregation with its difficulties, the business man to his counter, the mother to her large family with its care, the worker to her Bible class. It is this only that will help us to feel, “I can conquer, I can live in the rest of God.” Why? “Because I have the almighty Jesus with me every day.” With God’s people, there seems to be one hindrance, they do not know their Saviour. They do not realize that this blessed Christ is an ever present, all-pervading, in-dwelling Christ, who wants to take charge of their entire lives. They do not know, they do not believe that He is an Almighty Christ, and ready in the midst of any difficulties and any circumstances to be their keeper and their God. This is absolutely true. Many Christians are asked as to how one may [pg 135]have the joy unspeakable, the joy that nothing can take away, the joy of the friendship and nearness and love of Jesus filling his heart. We complain that the rush of competition is so terrible that we can not get time for private prayer. Brother, the Lord Jesus Christ, if He comes to you as a brother and a friend and an abiding guest, can give your heart the joy of the Holy Ghost, so that business will take its right place under your feet. Your heart is too holy to have it filled with business; let the business be in the head and under the feet, but let Christ have the whole heart, and He will keep the whole life. Our glorious, exalted, almighty, ever present Christ! why is it that you and I can not trust Him fully, perfectly to do His work? Shall we not say before God that we do trust Him, that we will trust Christ to be to us every moment all that we can desire? On the Cross of Calvary Christ was all alone, and you believe He did a perfect and a blessed work; and Christ in Heaven is all alone, as high priest and intercessor, and you trust Him for His work there. But, praise God! it is equally true, Christ in the heart is able all alone to keep it all the days. May it please God to reveal to His children the nearness of Christ standing and knocking at the door of every heart, ready to come in and rest forever there and to lead the soul into His rest.[pg 136] We all know what the power of joy is; we know there is nothing so attractive as joy, there is nothing can help a man to bear and endure so much as joy; we know that the Lord Jesus Himself for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross. One is not living aright if he is living a sighing, trembling, doubting life. Come to-day and believe the joy of the Holy Ghost is meant for you. Does not the Scripture say, “Whom not having seen we love; in whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” Do you not believe that this blessed, adorable, inconceivably beautiful Son of God, the delight of the Father,—do you not believe that this Son of God could fill your heart with delight day and night, if He were always present? And do you not believe that He loves you more than a bridegroom loves his bride? Do you not believe that, having bought you with His blood, Jesus is longing for you? He needs you to satisfy His heart of love. Begin to believe with your whole heart, “The joy of the Holy Ghost is my portion,” for the Holy Ghost secures to me without interruption the presence and the love of Jesus. But secondly, there is the joy of deliverance from sin. The Holy Ghost comes to sanctify us. Christ is our sanctification, and the Holy Ghost comes to communicate Him to us, to work out all [pg 137]that is in Christ and to reproduce it in us. Let us remember that in the sight of God there is something more than work. There is Christlikeness—the likeness and the life of Christ in us. That is what God wants; that will fit us for work. God asks not that Christ should live in us as separate persons; temples full of filthy, impure, foul creatures, with Christ hidden away somewhere there,—that is not the intention of God, but He wants Christ so formed in us that we are one with Christ, and that in our thinking, feeling and living, the image of His blessed Son is manifest before Him. The Holy Spirit is given to sanctify us. My brother, are you willing to be sanctified from every sin, be that sin great or small? I am not asking, do you feel that you have the power to conquer it? I am not even asking, do you feel the power to cast it out? It may be that you feel no power; that won’t hinder if you are willing. I can not cast out sin, but I can get the Almighty Christ by the Holy Spirit to do it, and it is my work to say to Christ, “There is the sin, there is the evil thing, I lay it at Thy feet, I cast it there, I cast it into Thy very bosom. Lord, I am ready to cut off the right hand, anything, only deliver me from it.” Then Christ will cast out the evil spirit and give deliverance. The Spirit of God is a holy spirit and His work is to make free from the power of sin and death. And if you want [pg 138]to live in the joy of the Holy Ghost, the question comes: “Are you willing to surrender everything that is sinful, even what appears good,—but has the stain of sin on it?” You may be involved in relationships that make your life very difficult. A pastor with his people maybe brought into very difficult relationships; or a business man with his partner or those with whom he has to associate, may be in an exceedingly trying position. But is not the blessed Lamb of God worth it all? What is the Christ worth to you? The question was once asked the disciples, “What think ye of Christ?” I ask, “What is Christ worth to you?” And I beseech you, whatever prospective difficulties there may be, and whatever perplexities surround you, take the whole world to-day and cast it at His feet. To have Him is worth any difficulty; to have Him will be the solution of every difficulty. There are not only such external, manifest difficulties and perplexities, there are a thousand little things that come in our life and that often disturb us, temptations to unloving feelings, and sharp words, and hasty judgments. Oh, come, and believe that the Holy Spirit, the sanctifier, can come in and rule, and give grace to pass through all without sinning, and you shall know what the joy of the Holy Ghost is. Our body, we read in 1st Corinthians, is the temple of the Holy Ghost. It is to be holy in things like eating and drinking. [pg 139]How often a Christian comes to the consciousness that he takes or seeks too much enjoyment in that eating, eating for pleasure, with no self-denial or self-sacrifice in his feeding the body! How often we tempt one another to eat, and how often the believer forgets that this body is the very secret temple of the Holy Ghost and that every mouthful we eat and drink must be for the glory of God in such a way as to be perfectly well pleasing to Him! Beloved, I bring you a message: There is access for you into the rest of God, and the Holy Spirit is given to bring you in, and the Holy Spirit will fill your heart with the unutterable joy of Christ’s presence; and with the joy of deliverance from sin, of victory over sin; the unutterable joy of knowing that you are doing God’s will and are pleasing in His sight; the unutterable joy of knowing that He is sanctifying and keeping the temple for Christ to dwell in. Believers, the joy of the Holy Ghost, the joy of that holiness of God, is His blessedness, His purity, His perfection, that nothing can mar or stain or disturb. The Holy Ghost waits to bring and to manifest it in our lives. He wants to come so into our hearts that we shall live, as Holy Ghost men, the sanctified life, with the sanctifying power of Jesus running through our whole beings. My third thought is: the joy of the Holy Ghost is the joy of the love of the saints. The Holy [pg 140]Ghost was not given to any man on the day of Pentecost separate from the others; He came and filled the whole company. We know how much division and separation and pride there had been among them, but on that day the Holy Ghost so filled their hearts that we find it was afterward said: “Behold how these men love one another.” There was a love in the primitive church that the very heathen noticed, and could not understand. Why was that? The Holy Spirit is the bond of union between the Father and Son; and that bond is love. The Holy Spirit is just the love of God come to dwell in the heart. When He dwells with me and my brother we learn to love each other. Though I be unloving naturally, and though I have very little grace, if the heart of my brother is full of the Holy Spirit he loves me through it all. You know love is a wonderful thing. As long as a man tries to love it is not real love, but when real love comes, the more opposition it meets the more it triumphs, for the more it can exercise itself and perfect itself, the more it rejoices. Take a mother with a son dishonoring her. How her love follows him! When she sees that he has fallen deeper than ever before, how the dear mother heart only loves him the more intensely through all the wretchedness! Does not the Scripture say, “If He gave His life for us, we are bound to give our life for the brethren?” The Holy Spirit comes [pg 141]as a spirit of love, and if you want to know the joy of the Holy Ghost, and want Him to lead you into the rest of God and keep you there, beware above everything on earth or in hell of being unloving. One sharp word to your brother or sister brings a cloud upon you without your knowing it. People are so accustomed to talk just as they like about each other that they say sharp and unkind and unloving things, and when a cloud comes in consequence they cannot understand it. If there is one thing that grieves God, if there is one thing that hinders the Spirit—the fruit of the Spirit is love—it is the want of lovingness. If you want to live in the joy of the Holy Ghost make your covenant with God. “But,” you say, “there is a Christian man who makes me so impatient; he does trouble me and vex me so with his stupidity. And there are those worldly men; how they have tempted me in times past and done me harm! And there is that business man who is trying to ruin me.” Take them all, and your own wife and children and every one around you and say, “I understand it, love is rest, and rest is love. God resteth in His love. Love is rest and rest is love, and where there is no love the rest must be disturbed.” And let us say to-day, “I see what the joy is; it is the joy of always loving, it is the joy of losing my own life in love to others.” In connection with humility, some one asks, “How [pg 142]about that text, ‘In honor preferring one another?'” When a soul comes into perfect humility before God it becomes nothing, and God becomes all in all. I am nothing. There is no self to be affronted; I have said before God: “I am nothing; it is only Thy life and light that shines. The honor is Thine, and nothing may touch me but what is against the glory of my God.” Beloved, are you living in the joy of the Holy Ghost? Come and accept a blessing and give yourself up to live a life of humility in which you are nothing, and a life of love like Christ’s in which you only live for your fellow-men, for the kingdom of God is the joy of the Holy Ghost. My last thought is that the joy of the Holy Ghost is the joy of working for God. The joy of the presence of Jesus, the joy of deliverance from sin, the joy of love for the brethren, and then the joy of working for God. Some of us have at times felt what an incomprehensible thing it is that the everlasting God should work through us; and we have said, “Lord, what is this, that Thou the Almighty One dost work in me and through me, a vile worm by nature?” It is a mystery that passeth knowledge, and yet it is so true. The joy of the Holy Ghost comes when a man gives himself up to the Christlike work of carrying the love of God to men. Let us seek the perishing, let us live and die for souls, let us live and die that our [pg 143]fellow-men may be reclaimed and brought back to their God. There is no joy like hearing the joy-song of a new-born soul. But yes, there is another joy that may be as deep. Even if God does not give me the blessing of hearing the newborn soul sing its song, I may have the joy, the sympathy with Jesus in His rejected life, and the assurance that the Father looks with good pleasure on me. When I think of the thousands of believers in the Christian world and then think of the heathen world, the cry comes up in my heart: “What are we doing?” Ah, we need to be crying to God day and night, “Lord God, wake us up. Lord God, let the Holy Spirit burn within us.” Are we the true successors of Jesus Christ? Are we indeed the followers and successors of Christ who went all the way to Calvary to give His blood for men? Do let us remember the joy of the Holy Ghost is the joy of working for God in Christ. I believe that God has new ways and new leadings and new power for His people, if they will only wait on Him. But what most of us do is this: we thank God for all He has given, we look at all the ways of working we have, and we say that we will try to do our work better. But oh, if we had a sense of the need, if we had any sense, by the vision of the Holy Ghost, of the state of the millions around us, I am sure we would fall on our faces before God and say, “God [pg 144]help me to something new. Oh that every fiber of my being may be taken possession of for this great work with God!” The great need is that all Christians should consecrate themselves wholly to God for His work. May God help us to know what is the joy of the Holy Ghost. Concluding, I ask again: “Do you believe that it is possible for the Lord Jesus, our Shiloh, of whom Jacob prophesied, our Joshua, our glorious King and High Priest,—do you believe it is possible for Christ Jesus to bring you to-day into the rest of God?” Remember that word in Hebrews, “Even as the Holy Ghost saith, to-day.” To-day, summon up courage and take up your ministry, and take up your business, and take up your surroundings, and take up your natural temperament, and take up your home, and take up your life for the days to come upon earth, and say, “I do not understand it, I know not what will come, but one thing I know, I do absolutely give everything into the hands of the crucified Lamb of God; He shall have me in my entirety.” And oh, remember, beloved, that Christ will be to you more than you can think or understand, more than you can ask or desire. Come, let us cast ourselves into those blessed, loving arms, and let us believe even now that our Joshua leads us into the rest of God, the rest in which we are saved from self-care and self-seeking [pg 145]and self-trusting and self-loving, the rest in which we do not think of ourselves, but where He who is almighty and omnipresent is always going to be with us and is always going to work within us. And let us when we have done that, claim the promise, that as we have sought first the kingdom and God’s righteousness, all things shall be added unto us. Beloved, the kingdom of God is within you, and it is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. Come, let us claim it even now in simple, childlike, humble faith.[pg 146]

TRIUMPH OF FAITH.

XI.

John 4: 50.—And the man believed the word that Jesus had spoken unto him.

Let me quote from the Gospel according to St. John, the 4th chapter, beginning at the 46th verse: “So Jesus came again into Cana of Galilee, where He made the water wine. And there was a certain nobleman whose son was sick at Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus was come up out of Judea into Galilee, he went unto Him, and besought Him that He would come down and heal his son; for he was at the point of death. Then said Jesus unto him, Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe.” There you have the word “believe” the first time. “The nobleman saith unto Him, Sir, come down ere my child die. Jesus saith unto him, Go thy way; thy son liveth. And the man believed the word that Jesus had spoken unto him, and he went his way.” There you have that word the second time. “And as he was now going down, his servants met him, and told him, saying, Thy son liveth. Then inquired he of them the hour when he began to [pg 147]amend. And they said unto him, Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him. So the father knew that it was at the same hour, in the which Jesus said unto him, Thy son liveth; and himself believed, and his whole house.” There you have the word “faith”. This story has often been used to illustrate the different steps of faith in the spiritual life. It was this use made of it in an address that brought the sainted Canon Battersby into the full enjoyment of rest. He had been a most godly man, but had lived the life of failure. He saw in the story what it was to rest on the Word and trust the saving power of Jesus, and from that night he was a changed man. He went home to testify of it, and under God, he was allowed to originate the Keswick Convention. Let me point out to you the three aspects of faith which we have here: first, faith seeking; then, faith finding; and then, faith enjoying. Or, still better: faith struggling; faith resting; faith triumphing. First of all, faith struggling. Here is a man, a heathen, a nobleman, who has heard about Christ. He has a dying son at Capernaum, and in his extremity leaves his home, and walks some six or seven hours away to Cana of Galilee. He has heard of the Prophet, possibly, as one who has made water wine; he has heard of His other miracles round Capernaum, and he [pg 148]has a certain trust that Jesus will be able to help him. He goes to Him, and his prayer is that the Lord will come down to Capernaum and heal his son. Christ said to him, “Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe.” He saw that the nobleman wanted Him to come and stand beside the child. This man had not the faith of the centurion—”Only speak a word.” He had faith. It was faith that came from hearsay, and it was faith that did, to a certain extent, hope in Christ; but it was not the faith in Christ’s power such as Christ desired. Still Christ accepted and met this faith. After the Lord had thus told him what He wished—a faith that could fully trust Him—the nobleman cried the second time, “Sir, come down ere my child die.” Seeing his earnestness and his trust, Christ said, “Go thy way; thy son liveth.” And then we read that the nobleman believed. He believed, and he went his way. He believed the word that Jesus had spoken. In that he rested and was content. And he went away without having any other pledge than the word of Jesus. As he was walking homeward, the servants met him, to tell him his son lived. He asked at what hour he began to amend. And when they told him, he knew it was at the very hour that Jesus had been speaking to him. He had at first a faith that was seeking, and struggling, and searching for blessing; then he had a faith that accepted the [pg 149]blessing simply as it was contained in the word of Jesus. When Christ said, “Thy son liveth,” he was content, and went home, and found the blessing—the son restored. Then came the third step in his faith. He believed with his whole house. That is to say, he did not only believe that Christ could do just this one thing, the healing of his son; but he believed in Christ as his Lord. He gave himself up entirely to be a disciple of Jesus. And that not only alone, but with his whole house. Many Christians are like the nobleman. They have heard about a better life. They have met certain individuals by whose Christian lives they have been impressed, and consequently have felt that Christ can do wonderful things for a man. Many Christians say in their heart, “I am sure there is a better life for me to live; how I wish I could be brought to that blessed state!” But they have not much hope about it. They have read, and prayed, but they have found everything so difficult, If you ask them, “Do you believe Jesus can help you to live this higher life?” they say, “Yes; He is omnipotent.” If you ask, “Do you believe Jesus wishes to do it?” they say, “Yes, I know He is loving.” And if you say, “Do you believe that He will do it for you?” they at once say, “I know He is willing, but whether He will actually do it for me I do not know. I am not sure that I am [pg 150]prepared. I do not know if I am advanced enough. I do not know if I have enough grace for that.” And so they are hungering, struggling, wrestling, and often remain unblessed. This state of things sometimes goes on for years—they are expecting to see signs and wonders, and hoping that God, by a miracle, will put them all right. They are just like the Israelites; they limit the Holy One of Israel. Have you ever noticed that it is the very people whom God has blessed so wonderfully who do that? What did the Israelites say? “God hath provided water in the wilderness. But can He provide the table in the wilderness? We do not think He can.” And so we find believers who say, “Yes, God has done wonders. The whole of redemption is a wonder, and God has done wonders for some whom I know. But will God take one so feeble as I, and put me entirely right?” The struggling and wrestling and seeking are the beginnings of faith in you—a faith that desires and hopes. But it must go on further. And how can that faith advance? Look at the second step. There is the nobleman, and Christ speaks to him this wonderful word: “Go thy way; thy son liveth;” and the nobleman simply rests upon that word of the living Jesus. He rests on it, and without any proof of what he is to get, and without one man in the world to encourage him. He goes away home with the thought, “I have received the blessing [pg 151]I sought; I have got life from the dead for my son. The living Christ promised it me, and on that I rest.” The struggling, seeking faith has become a resting faith. The man has entered into rest about his son. And now, dear believers, this is the one thing God asks you to do: God has said that in Christ you have eternal life, the more abundant life; Christ has said to you, “I live, and ye shall live also.” The Word says to us that Christ is our Peace, our Victory over every enemy, who leads us into the rest of God. These are the words of God, and His message has come to us that Christ can do for us what Moses could not have done. Moses had no Christ to live in him. But it is told you that you can have what Moses had not; you can have a living Christ within you. And are you going to believe that, apart from any experience, and apart from any consciousness of strength? If the peace of God is to rule in your heart, it is the God of peace Himself must be there to do it. The peace is inseparable from the God. The light of the sun—can I separate that from the sun? Utterly impossible. As long as I have the sun I have the light. If I lose the sun; I lose the light. Take care! Do not seek the peace of God or the peace of Christ apart from God and Christ. But how does Christ come to me? He comes to me in this precious Word; and just as [pg 152]He said to the nobleman, “Go thy way home; thy son liveth,” so Christ comes to me to-day, and He says, “Go thy way; thy Saviour liveth.” “Lo, I am with you alway.” “I live, and ye shall live also.” “I wait to take charge of your whole life. Will you have me do this? Trust to me all that is evil and feeble; your whole sinful and perverse nature—give it up to Me; that dying, sin-sick soul—give it up to Me, and I will take care of it.” Will you not listen and hear Him speak to your soul? “Child, go forward into all the circumstances of life that have tempted you; into all the difficulties that threaten you.” Your soul lives with the life of God; your soul lives in the power of God; your soul lives in Christ Jesus. Will you not, like the nobleman, take the simple step of faith, and believe the word Jesus hath spoken? Will you not say, “Lord Jesus, Thou hast spoken: I can rest on Thy Word. I have seen that Christ is willing to be more to me than I ever knew; I have seen that Christ is willing to be my life in the most actual and intense meaning of the words.” All that we know about the Holy Ghost sums itself up in this one thing: The Holy Ghost comes to make Christ an actual, indwelling, always-abiding Saviour. Lastly, comes the triumphant faith. The man went home holding fast the promise. He had only one promise, but he held it fast. When God gives [pg 153]me a promise, He is just as near me as when He fulfills it. That is a great comfort. When I have the promise I have also the pledge of the fulfillment. But the whole heart of God is in His promise, just as much as in the fulfillment of it, and sometimes God, the promiser, is more precious because I am compelled to cling more to Him, and to come closer, and to live by simple faith, and to adore His love. Do not think this is a hard life, to be living upon a promise. It means living upon the everlasting God. Who is going to say that is hard? It means living upon the crucified, the loving Christ. Be ashamed to say that is a difficult thing. It is a blessed thing. The nobleman went home and found the child living. And what happened then? Two things. First: he gave up his whole life to be a believer in Jesus. If there had been a division among the people of Capernaum, and thousands of them had hated Christ, this man would still have stood on His side. He believed in the Lord. This is what must take place with us. Let us go forward with our trust in the living Christ, knowing that He will keep us. Then we will get grace to carry the life of Christ into our whole conduct, into all our walk and conversation. The faith that rests in Jesus, is the faith that trusts all to Him, with all we have. Do we not read that when God had finished His work, and rested, it was only to begin [pg 154]new work? Yes; the great work was to be carried on—watching over and ruling His world and His church. And is it not so with the Lord Jesus? When He had finished His work, He sat upon the throne to do His work of perfecting the body, through the Holy Spirit. And now, the Holy Spirit is carrying on that blessed work, teaching us to rest in Christ, and in the strength of that rest to go on, and to cover our whole life with the power, and the obedience, and the will, and the likeness of the Lord Jesus. The nobleman gave up his whole life to be a believer in Christ; and from that day it was a believer in Jesus who walked about the streets of Capernaum; not only a man who could say, “Once He helped me,” but, “I believe in Him with my whole life.” Let that be so with us everywhere; let Christ be the one object of our trust. One thought more,—he believed with his whole house. That was triumphant faith. He took up his position as a believer in Christ; and his wife, his children, his servants—he gathered them all together, and laid them at the feet of Christ. And if you want power in your own house, if you want power in your Bible-class, if you want power in your social circle, if you want power to influence the nation and if you want power to influence the Church of Christ, see where it begins. Come into contact with Jesus in this rest of faith that accepts [pg 155]His life fully, that trusts Him fully, and the power will come by faith to overcome the world; by faith to bless others; by faith to live a life to the glory of God. Go thy way, thy soul liveth; for it is Jesus Christ who liveth within you. Go thy way; be not trembling and fearful, but rest in the word and the power of the Son of God. “Lo, I am with you alway.” Go thy way, with the heart open to welcome Him, and the heart believing He has come in. Surely we have not prayed in vain. Christ has listened to the yearnings of our hearts and has entered in. Let us go our way quietly, restfully, full of praise, and joy, and trust; ever hearing the words of our Master, “Go thy way, thy soul liveth;” and ever saying, “I have trusted Christ to reveal His abundant life in my soul; by His grace I will wait upon Him to fulfill His promise.” Amen.[pg 156]

THE SOURCE OF POWER IN PRAYER.

XII.

Romans 8: 26-27.—Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.

Here we have the teaching of God regarding the help the Holy Spirit will give us in prayer. The first half of this chapter is of much importance in connection with the teaching of God’s word regarding the Spirit. In Romans vi. we read about being dead to sin and alive to God, and in Romans vii., about being dead to the law and married to Christ, and also about the impotency of the unregenerate man to do God’s will. This is only a preparation to show us how helpless we are; and then in the eighth chapter comes the blessed work of the Spirit, expressed chiefly in the following words: “The Spirit hath made us free from the law of sin and death.” The Spirit makes us free from the power of sin, and teaches and leads us so that we walk after the Spirit. In our inner [pg 157]disposition we may become spiritually minded, and enabled to mortify the deeds of the body. The Holy Spirit helps our infirmities. Prayer is the most necessary thing in the spiritual life. Yet we do not know how to pray nor what to pray for as we ought. The Spirit, Paul tells us, prays with groanings unutterable. And again he tells us that we ourselves often do not know what the Spirit is doing within us, but there is one, God, who searches the hearts. Words often reveal my thought and my wishes, but not what is deep in my heart, and God comes and searches my heart, and deep down, hidden, what I can not see and what was to me an unutterable longing, God finds. Powerful prayer! The confession of ignorance! Ah, friends, I am often afraid for myself as a minister that I pray too easily. I have been praying for these forty or fifty years and it becomes, as far as man is concerned, an easy thing to pray. We all have been taught to pray, and when we are called upon we can pray, but it gets far too easy, and I am afraid we think we are praying often when there is little real prayer. Now if we are to have the praying of the Holy Ghost in us one thing is needed; we must begin by feeling, “I can not pray.” When a man breaks down and can not pray, and there is a fire burning in his heart, and a burden resting upon him, there is something drawing him to God. “I know not what [pg 158]to pray,”—oh, blessed ignorance! We are not ignorant enough. Abraham went out not knowing whither he went; in that was an element of ignorance and also an element of faith. Jesus said to His disciples when they came with their prayer for the throne, “You know not what you ask.” Paul says, “No man knoweth the things of God but the Spirit of God.” You say, “If I am not to pray the old prayers I learned from my mother or from my professor in college or from my experience yesterday and the day before, what am I to pray?” I answer, pray new prayers, rise higher into the riches of God. You must begin to feel your ignorance. You know what we think of a student who goes to college fancying he knows everything. He will not learn much. Sir Isaac Newton said, “I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” When I see a man who can not pray glibly and smoothly and readily, I say that is a mark of the Holy Spirit. When he begins in his prayers to say, “Oh, God, I want more, I want to be led deeper in. I have prayed for the heathen, but I want to feel the burden of the heathen in a new way,” it is an indication of the presence of the Holy Spirit. I tell you, beloved, if you will take [pg 159]time and let God lay the burden of the heathen heavier upon you until you begin to feel, “I have never prayed,” it will be the most blessed thing in your life. And so with regard to the church: We want to take up our position as members of the church of Christ in this land; and as belonging to that great body, to say, “Lord God, is there nothing that can be done to bless the church of this land and to revive it and bring it out of its worldliness and out of its feebleness?” We may confer together and conclude faithlessly, “No, we do not know what is to be done; we have no influence and power over all these ministers and their churches.” But on the other hand, how blessed to come to God and say, “Lord, we know not what to ask. Thou knowest what to grant.” The Holy Spirit could pray a hundred fold more in us if we were only conscious of our ignorance, because we would then feel our dependence upon Him. May God teach us our ignorance in prayer and our impotence, and may God bring us to say, “Lord, we can not pray; we do not know what prayer is.” Of course some of us do know in a measure what prayer is, many of us, and we thank God for what he has been to us in answer to prayer, but oh, it is only a little beginning compared to what the Holy Spirit of God teaches. There is the first thought: our ignorance. “We know not what we should pray for as we ought;” [pg 160]but “the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” We often hear about the work of God the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost in working out and completing the great redemption, and we know that when God worked in the creation of the world, He was not weary, and yet we read that wonderful expression in the book of Exodus about the Sabbath day, “God rested and was refreshed.” He was refreshed, the Sabbath day was a refreshment to Him. God had to work and Christ had to work, and now the Holy Spirit works, and His secret working place, the place where all work must begin, is in the heart where He comes to teach a man how to pray. When a man begins to get an insight into that which is needed and that which is promised and that which God waits to perform, he feels it to be beyond his conception; then is the time he will be ready to say, “I can not limit the holy one of Israel by my thoughts; I give myself up in the faith that the Holy Spirit can be praying for me with groanings, with longings, that can not be expressed.” Apply that to your prayers. There are different phases of prayer. There is worship, when a man just bows down to adore the great God. We do not take time to worship. We need to worship in secret, just to get ourselves face to face with the everlasting God, that He may overshadow us and cover us and fill us with His love [pg 161]and His glory. It is the Holy Spirit that can work in us such a yearning that we will give up our pleasures and even part of our business, that we may the oftener meet our God. The next phase of prayer is fellowship. In prayer there is not only the worship of a king, but fellowship as of a child with God. Christians take far too little time in fellowship. They think prayer is just coming with their petitions. If Christ is to make me what I am to be, I must tarry in fellowship with God. If God is to let his love enter in and shine and burn through my heart, I must take time to be with Him. The smith puts his rod of iron into the fire. If he leaves it there but a short time it does not become red hot. He may take it out to do something with it and after a time put it back again for a few minutes, but this time it does not become red hot. In the course of the day he may put the rod into the fire a great many times and leave it there two or three minutes each time, but it never becomes thoroughly heated. If he takes time and leaves the rod ten or fifteen minutes in the fire the whole iron will become red hot with the heat that is in the fire. So if we are to get the fire of God’s holiness and love and power we must take more time with God in fellowship. That was what gave men like Abraham and Moses their strength. They were men who were separated to a fellowship with God, and the living God [pg 162]made them strong. Oh, if we did but realize what prayer can do! Another, and a most important phase of prayer is intercession. What a work God has set open for those who are His priests—intercessors! We find a wonderful expression in the prophecy of Isaiah; God says, “Let him take hold of me;” and again, “There is none that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee.” In other passages God refers to the intercessors for Israel. Have you ever taken hold of God? Thank God, some of us have; but oh, friends, representatives of the church of Christ in the United States, if God were to show us how much there is of intense prayer for a revival through the church, how much of sincere confession of the sins of the church, how much of pleading with God and giving Him no rest till He make Jerusalem a glory in the earth, I think we should all be ashamed. We need to give up our hearts to the Holy Spirit, that He may pray for us and in us with groanings that can not be uttered. What am I to do if I am to have this Holy Spirit within me? The Spirit wants time and room in the heart; He wants the whole being. He wants all my interest and influence going out for the honor and the glory of God; He wants me to give myself up. Beloved friend, you do not know what you could do if you would give yourself up to intercession. [pg 163]It is a work that a sick one lying on a bed year by year may do in power. It is a work that a poor one who has hardly a penny to give to a missionary society can do day by day. It is a work that a young girl who is in her father’s house and has to help in the housekeeping can do by the Holy Spirit. People often ask: What does the Church of our day do to reach the masses? They ask, though they ask it tremblingly, for they feel so helpless: What can we do against the materialism and infidelity in places like London and Berlin and New York and Paris? We have given it up as hopeless. Ah, if men and women could be called out to band themselves together to take hold upon God! I am not speaking of any prayer union or any prayer time statedly set apart, but if the Spirit could find men and women who would give up their lives to cry to God, the Spirit would most surely come. It is not selfishness and it is not mere happiness that we seek when we talk about the peace and the rest and the blessing Christ can give. God wants us, Christ wants us, because He has to do a work; the work of Calvary is to be done in our hearts, we are to sacrifice our lives to pleading with God for men. Oh, let us yield ourselves day by day and ask God that it may please Him to let His Holy Spirit work in us. Then comes the last thought, that God Himself comes to look with complacency upon the attitude [pg 164]of His child. Perhaps that poor man does not know that he is praying; perhaps he is ashamed of his prayers. So much the better. Perhaps he feels burdened and restless, but God hears, God discovers what is the mind of the Spirit, and will answer. Oh, think of this wonderful mystery, God the Father on the throne ready to grant unto us His blessings according to the riches of His glory; Christ the almighty high priest pleading day and night. His whole person is one intercession, and there goes up from Him without ceasing the pleading to the Father, “Bless thy church,” and the answer comes from the Father to the Son, and from the Son down to the church, and if it does not reach us, it is because our hearts are closed. Let us open and enlarge our hearts and say to God, “Oh that I might be a priest, to enter God’s presence continually and to take hold of God and to bring down a blessing to my perishing fellowmen!” God longs to find the intercession of Jesus reflected in the hearts of His children, and where He finds it, it is a delight. And He that searcheth the hearts knoweth the mind of the Spirit, because he prayeth for the saints, according to the will of God. Some one has spoken of that word, “for the saints,” as meaning the spirit of praise in the believer for the saints throughout the world. God’s word continually comes to us to pray for all not to be content with ourselves. Think [pg 165]upon the hundreds of church members in this land, multitudes unconverted, multitudes just converted, but yet worldly and careless. Think of the thousands of nominal Christians—Christians in name, but robbing God! and can we be happy? If we bear the burden of souls, can we have this peace and joy? God gives you peace and joy with no other object than that you should be strong to bear the burden of souls in the joy of Christ’s salvation. We do not wish to say, “I am trying to be as holy as I can; what have I to do with those worldly people about me?” If there is a terrible disease in my hand, my body can not say, “I have nothing to do with it.” When the people had sinned Ezra rent his garments and bowed in the dust and made confession. He repented on the part of the people. And Nehemiah, when the nation sinned, made confession, and cast himself before God, deploring their disobedience to the God of their fathers. Daniel did the very same. And think you that we as believers have not a great work to do? Suppose we were each, persons without a single sin; just suppose it; could we then make confession? Look at Christ, without sin! He went down into the waters of baptism with sinners; He made Himself one with them. God has spoken to us to ask us if we realize what we are. He now asks us whether we belong to the church of this land, whether we have borne the burden of [pg 166]sin around us. Let us go to God and may He by the Holy Spirit fill our hearts with unutterable sorrow at the state of the church, and may God give us grace to mourn before Him. And when we begin to confess the sins of the church, we will begin to feel our own sins as never before. In five of the epistles to the seven churches in Asia the keynote was “Repent;” there was to be no idea of overcoming and getting a blessing unless they repented. Let us on behalf of the church of Christ repent, and God will give us courage to feel that He will revive His work.[pg 167]

THAT GOD MAY BE ALL IN ALL.

XIII.

1 Corinthians 15: 24-28.—”Then cometh the end, when He shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when He shall have put down all rule, and all authority and power. For He must reign till He hath put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. For He hath put all things under His feet. But when He saith, All things are put under Him, it is manifest that He is excepted, which did put all things under Him. And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also Himself be subject unto Him, that God may be all in all.”

This will be the grand conclusion of the great drama of the world’s history, and of Christ’s redemption. There will come a day—the glory is such we can form no conception of it, the mystery is so deep we can not realize it, but there is a day coming, when the Son shall deliver up the Kingdom that the Father gave Him, and that He won with His blood, and that He hath established and perfected from the throne of His glory. “He shall deliver up the Kingdom unto the Father.” The Son Himself shall be subject also unto the Father, “that God may be all in all.” I cannot understand it—the ever blessed Son equal with God, from eternity, [pg 168]and through eternity; the ever blessed Son on the throne shall be subject unto the Father; and in some way utterly beyond our comprehension, it shall then be made manifest, as never before, that God is all in all. It is this that Christ has been working for; it is this that He is working for to-day in us; it is this that He thought it worth while to give His blood for; it is this that His heart is longing for in each of us; this is the very essence and glory of Christianity, “that God may be all in all.” And now, if this is what fills the heart of Christ; if this expresses the one end of the work of Christ, then, if I want to have the spirit of Christ in me, the motto of my life must be: Everything made subject, and swallowed up in Him, “that God may be all in all.” What a triumph it would be if the Church were fighting really with that banner floating over her! What a life ours could be if that were really our banner! To serve God fully, wholly, only, to have Him all in all! How it would ennoble, and enlarge, and stimulate our whole being! I am working, I am fighting, “that God may be all in all;” that the day of glory may be hastened. I am praying, and the Holy Spirit makes His wrestling in me with unutterable longing, “that God may be all in all.” Would that we Christians realized in connection with what a grand cause we are working and praying; that we had some [pg 169]conception of what a Kingdom we are partakers of, and what a manifestation of God we are preparing for. To illustrate what a grand thing it is to belong to the Kingdom of God, and to the glorious Church of Christ on earth, John McNeill tells how when he was a boy twelve years of age, working on a railway line and earning the grand wages of six shillings a week, he used to go home to his mother and sisters, who thought no end of their little Johnnie, and delight them by telling of the position he had. He would say with great pride, “Oh, our company—it has so many thousands of pounds passing through its hands every year; it carries so many hundreds of thousands of passengers every year; and it has so many miles of railway, and so many engines and carriages; and so many thousands in its employ!” And the mother and the sisters had great pride in him, because he was a partner in such an important business. Christians, if we would only rouse ourselves to believe that we belong to the Kingdom that Christ is preparing to deliver up to the Father, that God may be all in all, how the glory would fill our hearts, and expel everything mean, and low, and earthly! How we should be borne along in this blessed faith! I am living for this: that Christ may have the Kingdom to deliver to the Father. I [pg 170]am living for this, and I will one day see Him made subject to the Father, and then God all in all. I am living for Him, and I shall be there not only as a witness, but I will have a part in it all. The Kingdom delivered up, the Son made subject, and God all in all! I shall have a part in it, and in adoring worship share the glory and the blessedness. Let us take this home to our hearts, that it may rule in our lives—this one thought, this one faith, this one aim, this one joy: Christ lived, and died, and reigns; I live and die and in His power I reign; only for this one thing, “that God may be all in all.” Let it possess our whole heart, and life. How can we do this? It is a serious question, to which I wish to give you a few simple answers. And I say, first of all: Allow God to take His place in your heart and life. Luther often said to people, when they came troubling him about difficulties, “Do let God be God.” Oh, give God His place. And what is that place? “That God may be all in all.” Let God be all in all every day, from morning to evening. God to rule and I to obey. Ah, the blessedness of saying, “God and I!” What a privilege that I have such a partner! God first, and then I! And yet there might be secret self-exaltation in associating God with myself. And I find in the Bible a more precious word still. It is, “God and not I.” It is not, “God first, and I second;” God is all, and I am nothing. Paul said, “I labored more abundantly than they all; though I be [pg 171]nothing.” Let us try to give God His place—begin in our closet, in our worship, in our prayer. The power of prayer depends almost entirely upon our apprehension of who it is with whom I speak. It is of the greatest consequence, if we have but half an hour in which to pray, that we take time to get a sight of this great God, in His power, in His love, in His nearness, just waiting to bless us. This is of far more consequence than spending the whole half hour in pouring out numberless petitions, and pleading numberless promises. The great thing is to feel that we are putting our supplications into the bosom of omnipotent Love. Before and above everything, let us take time ere we pray to realize the glory and presence of God. Give God His place in every prayer. I say, allow God to have His place. I can not give God His place upon the throne—in a certain sense I can, and I ought to try. The great thing, however, is for me to feel that I can not realize what that place is, but God will increasingly reveal Himself and the place He holds. How do I know anything about the sun? Because the sun shines, and in its light I see what the sun is. The sun is its own evidence. No philosopher could have told me about the sun if the sun did not shine. No power of meditation and thought can grasp the presence of God. Be quiet, and trusting, and resting, and the everlasting God will shine into your heart, [pg 172]and will reveal Himself. And then, just as naturally as I enjoy the light of the sun, and as naturally as I look upon the pages of a book knowing that I can see the letters because the light shines; just as naturally will God reveal Himself to the waiting soul, and make His presence a reality. God will take His place as God in the presence of His child, so that absolutely and actually the chief thing in the child’s heart shall be: “God is here, God makes Himself known.” Beloved, is not this what you long for—that God shall take a place that He has never had; and that God shall come to you in a nearness that you have never felt yet; and, above all, that God shall come to you in an abiding and unbroken fellowship? God is able to take His place before you all the day. I repeat what I have referred to before, because God has taught me a lesson by it: As God made the light of the sun so soft, and sweet, and bright, and universal, and unceasing, that it never costs me a minute’s trouble to enjoy it; even so, and far more real than the light shining upon me, the nearness of my God can be revealed to me as my abiding portion. Let us all pray “that God may be all in all,” in our everyday life. “That God may be all in all,” I must not only allow Him to take His place, but secondly, I must accept [pg 173]His will in everything. I must accept His will in every providence. Whether it be a Judas that betrays, or whether it be a Pilate in his indifference, who gives me up to the enemy; whatever the trouble, or temptation, or vexation, or worry, that comes, I must see God in it, and accept it as God’s will to me. Trouble of any sort that comes to me is God’s will for me. It is not God’s will that men should do the wrong, but it is God’s will that they should be in circumstances of trial. There is never a trial that comes to us but it is God’s will for us, and if we learn to see God in it, then we bid it welcome. Suppose away in South Africa there is a woman whose husband has gone on a long journey into the interior. He is to be away for months from all posts. The wife is anxious to receive news. In weeks she has had no letter or tidings from him. One day, as she stands in her door, there comes a great, savage Kafir. He is frightful in appearance, and carries his spears and shield. The woman is alarmed and rushes into the house and closes the door. He comes and knocks at the door, and she is in terror. She sends her servant, who comes back and says, “The man says he must see you.” She goes, all affrighted. He takes out an old newspaper. He has come a month’s journey on foot from her husband, and inside the dirty newspaper is a letter from her husband, telling her of his welfare. How that wife delights in that letter! She forgets [pg 174]the face that has terrified her. And now as weeks are passing away again, how she begins to long for that ugly Kafir messenger! After long waiting he comes again, and this time she rushes out to meet him because he is the messenger that comes from her beloved husband, and she knows that with all his repelling exterior, he is the bearer of a message of love. Beloved, have you learned to look at tribulation, and vexation, and disappointment, as the dark, savage-looking messenger with a spear in his hand, that comes straight from Jesus? Have you learned to say, “There is never a trouble, and never a hurt by which my heart is touched or even pierced, but it comes from Jesus, and brings a message of love?” Will you not learn to say from to-day, “Welcome every trial, for it comes from God?” If you want God to be all in all, you must see and meet God in every providence. Oh, learn to accept God’s will in everything! Come learn to say of every trial, without exception, “It is my Father who sent it. I accept it as His messenger,” and nothing in earth or hell can separate you from God. If God is to be all in all in your heart and life, I say not only, Allow Him to take His place, and accept all His will, but, thirdly, Trust in His power. Dear friends, it is “God who worketh to will and to do according to His good pleasure.” It is “the God of peace,” according to another [pg 175]passage, “who perfects you in every good thing to do His will, working in you what is well-pleasing in His sight.” You complain of weakness, of feebleness, of emptiness. Never mind; that is what you are made for—to be an emptied vessel, in which God can put His fullness and His strength. Do learn the lesson. I know it is not easy. Long after Paul had been an apostle, the Lord Jesus had to come in a very special way to teach him to say, “I do gladly glory in my infirmities.” Paul was in danger of being exalted, owing to the revelations from Heaven, and Jesus sent him a thorn in the flesh—yes, Jesus sent it—a messenger of Satan—to buffet him. Paul prayed, and struggled, and wanted to get rid of it. And Jesus came to him, and said, “It is my doing that you may not be free from that. You need it. I will bless you wonderfully in it.” Paul’s life was changed from that moment in this one respect, and he said, “I never knew it so before, from henceforth I glory in my infirmities; for when I am weak, then am I strong.” Do you indeed desire God to be all in all? Learn to glory in your weakness. Take time to say every day as you bow before God, “The almighty power of God that works in the sun, and the moon, and the stars, and the flowers, is working in me. It is as sure as that I live. The almighty power of God is working in me. I only need to get down, and be quiet; I need to be more [pg 176]submissive, and surrendered to His will; I need to be more trustful, and to allow God to do with me what He will.” Give God His way with you, and let God work, and He will work mightily. The deepest quietness has often been proved to be the inspiration for the highest action. It has been seen in the experience of many of God’s saints, and it is just the experience we need,—that in the quietness of surrender and faith, God’s working has been made manifest. Fourthly: If God is to be all in all, sacrifice everything for His kingdom and glory. “That God may be all in all.” This is such a noble, glorious, holy aim that Christ said, “For this I will give my life. For this I will give my all, even to the death of the cross. For this I will give myself.” If it was worth that to Christ, is it worth less to you? If one had asked Jesus of Nazareth, “What is it Thou hast a body for; what is to Thee the highest use of the body?” He would have said, “The use and the glory of my body is that I can give it a sacrifice to God. That is every thing.” What is the use of having a mind; and what is the use of having money; and what is the use of having children? That I can give them to God; for God must be all in all in everything. I pray God that He may give us such a sight of His kingdom, and His glory, that everything else may disappear. Then, if you had ten thousand lives, you [pg 177]would say, “This is the beauty and the worth of life, ‘that God may be all in all’ to me, and that I may prove to men that God is more than everything, that life is only worth living as it is given to God to fill.” Do let us sacrifice everything for His kingdom and glory. Begin to live day by day with the prayer, “My God, I am given up to Thee. Be Thou my all in all.” You say, “Am I able to realize that?” Yes, in this way: Let the Holy Spirit dwell in you; let the Holy Spirit burn in you as a fire, and burn in you with unutterable groanings, crying unto God, Himself to reveal His presence and His will in you. In the eighth of Romans, Paul spoke about the groanings of the whole creation. And what is the whole creation groaning for? For the redemption, the glorious liberty of the children of God. And I am persuaded that was what Paul meant when he spoke of the groanings of the Holy Spirit—the unutterable groanings for the coming time of glory when God should be all in all. Christians, sacrifice your time; sacrifice your interests; sacrifice your heart’s best powers in praying, and desiring, and crying that “God may be all in all.” And lastly: if God is to be all in all, wait continually on Him all the day. My first point had reference to giving God His place; but I want to bring this out more pointedly in conclusion. Wait continually on God all the day. If you are to do [pg 178]that, you must live always in His presence. That is what we have been redeemed for. Do we not read in the Epistle to the Hebrews, “Let us draw near within the veil, through the blood, where the high priest is?” The holy place in which we are to live in the heavens is the immediate presence of God. The abiding presence of God is certainly the heritage of every child of God, as that the sun shines. The Father never hides His face from His child. Sin hides it, and unbelief hides it, but the Father lets His love shine all the day on the face of His children. The sun is shining day and night. Your sun shall never go down. Begin to seek for this. Come and live in the presence of God. There is indeed an abiding place in His presence, in the secret of His pavilion, of which some one has sung very beautifully: With me, wheresoe’er I wander, That great Presence goes; That unutterable gladness, Undisturbed repose. Everywhere, the blessed stillness Of that Holy Place; Stillness of the love that worships, Dumb before His face. This is the portion of those to whom the prayer is granted—”One thing have I desired of the Lord, and that will I seek after; that I may dwell all my days in the house of the Lord; to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple.” [pg 179]”In the secret of His pavilion He hideth me.” God Himself will take you up, and will keep you there, so that all your work shall be done in God. Beloved, wait continually upon God. You can not do this unless you are in His presence. You must live in His presence. Then the blessed habit of waiting upon God will be learned. The real difficulty of getting to the point of real waiting upon God, is because most Christians have not sought to realize the nearness of God, and to give God the first place. But let us strive after this, let us trust God to give it to us by His grace, let us wait on God all the day. “My eyes,” says one, “are ever towards Thee.” Wait upon God for guidance, and God, if you wait much upon Him, will lead you up into new power for His service, into new gladness in His fellowship. He will lead you out into a larger trust in Him; He will prepare you to expect new things from Him. Beloved, there is no knowing what God will do for a man who is utterly given up to Him. Praise His name! Let each one of us say, “May my life be to live and die, to labor and to pray continually for this one thing: that in me, and around me, and in the church; that throughout the world ‘God may be all in all.'” A little seed is the beginning of a great tree. A mustard seed becomes a tree in which the birds of the air can nestle. That great day of which the text [pg 180]speaks, when Christ Himself shall be subject to the Father, and deliver up the Kingdom to the Father, and God shall be all in all—that is the great tree of the Kingdom of God reaching its perfect consummation and glory. Oh, let us take the seed of that glory into our hearts, and let us bow in lowly surrender and submission, and say, “Amen, Lord; this be my one thought. This be my life—to speak and to work, to pray and to exist only that others may be brought to know Him too. This be my life—to yield myself to the unutterable yearnings of the Holy Spirit, that I may not rest, but ever keep my eye on that day—the day of glory, when in very deed God shall be all in all.” God help every one of us. God help us all to yield ourselves to Him, and to Christ, and to make it our every-day life; for His name’s sake. Amen. THE END.

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Title: The Spirit and the Word
       A Treatise on the Holy Spirit in the Light of a Rational
              Interpretation of the Word of Truth
              

Author: Zachary  Taylor Sweeney

Release Date: February 10, 2005 [EBook #15011]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SPIRIT AND THE WORD ***




Produced by Bob Jones, Frank van Drogen, Thomas Hutchinson and the
PG Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

THE SPIRIT AND THE WORD

A Treatise on the Holy Spirit in the Light

of a Rational Interpretation of

the Word of Truth>

By Z. T. SWEENEY

GOSPEL ADVOCATE COMPANY

Nashville, Tennessee

---

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE INTRODUCTION       5 I  —  THE SPIRIT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT       9 II  —  THE SPIRIT AND THE NEW TESTAMENT       15 III  —  THE PERSONALITY AND DIVINITY OF THE SPIRIT       35 IV  —  THE SPIRIT AND JOHN THE BAPTIST       43 V  —  THE SPIRIT AND JESUS       53 VI  —  THE SPIRIT AND THE APOSTLES       65 VII  —  THE SPIRIT AND THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH       81 VIII  —  THE SPIRIT AND THE WORLD       98 IX  —  THE SPIRIT AND CHRISTIANS       117 X  —  THE PARTING WORD       141

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INTRODUCTION

Christianity is differentiated from all the other religions by the fact that it offers its followers a spiritual dynamic in living up to its precepts. That dynamic is the Holy Spirit, that sets the word of God on fire, warms the church from coldness to enthusiasm, and strengthens the Christian with a power not his own in the great battle between the flesh and the spirit. Christianity is unique in making this offer. No other religion has any equivalent for it. The Holy Spirit is not obtained from the deductions of logic, the conclusions of philosophy nor from the investigations of science. All these are as silent as the grave regarding his presence and potency. It is solely and distinctly a matter of divine revelation. It is not my purpose, therefore, to view this subject in the light of philosophic induction, logical deduction nor scientific investigation, but solely in the light of God’s revelation. I shall gather the teaching of God’s word around several important phases of the nature, mission and work of the Spirit. I do not speculate upon what God may do through his Spirit; I put no limit upon the power of the Spirit. He may work in a thousand ways, for aught I know. I am treating solely of that work of the Spirit which God has made plain in his revealed word. For the sake of simplifying the treatment of the subject, I shall use the words “Spirit” and “Holy Spirit” instead of other terms used in the Scriptures. The Old Testament has eighty-eight distinct references to the Holy Spirit. In these references there are eighteen names applied. The New Testament refers to the Spirit two hundred and sixty-four times and uses thirty-nine names. Five names are common to both Testaments, which leaves fifty-two different appellatives for the Spirit. Seventeen appellatives express his relation to God, five his relation to the Son, five indicate his divine nature, seven describe his own character, while seventeen are used to indicate his relation to man. He is called the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of Jesus, the Spirit of his Son, of the Lord, of Truth, of Grace, of Holiness, of Glory, and of Adoption. He is called the Comforter, but this term never denotes his relation to man in general. It always describes a special relation to the apostles and their work. I wish my readers to bring to the perusal of this work the same spirit of earnestness that I shall put into the task of producing it. We read in the language of Jesus that “every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men; but the blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven” (Matt. 12:31). “And every one who shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but unto him that blasphemeth against the Holy Spirit it shall not be forgiven” (Luke 12:10). Whatever else these terrible warnings may teach, they undoubtedly teach that the greatest care should be taken by those who venture to discuss this subject or investigate such discussion. Let both writer and reader therefore cast aside any flippancy of spirit, also any preconceptions or prejudices, and say like young Samuel of old: “Speak, Lord; thy servant heareth.” The subject may be made plain or simple according to the manner we may treat it. If we view it in the light of psychological manifestation in our own hearts, or in the lives of those around us, which are ascribed to the Spirit, we shall find ourselves wandering in a maze of mystery. If we follow the word of God, which is the only source of knowledge, we shall find ourselves walking in a light that shall grow brighter as we proceed. It is impossible in a book the size of this to treat all the many passages that refer to the Holy Spirit, but we shall give those that have important bearing upon the subject.

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I

THE SPIRIT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT

The Old Testament does not give the same prominence to the Holy Spirit as does the New Testament. This is doubtless true because the Old Testament deals largely with material things, while the New Testament is primarily and essentially dealing with the spiritual nature and actions of man. It is, however, referred to in more than half of the books of the Old Testament, while in sixteen of them there is no specific mention of the Spirit. It is, however, mentioned specifically eighty-eight times in the Old Testament. It is generally spoken of as the Spirit of God. The New Testament refers to these passages in such a way as to identify the Holy Spirit of the New with the Spirit of God of the Old. In Luke 4:18 Jesus says:“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,Because he anointed me to preach goodtidings to the poor:He hath sent me to proclaim release tothe captives,And recovering of sight to the blind.To set at liberty them that are bruised,To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” This is directly connected with the “Spirit of the Lord Jehovah” in Isa. 61: 1, 2. In the second chapter of Acts we have a direct connection with Joel 2. These are two of many such connections that bind together and identify the Spirit of the Lord of the Old Testament with the Holy Spirit of the New. In both Testaments we find God working by his Spirit. The Old Testament gives three lines of work performed by the Spirit: 1. HIS RELATION TO THE MATERIAL UNIVERSE. (1) In Gen. 1:2 we are told: “And the Spirit of God moved on the face of the waters.” The word “moved” carries the sense of “hovered” or “brooded.” The previous condition of the world was “waste and void,” or a “formless waste.” In some way the Spirit of God fashioned this formless waste into the multiplicity of contrasts that followed. It bound together those elements that were homogeneous, and separated the heterogeneous and so prepared the way for the dividing the light from the darkness that followed. The mode of the operation we do not know, but the fact of the operation is clearly revealed. (2) “By his Spirit the heavens are garnished” (Job 26:13). The expression could be better translated, “The heavens are made fair,” or beautiful. That is, he set the constellations in their order. He gives one illustration when he says: “His hand hath pierced the swift serpent.” Reference is here made to the beautiful constellation of “Serpens,” or Draco, of graceful and striking appearance. (3) God’s Spirit made me man; ’twas the Almighty’s breath that gave me life. This higher life that was given to man by an inbreathing of the Spirit distinguishes man (homo) from all other animal species. 2. THE RELATION OF THE SPIRIT TO CREATED MAN. (1) Gen. 6:3. God tells Noah: “My Spirit shall not strive with man for ever, for that he also is flesh: yet shall his days be a hundred and twenty years.” Here the work of the Spirit passes from the form of omnipotence to one of pleading or striving. The Spirit no more impresses his will upon the material universe, but expresses (rolls it out) to a rational creature. By the preaching of the faithful Noah the Spirit plead with the antediluvians to do right and escape the destruction that was coming upon a corrupt and wicked world. From this time onward the Spirit comes on men in various ways, qualifying them with supernatural power for the performance of special duties. (See Num. 11:25; Judg. 3:10; 1 Sam. 18:10; 10:11.) (2) But we find no case of the Spirit falling on man to cleanse him from sin, or to confer upon him a special blessing. Later on in the prophets the Spirit becomes a revealing and inspiring Spirit. (See Isa. 61:1; Ezek. 2:2; Zech. 7:12; 4:6.) As a result of this revealing power, we have the great facts of the New Testament set forth in detail. The life, nature, character and mission of the world’s Redeemer stand forth in beauty and symmetry. 3. THE RELATION OF THE SPIRIT TO THE INDIVIDUAL MAN. The idea of holiness is not usually associated with the Spirit in the Old Testament. The term “Holy Spirit” occurs but three times in it. David prays (Ps. 51:11): “Take not thy holy Spirit from me.” Isaiah says (63:10): “They rebelled and grieved his holy Spirit;” and again (63:11) he asks: “Where is he that put his holy Spirit in the midst of them?” It is, however, called “good Spirit” twice (Neh. 9:20; Ps. 143:10). It is mainly in reference to Messianic days that we find this ethical and personal relation to the Spirit of God. These three relations of the Spirit are in perfect harmony with God’s law of progressive development in the world. We find him at first working upon a chaotic material universe; second, upon society, and, third, upon the individual character. The work of the Spirit upon the material universe makes it a fit dwelling-place for man. His work upon society makes man fit to dwell in the universe, and his work upon the individual character makes man fit for a righteous and holy fellowship with similar characters.

---

II

THE SPIRIT AND THE NEW TESTAMENT

There are two hundred and sixty-four references to the Spirit in the New Testament. But in many of them there is no allusion to the Holy Spirit. In many places the expressions “the Spirit,” and “the Holy Spirit,” should be rendered “Spirit” and “holy Spirit,” or frequently “a holy Spirit.” The passages in this chapter are arranged in two columns: Column I contains the passages in which the definite article is to be found in the Greek. These should always be translated “the Holy Spirit.” Column 2 contains the passages where the definite article is not found and which may be often—but not always—translated “a holy Spirit.” The use of the article is often governed by other parts of speech. Where the Spirit sustains a universal relation to mankind, the word is italicized.

MATTHEW

3:16. He saw the Spirit of God       1:18. She was found with child of
descending as a dove, and coming     the Holy Spirit.
upon him.
                                     1:20. That which is conceived in
4: 1. Then was Jesus led up of the   her is of the Holy Spirit.
Spirit into the wilderness to be
tempted of the devil.                3:11. He shall baptize you in the
                                     Holy Spirit, and in fire.
10:20. For it is not ye that
speak, but the Spirit of your        12:28. If I by the Spirit of God
Father that speaketh in you.         cast out demons.

12:18. I will put my Spirit upon     22:43. How then doth David in the
him.                                 Spirit call him Lord.

12:31. The blasphemy against the
Spirit shall not be forgiven.

12:32. Whosoever shall speak
against the Holy Spirit, it shall
not be forgiven him.

28:19. Baptizing them into the
name of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit.


MARK

1:10. Coming up out of the water,
he saw ... the Spirit as a
dove descending upon him.

1:8 He shall baptize you in the
Holy Spirit dove descending upon
him.

1:12. Straightway the Spirit
driveth him forth into the
wilderness.

3:29. Whosoever shall blaspheme
against the Holy Spirit hath never
forgiveness.

12:36. David himself said in the
Holy Spirit.

13:11. It is not ye that speak,
but the Holy Spirit.


LUKE

2:26. It had been revealed unto      3:16. He shall baptize you in
him by the Holy Spirit.              [the] Holy Spirit and in fire.

2:27. He came in the Spirit into     4:18. The Spirit of the Lord is
the temple.                          upon me.

3:22. The Holy Spirit descended in   10:21. He rejoiced in [the] Holy
a bodily form, as a dove, upon       Spirit.
him.
                                     11:13. How much more shall your
4:1. Jesus ... was led in the        heavenly Father give [the] Holy
Spirit in the wilderness.            Spirit to them that ask him?

4:14. Jesus returned in the power    1:15. He shall be filled with
of the Spirit into Galilee.          [the] Holy Spirit.

4:1. Jesus, full of the Holy         1:35. [The] Holy Spirit shall come
Spirit, returned from the Jordan.    upon thee.

12:10. Unto him that blasphemeth     1:41. Elisabeth was filled with
against the Holy Spirit it shall     [the] Holy Spirit.
not be forgiven.
                                     1:67. Zacharias was filled with
12:12. The Holy Spirit shall teach   [the] Holy Spirit.
you in that very hour what ye
ought to say.                        2:25. There was a man in
                                     Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon;
24:49. Behold, I send forth the      ... [the] Holy Spirit was upon
promise of my Father upon you.       him.


JOHN.

1:32. I have beheld the Spirit       1:33. The same is he that
descending as a dove out of          baptizeth in the Holy Spirit.
heaven; and it abode upon him.
                                     3:5. Except one be born of water
1:33. Upon whomsoever thou shalt     and [the] Spirit.
see the Spirit descending, and
abiding upon him.                    7:39. [The] Spirit was not yet
                                     given.
3:6. That which is born of the
Spirit is spirit.                    20:22. He breathed on them, and
                                     saith unto them, Receive ye [the]
3:8. So is every one that is born    Holy Spirit.
of the Spirit.

3:34. He giveth not the Spirit by
measure.

6:63. It is the spirit that giveth
life.

7: 39. This spake he of the
Spirit, which they that believed
on him were to receive.

14:16. He shall give you another
Comforter.

14:17. Even the Spirit of truth.

14:26. The Comforter, even the
Holy Spirit, ...  he shall teach
you.

15: 26. When the Comforter is
come, ... even the Spirit of truth,
... he shall bear witness of me.

16:7. If I go not away, the
Comforter will not come unto you.

16:8. He, when he is come, will
convict the world in respect of
sin, and of righteousness, and of
judgment.

16:9. Of sin, because they believe
not on me;

16:10. Of righteousness, because I
go to the Father;

16:11. Of judgment, because the
prince of this world hath been
judged.

16:13. When he, the Spirit of
truth, is come, he shall guide you
into all the truth: for he shall
not speak from himself; but what
things soever he shall hear, these
shall he speak: and he shall
declare unto you the things that
are to come.

16:14. He shall glorify me: for he
shall take of mine, and shall
declare it unto you.

16:15. He taketh of mine, and
shall declare it unto you.


ACTS

1:4. He charged them ...  to wait    1:2. He had given commandment
for the promise of the Father.       through [the] Holy Spirit unto the
                                     apostles.
1:8. Ye shall receive power, when
the Holy Spirit is come upon you.    1:5. John indeed baptized with
                                     water; but ye shall be baptized in
1:16. The scripture should be        [the] Holy Spirit.
fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit
spake before by the mouth of David   2:4. They were all filled with the
concerning Judas.                    Holy Spirit, and began to speak
                                     with other tongues, as [the]
2:17. I will pour forth of my        Spirit gave them utterances.
Spirit upon all flesh:
4:8. Peter, filled with [the] Holy
2:18. On my servants and on my       Spirit, said unto them.
handmaidens in those days will I
pour forth my Spirit.                6: 3. Look ye out ...  seven men
                                     ...  full of [the] Spirit.
2:33. Having received of the
Father the promise of the Holy       6:5. Stephen, a man full of ...
Spirit, he hath poured forth this.   the Holy Spirit.

2:38. Ye shall receive the gift of   7:55. He, being full of [the] Holy
the Holy Spirit.                     Spirit.

4:25. Who by the Holy Spirit, by     8:15. Who ... prayed for them,
the mouth of our father David, ...   that they might receive [the] Holy
didst say.                           Spirit.

4:31. They were all filled with      8:16. For as yet it was fallen
the Holy Spirit, and they spake      upon none of them.
the word of God with boldness.
                                     8:17. Then laid they their hands
5:3. Why hath Satan filled thy       on them, and they received [the]
heart to lie to the Holy Spirit.     Holy Spirit.

5:9. How is it that ye have agreed   8:19. Give me also this power,
together to try the Spirit of the    that on whomsoever I lay my hands,
Lord?                                he may receive [the] Holy Spirit.

5:32. We are witnesses of these      8:39. [The] Spirit of the Lord
things; and so is the Holy Spirit.   caught away Philip.

6:10. They were not able to          9:17. Jesus ... hath sent me, that
withstand ...  the Spirit by which   thou mayest ... be filled with
he spake.                            [the] Holy Spirit.

7:51. Ye do always resist the Holy   10: 38. God anointed him with
Spirit.                              [the] Holy Spirit and with power.

8:18. When Simon saw that through    11:16. Ye shall be baptized in
the laying on of the apostles'       [the] Holy Spirit.
hands the Holy Spirit was given,
                                     11:24. He was a good man, and full
8:20. Thou hast thought to obtain    of [the] Holy Spirit.
the gift of God with money.
                                     13:9. Paul, filled with [the] Holy
8:29. The Spirit said unto Philip,   Spirit, fastened his eyes on him.
Go near, and join thyself to this
chariot.                             13:52. The disciples were filled
                                     with joy and with [the] Holy
9:31. The church ...  walking ...    Spirit.
in the comfort of the Holy Spirit,
was multiplied.                      19:2. Did ye receive [the] Holy
                                     Spirit when ye believed?...  We
10:19. The Spirit said unto him,     did not so much as hear whether
Behold, three men seek thee.         [the] Holy Spirit was given.

10: 20. Go with them....  I have
sent them.

10: 44. The Holy Spirit fell on
all them that heard the word.

10: 45. On the Gentiles also was
poured out the gift of the Holy
Spirit.

10:47. Who have received the Holy
Spirit as well as we?

11:12. The Spirit bade me go with
them.

11:25. As I began to speak, the
Holy Spirit fell on them.

11:28. Agabus ... signified by the
Spirit that there should be a
great famine over all the world.

13:2. The Holy Spirit said,
Separate me Barnabas and Saul.

13:4. They, being sent forth by
the Holy Spirit.

15:8. God ... bare them witness,
giving them the Holy Spirit.

15:28. It seemed good to the Holy
Spirit, and to us.

16:6. Forbidden of the Holy
Spirit, to speak the word in Asia.

16:7. The Spirit of Jesus suffered
them not.

19:6. When Paul had laid his hands
upon them, the Holy Spirit came on
them.

20: 22. I go bound in the spirit
unto Jerusalem.

20: 28. Take heed ... to all the
flock, in which the Holy Spirit
hath made you bishops.

21: 4. These said to Paul through
the Spirit, that he should not set
foot in Jerusalem.

21.11. Thus saith the Holy
Spirit, So shall the Jews at
Jerusalem bind the man that owneth
this girdle.

28: 25. Well spake the Holy Spirit
through Isaiah the prophet.


ROMANS

8:2. The law of the Spirit    1:4. Who was declared to be the
of life in Christ Jesus made me      Son of God with power, according
free from the law of sin and of      to [the] spirit of holiness.
death.
                                     5:5. The love of God hath been
8: 10. The spirit is life because    shed abroad in our hearts through
of righteousness.                    [the] Holy Spirit.

8: 11. If the Spirit of him that     8:4. The ordinance of the law
raised up Jesus from the dead        might be fulfilled in us, who walk
dwelleth in you, he ...  shall       ... after [the] Spirit.
give life also to your mortal
bodies through his Spirit.           8:5. They that are after [the]
                                     Spirit the things of [the]
8:16. The Spirit himself      Spirit.
beareth witness with our spirit.
                                     8:9. Ye are ... in the
8:23. Who have the first-fruits of   Spirit, if ... [the] Spirit
the Spirit.                          of God dwelleth in you.  But if
                                     any man hath not the Spirit
8:20. The Spirit also helpeth our    of Christ, he is none of his.
infirmity: ... the Spirit himself
maketh intercession for us.          8:13. If by [the] Spirit ye
                                     put to death the deeds of the
8:27. He ... knoweth what is the     body, ye shall live.
mind of the Spirit.
                                     8:14. As many as are led by [the]
9:1. I say the truth ...  my         Spirit of God, these are
conscience bearing witness with me   the sons of God.
in the Holy Spirit.
                                     8:15. Ye received [the]
15:30. I beseech you ...  by the     spirit of adoption.
love of the Spirit.
                                     14:17. The kingdom of God is ...
                                     righteousness and peace and joy in

[the]

Holy Spirit. 15:13. That ye may abound in hope, in the power of [the] Holy Spirit. 15:16. The offering up of the Gentiles might be made acceptable, being sanctified by [the] Holy Spirit. 15:19. In the power of [the] Holy Spirit. 1 CORINTHIANS 2:10. God revealed them 2:4. My speech and my preaching through the Spirit; for the were … in demonstration of Spirit searcheth all [the] Spirit. things. 2:13 In words … which [the] 2:11. The things of God none Spirit teacheth. knoweth, save the Spirit of God. 7:40 I think that I also have

[the]

spirit of God. 2:12. But we received … the spirit which is from God. 12:3 No man speaking in the Spirit of God saith, Jesus is anathema; 2:14. The natural man and no man can say, Jesus is Lord, receiveth not the things of but in [the] Holy Spirit. the Spirit of God. 14:2 In [the] Spirit he speaketh 3:16. Know ye not … that mysteries. the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? 6:11. Ye were justified … in the Spirit of our God. 6:19. Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. 12:4. There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. 12:7. To each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit to profit withal. 12:8. To one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom; and to another the word of knowledge, according to the same Spirit. 12:9. To another faith, in the same Spirit; and to another gifts of healings, in the one Spirit. 12:11. All these worketh the one and the same Spirit, dividing to each one severally even as he will. 2 CORINTHIANS 1:22. Who … gave us the earnest 3:3. Ye are an epistle of Christ, of the Spirit in our hearts. … written … with [the] Spirit of the living God. 3:6. The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. 3:18. We all … are transformed into the same image from glory to 3:8. How shall not rather the glory, even us from the Lord [the] ministration of the spirit be with Spirit. glory? 6:6. In kindness, in [the] Holy 4:13. Having the same spirit of Spirit, in love unfeigned. faith. 11:4 If ye receive a different 5:5. Who gave unto us the earnest spirit, which ye did not of the Spirit. receive. 12:18. Walked we not in the same 6:6. In kindness, in [the] Holy Spirit? Spirit, in love unfeigned. If ye receive a different 13:14. The communion of the Holy spirit, which ye did not Spirit, be with you all, from receive. glory to glory, even as from the Lord [the] Spirit. GALATIANS. 3:2. Received ye the Spirit by the 3:3. Having begun in [the] works of the law, or by the Spirit, are ye now hearing of faith? perfected in the flesh? 3:5. He … that supplieth to you 4:29. He that was born after the the Spirit. flesh persecuted him that was born after [the] Spirit. 3:14. That we might receive the promise of the Spirit 5:5. We through [the] through faith. Spirit by faith wait for the hope of righteousness. 4:6. God sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our 5:16. Walk by [the] Spirit, and ye hearts. shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. 5:17. The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the 5:18. If ye are led by [the] Spirit against the flesh. Spirit, ye are not under the law. 5:22. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace. 5:25. If we live by [the] Spirit, by the 6:8. He that soweth unto the Spirit let us also walk. Spirit shall of the Spirit reap eternal life. EPHESIANS. 1:13. Ye were sealed with the Holy 1:17. That God … may give unto Spirit of promise. you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of 2:18. Through him we both have our him. access in one Spirit unto the Father. 2:22. In whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God 3:16. That ye may be strengthened in [the] Spirit. with power through his Spirit in the inward man. 3:5. It hath now been revealed unto his holy apostles and 4:3. Keep the unity of the prophets in [the] Spirit. Spirit in the bond of peace. 5:18. Be filled with [the] Spirit. 4:4. There is one body, and one 6:18. Praying at all seasons in Spirit. [the] Spirit. 4:30. Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom ye were sealed. 6:17. Take … the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. PHILLIPPIANS. 1:19. The supply of the 2:1. If there is …any fellowship Spirit of Jesus Christ. of [the] Spirit. 3:3. We are the circumcision, who worship by [the] Spirit of God. COLOSSIANS. 1:8. Who also declared unto us your love in [the] Spirit. 1 THESSALONIANS. 4:8. God, who giveth his Holy 1:5. Our gospel came not unto you Spirit unto you. in word only, but …in the Holy Spirit. 6:19. Quench not the Spirit. 1:6. Having received the word …with joy of [the] Holy Spirit. 2 THESSALONIANS. 2:13. God chose you …in sanctification of [the] Spirit. 1 TIMOTHY. 4:1. The Spirit saith expressly, 3:16. He who was … justified in that … some shall fall away from [the] spirit. the faith. 4:14. Neglect not the gift that is in thee. 2 TIMOTHY. 1:7. God gave us not a spirit of fearfulness; but of power and love and discipline. 1:14. That good thing … guard through [the] Holy Spirit. TITUS. 3:5. He saved us through the … renewing of [the] Holy Spirit. HEBREWS. 3:7. Wherefore, even as the Holy 2:4. God also bearing witness with Spirit saith, To-day if ye will them, … by gifts of [the] Holy hear his voice. Spirit. 4:3. Even as he hath said. 6:4. Were made partakers of [the] Holy Spirit. 4:7. He again defineth a certain day. 9:14. Who through [the] eternal Spirit offered himself without 9:8. The Holy Spirit this blemish unto God. signifying. 10:15. The Holy Spirit also beareth witness to us. 10:29. Hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace? JAMES. 4:5. Doth the Spirit which he made to dwell in us long unto envying? 1 PETER 1:11. Searching what time … the 1:2. In sanctification of [the] Spirit of Christ … did point Spirit. unto. 1:12. Preached the gospel unto you 3:18. Put to death in the flesh, in [the] Holy Spirit. but made alive in the spirit. 4:6. Live according to God in 4:14. The Spirit of glory and the [the] spirit. Spirit of God resteth upon you. 2 PETER 1:21. Men spake from God, being moved by [the] Holy Spirit. 1 JOHN 2:20. Ye have an anointing from the Holy One. 2:27. The anointing which ye received of him abideth in you. 3:24. We know that he abideth in us by the Spirit which he gave us. 4:2. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God. 4:6. By this we know the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error. 4:13. He hath given us of his Spirit. 5:7. It is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is the truth. 5:8. There are three who bear witness, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood. JUDE 19. Having not [the] Spirit. 20. Praying in [the] Holy Spirit. REVELATION. 1:4. The seven Spirits that are 1:10. I was in [the] Spirit before his throne. on the Lord’s day. 2:7. Hear what the Spirit saith to 4:2. Straightway I was in [the] the churches. Spirit. 2:17. Hear what the Spirit saith 11:11. The breath of life from God to the churches. entered into them. 2:29. Hear what the Spirit saith 17:3. He carried me away in [the] to the churches. Spirit into a wilderness. 3:1. He that hath the seven 21:10. He carried me away in [the] Spirits of God. Spirit to a mountain. 3:6. Hear what the Spirit saith to the churches. 3:13. Hear what the Spirit saith to the churches. 4:5. Seven lamps of fire … which are the seven Spirits of God. 5:6. Seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God. 14:13. Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors. 22:17. The Spirit and the bride say, Come,

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III

THE PERSONALITY AND DIVINITY OF THE SPIRIT

Two views have been entertained concerning the Holy Spirit: (1) That it is a divine influence proceeding from the Father, an emanation from or manifestation of the divine, or a mere impersonal force. (2) That he is a person and active in all the ways of a personality. That the latter view is the correct and Scriptural one is evident from the following considerations: 1. HIS WORKS PROCLAIM PERSONALITY. (1) He speaks. “But the Spirit saith expressly, that in later times some shall fall away from the faith” (1 Tim. 4:1). A speaker is a person; no influence or principle can speak. (2) He testifies. “But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall bear witness of me” (John 15: 26). (3) He teaches and quickens the mind. “But the Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said unto you” (John 14:26). (4) He guides. “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye can not bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he shall guide you into all the truth” (John 16: 12, 13). (5) He leads and forbids. “And they went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden of the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia; and when they were come over against Mysia, they assayed to go into Bithynia; and the Spirit of Jesus suffered them not” (Acts 16:6, 7). (6) He searches. “But unto us God revealed them through the Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God” (1 Cor. 2:10). In the above passages the Holy Spirit is said to speak, to testify, to quicken, to teach, to guide disciples, to lead, to forbid and to search. All these things unite in showing the Holy Spirit to be a person, for nothing but a person can do them. 2. HE HAS THE CHARACTERISTICS OF A PERSON. We will mention a few of them: (1) Mind. “And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit” (Rom. 8:27). (2) Knowledge. “Even so the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God” (1 Cor. 2:11). (3) Affection. “Now I beseech you, brethren, by our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the love of the Spirit, that ye strive together with me in your prayers to God for me” (Rom. 15:30). (4) Will. “But all these worketh the one and the same Spirit, dividing to each one severally even as he will” (1 Cor. 12:11). (5) Goodness. “Thou gavest also thy good Spirit to instruct them” (Neh. 9:20). Goodness, will, affection, knowledge and mind are all characteristics of a person. By no stretch of the imagination can they be ascribed to a mere impersonal influence or principle. These five characteristics form the fingers in the hand of certainty by which we grasp the personality of the Holy Spirit. 3. HE SUFFERS SLIGHTS AND INJURIES THAT CAN ONLY BE ASCRIBED TO A PERSONALITY. (1) He can be grieved and vexed. “And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom ye were sealed unto the day of redemption” (Eph. 4:30). “But they rebelled, and grieved his holy Spirit: therefore he was turned to be their enemy, and himself fought against them” (Isa. 63:10). (2) He can be despited. “Of how much sorer punishment, think ye, shall he be judged worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant where-with he was sanctified an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace” (Heb. 10:29). (3) He can be blasphemed. “Therefore I say unto you, Every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men; but the blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven. And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever shall speak against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor in that which is to come” (Matt. 12:31, 32). (4) He can be resisted. “Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Spirit” (Acts 7:51). (5) He can be lied unto. “But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thy heart to lie to the Holy Spirit, and to keep back part of the price of the land?” (Acts 5:3). A mere principle can not sustain any of the above slights. Nothing but a personality can be blasphemed, lied to, resisted or grieved. 4. HE IS A DIVINE PERSONALITY. This will be seen from the following attributes, which are the attributes of God: (1) Eternity. “How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish unto God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” (Heb. 9:14). “Jehovah is great in Zion; And he is high above all the peoples” (Ps. 99:2). (2) Omniscience. “But unto us God revealed them through the Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For who among men knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of the man, which is in him? even so the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God” (1 Cor. 2:10, 11). (3) Omnipotence. “But as for me, I am full of power by the Spirit of Jehovah, and of judgment, and of might, to declare unto Jacob his transgression, and to Israel his sin” (Mic. 3:8). (4) Omnipresence. “Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?… Even there shall thy hand lead me, And thy right hand shall hold me” (Ps. 139:7, 10). “Can any hide himself in secret places so that I shall not see him? saith Jehovah. Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith Jehovah” (Jer. 23:24). 5. THE WORKS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT MANIFEST DIVINITY. (1) The work of creation. “And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters” (Gen. 1:2). “By his Spirit the heavens are garnished; his hand hath pierced the swift serpent” (Job 26:13). “By the word of Jehovah were the heavens made, And all the host of them by the breath of his mouth” (Ps. 33:6). “The Spirit of God hath made me, And the breath of the Almighty giveth me life” (Job 33:4). (2) The work of providence. “Thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they are created; and thou renewest the face of the ground” (Ps. 104:30). (3) The work of regeneration and resurrection. “Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except one be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God” (John 3:5). “But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, he that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall give life also to your mortal bodies through his Spirit that dwelleth in you” (Rom. 8:11). (4) He is the source of the miraculous. “But if I by the Spirit of God cast out demons, then is the kingdom of God come upon you” (Matt. 12:28). “To another faith, in the same Spirit; and to another gifts of healing, in the one Spirit; … but all these worketh the one and the same Spirit, dividing to each one severally even as he will” (1 Cor. 12:9, 11). Thus in his works, his characteristics, the things he suffers, his attributes and his achievements, we have a fivefold cord of testimony that clearly demonstrates the Spirit’s personality and divinity.

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IV

THE SPIRIT AND JOHN THE BAPTIST

The first mention of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament is in connection with John the Baptist: “There was in the days of Herod, king of Judæa, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the course of Abijah: and he had a wife of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elisabeth. And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless” (Luke 1:5, 6). This Zacharias was taking his turn in the temple service, and an angel appeared unto him and announced that in answer to his prayer his wife Elisabeth should bear a son whose name should be called John; that he should be great, and should drink no wine nor strong drink, and (Luke 1:15) “he shall be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb”; and “his father Zacharias was filled with the Holy Spirit, and prophesied, saying, Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel; for he hath visited and wrought redemption for his people” (Luke 1:67, 68). And the child John grew and “waxed strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till the day of his showing unto Israel” (Luke 1:80). His private life was spent in the desert solitudes, where he was being strengthened in spirit for the great work God had prepared for him. This work had been foretold by the Holy Spirit. It spake through Isaiah the prophet (40:3), saying: “The voice of one that crieth, Prepare ye in the wilderness the way of Jehovah; make level in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low; and the rough places a plain: and the glory of Jehovah shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.” Again, Malachi (3:1) says: “Behold, I send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me.” In fulfillment of these predictions of the Spirit came John the Baptist in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. Great multitudes flocked to his preaching and baptism. Among others came Jesus of Nazareth, and “on the morrow he seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). “This is he of whom I said, After me cometh a man who is become before me: for he was before me. And I knew him not; but that he should be made manifest to Israel, for this cause came I baptizing in water. And John bare witness, saying, I have beheld the Spirit descending as a dove out of heaven; and it abode upon him. And I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptize in water, he said unto me, Upon whomsoever thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and abiding upon him, the same is he that baptizeth in the Holy Spirit. And I have seen, and have borne witness that this is the Son of God” (John 1:30-34). The next mention of the Holy Spirit by John the Baptist is in reference to the baptism in the Holy Spirit and in fire. In order that the reader may have a clear understanding of this disputed and difficult subject, I shall present the testimonies of the four Evangelists in parallel columns [paragraphs]: MATT. 3:10-12. And even now the axe lieth at the root of the trees: every tree therefore that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. I indeed baptize you in water unto repentance: but he that after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit and in fire: whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly cleanse his threshing-floor; and he will gather his wheat into the garner, but the chaff he will burn up with unquenchable fire. MARK 1:7, 8. And he preached, saying There cometh after me he that is mightier than I, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose. I baptize you in water; but he shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit. LUKE 3:9, 16, 17. And even now the axe also lieth at the root of the trees: every tree therefore that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire…. John answered, saying unto them all, I indeed baptize you in water; but there cometh he that is mightier than I, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose; he shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit and in fire: whose fan is in his hand, thoroughly to cleanse his threshing-floor and to gather the wheat into his garner; but the chaff he will burn up with unquenchable fire. JOHN 1:33. And I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptize in water, he said unto me, Upon whomsoever thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and abiding upon him, the same is he that baptizeth in the Holy Spirit. John is preaching to a mixed multitude composed of those who would accept his teaching and baptism, and of those who would accept neither. Many the former would become disciples of Jesus and receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit to qualify them to take up the work of the Master and carry it on until the church would be established and the gospel fully revealed to men. The baptism of the Spirit, a purely supernatural thing, was necessary to qualify them for this work. Others would “reject for themselves the counsel of God, being not baptized of him.” These should at last “have their part in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone.” That such a division was meant by John becomes evident if we examine the context carefully. In the above parallel columns the reader will observe that Matthew and Luke use the expression “in the Holy Spirit and in fire.” They both use two illustrations to show what is meant by “in fire.” One of the illustrations immediately precedes and the other immediately follows the expression “in the Holy Spirit and in fire,” seemingly for the specific purpose of guarding against a failure to understand the expression “in fire.” The illustration that precedes in both instances is: “Therefore every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire.” The illustration that follows in each instance is: “He will burn up the chaff in unquenchable fire.” With these forcible illustrations to guard the passage, can any one fail to understand what is meant by the baptism in fire? The reader will also observe that neither Mark nor John refers to the baptism in fire, and neither uses any illustration to explain it, because no illustration is necessary. Where the baptism of fire is used there was always something destroyed by fire. This interpretation harmonizes with the universal use of the word “fire” in the New Testament. (1) In not a single instance is it used to denote a spiritual blessing conferred upon the good. (2) In not a single instance does it refer to the work of the Holy Spirit in purifying sinners. It is connected with judgments, punishments, fiery indignation, devouring adversaries, consuming, and even with hell itself; but in no case does it refer to the power of God in the scheme of redemption to convert and save men. Neither does the baptism of the Holy Spirit refer to cleansing men from sin and saving them. It was not given for that purpose. This is a foolish dream born out of the castaway doctrine of the total depravity of man and his total disability to hear, believe and obey the truth. Those who claim the baptism of the Holy Spirit to-day claim that it is the regenerating, converting, purifying power of God. But the Bible does not so teach. In every instance in which the word “purify” is found in the New Testament it is an act of personal volition—something a man must do for himself. John 11:55: “Now the passover of the Jews was at hand: and many went up to Jerusalem out of the country before the passover, to purify themselves.” Acts 21:24: “These take, and purify thyself with them, and be at charges for them, that they may shave their heads; and all shall know that there is no truth in the things whereof they have been informed concerning thee; but that thou thyself also walkest orderly, keeping the law.” Acts 21:26: “Then Paul took the men, and the next day purifying himself with them went into the temple, declaring the fulfilment of the days of purification, until the offering was offered for every one of them.” Jas. 4:8: “Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye doubleminded.” 1 Pet. 1:22: “Seeing ye have purified your souls in your obedience to the truth unto unfeigned love of the brethren, love one another from the heart fervently.” 1 John 3:3: “And every one that hath this hope set on him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.” “Men must cleanse themselves from wrong in thought, word and deed, and purify their souls in obeying the truth. The Bible teaches that this is God’s way of purifying sinners” (H.R. Pritchard, “Addresses,” p. 323). From this chapter the reader will obtain the following Scripture facts: 1. The Holy Spirit rested on John the Baptist from his mother’s womb. 2. The Holy Spirit filled his father Zacharias so that he prophesied. 3. The Holy Spirit bore witness to Jesus by descending and abiding upon him, enabling John to identify him. 4. John promised a baptism in the Holy Spirit to some of his auditors and threatened others with a baptism in fire. 1 Pet. 1:11, 12: “Searching what time or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did point unto, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glories that should follow them. To whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto you, did they minister these things, which now have been announced unto you through them that preached the gospel unto you by the Holy Spirit sent forth from heaven: which things angels desire to look into.”

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V

THE SPIRIT AND JESUS

The relation sustained by the Holy Spirit to Jesus Christ is a twofold one. First: He predicted by the holy prophets the great facts in the life of the coming one. Second: He associated himself with that one after he came. 1. THE TIME OF HIS COMING WAS CLEARLY FORETOLD. He was to come “in the last days,” or in the end of the Jewish Dispensation. “And it shall come to pass in the latter days, that the mountain of Jehovah’s house shall be established on the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it” (Isa. 2:2). 2. HE WAS TO COME WHILE THE SECOND TEMPLE WAS IN EXISTENCE. “Behold, I send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant, whom ye desire, behold, he cometh, saith Jehovah of hosts” (Mal. 3:1). 3. THE PLACE OF HIS NATIVITY WAS A MATTER OF PROPHECY. “But thou, Bethlehem Ephrathah, which art little to be among the thousands of Judah, out of thee shall one come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting” (Mic. 5:2). 4. HIS LINEAGE WAS DECLARED IN THE JEWISH SCRIPTURES. (1) He was to be a descendant of Abraham. “In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed” (Gen. 12:3). “For verily not of angels doth he take hold, but he taketh hold of the seed of Abraham” (Heb. 2:16). (2) He was to be of the tribe of Judah. “For it is evident that our Lord hath sprung out of Judah; as to which tribe Moses spake nothing concerning priests” (Heb. 7:14). (3) He was to be of the house of David. “And it shall come to pass in that day, that the root of Jesse, which standeth for an ensign of the peoples, unto him shall the nations seek; and his resting-place shall be glorious” (Isa. 11:10). 5. HIS CHARACTER WAS MINUTELY DESCRIBED BY THE PROPHETS. (1) His wisdom. “And the Spirit of Jehovah shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of Jehovah” (Isa. 11:2). (2) His obedience. “For I am come down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me” (John 6:38). (3) His love of righteousness. “Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated wickedness: Therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows” (Ps. 45:7). (4) His gentleness and tenderness. “He will not cry, nor lift up his voice, nor cause it to be heard in the street. A bruised reed will he not break, and a dimly burning wick will he not quench: he will bring forth justice in truth” (Isa. 42:2, 3). (5) His compassion. “The Spirit of the Lord Jehovah is upon me; because Jehovah hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound” (Isa. 61:1). 6. HIS BETRAYAL AND TRIAL. As we approach the closing scenes of Christ’s life the prophecies become more minute and remarkable. (1) The betrayal. “And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my hire; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my hire thirty pieces of silver. And Jehovah said unto me, Cast it unto the potter, the goodly price that I was prized at by them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them unto the potter, in the house of Jehovah” (Zech. 11:12, 13). (2) His demeanor when on trial. “He was oppressed, yet when he was afflicted he opened not his mouth; as a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before its shearers is dumb, so he opened not His mouth” (Isa. 53:7). (3) When crucified, the soldiers were to part his garments among them and cast lots for his vesture. “They part my garments among them, And upon my vesture do they cast lots” (Ps. 22:18). (4) He was to be numbered with the transgressors. “Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out his soul unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors” (Isa. 53:12). (5) He was to perish amid cruel mockings. “But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people. All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, Commit thyself unto Jehovah; let him deliver him: let him rescue him, seeing he delighted in him” (Ps. 22:6-8). 7. HIS RESURRECTION AND CORONATION. (1) He was to rise from the dead. “For thou wilt not leave my soul to Sheol; neither wilt thou suffer thy holy one to see corruption” (Ps. 16:10). (2) His ascension was also a subject of prophecy. “Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led away captives; thou hast received gifts among men, yea, among the rebellious also, that Jehovah God might dwell with them” (Ps. 68:18). (3) His coronation is foretold and described. “I saw in the night visions, and, behold, there came with the clouds of heaven one like unto a son of man, and he came even to the ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and languages should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed” (Dan. 7:13, 14). The above are only a few of the many predictions made by the Holy Spirit as to the character, life, sacrifice and dominion of our Lord. We notice now the work of the Spirit in, upon and through him. 1. HE WAS CONCEIVED BY THE HOLY SPIRIT. “Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found with child of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 1: 18). “And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee: wherefore also the holy thing which is begotten shall be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35). 2. HE WAS ANOINTED BY THE HOLY SPIRIT. “And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway from the water: and lo, the heavens were opened unto him and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove, and coming upon him; and lo, a voice out of the heavens, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:16, 17). “And it came to pass in those days, that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized of John in the Jordan. And straightway coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens rent asunder, and the Spirit as a dove descending upon him: and a voice came out of the heavens, Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I am well pleased” (Mark 1:9-11). “Now it came to pass, when all the people were baptized, that, Jesus also having been baptized and praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended in a bodily form, as a dove, upon him, and a voice came out of heaven, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased” (Luke 3:21, 22). “And John bare witness, saying, I have beheld the Spirit descending as a dove out of heaven; and it abode upon him, and I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptize in water, he said unto me, Upon whomsoever thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and abiding upon him, the same is he that baptizeth in the Holy Spirit” (John 1: 32, 33). 3. HE WAS LED BY THE HOLY SPIRIT. “Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil” (Matt. 4:1). “And straightway the Spirit driveth him forth into the wilderness” (Mark 1:12). “And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led in the Spirit in the wilderness” (Luke 4:1). 4. HE WROUGHT MIRACLES BY THE HOLY SPIRIT. “But if I by the Spirit of God cast out demons, then is the kingdom of God come upon you” (Matt. 12:28). “But if I by the finger of God cast out demons, then is the kingdom of God come upon you” (Luke 11:20). 5. HE OFFERED HIMSELF UP THROUGH THE HOLY SPIRIT. “How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish unto God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” (Heb. 9:14). 6. HE WAS RAISED BY THE HOLY SPIRIT. “But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, he that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall give life also to your mortal bodies through his Spirit that dwelleth in you” (Rom. 8:11). “Who was declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1:4). 7. HE GAVE THE COMMISSION BY THE HOLY SPIRIT. “The former treatise I made, O Theophilus, concerning all that Jesus began both to do and to teach, until the day in which he was received up, after that he had given commandment through the Holy Spirit unto the apostles whom he had chosen” (Acts 1:1, 2). 8. HIS ASCENSION AND CORONATION WERE ANNOUNCED BY THE HOLY SPIRIT. “Being therefore by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he hath poured forth this, which you see and hear” (Acts 2:33). “Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly, that God hath made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified” (Acts 2:36). Thus the Spirit predicted the coming of Jesus and the great facts of his birth, baptism, anointing, miracles, death, burial and resurrection, ascension and coronation, and then came from the Father to carry on the work of extending his kingdom. In the light of this testimony we can truly say with Paul in 2 Cor. 12:3: “Wherefore I make known unto you, that no man speaking in the Spirit of God saith, Jesus is anathema: and no man can say, Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Spirit.” “I manifested thy name unto the men whom thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them to me; and they have kept thy word. Now they know that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are from thee: for the words which thou gavest me I have given unto them; and they received them, and know of a truth that I came forth from thee, and they believe that thou didst send me…. While I was with them, I kept them in thy name which thou hast given me: and I guarded them, and not one of them perished, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled…. I have given them thy word; and the world hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that thou shouldst take them from the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil one” (John 17:6-8, 12, 14, 15).

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VI

THE SPIRIT AND THE APOSTLES

In interpreting Scripture, attention should be paid not only to the speaker and his message, but also to the parties addressed. There are passages that are universal in their application, others that are national, and still others that are addressed to individuals only. Many promises are addressed to children of God only, and do not apply to those who are not citizens of Christ’s kingdom. Again, there are commands that are addressed solely to men in a state of condemnation, and have no relevancy when applied to the children of God. Christ uttered many things to his chosen ambassadors, chosen to establish his kingdom on earth, which were never intended to be applied to any others. It is a mistake for the Christian of to-day to make universal, promises that were intended by our Lord for special individuals. It confuses the whole scheme of redemption and makes a mystery out of Scriptures that are perfectly clear when proper limitations are made. Things addressed to a chosen few have been wrongly applied to all and great confusion has resulted therefrom. It is my purpose in this chapter to notice some of these. The fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth chapters of John contain a record of a private talk by our Lord to the twelve, and to them alone. Jesus was approaching the close of his earthly ministry. He had chosen his apostles, and they had left all to follow him. He had eaten, slept and companied with them. He had taught them the great truths upon which his kingdom would be founded. They had learned to depend upon him for advice, instruction, comfort and guidance. They confessed this when they said, “Thou hast the words of eternal life.” He was soon to leave them, and knew that they would feel that they were “as sheep without a shepherd.” He wishes them to know that they should not be left orphaned. He tells them, “I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter that he may abide with you for ever,” or to the remotest age. That is, as long as you shall have need of him. The Greek word translated “for ever” does not necessarily mean unlimited duration. It is often applied to much shorter periods, even to a lifetime. The word “Comforter” is a translation from the Greek word Paracletos, and it is a very inadequate translation. There is no word within my knowledge that will fully express in English the Greek word. It is much better to Anglicize the word into the English “Paraclete.” This word is used of the Holy Spirit only four times in the New Testament, and is only used by the Saviour in his private address to the twelve, found in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth chapters of John. It is never applied to the work of the Holy Spirit in relation to mankind in general. It is promised only to the chosen, and Jesus tells them that the world can not receive “him.” This Paraclete is a distinct gift to the twelve, to take the place of the personal presence and guidance of the leader who is preparing to leave them. What is the nature of this promised one? By examining the lexicons we find that Paraclete is: 1. One called or sent to assist another. 2. One who pleads the cause of another. 3. A monitor. 4. An instructor. 5. A guide. 6. A helper. 7. A supporter. 8. A comforter. Of this Paraclete Jesus says: 1. Whom the world can not receive. 2. He dwelleth with you and shall be in you. 3. He shall teach you all things. 4. He shall bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have spoken unto you. 5. He shall testify of me. 6. He shall convict the world of sin. 7. He shall convict the world of righteousness. 8. He shall convict the world of judgment. 9. He shall guide you into all truth. 10. He shall show you things to come. 11. He shall receive of mine and show it unto you. Here we have eleven distinct things that the Paraclete is to do for the apostles. All these offices of the Paraclete were needed by the apostles in their work of proclaiming Christianity and establishing the church. They were ignorant and unlearned, humanly speaking, and could never have gone forth to success without this supernatural Paraclete. They took no thought what they should say, for it was given them at the proper time. Others have to take thought. Paul tells Timothy to “study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” Timothy had to study because he did not possess the Paraclete. Yet Timothy did possess the gift of the Spirit. “For which cause I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee through the laying on of my hands” (2 Tim. 1:6). Men to-day are required to study that they may know what to say. A failure to observe this exhortation of the apostle is the reason why a great many do not know what to say. The Paraclete was not only an instructor, but he was an infallible guide. This is evident from the fact that no apostle ever contradicted another nor said anything foolish. I never heard a man of to-day lay claim to being guided “into all truth by the Spirit,” who did not say something foolish in the next five minutes. If any man claims the direct guidance of the Spirit to-day, he can not consistently deny that same claim to others. But we have all sorts of men teaching all sorts of doctrines, often contradicting each other. Does the Spirit guide one man to preach up Universalism and another man to preach it down! The same is true of Calvinism, Mormonism or any other ism. This teaching places the Spirit in a very unenviable position, that of preaching four or five different teachings at the same time, each within a half-mile of the other. Suppose a preacher were to do that! What would the people think of him? It would ruin the reputation of any preacher in Christendom. There is something wrong, and that something is to apply to the world the promise of the Paraclete, which was only given to the apostles. Paul tells Timothy: “The things thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men who shall be able to teach others also.” Was that not an impertinence in Paul if Timothy had the same divine leading as he? Was it not impertinence in Jude to say that the faith was “once for all delivered to the saints,” if there were deliverances being constantly made? What need to preach the gospel to the heathen world if God is directly leading men into the truth? What need for a New Testament if all men possess this Paraclete? How can one man deny the claims of another whom he admits to be divinely guided into all truth? Some have thought that Christ bestowed the Paraclete upon the apostles when he breathed upon them and said: “Receive ye the Holy Spirit.” At best that was a prophetic and not an actual bestowal, for after that onbreathing we find Peter (Acts I) calling upon the assembly of brethren to take a vote as to who should succeed Judas in the apostolic college. If he had possessed the Paraclete at that time, he would not have been compelled to resort to the judgment of his brethren to determine such a question. Moreover, Christ indicated when the Paraclete would come, by stating the work that would follow his coming: “When he is come he shall convict the world [age] of sin, of righteousness and of judgment.” How did he do this? 1. His first act at his coming was to baptize the apostles in the Spirit and endow them with the Paraclete. “Ye shall be baptized in the Holy Spirit not many days hence” (Acts 1:5). 2. When the Spirit baptized these apostles with divine guidance he began his work of convicting the world through them. (1) To convict the world of sin. Not of sin in general. It is a mistaken idea that the Spirit is sent to personally convict a man of the sin of lying, stealing or defrauding his neighbor. When I was a boy in old Kentucky the colored people used to hold great revivals; they generally selected corn-planting-time or harvest-time for these meetings. Many of them would lie for days in a cataleptic condition, which, they said, was a “conviction of the Spirit.” A man would go groaning and moping to his task because he was “under conviction of the Holy Ghost.” The above passage teaches nothing of the kind, nor does any other passage in the New Testament teach it. There is not a case in the New Testament where the Holy Spirit ever made an issue with a man to personally convict him of sin. All men are convicted of sin by the Spirit, but it is the Spirit working through the preaching of Spirit-filled men. “And he, when he is come, will convict the world [the Jewish world or age] in respect of sin, because they believe not on me.” They called him a blasphemer, they rejected him, they took him with wicked hands and crucified and slew him; and the first thrust of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost was at this sinful act of the world: “This same Jesus whom ye took with wicked hands and crucified and slew, God hath raised him up and made him both Lord and Christ.” (2) “Of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and ye behold me no more.” If this passage teaches that men are individually convicted of sin, it also teaches that they are individually convicted of righteousness, and this would be a most herculean task, even for the Spirit, to perform. It is a contradiction of terms to say that the Spirit convicts a man of sin, then, in the next breath, that he convicts the same man of righteousness. And yet, the Spirit was to convict men “of righteousness”; but whose righteousness? The righteousness of Jesus Christ. “Of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and ye behold me no more.” When Jesus was on earth he claimed to be the Son of God; he claimed to come down from heaven; he claimed to be God manifest in the flesh; but, at the same time, he was a “man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” “There was no beauty that we should desire him.” On this account the Jews refused to accept him as the Son of God; they denied his claim to divinity and called him a blasphemer for making himself equal with God; they believed that he was unrighteous in making that claim, and Jesus died because his claims were not accepted by his people; but after his death he was crowned with glory and honor at the right hand of the Majesty on high, and the Spirit came to demonstrate the righteous claims Jesus made while on earth. The Spirit came to convict men of the righteousness of Christ, and not their own righteousness. A simple illustration will probably throw light upon this thought. Forty years ago my father lived in a little village in the State of Illinois, midway between St. Louis and Indianapolis. One afternoon two young lads, covered with dust and toilworn, came to his house and told him they were sons of an elder of a Christian Church in Indiana; that they had been robbed in St. Louis, and were making their way home on foot; they asked for something to eat. My father doubted their claims; he felt that they were impostors; but my mother, who had boys of her own out in the world, and who always believed the best of everybody, said: “We will feed them and care for them during the night.” Their wants were supplied, and they were given lodging for the night, and sent on their way the next morning with a good lunch for the day. Six months afterward, I preached in Monroe County, Indiana, and, stopping with one of the elders of the church, two young lads were introduced to me as his boys. They asked me if my father lived in Illinois. I told them he did. They then recounted their experience at my father’s home, and said to me: “We would be glad when you return home if you will tell your father that you stopped at our house, and that you know we were what we claimed to be when we sought his aid.” When I returned to my father’s home I convicted him of the righteousness of those boys in the claim which they set forth, and which he had hitherto doubted. In a similar manner the Spirit of God came down to convict the world, that had rejected the claims of Jesus, of his righteousness in making those claims. (3) He will convict the world of judgment, because the “prince of this world is judged.” This passage does not say, as many preachers quote it, “of judgment to come,” but “of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged.” This Scripture is often quoted to show that a judgment was pronounced upon Satan, who is often called the prince of this world. The word for prince in the original is used thirty-seven times—thirty-two times it clearly means an earthly ruler, and five times it may apply to Satan. There is no reason why the expression, “the prince of this world,” may not mean an earthly ruler. It evidently refers to Pontius Pilate, in John 14:30, when Jesus says: “The prince of this world cometh, and he hath nothing in me.” Pilate justifies that statement when he says: “I find no fault in this man.” Nevertheless, as prince of this world, he pronounced the death-sentence and delivered him up to be crucified. This was the judgment of the prince of this world, but the descent of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost reversed this judgment and pronounced a righteous judgment in its place, thus judging Pilate “the prince of this world.” The above three things were accomplished on the day of Pentecost by the coming of the Spirit. The Jews were convicted of sin in rejecting and crucifying Christ; they were also convicted of the righteousness of Christ in claiming to be the Son of God, and likewise convinced that God had raised up Jesus and made him both Lord and Christ. In accomplishing this work the Spirit did it through the instrumentality of gospel preaching, and all subsequent convictions of sin, of righteousness and of judgment have been accomplished through the same agency, and will be till the end of time. This Paraclete continued with the apostles till the end of their ministry, guiding, leading, and showing them “things to come,” bringing all things to their remembrance that Christ had spoken unto them. Under this direct and supernatural control they preached the gospel to all the nations of the earth, and established the church with all its officers, ordinances, privileges and duties. They wrote the epistles to the churches and gave to mankind the New Testament, “the perfect law of liberty.” The work of the Paraclete being finished, and his mission ended, no man has been guided, shown and directed personally by him since. God does no unnecessary work, and the work of the Paraclete is not necessary now. His work remains in the teachings and lives of the apostles. There are many things in the above-mentioned chapters that rightfully have a universal application, but the special promises concerning the Paraclete are not included in those things. “Wherefore he saith, When he ascended on high, he led captivity captive, And gave gifts unto men…. And he gave some to be apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministering, unto the building up of the body of Christ: till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a fullgrown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” (Eph. 4:8, 11-13).

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VII

THE SPIRIT AND THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH

That the Holy Spirit sustained a relation to the apostolic church that it does not sustain to the church of to-day is clearly evident to the student of the Divine Word. The church of the apostolic age had no New Testament as we have to-day. Hence the necessity of a more direct and immediate leading than is necessary to-day. The apostle Paul states the difference between the two when he says: “For we know in part, and we prophesy in part; but when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away.” This is not a contrast between the imperfections of our day and the perfection of heaven, but between the imperfection of the apostolic church and the perfection of the church of to-day. That which is perfect has come; a perfect revelation of Christian character, a perfect gospel, a perfect “law of liberty,” a perfect New Testament. The apostolic church was limited to knowing in part and prophesying in part. “But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit to profit withal. For to one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom; and to another the word of knowledge, according to the same Spirit: to another faith, in the same Spirit; to another gifts of healings, in the one Spirit; and to another workings of miracles; and to another prophecy; and to another discernings of spirits: to another divers kinds of tongues; and to another the interpretation of tongues: but all these worketh the one and the same Spirit, dividing to each one severally even as he will” (1 Cor. 12:7-11). Now, here was manifestly a condition in the first churches that does not exist to-day. Here are various direct and supernatural workings that are manifestations of spiritual power resulting from a direct gift of the Spirit to members of apostolic churches. Now, there was a purpose to be accomplished by this special gift of the Spirit. In the fourth chapter of Ephesians the apostle tells us the purpose of this gift. “And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: Till we all come to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God.” This gift of the Spirit accompanied the baptism of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost. This brings us to a very-interesting question; viz., Was the promise of the “gift of the Holy Spirit,” referred to by Peter on the day of Pentecost, a universal one to all who obey the gospel, or was it limited to those of the apostolic church who received it that they might manifest it in a supernatural way “to profit withal,” or to the profit of all? There are some who claim that “the gift of the Spirit” is one that belongs to all who obey the gospel to-day, that it is independent of the instrumentality of the gospel, and is the peculiar heritage of those who repent and are baptized for the remission of sins; that it performs a work in them other than is performed by the Spirit operating through the truth. There are others who claim that the “gift of the Spirit” was a supernatural power and was conferred on persons to qualify them to do a work or works peculiar to the age of miracles which obtained in the apostolic church. The only way to settle this is by appealing to (1) the consciousness of individuals, (2) to the Divine Word. Before appealing to either of these tribunals, there are a few facts that we must consider. (1) This is the only passage in the New Testament that connects “the gift of the Spirit” with obedience to the gospel in the preaching of the apostles. We have remission of sins so connected on various occasions (see Acts 5:31; 10:43; 13:38; 26:18, etc., etc.), but nowhere else is this “gift of the Spirit” promised. If it is to be as universal as “remission of sins,” ought it not to have the same prominence in apostolic preaching? This is an important factor in settling the matter. (2) In the only instance in which it is promised it is inexorably connected with baptism for the remission of sins. It is promised to no others, and all others are ruled out by the explicit terms of the promise. With these facts before us, let us now appeal to the consciousness of the individual. If we consider numbers, it is safe to say that ninety-five per cent. of those who to-day claim “the gift of the Spirit” have never been baptized for the remission of sins. They have never performed the conditions upon which the gift was bestowed. Are they competent to testify? Of the remaining five per cent., there is not one who can give any definite reason why he is conscious of the personal indwelling of the Spirit within him. To demonstrate my statement I appeal to the consciousness of my readers. Are you conscious of any influence within you except a holy joy that comes from obedience to the will of God? If you are not, what evidence have you that the Spirit personally dwells in you? So much for the argument from consciousness. Now let us appeal to the Divine Word. When the apostle Peter promised “the gift of the Spirit,” he followed it with the words, “For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all them that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.” He distinctly states that the gift of the Spirit is in fulfillment of “the promise.” Now, is there in the Scripture any promise of a personal indwelling of the Holy Spirit as a result of obedience? Let us search the words of the Master. In Luke 11:13 our Lord says: “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?” This passage may be disposed of by saying that in the original it is a holy spirit and does not refer to the Holy Spirit at all. It represents God’s willingness to give a holy disposition. Matthew explains it in the words “good gifts to them that ask him.” In John 7:38, 39 we have recorded another promise: “He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, from within him shall flow rivers of living water. But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believed on him were to receive: for the Spirit was not yet given; because Jesus was not yet glorified.” This is evidently a supernatural gift, as he represents the recipient of it as a fountain from which flows rivers of living water. This is obviously not true of us to-day. Our Saviour also dates the bestowal as following his glorification, or on the day of Pentecost. In Mark 16:16-18: “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that disbelieveth shall be condemned. And these signs shall accompany them that believe: in my name shall they cast out demons; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall in no wise hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” These five things that accompanied the believers are all supernatural. Of the three promises of Jesus—which are all that are recorded in the New Testament—only two refer to the Holy Spirit, and both of these to its supernatural manifestation. If we go back of the Saviour to the Old Testament, we find a distinct promise of the gift of the Spirit: “And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions: and also upon the servants and upon the hand-maids in those days will I pour out my Spirit” (Joel 2:28, 29). This promise is the one quoted by Peter to explain the manifestations on the day of Pentecost to the people drawn together by that wonderful event. From it he delivers by the Spirit a sermon on the claims of our Lord. He shows that they had taken the Lord by wicked hands and had crucified and slain him; that God had raised him from the dead and had exalted him to his right hand; had given him the promise of the Holy Spirit; that what they saw and heard was the fulfillment of Joel’s promise. This promise was not simply to the apostles, for we read in the preceding chapter that the apostles, and the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brethren to the number of one hundred and twenty all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication. “And when the day of Pentecost was now come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound as of the rushing of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them tongues parting asunder, like as of fire; and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.” This shows that the gift of the Spirit came upon all the followers Jesus left behind him. When the multitude were convicted by the apostle’s discourse, they “said unto Peter and the rest of the apostles, Brethren, what shall we do? And Peter said unto them, Repent ye, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ unto the remission of your sins: and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For to you is the promise, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call unto him.” What promise! Evidently the promise of God, “I will pour out of my spirit upon all flesh.” There is no other promise in the mind of Peter and his hearers, and I know of no other promise the reader can have in mind. This position is amply supported by after-developments. “While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Spirit fell on all them that heard the word. And they of the circumcision that believed were amazed, as many as came with Peter, because that on the Gentiles also was poured out the gift of the Holy Spirit. For they heard them speak with tongues, and magnify God. Then answered Peter, Can any man forbid the water, that these should not be baptized, who have received the Holy Spirit as well as we?” (Acts 10:44-47). This was in fulfillment of the promise not only to the Jews, but the Gentiles, whom the Jews regarded as “far off.” Paul, speaking to Gentiles, says: “But now in Christ Jesus, ye that were once far off are made nigh in the blood of Christ” (Eph. 2:13). In this incident “the gift of the Holy Spirit” and “receiving the Spirit” are the same. And when Peter was taken to task for baptizing the Gentiles, he defends himself on the ground that God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, giving them the Holy Spirit, “the like gift as he did also unto us.” In the above instances, Pentecost and the house of Cornelius, the gift of the Spirit was the result of the baptism of the Spirit, the baptism of the Spirit was an outpouring or falling of the Spirit upon the Jews at Pentecost and the Gentiles at the house of Cornelius, to signify his acceptance of both Jew and Gentile into the kingdom of Christ. Paul undoubtedly refers to this when he says: “For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks” (1 Cor. 12:13). The baptism of the Spirit ceased when its object—the making of one body out of Jews and Gentiles—was accomplished, but “the gift of the Spirit” did not cease. It was conferred by the laying on of the hands of the apostles through all their lives. A few illustrations may be mentioned from the Scriptures. The Samaritans. When a bloody persecution arose at Jerusalem, following the death of Stephen, the disciples were scattered and went everywhere preaching the Word. Philip went to the city of Samaria and preached Christ to them. “But when they believed Philip preaching good tidings concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women” (Acts 8:12). “For as yet the Holy Spirit was fallen upon none of them: only they had been baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 8:16). If the gift of the Spirit is to all baptized believers, why did not the Samaritans receive it? Philip was not an apostle and did not have the power to confer “the gift of the Spirit” by the imposition of hands, and, in order that they might receive this “gift,” it was necessary that two apostles, Peter and John, should go to Samaria and lay hands on them, that they might receive the Spirit. Here is a clear case of baptized believers receiving the Holy Spirit by the imposition of hands. Disciples at Ephesus. In Acts 19 Paul met certain disciples that had received the baptism of John. He showed them that John did not preach a full gospel, which embraced a belief in Christ. “And when they heard this, they were baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus, and when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them.” This is another clear case of the Spirit being given by the imposition of hands. Timothy. In 2 Tim. 1:6 Paul tells Timothy: “For which cause I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee through the laying on of my hands.” This is a third instance of the gift of the Spirit by the imposition of hands, and they form just three more instances than can be found of the Spirit taking his personal “abode in men because they have believed and been baptized.” That the Spirit was imparted to many Christians in a similar way is clear. Paul tells the brethren at Borne: “For I long to see you, that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift, to the end that ye may be established.” It was not necessary that he see these brethren to the end that he might proclaim the gospel unto them; but it was necessary that he see them that he might lay hands on them and impart the gift of the Spirit. In Mark 16:17, 18 Jesus concludes the commission as follows: “And these signs shall accompany them that believe: in my name shall they cast out demons; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall in no wise hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” Here is clearly the promise of supernatural power which he calls “signs.” Signs of what? There is but one answer that can be given: signs of the indwelling of God’s Spirit by which alone they could work these signs. Are these signs in existence to-day? No thoughtful reader will so affirm. If the manifestations of the Spirit have ceased, is it not reasonable that the “gift” has also ceased? If not, we have the remarkable fact of the Spirit dwelling in man and not being able to manifest any signs of his indwelling. We are now enabled to reach two conclusions of importance: First, the “gift of the Spirit” was a supernatural gift for the purpose of enabling the “believers” in apostolic days to work the “signs” which Christ said should accompany them that believe, and ceased when the signs ceased. Second, many of the exhortations of the New Testament writers were to a church whose members were filled with the supernatural power of the Spirit, and should be interpreted in the light of that fact. We give a few examples that fall under this head: “Declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness” (Rom. 1:4). “But ye are … in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you” (Rom. 8:9). “Ourselves also, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit” (Rom. 8:23). “My conscience bearing witness with me in the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 9:1). “Now I beseech you, brethren, by our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the love of the Spirit” (Rom. 15:30). “Now he that wrought us for this very thing is God, who gave unto us the earnest of the Spirit” (2 Cor. 5:5). “Ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, which is an earnest of our inheritance” (Eph. 1:13, 14). “Through him we both have our access in one Spirit unto the Father” (Eph. 2:18). “Be filled with the Spirit” (Eph. 5:18). “If there is therefore any … fellowship of the Spirit” (Phil. 2:1). “Therefore he that rejecteth, rejecteth … God, who giveth his Holy Spirit unto you” (1 Thess. 4:8). “For God gave us not a spirit, of fearfulness; but of power and love and discipline” (2 Tim. 1:7). “He saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit” (Tit. 3:5). “God also bearing witness with them, both by signs and wonders and by manifold powers, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit” (Heb. 2:4). “Doth the spirit which he made to dwell in us long unto envying?” (Jas. 4:5). “Ye have an anointing from the Holy One” (1 John 2: 20). “The anointing which ye received of him abideth in you” (1 John 2:27). “He hath given us of his Spirit” (1 John 4:13). All the above Scriptures become clear if we understand them to apply to a people through whom God was manifesting his presence by supernatural demonstrations, but many of them lack meaning when applied to people of God who no longer exhibit these supernatural powers.

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VIII

THE SPIRIT AND THE WORLD

Hitherto we have been treating the Holy Spirit in terms of the past, but now we come to the present tense. Is the Holy Spirit a power in the present age? If so, what kind of a power? Is he making an issue with men as a direct power and working upon them immediately, or is he working through an instrumentality, and, if so, what is the instrumentality? The Spirit is undoubtedly dealing with two classes of persons in his work to-day. First, those who are not believers, and therefore unconverted and “aliens from the commonwealth of Israel.” Second, those who have believed and obeyed the gospel, and are therefore children of God. We shall devote this chapter to the influence of the Spirit upon the unbelieving world. In the very nature of things, the work of the Spirit is to make believers out of unbelievers, and convert the perverted. We all believe this. We believe that all believers are made by the power of the Spirit. We differ about whether he exercises that power directly from himself to the individual soul, or whether he exercises that power through the gospel, through the apostles and through Christ’s word of truth. Reason, philosophy and experience exhausted themselves in discovering but two methods by which one spirit can exercise an influence over another. First, a direct mechanical, immediate influence taking possession of the will and influencing the mind of and controlling the speech and actions of the subject. This takes place in hypnotism and is supposed to take place in clairvoyance and clairaudience. Second, a rational moral influence exerted by ideas impressed upon the mind by teaching and words that represent ideas. There is, there can be, no third way by which one spirit can influence another. You may study till you are gray-headed or bald-headed, for that matter, and you will discover no other way. The Holy Spirit has used both of these methods in the past. 1. In the case of the apostles and prophets, he immediately, mechanically and directly controlled their actions and speech, so much so that Jesus told them that under the influence of the Spirit they should take no thought what they should say. “For it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Spirit” (Mark 13:11). “And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance” (Acts 2:4). 2. In the case of the men to whom the apostles preached on the day of Pentecost, the Spirit used a rational moral influence through the words of Peter’s sermon, which conveyed ideas that swayed their minds and hearts. It is claimed by some that both of these methods are used by the Spirit to-day. The modern teaching concerning the first of these influences is well set forth in the following selection from a widely known book by L.B. Dunn, entitled “The Mission of the Spirit”: “Even where the light of the gospel does not shine, and the institutions of the gospel are not enjoyed, there the Spirit acts directly upon man’s heart and conscience, writes the law of God upon his mind, gives him the sense of sin and the need of forgiveness. Hence, wherever man is, there the Comforter is at work upon his heart and mind. The divine influence is imparted unconditionally and irresistibly. The Holy Spirit is ever employed to bring man back to God; and whether he desires it or not, whether he is willing or unwilling, still the Comforter comes to him with his heavenly illumination, his divine influence, convincing him of sin, and his consequent need of the mercy of God. May I not truly say that man really has no choice in the matter as to whether he will or will not have this divine influence upon his soul? He is, he must be, enlightened and convinced, whether he will hear or forbear, whether he will be saved or damned. He can not prevent the entrance of the Spirit into his heart.” In connection with the above we quote also from a sermon in “The Baptist Pulpit,” by Rev. J.W. Hayhurst: “God has given us no means by which the conversion of sinners, or the general revival of religion, can be effected, irrespective of the direct agency of the Spirit. The gospel itself will not do it.” These quotations give us a pretty clear and explicit statement of the theory of the direct mechanical and immediate operation of the Holy Spirit upon the human spirit. The second method is aptly stated by an editorial which appeared in the Sunday School Times during the year 1908: “It is a strange fact that, notwithstanding the explicitness and uniformity of the New Testament teachings on this subject, there is a widespread popular opinion that the Holy Spirit’s work is directly and immediately on or in the heart of the unbeliever, without the intervention or agency of the Christian whatever. To hear what is said in the sermons, or sung in the hymns, or prayed in the prayers of many Christians, one might believe that the Holy Spirit is sent directly to the unbelieving sinner, to strive with him, to show him his sin, and to point him to, the Saviour; and that therefore the Christian preacher or teacher has rather to wait the results of this work of the Spirit, than to be the instrument or the avenue of this work. Many a Christian seems to think that the Holy Spirit’s work is that of a revival preacher, in moving sinners to repentance by a direct appeal to their consciences and understandings, instead of stirring up Christians to appeal, in the power of the Spirit, to unbelievers to believe and turn to God. It is true that, in this present dispensation of the Spirit, all power in the evangelizing of the world, and in the swaying of the hearts of men toward Christ and in the service of Christ, is primarily with the Holy Spirit. But it is also true that the Holy Spirit, according to the Bible teachings, works in and by and through believers in Jesus. Hence if one who is not a believer in Jesus is to be won to discipleship, the question is not, ‘Will the Holy Spirit work on his mind immediately, or will the Holy Spirit work through one who already believes?’ for that question the Bible has already answered. The Holy Spirit can use the written words, like the spoken words, of a chosen messenger of God to an unbelieving soul. But in every case the Spirit reaches the believer mediately, not immediately.” Now, these theories are directly contradictory. If one is true, the other can not be. The only question to decide is as to which one is true. Let us examine these theories in the light of reason, revelation and experience. If the Holy Spirit works directly and immediately on the heart of man, surely there should be some tangible evidence of it given in such a striking way as to demonstrate the truth of the theory. But the experience of Christendom for nineteen centuries fails to furnish a single unquestioned evidence of it. The proof of the theory is made to hinge upon far-fetched inferences drawn from Scripture statements, and even these fail to furnish the evidence sought. Let us notice some of the Scriptures that are relied upon to prove a direct operation of the Spirit in the conversion of sinners: 1. “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep mine ordinances, and do them” (Ezek. 36:26, 27). This passage has been much relied upon to prove the theory of an abstract operation of the Spirit upon the sinner in conversion. Its failure to support the theory is evidenced by the following facts: (1) The Lord was not talking about the conversion of a sinner, but the renewal of Israel as a people. (2) The passage says nothing about the work of the Holy Spirit. (3) There is nothing mentioned in the passage that could not have been accomplished by ordinary means. (4) The very point to be proven is assumed. 2. “But their minds were hardened: for until this very day at the reading of the old covenant the same veil remaineth, it not being revealed to them that it is done away in Christ. But unto this day, whensoever Moses is read, a veil lieth upon their heart. But whensoever it shall turn to the Lord, the veil is taken away” (2 Cor. 3:14-16). Just what is found here to prove a direct operation of the Spirit would be difficult to say. The apostle is speaking of the Jews reading the Scriptures with a veil which blinds them. The veil was undoubtedly a false interpretation, which prevented their seeing Christ in their Scriptures. If they had not this wrong interpretation, they would see Christ and their Scriptures would be plain. As it was, they were dark and mysterious. The apostle tells what will remove the veil: “When they shall turn to the Lord,” the veil shall be taken away. There is nothing in the whole passage that even hints at an immediate operation of the Spirit. 3. “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10). There is nothing here to even hint at a direct operation. It says the Ephesians were created in Christ Jesus (not in the Holy Spirit) unto good works. If the reader wishes to learn by what means they were so created, let him turn to chapter 1, verse 13, and he will obtain the information: “In whom ye also, having heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your salvation,—in whom, having also believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.” That is something to the point. They “heard the word of truth,” the gospel of their salvation. Then, after they believed, they “were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.” There is nothing in the passage to warrant the teaching of a special operation to enable them to believe. 4. “And a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, one that worshipped God, heard us: whose heart the Lord opened to give heed unto the things which were spoken by Paul” (Acts 16:14). This is relied upon to prove a direct work of the Spirit upon Lydia that she might hear and believe. The very thing to be proved is again assumed. True, the Lord opened Lydia’s heart, but he didn’t do so that she might “receive the word,” for Paul had already preached it to her. Her heart was opened that “she gave heed to the things spoken by Paul.” Before she heard Paul she had a narrow, bigoted Jewish heart. After she heard the preaching, her heart was opened to attend to the things she had heard. That is, she obeyed the gospel. Nothing about the Holy Spirit in the entire history. 5. “And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth: whom the world cannot receive; for it beholdeth him not, neither knoweth him: ye know him; for he abideth with you, and shall be in you” (John 14:16, 17). As I have elsewhere shown, this passage has a private and peculiar application to the apostles, and not to the world of mankind. It specifically states that “the world cannot receive” this Comforter. That kills it as a proof-text that the world “must receive it” before it can believe. Those who affirm a direct operation of the Spirit on “the world” make a clear-cut issue with the Saviour. 6. “I planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase” (1 Cor. 3:6). Those who use this to prove a special operation of the Spirit make it mean, “I have planted the word and Apollos has watered it, but God by a special work of the Holy Spirit makes the increase of the word.” This is a false interpretation, as the apostle was not speaking of “the word” at all. How could Apollos “water the word“? The apostle was speaking of the congregation at Corinth, which he had planted and Apollos had tended, and which, under the care of God, had made increase. There is nothing in the passage about the Holy Spirit. 7. “While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Spirit fell on all them that heard the word” (Acts 10:44). This has reference to God’s signifying his acceptance of the Gentiles by an outpouring similar to the one on the day of Pentecost. It was purely a supernatural act, and has never been repeated since that day. But even then it would not prove the necessity of an operation of the Spirit, that men might hear the gospel and believe it. The record says “it fell on all them that heard the word.” Cornelius was told by the angel to send for Peter, “who shall tell thee words whereby thou shalt be saved.” 8. “Now the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him; and he cannot know them, because they are spiritually judged. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, and he himself is judged of no man” (1 Cor. 2:14, 15). This is held to be one of the strongest passages to confirm the teaching of the necessity of a direct operation of the Holy Spirit to enable a man to hear and to believe the gospel. A brief examination of the context will show that such an idea was not in the mind of the apostle at all. The apostle is not even speaking of conversion when he uses the language. He is speaking of inspiration. The spiritual man in Paul’s mind was a man inspired by the Spirit, and the natural man was an uninspired man. If the reader will turn to the ninth verse of the chapter and read to the conclusion of the chapter, and place “uninspired” where he finds “natural,” and “inspired” where “spiritual” is found, the passage will be as clear as a sunbeam. “The things of the Spirit” are things produced by the Spirit, which needed an inspired man to explain. The day of Pentecost was a “thing of the Spirit,” and there was not an uninspired man in all that great throng that could understand it. The best solution they could give was, “These men are drunk,” but Peter, an inspired man, explained in inspired language that “this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel: It shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, that I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh.” When these natural (uninspired) men heard Peter’s (inspired) spiritual explanation, they could understand it. They did understand it and obeyed it to the number of three thousand. Nebuchadnezzar’s vision was a “thing of the Spirit,” and there was not a natural (uninspired) man in all his realm that could interpret it. But Daniel, a spiritual (inspired) man, explained it in spiritual language and then all could understand it. There is nothing in the passage to support the theory of a direct operation to enable man to understand the gospel. 9. “Him did God exalt with his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, to give repentance to Israel, and remission of sins” (Acts 5:31). This passage is used because it speaks of Christ giving repentance. They infer that is done by a direct operation of the Spirit. But the passage says nothing as to how he grants repentance. Christ gives many things that are not the result of a direct operation of the Spirit. The very next verse says God gives “the Holy Spirit to all them that obey him.” This directly contradicts the theory of the necessity of a direct operation of the Spirit to enable men to obey him. 10. “No man can come to me, except the Father that sent me draw him: and I will raise him up in the last day” (John 6:44). This is greatly relied upon to show the necessity of an irresistible drawing before men can come to Christ. The word “draw,” in the Scriptures, is a translation of two words in the original. One means to draw by force, “to drag;” the other means to “entice, allure or persuade”—that men are drawn by moral arguments, or “allured.” In the next verse Christ tells how men are drawn. “Every one that hath heard from the Father, and hath learned, cometh unto me.” Christ draws men by “teaching,” and they come as result of “learning.” That is why he told his disciples to “go teach all nations.” That is Christ’s method of drawing. Now, I have selected ten of the strongest passages in the New Testament that support the theory of a direct operation of the Spirit before men are qualified to hear and obey the gospel. If it is not taught in the above passages, it is not taught in the Bible. When rightly considered, not one of them even leans toward the theory. Are we not justified in saying that the theory is not supported by the Scriptures! Now, how are persons made believers? Hear the word of God: 1. “For I am not ashamed of the gospel: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek” (Rom. 1:16). Now, here is the unequivocal statement that God’s power to save is lodged in the gospel. In all ages of Christianity there is not a record of a single soul ever being saved without the presence of this power. But this is not a magical power. It must be heard in order that it produce faith. But how shall they hear without a preacher and how shall he preach except he be sent? The order is, then, (1) send, (2) preach, (3) hear, (4) believe, (5) obey, (6) saved. Now, this is the order of the Saviour’s commission to his followers. “Go preach the gospel to every creature; he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.” That is our marching order to-day. 2. “Now these were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, examining the scriptures daily, whether these things were so. Many of them therefore believed; also of the Greek women of honorable estate, and of men, not a few” (Acts 17:11, 12). Here were believers made by searching the Scriptures and by receiving the Word with all “readiness of mind.” The same method will make believers of unbelievers to-day. 3. “For though ye have ten thousand tutors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I begat you through the gospel” (1 Cor. 4:15). No clearer statement could be made as to the power exercised in begetting men to a new life. They are begotten through the gospel. 4. “Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first-fruits of his creatures” (Jas. 1:18). This is as clear as the one above it. We are brought forth by the Word of truth. 5. “For this people’s heart is waxed gross, And their ears are dull of hearing, And their eyes they have closed; Lest haply they should perceive with their eyes, And hear with their ears, And understand with their heart, And should turn again, And I should heal them” (Matt. 13:15). To be healed, one must be converted; to be converted, one must understand with the heart; to understand with the heart, one must perceive and hear. But the people the Lord mentions were not healed. Why? Because they were not converted. Why were they not converted? Because they had not perceived with their eyes and heard with their ears. Why had they not seen and heard! “Their ears are dull of hearing, And their eyes they have closed; Lest at any time they should see with their eyes, And hear with their ears.” Men talk of the Bible being a sealed book. They would better talk of sealed eyes, ears and hearts, as does the Saviour.

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IX

THE SPIRIT AND CHRISTIANS

It has been aptly and truthfully said that “no importance can be attached to a religion that is not begun, carried on and completed by the Spirit of God.” That the Christian is led, guided and strengthened by the Spirit can not be denied by any Bible reader. To deny the fact that the Spirit dwells in us is to deny the Bible. But it is asserted with equal clearness in the Divine Word that God dwells in us. “And what agreement hath a temple of God with idols? for we are a temple of the living God; even as God said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (2 Cor. 6:16). This not only says that God will dwell in us, but that he walks in us. It is also clearly taught that Christ dwells in us. “That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love” (Eph. 3:17). Now, if God, Christ and the Spirit dwell in us, is there any teaching that the Spirit dwells in us in a different sense from that in which the Father and the Son dwell in us? How, then, does the Father dwell in us? By referring to Lev. 26:12, from which Paul quoted, we find that God promised to be in communion with Israel, but there is nothing in the passage to show his personal indwelling in any one person. How does Christ dwell in us? The passage above quoted says, “Christ shall dwell in your hearts by faith;” more correctly rendered, “the faith” or the gospel. How does the Spirit dwell in us? In Gal. 3:2, Paul asks the Galatians: “Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by thehearing of the faith?”—or the gospel. The above Scriptures clearly teach that when the words, thoughts and Spirit of God are controlling in our lives, God dwells in us; that when the gospel controls us, Christ dwells in us; that when we receive the gospel by the hearing of faith, the Spirit dwells in us. Now, what reason has any man for declaring that the Spirit dwells in us in any other way, unless he can point to an explicit declaration of God’s word defining and explaining that other way? This can not be done, for there is no such passage. “But,” says one, “I do not have to depend upon the Word. I know it by my own consciousness.” It is a principle as old as metaphysics that consciousness does not take cognizance of causes, but of effects. You may be conscious of an effect within you, but you can not be conscious of the cause that produced the effect. Suppose you are lying asleep on the ground; you are suddenly awakened by a severe pain in your lower limb; consciousness tells you that you are suffering pain, but it does not tell you what produced that pain. This must be decided by reason or faith. If you find a thorn in the grass where your limb was resting, reason says the thorn stuck you; if you find a bumblebee mashed in the grass, reason will say the insect stung you; or, if some one near you says a boy with a pin in his hand ran away from you, faith will say the boy stuck you. But in either case it was reason or faith that decided the cause of your pain. Now, when a man says, “I am conscious of the presence of the Holy Spirit within me,” he simply means, “I am conscious of a feeling within me which I have been taught was caused by the Holy Spirit.” If the man has been taught wrong, he assigns a wrong cause for the feeling. What is the feeling usually assigned for the presence of the Holy Spirit’s personal indwelling? It is a feeling of joy, peace and love. But can not such feeling be excited by other causes? We know there are dozens of causes that will produce such feelings. In the absence of clear testimony, what right has any one to attribute such feeling to the personal presence of the Holy Spirit? A man is found murdered. The testimony shows that any one of a dozen men could have killed him. Is there an intelligent jury in the land that would convict any one of the men of being the murderer? What would you think of a jury that would render such a verdict? “Well,” says one, “what of the great numbers who pray for a ‘Pentecostal revival’? Are they all wrong?” Not wrong in what they want, but wrong in what they call it. All that those people desire, is to be filled with a genuine revival of religious enthusiasm. Their mistake is in calling it a “Pentecostal shower.” A Pentecostal shower would lead every preacher under its influence to say, with the apostle Peter, to inquiring sinners: “Repent, and be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins.” This is what they are careful not to say. It is a clear evidence that the Spirit which guided Peter is not guiding them. I assert it to be a fact that everything that is claimed to be effected by a personal indwelling of the Spirit is as clearly accomplished by the Spirit acting through the word of God. I do not wish to rest content with asserting that statement, but I wish to prove it. What are the things that might be accomplished by a direct personal indwelling of the Spirit in us? 1. He might give us faith. But through the Word he does that. “So belief cometh of hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ” (Rom. 10:17). 2. He might enable us to enjoy a new birth. But through the Word he does that. “Having been begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the word of God, which liveth and abideth” (1 Pet. 1:23). 3. He might give us light. But through the Word he does that. “The entrance of thy word giveth light” (Ps. 119:130). 4. He might give us wisdom. But through the Word he does that. “But abide thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; and that from a babe thou hast known the sacred writings which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:14, 15). “The testimony of Jehovah is sure, making wise the simple” (Ps. 19:7). 5. He might convert us. But he does that through the Word. “The law of Jehovah is perfect, converting the soul” (Ps. 19:7). 6. He might open our eyes. But he does that through the Word. “The precepts of Jehovah are right, rejoicing the heart; The commandment of Jehovah is pure, enlightening the eyes” (Ps. 19:8). 7. He might give us understanding. But he does that through the Word. “Through thy precepts I get understanding: Therefore I hate every false way” (Ps. 119:104). 8. He might quicken us. But he does that through the Word. “This is my comfort in my affliction; For thy word hath quickened me” (Ps. 119: 50). 9. He might save us. But he does that through the Word. “Wherefore putting away all filthiness and overflowing of wickedness, receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your souls” (Jas. 1:21). 10. He might sanctify us. But he does this through the Word. “Sanctify them in the truth: thy word is truth” (John 17:17). 11. He might purify us. But he does that through the Word. “Seeing ye have purified your souls in your obedience to the truthunto unfeigned love of the brethren, love one another from the heart fervently” (1 Pet. 1:22). 12. He might cleanse us. But he does that through the Word. “Already ye are clean because of the word which I have spoken unto you” (John 15:3). 13. He might make us free from sin. But he does that through the Word. “But thanks be to God, that whereas ye were servants of sin, ye became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching whereunto ye were delivered; and being made free from sin, ye became servants of righteousness” (Rom. 6:17, 18). 14. He might impart a divine nature. But he does that through the Word. “Whereby he hath granted unto us his precious and exceeding great promises; that through these ye may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world by lust” (2 Pet. 1:4). 15. He might fit us for glory. But he does that through the Word. “And now I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you the inheritance among all them that are sanctified” (Acts 20:32). 16. He might strengthen us. But he does that by his Word. “Strengthen me according to thy word” (Ps. 119:28). In the above cases we have covered all the conceivable things a direct indwelling Spirit could do for one, and have also shown that all these things the Spirit does through the word of God. It is not claimed that a direct indwelling of the Spirit makes any new revelations, adds any new reasons or offers any new motives than are found in the word of God. Of what use, then, would a direct indwelling Spirit be? God makes nothing in vain. We are necessarily, therefore, led to the conclusion that, in dealing with his children to-day, God deals with them in the same psychological way that he deals with men in inducing them to become children. This conclusion is strengthened by the utter absence of any test by which we could know the Spirit dwells in us, if such were the case. WHAT THE SPIRIT DOES FOR CHRISTIANS. 1. He is active in our birth. “Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except one be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God” (John 3:5). Here is a distinct statement of a radical change, so radical as to be likened to a new birth in order that we may enter the kingdom of God. What is it that is born? Christ says, “A man.” But what is a man? We regard a man as having a mind, a heart and a body. There is no perfect man where any of these elements is lacking. If, therefore, a man is born again, he must be born in mind, in heart, in body. How is this birth accomplished? Let us see what the Word says. “But as many as received him, to them gave he the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12, 13). God gives all things—sometimes directly, sometimes through an agent. The Holy Spirit is the agent. “Born of water and the Spirit.” But an agent often works through an instrument. What is the instrument? The word of God. “Seeing ye have purified your souls in your obedience to the truth unto unfeigned love of the brethren, love one another from the heart fervently; having been begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the word of God, which liveth and abideth” (1 Pet. 1:22, 23). How can the word of God accomplish the new birth? By the only way that words can accomplish any change—by being heard, understood, and influencing the life. The Holy Spirit puts himself into the words that contain his motives, actions and promises. How can this be done! Just as man does it. Years ago the prophet Mohammed put his spirit into the words, “There is one God, and Mohammed is his prophet.” When a man reads these words and believes and acts upon them, the spirit of Mohammed enters into that man and dwells there as long as the man continues true to those words. The only way to take the spirit of Mohammed out of those words is to transpose them so they will not say what he said. George Washington put his spirit into the sentence, “United we stand, divided we fall.” As long as the American people are true to the above words, the spirit of George Washington will live in them. But make the same words read, “Divided we stand, united we fall,” and the spirit of Washington is removed from them. The only way to take the Spirit of God from the word of God is to add to, take from or transpose the Word so it will not say what the Spirit said in it. “Well,” says one, “if we are born of the Spirit operating through the Word, must we not understand all the Word in order that we may be born again?” No, the apostle limits the part of the Word we must understand in verse 25 of this same chapter: “This is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.” Let us now endeavor to learn how the gospel produces this change. How is the mind born again! In order to learn this we must understand what is the normal condition of the mind of the unregenerate. In general we may say it is in a state of unbelief. Now, the proclamation of the great facts of the death, burial and resurrection of Christ according to the Scriptures will break up that condition of unbelief and produce a conviction of the truth of the gospel. When the mind is changed from a state of unbelief to one of hearty belief the birth of the mind is complete. But the mind is only a part of man. The heart must be born again. What is the normal state of the unregenerate heart? It is one of either indifference or hatred. The latter is the former fully ripened. It is said that Voltaire carried a seal ring upon which were engraved the words, “Crush the wretch,” and every time he sealed a letter he impressed his spirit of hatred upon that letter. Now, the gospel sets forth the love of God in Christ and the loveliness of Christ’s sacrifice for us in such a manner as to change the indifferent or malignant heart into one of supreme love to Christ. When the heart has thus been changed from hatred to love it is born again. But man has also a body, and upon this spirit can not act. If the body is to be born again, some element must be used that can act upon the body. Hence our Saviour says, “born of water and the Spirit,” because water can act upon the body. Now, the only use of water in the new birth is in the act of baptism. All scholars of note in the religious world agree that Christ’s use of water in the new birth has reference to baptism. Paul also speaks of “having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed in pure water.” Thus, with mind and heart changed by the Spirit through the gospel, and the body solemnly consecrated to God in baptism, the entire man is born again. This is all accomplished by the Spirit of God working in and through the gospel. 2. Another work of the Spirit is to “bear witness with our spirits that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs” (Rom. 8:16). It does not say, “bear witness to our spirits,” but “with our spirits.” Many people gauge the witness of the Spirit by feelings within themselves. If they feel good, it is evidence to them of the Spirit’s testimony, but they frequently feel bad also; whose testimony is that? The testimony of the Spirit should be clear testimony, and not fluctuating; it should be in words, and not in feelings. Feelings, impressions and emotions come and go like the waves of the sea, but words remain forever the same. “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word shall not pass away,” saith the Lord. The idea of the conscious testimony of the Spirit is not sustained by either the word of God nor a correct psychology. It is the testimony of metaphysicians, from Sir William Hamilton down to the writer, that consciousness does not take cognizance of causes, but effects. Feelings are effects and not causes. Consciousness tells us when we feel good or bad, but it does not tell us what makes us feel good or bad. When a man has been taught that a certain feeling in the heart is produced by a certain agency, his faith and reason may decide that that agency produced the feeling, but consciousness has nothing whatever to do with the cause of the feeling. Likewise, a certain feeling in the heart may be attributed to the Spirit because one has been taught that the Spirit will produce such a feeling, but consciousness can not trace that feeling to the Spirit himself. A man should feel right because he knows he is right, and not know he is right because he feels right. In deciding whether we be children of God, we have two witnesses: first, the Spirit himself, and, second, our spirit. The Spirit testifies as to who is a child of God; our spirits testify as to what we are. If our spirits testify that we are the character which the Spirit says belongs to a child of God, then we have the testimony of the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirits that we are children of God. The testimony of the Spirit, in the nature of the case, must be general. He testifies that whosoever believes in Christ, repents of his sins, and is baptized into him, is a child of God. This is the whole of his testimony. Your spirit, likewise, must bear witness to your position on all of these points. No one but your own spirit can testify that you believe in Christ; you may profess to, and the whole world may believe that you do, but your own spirit knows that you are a hypocrite in making the profession. Likewise, no one can testify but your own spirit that you have repented; you may make professions of repentance, and the world may believe you thoroughly sincere, but your own spirit may tell you that your profession is false. In a similar manner, no one but your own spirit can testify that you have been baptized; your father and mother may say so, the church record may so testify, and yet it is possible for them to be mistaken. To be certain you are a child of God you must have the testimony of your own spirit that you believe, that you have repented and that you have been baptized. If, in the judgment day, God should ask such people, “Have you obeyed me in the act of Christian baptism?” they would not have the testimony of their spirit that they had so obeyed; they would have to fall back upon the church record or that of their father and mother. Others may be satisfied with such testimony, but, as for myself, if I did not have the testimony of my own spirit that I had obeyed the Lord in Christian baptism, I would obtain that testimony before the going down of the sun. “Well,” says one, “is that all the witness of the Spirit mentioned by the apostle?” Yes, that is all; absolutely and unqualifiedly all. What more can you desire? “Well,” says another, “I want something more than the mere word; I want to be saved like the thief on the cross.” How do you know that the thief on the cross was saved? “Oh, the Bible says he was.” True, but that is the testimony of the “mere word”; so you have as much testimony to your own salvation as you have for the salvation of the thief on the cross, and it would be impossible for you to have any more. Suppose the Lord were to come down and take you up bodily and set you down before his throne in heaven, and, in the presence of all the angels and archangels, say to you: “My child, your sins are all forgiven.” “Now,” says one, “that would be testimony indeed.” Yes, it would be testimony, but no more testimony than you have in the word of God now; you would then have only the testimony of the “mere word” of God that you were forgiven. All such criticisms arise out of infidelity as to the truthfulness of God’s word. 3. The Spirit maketh intercession for us. This is not a work done in us nor upon us, but is something done for us before the throne of God. We can not dogmatize as to how the Spirit maketh intercession, but Paul says he does it “according to the will of God.” This is a fact that appeals to our faith and not to our Christian experience. It “can not be uttered.” We can rest upon it and draw comfort from it as a child draws strength from its mother’s breast. We can also draw comfort from the fact that Christ “ever liveth to make intercession for us,” though we have no knowledge as to how he does it. 4. Another work of the Spirit is to “change us from glory to glory.” “But we all, with unveiled face, reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18). The figure used here by the apostle is taken from the process of mirror-making among the ancients. They hadn’t the glass mirrors of our day, but a mirror of highly polished metal. A piece of coarse metal would be placed upon a stone and the workmen would begin to polish it; at first it made no reflection at all, but when polished for awhile would give a distorted and perverted reflection; but in the process of polishing, that reflection would grow clearer and clearer, when finally a man could behold his face in it perfectly reflected. And so with us. When taken into the great spiritual laboratory of Christianity we are blocks in the rough, but in the polishing process of the church and spiritual surroundings we begin to reflect the image of our Master, and when we have completed the work, we reflect him as perfectly as a human being can. Take, for illustration, the brothers Peter and John. At first they were called Boanerges, sons of thunder; they wanted to call down fire from heaven to destroy men who differed from them; but in the great laboratory of the Christian life they grew more and more Christlike, transformed by the Spirit of God, until at last we see the old apostle John at Ephesus, beautified and ennobled, sitting in his chair and lifting up trembling hands, and saying to the young disciples: “Little children, love one another, for love is of God.” We see the transforming power of the spiritual atmosphere of the church and the Christian life upon human nature. Christian, with this illustration before you, how can you excuse yourself for keeping out of the spiritual atmosphere of God, for staying away from the communion and the spiritual convocation of God’s people? Is it a burden and a duty to attend the house of God, or is it a pleasure gladly and joyfully anticipated? When you rise on the Lord’s Day morning, do you say, “Must I go to church to-day?” or do you say:“You may sing of the beauty of mountain and dale,The water of streamlet and the flowers of the Vale,But the place most delightful this earth can afford,Is the place of devotion, the house of the Lord”? 5. The last work of the Spirit which the word of God mentions is the “quickening of our mortal bodies.” “But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall quicken your mortal bodies through his Spirit that dwelleth in you” (Rom. 8:11). This Spirit which has ever been with us, watching over us, will never leave us until he raises our bodies from the dead and fashions our vile bodies like unto the glorious body of our Lord. It matters much where we now live; it matters little where and how we die. Our bodies may be buried in the unfathomed caves of ocean; they may lie upon some mountain-peak or be placed in a crowded cemetery of some great city. No stone may mark our resting-place, no friend may be able to find the spot and place a flower of love upon it; but that abiding-place is known to the infinite Spirit of God, and from our ashes he will quicken our bodies and present us faultless before the throne of God.“I know not where His isles may liftTheir fronded palms in air:I only know I can not driftBeyond His love and care.” We have not space in this chapter to notice other than the principal passages which refer to the work of the Spirit as it relates to Christians, but in the five above mentioned there is no hint that he does anything in us other than through the instrumentality of the gospel, and there are no other passages that teach a direct work upon us more clearly than those mentioned. There are many passages that trace the blessed and glorious work of the Spirit in us and through us, but they all confirm the clear statement quoted from the Sunday School Times that he works mediately, and not immediately.

---

X

THE PARTING WORD

Blasphemy against the Spirit. This is a subject that is intensely interesting to many people. They imagine that in some way unknown to themselves they may have committed this act, and it causes them great concern. I will say that such people need have no alarm. The man who has actually committed this sin never feels any alarm about it. He is the last man to feel concern over it. By reading the twelfth chapter of Matthew the reader can obtain a clear view of this sin. Jesus was being hounded by the Pharisees, who had determined to procure his death at all hazards. They were watching, exaggerating and criticizing everything he did. He went on a Sabbath day through the field of corn and his disciples plucked and ate some of the corn. There was an immediate outcry of “The Sabbath is violated.” Again, Jesus healed the man with a withered hand and the Pharisees went out and held a council to plan his destruction. Again, there was brought to him a man possessed of a devil, rendering him blind and dumb. Jesus healed him by casting out the devil, so that he “both saw and heard.” Casting out devils had always been regarded by the Jews as a direct work of the Spirit of God. The people are amazed, and proclaimed him the Son of David, or the Messiah. The Pharisees could not deny the fact, but they said: “He does it by Beelzebub, the prince of devils.” These three incidents show a disposition on their part to deliberately reject all testimony contrary to their plan to compass his death. They had rendered their verdict in advance and were not open to conviction, no matter what testimony might be offered. Jesus tells them that if he casts out devils by Beelzebub, then Satan is divided against himself. “But if I by the Spirit of God cast out devils, then is the kingdom of God come upon me” (Matt. 12:28). “Therefore I say unto you, Every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven. And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever shall speak against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor in that which is to come” (Matt. 12:31, 32). That these men had committed, or were in great danger of committing, this blasphemy is evident from the caution uttered above. When a man to-day reaches the comprehensive state of mind that he is going to reject Jesus over any and all evidence, he has gone into the house, shut and locked the door and thrown away the key. God can not reach him. Such a man will be let alone by the Spirit of God. That Paul understood this condition to be unpardonable, we read in Heb. 6:4-6: “But as touching those who were once enlightened, and tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the age to come, and then fall away, it is impossible to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.” Paul says it is impossible to renew such a one to repentance. Why? “Seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh.” That is, they have reached the same state of mind the Pharisees had who crucified him the first time. Men can commit that same act to-day, but when they do it they lose all concern regarding the consequences. As long as one has concern, he may rest assured that he has not blasphemed the Holy Spirit. The Fruits of the Spirit. I have not treated this passage hitherto, because I do not understand the apostle to be referring to the Holy Spirit, but to man’s spirit. In this fifth chapter of Galatians the apostle divides man into two domains, one of the flesh and another of the spirit. He says: “The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: for these are contrary the one to the other: that ye may not do the things that ye would” (Gal. 5:17). It is impossible to imagine “the flesh” preventing the Holy Spirit from doing “the things he would.” It is also impossible to conceive that the Holy Spirit is lusting against man’s flesh. But we all recognize that there is a terrible conflict between man’s flesh and his spirit. These are contrary the one to the other and lust against each other. When man’s flesh triumphs over his spirit, certain works are inevitable which Paul enumerates. When the Spirit (in man) dominates the flesh, then certain “fruits of the Spirit” appear. They are the fruits of man’s spiritual nature triumphing over his fleshly nature. The same contrast is set forth in Galatians, chapter 6, where it speaks of sowing to the flesh and to the Spirit. How can any man sow to the Holy Spirit? Paul describes the same conflict in the seventh chapter of Romans. I think that the spirit (of man) can be aided by the Holy Spirit in its battle against the flesh, but the “fruits” mentioned are of man’s spirit and not the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God at Work To-Day. Says one, “Is not the Spirit actively at work in the world to-day?” Of course he is. It is not a question of what he is doing but how he is doing it. The religious world is pretty generally agreed that the Spirit is pleading with the world of the unsaved through the motives and inducements of the gospel, the moral truth which appeals to the intellect and heart of the unconverted to turn to God and be saved; that all the saving power of God is found in Christ and the gospel which reveals him; that God will not go beyond the cross of Christ to save any man. It is Christ “who was made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption: that, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.” All that is necessary for wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption—and that is all we need—is found in Christ. This being so, we need no other power but gospel power in our attempts to become children of God or to live as children of God. We get into confusion when we try to obtain some other and more direct power. We are led into a dependence upon our feelings, which are unreliable. Bishop J.H. Vincent, than whom stands no higher in the Northern M.E. Church, aptly states the whole matter thus: “There are people who put stress on sentiment and emotion in religion. If they ‘feel good,’ they have no doubt as to their present security and their acceptance with God. These people covet moods and states of feeling. They revel in songs and prayers and hallelujahs. The thrill of sentiment and the warm currents of emotion are ‘the all and in all’ of religion. Such saints forget that mere mental exhilaration and good feeling may coexist with carnal hearts, selfish aims, and utter worldliness of temper.” His brethren will scarcely accuse the Bishop of not believing in “heartfelt religion,” and yet they used to strongly accuse us of denying it, because we plead for the testimony of the Book rather than the testimony of feelings. We get into the same confusion when we attempt to fall back upon some inward power, independent of God’s word, in living the Christian life. The writer has known many good, honest people that claimed to have an inward monitor to lead them, who at the same time would reject the clear teaching of God’s word. The Spirit of God never led any man to contradict the Word which he has so clearly revealed. The whole Christian life is a life of faith. It begins, continues and ends in faith. “God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation he that fears God and works righteousness is accepted of him.” “The sword of the Spirit” is “the word of God.”

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Title: The Ministry of the Spirit

Author: A. J. Gordon

Release Date: May 8, 2008 [eBook #25395]

Language: English

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MINISTRY OF THE SPIRIT***

E-text prepared by Al Haines

Transcriber’s note:

Page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers enclosed in curly braces, e.g. {99}. They have been located where page breaks occurred in the original book. For its Scripture Index and its General Index, a page number has been placed only at the start of those sections.

Footnotes have been renumbered sequentially and moved to the end of their respective chapters. The book’s Index has a number of references to footnotes, e.g. the “96 n.” entry under “Assyrians.” In such cases, check the referenced page to see which footnote(s) are relevant.

The Greek words in this e-book have been transliterated according to Project Gutenberg’s Greek How-To. Such words are indicated with surrounding underscores. Underscores are also used to indicate italicization of words, but in this e-book such words are always English words.

THE MINISTRY OF THE SPIRIT

by

A. J. GORDON, D.D.

With an Introduction by Rev. F. B. Meyer Minister at Christ Church, London

Philadelphia American Baptist Publication Society 1420 Chestnut Street 1894

Copyright 1894 by the American Baptist Publication Society

To the

INHERITORS OF THE SPIRIT

{vii}

PREFACE

It is not claimed that in this little volume all has been said that might be said upon the subject treated. On the contrary, the writer has proceeded upon the belief that the doctrine of the Holy Spirit can be better understood by limiting the sphere of discussion, rather than by extending it to the largest bounds. For finite beings, at least, presence is more intelligible than omnipresence. So, though the subject of this book is in itself profoundly mysterious, we have sought to simplify it by dwelling upon the time-ministry of the Holy Ghost without entering upon the consideration of his eternal ministry. What the Spirit did before the incarnation of Christ, and what he may do hereafter beyond the second advent of Christ, is a question hardly touched upon in this volume. We have sought rather to emphasize and to magnify the great truth that the Paraclete is now present in the church: that we are living in the dispensation of the Spirit, with all the unspeakable blessing for the church and for the world which this economy provides. Hence, as we speak of the ministry of Christ {viii} meaning a service embraced within defined limits, so we name this volume the “Ministry of the Spirit,” as referring to the work of the Comforter extending from Pentecost to the end of this dispensation.

How deep a subject for a study! What prayer more becoming for those entering upon it than the humble petition that the Spirit himself will teach us concerning the Spirit! Deeply sensible of the imperfection of this work, it is now committed to the use and blessing of that Divine Person of the Godhead of whom it so unworthily speaks.

A. J. G.

BOSTON, Dec., 1894.

{ix}

INTRODUCTION

It is remarkable how many in these last days have been led to deal with the sublime subject to which this treatise is devoted. Without doubt the mind of the church is being instructed, and her heart prepared for a recognition of the indwelling, administration, and co-operation of the blessed Paraclete, which has never been excelled in her history, and is fraught with the greatest promise both to her and to the world.

Each of these treatises has brought out some new phase in respect to the person or mission of the Holy Spirit, but I cannot recall one that is so lucid, so suggestive, so scriptural, so deeply spiritual as this, by my beloved friend, Dr. Gordon. The chapters on the Embodying, the Enduement, and the Administration of the Spirit seem specially fresh and helpful. But all is good, and deserving of prayerful perusal. Let only such truths be well wrought into the mental and spiritual constitution {x} of God’s servants, and there would be such a revival of pure and undefiled religion in the churches, and such marvelous results through them on the world that the age would close with a world-wide Pentecost. And there are many symptoms abroad that this also is in the purpose of God. Nothing else can meet the deepest needs and yearnings of our time.

Christianity is beset with three powerful currents, which insidiously operate to deflect her from her course. Materialism, which denies or ignores the supernatural, and concentrates its heed on ameliorating the outward conditions of human life; criticism, which is clever at analysis and dissection, but cannot construct a foundation on which the religious faculty may build and rest; and a fine literary taste, which has greatly developed of late, and is disposed to judge of power by force of words or by delicacy of expression.

To all of these we have but one reply. And that is, not a system, a creed, a church, but the living Christ, who was dead, but is alive forevermore, and has the keys to unlock all perplexities, problems, and failures. Though society could be {xi} reconstituted, and material necessities be more evenly supplied, discontent would break out again in some other form, unless the heart were satisfied with his love. The truth which he reveals to the soul, and which is ensphered in him, is alone able to appease the consuming hunger of the mind for data on which to construct its answer to the questions of life and destiny and God, which are ever knocking at its door for solution. And men have yet to learn that the highest power is not in words or metaphors or bursts of eloquence, but in the indwelling and out-working of the Word, who is the wisdom and the power of God, and who deals with regions below those where the mind vainly labors.

Jesus Christ, the ever-living Son of God, is the one supreme answer to the restlessness and travail of our day. But he cannot, he will not reveal himself. Each person in the Holy Trinity reveals another. The Son reveals the Father, but his own revelation awaits the testimony of the Holy Ghost, which, though often given directly, is largely through the church. What we need then, and what the world is waiting for, is the Son of God, borne witness to and revealed in all his radiant {xii} beauty of the ministry of the Holy Spirit, as he energizes with and through the saints that make up the holy and mystical body, the church.

It is needful to emphasize this distinction. In some quarters it seems to be supposed that the Holy Spirit himself is the solution of the perplexities of our time. Now what we may witness in some coming age we know not, but in this it is clear that God in the person of Christ is the one only and divine answer. Here is God’s yea and amen, the Alpha and Omega, sight for the blind, healing for the paralyzed, cleansing for the polluted, life for the dead, the gospel for the poor and sad and comfortless. Now we covet the gracious bestowal of the Spirit, that he may take more deeply of the things of Christ, and reveal them unto us. When the disciples sought to know the Father, the Lord said, He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. It is his glory that shines on my face, his will that molds my life, his purpose that is fulfilled in my ministry. So the blessed Paraclete would turn our thought and attention from himself to him, with whom he is One in the Holy Trinity, and whom he has come to reveal.

{xiii}

Throughout the so-called Christian centuries the voice of the Holy Spirit has borne witness to the Lord, directly and mediately. Directly, in each widespread quickening of the human conscience, in each revival of religion, in each era of advance in the knowledge of divine truth, in each soul that has been regenerated, comforted, or taught. Mediately his work has been carried on through the church, the body of those that believe. But, alas! how sadly his witness has been weakened and hindered by the medium through which it has come. He has not been able to do many mighty works because of the unbelief which has kept closed and barred those avenues through which he would have poured his glad testimony to the unseen and glorified Lord.

The divisions of the church, her strife about matters of comparative unimportance, her magnification of points of difference, her materialism, her love of pelf and place and power, her accounting herself rich and increased in goods and needing nothing, when she was poor, and miserable, and blind, and naked—these things have not only robbed her of her testimony, but have grieved and {xiv} quenched the Holy Spirit, and nullified his testimony.

We gladly hail the signs that this period of apathy and resistance is coming to a close. The Church which is in the churches is making herself felt, is arising from the dust and arraying herself in her beautiful garments. There is a widespread recognition of the unity of all who believe, together with an increasing desire to magnify the points of agreement and minimize those of divergence. The great conventions for the quickening of spiritual life on both sides of the Atlantic in which believers meet, irrespective of name or sect, are doing an incalculable amount of good in breaking down the old lines of demarcation, and making real our spiritual oneness. The teaching of consecration and cleanliness of heart and life is removing those obstacles that have restrained and drowned the Spirit’s still small voice. The fuller’s soap and the refiner’s fire have been largely resorted to, with the best results. And as believers have become more consistent and devoted, they have grown increasingly sensitive to the indwelling, energy, and co-witness of the Holy Spirit.

{xv}

If only this glorious movement is permitted to achieve its full purpose, the effect will be transcendently glorious. The church will become as pliant to the Divine Tenant as the resurrection body of our Lord to the impulse of his divine nature. And so the Lord Jesus will increasingly become the object of human hope, the center around which the concentric circles of human life shall circle.

That the Lord Jesus should be thus magnified and glorified through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and with this end in view, that the hearts and lives of believers should be made more sensitive to and receptive of his blessed energy, this treatise has been prepared; and I add my testimony to the beloved author’s, that in the mouth of two witnesses, every word may be established; and my prayer to his that the yea of the Spirit to the great voice of the gospel may be heard more mightily and persistently amongst us.

{xvii}

CONTENTS

PAGE

CHAPTER I.

THE AGE-MISSION OF THE SPIRIT. INTRODUCTORY, . . . . . . . . . 11

CHAPTER II.

THE ADVENT OF THE SPIRIT, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

CHAPTER III.

THE NAMING OF THE SPIRIT, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

CHAPTER IV.

THE EMBODYING OF THE SPIRIT, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

CHAPTER V.

THE ENDUEMENT OF THE SPIRIT, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 1. Sealing; 2. Filling; 3. Anointing.

CHAPTER VI.

THE COMMUNION OF THE SPIRIT, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 1. The Spirit of Life: Our Regeneration. 2. The Spirit of Holiness: Our Sanctification. 3. The Spirit of Glory: Our Transfiguration.

CHAPTER VII.

THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE SPIRIT, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 1. In the Ministry and Government of the Church. 2. In the Worship and Service of the Church. 3. In the Missionary Enterprise of the Church.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE INSPIRATION OF THE SPIRIT, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163

CHAPTER IX.

THE CONVICTION OF THE SPIRIT, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 1. Of Sin; 2. Of Righteousness; 3. Of Judgment.

CHAPTER X.

THE ASCENT OF THE SPIRIT, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203

{11}

I

THE AGE-MISSION OF THE SPIRIT

{12}

“It is evident that the present dispensation under which we are is the dispensation of the Spirit, or of the Third Person of the Holy Trinity. To him in the Divine economy, has been committed the office of applying the redemption of the Son to the souls of men by the vocation, justification, and salvation of the elect. We are therefore under the personal guidance of the Third Person, as truly as the apostles were under the guidance of the Second.”—Henry Edward Manning.

{13}

THE AGE-MISSION OF THE SPIRIT—INTRODUCTORY

In some observations on the doctrine of the Spirit, which lie before us as we write, an eminent professor of theology remarks on the disproportionate attention which has been given to the person and work of the Holy Spirit, as compared with that bestowed on the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. It is affirmed, moreover, that in many of the works upon the subject now extant there is a lack of definiteness of impression which leaves much still to be desired in the treatment of this subject. These observations lead us to ask: Why not employ the same method in writing about the Third Person of the Trinity as we use in considering the Second Person? Scores of excellent lives of Christ have been written; and we find that in these, almost without exception, the divine story begins with Bethlehem and ends with Olivet. Though the Saviour lived before his incarnation, and continues to live after his ascension, yet it gives a certain definiteness of impression to limit one’s view to his historic career, distinguishing his visible life lived in time from his invisible life lived in eternity.

{14}

So in considering the Holy Spirit, we believe there is an advantage in separating his ministry in time from his ministry before and after, bounding it by Pentecost on the one side, and by Christ’s second coming on the other. We have to confess that in many respects one of the best treatises on the Spirit which we have found is by a Roman Catholic—Cardinal Manning. Notwithstanding the papistical errors which abound in the volume, his general conception of the subject is in some particulars admirable. His treatise is called “The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost.” How much is suggested by this title! Just as Jesus Christ had a time-ministry which he came into the world to fulfill, and having accomplished it returned to the Father, so the Holy Spirit, for the fulfillment of a definite mission, came into the world at an appointed time; he is now carrying on his ministry on earth, and in due time he will complete it and ascend to heaven again—this is what these words suggest, and what, as we believe, the Scriptures teach. If we thus form a right conception of this present age-ministry of the Spirit, we have a definite view-point from which to study his operations in the ages past, and his greater mission, if there be such, in the ages to come.

Now we conceive that the vagueness and mystery attaching in many minds to the doctrine of the Spirit, are due largely to a failure to recognize his {15} time-ministry, distinct from all that went before and introductory to all that is to come after—a ministry with a definite beginning and a definite termination. Certainly no one can read the farewell discourse of our Lord, as recorded by John, without being impressed with the fact that just as distinctly as his own advent was foretold by prophets and angels, he now announces the advent into the world of another, co-equal with himself, his Divine successor, his other self in the mysterious unity of the Godhead. And moreover, it seems clear to us that he implied that this coming One was to appear not only for an appointed work, but for an appointed period: “He shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever”—eis ton aiõna. If we translate literally and say “for the age,” it harmonizes with a parallel passage. In giving the great commission, Jesus says: “And lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the age.” Here his presence by the Holy Ghost is evidently meant. The perpetuity of that presence is guaranteed, “with you all the days”; and its bound determined, “unto the end of the age.” Not that it need be argued that he shall not be here after this dispensation is finished; but that there is such a thing as a temporal mission of the Holy Spirit does seem to be implied. And a full study confirms the view. The present is the dispensation of {16} the Holy Ghost; the age-work which he inaugurated on the day of Pentecost is now going on, and it will continue until the Lord Jesus returns from heaven, when another order will be ushered in and another dispensational ministry succeed.

In the well-known work of Moberly, on “The Administration of the Holy Spirit in the Body of Christ,” the author divides the course of redemption thus far accomplished into these three stages: The first age, God the Father; the second age, God the Son; and the third age, God the Holy Ghost. This distribution seems to be correct, and so does his remark upon the inauguration of the last of these periods on the day of Pentecost. “At that moment,” he says, “the third stage of the development [manifestation] of God for the restoration of the world finally began, never to come to an end or to be superseded on earth till the restitution of all things, when the Son of Man shall come again in the clouds of heaven, in like manner as his disciples saw him go into heaven.” And what shall be the next period, “the age to come,” whose powers they have already tasted who have been “made partakers of the Holy Ghost”? This question need not be answered, as we have done all that is required, defined the age of the Spirit which constitutes the field in which our entire discussion lies.

{17}

II

THE ADVENT OF THE SPIRIT

{18}

“Therefore the Holy Ghost on this day—Pentecost—descended into the temple of his apostles, which he had prepared for himself, as a shower of sanctification, appearing no more as a transient visitor, but as a perpetual Comforter and as an eternal inhabitant. He came therefore on this day to his disciples, no longer by the grace of visitation and operation, but by the very presence of his majesty.”—Augustine.

{19}

II

THE ADVENT OF THE SPIRIT

“For the Holy Ghost was not yet,” is the more than surprising saying of Jesus when speaking of “the Spirit which they that believe on him should receive.” Had not the Spirit been seen descending upon Jesus like a dove at his baptism, and remaining on him? Had he not been the divine agent in creation, and in the illumination and inspiration of the patriarchs and prophets and seers of the old dispensation? How then could Jesus say that he “was not yet given,” as the words read in our Common version? The answer to this question furnishes our best point of departure for an intelligent study of the doctrine of the Spirit. Augustine calls the day of Pentecost the “dies natalis” of the Holy Ghost; and for the same reason that the day when Mary “brought forth her first-born son” we name “the birthday of Jesus Christ.” Yet Jesus had existed before he lay in the cradle at Bethlehem; he was “in the beginning with God”; he was the agent in creation. By him all things were. But on the day of his birth he became incarnate, that in the flesh he might fulfill his great {20} ministry as the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, manifesting God to men, and making himself an offering for the sins of the world. Not until after his birth in Bethlehem was Jesus in the world in his official capacity, in his divine ministry as mediator between man and God; and so not till after the day of Pentecost was the Holy Spirit in the world in his official sphere, as mediator between men and Christ. In the following senses then is Augustine’s saying true, which calls Pentecost “the birthday of the Spirit”:

1. The Holy Spirit, from that time on, took up his residence on earth. The Christian church throughout all this dispensation is the home of the Spirit as truly as heaven, during this same period, is the home of Jesus Christ. This is according to that sublime word of Jesus, called by one “the highest promise which can be made to man”: “If a man love me he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him” (John 14: 23). This promise was fulfilled at Pentecost, and the first two Persons of the Godhead now hold residence in the church through the Third. The Holy Spirit during the present time is in office on earth; and all spiritual presence and divine communion of the Trinity with men are through him. In other words, while the Father and the Son are visibly and personally in heaven, they are invisibly here in the {21} body of the faithful by the indwelling of the Comforter. So that though we affirm that on the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit came to dwell upon earth for this entire dispensation, we do not imply that he thereby ceased to be in heaven. Not with God, as with finite man, does arrival in one place necessitate withdrawal from another. Jesus uttered a saying concerning himself so mysterious and seemingly contradictory that many attempts have been made to explain away its literal and obvious meaning: “And no man hath ascended up to heaven but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man who is in heaven“—Christ on earth, and yet in glory; here and there, at the same time, just as a thought which we embody in speech and send forth from the mind, yet remains in the mind as really and distinctly as before it was expressed. Why should this saying concerning our divine Lord seem incredible? And as with the Son, so with the Spirit. The Holy Ghost is here, abiding perpetually in the church; and he is likewise there, in communion with the Father and the Son from whom he proceeds, and from whom, as co-equal partner in the Godhead, he can never be separated any more than the sunbeam can be dissociated from the sun in which it has its source.

2. Again: The Holy Spirit, in a mystical but very real sense, became embodied in the church on the day of Pentecost. Not that we would by any {22} means put this embodiment on the same plane with the incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity. When “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,” it was God entering into union with sinless humanity; here it is the Holy Spirit uniting himself with the church in its imperfect and militant condition. Nevertheless, it is according to literal Scripture that the body of the faithful is indwelt by the divine Spirit. In this fact we have the distinguishing peculiarity of the present dispensation. “For he dwelleth with you and shall be in you!” said Jesus, speaking anticipatively of the coming of the Comforter; and so truly was this prediction fulfilled that ever after the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit is spoken of as being in the church. “If so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you” is the inspired assumption on which the deep teaching in Romans eighth proceeds. All the recognition and deference which the disciples paid to their Lord they now pay to the Holy Spirit, his true vicar, his invisible self, present in the body of believers. How artlessly and naturally this comes out in the findings of the first council at Jerusalem: “It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us” runs the record; as though it had been said: “Peter and James and Barnabas and Saul and the rest were present, and also just as truly was the Holy Ghost.”

And when the first capital sin was committed in the church, in the conspiracy and falsehood {23} of Ananias and Sapphira, Peter’s question is: “Why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost?” “How is it that ye have agreed together to tempt the Holy Ghost?” Not only is the personal presence of the Spirit in the body of believers thus distinctly recognized, but he is there in authority and supremacy, as the center of the assembly. “Incarnated in the church!” do we say? We get this conception by comparing together the inspired characterizations of Christ and of the church. “This temple” was the name which he gave to his own divine person, greatly to the scandal and indignation of the Jews; and the evangelist explains to us that “he spoke of the temple of his body.” A metaphor, a type! do we say? No! He said so because it was so. “The Word was made flesh and tabernacled among us, and we beheld his glory” (John 1: 14). This is temple imagery. “Tabernacled” (eschênôsen) is the word used in Scripture for the dwelling of God with men; and the temple is God’s dwelling-place. The “glory” harmonizes with the same idea. As the Shechinah cloud rested above the mercy-seat, the symbol and sign of God’s presence, so from the Holy of Holies of our blessed Lord’s heart did the glory of God shine forth, “the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth,” certifying him to be the veritable temple of the Most High.

After his ascension and the sending down of the {24} Spirit, the church takes the name her Lord had borne before; she is the temple of God, and the only temple which he has on earth during the present dispensation. “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” asks the apostle. This he speaks to the church in its corporate capacity. “A holy temple in the Lord, in whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God through the Spirit,” is the sublime description in the Epistle to the Ephesians. It is enough that we now emphasize the fact that the same language is here applied to the church which Christ applies to himself. As with the Head, so with the mystical body; each is indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and thus is God in some sense incarnated in both; and for the same reason. Christ was “the Image of the Invisible God”; and when he stood before men in the flesh he could say to them, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” Not otherwise than through the incarnation, so far as we know, could the unknown God become known, and the unseen God become seen. So, after Christ had returned to the Father, and the world saw him no more, he sent the Paraclete to be incarnated in his mystical body, the church. As the Father revealed himself through the Son, so the Son by the Holy Spirit now reveals himself through the church; as Christ was the image of the invisible God, so the church is appointed to be {25} the image of the invisible Christ; and his members, when they are glorified with him, shall be the express image of his person.

This then is the mystery and the glory of this dispensation; not less true because mysterious; not less practical because glorious. In an admirable work on the Spirit, the distinction between the former and the present relation of the Spirit is thus stated: “In the old dispensation the Holy Spirit wrought upon believers, but did not in his person dwell in believers and abide permanently in them. He appeared unto men; he did not incarnate himself in man. His action was intermittent; he went and came like the dove which Noah sent forth from the ark, and which went to and fro, finding no rest; while in the new dispensation he dwells, he abides in the heart as the dove, his emblem, which John saw descending and alighting on the head of Jesus. Affianced of the soul, the Spirit went oft to see his betrothed, but was not yet one with her; the marriage was not consummated until the Pentecost, after the glorification of Jesus Christ.”[1]

3. A still more obvious reason why before the day of Pentecost it could be said that “the Holy Ghost was not yet,” is contained in the words, “Because that Jesus was not yet glorified.” In the order of the unfolding ages we see each of the persons of the Godhead in turn exercising an earthly {26} ministry and dealing with man in the work of redemption. Under the law, God the Father comes down to earth and speaks to men from the cloud of Sinai and from the glory above the mercy-seat; under grace, God the Son is in the world, teaching, suffering, dying, and rising again; under the dispensation of election and out-gathering now going on, the Holy Spirit is here carrying on the work of renewing and sanctifying the church, which is the body of Christ. There is a necessary succession in these Divine ministries, both in time and in character. In the days of Moses it might have been said: “Christ is not yet,” because the economy of God-Jehovah was not completed. The law must first be given, with its sacrifices and types and ceremonies and shadows; man must be put on trial under the law, till the appointed time of his schooling should be completed. Then must Christ come to fulfill all types and terminate all sacrifices in himself; to do for us “what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh,” and to become “the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.” When in turn Christ had completed his redemption-work by dying on the cross for our sins, and rising again from the dead for our justification, and had taken his place at God’s right hand for perpetual intercession, then the Holy Ghost came down to communicate and realize to the church the finished work of Christ. {27} In a word, as God the Son fulfills to men the work of God the Father, so God the Holy Ghost realizes to human hearts the work of God the Son.

There is a holy deference, if we may so say, between the Persons of the Trinity in regard to their respective ministries. When Christ was in office on earth, the Father commends us to him, speaking from heaven and saying: “This is my beloved Son, hear ye him”; when the Holy Ghost had entered upon his earthly office, Christ commends us to him, speaking again from heaven with sevenfold reiteration, saying: “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.”[2] As each Person refers us to the teaching of the other, so in like manner does each in turn consummate the ministry of the other. Christ’s words and works were not his own, but his Father’s: “The words which I speak unto you I speak not of myself, but the Father that dwelleth in me he doeth the works.”[3] The Spirit’s teaching and communications are not his own, but Christ’s: “Howbeit when he the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all truth; for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear that shall he speak; and he will show you things to come.” “He shall glorify me; for he shall receive of mine and show it unto you.“

This order in the ministries of the Persons of {28} the Godhead is so fixed and eternal that we find it distinctly foreshadowed even in the typical teaching of the Old Testament. Many speak slightingly of the types, but they are as accurate as mathematics; they fix the sequence of events in redemption as rigidly as the order of sunrise and noontide is fixed in the heavens. Nowhere in tabernacle or in temple, shall we ever find the laver placed before the altar. The altar is Calvary and the laver is Pentecost; one stands for the sacrificial blood, the other for the sanctifying Spirit. If any high priest were ignorantly to approach the brazen laver without first having come to the brazen altar, we might expect a rebuking voice to be heard from heaven: “Not yet the washing of water”; and such a saying would signify exactly the same as: “Not yet the Holy Ghost.”

Again, when the leper was to be cleansed, observe that the blood was to be put upon the tip of his right ear, the thumb of his right hand, and the great toe of his right foot; and then the oil was to be put upon the right ear, the right thumb, and the right foot—the oil upon the blood of the trespass-offering (Lev. 14). Never, we venture to say, in all the manifold repetitions of this divine ceremony, was this order once inverted, so that the oil was first applied, and then the blood; which means, interpreting type into antitype, that it was impossible that Pentecost could have preceded Calvary, or {29} that the outpouring of the Spirit should have anticipated the shedding of the blood.

Then let us reflect, that not only the order of these two great events of redemption was fixed from the beginning, but their dates were marked in the calendar of typical time. The slaying of the paschal lamb told to generation after generation, though they knew it not, the day of the year and week on which Christ our Passover should be sacrificed for us. The presentation of the wave sheaf before the Lord, “on the morrow after the Sabbath“[1] had for long centuries fixed the time of our Lord’s resurrection on the first day of the week. And the command to “count from the morrow after the Sabbath, from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the wave offering, seven Sabbaths,”[4] determined the day of Pentecost as the time of the descent of the Spirit. We sometimes think of the disciples waiting for an indefinite period in that upper room for the fulfillment of the promise of the Father; but the time had been fixed not only with God in eternity, but in the calendar of the Hebrew ritual upon earth. They tarried in prayer for ten days, simply because after the forty days of the Lord’s sojourn on earth subsequent to his resurrection, ten days remained of the “seven Sabbaths” period.

To sum up what we are saying: The Spirit of God is the successor of the Son of God in his {30} official ministry on earth. Until Christ’s earthly work for his church had been finished, the Spirit’s work in this world could not properly begin. The office of the Holy Ghost is to communicate Christ to us—Christ in his entireness. However perfectly the photographer’s plate has been prepared, there can be no picture until his subject steps into his place and stands before him. Our Saviour’s redemptive work was not completed when he died on the cross, or when he rose from the dead, or even when he ascended from the brow of Olivet. Not until he sat down in his Father’s throne, summing up all his ministry in himself,—”I am he that liveth and was dead, and behold I am alive forevermore,”—did the full Christ stand ready to be communicated to his church.[5] By the first Adam’s sin, God’s communion with man through the Holy Ghost was broken, and their union ruptured. When the second Adam came up from his cross and resurrection, and took his place at God’s right hand, there was a restoration of this broken fellowship. Very beautiful are {31} the words of our risen Lord as bearing on this point: “I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”[6] The place which the divine Son had won for himself in the Father’s heart, he had won for us also. All of acceptance and standing and privilege which was now his, was ours too, by redemptive right; and the Holy Ghost is sent down to confirm and realize to us what he had won for us. Without the expiatory work of Christ for us, the sanctifying work of the Spirit in us were impossible; and on the other hand, without the work of the Spirit within us, the work of Christ for us were without avail.

“And when the day of Pentecost was fully come.” What these words mean historically, typically, and doctrinally, we are now prepared to see. The true wave sheaf had been presented in the temple on high. Christ the first-fruits, brought from the grave on “the morrow after the Sabbath,” or the first day of the week, now stands before God accepted on our behalf; the seven Sabbaths from the resurrection day have been counted, and Pentecost has come. Then suddenly, to those who were “all of one accord in one place,” “there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all {32} the house where they were sitting, and there appeared unto them cloven tongues, like as of fire, and sat upon each of them, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.” As the manger of Bethlehem was the cradle of the Son of God, so was the upper room the cradle of the Spirit of God; as the advent of “the Holy Child” was a testimony that God had “visited and redeemed his people,” so was the coming of the Holy Ghost. The fact that the Comforter is here, is proof that the Advocate is there in the presence of the Father. Boldly Peter and the other apostles now confront the rulers with their testimony, “Whom ye slew and hanged on a tree . . . Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a prince and a Saviour, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins; and we are his witnesses of these things; and so also is the Holy Ghost, whom God, hath given to them that obey him.” As the sound of the golden bells upon the high priest’s garments within the Holiest gave evidence that he was alive, so the sound of the Holy Ghost, proceeding from heaven and heard in that upper chamber, was an incontestable witness that the great High Priest whom they had just seen passing through the cloud-curtain, entering within the veil, was still living for them in the presence of the Father. Thus has the “dies natalis,” the birthday of the Holy Spirit, come; and the events of his earthly mission will now be considered in their order.

[1] “The Work of the Holy Spirit in Man,” by Pastor Tophel, p. 32.

[2] See epistles to the seven churches: Rev 2: 11.

[3] John 14: 10.

[4] Lev. 23: 11-16.

[5] “Christ having reached his goal, and not till then, bequeathes to his followers the graces that invested his earthly course; the ascending Elijah leaves his mantle behind him. It is only an extension of the same principle, that the declared office of the Holy Spirit being to complete the image of Christ in every faithful follower by effecting in this world a spiritual death and resurrection,—a point attested in every epistle,—the image could not be stamped until the reality had been wholly accomplished; the Divine Artist could not fitly descend to make the copy before the entire original had been provided.”—Archer Butler.

[6] John 20: 17. “Because though he and the Father are one, and the Father his Father by the propriety of nature, to us God became a Father through the Son, not by right of nature, but by grace.”—Ambrose.

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III

THE NAMING OF THE SPIRIT

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“The name Paraclete is applied to Christ as well as to the Spirit; and properly: For it is the common office of each to console and encourage us and to preserve us by their defense. Christ was their [the disciples’] patron so long as he lived in the world; he then committed them to the guidance and protection of the Spirit. If any one asks us whether we are not under the guidance of Christ, the answer is easy: Christ is a perpetual guardian, but not visibly. As long as he walked on the earth he appeared openly as their guardian: now he preserves us by his Spirit. He calls the Spirit ‘another Comforter,’ in view of the distinction which we observe in the blessings proceeding from each.”—John Calvin.

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III

THE NAMING OF THE SPIRIT

The Son of God was named by the angel before he was conceived in the womb: “Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins.” Thus he came, not to receive a name, but to fulfill a name already predetermined for him. In like manner was the Holy Ghost named by our Lord before his advent into the world: “But when the Paraclete is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father” (John 15: 26). This designation of the Holy Spirit here occurs for the first time—a new name for the new ministry upon which he is now about to enter. The reader will find in almost any critical commentary discussions of the meaning of the word, and of the question of its right translation, whether by “Comforter,” or “Advocate,” or “Teacher,” or “Helper.” But the question cannot be fully settled by an appeal to classical or patristic Greek, for the reason, we believe, that it is a divinely given name whose real significance must be made manifest in the actual life and history of the Spirit. The name is the person himself, and only as we know the person can we interpret his name. Why {36} attempt then to translate this word any more than we do the name of Jesus? We might well transfer it into our English version, leaving the history of the church from the Acts of the Apostles to the experience of the latest saint to fill into it the great significance which it was intended to contain. Certain it is that the language of the Holy Ghost can never be fully understood by an appeal to the lexicon. The heart of the church is the best dictionary of the Spirit. While all the before-mentioned synonyms are correct, neither one is adequate, nor are all together sufficient to bring out the full significance of this great name, “The Paraclete.”

Let us consider, however, how much is suggested by the literal meaning of this word, “the Paracletos” and by all that our Lord says concerning him in his last discourse. “To call to one’s aid,” is the meaning of the verb, parachaleô, from which the name is derived. Very beautiful therefore is the word in its application to the disciples of Christ at the time when the Spirit was given. They had lost the visible presence of their Lord. The sorrow of his removal from them through the cross and the sepulchre had after three days been turned into joy by his resurrection. But now another separation had come, in his departure to the Father after the cloud had received him out of sight. In this last and longer bereavement, what should they do? Their beloved Master had told them beforehand {37} what to do. They were to call upon the Father to send them One to fill the vacant place, and he who should be sent would be the “Paraclete,” the “one called to their help.”[1]

But what deep questionings must have arisen in their hearts as they heard the Saviour’s promise: “If I go not away the Paraclete will not come unto you; but if I depart I will send him unto you.” Did they begin to ask whether the mysterious comer would be a “person”? Impossible to imagine. For he was to take the place of that greatest of persons; to do for them even greater things than he had done; and to lead them into even larger knowledge than he had imparted. The discussion of the personality of the Holy Ghost is so unnatural in the light of Christ’s last discourse that we studiously avoid it. Let us treat the question, therefore, from the point of view of Christ’s own words, and try to put ourselves under the impression which they make upon us. To state the matter as simply and familiarly as possible: Jesus is about to vacate his office on earth as teacher and prophet; but before doing so he would introduce us to his successor. As in a complex problem we seek to determine an unknown quantity by the known, so in this paschal discourse Jesus {38} aims to make us acquainted with the mysterious, invisible coming personage whom he names the “Paraclete” by comparing him with himself, the known and the visible one. Collating his comparisons we may find in them several groups of seeming contradictions, and just such contradictions as we should expect if this comer is indeed a person of the Godhead. Of the coming Paraclete then we find these intimations.[2]

1. He is another, yet the same: “And I will pray the Father and he shall give you another Comforter” (John 14: 16). By the use of this expression “another” our Lord distinguishes the Paraclete from himself, but he also puts him on the same plane with himself. For there is no parity or even comparison between a person and an influence. If the promised visitor were to be only an impersonal emanation from God, it would seem impossible that our Lord should have so co-ordinated him with himself as to say: “I go to be an Advocate for you in heaven (1 John 2: 1), and I send another to be an Advocate for you on earth.”

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But if Christ thus distinguishes the Comforter from himself, he also identifies him with himself: “I will not leave you orphans: I will come to you” (John 14: 18). By common consent this promise refers to the advent of the Spirit, for so the connection plainly indicates. And yet almost in the same breath he says: “The Comforter whom I will send unto you” (John 14: 26). Thus our Lord makes the same event to be at once his coming and his sending; and he speaks of the Spirit now as his own presence, and now as his substitute during his absence. So what must we conclude but that the Paraclete is Christ’s other self, a third Person in that blessed Trinity of which he is the second.

2. The Paraclete is subordinate yet superior in his ministry to the church. “For he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear that shall he speak. He shall glorify me; for he shall receive of mine and show it unto you” (John 16: 13).

Well may we mark the holy deference between the persons of the Trinity which is here pointed out. Each receives from another what he communicates, and each magnifies another in his praises. As Bengel concisely states it: “The Son glorifies the Father; the Spirit glorifies the Son.” What then is the office of the Holy Ghost, so far as we can interpret it, but that of communicating and applying the work of Christ to human hearts? If he convinces of sin it is by exhibiting the {40} gracious redemptive work of the Saviour and showing men their guilt in not believing on him. If he witnesses to the penitent of his acceptance it is by testifying of the atoning blood of Jesus in which that acceptance is grounded; if he regenerates and sanctifies the heart it is by communicating to it the life of the risen Lord. Christ is “all” in himself, and through the Spirit “in all” those whom the Spirit renews. This reverent subjection of the earthly Comforter to the heavenly Christ contains a deep lesson for those who are indwelt by the Spirit[3] and makes them rejoice evermore to be witnesses rather than originators.

With this subordination of the Holy Spirit to Christ, how is it yet true that such a great advantage was to accrue to the church by the departure of the Saviour and the consequent advent of the Spirit to take his place? That it would be so is what is plainly affirmed in the following text: “Nevertheless I tell you the truth. It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart I will send him unto you” (John 16: 7). If the Spirit is simply the measure of the Son, his sole work being to communicate the work of the Son, what gain could there be in the departure of the one in order to {41} the coming of the other? Would it not be simply the exchange of Christ for Christ?—his visible presence for his invisible?

To us the answer of this question is most obvious. It was not the earthly Christ whom the Holy Ghost was to communicate to the church, but the heavenly Christ,—the Christ re-invested with his eternal power, re-clothed with the glory which he had with the Father before the world was, and re-endowed with the infinite treasures of grace which he had purchased by his death on the cross. It is as though—to use a very inadequate illustration—a beloved father were to say to his family: “My children, I have provided well for your needs; but your condition is one of poverty compared with what it may become. By the death of a kinsman in my native country I have become heir to an immense estate. If you will only submit cheerfully to my leaving you and crossing the sea, and entering into my inheritance, I will send you back a thousand times more than you could have by my remaining with you.” Only in the instance we are considering, Christ is the “testator” as well as the heir. By his death the inheritance becomes available, and when he had ascended into heaven he sent down the Holy Spirit to distribute the estate among those who were joint heirs with him. What this estate is, may be best summarized in two beautiful expressions of frequent recurrence in the {42} epistles of Paul, “The riches of his grace” (Eph. 1: 7), and “The riches of his glory” (Eph. 3: 16). On the cross “the riches of his grace” was secured to us in the forgiveness of sins; on the throne “the riches of his glory” was secured to us in our being strengthened with all might by his Spirit in the inner man; in the indwelling of Christ in our hearts by faith, and in our infilling with all the fullness of God. The divine wealth only becomes completely available on the death, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord; so that the Holy Spirit, the divine Conveyancer, had not the full inheritance to convey till Jesus was glorified.

Observe therefore, in the valedictory discourse of our Lord, the frequent recurrence of the words: “Because I go to the Father,” one of the sayings which greatly perplexed his disciples. In the light of all which Jesus says in this connection, let us see if its meaning may not be clear to us. “If ye loved me ye would rejoice because I go unto the Father; for the Father is greater than I” (John 14: 28), he says in the same connection. We cannot here enter into the deep question of the kenosis, or self-emptying of the Son of God in his incarnation. It is enough that we follow the plain teaching of the Scripture, that though “being in the form of God, he counted it not a thing to be grasped to be on an equality with God; but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant” (Phil. 2: {43} 6, 7, R. V.). What now does his going to the Father signify but a refilling with that of which he had been emptied, or a resumption of his co-equality with God? The greater blessing which he could confer upon his church by his departure seems to lie in the fact of the greater power and glory into which he would enter by his enthronement at God’s right hand. As Luther pointedly puts it: “Therefore do I go, he saith, where I shall be greater than I now am, that is, to the Father, and it is better that I shall pass out of this obscurity and weakness into the power and glory in which the Father is.” In the light of this interpretation the meaning of our Lord’s words above quoted does not seem difficult. The Paraclete was to communicate Christ to his church,—his life, his power, his riches, his glory. In his exaltation all these were to be very greatly increased. “All things that the Father hath are mine” (John 16: 15), he says. And though he had for a time voluntarily disinherited himself of his heavenly possessions, he is now to be repossessed of them. “Therefore said I, that he shall take of mine and shall show it unto you” (16: 15). Christ at God’s right hand will have more to give than while on earth; therefore the church will have more to receive through the Paraclete than through the visible Christ. What obvious significance then do the following sayings from this farewell sermon of Jesus have: “Verily {44} verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me the works that I do shall he do also; greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto the Father” (John 14: 12). The earthly Christ is equal only to himself thus conditioned; and if the Holy Spirit shall communicate his power to his disciples, they will do the same works that he does. But the heavenly Christ is co-equal with the Father, therefore when he shall ascend to the Father, and the Spirit shall take of his and communicate to his church, it will do greater works than these. The stream of life, in other words, will have greater power because of the higher source from which it proceeds. Very deep are the mysteries here considered, and we can only speak of them in the light which we get by comparing Scripture with Scripture. Did the risen Christ breathe on his disciples and say to them: “Receive ye the Holy Ghost”?[4] “It is enough, Lord, that we have received the Spirit from thee,” they might well have said. Yet it was not enough for him to give; for looking on to the day of his enthronement, he says: “But when the Paraclete is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me” (John 15: 26). When Jesus hath ascended “on high,” then can the {45} Holy Ghost communicate “the power from on high.” Therefore it is expedient that he go away.

As with the power which Christ was to impart to his church through the Paraclete, so with the righteousness which he was both to impute and to impart; its highest source must be found in heaven: “And when he, the Comforter, is come, he will convince the world of righteousness; . . . of righteousness because I go to my father, and ye see me no more” (John 16: 8-10). We may say truly that the righteousness of Christ was not completely finished and authenticated till he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. By his death he perfectly satisfied the claims of a violated law, but this fact was not attested until the grave gave back the certificate of discharge in his released and risen body. By his resurrection he was “declared to be the Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of holiness” (Rom. 1: 4). But the fact was not fully verified till God had “set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named” (Eph. 1: 20, 2l). Now in his consummated glory he is prepared to be “made wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption” to his people. He who had been “manifest in the flesh” that he might be made sin for us, was now “justified in the Spirit” and “received up into glory,” that he might be made {46} righteousness to us, and that “we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” Christ’s coronation, in a word, is the indispensable condition to our justification. Till he who was made a curse for us is crowned with glory and honor we cannot be assured of our acceptance with the Father.[5] How deep the current of thought which flows through this narrow channel—”Because I go to the Father.”

3. The Paraclete teaches only the things of Christ; yet teaches more than Christ taught: “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all the truth” (John 16: 12, 13). It is as though he had said: “I have brought you a little way in the knowledge of my doctrine; he shall bring you all the way.” One reason for this saying seems plain: The teaching of Jesus during his earthly ministry waited to be illumined by a light not risen—the light of the cross, the light of the sepulchre, the light of the ascension. Therefore until these events had come to pass, Christian doctrine was undeveloped, and could not be fully communicated to the disciples of Christ. But this is not all. The “because I go to the Father” still gives the key to our Lord’s meaning. “But what things {47} soever he shall hear, these shall he speak, and he shall declare unto you things to come” (John 16: 13, R. V.). Very wonderful is this hint of the mutual converse of the Godhead, so that the Paraclete is described as listening while he leads, as having an ear in heaven attentive to the converse of the Father and the glorified Son, while he extends an unseen guidance to the flock on earth, communicating to them what he has heard from the Father and the Son. And we may reverently ask, Has not the glorified Christ more of knowledge and revelation to communicate than he had in the days of his humiliation? Of “the things to come” has he not secrets to impart which hitherto may have been hidden in the counsels of the Father? To take a single illustration from the words of Christ. Speaking of his second advent, he says: “But of that day or that hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father” (Mark 13: 32[6]). It is best that we should interpret these words frankly, and instead of saying, with some, that he did not know in the sense that he was not permitted to disclose, admit it possible that while in his humiliation and under the veil of his incarnation, this secret was hidden from his eyes.

But is it not presumptuous for us to reason, that {48} therefore he does not now know the day of his coming? How constantly is that text quoted as a decisive and final prohibition of all inquiry into the proximate time of our Lord’s return in glory. But they who so use this saying simply remand us to the childhood of the church, to the spiritual nonage of the ante-Pentecostal days. Have we forgotten that since our Lord ascended to the Father he has given us a further revelation, that wondrous book of the Apocalypse, which opens and closes with a beatitude upon those who read and faithfully keep the words of this prophecy? And one characteristic feature of this book is its chronological predictions concerning the time of the end, its mystical dates, which have led many sober searchers of the word of God to inquire diligently “what and what manner of time” the Spirit did signify in giving us these way-marks in the wilderness. This being so, we may ask: If we are not irreverent in concluding with many devout expositors that our Saviour meant what he said in declaring that he did “not yet” know the time of his advent, are we presumptuous in taking literally the opening words of the Apocalypse?: “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to show unto his servants the things which must shortly come to pass.” It was because of his going unto the Father that greater works and greater riches were to attend the church after Pentecost. Why may we not assign to the same {49} cause also the fuller revelation of the future and the leading into completer truth concerning the blessed hope of the church? In other words, if we may think of Christ as entering into larger revelation as he returns to the glory which he had with the Father must we not think of larger communications of truth by the blessed Paraclete?

Have we not learned something of the nature and offices of the Spirit by this study of his new name, and of all that the departing Lord says in the wondrous discourse wherein he introduces him to his disciples? At least the study should enable us to distinguish two inspired terms which have been needlessly confounded by not a few writers, viz.: the words “Paraclete,” and “Parousia.” The latter word, which constantly occurs in Scripture as describing our Lord’s second coming, has been applied in several learned works to the advent of the Holy Spirit; and since Christ came in the person of the Spirit, it has been argued that the Redeemer’s promised advent in glory has already taken place. But this is to confuse terms whose use in Scripture marks them as clearly distinct. Observe their difference: In the Paraclete, Christ comes spiritually and invisibly; in the Parousia, he comes bodily and gloriously. The advent of the Paraclete is really conditioned on the Saviour’s personal departure from his people: “If I go not away the Paraclete will not come to you” (John 16: 7). {50} The Parousia, on the other hand, is only realized in his personal return to his people: “For what is our hope or joy or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming?” (1 Thess. 2: 19.) The Paraclete attends the church in the days of her humiliation; the Parousia introduces the church into the day of her glory. In the Paraclete, Christ came to dwell with the church on earth: “I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you” (John 14: 18). In the Parousia, Christ comes to take the church to dwell with himself in glory: “I will come again and receive you unto myself; that where I am there ye may be also” (John 14: 3). Christ prayed on behalf of his bereaved church for the coming of this Paraclete: “And I will pray the Father and he shall give you another Paraclete.” The Holy Spirit now prays with the pilgrim-church for the hastening of the Parousia. “And the Spirit and the bride say, Come” (Rev. 22: 17). These two can only be understood in their mutual relations. Christ, who gave the new name to the Holy Spirit, can best interpret that name to us by making us acquainted with himself. May that name be for us so real a symbol of personal presence that while strangers and pilgrims in the earth we may walk evermore “in the paraclesis of the Holy Ghost” (Acts 9:31).

[1] The word paraklêtôr is used in the Septuagint (Job 16:2) with the meaning of “Comforter,” and the term paraklêtosoccurs in the Talmud, signifying “Interpreter.”

[2] The most obvious reason for concluding that the Holy Spirit is a person is that he performs actions and stands in relations which belong only to a person, e. g.: He speaks (Acts 1: 16); he works miracles (Acts 2: 4; 8: 39); he sets ministers over churches (Acts 20: 28); he commands and forbids (Acts 8: 29; 11: 12; 13: 2; 16: 6, 7); he prays for us (Rom. 8: 26); he witnesses (Rom. 8: 16); he can be grieved (Eph. 4: 30); he can be blasphemed (Mark 3: 29); he can be resisted (Acts 7: 51, etc).

[3] If the Holy Spirit may not speak of himself as preacher, how canst thou draw thy preaching out of thyself—out of thine head or even out of thine heart.—Pastor Gossner.

[4] Let it be observed that in this communication of the risen Christ it is not said, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost”—the article being significantly omitted—Labete Pneuma agion (John 20: 22).

[5] How righteous must he be, who will go to the Father from the cross and the grave! Thus will the Holy Spirit convince the world that he is a righteous man, and truly righteous for man.—Roos.

[6] “Neither the Son”: “It is more than neither; it is not yet the Son,” says Morrison the commentator.

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IV

THE EMBODYING OF THE SPIRIT

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“But now the Holy Ghost is given more perfectly, for he is no longer present by his operation as of old, but is present with us so to speak, and converses with us in a substantial manner. For it was fitting that, as the Son had conversed with us in the body, the spirit should also come among us in a bodily manner.”—Gregory Nazianzen.

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IV

THE EMBODYING OF THE SPIRIT

“The church, which is his body,” began its history and development at Pentecost. Believers had been saved, and the influences of the Spirit had been manifested to men in all previous dispensations from Adam to Christ. But now an ecclesia, an outgathering, was to be made to constitute the mystical body of Christ, incorporated into him the Head and indwelt by him through the Holy Ghost. The definition which we sometimes hear, that a church is “a voluntary association of believers, united together for the purposes of worship and edification” is most inadequate, not to say incorrect. It is no more true than that hands and feet and eyes and ears are voluntarily united in the human body for the purposes of locomotion and work. The church is formed from within; Christ present by the Holy Ghost, regenerating men by the sovereign action of the Spirit, and organizing them into himself as the living center. The Head and the body are therefore one, and predestined to the same history of humiliation and glory. And as they are one in fact, so are they one in name. He whom God anointed and filled with the Holy Ghost {54} is called “the Christ,” and the church, which is his body and fullness, is also called “the Christ.” “For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is the Christ” (1 Cor. 12: 12). Here plainly and with wondrous honor the church is named o Christos, commenting upon which fact Bishop Andrews beautifully says: “Christ is both in heaven and on earth; as he is called the Head of his church, he is in heaven; but in respect of his body which is called Christ, he is on earth.”

So soon as the Holy Ghost was sent down from heaven this great work of his embodying began, and it is to continue until the number of the elect shall be accomplished, or unto the end of the present dispensation. Christ, if we may say it reverently, became mystically a babe again on the day of Pentecost, and the hundred and twenty were his infantile body, as once more through the Holy Ghost he incarnated himself in his flesh. Now he is growing and increasing in his members, and so will he continue to do “till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of fullness of Christ.” Then the Christ on earth will be taken up into visible union with the Christ in heaven, and the Head and the body be glorified together. Observe how the history of the church’s formation, as recorded in the Acts, harmonizes with {55} the conception given above. The story of Pentecost culminates in the words, “and the same day there were added about three thousand souls” (Acts 2: 41). Added to whom? we naturally ask. And the King James translators have answered our question by inserting in italics “to them.” But not so speaks the Holy Ghost. And when, a few verses further on in the same chapter, we read: “And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved,” we need to be reminded that the words “to the church” are spurious. All such glosses and interpolations have only tended to mar the sublime teaching of this first chapter of the Holy Spirit’s history. “And believers were the more added to the Lord” (Acts 5: 14.) “And much people were added unto the Lord” (Acts 11: 24.) This is the language of inspiration—Not the mutual union of believers, but their divine co-uniting with Christ; not voluntary association of Christians, but their sovereign incorporation into the Head and this incorporation effected by the Head through the Holy Ghost.

If we ask concerning the way of admission into this divine ecclesia, the teaching of Scripture is explicit: “For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body” (1 Cor. 12: 13). The baptism in water marks the formal introduction of the believer into the church; but this is the symbol, not the substance. For observe the identity of form between the ritual {56} and the spiritual. “I indeed baptize you in water,” . . . said John, “but he that cometh after me . . . shall baptize you in the Holy Ghost and in fire” (Matt. 3: 11). As in the one instance the disciple was submerged in the element of water, so in the other he was to be submerged in the element of the Spirit. And thus it was in actual historic fact. The upper room became the Spirit’s baptistery, if we may use the figure. His presence “filled all the house where they were sitting,” and “they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.” The baptistery would never need to be re-filled, for Pentecost was once and for all, and the Spirit then came to abide in the church perpetually. But each believer throughout the age would need to be infilled with that Spirit which dwells in the body of Christ. In other words, it seems clear that the baptism of the Spirit was given once for the whole church, extending from Pentecost to Parousia. “There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Eph. 4: 5). As there is one body reaching through the entire dispensation, so there is “one baptism” for that body given on the day of Pentecost. Thus if we rightly understand the meaning of Scripture it is true, both as to time and as to fact, that “in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free.”

The typical foreshadowing, as seen in the church in the wilderness, is very suggestive at this point: “Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be {57} ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud and all passed through the sea; and were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea” (1 Cor. 10: 1). Baptized into Moses by their passage through the sea, identified with him as their leader, and committed to him in corporate fellowship; even so were they also baptized into Jehovah, who in the cloud of glory now took his place in the midst of the camp and tabernacled henceforth with them. The type is perfect as all inspired types are. The antitype first appears in Christ our Lord, baptized in water at the Jordan, and then baptized in the Holy Ghost which “descended from heaven like a dove and abode upon him.” Then it recurred again in the waiting disciples, who besides the baptism of water, which had doubtless already been received, now were baptized “in the Holy Ghost and in fire.” Henceforth they were in the divine element, as their fathers had been in the wilderness, “not in the flesh but in the Spirit” (Rom. 8: 9); called “to live according to God in the Spirit” (1 Peter 4: 6); to “walk in the Spirit” (Gal. 5: 25); “praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit” (Eph. 6: 18). In a word, on the day of Pentecost the entire body of Christ was baptized into the element and presence of the Holy Ghost as a permanent condition. And though one might object that the body as a whole was not yet in existence, we reply that neither was the complete church in {58} existence when Christ died on Calvary, yet all believers are repeatedly said to have died with him.

To change the figure of baptism for a moment to another which is used synonymously, that of the anointing of the Spirit, we have in Exodus a beautiful typical illustration of our thought. At Aaron’s consecration the precious ointment was not only poured upon his head, but ran down in rich profusion upon his body and upon his priestly garments. This fact is taken up by the psalmist when he sings: “Behold how good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. It is like the precious ointment upon the head that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron’s beard, that went down to the skirts of his garments” (Ps. 133: 1, 2). Of our great High Priest we read: “How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power” (Acts 10: 38). But it was not for himself alone but also for his brethren that he obtained this holy unction. He received that he might communicate. “Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending and remaining on him, the same is he that baptizeth in the Holy Ghost” (John 1: 33). And now we behold our Aaron, our great High Priest, who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, standing in the holiest in heaven. “Thou didst love righteousness and didst hate iniquity,” is the divine encomium now passed upon him, “therefore God, thy God, anointed thee with the oil of gladness {59} above thy fellows” (Heb. 1: 9). He, the Christos, the Anointed, stands above and for the Christoi, his anointed brethren, and from him the Head, the unction of the Holy Ghost descended on the day of Pentecost. It was poured in rich profusion upon his mystical body. It has been flowing down ever since, and will continue to do so till the last member shall have been incorporated with himself, and so anointed by the one Spirit into the one body, which is the church.

It is true that in one instance subsequent to Pentecost the baptism in the Holy Ghost is spoken of. When the Spirit fell on the house of Cornelius, Peter is reminded of the word of the Lord, how that he said: “John indeed baptized in water, but ye shall be baptized in the Holy Ghost” (Acts 11: 16). This was a great crisis in the history of the church, the opening of the door of faith to the Gentiles, and it would seem that these new subjects of grace now came into participation of an already present Spirit. Yet Pentecost still appears to have been the age-baptism of the church. As Calvary was once for all, so was the visitation of the upper room.

Consider now that, as through the Holy Ghost we become incorporated into the body of Christ, we are in the same way assimilated to the Head of that body, which is Christ. An unsanctified church dishonors the Lord, especially by its incongruity. A noble head, lofty-browed and intellectual, upon a {60} deformed and stunted body, is a pitiable sight. What, to the angels and principalities who gaze evermore upon the face of Jesus, must be the sight of an unholy and misshapen church on earth, standing in that place of honor called “his body.” Photographing in a sentence the ecclesia of the earliest centuries, Professor Harnack says: “Originally the church was the heavenly bride of Christ, and the abiding place of the Holy Spirit.” Let the reader consider how much is involved in this definition. The first and most sacred relation of the body is to the head. Watching for the return of the Bridegroom induces holiness of life and conduct in the bride; and the supreme work of the Spirit is directed to this end, that “He may establish our hearts unblamable in holiness before God our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints” (1 Thess. 3: 13). In accomplishing this end he effects all other and subordinate ends. The glorified Christ manifests himself to man through his body. If there is a perfect correspondence between himself and his members, then there will be a true manifestation of himself to the world.[1] Therefore does the Spirit abide in the body, that the body may be “inChristed,” to {61} use an old phrase of the mystics; that is, indwelt by Christ and transfigured into the likeness of Christ. Only thus, as “a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people,” can it “shew forth the virtues of him who has called us out of darkness into his marvelous light.” And who is the Christ that is thus to be manifested? From the throne he gives us his name: “I am he that liveth and was dead, and behold I am alive for evermore” (Rev. 1: 18). Christ in glory is not simply what he is, but what he was and what he is to be. As a tree gathers up into itself all the growths of former years, and contains them in its trunk, so Jesus on the throne is all that he was and is and is to be. In other words, his death is a perpetual fact as well as his life.

And his church is predestined to be like him in this respect, since it not only heads up in him, as saith the apostle, that ye “may grow up into him in all things which is the Head, even Christ,” but also bodies itself forth from him, “from whom the whole body, fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, . . . maketh increase of the body” . . . (Eph. 4: 16). If the church will literally manifest Christ, then she must be both a living and a dying church. To this she is committed in the divinely given form of her baptism. “Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his {62} death; therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6: 3, 4). And the baptism of the Holy Ghost into which we have been brought is designed to accomplish inwardly and spiritually what the baptism of water foreshadows outwardly and typically, viz., to reproduce in us the living and the dying of our Lord.

First, the living. “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death” (Rom. 8: 2). That is, that which has been hitherto the actuating principle within us, viz., sin and death, is now to be met and mastered by another principle, the law of life, of which the Holy Spirit of God is the author and sustainer. As by our natural spirit we are connected with the first Adam, and made partakers of his fallen nature, so by the Holy Spirit we are now united with the second Adam, and made partakers of his glorified nature. To vivify the body of Christ by maintaining its identity with the risen Head is, in a word, the unceasing work of the Holy Ghost.

Secondly, the dying of our Lord in his members is to be constantly effected by the indwelling Spirit. The church, which is the fullness of him that “filleth all in all,” completes in the world his {63} crucifixion as well as his resurrection. This is certainly Paul’s profound thought, when he speaks of filling up “that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh, for his body’s sake, which is the church” (Col. 1: 24). In other words, the church, as the complement of her Lord, must have a life experience and a death experience running parallel.

It is remarkable how exact is this figure of the body, which is employed to symbolize the church. In the human system life and death are constantly working together. A certain amount of tissue must die every day and be cast out and buried, and a certain amount of new tissue must also be created and nourished daily in the same body. Arrest the death-process, and it is just as certain to produce disorder as though you were to arrest the life-process. Literally is this true of the corporate body also. The church must die daily in fulfillment of the crucified life of her Head, as well as live daily in the manifestation of his glorified life. This italicised sentence, which we take from a recent book, is worthy to be made a golden text for Christians: “The Church is Christian no more than as it is the organ of the continuous passion of Christ.” To sympathize, in the literal sense of suffering with our sinning and lost humanity, is not only the duty of the church, but the absolutely essential condition to her true manifestation of her Lord. A {64} self-indulgent church disfigures Christ; an avaricious church bears false witness against Christ; a worldly church betrays Christ, and gives him over once more to be mocked and reviled by his enemies.

The resurrection of our Lord is prolonged in his body, as we all see plainly. Every regeneration is a pulse-beat of his throne-life. But too little do we recognize the fact that his crucifixion must be prolonged side by side with his resurrection. “If any man will come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” The church is called to live a glorified life in communion with her Head, and a crucified life in her contact with the world. And the Holy Spirit dwells evermore in the church to effect this twofold manifestation of Christ. “But God be thanked, that ye have obeyed from the heart that pattern of doctrine to which ye were delivered,” writes the apostle (Rom. 6: 17). The pattern, as the context shows, is Christ dead and risen. If the church truly lives in the Spirit, he will keep her so plastic that she will obey this divine mold as the metal conforms to the die in which it is struck. If she yields to the sway of “the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience,” she will be stereotyped according to the fashion of the world, and they that look upon her will fail to see Christ in her.

[1] “The Holy Spirit not only dwells in the church as his habitation, but also uses her as the living organism whereby he moves and walks forth in the world, and speaks to the world and acts upon the world. He is the soul of the church which is Christ’s body.”—Bishop Webb, The Presence and Office of the Spirit, p. 47.

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V

THE ENDUEMENT OF THE SPIRIT

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“To the disciples, the baptism of the Spirit was very distinctly not his first bestowal for regeneration, but the definite communication of his presence in power of their glorified Lord. Just as there was a two-fold operation of the one Spirit in the Old and New Testaments, of which the state of the disciples before and after Pentecost was the striking illustration, so there may be, and in the great majority of Christians is, a corresponding difference of experience. . . When once the distinct recognition of what the indwelling of the Spirit was meant to bring is brought home to the soul, and it is ready to give up all to be made partaker of it, the believer may ask and expect what may be termed a baptism of the Spirit. Praying to the Father in accordance to the two prayers in Ephesians, and coming to Jesus in the renewed surrender of faith and obedience, he may receive such an inflow of the Holy Spirit as shall consciously lift him to a different level from the one on which he has hitherto lived.”—Rev. Andrew Murray.

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V

THE ENDUEMENT OF THE SPIRIT

We have maintained in the previous chapter that the baptism in the Holy Ghost was given once for all on the day of Pentecost, when the Paraclete came in person to make his abode in the church. It does not follow therefore that every believer has received this baptism. God’s gift is one thing; our appropriation of that gift is quite another thing. Our relation to the second and to the third persons of the Godhead is exactly parallel in this respect. “God so loved the world that he gavehis only begotten Son” (John 3: 16). “But as many as received him to them gave he the right to become the children of God, even to them that believe on his name” (John 1: 12). Here are the two sides of salvation, the divine and the human, which are absolutely co-essential.

There is a doctrine somewhat in vogue, not inappropriately denominated redemption by incarnation, which maintains that since God gave his Son to the world, all the world has the Son, consciously or unconsciously, and that therefore all the world will be saved. It need not be said that a true evangelical teaching must reject this theory as utterly {68} untenable, since it ignores the necessity of individual faith in Christ. But some orthodox writers have urged an almost identical view with respect to the Holy Ghost. They have contended that the enduement of the Spirit is “not any special or more advanced experience, but simply the condition of every one who is a child of God”; that “believers converted after Pentecost, and living in other localities, are just as really endowed with the indwelling Spirit as those who actually partook of the Pentecostal blessing at Jerusalem.”[1]

On the contrary, it seems clear from the Scriptures that it is still the duty and privilege of believers to receive the Holy Spirit by a conscious, definite act of appropriating faith, just as they received Jesus Christ. We base this conclusion on several grounds. Presumably if the Paraclete is a person, coming down at a certain definite time to make his abode in the church, for guiding, teaching, and sanctifying the body of Christ, there is the same reason for our accepting him for his special ministry as for accepting the Lord Jesus for his special ministry. To say that in receiving Christ we necessarily received in the same act the gift of the Spirit, seems to confound what the Scriptures make distinct.[2] For it is as sinners that we accept {69} Christ for our justification, but it is as sons that we accept the Spirit for our sanctification: “And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying Abba, Father” (Gal. 4: 6). Thus, when Peter preached his first sermon to the multitude after the Spirit had been given, he said: “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost” (Acts 2: 38).

This passage shows that logically and chronologically the gift of the Spirit is subsequent to repentance. Whether it follows as a necessary and inseparable consequence, as might seem, we shall consider later. Suffice that this point is clear, so clear that one of the most conservative as well as ablest writers on this subject, in commenting on this text in Acts, says: “Therefore it is evident that the reception of the Holy Ghost, as here spoken of, has nothing whatever to do with bringing men to believe and repent. It is a subsequent operation; it is an additional and {70} separate blessing; it is a privilege founded on faith already actively working in the heart. . . I do not mean to deny that the gift of the Holy Ghost may be practically on the same occasion, but never in the same moment. The reason is quite simple too. The gift of the Holy Ghost is grounded on the fact that we are sons by faith in Christ, believers resting on redemption in him. Plainly, therefore, it appears that the Spirit of God has already regenerated us.”[3]

Now, as we examine the Scriptures on this point, we shall see that we are required to appropriate the Spirit as sons, in the same way that we appropriated Christ as sinners. “As many as received him, even to them that believe on his name,” is the condition of becoming sons, as we have already seen, receiving and believing being used as equivalent terms. In a kind of foretaste of Pentecost, the risen Christ, standing in the midst of his disciples, “breathed on them and said, Receive ye the Holy Ghost.” The verb is not passive, as our English version might lead us to suppose, but has here as generally an active signification, just as in the familiar passage in Revelation: “Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” Twice in the Epistle to the Galatians the possession of the Holy Ghost is put on the same grounds of active {71} appropriation through faith: “Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith?” (3: 2). “That ye might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith” (3: 14). These texts seem to imply that just as there is a “faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ” for salvation, there is a faith toward the Holy Ghost for power and consecration.

If we turn from New Testament teaching to New Testament example we are strongly confirmed in this impression. We begin with that striking incident in the nineteenth chapter of Acts. Paul, having found certain disciples at Ephesus, said unto them: “Did ye receive the Holy Ghost when ye believed? And they said unto him, Nay; we did not so much as hear whether there is a Holy Ghost.” This passage seems decisive as showing that one may be a disciple without having entered into possession of the Spirit as God’s gift to believers. Some admit this, who yet deny any possible application of the incident to our own times, alleging that it is the miraculous gifts of the Spirit which are here under consideration, since, after recording that when Paul had laid his hands upon them and “the Holy Ghost came upon them,” it is added that “they spake with tongues and prophesied.” All that need be said upon this point is simply that these Ephesian disciples, by the reception of the Spirit, came into the same condition with the upper-room disciples who {72} received him some twenty years before, and of whom it is written that “they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.” In other words, these Ephesian disciples on receiving the Holy Ghost exhibited the traits of the Spirit common to the other disciples of the apostolic age.

Whether those traits—the speaking of tongues and the working of miracles—were intended to be perpetual or not we do not here discuss. But that the presence of the personal Holy Spirit in the church was intended to be perpetual there can be no question. And whatsoever relations believers held to that Spirit in the beginning they have a right to claim to-day. We must withhold our consent from the inconsistent exegesis which would make the water baptism of the apostolic times still rigidly binding, but would relegate the baptism in the Spirit to a bygone dispensation. We hold indeed, that Pentecost was once for all, but equally that the appropriation of the Spirit by believers is always for all, and that the shutting up of certain great blessings of the Holy Ghost within that ideal realm called “the apostolic age,” however convenient it may be as an escape from fancied difficulties, may be the means of robbing believers of some of their most precious covenant rights.[4] Let us {73} transfer this incident of the Ephesian Christians to our own times. We need not bring forward an imaginary case, for by the testimony of many experienced witnesses the same condition is constantly encountered. Not only individual Christians, but whole communities of disciples are found who have been so imperfectly instructed that they have never known that there is a Holy Spirit, except as an influence, an impersonal something to be vaguely recognized. Of the Holy Ghost as a Divine Person, dwelling in the church, to be honored and invoked and obeyed and implicitly trusted, they know nothing. Is it conceivable that there could be any deep spiritual life or any real sanctified energy for service in a community like this? And what should a well-instructed teacher or evangelist do, on discovering a church or an individual Christian in such a condition? Let us turn to another passage of the Acts for an answer: “Now when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God they sent unto them Peter and John, who when they were come down prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Ghost; for as yet he had fallen upon none of them; only they were baptized in the name {74} of the Lord Jesus. Then laid they their hands on them and they received the Holy Ghost” (Acts 8: 14-17).

Here were believers who had been baptized in water. But this was not enough. The baptism in the Spirit, already bestowed at Pentecost, must be appropriated. Hear the prayer of the apostles “that they might receive the Holy Ghost.” Such prayer we deem eminently proper for those who today may be ignorant of the Comforter. And yet such prayer should be followed by an act of believing acceptance on the part of the willing disciple: “O Holy Spirit, I yield to thee now in humble surrender. I receive thee as my Teacher, my Comforter, my Sanctifier, and my Guide.” Do not testimonies abound on every hand of new lives resulting from such an act of consecration as this, lives full of peace and power and victory among those who before had received the forgiveness of sins but not the enduement of power?

We conceive that the great end for which the enduement of the Spirit is bestowed is our qualification for the highest and most effective service in the church of Christ. Other effects will certainly attend the blessing, a fixed assurance of our acceptance in Christ, and a holy separateness from the world; but these results will be conducive to the greatest and supreme end, our consecrated usefulness.

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Let us observe that Christ, who is our example in this as in all things, did not enter upon his ministry till he had received the Holy Ghost. Not only so, but we see that all his service from his baptism to his ascension was wrought in the Spirit. Ask concerning his miracles, and we hear him saying: “I by the Spirit of God cast out devils” (Matt. 12: 28). Ask concerning that decease which he accomplished at Jerusalem, and we read “that he through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot unto God” (Heb. 9: 14). Ask concerning the giving of the great commission, and we read that he was received up “after that he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles” (Acts 1: 2). Thus, though he was the Son of God, he acted ever in supreme reliance upon him who has been called the “Executive of the Godhead.”

Plainly we see how Christ was our pattern and exemplar in his relation to the Holy Spirit. He had been begotten of the Holy Ghost in the womb of the virgin, and had lived that holy and obedient life which this divine nativity would imply. But when he would enter upon his public ministry, he waited for the Spirit to come upon him, as he had hitherto been in him. For this anointing we find him praying: “Jesus also being baptized and praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a {76} dove upon him” (Luke 3: 22). Had he any “promise of the Father” to plead, as he now asked the anointing of the Spirit, if as we may believe this was the subject of his prayer? Yes; it had been written in the prophets concerning the rod out of the stem of Jesse: “And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him; the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord” (Isa. 11: 2). “The promise of the seven-fold Spirit,” the Jewish commentators call it. Certainly it was literally fulfilled upon the Son of God at the Jordan, when God gave him the Spirit without measure. For he who was now baptized was in turn to be baptizer. “Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost” (John 1: 33). “I indeed baptize you in water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I . . . he shall baptize you in the Holy Ghost and in fire” (Matt. 3: 11, R. V.). And now being at the right hand exalted, and having “the seven spirits of God” (Rev. 3: 3), the fullness of the Holy Ghost, he will shed forth his power upon those who pray for it, even as the Father shed it forth upon himself.

Let us observe now the symbols and descriptions of the enduement of the Spirit which are applied equally to Christ and to the disciples of Christ.

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1. The Sealing of the Spirit. We hear Jesus saying to the multitude that sought him for the loaves and fishes, “Labor not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto eternal life, which the Son of man shall give unto you, for him hath God the Father sealed” (John 6: 27). This sealing must evidently refer back to his reception of the Spirit at the Jordan. One of the most instructive writers on the Hebrew worship and ritual tells us that it was the custom for the priest to whom the service pertained, having selected a lamb from the flock, to inspect it with the most minute scrutiny, in order to discover if it was without physical defect, and then to seal it with the temple seal, thus certifying that it was fit for sacrifice and for food. Behold the Lamb of God presenting himself for inspection at the Jordan! Under the Father’s omniscient scrutiny he is found to be “a lamb without blemish and without spot.” From the opening heaven God gives witness to the fact in the words: “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,” and then he puts the Holy Ghost upon him, the testimony to his sonship, the seal of his separation unto sacrifice and service.

The disciple is as his Lord in this experience. “In whom having also believed ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise” (Eph. 1: 13). As always in the statements of Scripture, this {78} transaction is represented as subsequent to faith. It is not conversion, but something done upon a converted soul, a kind of crown of consecration put upon his faith. Indeed the two events stand in marked contrast. In conversion the believer receives the testimony of God and “sets his seal to that God is true” (John 3: 33). In consecration God sets his seal upon the believer that he is true. The last is God’s “Amen” to the Christian, verifying the Christian’s “Amen” to God. “Now he, which establisheth us with you in Christ, and anointed us, is God; who also sealed us and gave us the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts” (2 Cor. 1: 21, 22).

If we ask to what we are committed and separated by this divine transaction, we may learn by studying the church’s monograph, if such we may name what is brought out in a mysterious passage in one of the pastoral epistles. In spite of the defection and unbelief of some, the apostle says: “Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal.” Then he gives us the two inscriptions on the seal: “The Lord knoweth them that are his”; and, “Let every one that nameth the name of the Lord depart from unrighteousness” (2 Tim. 2: 19)—Ownership and holiness. When we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit it is that we may count ourselves henceforth and altogether Christ’s. If any shrink from this devotement, how can he {79} have the fullness of the Spirit? God cannot put his signature upon what is not his. Hence, if under the sway of a worldly spirit we withhold ourselves from God and insist on self-ownership, we need not count it strange if God withholds himself from us and denies us the seal of divine ownership. God is very jealous of his divine signet. He graciously bestows it upon those who are ready to devote themselves utterly and irrevocably to his service, but he strenuously withholds it from those who, while professing his name, are yet “serving divers lusts and pleasures.” There is a suggestive passage in the Gospel of John which, translated so as to bring out the antitheses which it contains, reads thus: “Many trusted in his name, beholding the signs which he did; but Jesus did not trust himself to them” (John 2: 23, 24). Here is the great essential to our having the seal of the Spirit. Can the Lord trust us? Nay; the question is more serious. Can he trust himself to us? The Holy Spirit, which is his signet ring, can he commit it to our use for signing our prayers and for certifying ourselves, and his honor not be compromised?

The other inscription on the seal is: “Let every one that nameth the name of the Lord depart from unrighteousness.”[5] The possession of the Spirit {80} commits us irrevocably to separation from sin. For what is holiness but an emanation of the Spirit of holiness who dwells within us? A sanctified life is therefore the print or impression of his seal: “He can never own us without his mark, the stamp of holiness. The devil’s stamp is none of God’s badge. Our spiritual extraction from him is but pretended unless we do things worthy of so illustrious birth and becoming the honor of so great a Father.” The great office of the Spirit in the present economy is to communicate Christ to his church which is his body. And what is so truly essential of Christ as holiness? “In him is no sin; whosoever abideth in him sinneth not.” The body can only be sinless by uninterrupted communion with the Head; the Head will not maintain communion with the body except it be holy.

The idea of ownership, just considered, comes out still further in the words of the apostle: “And grieve not the Spirit of God in whom ye were sealed unto the day of redemption” (Eph. 4: 30). The day of redemption is at the advent of our Lord in glory, when he shall raise the dead and translate the living. Now his own are in the world, but the world knows them not. But he has put his mark and secret sign upon them, by which he shall recognize them at his coming. In that great quickening, at the Redeemer’s advent, the Holy Spirit will be the seal by which the saints will be recognized, {81} and the power through which they will be drawn up to God. “If the Spirit that raised up Jesus dwell in you” (Rom. 11: 9), is the great condition of final quickening. As the magnet attracts the particles of iron and attaches them to itself by first imparting its own magnetism to them, so Christ, having given his Spirit to his own, will draw them to himself through the Spirit. We are not questioning now that all who have eternal life dwelling in them will share in the redemption of the body; we are simply entering into the apostle’s exhortation against grieving the Spirit. We must fear lest we mar the seal by which we were stamped, lest we deface or obscure the signature by which we are to be recognized in the day of redemption.[6]

In a word the sealing is the Spirit himself, now received by faith and resting upon the believer, with all the results in assurance, in joy, and in {82} empowering for service, which must follow his unhindered sway in the soul. Dr. John Owen, who has written more intelligently and more exhaustively on this subject than any with whom we are acquainted, thus sums up the subject: “If we can learn aright how Christ was sealed, we shall learn how we are sealed. The sealing of Christ by the Father is the communication of the Holy Spirit in fullness to him, authorizing him unto and acting his divine power in all the acts and duties of his office, so as to evidence the presence of God with him and approbation of him. God’s sealing of believers then is his gracious communication of the Holy Spirit unto them so to act his divine power in them as to enable them unto all the duties of their holy calling, evidencing them to be accepted with him both for themselves and others, and asserting their preservation unto eternal life.”[7]

2. The Fullness of the Spirit. Immediately upon his baptism we read: “And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness” (Luke 4: 1). The same record is made concerning the upper-room, disciples, immediately after the descent of the Spirit: “And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2: 4). What is here spoken of seems nothing different from what in other Scriptures is {83} called the reception of the Spirit. It is a transaction that may be repeated, and will be if we are living in the Spirit. But it is clearly an experience belonging to one who has already been converged. This comes out very plainly in the life of Paul. If according to the opinion quoted in the early part of this chapter, the reception of the Spirit is associated always and inseparably with conversion, one will reasonably ask, why a conversion so marked and so radical as that of the apostle to the Gentiles need be followed by such an experience as that named in Acts 9: 17: “And Ananias departed and entered into the house, and laying his hands on him, said Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus who appeared unto thee in the way which thou earnest, hath sent me that thou mightest receive thy sight and be filled with the Holy Ghost.” We seem to have a clear allusion here to that which so constantly appears in Scripture, both in doctrine and in life, a divine something distinct from conversion and subsequent to it, which we have called the reception of the Spirit. “The enduement of power” we may well name it; for observe how constantly throughout the book of Acts mighty works and mighty utterances are connected with this qualification. “Then Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, said unto them” (Acts 4: 8), is the preface to one of the apostle’s most powerful sermons. “And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the {84} word with boldness” (Acts 4: 31), is a similar record. And they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost, the narrative runs, regarding the choice of deacons in Acts 6: 5. “And he, being full of the Holy Ghost,” is the keynote to his great martyr-sermon. This infilling of the Spirit marks a decisive and most important crisis in the Christian life, judging from the story of the apostle’s conversion, to which we have just referred.

But, as we have intimated, we are far from maintaining that this is an experience once for all, as the sealing seems to be. As the words “regeneration” and “renewal” used in Scripture mark respectively the impartation of the divine life as a perpetual possession and its increase by repeated communications, so in our sealing there is a reception of the Spirit once for all, which reception may be followed by repeated fillings. It is reasonable to conclude this since our capacity is ever increasing and our need constantly recurring, according to the beautiful saying of Godet: “Man is a vessel destined to receive God, a vessel which must be enlarged in proportion as it is filled and filled in proportion as it is enlarged.”

And yet we confess here to a degree of uncertainty as to the use of terms, and as to whether the two now under consideration are identical. We may well pause therefore and lift a prayer, that since “we have received not the spirit of {85} the world but the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things which are freely given to us of God,” this blessed Revelator and Interpreter may not only reveal to us our privilege and inheritance in the Holy Ghost, but teach us to name and distinguish the terms by which it is conveyed.

While the fact of which we are speaking seems undoubted, the exposition of it is far from being easy. Therefore we should attach no little value to a consensus of opinion on this subject from those who have thought most carefully and searched most prayerfully concerning it This is our apology for the multiplied quotations which we are introducing into this chapter, believing that the Holy Spirit is most likely to interpret himself through those who most honor him in seeking his guidance and illumination.

In a recent work upon this subject, in which careful scholarship and spiritual insight seem to be well united, the author thus states his conclusions: “It seems to me beyond question, as a matter of experience both of Christians in the present day and of the early church, as recorded by inspiration, that in addition to the gift of the Spirit received at conversion, there is another blessing corresponding in its signs and effects to the blessing received by the apostles at Pentecost—a blessing to be asked for and expected by Christians still, and to be described in language similar to that employed {86} in the book of the Acts. Whatever that blessing may be, it is in immediate connection with the Holy Ghost; and one of the terms by which we may designate it is ‘to be filled with the Spirit.’ As with the early Christians so with us now, the filling comes when there is special need for it. . . And there is an occasion when that blessing comes to a man for the first time. That first time is a spiritual crisis from which his future spiritual life must be dated. There may be a question as to what it is to be called, or at least by what name in Scripture we are authorized to call it. . . Whether consciously or not, it is to the fact of the Holy Spirit’s coming in new power to the soul that all new life is due; and the more that this is consciously understood the more is the Holy Ghost in his due place in our hearts. It is only when he is consciously accepted in all his power that we can be said to be either ‘baptized’ or ‘filled’ with the Holy Ghost. I should like to add that it is possible to maintain that God from the first offered to his own people a higher position in this matter than they have generally been able to occupy, in that the fullness of the Spirit was and is offered to each soul at conversion; and that it is only from want of faith that subsequent outpourings of the Holy Ghost become needful.”[8]

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That the filling of the Spirit belongs to us as a covenant privilege seems to be clear from the exhortation in the Epistle to the Ephesians, which is confessedly of universal application: “Be not drunken with wine, wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit” (Eph. 5: 18). The passive verb employed here is suggestive. The surrendered will, the yielded body, the emptied heart, are the great requisites to his incoming. And when he has come and filled the believer, the result is a kind of passive activity, as of one wrought upon and controlled rather than of one directing his own efforts. Under the influence of strong drink there is an outpouring of all that the evil spirit inspires—frivolity, profanity, and riotous conduct. “Be God-intoxicated men,” the apostle would seem to say; “let the Spirit of God so control you that you shall pour yourself out in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.” If such divine enthusiasm has its perils, we believe that they are less to be dreaded than that “moderatism” which makes the servants of God satisfied with the letter of Scripture if only that letter be skillfully and scientifically handled, rather than giving the supreme place to the Spirit as the inspirer and motor of all Christian service.

3. The Anointing of the Spirit. After the baptism and temptation we find our Lord appropriating to himself the words of the prophet, as he read them in the synagogue of Nazareth: {88} “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor” (Luke 4: 18). Twice in the Acts there is a reference to this important event in similar terms: “Thy holy servant Jesus, whom thou didst anoint” (Acts 4: 27, R. V.). “Jesus of Nazareth, how that God anointed him with the Holy Ghost and with power” (Acts 10: 38). And as with the Lord so with his disciples: “Now he that establisheth us with you in Christ, and anointed us, is God” (2 Cor. 1: 21, R. V.).

A student of the Scriptures need not be told how closely the ceremony of anointing was related to all important offices and ministries of the servants of Jehovah under the old covenant. The priest was anointed that he might be holy unto the Lord (Lev. 8: 12). The king was anointed that the Spirit of the Lord might rest upon him in power (1 Sam. 16: 15). The prophet was anointed that he might be the oracle of God to the people (1 Kings 19: 16). No servant of Jehovah was deemed qualified for his ministry without this holy sanctifying touch laid upon him. Even in the cleansing of the leper this ceremony was not wanting. The priest was required to dip his right finger in the oil that was in his left hand and to put it upon the tip of the right ear, upon the thumb of the right hand, and upon the great toe of the right foot of him that was to be cleansed, the oil “upon {89} the blood of the trespass-offering” (Lev. 14: 17). Thus with divine accuracy did even the types foretell the two-fold provision for the Christian life, cleansing by the blood and hallowing by the oil—justification in Christ, sanctification in the Spirit.

If we ask now what this anointing is, the reply is obviously the Holy Spirit himself. As before he was the seal attesting us, so now he is the oil sanctifying us—the same gift described by different symbols. And as it was the Aaron who had been the first anointed who was qualified to anoint others, so with our great High Priest. It is he within the veil who gives the Spirit unto his own, that he may qualify them to be “an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession” (1 Peter 2: 9, R. V.). “But ye have an anointing from the Holy One, and ye know all things” (1 John 2: 20). Christ in the New Testament is constantly called “the Holy One.” And because the Spirit was sent to communicate him to the people, they are made partakers of his knowledge as well as of his holiness. If it should be said that this unction of which John speaks is miraculous, the divine illumination of evangelists and prophets who were commissioned to be the vehicles of inspired Scripture, we must call attention to other passages which connect the knowledge of God with the Holy Ghost. “For who among men knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of a man which {90} is in him; even so the things of God none knoweth save the Spirit of God” (1 Cor. 2: 11, R. V.). The horse and his rider may see the same magnificent piece of statuary in the park; the one may be delighted with it as a work of human genius, but upon the dull eye of the other it makes no impression, and for the reason that it takes a human mind to appreciate the work of the human mind. Likewise only the Spirit of God can know and make known the thoughts and teachings and revelations of God. This seems to be the meaning of John in his discourse concerning the divine unction: “But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you; but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things” (1 John 2: 27).

In nothing does the enduement of the Spirit more distinctly manifest itself than in the fine discernment of revealed truth which it imparts. As in service, the contrast between working in the power of the Spirit and in the energy of the flesh is easily discernible, even more clearly in knowledge and teaching is the contrast between the tuition of learning and the intuition of the Spirit. While we should not undervalue the former, it is striking to note how the Bible puts the weightier emphasis on the latter; so that really the unspiritual hearer is to be accounted less blameworthy for not discerning the truth than the intellectual preacher is for {91} expecting him to do so. When, for example, one attempts with the utmost learning to convince an unbeliever of the deity of Christ and fails, the word of Scripture to him is: “No man is able to say ‘Lord Jesus’ save in the Holy Ghost” (1 Cor. 12: 3).

The Spirit of Jesus can alone reveal to men the lordship of Jesus, and this key of knowledge the Holy Ghost will never put into the hand of any man however learned. As it is written that Christ is the “raying forth” of the Father’s glory, and “the express image of his person” (Heb. 1: 3), thus by a beautiful figure reminding us that as we can only see the sun in the rays of the sun, so we can only know God in Jesus Christ, who is the manifestation of God. It is so likewise between the second and third Persons of the Trinity. Christ is the image of the invisible God; the Holy Ghost is the invisible image of Christ. As Jesus manifested the Father outwardly, the Spirit manifests Jesus inwardly, forming him within us as the hidden man of the heart, imaging him to the spirit by an interior impression which no intellectual instruction, however diligent, can effect.

In his profound discourse concerning the “unction” and accompanying illumination, John was only expounding by the Spirit what Jesus had said before his departure: “Howbeit, when he the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all {92} truth; he shall glorify me; for he shall receive of mine and shall show it unto you” (John 16: 13). “The Spirit of truth”—How much instruction and suggestion is conveyed by this term! As he is called “the Spirit of Christ,” as revealing Christ in his suffering and glory, so he is called “the Spirit of truth,” as manifesting the truth in all its depths and heights. As impossible as it is that we should know the person of Christ without the Spirit of Christ who reveals him, so impossible it is that we should know the truth as it is in Jesus without the Spirit of truth who is appointed to convey it. “The Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive” (John 14: 17)—We must come to Christ before the Spirit can come to us. “The Spirit of truth which proceedeth from the Father” (John 15: 26)—He can only teach us in intelligent sonship to cry “Abba, Father.” “The Spirit of truth . . . shall guide you into all truth” (John 16: 13). Divine knowledge is all and altogether in his power to communicate, and without his illumination it must be hidden from our understanding.

Thus we have had the enduement of the Spirit presented to us under three aspects—sealing, filling, and anointing—all of which terms, so far as we can understand, signify the same thing—the gift of the Holy Ghost appropriated through faith. Each of these terms is connected with some special {93} Divine endowment—the seal with assurance and consecration; the filling with power; and the anointing with knowledge. All these gifts are wrapt up in the one gift in which they are included, and without whom we are excluded from their possession.

While thus we conclude that it is a Christian’s privilege and duty to claim a distinct anointing of the Spirit to qualify him for his work, we would be careful not to prescribe any stereotyped exercises through which one must necessarily pass in order to possess it. It is easy to cite cases of decisive, vivid, and clearly marked experience of the Spirit’s enduement, as in the lives of Dr. Finney, James Brainard Taylor, and many others. And instead of discrediting these experiences—so definite as to time and so distinct as to accompanying credentials—we would ask the reader to study them, and observe the remarkable effects which followed in the ministry of those who enjoyed them. The lives of many of the co-laborers with Wesley and Whitefield give a striking confirmation of the doctrine which we are defending. Years of barren ministry, in which the gospel was preached with orthodox correctness and literary finish, followed, after the Holy Spirit had been recognized and appropriated, by evangelistic pastorates of the most fervent type, such is the history of not a few of these mighty men of God.

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Let not this great subject be embarrassed by too minute theological definitions on the one hand, nor by the too exacting demand for striking spiritual exercises on the other, lest we put upon simple souls a burden greater than they can bear. Nevertheless we cannot emphasize too strongly the divine crisis in the soul which a full reception of the Holy Ghost may bring. “My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you” (Gal. 4: 19), writes the apostle to those who had already believed on the Son of God. Whatever he may have meant in this fervent saying, we doubt not that the deepest yearning of the Spirit is for the informing of Christ in the heart, in order to that outward conformity to Christ which is the supreme end of Christian nurture. If we conceive of the Christian life as only a gradual growth in grace, is there not danger that we come to regard this growth as both invisible and inevitable, and so take little responsibility for its accomplishment? Let the believer receive the Holy Ghost by a definite act of faith for his consecration, as he received Christ by faith for his justification, and may he not be sure that he is in a safe and scriptural way of acting? We know of no plainer form of stating the matter than to speak of it as a simple acceptance by faith, the faith which is

An affirmation and an act, Which bids eternal truth be present fact.

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It is a fact that Christ has made atonement for sin; in conversion faith appropriates this fact in order to our justification. It is a fact that the Holy Ghost has been given; in consecration faith appropriates this fact for our sanctification. One who writes upon this subject with a scholarship evidently illuminated by a deep spiritual tuition, says: “If a reference to personal experience may be permitted, I may indeed here ‘set my seal.’ Never shall I forget the gain to conscious faith and peace which came to my own soul, not long after a first decisive and appropriating view of the crucified Lord as the sinner’s sacrifice of peace, from a more intelligent and conscious hold upon the living and most gracious personality of the Spirit through whose mercy the soul had got that blessed view. It was a new development of insight into the love of God. It was a new contact as it were with the inner and eternal movements of redeeming goodness and power, a new discovery in divine resources.“[9]

Well is our doctrine described in these italicised words: “A contact with the inner movements of Divine power.” The energy of the Spirit appropriated, even as with uplifted finger the electric car touches the current which is moving just above it in the wire and is borne irresistibly on by it.—Thus does the power which is eternally for us become a power within us; the law of Sinai, with {96} its tables of stone, is replaced by “the law of the Spirit of life” in the fleshly tables of the heart; the outward commandment is exchanged for an inward decalogue; hard duty by holy delight, that henceforth the Christian life may be “all in Christ, by the Holy Spirit, for the glory of God.”

[1] Rev. E. Boys, “Filled with the Spirit,” p. 87.

[2] It is assumed by some that because those that walked with Christ of old received the baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire at Pentecost, more than eighteen hundred years ago, therefore all believers now have received the same. As well might the apostles, when first called, have concluded that because at his baptism the Spirit like a dove rested upon Christ, therefore they had equally received the same blessing. Surely the Spirit has been given and the work in Christ wrought for all; but to enter into possession, to be enlightened and made partakers of the Holy Ghost, there must be a personal application to the Lord, etc.—Andrew Jukes, “The New Man.”

[3] William Kelly, “Lectures on the New Testament Doctrine of the Holy Spirit,” p. 161.

[4] It is a great mistake into which some have fallen, to suppose that the results of Pentecost were chiefly miraculous and temporary. The effect of such a view is to keep spiritual influences out of sight; and it will be well ever to hold fast the assurance that a wide, deep, and perpetual spiritual blessing in the church is that which above all things else was secured by the descent of the Spirit after Christ was glorified.—Dr. J. Elder Cumming, “Through the Eternal Spirit.”

[5] It will be observed that the inscription on the seal is substantially the same as that upon the forehead of the High Priest, [Hebrew characters]—HOLINESS TO THE LORD (Exod. 39: 30).

[Transcriber’s note: I have not attempted to insert the transliterated Hebrew characters in the above footnote. As best my research can tell me, they are, from left to right, H (het, hei), V/O/U (vav), H (het, hei), Y (yod, yud), L (lamed), a blank space, S/Sh (shin), D (dalet) or R (resh, reish), and Q (qof/kuf).]

[6] The allusion to the seal as a pledge of purchase would be peculiarly intelligible to the Ephesians, for Ephesus was a maritime city, and an extensive trade in timber was carried on there by the shipmasters of the neighboring ports. The method of purchase was this: The merchant, after selecting his timber, stamped it with his own signet, which was an acknowledged sign of ownership. He often did not carry off his possession at the time; it was left in the harbor with other floats of timber; but it was chosen, bought, and stamped; and in due time the merchant sent a trusty agent with the signet, who finding that timber which bore a corresponding impress, claimed and brought it away for the master’s use. Thus the Holy Spirit impresses on the soul now the image of Jesus Christ; and this is the sure pledge of the everlasting inheritance.—E. H. Bickersteth, “The Spirit of Life,” p. 176.

[7] John Owen, D. D., “Discourse Concerning the Spirit,” pp. 406, 407.

[8] “Through the Eternal Spirit,” by James Elder Cumming, D.D., pp. 146, 147.

[9] “Veni Creator Spiritus,” by Principal H. C. G. Moule, p. 13.

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VI

THE COMMUNION OF THE SPIRIT

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“In his intimate union with his Son, the Holy Spirit is the unique organ by which God wills to communicate to man his own life, the supernatural life, the divine life—that is to say, his holiness, his power, his love, his felicity. To this end the Son works outwardly, the Holy Spirit inwardly.”—Pastor G. F. Tophel.

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VI

THE COMMUNION OF THE SPIRIT

The familiar benediction which invokes upon us the “communion of the Holy Ghost” has probably a deeper meaning in it than has generally been recognized. The word “communion”—choinônia—signifies the having in common. It is used of the fellowship of believers one with another, and also of their mutual fellowship with God. The Holy Spirit dwelling in us is the agent through whom this community of life and love is effected and maintained. “And truly our fellowship,” says John, “is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1: 3). But this having in common with the first two persons of the Godhead were only possible through the communion of the Holy Ghost, the third person. In his promise of the Comforter, Jesus said: “He shall take of mine and show it unto you.” As the Son while on earth communicated to men the spiritual riches of the invisible Father, so the Spirit now communicates to us the hidden things of the invisible Son; and if we were required to describe in a word the present office-work of the Holy Ghost, we should say that it is to make true in us that which is already true for us in {100} our glorified Lord. All light and life and warmth are stored up for us in the sun; but these can only reach us through the atmosphere which stands between us and that sun as the medium of communication; even so in Christ are “hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,” and by the Holy Spirit these are made over to us. It will be our endeavor in this chapter to count up our hid treasures in Christ, and to consider the Spirit in his various offices of communication.

1. The Spirit of Life: Our Regeneration. Not until our Lord took his place at God’s right hand did he assume his full prerogative as life-giver to us. He was here in the flesh for our death; he took on him our nature that he might in himself crucify our Adam-life and put it away. But when he rose from the dead and sat down on his Father’s throne, he became the life-giver to all his mystical body, which is the church. To talk of being saved by the earthly life of Jesus is to know Christ only “after the flesh.” True, the apostle says that “being reconciled” by Christ’s death, “much more being reconciled we shall be saved by his life.” But he here refers plainly to his glorified life. And Jesus, looking forward to the time when he should have risen from the dead, says: “Because I live, ye shall live also.” Christ on the throne is really the heart of the church, and every regeneration is a pulse-beat of that heart in souls begotten from above {101} through the Holy Spirit. The new birth therefore is not a change of nature as it is sometimes defined; it is rather the communication of the Divine nature, and the Holy Spirit is now the Mediator through whom this life is transmitted. If we take our Lord’s words to Nicodemus: “Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God,” and press the “again” anôthen back to its deepest significance, it becomes very instructive. “Born from above,” say some. And very true to fact is this saying. Regeneration is not our natural life carried up to its highest point of attainment, but the Divine life brought down to its lowest point of condescension, even to the heart of fallen man. John, in speaking of Jesus as the life-giver, calls him “he that cometh from above” (3: 31); and Jesus, in speaking to the degenerate sons of Abraham, says: “Ye are from beneath, I am from above” (John 8: 23). It has been the constant dream and delusion of men that they could rise to heaven by the development and improvement of their natural life. Jesus by one stroke of revelation destroys this hope, telling his hearer that unless he has been begotten of God who is above as truly as he has been begotten of his father on earth, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Others make these words of our Lord signify “born from the beginning.” There must be a resumption of life de novo, a return to the original {102} source and fountain of being. To find this it is not enough that we go back to the creation-beginning revealed in Genesis; we must return to the precreation-beginning revealed in John, the book of re-genesis. In the opening of Genesis we find Adam, created holy, now fallen through temptation, his face averted from God and leading the whole human race after him into sin and death. In the opening of the Gospel of John we find the Son of God in holy fellowship with the Father. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was toward God”, pros ton theon—not merely proceeding from God, but tending toward God by eternal communion. Conversion restores man to this lost attitude: “Ye turned to God, pros ton theon, from idols to serve the living and true God” (1 Thess. 1: 9). Regeneration restores man to his forfeited life, the unfallen life of the Son of God, the life which has never wavered from steadfast fellowship with the Father. “I give unto them eternal life,” says Jesus. Is eternal life without end? Yes; and just as truly without beginning. It is uncreated being in distinction from all-created being; it is the I-am life of God in contrast to the I-become life of all human souls. By spiritual birth we acquire a divine heredity as truly as by natural birth we acquire a human heredity.

In the condensed antithesis with which our Lord concludes his demand for the new birth, we have both the philosophy and the justification of his {103} doctrine: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I say unto you, Ye must be born anew” (John 3: 7, R. V.). By no process of evolution, however prolonged, can the natural man be developed into the spiritual man; by no process of degeneration can the spiritual man deteriorate into the natural man. These two are from a totally different stock and origin; the one is from beneath, the other is from above. There is but one way through which the relation of sonship can be established, and that is by begetting. That God has created all men does not constitute them his sons in the evangelical sense of that word. The sonship on which the New Testament dwells so constantly is based absolutely and solely on the experience of the new birth, while the doctrine of universal sonship rests either upon a daring denial or a daring assumption—the denial of the universal fall of man through sin, or the assumption of the universal regeneration of man through the Spirit. In either case the teaching belongs to “another gospel,” the recompense of whose preaching is not a beatitude but an anathema.[1]

The contrast between the two lives and the way {104} in which the partnership—the choinônia—with the new is effected, is told in that deep saying of Peter: “Whereby he hath granted us his precious and exceeding great promises; that through these ye may become partakers—choinônia—of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption which is in the world by lust” (2 Pet. 1: 4, R. V.). Here are the two streams of life contrasted:

1. The corruption in the world through lust.

2. The Divine nature which is in the world through the incarnation.

Here is the Adam-life into which we are brought by natural birth; and over against it the Christ-life into which we are brought by spiritual birth. From the one we escape, of the other we partake. The source and issue of the one are briefly summarized: “Lust when it hath conceived bringeth forth sin, and sin when it is finished bringeth forth death.” The Jordan is a fitting symbol of our natural life, rising in a lofty elevation and from pure springs, but plunging steadily down till it pours itself into that Dead Sea from which there is no outlet: To be taken out of this stream and to be brought into the life which flows from the heart of God is man’s only hope of salvation. And the method of effecting this transition is plainly stated, “through these,” or by means of the precious and exceeding great promises. As in grafting, the old and degenerate stock must first be cut off and then the new inserted, so {105} in regeneration we are separated from the flesh and incorporated by the Spirit. And what the scion is in grafting, the word or promise of God is in regeneration. It is the medium through which the Holy Spirit is conveyed, the germ cell in which the Divine life is enfolded. Hence the emphasis which is put in Scripture upon the appropriation of divine truth. We are told that “of his own will begat he us with the word of truth” (James 1: 18). “Having been begotten again, not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible, through the word of God, which liveth and abideth” (1 Peter 1: 23, R. V.).

Very deep and significant, therefore, is the saying of Jesus in respect to the regenerating power of his words, in the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John; He emphasizes the contrariety between the two natures, the human and the divine, saying: “It is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing.” And then he adds: “The words which I have spoken unto you are spirit and life.” As God in creation breathed into man the breath of life and he became a living soul, so the Lord Jesus by the word of his mouth, which is the breath of life, recreates man and makes him alive unto God. And not life only, but likeness as well, is thus imparted. “So God created man in his own image; in the image of God created he him,” is the simple story of the origin of an innocent race. Then follows the temptation and the fall, and then the story of the {106} descent of a ruined humanity: “And Adam begot a son in his own likeness, after his image.”

And yet how wide the gulf between these two origins. The notion is persistent and incurable in the human heart, that whatever variation there may have been from the original type, education and training can reshape the likeness of Adam to the likeness of God. “As the twig is bent the tree is inclined,” says the popular proverb. True; but though a crooked sapling may be developed into the upright oak, no bending or manipulation can ever so change the species of the tree as to enable men to gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles. Here again the dualism of Jesus Christ’s teaching is distinctly recognized. “A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.” And what is the remedy for a corrupt tree? The cutting off of the old and the bringing in of a new scion and stock. The life of God can alone beget the likeness of God; the divine type is wrapped up in the same germ which holds the Divine nature. Therefore in regeneration we are said to have “put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him” (Col. 3: 10), and “which after God hath been created in . . . true holiness” (Eph. 4: 24).

In a word, the lost image of God is not restamped upon us, but renewed within us. Christ our life was “begotten of the Holy Ghost,” and he became {107} the fount and origin of life henceforth for all his church. This communication of the divine life from Christ to the soul through the Holy Spirit is a hidden transaction, but so great in its significance and issues that one has well called it “the greatest of all miracles.” As in the origin of our natural life we are made in secret and curiously wrought, much more in our spiritual. But the issue has to do with the farthest eternity. “As when the Lord was born the world still went on its old way, little conscious that one had come who should one day change and rule all things, so when the new man is framed within, the old life for a while goes on much as before; the daily calling, and the earthly cares, and too often old lusts and habits also, still engross us; a worldly eye sees little new, while yet the life which shall live forever has been quickened within and a new man been formed who shall inherit all.”[2]

2. The Spirit of Holiness: Our Sanctification. “According to the Spirit of holiness” Christ “was declared to be the Son of God in power by the resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1: 4). How striking the antithesis between our Lord’s two natures, as revealed in this passage, Son of David as to the flesh, Son of God as to the Spirit. And “as he is so are we in this world.” We who are regenerate have two natures, the one derived from Adam, the other {108} derived from Christ, and our sanctification consists in the double process of mortification and vivification, the deadening and subduing of the old and the quickening and developing of the new. In other words, what was wrought in Christ who was “put to death in the flesh but quickened in the spirit” is rewrought in us through the constant operation of the Holy Ghost, and thus the cross and the resurrection extend their sway over the entire life of the Christian. Consider these two experiences.

Mortification is not asceticism. It is not a self-inflicted compunction, but a Christ-inflicted crucifixion. Our Lord was done with the cross when on Calvary he cried: “It is finished.” But where he ended each disciple must begin: “If any man will come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it” (Matt. 16: 24, 25). These words, so constantly repeated in one form or another by our Lord, make it clear that the death-principle must be realized within us in order that the life-principle may have final and triumphant sway. It is to this truth which every disciple is solemnly committed in his baptism: “Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by {109} the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6: 3, 4). Baptism is the monogram of the Christian; by it every believer is sealed and certified as a participant in the death and life of Christ; and the Holy Spirit has been given to be the Executor of the contract thus made at the symbolic grave of Christ.

In considering the great fact of the believer’s death in Christ to sin and the law, we must not confound what the Scriptures clearly distinguish. There are three deaths in which we have part:

1. Death in sin, our natural condition.

2. Death for sin, our judicial condition.

3. Death to sin, our sanctified condition.

1. Death in sin. “And you . . . who were dead in trespasses and sins,” “And you being dead in your sins” (Eph. 2: 1; Col. 2: 13). This is the condition in which we are by nature, as participants in the fall and ruin into which the transgression of our first parents has plunged the race. It is a condition in which we are under moral insensibility to the claims of God’s holiness and love; and under the sentence of eternal punishment from the law which we have broken. In this state of death in sin Christ found the whole world when he came to be our Saviour.

2. Death for sin. “Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ” (Rom. 7: 4). This is the condition into {110} which Christ brought us by his sacrifice upon the cross. He endured the sentence of a violated law on our behalf, and therefore we are counted as having endured it in him. What he did for us is reckoned as having been done by us: “Because we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died” (2 Cor. 5: 14, R. V.). Being one with Christ through faith, we are identified with him on the cross: “I have been crucified with Christ” (Gal. 2: 20, R. V.). This condition of death for sin having been effected for us by our Saviour, we are held legally or judicially free from the penalty of a violated law, if by our personal faith we will consent to the transaction.

3. Death to sin. “Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6: 11, R. V.). This is the condition of making true in ourselves what is already true for us in Christ, of rendering practical what is now judicial; in other words, of being dead to the power of sin in ourselves, as we are already dead to the penalty of sin through Jesus Christ. As it is written in the Epistle to the Colossians: “For ye died,” judicially in Christ, “mortify”—make dead practically—”therefore your members which are upon the earth” (Col. 3: 2, 5, R. V.). It is this condition which the Holy Spirit is constantly effecting in us if we will have it so. “If ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body {111} ye shall live” (Rom. 8: 13). This is not self-deadening, as the Revised Version seems to suggest by its decapitalizing of the word “Spirit.” Self is not powerful enough to conquer self, the human spirit to get the victory over the human flesh. That were like a drowning man with his right hand laying hold on his left hand, only that both may sink beneath the waves. “Old Adam is too strong for young Melancthon,” said the Reformer. It is the Spirit of God overcoming our fleshly nature by his indwelling life, on whom is our sole dependence. Our principal care therefore must be to “walk in the Spirit” and “be filled with the Spirit,” and all the rest will come spontaneously and inevitably. As the ascending sap in the tree crowds off the dead leaves which in spite of storm and frost cling to the branches all winter long, so does the Holy Ghost within us, when allowed full sway, subdue and expel the remnants of our sinful nature.

One cannot fail to see that asceticism is an absolute inversion of the Divine order, since it seeks life through death instead of finding death through life. No degree of mortification can ever bring us to sanctification. We are to “put off the old man with his deeds.” But how? By “putting on the new man who is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him.” “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death” (Rom. 8: 2), {112} writes Paul. It is a pointed statement of the case which one makes in describing the transition from the old to the new in his own experience, from the former life of perpetual defeat to the present life of victory through Christ. “Once it was a constant breaking off, now it is a daily bringing in,” he says. That is, the former striving was directed to being rid of the inveterate habits and evil tendencies of the old nature—its selfishness, its pride, its lust, and its vanity. Now the effort is to bring in the Spirit, to drink in his divine presence, to breathe, as a holy atmosphere, his supernatural life. The indwelling of the Spirit can alone effect the exclusion of sin. This will appear if we consider what has been called “the expulsive power of a new affection.” “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world,” says the Scripture. But all experience proves that loving not is only possible through loving, the worldly affection being overcome by the heavenly.

And we find this method clearly exhibited in the word. “The love of the Spirit” (Rom. 15: 30) is given us for overcoming the world. The divine life is the source of the divine love. Therefore “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.” Because we are by nature so wholly without heavenly affection, God, through the indwelling Spirit, gives us his own love with which to love himself. Herein {113} is the highest credential of discipleship: “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another” (John 13: 35). As Christ manifested to the world the love of the Father, so are we to manifest the love of Christ—a manifestation, however, which is only possible because of our possessorship of a common life. As one has truly said concerning our Saviour’s command to his disciples to love one another: “It is a command which would be utterly idle and futile were it not that he, the ever-loving One, is willing to put his own love within me. The command is really no more than to be a branch of the true vine. I am to cease from my own living and loving, and yield myself to the expression of Christ’s love.”

And what is true of the love of Christ is true of the likeness of Christ. How is the likeness acquired? Through contemplation and imitation? So some have taught. And it is true, if only the indwelling Spirit is behind all, beneath all, and effectually operative in all. As it is written: “But we all with unveiled face, reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3: 18, R. V.). It is only the Spirit of the Lord dwelling within us that can fashion us to the image of the Lord set before us. Who is sufficient by external imitation of Christ to become {114} conformed to the likeness of Christ? Imagine one without genius and devoid of the artist’s training sitting down before Raphael’s famous picture of the Transfiguration and attempting to reproduce it. How crude and mechanical and lifeless his work would be! But if such a thing were possible that the spirit of Raphael should enter into the man and obtain the mastery of his mind and eye and hand, it would be entirely possible that he should paint this masterpiece; for it would simply be Raphael reproducing Raphael. And this in a mystery is what is true of the disciple filled with the Holy Ghost. Christ, who is “the image of the invisible God,” is set before him as his divine pattern, and Christ by the Spirit dwells within him as a divine life, and Christ is able to image forth Christ from the interior life to the outward example.

Of course likeness to Christ is but another name for holiness, and when, at the resurrection, we awake satisfied with his likeness (Ps. 17: 15), we shall be perfected in holiness. This is simply saying that sanctification is progressive and not, like conversion, instantaneous. And yet we must admit the force of what a devout and thoughtful writer says as to the danger of regarding it as only a gradual growth. If a Christian looks upon himself as “a tree planted by the rivers of water that bringeth forth his fruit in his season,” he judges rightly. But to conclude therefore that his growth will be as {115} irresistible as that of the tree, coming as a matter of course simply because he has by regeneration been planted in Christ, is a grave mistake. The disciple is required to be consciously and intelligently active in his own growth, as a tree is not, “to give all diligence to make his calling and election sure.” And when we say “active” we do not mean self-active merely, for “which of you by being anxious can add one cubit unto his stature?” asks Jesus (Matt. 6: 27, R. V.). But we must surrender ourselves to the divine action by living in the Spirit and praying in the Spirit and walking in the Spirit, all of which conditions are as essential to our development in holiness, as the rain and the sunshine are to the growth of the oak. It is possible that through a neglect and grieving of the Spirit a Christian may be of smaller stature in his age than he was in his spiritual infancy, his progress being a retrogression rather than an advance. Therefore in saying that sanctification is progressive let us beware of concluding that it is inevitable.

Moreover, as candid inquirers, we must ask what of truth and of error there may be in the doctrine of “instantaneous sanctification,” which many devout persons teach and profess to have proved. If the conception is that of a state of sinless perfection into which the believer has been suddenly lifted and of deliverance from a sinful nature which has been suddenly eradicated, we must {116} consider this doctrine as dangerously untrue. But we do consider it possible that one may experience a great crisis in his spiritual life, in which there is such a total self-surrender to God and such an infilling of the Holy Spirit, that he is freed from the bondage of sinful appetites and habits, and enabled to have constant victory over self, instead of suffering constant defeat. In saying this, what more do we affirm than is taught in that scripture: “Walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh” (Gal. 5: 16).

Divine truth as revealed in Scripture seems often to lie between two extremes. It is emphatically so in regard to this question. What a paradox it is that side by side in the Epistle of John we should have the strongest affirmation of the Christian’s sinfulness: “If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us”; and the strongest affirmation of his sinlessness: “Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin, for his seed remaineth in him, and he cannot sin because he is born of God” (1 John 1: 8; 3: 9). Now heresy means a dividing or choosing, and almost all of the gravest errors have arisen from adopting some extreme statement of Scripture to the rejection of the other extreme. If we regard the doctrine of sinless perfection as a heresy, we regard contentment with sinful imperfection as a greater heresy. And we gravely fear that many Christians make the {117} apostle’s words, “If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves,” the unconscious justification for a low standard of Christian living. It were almost better for one to overstate the possibilities of sanctification in his eager grasp after holiness, than to understate them in his complacent satisfaction with a traditional unholiness. Certainly it is not an edifying spectacle to see a Christian worldling throwing stones at a Christian perfectionist.

What then would be a true statement of the doctrine which we are considering, one which would embrace both extremes of statement as they appear in the Epistle of John? Sinful in self, sinless in Christ—is our answer: “In him is no sin; whosoever abideth in him sinneth not” (1 John 3: 5, 6). If through the communication of the Holy Spirit the life of Christ is constantly imparted to us, that life will prevail within us. That life is absolutely sinless, as incapable of defilement as the sunbeam which has its fount and origin in the sun. In proportion to the closeness of our abiding in him will be the completeness of our deliverance from sinning. And we doubt not that there are Christians who have yielded themselves to God in such absolute surrender, and who through the upholding power of the Spirit have been so kept in that condition of surrender, that sin has not had dominion over them. If in them the war between the flesh and the spirit has not been forever ended, there has {118} been present victory in which troublesome sins have ceased from their assaults, and “the peace of God” has ruled in the heart.

But sinning is one thing and a sinful nature is another; and we see no evidence in Scripture that the latter is ever eradicated completely while we are in the body. If we could see ourselves with God’s eye, we should doubtless discover sinfulness lying beneath our most joyful moments of unsinning conduct, and the stain of our old and fallen nature so discoloring our whitest actions as to convince us that we are not yet faultless in his presence. Only let us gladly emphasize this fact, that as we inherit from Adam a nature incapable of sinlessness, we inherit from Christ a nature incapable of sinfulness. Therefore, it is written: “Whosoever is born of God cannot sin, for his seed remaineth in him.” It is not the nature of the new nature to sin; it is not the law of “the law of the Spirit of life” to transgress. For the new-born man to do evil is to transgress the law of his nature as before it was to obey it. In a word, before our regeneration we lived in sin and loved it; since our regeneration we may lapse into sin but we loathe it.

3. The Spirit of Glory: Our Transfiguration. “The Spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you,” writes Peter (1 Peter 4: 14). Let us recall this apostle’s habit of dividing the stages of redemption into these two, “the sufferings of Christ and the {119} glory that should follow,” in which he seems to conceive of our Lord’s mystical body, the church, as passing through and reproducing the twofold experience of its Head, in humiliation and in subsequent exaltation. Even in the time of her humiliation she has the Spirit of glory abiding on her, as the cloud of glory rested down upon the tabernacle in the wilderness during all the pilgrimage of the children of Israel. And is not Peter’s saying the same as Paul’s, in his picture of the suffering creation: “But ourselves also, which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body” (Rom. 8: 23). Not yet have we reached the consummation of our hope, at the “appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ” (Titus 2: 13, R. V.); but the Spirit, through whose inworking power this great change is to be wrought, already dwells in us, giving us by his present quickening the pledge and earnest of our final glory. And so we read in another Scripture: “But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you” (Rom. 8: 11). It is not our dead bodies which are here spoken of as the objects of the Spirit’s quickening, but our mortal bodies—bodies liable to death and doomed to death if the Lord {120} tarry, but not yet having experienced death. Hence the quickening referred to has to do rather with the vivifying of the living saints than the resurrection of the dead saints.

Of course the consummation of this vivifying is at the Lord’s coming, when those who have died shall be raised, and those who are alive shall be transfigured; but because of the Spirit of life dwelling in us, who shall say that the process has not even now begun? To explain: “Behold I shew you a mystery,” says Paul; “we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump” (1 Cor. 15: 51, 52). That is, as at Christ’s coming the dead saints will be raised, so the living saints will be translated without seeing death. A change will come to them, so far as we can understand, like that which came to Jesus at his resurrection—the body glorified, all of mortal and earthly belonging to it by nature eliminated in an instant, and the Holy Ghost so completely transforming and immortalizing it that it shall become perfectly fashioned to the likeness of Christ’s glorified body. But having the Spirit dwelling in us we have, even now, the first-fruits of this transformation in the daily renewing of our inward man, in the helping and healing and strengthening which sometimes comes to our bodies through the hidden life of the Holy Ghost. Sanctification is progressive, waiting to be {121} consummated in the future; so is glorification in some sense progressive, since by the presence of the Spirit we already have the earnest of the glory that is to be. As Edward Irving beautifully states it, condensing his language: “As sickness is sin apparent in the body, the presentiment of death, the forerunner of corruption, and as disease of every kind is mortality begun, so the quickening of our mortal bodies by the inward inspiration of the Spirit is the resurrection forestalled, redemption anticipated, glory begun in our humiliation.”

When is sanctification completed? At death, is the answer which we find given in some creeds and manuals of theology. This may be true; but we say it not, because the Scripture saith it not. So far as we can infer from the word of God the date of our sanctification or perfection in holiness is definitely fixed at the appearing of the Lord “a second time without sin unto salvation.” Our sanctification, now going on, is glory begun in us; our glorification then ushered in will be glory completed in us. The Spirit of glory now working in us brings forward and already works within us the beginning of the perfect life. Because we have been made “partakers of the Holy Ghost” we have thereby “tasted the powers of the age to come” (Heb. 6: 4, 5, R. V.), that age of complete deliverance from sin and sickness and death. But at most we have only tasted as yet; we have not {122} drunk fully into the fountain of immortal life. It is at Christ’s advent that this blessed consummation is fixed: “To the end he may establish your hearts unblamable in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints” (1 Thess. 3: 13, R. V.). Not simply blameless but faultless, seems to be the condition here foretold, since it is unblamable in the sphere and element of holiness.

And with this agrees another text in the same epistle: “And the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved entire without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thess. 5: 23, R. V.). The time appointed for the consummation of this blameless wholeness is at the Saviour’s advent in glory. And how suggestive the order maintained in naming the threefold man: “Your spirit, soul, and body.” Our sanctification moves from within outward. It begins with the spirit, which is the holy of holies; the Spirit of God acting first on the spirit of man in renewing grace, then upon the soul, till at last it reaches the outer court of the body, at the resurrection and translation. When the body is glorified, then only will sanctification be consummated, for then only will the whole man, spirit, soul, and body, have come under the Spirit’s perfecting power.

We may see the difference between progressive {123} sanctification and perfected sanctification, or glorification, by comparing familiar texts. One already has been quoted in this chapter: “We all, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor. 3: 18). Here are degrees of progress “from glory to glory,” and it is a progress in the glorified life—gradual conformity to the Lord of glory, through successive stages of glory, effected by the Spirit of glory. The word-painting of the passage inevitably associates it in our thought with the great transfiguration experience of our Lord, when by a kind of rapture he was for a little while taken out of “this present evil age” (Gal. 1: 4), and translated into “the age to come,” and made to taste of its powers as “he appeared in glory” (Heb. 6: 5, R. V.). So says the apostle: “Be not fashioned according to this age, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds” (Rom. 12: 2, R. V.). That is, by his inward transformation the Holy Spirit is to be daily repeating in us the Lord’s glorification, separating us from the present age of sin and death and assimilating us to the age to come, with its resurrection triumph and its perfected restoration to God, when we shall be presented “faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy” (Jude 24). This is our step-by-step advancement into a predestined inheritance; and it must for the present be {124} step by step. “Of his fullness have all we received,” but we can appropriate that fullness only “grace by grace” (John 1: 16). Of his righteousness we have all been made partakers, but we only advance in its possession “from faith to faith” (Rom. 1: 17). Even in passing through the valley of Baca we can make it a place of springs, going “from strength to strength” as we appear “before God in Zion” (Ps. 84: 6). Thus our growth in grace is our glory begun; but the progress is like the artist’s slow and patient perfecting of his picture. Turn now to another statement: “We know that if he shall be manifested we shall be like him, for we shall see him even as he is” (1 John 3: 2, R. V.). Whatever difficulty may arise from another translation of this passage, one thought seems to be taught in the entire connection, viz., that the unveiled manifestation of God will bring the full perfection of his saints. Thus Alford sums up the meaning of the passage. As the believer, having by a knowledge of God been regenerated, “becomes more and more like God, having his seed in him, so the full and perfect accomplishment of this knowledge in the actual fruition of God himself must of necessity bring with it entire likeness to God.” In a word, it seems to us that the sanctification taking place at the manifestation of our incarnate Lord will be as the instantaneous photograph compared with the Spirit’s slow and patient limning of the {125} image of Christ in our present state. “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,” “we shall be changed” (1 Cor. 15: 52). Then the glorified body and the glorified spirit, long divorced by sin, will be remarried. So long as this twain are separated by death, or are at war in our present earthy life, our perfection in holiness were impossible.

It is because the resurrection and translation of the saints are instantaneous that we affirm sanctification to be instantaneous at the coming of the Lord. The Scripture is always harmonious with itself, however widely separated the writers of its books by time or distance. David struck the same joyful note with John, though the learned may insist that he did not know of the resurrection. “As for me, I shall behold thy face in righteousness”—the seeing him as he is and being made fit to see him. “I shall be satisfied when I awake in thy likeness”—the conformity to the Divine image at the instant sound of the resurrection trump. (Ps. 17: 15.) Perhaps we may conjecture wherein will consist the perfection of the resurrection state. We may find it in that one saying: “It is raised a spiritual body” (1 Cor. 15: 44). Now, how often the body dominates the spirit, making it do what it would not; but then, the spirit will dominate the body, making it do as it will. In a house divided against itself there can be neither perfection nor peace. Such is the condition in our present state {126} of humiliation. And not the body alone, but the immaterial within us may be at war with the divine. What does the Apostle Jude mean in his description of certain who separated themselves, saying that they are “sensual, having not the Spirit” (Jude 19). The soul, the middle factor in the man, if we may say so, instead of being in alliance with our higher nature, the spirit, takes sides with the lower, the flesh, so that instead of being spiritual we become “earthly, sensual, devilish” (James 3: 15). The whole man must be presented blameless at the coming of the Lord before we can enter upon a state of blessed perfection. Our spirit must not only rule our soul and our body, but both these must be subject to the Holy Spirit of God. Dimly and imperfectly do we thus image to ourselves the perfection of our “spiritual body.” Now the body bears the spirit, a slow chariot, whose wheels are often disabled, and whose swiftest motion is but labored and tardy. Then the spirit will bear the body, carrying it as on wings of thought whithersoever it will. The Holy Ghost, by his divine inworking will, has completed in us the Divine likeness, and perfected over us the Divine dominion. The human body will now be in sovereign subjection to the human spirit, and the human spirit to the divine Spirit, and God will be all and in all.

[1] Milton probably gives the true genesis of this doctrine in these words, which he puts into the mouth of Satan:

“The son of God I also am or was; And if I was, I am; relation stands; All men are sons of God.”

[2] Andrew Jukes, “The New Man,” p. 53.

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VII

THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE SPIRIT

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“The Holy Ghost from the day of Pentecost has occupied an entirely new position. The whole administration of the affairs of the Church of Christ has since that day devolved upon him. . . That day was the installation of the Holy Spirit as the Administrator of the Church in all things, which office he is to exercise according to circumstances at his discretion. It is as vested with such authority that he gives his name to this dispensation. . . There is but one other great event to which the Scripture directs us to look, and that is the second coming of the Lord. Till then we live in the Pentecostal age and under the rule of the Holy Ghost.”—James Elder Cumming, D. D.

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VII

THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE SPIRIT

The Holy Spirit, as coming down to fill the place of the ascended Redeemer, has rightly been called “The Vicar of Jesus Christ.” To him the entire administration of the church has been committed until the Lord shall return in glory. His oversight extends to the slightest detail in the ordering of God’s house, holding all in subjection to the will of the Head, and directing all in harmony with the divine plan. How clearly this comes out in that passage in the twelfth chapter of First Corinthians. As in striking a series of concentric circles there is always one fixed center holding each circumference in defined relation to itself, so here we see all the “diversities of administrations” determined by the one Administrator, the Holy Ghost. “Varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit“; “diversities of working, but the same God“; different words “according to the same Spirit“; “gifts of faith in the same Spirit“; “gifts of healing in the one Spirit“; miracles, prophecies, tongues, interpretations, “but all these worketh the one and the same Spirit, dividing to each one severally as he will.” Whether the authority of this one ruling {130} sovereign Holy Ghost be recognized or ignored determines whether the church shall be an anarchy or a unity, a synagogue of lawless ones or the temple of the living God.

Would one desire to find the clue to the great apostasy whose dark eclipse now covers two-thirds of nominal Christendom, here it is—the rule and authority of the Holy Spirit ignored in the church; the servants of the house assuming mastery and encroaching more and more on the prerogatives of the Head, till at last one man sets himself up as the administrator of the church, and daringly usurps the name of “The Vicar of Christ.” When the Spirit of the Lord, speaking by Paul, would picture the mystery of lawlessness and the culmination of apostasy, he gives us a description which none should misunderstand: “So that he, as God, sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God” (2 Thess. 2: 4). What is the temple of God? The church without a question: “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” (1 Cor. 3: 16). Whose prerogative is it to sit there? The Holy Ghost’s, its ruler and administrator, and his alone.

When Christ, our Paraclete with the Father, entered upon his ministry on high, we are told more than a score of times that he “sat down at the right hand of God.” Henceforth heaven is his official seat, until he returns in power and great glory. {131} When he sent down another Paraclete to abide with us for the age, he took his seat in the church, the temple of God, there to rule and to administer till the Lord returns. There is but one “Holy See” upon earth: that is, the seat of the Holy One in the church, which only the Spirit of God can occupy without the most daring blasphemy. It becomes all true believers to look well to that picture of one “sitting in the temple of God,” and to read the lesson which it teaches. We may have no temptation toward the papacy, which thrusts a man into the seat of the Holy Ghost,[1] or toward clerisy which obtrudes an order of ecclesiastics—archbishops, cardinals, and archdeacons into that sacred place; but let us remember that a democracy may be guilty of the same sin as a hierarchy, in settling solemn issues by a “show of hands,” instead of prayerfully waiting for the guidance of the Holy Spirit, in substituting the voice of a {132} majority for the voice of the Spirit. Of course, in speaking thus we concede that the Holy Spirit makes known his will in the voice of believers, as also in the voice of Scripture. Only there must be such prayerful sanctifying of the one and such prayerful search of the other, that in reaching decisions in the church there may be the same declaration as in the first Christian council: “It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us” (Acts 15: 28).

In some very profound teaching in 2 Cor. 3 we seem to have a hint as to how we hear the voice of the Lord in guiding the affairs of the church. There, the administration (diachonia) of the Spirit is distinctly spoken of in contrast with the administration of the law. Its deliverances are written “not with ink, not in tables of stone, but in the tables that are the hearts of flesh, with the Spirit of the living God” (R. V.). There must be a sensitive heart wherein this handwriting may be inscribed; an unhindering will through which he may act. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty,” it is written in the same passage; liberty for God to speak and act as he will through us, which begets loyalty; not liberty for us to act as we will, which begets lawlessness.

To us there is something exceedingly suggestive in the teaching of the Lord’s post-ascension gospel, the Revelation, on this point. The epistles to the {133} seven churches we hold, with many of the best commentators, to be a prophetic setting forth of the successive stages of the church’s history—its declines and its recoveries, its failures and its repentances, from ascension to advent. And because the bride of Christ is perpetually betrayed into listening to false teachers and surrendering to the guidance of evil counsellors, the Lord is constantly admonishing her to heed the voice of her true Teacher and Guide, the Holy Ghost. How forcibly this admonition is introduced into the great Apocalyptic drama! As in the opening of the successive seals, representing the judgments of God upon apostate Christendom, the cry is repeated, “Come”! “Come”! “Come”! “Come”! (Rev. 6)—as though the church under chastisement would repeatedly relearn the advent prayer which her Lord put into her mouth in the beginning: “Even so, come, Lord Jesus,” so at each stage of the church’s backsliding a voice is heard from heaven saying: “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.” It is the admonition “of him that hath the seven spirits of God,” seven times addressed to his church throughout her earthly history, calling her to return from her false guides and misleading teachers, and to listen to the voice of her true Counsellor.

From this general statement of the administration of the Holy Spirit let us now descend to the {134} particular acts and offices in which this authority is exercised.

1. The Holy Spirit in the ministry and government of the church. In speaking to the elders of Ephesus Paul says: “Take heed unto yourselves, and to all the flock in the which the Holy Ghost hath made you bishops, to feed the church of God” (Acts 20: 28, R. V.). Clearly in the beginning bishops or pastors were given by the Spirit of God, not by the suffrages of the people. The office and its incumbent were alike by direct divine appointment. We find this distinctly set forth in the Epistle to the Ephesians: “When he ascended on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. . . And he gave some to be apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministering, unto the building up of the body of Christ” (Eph. 4: 8-12, R. V.). The ascent of the Lord and the descent of the Spirit are here exhibited in their necessary relation. In the one event Christ took his seat in heaven as “Head over all things to his church”; in the other the Holy Ghost came down to begin the work of “building up the body of Christ.” Of course it is the Head who directs the construction of the body, as being “fitly framed together it groweth into a holy temple in the Lord”; and it is the Holy Ghost who superintends this construction since “we are {135} builded together for an habitation of God in the Spirit.” Therefore all the offices through which this work is to be carried on were appointed by Christ and instituted through the Spirit whom he sent down. Suppose now that men invent offices which are not named in the inspired list, and set up in the church an order of popes and cardinals, archbishops and archdeacons? Is it not a presumption, the worst fruit of which is not alone that it introduces confusion into the body of Christ, but that it begets insubordination to the rule of the Holy Ghost? But suppose, on the other hand, that we sacredly maintain those offices of the ministry which have been established for permanent continuance in the church, and yet take it upon us to fill these according to our own preference and will; is this any less an affront to the Spirit?

Doubtless the mistakes of God’s servants, as given in Scripture are as truly designed for our instruction and admonition as their obedient examples. We think we do not err in finding such a recorded warning in the opening chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. A vacancy had occurred in the apostolate. Standing up in the upper room, amidst the hundred and twenty, Peter boldly affirmed that this vacancy must be filled, and of the men who had companied with them during the Lord’s earthly ministry, “one must be ordained to be a witness with us of his resurrection.” But the {136} disciples had hitherto had no voice in choosing apostles. The Lord had done this of his own sovereign will: “Have I not chosen you twelve?” Now he had gone away into heaven, and his Administrator had not yet arrived to enter upon his office-work. Surely if the divine order was to be, that having “ascended on high” he was “to give some apostles,” it were better to await the coming of the Paraclete with his gifts. Not only so, but we are persuaded that, with Christ departed and the Holy Spirit not yet come, a valid election of an apostle were impossible. But in spite of this, a nomination was made; prayer was offered in which the Lord was asked to indicate which of the candidates he had chosen; and then a vote having been taken, Matthias was declared elected. Is there any indication that this choice was ever ratified by the Lord? On the contrary, Matthias passes into obscurity from this time, his name never again being mentioned. Some two years subsequent, the Lord calls Saul of Tarsus; he is sealed with his Spirit, and certified by such evident credentials of the Divine appointment that he boldly signs himself “Paul, an apostle, not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father” (Gal. 1: 1).

We believe that the apostolic office has passed away, the qualification therefor, that of having been a witness of the Lord’s resurrection, being now impossible. But the office of pastor, elder, bishop, or {137} teacher of the flock still remains. And the divine plan is that this office should be filled, just as in the beginning, by the appointment of the Holy Ghost. Nor can we doubt that if there is a prayerful waiting upon him for guidance, and a sanctified submission to his will when it is made known, he will now choose pastors and set them over their appointed flocks just as manifestly as he did in the beginning. Very beautiful is the picture in Revelation of the glorified Lord, moving among the candlesticks. There are “seven golden candlesticks” now, not one only as in the Jewish temple. The Church of God is manifold, not a unit.[2] He who “walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks” “holdeth the seven stars in his right hand.” These stars are “the angels of the seven churches”—their ministers or bishops as generally understood. The Lord holds them in his right hand. Does he not require us to ask of him alone for their bestowal? Yes. “Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth laborers into his harvest” (Luke 10: 2). There is no intimation in Scripture that we are to apply anywhere but to him for the ministry of his church. Does he not give {138} such ministry, and he alone? Yes. “When he ascended on high . . . he gave some . . . pastors and teachers.” And now, speaking to the church in Ephesus, the elders of which, chosen by the Holy Ghost, Paul had so affectionately exhorted, he is seen in the attitude of Chief-shepherd and Bishop—giving pastors with his own hand; placing them with his own right hand, and warning the church that though they have tried and rejected false apostles, they have nevertheless left their “first love.” Significant word! On this love our Lord conditioned the indwelling of the Father and of the Son through the Holy Spirit (John 14: 23). Losing this the peril becomes imminent that the candlestick may be removed out of its place; and so the warning is solemnly announced: “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.” Without the Spirit the candlestick can shed forth no light, and loses its place of testimony.

Dead churches, whose witness has been silenced, whose place has been vacated, even though the lifeless form remains, have we not seen such? And what is the safeguard against them, if not that found in the apostle’s warning: “Quench not the Spirit?” The voice of the Lord must be heard in his church, and to the Holy Ghost alone has been committed the prerogative of communicating that voice. Is there any likelihood that that voice will be heard when the king or prime minister of a civil {139} government holds the sole function of appointing the bishops, as in the case of State churches? Is there any certainty of it when an archbishop or bishop puts pastors over flocks by the action of his single will? We may congratulate ourselves that we are neither in a State church nor under an episcopal bishop; but there are methods of ignoring or repressing the voice of the Holy Ghost, which though simpler and far less apparent than those just indicated, are no less violent. The humble and godly membership of the little church may turn to some pastor, after much prayer and waiting on God for the Spirit’s guidance, and the signs of the divine choice may be clearly manifest; when some pulpit committee, or some conclave of “leading brethren,” vetoes their action on the ground, perchance, that the candidate is not popular and will not draw. Alas! for the little flock so lorded over that the voice of the Holy Ghost cannot be heard.

And majorities are no more to be depended upon than minorities, if there is in both cases a neglect of patient and prolonged waiting upon the Lord to know his will. Of what value is a “show of hands” unless his are stretched out “who holdeth the seven stars in his right hand?” Of what use is a viva voce choice, except the living voice of Christ be heard speaking by his Spirit? One may object that we are holding up an ideal which is impossible to be realized. It is a difficult ideal we admit, as {140} the highest attainments are always difficult; but it is not an impossible one. It is easier to recite our prayers from a book than to read them from the tables of a prepared heart, where the finger of the Spirit has silently written them; but the more difficult way is the more acceptable way to him who seeks for worshipers who “worship in Spirit and in truth.” It is easier to get “the sense of the meeting” in choosing a pastor than to learn “the mind of the Spirit” by patient tarrying and humble surrender to God; but the more laborious way will certainly prove the more profitable way. The failure to take this way is, we are persuaded, the cause of more decay and spiritual death in the churches than we have yet imagined. From the watch-tower where we write we can look out on half a score of churches on which “Ichabod” has been evidently written, and the glory of which has long since departed. They were founded in prayer and consecration, “to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven.” Why has their light been extinguished, though the lampstand which once bore it still remains, adorned and beautified with all that the highest art and architecture can suggest? Their history is known to him who walks among the golden candlesticks. What violence may have been done, by headstrong self-will, to him who is called “the Spirit of counsel and might”? What rejection of the truth which he, “the Spirit {141} of truth,” has appointed for the faith of God’s church till at last the word has been spoken: “Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost; as your fathers did, so do ye.” Is it only Jewish worshipers to whom these words apply? Is it only a Jewish temple of which this sentence is true: “Behold your house is left unto you desolate”? The Spirit will not be entirely withdrawn from the body of Christ indeed, but there is the Church, and there are churches. A man may yet live and breathe when cell after cell has been closed by congestion till at last he only inhales and exhales with a little portion of one lung. Let him that readeth understand.

The Spirit is the breath of God in the body of his church. While that divine body survives and must, multitudes of churches have so shut out the Spirit from rule and authority and supremacy in the midst of them that the ascended Lord can only say to them: “Thou hast a name to live and art dead.” In a word, so vital and indispensable is the ministry of the Spirit, that without it nothing else will avail. Some trust in creeds, and some in ordinances; some suppose that the church’s security lies in a sound theology, and others locate it in a primitive simplicity of government and worship; but it lies in none of these, desirable as they are. The body may be as to its organs perfect and entire, wanting nothing; but simply because the Spirit has been {142} withdrawn from it, it has passed from a church into a corpse. As one has powerfully stated it: “When the Holy Spirit withdraws, . . . he sometimes allows the forms which he has created to remain. The oil is exhausted, but the lamp is still there; prayer is offered and the Bible read; church-going is not given up, and to a certain degree the service is enjoyed; in a word religious habits are preserved, and like the corpses found at Pompeii, which were in a perfect state of preservation and in the very position in which death had surprised them, but which were reduced to ashes by contact with the air, so the blast of trial, of temptation, or of final judgment will destroy these spiritual corpses.”[3]

2. The Holy Spirit in the Worship and Service of the Church. Is there anything, from highest to lowest, which we are called to do in connection with the worship of God’s house, of which the Holy Spirit is not the appointed agent? Believers are the instruments indeed through which he acts; but they have no function apart from his inspiration and guidance, any more than the organ-pipe has without the wind, which breathing through it causes it to resound. To make this clear, we may consider the several parts of the service of the church as we are accustomed to participate in it, and observe their relation to the divine Administrator.

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(1) Preaching is by general consent an important factor of the work of the ministry, both for the pastor and for the evangelist. In what consists its inspiration and authority? We “have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven” (1 Peter 1: 12), is Peter’s simple story of the apostolic method. And the words direct our thought to the Spirit not as instrumental but as inspiring. “In the Holy Ghost,” the words mean literally. The true preacher does not simply use the Spirit; he is used by the Spirit. He speaks as one moving in the element and atmosphere of the Holy Ghost, and mastered by his divine power.

In this fact the sermon differs immeasurably from the speech, and the preacher from the orator. How distinctly Paul emphasizes this contrast in his letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 2: 4). The sole substance of his preaching he declares to be “Jesus Christ and him crucified,” and the sole inspiration of his preaching, the Holy Ghost: “And my speech was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and power.” What did good Philip Henry mean by his resolve “to preach Christ crucified in a crucified style”? More perhaps than he thought or knew. “He shall testify of me,” is Jesus’ saying concerning the promised Paraclete. The Comforter bears witness to the Crucified. No other theme in the pulpit can be sure of commanding his co-operation. {144} Philosophy, poetry, art, literature, sociology, ethics, and history are attractive subjects to many minds, and they who handle such themes in the pulpit may set them forth with alluring words of human genius; but there is no certainty that the Holy Ghost will accompany their presentation with his divine attestation. The preaching of the Cross, in chastened simplicity of speech, has the demonstration of the Spirit pledged to it, as no secular, or moral, or even formal religious discourse has. And when Paul writes to the Thessalonians: “Our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance” (1 Thess. 1: 5), we need only to be reminded that “our gospel” meant but one thing to Paul, the setting forth of Jesus Christ crucified in the midst of the people, and we have found the secret of evangelical power. Ought it not therefore to be the supreme question with the preacher, what themes can assuredly command the witness of the Holy Spirit, rather than what topics will enlist the attention of the people? Let us set the popular preacher and the apostolic preacher side by side, and consider whose reward we would choose, universal admiration or “God also bearing witness, both with signs and wonders and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his will” (Heb. 2: 4)—the sermon greeted with applause and the clapping of hands, or “the word received with joy of {145} the Holy Ghost” (1 Thess. 1: 6)?—admiration of the preacher possessing all who listen to the discourse, or “the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word” (Acts 10: 44)? Language cannot express the vital moment of the question which we are here discussing. Our generation is rapidly losing its grip upon the supernatural; and as a consequence the pulpit is rapidly dropping to the level of the platform. And this decline is due, we believe, more than anything else, to an ignoring of the Holy Spirit as the supreme inspirer of preaching. We wish to see a great orator in the pulpit, forgetting that the least expounder of the word, when filled with the Holy Ghost, is greater than he. We want the gospel, forsooth; but in the strenuous demand that it be set forth according to the “spirit of the age” we ignore the supremacy of the “Spirit of God.” And the method of discourse soon tells upon the matter. We cannot very long have the truth in the pulpit after we have lost “the Spirit of truth” therefrom. “When one possesses not the whole of life,” says Vinet, “he possesses not the whole of truth.”

In all that we have said we do not ignore the human element in preaching, nor undervalue good learning and sanctified mental training, as a furnishing for this high office. We only emphasize the extreme peril of making that supreme which God has made subordinate. As it is genius which raises the great {146} painter or poet far above the common man, so it is the Holy Spirit which lifts the preacher far above the man of genius. A gifted artist spoke wisely when one, thinking only of the implements of his profession, asked, “With what do you mix your paints?” “With brains, sir,” he replied. The preacher who brought three thousand to believe on a crucified Christ, under a single sermon, anticipated the question of those who, with an eye upon the mere human accessories of his sermon, might ask after the secret of his power; and he unfolds that secret in a single terse sentence: “With the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven.”

(2) Prayer is a most vital element in the worship of God’s church. “Lord, teach us how to pray, as John also taught his disciples.” Jesus complied literally with this request of his followers. As John, under the law, could only give rules and rudiments, not yet having come to the dispensation of grace and of the Spirit, so did Jesus give a form of prayer, a lesson in the “technique of worship.” But only when he reaches the eve of his passion, when he announces the coming of the Comforter, does he lead his disciples into the heart and mystery of the great theme, teaching them to pray as John could nothave taught his disciples. “Hitherto ye have asked nothing in my name,” said Jesus, in his paschal discourse. But now that he was about to enter into his mediatorial office at God’s right {147} hand, and to send forth the Comforter into the midst of his disciples, this joyful privilege was to be accorded to him: “Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name he will give it you”[4] (1 John 16: 23). The words are equivalent to “in me.” The thought is not surely that of using the name of Jesus as a password or as a talisman, but of entering into his person and appropriating his will; so that when we pray, it shall be as though Jesus himself stood in God’s presence and made intercession. Nor is it “as though”—it is the literal fact. We become identified with Christ through the Spirit, now sent down, and his will is wrought within us by the Holy Ghost, so that to ask what we desire of him is to ask what he desires for us. We are inwilled by his will, because inspired by his Spirit, who lives and breathes within us. Therefore we may know that we are always heard, since we are in him who can boldly say to the Father: “I know that thou always hearest me.” It is Christ’s mediatorship with the Father, and the Holy Ghost’s mediatorship with us, that gives us this high privilege of praying in the name of Jesus, as it is written: “For through him we both have access in one Spirit unto the Father.”

When therefore, under the fuller development of {148} doctrine as found in the epistles, we read of “praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit” (Eph. 6: 18), and of “praying in the Holy Ghost” (Jude 20), it is simply an admonition to use our privilege of asking in the name of Jesus. For to be in the Spirit is to be in Christ, united to his person, identified with his will, invested with his righteousness, so that we are as he is before the Father.

In that fullest exposition of the doctrine of the Spirit, given in the eighth of Romans, we see clearly that the ministry of the Comforter consists in his effectuating in us that which Christ is accomplishing for us on the throne. Especially is this true of prayer. In the Epistle to the Hebrews we read: “Wherefore also he is able to save to the uttermost them that draw near to God through him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them” (Heb. 7: 25, R. V.). In the Epistle to the Romans we read: “And in like manner the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity; for we know not how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered; and he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God” (Rom. 8: 26, 27, R. V.). These passages, read together, clearly show the Spirit doing the same thing in us which Christ in heaven {149} is doing forus. And, moreover, they reveal to us the method of the glorified Christ in helping those who know not what to pray for as they ought, teaching them, not by an outward form, but by an inward guidance. Indeed, the prayer inspired by the Holy Spirit is often so deep that it cannot be expressed in formal words, but reaches the ear of the Father only in unspeakable yearnings, in unuttered groanings. The keynote of all true intercession is the will of God. In the disciples’ prayer, as taught them by the Master, this note is distinctly sounded: “Thy will be done on earth as in heaven.” In the Saviour’s garden-prayer it is heard again, as with strong crying and tears the Son of God exclaims: “Not my will but thine be done”; and in the revelation of the doctrine of prayer through an inspired apostle we read: “If we ask anything according to his will he heareth us.” It is the Spirit’s deepest work in the believer to attune his mind to this exalted key, as he “maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.” There is a promise which all disciples love to quote for their assurance in prayer: “If two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven” (Matt. 18: 19). The word translated “agree” is a very suggestive one. It is, sympsônêsôsin, from which our word “symphony” comes. If two shall accord {150} or symphonize in what they ask, they have the promise of being heard. But, as in tuning an organ all the notes must be keyed to the standard pitch, else harmony were impossible, so in prayer. It is not enough that two disciples agree with each other; they must both accord with a Third—the righteous and holy Lord—before in the scriptural sense they can agree in intercession. There may be agreement which is in most sinful conflict with the divine will: “How is it that ye have agreed together [synepsônêthê, the same word] to tempt the Spirit of the Lord?” asks Peter (Acts 5: 9). Here is mutual accord, but guilty discord with the Holy Ghost. On the contrary it is the Spirit’s ministry to attune our wills to the Divine; thus only can there be praying in the Holy Ghost.

We cannot therefore emphasize too strongly the administration of the Spirit in directing the worship of God’s house. The use of liturgical forms is a relapse into legalism, a consent to be taught to pray as “John taught his disciples.” True, there may be extemporaneous forms as well as written forms, praying by rote as well as praying by the book. Against both habits we simply interpose the higher teaching of the Spirit, as belonging especially to this dispensation, in which the Father seeketh worshipers who “worship in Spirit and in truth.” To pray rightly is the highest of all attainments. And it is so because the secret lies {151} between these two opposites; a spirit supremely active while supremely passive, a heart prevailing with God because prevailed over by God. “O Lord,” says a high saint, “my spirit was like a harp this morning, making melody before thee, since thou didst first tune the instrument by the Holy Spirit, and then didst choose the psalm of praise to be played thereon.” Most solemn and suggestive words these have always seemed: “The Father seeketh such to worship him.” Amid all the repetition of forms and the chanting of liturgies, how earnestly the Most High searches after the spiritual worshiper, with a heart inwardly retired before God, with a spirit so sensitive to the hidden motions of the Holy Ghost that when the lips speak they shall utter the effectual inwrought prayer that availeth much!

If any shall interpose the objection that what we are saying is too high to be practical, it may be well to confirm our position by the witness of experience. We are not speaking of pulpit prayers especially, in what we have said. The universal priesthood of believers, which the Scriptures so plainly teach, constitutes the ground for common intercession, for “the praying one for another” which is the distinctive feature of the Spirit’s dispensation The prayer meeting, therefore, in which the whole body of believers participate, probably comes nearer the pattern of primitive Christian {152} worship than any other service which we hold. To apply our principle here, then, what method is found most satisfactory? Shall the service be arranged beforehand, this one selected to pray, and that one to exhort; and during the progress of the worship, shall such a one be called up to lead the devotions, and such a one to follow? In a word, shall the service be mapped out in advance and manipulated according to the dictates of propriety and fitness as it goes on? One, after many years of experience, can bear emphatic testimony to the value of another way—that of magnifying the office of the Holy Spirit as the conductor of the service, and of so withholding the pressure of human hands in the assembly that the Spirit shall have the utmost freedom to move this one to pray and that one to witness, this one to sing and that one “to say amen at our giving of thanks,” according to his own sovereign will. Here we speak not theoretically but experimentally. The fervor and spirituality and sweet naturalness of the latter method has been demonstrated beyond a peradventure, and that too, after an extended trial of both ways, the first in ignorance of a better way, with constant labor and worry and fret, and the last with inexpressible ease and comfort and spiritual refreshment. Honor the Holy Ghost as Master of assemblies; study much the secret of surrender to him; cultivate a quick ear for hearing his inward voice and a ready tongue {153} for speaking his audible witness; be submissive to keep silence when he forbids as well as to speak when he commands, and we shall learn how much better is God’s way of conducting the worship of his house than man’s way.[5]

(3) The service of song in the house of the Lord is another element of worship whose relation to the Spirit needs to be strongly emphasized. Spiritual singing has a divinely appointed place in the church of Christ. Church music, in the ordinary sense of that phrase, has no such place, but is a human invention which custom has, with many, unhappily elevated into an ordinance. We often quote the exhortation of the apostle: “Be filled with the Spirit,” without marking the practical service with which this fullness stands immediately connected: “Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord” (Eph. 5: 19). As immediately as prayer is connected with the Holy Ghost in this same epistle: “Praying at all seasons in the Spirit“; and our edification in the church: “Builded {154} together in the Spirit” (Eph. 2: 22, R. V.); and our spiritual energizing: “Strengthened with power through his Spirit” (Eph. 3: 16, R. V.); and our approach to God, “Access in one Spirit unto the Father” (2: 18, R. V.), so intimately is the worship of praise here connected with the Holy Ghost and made dependent on his power. Therefore it would seem too obvious to need arguing, that an unregenerate person is disqualified from ministering in the service of song in God’s house. Scripturally this seems incontestable; and as to the teaching of experience, we should hardly know how to name any custom which has brought a sorer blight upon the life of the church, or a heavier repression upon its spiritual energy, than the habit, now so general, of introducing unsanctified, unconverted, and even notoriously worldly persons into the choirs of the churches.

Now the teaching of the text just cited is decisive, not only against such performers in choirs, but against the choirs themselves, if by the latter term is meant certain ones employed to dispense music for the delectation of the congregation. For observe how distinctly the mutual and inter-congregational character of Christian singing is here pointed out: “Speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.” The one feature of the worship of the church, which distinguishes it radically and totally from that of the {155} temple, is that it is mutual. Under the law there were priests and Levites to minister and people to be ministered to; under the gospel there is a universal spiritual priesthood, in which all minister and all are ministered to. Every act of service belonging to the Christian church is so described. There must be prayer, and the exhortation is, “Pray one for another” (James 5: 16). There must be confession, and the injunction is: “Confess your sins one to another” (James 5: 16, R. V.). There must be exhortation, and the command is: “Exhort one another” (Heb. 3: 13). There must be love, and we are enjoined to “love one another” (1 Peter 1: 22). There must be burden-bearing, and the exhortation is: “Bear ye one another’s burdens” (Gal. 6: 2). There must be comforting, and the command is: “Wherefore comfort one another” (1 Thess. 4: 18). So with the worship of song. Its reciprocal character is emphasized, not only in the passage just quoted, but also in the Epistle to the Colossians: “Teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” (Col. 3: 16). This is according to the clearly defined method of the Spirit in this dispensation. He establishes our fellowship with the Head of the church, and through him with one another. All blessing in the body is mutual, and the worship which is ordained to maintain and increase that blessing is likewise mutual.

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As now the Spirit is the inspirer and director of the worship of God’s church, he must have those who have been renewed and are indwelt by himself as the instruments through whom he acts; and by a teaching of Scripture too clear to be misunderstood all others are disqualified. How distinctly is this shown even in the types and symbols of the old dispensation. The holy anointing enjoined in Exodus for Aaron and his sons, is confessedly a type of the unction of the Holy Ghost. And mark the rigid and sacred limitations in its use: “And thou shalt anoint Aaron and his sons, and consecrate them that they may minister unto me in the priest’s office. And thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel, saying: This shall be a holy anointing oil unto me throughout your generation. Upon man’s flesh it shall not be poured; neither shall ye make any other like it, after the composition of it; it is holy, and shall be holy unto you; whosoever compoundeth any like it, or whoso putteth any of it upon a stranger, shall even be cut off from his people” (Exod. 30: 30-33).

Now, of these minute directions and prescribed transactions we may say confidently that “they happened unto them for ensamples and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world [ages] are come” (1 Cor. 10: 11). The three rigid prohibitions here named touch just the errors which are most characteristic of the present {157} generation. “Upon man’s flesh it shall not be poured“; honoring the natural man, and exalting human nature into that place which belongs only to the regenerate. This is the error of those who believe in the universal sonship of the race, and call the carnal man divine. “Whosoever putteth any of it upon a stranger.” This is the sin of those who thrust into the ministry and service of the church persons who have never by the new birth through the Spirit been brought into the family of God, into the household of faith. “Whosoever compoundeth any like it.” This is the artificial imitation of the Spirit’s offices and ministration. Let the Christian reader pause and ponder well this last prohibition. In the story of the primitive church sample sins are given for our warning, as well as specimen graces for our emulation. One such sin, so subtle, so dangerous, and so constantly recurring in Christian history, having taken the name of its first author and being called “simony,” has been handed down from generation to generation. “Because thou hast thought that the gift of God can be purchased with money” is the solemn indictment against one who had purposed to buy the power of the Holy Ghost. Many desire the gifts of the Spirit who little care for the Spirit himself. Divine music is greatly coveted. Why not, with our thousands of gold, buy this spiritual luxury? Bring the singing men and singing women from the {158} opera and from the concert hall; bid them compound a potion of sanctuary music, which shall entrance all ears and draw to the church those who could not be drawn thither by the plain attractions of the Cross. But what is the exhortation of Scripture? “By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to his name” (Heb. 13: 15). This kind of sacrifice costs—earnest prayer, deep communion, and the fullness of the Spirit; but no sum of gold, however large, is adequate for its purchase, nor can any musician’s art, however ingenious, imitate it. Is there no approach to the sin of simony in those churches which spend thousands yearly in artistic music? And is not this attempted purchase of the Holy Ghost closely linked with the other sin of robbing God, considering how this lavish expenditure on artificial worship is almost always accompanied with meagre giving for the carrying out of the Great Commission? Our conclusion is, that the service of song has been committed to the church, and to the church alone, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Some of her number may be appointed to lead this service, if they themselves are under the leadership of the Spirit. But the church cannot commit this divine ministry to unsanctified hireling minstrels, without affront to the Spirit of God and serious peril to her own communion with God.

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If again any object that we are setting up an exaggerated and impossible ideal, let the voice of experience be heard in evidence. Let pastors be called to testify of the added blessing and fervor which have come to their sanctuaries when this ideal has been approximately realized. Let history repeat its story of song driven in times of apostasy into some narrow stall of the church, and into the hands of a few trained monopolists of worship; and then, in eras of revival, of the bursting of the barriers and the people of God seizing once more their defrauded heritage and breaking forth, a great multitude, into “hallelujahs of the heart.” The annals of the Lollards, and of the Lutherans, and of the Wesleyans, and of the Salvationists bear harmonious witness on this point, and are deeply instructive.

3. The Holy Spirit in the Missions of the Church. In the Gospels which contain the story of Christ’s earthly life we have the record of the giving of the Great Commission: “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.” In the Acts, which contains the story of the life of the Spirit, we have the promise of the coming of the Executor of that Commission: “But ye shall receive power when the Holy Ghost is come upon you; and ye shall be my witnesses, both in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1: 8, R. V.). Nowhere is the hand {160} of the Spirit more distinctly seen than in the origination and superintendence of missions. The field is the world, the sower is the disciple, and the seed is the word. The world can only be made accessible through the Spirit—”When he is come he will convict the world of sin”; the sower is energized only through the Spirit—”Ye shall receive the power of the Holy Ghost coming upon you”; and the seed is only made productive through the quickening of the Spirit—”He that soweth unto the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap eternal life” (Gal. 6: 8, R. V.). In the simple story of the primitive mission, as recorded in the thirteenth of Acts, we see how every step in the enterprise was originated and directed by the presiding Spirit. We observe this:

(1) In the selection of missionaries: “The Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them” (13: 2).

(2) In their thrusting forth into the field: “So they, being sent forth by the Holy Ghost, departed unto Seleucia” (13: 4).

(3) In empowering them to speak: “Then Saul, who also is called Paul, filled with the Holy Ghost, said” (13: 9).

(4) In sustaining them in persecution: “And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Ghost” (13: 52).

(5) In setting the Divine seal upon their {161} ministry among the Gentiles: “And God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as he did unto us” (15: 8).

(6) In counseling in difficult questions of missionary policy: “It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us” (15: 28).

(7) In restraining the missionaries from entering into fields not yet appointed by the Lord: They “were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the gospel in Asia. . . They assayed to go into Bithynia but the Spirit suffered them not” (16: 6, 7).

Very striking is this record of the ever-present, unfailing, and minute direction of the Holy Ghost in all the steps of this divine enterprise. “But this was in apostolic days,” it will be said. Yes; but the promise of the Spirit is that “He shall abide with you for the age.” Unless the age has ended he is still here, and still in office, and still entrusted with the responsibility of carrying out that work which is dearest to the heart of our glorified Lord. Who can say that there is not need in these days of a return to primitive methods and of a resumption of the Church’s primitive endowments? The Holy Spirit is not straitened in himself, but only in us. If the Church had faith to lean less on human wisdom, to trust less in prudential methods, to administer less by mechanical {162} rules, and to recognize once more the great fact that, having committed to her a supernatural work, she has appointed for her a supernatural power, who can doubt that the grinding and groaning of our cumbrous missionary machinery would be vastly lessened, and the demonstration of the Spirit be far more apparent?

[1] Of course Catholic writers claim that the pope is the “Vicar of Christ” only as being the mouth-piece of the Holy Ghost. But the Spirit has been given to the church as a whole, that is to the body of regenerated believers, and to every member of that body according to his measure. The sin of sacerdotalism is, that it arrogates for a usurping few that which belongs to every member of Christ’s mystical body. It is a suggestive fact that the name klêros, which Peter gives to the church as the “flock of God,” when warning the elders against being lords over God’s heritage, now appears in ecclesiastical usage as the clergy, with its orders of pontiff and prelates and lord bishops, whose appointed function it is to exercise lordship over Christ’s flock.

[2] By the candlesticks being seven instead of one, as in the tabernacle, we are taught that whereas in the Jewish dispensation, God’s visible church was one, in the Gentile dispensation there are many visible churches; and that Christ himself recognizes them alike.—Canon Garratt, “Commentary on the Revelation,” p. 32.

[3] “The Work of the Holy Spirit in Man,” by Pastor G. F. Tophel, p. 66.

[4] It was impossible up to the time of the glorification of Jesus to pray to the Father in his name. It is a fullness of joy peculiar to the dispensation of the Spirit to be able to do so.—Alford.

[5] It were well for us to give more heed to the voice of Christian history as related to such questions as these. The rise of “sporadic sects” like the “Quietists,” the “Mystics,” the “Friends,” and the “Brethren,” with their emphasis on “the still voice” and “the inward leading,” is very suggestive. If we may not go so far as some of these go in the insistence on speaking only as sensibly moved by the Spirit we may be admonished of the hard, artificial man-made worship which made their protest necessary.

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VIII

THE INSPIRATION OF THE SPIRIT

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“Have you visited the Cathedral of Freyburg, and listened to that wonderful organist, who with such enchantment draws the tears from the traveler’s eyes while he touches, one after another, his wonderful keys, and makes you hear by turns the march of armies upon the beach, or the chanted prayer upon the lake during the tempest, or the voices of praise after it is calm? Well, thus the Eternal God, embracing at a glance the key-board of sixty centuries, touches by turns, with the fingers of his Spirit, the keys which he had chosen for the unity of his celestial hymn. He lays his left hand upon Enoch, the seventh from Adam, and his right hand on John, the humble and sublime prisoner of Patmos. From the one the strain is heard: ‘Behold the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints’; from the other: ‘Behold he cometh with clouds.’ And between the notes of this hymn of three thousand years there is eternal harmony, and the angels stoop to listen, the elect of God are moved, and eternal life descends into men’s souls.”—Gaussen’s Theopneustia.

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VIII

THE INSPIRATION OP THE SPIRIT

Inspiration signifies inbreathing. Both the scribe and the Scripture, both the man of God and the word of God were divinely inbreathed. In that memorable meeting of the risen Lord and his disciples within the closed doors, we read that “He breathed on them and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost; whosesoever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven unto them; whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained” (John 20: 22, R. V.). Well may the question of the scribes concerning Jesus now arise in our hearts concerning his disciples: “Who can forgive sins but God only?” And the answer should be: “True; God alone can forgive sins. And it is only because the Spirit of God, who is God, is in the apostles, endowing them with his divine prerogatives, that they are able to exercise this high authority.”

We are persuaded, however, that this commission was not given to all Christians, though all have the Spirit. In a note in Olshausen’s Commentary the matter seems to be correctly stated: “To the apostles was granted the power, absolute and unconditioned, of binding and loosing, just as to them was {166} given the power of publishing truth unmixed with error. For both they possessed miraculous spiritual endowments.” Only we should say “sovereign” rather than “miraculous” endowments. “The Spirit breatheth where he wills, and thou hearest his voice,” said Jesus.[1] While miraculous gifts were not confined to the apostles, Christ may have committed to these, and to these alone, the sovereign prerogative of forgiving sins; gifts of healing, on the other hand, the working of miracles, prophecy, the discerning of spirits, and tongues, being distributed throughout the church; “but all these worketh one and the same Spirit, dividing to each one severally even as he will” (1 Cor. 12: 11, R. V.). In a word, the action of the Holy Ghost was supremely sovereign in the assignment of spiritual offices, and when Jesus breathed on his apostles the Holy Ghost, and gave them authority {167} to remit sins, he separated them unto a prerogative of which others, indwelt by the same Spirit, might have known nothing. It is very generally held that the order of apostles ceased with the death of those who had seen the Lord and companied with him until the day that he was received up. But the reason for this cessation has been too little considered. May we not believe that the apostles and their companions were commissioned to speak for the Lord until the New Testament Scriptures, his authoritative voice, should be completed? If so, in the apostolate we have a provisional inspiration; in the gospel a stereotyped inspiration; the first being endowed with authority ad interim to remit sins, and the second having this authority in perpetuam. The New Testament, as the very mouthpiece of the Lord, pronounces forgiveness upon all in every generation who truly repent and believe on the Son of God; and preachers in every age, with the Bible in their hand, are authorized to do the same declaratively. But when it is urged, as by Catholic writers, that this infallibility for teaching and absolution, which was committed to the apostles, has descended through a succession of ministers called the clergy, the answer seems to be, that this authority has not been perpetuated in any body of men apart from the Scriptures, but was transferred to the New Testament and lodged there for all time. Historically, at least, it seems to have been {168} the fact, that as the apostles and prophets of the new dispensation disappeared, the Gospels and Epistles took their place, and that henceforth the divine authoritative voice of the Spirit could be distinctly recognized only in the written word. As coal has been called “fossil sunlight,” so the New Testament may be called fossil inspiration, the supernatural illumination which fell upon the apostles being herein stored up for the use of the church throughout the ages.[2]

“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God [theopneustos—God-breathed], and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (3 Tim. 3: 16). As the Lord breathed the Spirit into certain men, and thereby committed to them his own prerogative of forgiving sin, so he breathed his Spirit into certain books and endowed them with his infallibility in teaching truth. God did not choose to inspire all good books, though he has chosen to

{169} inbreathe one book, thereby separating it and setting it apart from all other books.[3] The phrase, “the Bible is simply literature,” which some are using to-day, as a suggestion against bibliolatry, is not true. Literature is the letter; Scripture is the letter inspired by the Spirit. What Jesus said in justification of his doctrine of the new birth is equally applicable to the doctrine of inspiration: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” Educate, develop, and refine the natural man to the highest possible point, and yet he is not a spiritual man till, through the new birth, the Holy Ghost renews and indwells him. So of literature; however elevated its tone, however lofty its thought, it is not Scripture. Scripture is literature indwelt by the Spirit of God. The absence of the Holy Ghost from any writing constitutes the impassable gulf between it and Scripture. Our Lord, in speaking of his own doctrine, uses the same language, to show its separateness from common teaching which he employs above to mark the distinction of the new man. He says: “It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I have spoken unto {170} you are spirit and are life” (John 6: 63, R. V.). Words they were, and in that respect, literature; but words divinely inbreathed and therefore Scripture. In fine, the one fact which makes the word of God a unique book, standing apart in solitary separateness from all other writings, is that which also parts off the man of God from common men—the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. Therefore we may say truly of the Bible, not merely that it was inspired, but it is inspired; that the Holy Ghost breathes within it, making it not only authoritative in its doctrine but life-giving in its substance, so that they who receive its promises by faith “have been begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the word of God which liveth and abideth” (1 Peter 1: 23, R. V.).

Thus far in this volume we have been dwelling upon the various works and offices of the Paraclete. Now we come to consider that the Holy Spirit not only acts but speaks. Let us listen to the repeated affirmations of this fact. Seven times our glorified Lord says, speaking in the Apocalypse: “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches” (Rev. 2: 7). The Paraclete on earth answers to the Paraclete above, so that to the voice from Heaven saying: “Write, blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth,” the response is heard: “Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors,” etc. (Rev. 14: 13). {171} This accords with the general tenor of Scripture as to its own Author. In referring to the Old Testament, Peter says: “This Scripture must needs have been fulfilled, which the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David spake before concerning Judas, which was guide to them that took Jesus” (Acts 1: 16). And again: “David himself said by the Holy Ghost” (Mark 12: 36), our Lord thus plainly recognizing the voice of the Spirit in the voice of the psalmist. So again: “The Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and his word was in my tongue. The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me” (2 Sam. 23: 2, 3), and “Wherefore as the Holy Ghost saith, To-day if ye will hear his voice” (Heb. 3: 7).

And what is it to speak? Is it not to express thought in language? The difference between thinking and saying is simply the difference of words. Therefore, if the Holy Ghost “saith,” we are to find in the words of Scripture the exact substance of what he saith. Hence verbal inspiration seems absolutely essential for conveying to us the exact thought of God. And while many affect to ridicule the idea as mechanical and paltry, the conduct and method of scholars of every shade of belief show how generally it is accepted. For, why the minute study of the words of Scripture carried on by all expositors, their search after the precise shade of verbal significance, their attention to the {172} minutest details of language, and to all the delicate coloring of mood and tense and accent? The high scholars who speak lightly of the theory of literal inspiration of the Scriptures by their method of study and exegesis are they who put the strongest affirmation on the doctrine which they deny. Then we cannot forget what we imply when we say that language is the expression of thought. Words determine the size and shape of ideas. As exactly as the coin answers to the die in which it is struck, does the thought answer to the word by which it is uttered. Vary the language by the slightest modification, and you by so much vary the thought.

As ultra spiritualism interprets Paul’s words “a spiritual body,” to mean a ghost, when the accent is as strongly on the sõmaas on the pneumatichon, his real thought evidently being that of a body spiritualized; so some, remembering that “the letter killeth,” would etherealize Scripture by telling us that the divine idea is the chief thing, and the language quite secondary. But wisely and well has Martin Luther reminded us that “Christ did not say of his Spirit, but of his words, they are spirit and life.”

To deny that it is the Holy Ghost who speaks in Scripture, is an intelligible position; but admitting that he speaks, we can only understand his thoughts by listening to his words. True, he may beget within us emotions too deep for expression, as when {173} “The Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered” (Rom. 8: 26). But the idea which is really intelligible is the idea that is embodied in speech. For finite minds, at least, words are the measure of comprehensible thoughts. Evidently Jesus claims for his teaching not only inspiration, but verbal inspiration, when he says that his words are “spirit and life.” And to this agrees the saying of Paul, in speaking of the inspiration of the Holy Ghost: “But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things which are freely given to us of God, which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth, comparing spiritual things with spiritual” (1 Cor. 2: 10-13).

And what if one objects that this theory makes inspiration purely mechanical, and turns the writers of Scripture into stenographers, whose office is simply to transcribe the words of the Spirit as they are dictated? It must be confessed that there is much in Scripture to support this view of the case. Should we see a student who, having taken down {174} the lecture of a profound philosopher, was now studying diligently to comprehend the sense of the discourse which he had written, we should understand simply that he was a pupil and not a master; that he had nothing to do with originating either the thoughts or the words of the lecture, but was rather a disciple whose province it was to understand what he had transcribed, and so be able to communicate it to others. And who can deny that this is the exact picture of what we have in the following passage from Scripture: “Of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you, searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow; unto whom it was revealed,” etc. (1 Peter 1: 10, 11). Here were inspired writers, studying the meaning of what they themselves had written. If they were prophets on the manward side, they were evidently pupils on the Godward side. With all possible allowance for the human peculiarities of the writers, they must have been reporters of what they heard, rather than the formulators of that which they had been made to understand. How nearly this also describes the attitude of Christ,—a hearer that he might be a teacher: “All things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you” (John 15: 15); {175} a reporter that he might be a revealer: “I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me” (John 17: 8).

In these days scholars are very jealous for the human element in inspiration; but the sovereign element is what most impresses the diligent student of this subject. “The Spirit breatheth where he wills.” Concerning regeneration by the Holy Ghost, we are carefully told that it is “not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God”; and concerning inspiration by the Spirit, the teaching is equally explicit: “For no prophecy ever came by the will of man, but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Peter 1: 21, R. V.).

The style of Scripture is, no doubt, according to the traits and idiosyncracies of the several writers, as the light within the cathedral takes on its various hues from passing through the stained windows; but to say that the thoughts of the Bible are from the Spirit, and the language from men, creates a dualism in revelation not easy to justify; so that we must quote with entire approval the words of an eminent writer upon this subject: “The opinion that the subject-matter alone of the Bible proceeded from the Holy Spirit, while its language was left to the unaided choice of the various writers, amounts to that fantastic notion which is the grand fallacy of many theories of inspiration; namely, that two spiritual agencies were in operation, one of which {176} produced the phraseology in the outward form, while the other created within the soul the conceptions and thoughts of which such phraseology was the expression. The Holy Spirit, on the contrary, as the productive principle, embraces the entire activity of those whom he inspires, rendering their language the word of God.”[4]

If it be urged that the quotations which the New Testament makes from the Old are rarely ipsissima verba, the language being in many instances greatly changed, it should be noted in reply how significant even these changes often are. If the Holy Spirit directed in the writing of both books, he would have a sovereign right to alter the phraseology, if need be, from the one to the other. In the opinion of many scholars the change of “the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob,” in Isa. 59: 20, to “There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer,” in Rom. 11: 26, is an inspired and intentional change.[5] So of the citation from Amos 9: 11, “In that day will I raise up the tabernacle that is fallen,” as given in Acts 15:16, “After these things I will return, and I will build again the tabernacle of David which is fallen”; the modification of the language seems designed, in order to make clear its significance in its present setting. Many other examples might be given of {177} a reshaping of his own words by the divine Author of Scripture. On the other hand, the constant recurrence of the same words and phrases in books of the Bible most widely separated in the time and circumstances of their composition, strongly suggests identity of authorship amid the variety of penmanship. The individuality of the writers was no doubt preserved, only that their individuality was subordinated to the sovereign individuality of the Holy Spirit. It is with the written word as with the incarnate Word. Because Christ is divine, he is more truly human than any whom the world has ever seen; and because the Bible is supernatural, it is natural as no other book which was ever written; its divinity lifts it above those faults of style which are the fruits of self-consciousness and ambition. Whether we read the Old Testament story of Abraham’s servant seeking a bride for Isaac, or the New Testament narrative of the walk of the risen Christ with his disciples to Emmaus, the inimitable simplicity of the diction would make us think that we were listening to the dialect of the angels who never sinned in thought, and therefore cannot sin in style, did we not know rather that it is the phraseology of the Holy Spirit.[6]

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An eminent German theologian has written a sentence so profoundly significant that we here reproduce it in Italics: “We can in fact speak with good reason of a language of the Holy Ghost. For it lies in the Bible plainly before our eyes, how the Divine Spirit, who is the agent of revelation, has fashioned for himself a quite peculiar religious dialect out of the speech of that people which forms its theatre.“[7] So true do we hold this saying to be, that it seems to us quite impossible that the exact meaning of many of the terms of the New Testament Greek should be found in a Lexicon of classic Greek. Though the verbal form is the same in both, the inbreathed spirit may have imparted such new significance to old words, that to employ a secular dictionary for translating the sacred oracles, were almost like calling an unregenerate man to interpret the mysteries of the regenerate life. Do we not know how modern progress and discovery have even put new meanings into many English words, so that one must be in “the spirit of the age” in order to comprehend them?[8] Thus {179} likewise, even in the work of verbal criticism, it is essential that one possess the spirit of Christ in order to translate the words of Christ.

As to the question of the “inerrancy of Scripture,” as the modern phrase is, we may well pass by many minor arguments, and emphasize the one great reason for holding this view, viz.: If it is God the Holy Ghost who speaks in Scripture, then the Bible is the word of God, and like God, infallible. A recent brilliant writer has challenged us to show where the Bible anywhere calls itself “The word of God.”[9] The most elementary student of the subject can, with the aid of a concordance, easily point out the passages which so describe it. But we dwell on the fact that is not only called o logos tou theon, “the Word of God,” but ta logia tou theou, “the oracles of God.” This collective name of the Scriptures is most significant. We need not inquire of the heathen as to the meaning which they put upon the words as the authoritative utterances of their gods; let the usage of Scripture make its own impression: “What advantage then hath the Jew? or what is the profit of circumcision? Much every way; first of all, that they were intrusted with the oracles of God” (Rom. 3: 2, R. V.).[10]

This comprehensive expression is very helpful {180} to our faith. When critics are assailing the books of the Old Testament in detail, the Holy Spirit authenticates them for us in their entirety. As Abigail prayed for a soul “bound in the bundle of life” with the Lord, so here an apostle gives us the books of the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms bound together in one bundle of inspired authority. Stephen, in like manner, speaks of his nation as “those who received the lively oracles (of God) to give unto us” (Acts 7: 38); and Peter says, “If any man speak let him speak as the oracles of God” (1 Peter 4: 11). And not only this; the same apostles who submitted to the authority of the Old Testament as the oracles of God, themselves claimed to write as the oracles of God in the New Testament. “If any man,” says Paul, “think himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord” (1 Cor. 14: 37). “We are of God,” writes John. “He that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us” (1 John 4: 16). These claims are too great to be put forth concerning fallible writings. Admitting their premises, the Jews were right in charging Jesus with blasphemy, in that being a man {181} he made himself God. If Christ is not God, he is not even a good man. And if the Scriptures are not inerrant, they are worse than errant; since, being literature, they make themselves the word of God.

And what if it be said that there are irreconcilable contradictions in this book which calls itself the oracles of God? Two things may be said: First, it should be expected that under “the scientific method” such contradictions should appear and constantly multiply. The Bible is a sensitive plant, which shuts itself up at the touch of mere critical investigation. In the same paragraph in which it claims that its very words are the words of the Holy Spirit, it repudiates the scientific method as futile for the understanding of those words: “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,”—and insists on the spiritual method as alone adequate,—”but God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit” (1 Cor. 2: 9, 10). Not only does the Bible not yield roses to the critic, it yields the thorns and briars of hopeless contradiction. “Intellige ut credos verbum meum,” said Augustine to the rationalists of his day, “sed crede ut intelligas verbum Dei.” “Understand my word, that you may believe it; believe God’s word, that you may understand it.” Faith holds not only the keys of all the creeds, but of all the contradictions. He who starts out and proceeds under the conviction that the Bible is the {182} infallible word of God, will find discrepancies constantly turning into unisons under his study. And this remark leads to the second observation: that the contradictions of man may really be the harmonies of God. An uncultivated listener, hearing an oratorio of one of the great masters, would detect discords again and again in the strains; and as a matter of fact, what are called “accidentals” in music are discords, but discords inserted to heighten the harmony. Thus, as one after another of the alleged discrepancies of Scripture having been noted and made to jar upon the ear have then been reconciled, with what an emphatic and heightened harmony have the words of the psalmist, speaking by the Holy Ghost, fallen on our ear: “The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple”! There seems to the critic to be historic error in the statement of Stephen that Jacob was buried at Sychem (Acts 7: 16) instead of in the field of Machpelah before Mamre, as recorded in Gen. 50: 13, just as it was once thought that Luke had made a mistake, not to be explained away, in his reference to Cyrenius in chapter 2: 1, 2. But as the latter contradiction has disappeared, only confirming the veracity of Scripture by the investigation which it has called forth, so may the former. And so also with such alleged discrepancies as that between the record in {183} one place that King Solomon had four thousand stalls for horses, and in another forty thousand; or that of the statement in one passage that King Josias began to reign at eight years of age, and in another, at eighteen. What if we freely admit that we cannot reconcile these statements? That does not prove that they are not reconcilable. The history of solved contradictions has certainly shown this, that as “the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God stronger than men,” so the discords of God are more harmonious than men.

We may say, in closing this chapter, that almost the highest proof of the infallibility of Scripture is the practical one, that we have proved it so; that as the coin of the State has always been found able to buy the amount represented on its face, so the prophecies and the promises of Holy Scripture have yielded their face value to those who have taken pains to prove them. If they have not always done so, it is probable that they have not yet matured. Certainly there are multitudes of Christians who have so far proved the veracity of Scripture that they are ready to trust it without reserve in all that it pledges for the world yet unseen and the life yet unrealized. “Believe that thou mayest know,” then, is the admonition which Scripture and history combine to enforce. In the farewell of that rare saint, Adolph Monod, these golden words occur: {184} “When I shall enter the invisible world, I do not expect to find things different from what the word of God represented them to me here. The voice I shall then hear will be the same I now hear upon the earth, and I shall say, ‘This is indeed what God said to me; and how thankful I am that I did not wait till I had seen in order to believe.'”

[1] John 3: 8. “The wind bloweth where it listeth.” Without pronouncing dogmatically, it must be said that the translation of Bengel and some others—”The Spirit breatheth where he wills, and thou hearest his voice“—has reasons in its favor which are well-nigh irresistible; e.g., If to pneuma here is the wind, it has one meaning in the first part of the sentence and another meaning in the second; and that meaning too, one which it bears in no other instance of the more than two hundred and seventy uses of the word in the New Testament. It is not the word used in Acts 2: 2, as might be expected if it signified wind. Then it seems unnatural to ascribe volition to the wind, thelei. On the contrary, if the words apply to the Spirit, the saying is in entire harmony with other Scriptures, which affirm the sovereignty of the Holy Ghost in regeneration (John 1: 13) and in the control and direction of those who are the subjects of the new birth (2 Cor. 12: 4-11).

[2] The proof that the inspiration of the apostles and scribes of the New Testament was not transmitted to successors is thus stated by Neander: “A phenomenon singular in its kind is the striking difference between the writings of the apostles and those of the apostolic fathers, so nearly their contemporaries. In other instances transitions are wont to be gradual, but in this instance we observe a sudden change. There is no gentle gradation here, but all at once an abrupt transition from one style of language to another—a phenomenon which should lead us to acknowledge the fact of a special agency of the Divine Spirit in the souls of the apostles and of a new creative element in the first period.”—Church History, II., 405.

[3] There are the strongest reasons for rejecting the rendering of this passage as given in the Revised Version: “Every Scripture inspired of God is also profitable“, etc. The reader will find the objections to this rendering powerfully and conclusively set forth in Tregelles on Daniel. Note, p. 267.

[4] Lee on the “Inspiration of the Holy Scripture,” pp. 32, 33.

[5] See Lange’s “Commentary” in loco.

[6] I am satisfied only with the style of Scripture. My own style and the style of all other men cannot satisfy me. If I read only three or four verses I am sure of their divinity on account of their inimitableness. It is the style of the heavenly court.—Oetinger.

[7] Rothe, “Dogmatics,” p. 238.

[8] For example, Shakespeare, and Milton, and Dryden, employ the words “car” and “engine” and “train” in their writings; but living before the age of steam and railways they knew nothing of the meaning which these terms convey to us. And it is possible that Homer and Plato knew as little of the meaning of such words as aiôn and paraklêtos, as found in the revelation of Jesus Christ, by whom “the ages were framed” and the Comforter sent down.

[9] Dr. R. F. Horton, in “Verbum Dei.”

[10] The apostle in calling the Old Testament Scriptures the “oracles of God,” clearly recognizes them as divinely inspired books. The Jewish church was the trustee and guardian of these oracles till the coming of Christ. Now the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament are committed to the guardianship of the Christian Church.—Dr. Philip Schaff.

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IX

THE CONVICTION OF THE SPIRIT

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“The Comforter in every part of his threefold work glorifies Christ. In convincing of sin he convinces us of the sin of not believing on Christ. In convincing us of righteousness, he convinces us of the righteousness of Christ, of that righteousness which was made manifest in Christ going to the Father, and which he received to bestow on all such as should believe in him. And lastly, in convincing of judgment, he convinces us that the prince of the World was judged in the life and by the death of Christ. Thus throughout, Christ is glorified; and that which the Comforter shows to us relates in all its parts to the life and work of the incarnate Son of God.”—Julius Charles Hare.

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IX

THE CONVICTION OF THE SPIRIT

“And when he is come he will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment” (John 16: 8, R. V.). It is too large a conclusion which many seem to draw from these words, that since the day of Pentecost the Spirit has been universally diffused in the world, touching hearts everywhere, among Christians and heathen, among the evangelized and the unevangelized alike, and awakening in them a sense of sin. Does not our Lord say in this same discourse concerning the Comforter: “Whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not neither knoweth him”? (John 14: 17) With these words should be associated the limitation which Jesus makes in the gift of the Paraclete: “If I depart I will send him unto you.” Christ’s disciples were to be the recipients and distributors of the Holy Ghost, and his church the mediator between the Spirit and the world. “And when he is come (to you) he will reprove the world.” And to complete the exposition, we may connect this promise with the Great Commission, “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature,” and conclude that when the {188} Lord sends his messengers into the world, the Spirit of truth goes with them, witnessing to the message which they bear, convincing of the sin which they reprove, and revealing the righteousness which they proclaim. We are not clear to affirm that the conviction of the Spirit here promised goes beyond the church’s evangelizing, though there is every reason to believe that it invariably accompanies the faithful preaching of the word.

It will help us then to a clear conception of the subject, if we consider the Spirit of truth as sent unto the Church, testifying of Christ, and bringing conviction to the world.

As there is a threefold work of Christ, as prophet, priest, and king, so there is a threefold conviction of the Spirit answering thereto: “And he, when he is come, will convict the world in respect of sin and of righteousness and of judgment; of sin, because they believe not on me; of righteousness, because I go to the Father and ye behold me no more; of judgment, because the prince of this world hath been judged” (John 16: 8-12, R. V.). It is concerning the testimony of Christ as he spake to men in the days of his flesh; and concerning the work of Christ now carried on in his intercession at God’s right hand; and concerning the sentence of Christ when he shall come again to be our judge, that this witness of the Spirit has to do.

“He shall convince the world of sin.” Why is he {189} needed for this conviction since conscience is present in every human breast, and is doing his work so faithfully? We reply: Conscience is the witness to the law; the Spirit is the witness to grace. Conscience brings legal conviction; the Spirit brings evangelical conviction; the one begets a conviction unto despair, the other a conviction unto hope.

“Of sin, because they believe not on me,” describes the ground of the Holy Spirit’s conviction. The entrance of Christ into the world rendered possible a sin hitherto unknown: “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin; but now they have no cloak for their sin” (John 15: 22). Evil seems to have required the presence of incarnate goodness, in order to its fullest manifestation. Hence the deep significance of the prophecy spoken over the cradle of Jesus: “Behold this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed” (Luke 2: 34, 35). All the most hideous sins of human nature came out during the betrayal and trial and passion of our Lord. In that “hour and power of darkness” these sins seem indeed to have been but imperfectly recognized. But when the day of Pentecost had come, with its awful revealing light of the Spirit of truth, then there was great contrition in Jerusalem—a contrition the sting of {190} which we find in the charge of Peter: “Jesus of Nazareth, whom ye have taken and by wicked hands have crucified and slain.” Was not that deep conviction, following the gift of the Spirit, in which three thousand were brought to repentance in a single day, a conviction of sin because they had not believed on Christ?

For our reproof the Holy Ghost presents another side of the same fact, calling us to repentance, not for having taken part in crucifying Christ, but for having refused to take part in Christ crucified; not for having been guilty of delivering him up to death, but for having refused to believe in him who was “delivered for our offenses and raised again for our justification.” Wherever, by the preaching of the gospel, the fact of Christ having died for the sins of the world is made known, this guilt becomes possible. The sin of disbelieving on Christ is, therefore, the great sin now, because it summarizes all other sins. He bore for us the penalties of the law; and thus our obligation, which was originally to the law, is transferred to him. To refuse faith in him, therefore, is to repudiate the claims of the law which he fulfilled and to repudiate the debt of infinite love which, by his sacrifice, we have incurred. Nevertheless, the Spirit of truth brings home this sin against the Lord, not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. In a word, as has been well said, “it is not {191} the sin-question but the Son-question” which we really raise now in preaching the gospel. “Christ having perfectly satisfied God about sin, the question now between God and your heart is: Are you perfectly satisfied with Christ as the alone portion of your soul? Christ has settled every other to the glory of God.” In dealing with the guilty Jews, it was the historical fact which the Holy Ghost urged for their conviction: “Ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and killed the Prince of Life” (Acts 3: 14, 15). In dealing with us Gentiles, it is rather the theological or evangelical fact: “Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3: 18), and you are condemned that you have not believed on him and confessed him as Saviour and Lord. It is the same sin in the last instance, but viewed upon its reverse side, if we may say it. In the one case it is the guilt of despising and rejecting the Son of God; in the other, it is the guilt of not believing in him who was despised and rejected of men. Yet if submissively yielded to, the Spirit will lead us from this first stage of revelation to the second, since what Andrew Fuller said of the doctrines of theology is equally true of the convictions of the Spirit, that “they are united together like chain-shot, so that whichever one enters the heart the other must certainly follow.”

“Of righteousness, because I go to the Father and {192} ye see me no more.” Not until he had been seated in the heavenly places had Christ perfected righteousness for us. As he was “delivered for our offenses and raised again for our justification,” so must he be enthroned for our assurance. It is necessary to see Jesus standing at the right hand of God, in order to know ourselves “accepted in the Beloved.” How beautiful the culmination of Isaiah’s passion-prophecy wherein, accompanying the promise that “he shall bear the sin of many,” is the prediction that “by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many“! But he must be shown to be righteous, in order that he may justify; and this is what his exaltation does. “It was the proof that him whom the world condemned, God justified—that the stone which the builders rejected, God made the Headstone of the corner—that him whom the world denied and lifted up on a cross of shame in the midst of two thieves, God accepted and lifted up in the midst of the throne.”[1]

The words “and because ye see me no more,” which have perplexed the commentators, seem to us {193} to give the real clue to the meaning of the whole passage. So long as the High Priest was within the veil, and unseen, the congregation of Israel could not be sure of their acceptance. Hence the eager anxiety with which they waited his coming out, with the assurance that God had received the propitiation offered on their behalf. Christ, our great High Priest, has entered into the Holy of Holies by his own blood. Until he comes forth again at his second advent, how can we be assured that his sacrifice for us is accepted? We could not be, unless he had sent out one from his presence to make known this fact to us. And this is precisely what he has done in the gift of the Holy Ghost. “Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, he sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Heb. 1: 3). There he will remain throughout the whole duration of the great day of atonement, which extends from ascension to advent. But in order that his church may have immediate assurance of acceptance with the Father, through his righteous servant, he sends forth the Paraclete to certify the fact; and the presence of the Spirit in the midst of the church is proof positive of the presence of Jesus in the midst of the throne; as is said by Peter on the day of {194} Pentecost; “Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear” (Acts 2: 33).

Now the Lord’s words seem plain to us. Because he ascends to the Father, to be seen no more until his second coming, the Spirit meantime comes down to attest his presence and approval with the Father as the perfectly righteous One. How clearly this comes out in Peter’s defense before the Council: “The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree. Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins; and we are witnesses of these things, and so also is the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey him” (Acts 5: 30-32). Why this two-fold witness? The reason is obvious. The disciples could bear testimony to the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, but not to his enthronement; that event was beyond the ken of human vision; and so the Holy Ghost, who had been cognizant of that fact in heaven, must be sent down as a joint-witness with the apostles, that thus the whole circle of redemption-truth might be attested. Therein was the promise of Jesus in his last discourse literally fulfilled: “But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth which {195} proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me; and ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning” (John 15: 26, 27).

As we have said, it is not only the enthronement of Christ in righteous approval with the Father that must be certified, but the acceptance of his sacrificial work as a full and satisfying ground of our reconciliation with the Father. And the Spirit proceeding from God is alone competent to bear to us this assurance. Therefore in the Epistle to the Hebrews, after the reiterated statement of our Lord’s exaltation at the right hand of God, it is added: “For by one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified, whereof the Holy Ghost is also a witness to us” (Heb. 10: 14, 15). In a word, he whom we have known on the cross as “the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world,” must now be known to us on the throne as “the Lord our righteousness.” But though the angels and the glorified in heaven see Jesus, once crucified, now “made both Lord and Christ,” we see him not. Therefore it is written that “no man can say Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 12: 3, R. V.). So also we are told that “if any man sin we have a Paraclete with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2: 1); but we can only know Christ as such through that “other Paraclete” sent forth from the Father. It was promised that “when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he shall {196} not speak from himself; but what things soever he shall hear, these shall he speak” (John 16: 13, R. V.). Hearing the ascriptions of worthiness lifted up to Christ in heaven, and beholding him who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, now “crowned with glory and honor,” he communicates what he sees and hears to the church on earth. Thus, as he in his earthly life, through his own outshining and self-evidencing perfection, “was justified in the spirit”; so we, recognizing him standing for us in glory, and now “of God made unto us righteousness,” are also “justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6: 11).

Thus, though unseen by the church during all the time of his high-priestly ministry, our Lord has sent to his church one whose office it is to bear witness to all he is and all he is doing while in heaven, that so we may have “boldness and access with confidence by the faith of him,” and that so we may come boldly to the throne of grace, “the Holy Ghost this signifying”—what he could not under the old covenant—”that the way into the holiest of all” (Heb. 9: 8) has been made manifest.

And yet—strange paradox—in this identical discourse in which Jesus speaks to his disciples of seeing him no more, he says: “Yet a little while and the world seeth me no more, but ye see me; because I live ye shall live also” (John 14: 19); words {197} which by common consent refer to the same time of Christ’s continuance within the veil. But it is now by the inward vision, which the world has not, that they are to behold him. And they are to behold him for the world, since Christ said of him: “Whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him.” And yet it is “to convince the world” “of sin and of righteousness and of judgment” that the Spirit was to be sent. How shall we make it plain? When the sun retires beyond the horizon at night, the world, our hemisphere, sees him no more; yet the moon sees him, and all night long catches his light and throws it down upon us. So the world sees not Christ in the gracious provisions of redemption which he holds for us in heaven, but through the illumination of the Comforter the church sees him; as it is written: “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love him; but God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit” (1 Cor. 2: 9, 10). And the Church seeing these things, communicates what she sees to the world. Christ is all and in all; and the Spirit receives and reflects him to the world through his people.

The moon above, the church below, A wondrous race they run; But all their radiance, all their glow, Each borrows of its sun.

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“Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged.” Here, we believe, is a still farther advance in the revelation of the gospel, and not a retreat to the doctrine of a future judgment, as some would teach. For we repeat our conviction, that in this entire discourse the Holy Spirit is revealed to us as an evangel of Grace, and not as a sheriff of the Law. Hear the Apostle Peter once more, as, pointing to him who had been raised from the dead and seated in the heavenlies, he says: “By him every one that believeth is justified from all things from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses” (Acts 13: 39, R. V.). Justification, in the evangelical sense, is but another name for judgment prejudged and condemnation ended. In the enthroned Christ every question about sin is answered, and every claim of a violated law is absolutely met; and though there is no abatement in the demands of the decalogue, yet because “Christ has become the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth,” now “grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.” Strange paradox set forth in Isaiah’s passion psalm: “By his stripes we are healed,” as though it were told us that sin’s smiting had procured sin’s remission. And so it is. If the Holy Spirit shows us the wounds of the dying Christ for condemning us, he immediately shows us the wounds of the exalted Christ for comforting us. {199} His glorified body is death’s certificate of discharge, the law’s receipt in full, assuring us that all the penalties of transgression have been endured, and the Sin-bearer acquitted.

The meaning of this last conviction seems plain therefore: “Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged.” Recall the words of Jesus as he stood face to face with the cross: “Now is the judgment of this world; now shall the prince of this world be cast out” (John 12: 31). “The accuser of the brethren” is at last non-suited and ejected from court. The death of Christ is the death of death, and of the author of death also. “That through death he might destroy him that hath the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who, through fear of death, were all their lifetime subject to bondage” (Heb. 2: 14, 15). If the relation of Satan to our judgment and condemnation is mysterious, this much is clear, from this and several passages, that Christ by his cross has delivered us from his dominion. We must believe that Jesus spoke the literal truth when he said: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my word and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal life, and cometh not into judgment, but hath passed out of death into life” (John 5: 24, R. V.). On the cross Christ judged sin and acquitted those who believe on him; and in heaven he defends them against every re-arrest by a violated law. {200} “There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8: 1). Thus the threefold conviction brings the sinner the three stages of Christ’s redemptive work, past judgment and past condemnation into eternal acceptance with the Father.

In striking antithesis with all this, we have an instance in the Acts of the threefold conviction of conscience, when Paul before Felix “reasoned of righteousness, and temperance, and the judgment to come” (Acts 24: 25). Here the sin of a profligate life was laid bare as the apostle discoursed of chastity; the claims of righteousness were vindicated, and the certainty of coming judgment exhibited; and with the only effect that “Felix trembled.” So it must ever be under the convictions of conscience,—compunction but not peace. We have also an instructive contrast exhibited in Scripture, between the co-witness of the Spirit and the co-witness of conscience. “The Spirit himself beareth witness (summarturei) that we are the children of God” (Rom. 8: 16). Here is the assurance of sonship, with all the divine inward persuasion of freedom from condemnation which it carries. On the other hand is the conviction of the heathen, who have only the law written in their hearts: “Their conscience bearing witness (summarturousês), their thoughts one with another accusing, or else excusing them, in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men” {201} (Rom. 2: 15, 16). Conscience can “accuse,” and how universally it does so, abundant testimony of Christian missionaries shows; and conscience can “excuse,” which is the method that guilty thoughts invariably suggest; but conscience cannot justify. Only the Spirit of truth, whom the Father hath sent forth into the world, can do this. The work of the two witnesses may be thus set in contrast:

Conscience Convinces— The Comforter Convinces— Of sin committed; Of sin committed; Of righteousness impossible; Of righteousness imputed; Of judgment accomplished. Of judgment impending.

Happily these two witnesses may be harmonized, as they are by that atonement which reconciles man to himself, as well as reconciles man to God. Very significantly does the Epistle to the Hebrews, in inviting our approach to God make, as the condition of that approach, the “having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience.” As the High Priest carried the blood into the Holy of Holies in connection with the old dispensation, so does the Spirit take the blood of Christ into the inner sanctuary of our spirit in the more wondrous economy of the new dispensation, in order that he may “cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God” (Heb. 9: 14). Blessed is the man who is thus made at one with himself while made at one with God, so that he can say: “I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also {202} bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost” (Rom. 9: 11). The believer’s conscience dwelling in the Spirit, even as his life is “hid with Christ in God,” both having the same mind and bearing the same testimony—this is the end of redemption and this is the victory of the atoning blood.

[1] For as the ministry of Enoch was sealed by his reception into heaven, and as the ministry of Elijah was also abundantly proved by his translation, so also the righteousness and innocence of Christ. But it was necessary that the ascension of Christ should be more fully attested, because upon his righteousness, so fully proved by his ascension, we must depend for all our righteousness. For if God had not approved him after his resurrection, and he had not taken his seat at his right hand, we could by no means be accepted of God.—Cartwright.

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X

THE ASCENT OF THE SPIRIT

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“The Apostle Paul evidently saw the redemption of the bodies of the saints and their manifestation as the sons of God and with them the redemption of the whole creation from its present bondage to be the complete harvest of the Spirit, whereof the church doth now possess only the first-fruits, that is, the first ripe grains which could be formed into a sheaf and presented in the temple as a wave-offering unto the Lord. ‘That Holy Spirit of Promise which is the earnest of our inheritance,’ saith the same apostle—the earnest, like the first-fruit, being only a part of that which is to be earned . . . yet a sufficient surety that the whole shall in the fullness of the times, be likewise ours.”—Edward Irving.

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X

THE ASCENT OF THE SPIRIT

“He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens.” So writes the apostle concerning the Paraclete who is now with the Father, “Jesus Christ the righteous” (Eph. 4: 9). And what is true of the one is true of that “other Paraclete,” the Holy Ghost, who was sent down to abide with us during this age. When he has accomplished his temporal mission in the world he will return to heaven in the body which he has fashioned for himself—that “one new man,” the regenerate church, gathered out from both Jews and Gentiles during this dispensation. For what is the rapture of the saints predicted by the apostle when, at the sound of the trumpet and the resurrection of the righteous dead, “we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air?” (1 Thess. 4: 17). It is the earthly Christ rising to meet the heavenly Christ; the elect church, gathered in the Spirit and named o christos, (1 Cor. 12: 12,) taken up to be united in glory with “Christ, the Head of the church, himself the Saviour of the body” {206} (Eph. 5: 23, R. V.). In the council at Jerusalem this is announced as the distinctive work of the Spirit in this dispensation “to gather out a people for his name.” It was not by accident and as a term of derision that the first believers received their name; but “the disciples were divinely called Christians first in Antioch” (Acts 11: 26). This was the name pre-ordained for them, that “honorable name” by which they are called (James 2: 7). When, therefore, this out-gathering shall have been accomplished, and the people for his name shall be completed, they will be translated to be one with him in glory, as they were one with him in name, the Head taking the body to himself, “as Christ also, the church” (Eph. 5: 29). And this translation of the church is to be effected by the Holy Spirit who dwells in her. “But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you” (Rom. 8: 11). It is not by acting upon the body of Christ from without, but by energizing it from within, that the Holy Ghost will effect its glorification. In a word, the Comforter, who on the day of Pentecost, came down to form a body out of flesh, will at the Parousia return to heaven in that body, having fashioned it like unto the body of Christ, that it may be presented to him “not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing, . . . holy {207} and without blemish” (Eph. 5: 27). Is it meant to be implied in what is here said that the Comforter is to leave the world at the time of the advent, to return no more? By no means. And yet what is meant needs to be very explicitly set forth.

A very able writer on the doctrine of the Spirit makes this remark, so striking and yet so true that we have put it in italics: “As Christ shall ultimately give up his kingdom to the Father (1 Cor. 15: 24-28), so the Holy Ghost shall give up his administration to the Son, when he comes in glory and all his holy angels with him.”[1] The church and the kingdom are not identical terms, if we mean by the kingdom the visible reign and government of Jesus Christ on earth. In another sense they are identical. As the King, so the kingdom. The King is present now in the world, only invisibly and by the Holy Spirit; so the kingdom is now present invisibly and spiritually in the hearts of believers. The King is to come again visibly and gloriously; so shall the kingdom appear visibly and gloriously. In other words, the kingdom is already here in mystery; it is to be here in manifestation. Now the spiritual kingdom is administered by the Holy Ghost, and it extends from Pentecost to Parousia. At the Parousia—the appearing of the Son of Man in glory—when he shall take unto himself his great power and reign (Rev. 11: 17), when he who has {208} now gone into a far country, to be invested with a kingdom, shall return and enter upon his government (Luke 19: 15), then the invisible shall give way to the visible; the kingdom in mystery shall emerge into the kingdom in manifestation, and the Holy Spirit’s administration shall yield to that of Christ.

Here our discussion properly ends, since the age-ministry of the Holy Spirit terminates with the return of Jesus Christ in glory. But there is an “age to come” (Heb. 6: 5), succeeding “the present evil age” (Gal. 1: 4), and we may, in closing, take a glimpse at that for the light which it may throw upon the present dispensation.

What significance has the phrase, “the first-fruits of the Spirit,” which several times occurs in the New Testament? The first-fruits is but a handful compared with the whole harvest; and this is what we have in the gift of “the Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession” (Eph. 1: 13, 14). The harvest, to which all the first-fruits look forward, is at the appearing of the Lord. Christ, by his rising from the dead, became “the first-fruits of them that slept” (1 Cor. 15: 20). The full harvest, of course, is at the advent, when “they that are Christ’s at his coming” shall be raised up (1 Cor. 15: 23). So of the Holy Ghost. We have all the Spirit, but not all of the Spirit. As a person of {209} the God-head, he is here in his entirety; but as to his ministry, we have as yet but a part or earnest of his full blessing. To make this statement plain, let us observe that the work of the Holy Spirit, during this entire dispensation, is elective. He gathers from Jew and Gentile the body of Christ, the ecclesia, the called-out. This is his peculiar work in this gospel age. In a word, the present is the age of election, and not of universal ingathering.

But is this all we have to hope for? Let the word of God answer. Paul, in considering the hope of Israel, says that there is at this present time “a remnant according to the election of grace“; and a little farther on he declares that in connection with the coming of the Deliverer “all Israel shall be saved” (Rom. 11: 5, 26). Here is an elective out-gathering, and then a universal in-gathering; or, as the apostle sums it up in this same chapter: “If the first-fruits be holy, so also the lump.” On the other hand, James, speaking by the Holy Ghost concerning the Gentiles, says first that “God did visit the Gentiles to take out of them a people for his name,” and “after this will I return,” etc., “that the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles upon whom my name is called, saith the Lord” (Acts 15: 14, 17). Here, again, is first an elective out-gathering and then a total in-gathering.

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Now, by looking at other scriptures, it seems clear that the Holy Spirit is the divine agent in both these redemptions, the partial and the total. If we refer to Joel’s great prophecy: “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,” and then to Peter’s reference to the same, as recorded in the Acts, we are led to ask, Was this prediction completely fulfilled on the day of Pentecost? Clearly not. Peter, with inspired accuracy, says: “This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel,” without affirming that herein the prophecy of Joel was entirely fulfilled. Turning back to the prediction itself, we find that it includes within its sweep “the great and the terrible day of the Lord,” and the “bringing again of the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem” (Joel 2: 31; 3: 1), events which are clearly yet future. If again we examine the vivid prophecy of Israel’s conversion, we observe that their looking upon him whom they pierced, and mourning for him, follows the prediction: “And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and supplication” (Zech. 12: 10). So in the picture of the desolations of Jerusalem, as they have actually existed during the present age, the prophet represents this judgment of thorns and briars and forsaken palaces and desertion of population, as continuing “until the Spirit be poured upon us from on high” (Isaiah 32: 15).

Indeed the Scriptures seem to be harmonious in {211} their teaching that, after the present elective work of the Spirit has been completed, there will come a time of universal blessing, when the Spirit shall literally be “poured out upon all flesh”; when “that which is perfect shall come” and “that which is in part shall be done away.”

Thus in the doctrine of the Spirit there is a constant reference to the final consummation. “The Holy Spirit of God, in whom ye were sealed unto the day of redemption,” says Paul (Eph. 4: 30). Again: “Ourselves also which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves, groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body” (Rom. 8: 23).

All which the Comforter has yet brought us, or can now bring us, is only the first sheaf of the great harvest of redemption which awaits us on our Lord’s return. “Ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba, Father” (Rom. 8: 15); but for the adoption itself we wait; sons of God already by birth from above, we with the whole creation yet wait for “the manifestation of the sons of God” (Rom. 8: 19).

To his tender exhortation to be patient until the coming of the Lord, which James writes in the first chapter of his epistle, there is added the suggestive illustration: “Behold the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient over it until it receive the early and latter rain.” {212} As in husbandry the one rain belonged to the time of sowing, and the other to the time of harvest, so in redemption the early rain of the Spirit was at Pentecost, the latter rain will be at the Parousia; the one fell upon the world as the first sowers went forth into the world to sow, the other will accompany “the harvest which is the end of the age,” and will fructify the earth for the final blessing of the age to come, bringing repentance to Israel and the remission of sins, “that the times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send Jesus Christ, before appointed for you, whom the heavens must receive until the times of the restitution of all things” (Acts 3: 19-21).

[1] “Through the Eternal Spirit,” by Elder Cumming, D. D., p. 185.

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SCRIPTURE INDEX

PAGE

Genesis 50: 13 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182

Exodus 30: 30-33 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156

Leviticus 14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Leviticus 23: 11-16 . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Leviticus 8: 12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 Leviticus 14: 17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

1 Samuel 16: 15 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

2 Samuel 23: 2, 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

1 Kings 19: 16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

Psalms 133: 1, 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Psalms 17: 15 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 Psalms 84: 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 Psalms 17: 16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

Isaiah 11: 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Isaiah 59: 20 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176 Isaiah 32: 15 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210

Joel 2: 31 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210 Joel 3: 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210

Amos 9: 11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176

Zechariah 12: 10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210

Matthew 3: 11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Matthew 12: 28 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Matthew 3: 11, R. V. . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Matthew 16: 24, 25 . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 Matthew 6: 27, R. V. . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Matthew 18: 19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149

Mark 13: 32 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Mark 12: 36 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

Luke 3: 22 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Luke 4: 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Luke 4: 18 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 Luke 10: 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Luke 2: 1, 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 Luke 2: 34, 35 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 Luke 19: 15 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208

John 14: 23 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 John 1: 14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 John 20: 17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 John 15: 26 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 John 14: 16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 John 14: 18; 14: 26; 16: 13 . . . . . . . 39 John 16: 7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 John 14: 28 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 John 16: 15 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 John 14: 12; 15: 26 . . . . . . . . . . . 44 John 16: 8-10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 John 16: 12, 13 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 John 16: 13, R. V. . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 John 16: 7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 John 14: 18; 14: 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 John 1: 33 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 John 3: 16; 1: 12 . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 John 1: 33 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 John 6: 27 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 John 3: 33 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 John 2: 23, 24 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

John 16: 13; 14: 17; 15: 26; 16: 13 . . . 92 John 3: 31; 8: 23 . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 John 3: 7, R. V. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 John 13: 35. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 John 1: 16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 John 14: 23 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 John 16: 23 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 John 20: 22, R. V. . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 John 6: 63, R. V. . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 John 15: 15; 17: 8 . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 John 16: 8, R. V.; 14: 17 . . . . . . . . 187 John 16: 8, R. V. . . . . . . . . . . . . 188 John 15: 22 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 John 15: 26, 27 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 John 16: 13, R. V.; 14: 19 . . . . . . . . 196 John 12: 31; 5: 24, R. V. . . . . . . . . 199

Acts 9: 31 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Acts 2: 41; 5: 14; 11: 24 . . . . . . . . 55 Acts 10: 38 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Acts 11: 16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Acts 2: 38 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Acts 8: 14-17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Acts 1: 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Acts 2: 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Acts 9: 17; 4: 8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Acts 4: 31; 6: 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Acts 4: 27, R. V.; 10: 38 . . . . . . . . 88 Acts 15: 28 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 Acts 20: 28, R. V. . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 Acts 10: 44 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 Acts 5: 9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 Acts 1: 8, R. V. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 Acts 13: 2; 13: 4; 13: 9; 13: 52 . . . . . 160 Acts 15: 8; 15: 28; 16: 6, 7 . . . . . . . 161 Acts 1: 16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 Acts 15: 16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176 Acts 7: 38 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 Acts 7: 16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 Acts 3: 14, 15 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 Acts 2: 33; 5: 30-32 . . . . . . . . . . . 194 Acts 13: 39, R. V. . . . . . . . . . . . . 198 Acts 24: 25 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 Acts 11: 26 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206 Acts 15: 14, 17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 Acts 3: 19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212

Romans 1: 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Romans 8: 9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Romans 6: 3, 4; 8: 2 . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Romans 6: 17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Romans 11: 9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Romans 1: 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Romans 6: 3, 4; 7: 4 . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Romans 6: 11, R. V. . . . . . . . . . . . 110 Romans 8: 13; 8: 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 Romans 15: 30 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 Romans 8: 23; 8: 11 . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Romans 12: 2, R. V. . . . . . . . . . . . 123 Romans 1: 17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 Romans 8: 26, 27, R. V. . . . . . . . . . 148 Romans 8: 26 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 Romans 11: 26 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176 Romans 3: 2, R. V. . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 Romans 8: 1; 8: 16 . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 Romans 2: 15, 16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 Romans 9: 11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202 Romans 8: 11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206 Romans 11: 6, 26 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 Romans 8: 23; 8: 15; 8: 19 . . . . . . . . 211

1 Corinthians 12: 12 . . . . . . . . . . . 54 1 Corinthians 12: 13 . . . . . . . . . . . 55 1 Corinthians 10: 1 . . . . . . . . . . . 57 1 Corinthians 2: 11, R. V. . . . . . . . . 90 1 Corinthians 12: 3 . . . . . . . . . . . 91 1 Corinthians 15: 51, 52 . . . . . . . . . 120 1 Corinthians 15: 52; 15: 44 . . . . . . . 125 1 Corinthians 3: 16 . . . . . . . . . . . 130 1 Corinthians 2: 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 1 Corinthians 10: 11 . . . . . . . . . . . 156 1 Corinthians 12: 11, R. V. . . . . . . . 166 1 Corinthians 2: 10-13 . . . . . . . . . . 173 1 Corinthians 14: 37 . . . . . . . . . . . 180 1 Corinthians 2: 9, 10 . . . . . . . . . . 181 1 Corinthians 12: 3, R. V. . . . . . . . . 195 1 Corinthians 6: 11 . . . . . . . . . . . 196 1 Corinthians 2: 9, 10 . . . . . . . . . . 197 1 Corinthians 12: 12 . . . . . . . . . . . 205 1 Corinthians 15: 24-28 . . . . . . . . . 207 1 Corinthians 15: 20; 15: 23 . . . . . . . 208

2 Corinthians 1: 21, 22 . . . . . . . . . 78 2 Corinthians 1: 21, R. V. . . . . . . . . 88 2 Corinthians 5: 14, R. V. . . . . . . . . 110 2 Corinthians 3: 18, R. V. . . . . . . . . 113 2 Corinthians 3: 18 . . . . . . . . . . . 123 2 Corinthians 3: . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132

Galatians 5: 25 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Galatians 4: 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Galatians 3: 2; 3: 14 . . . . . . . . . . 71 Galatians 4: 19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 Galatians 2: 20, R. V. . . . . . . . . . . 110 Galatians 5: 16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Galatians 1: 14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 Galatians 1: 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 Galatians 6: 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 Galatians 6: 8, R. V. . . . . . . . . . . 160 Galatians 1: 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208

Ephesians 1: 7; 3: 16 . . . . . . . . . . 42 Ephesians 1: 20, 21 . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Ephesians 4: 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Ephesians 6: 18 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Ephesians 4: 16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Ephesians 1: 13 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Ephesians 4: 30 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Ephesians 5: 18 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Ephesians 4: 24 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 Ephesians 2: 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Ephesians 4: 8-12, R. V. . . . . . . . . . 134 Ephesians 6: 18 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 Ephesians 5: 19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 Ephesians 2: 22, R. V.; 3: 16, R. V.; 2: 18, R. V. . . . . . . . . . . 154 Ephesians 4: 9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 Ephesians 5: 23; 5: 29 . . . . . . . . . . 206 Ephesians 5: 27 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 Ephesians 1: 13, 14 . . . . . . . . . . . 208 Ephesians 4: 30 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211

Philippians 2: 6, 7, R. V. . . . . . . . 42, 43

Colossians 1: 24 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Colossians 3: 10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 Colossians 2: 13 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Colossians 3: 2, 5, R. V. . . . . . . . . 110 Colossians 3: 16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

1 Thessalonians 2: 19 . . . . . . . . . . 50 1 Thessalonians 3: 13 . . . . . . . . . . 60 1 Thessalonians 1: 9 . . . . . . . . . . . 102 1 Thessalonians 5: 23, R. V. . . . . . . . 122 1 Thessalonians 1: 5 . . . . . . . . . . . 144 1 Thessalonians 1: 6 . . . . . . . . . . . 145 1 Thessalonians 4: 18 . . . . . . . . . . 155 1 Thessalonians 4: 17 . . . . . . . . . . 205

2 Thessalonians 2: 4 . . . . . . . . . . . 130

2 Timothy 2: 19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 2 Timothy 3: 16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

Titus 2: 13, R. V. . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

Hebrews 1: 9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Hebrews 9: 14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Hebrews 1: 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 Hebrews 6: 4, 5, R. V. . . . . . . . . . . 121 Hebrews 6: 5, R. V. . . . . . . . . . . . 123 Hebrews 2: 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 Hebrews 7: 25, R. V. . . . . . . . . . . . 148 Hebrews 3: 13 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 Hebrews 3: 15 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 Hebrews 3: 7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 Hebrews 1: 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 Hebrews 10: 14, 15 . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 Hebrews 9: 8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196 Hebrews 2: 14, 15 . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 Hebrews 9: 14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 Hebrews 6: 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208

James 1: 18 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 James 3: 15 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 James 6: 16; 5: 16, R. V . . . . . . . . . 155 James 2: 7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206

1 Peter 4: 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 1 Peter 2: 9, R. V. . . . . . . . . . . . 89 1 Peter 1: 23, R. V. . . . . . . . . . . . 105 1 Peter 4: 14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 1 Peter 1: 12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 1 Peter 1: 22 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 1 Peter 1: 23, R. V. . . . . . . . . . . . 170 1 Peter 1: 11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 1 Peter 4: 11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 1 Peter 3: 18 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191

2 Peter 1: 4, R. V. . . . . . . . . . . . 104 2 Peter 1: 21, R. V. . . . . . . . . . . . 175

1 John 2: 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 1 John 2: 20 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 1 John 2: 27 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 1 John 1: 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 1 John 1: 8, 3: 9 . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 1 John 3: 5, 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 1 John 3: 2, R. V. . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 1 John 4: 16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 1 John 2: 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195

Jude 1: 24 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 Jude 1: 19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 Jude 1: 20 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148

Revelation 22: 17 . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Revelation 1: 18 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Revelation 3: 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Revelation 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 Revelation 2: 7; 14: 13 . . . . . . . . . 170 Revelation 11: 17 . . . . . . . . . . . . 207

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Adam: fall of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 child of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 nature derived from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 inheritance from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 Adam life: birth into . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 Adolph Monod: farewell of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 Age of the Spirit: defined . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Age-work: continuance of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Ambrose: observation of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Ananias and Sapphira: sin of . . . . . . . . . . . . 22, 23 Andrews, Bishop: beautiful words of . . . . . . . . . 54 Anointing: Importance of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88, 89 examples of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 Ante-Pentecostal days: spiritual nonage of . . . . . . 48 Apostles: Matthias chosen by . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 prerogatives of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166 order of, ceased . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 Asceticism: inversion of divine order . . . . . . . . 111 Augustine: quotation from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 calls Pentecost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 saying of true . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 replies to rationalists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

Baptism: a monogram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Baptized: into Moses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Bengel: statement of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Bible: Holy Ghost breathes within it . . . . . . . . . 170 divine author of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 infallibility of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 a sensitive plant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 Bickersteth, E. H.: quotation from . . . . . . . . . . 81 Boys, E.: extract from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 Butler, Archer: quotation from . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Calvary: typology of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 once for all . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Calvin, John; quotation from . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Canon Garratt: excerpt from . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Cartwright: extract from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192 Choirs: composed of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 Christ: life of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 on earth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 inspired characterizations of . . . . . . . . . . . 23 image of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 fulfills all types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 our Passover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 earthly work of, completed . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 ready to be communicated . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 expiatory work of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 accepted by God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 foretells Comforter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 the testator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 indwelling of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 generosity of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 earthly—equal to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 power to impart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 coronation of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 prayers of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 mystical body of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 present by . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 visible union of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 manifestation of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 indwelt by . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 description of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 vivifying power of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 disfigured . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 twofold manifestation of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 faith of, ignored . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 our justification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 effective service for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 example in all things . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 our pattern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 endued by the Spirit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 possessed by . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 holiness essential to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 draws to himself . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 justification in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 the Holy One . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 deity of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 image of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 conformity to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 made atonement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 treasure hidden in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 the heart of the church . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 begotten by Holy Ghost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 origin of life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 nature derived from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 came as Saviour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 efficacy of his sacrifice . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 victory through . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 manifested love of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 pattern of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 imparting life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 inheritance from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 official seat of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 bride of, betrayed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 living voice of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 identification with . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 helping us to pray . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 attitude of, described . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 divinity of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 spirit of, necessary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 threefold work of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188 died for the sins of the world . . . . . . . . . . . 190 satisfied God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 perfected righteousness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192 our High Priest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 resurrection of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194 enthronement of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 lifted to heaven . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196 continuance of within the veil . . . . . . . . . . . 197 not seen by the world . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 reflected by the Spirit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 answers all questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198 death of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 judged sin on the cross . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 redemptive work of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 administration of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208 the first-fruits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208 Christ-life: spiritual birth into . . . . . . . . . . 104 Christian Church: home of the Spirit . . . . . . . . . 20 Christian doctrine: undeveloped . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Christian life: crisis in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 a gradual growth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 possibilities of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 Christians: good text for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 ignorance of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 privilege of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 belief of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 possessors of the Spirit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 prove veracity of Scripture . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 divine naming of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206 Church: first capital sin of . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 temple of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 image of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 greater riches for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 history of begun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 definition of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 formation of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 introduction into . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 unsanctified, sometimes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 to be like Jesus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 appellation of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 complement of her Lord . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 disfigures Christ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Paraclete abides in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 effective service in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 monograph of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 Christ the heart of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 the temple of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 guidance of the Lord for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 is manifold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 dead yet living . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 appointments in State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Spirit withdrawn from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 feature of worship in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 service of, described . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 fellowship with Head of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 requirements of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161,162 Spirit sent unto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188 communications of to the world . . . . . . . . . . . 197 translation of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206 Comforter: another given . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 indwelling of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 coming of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 presence of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 foretold by Christ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 reverent subjection of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 ignorant of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Jesus’ promise of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 witness of the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 sending of the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 ministry of the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 return of to heaven . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206 consolation of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 Communion: significance of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 through Holy Spirit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Conscience: definition and work of . . . . . . . . . . 189 accusing power of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 Conversion: definition of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 Course of redemption: Moberly’s divisions . . . . . . 16 Cross: plain attractions of . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 Cumming, J. Elder: quotation from . . . . . . . . . 72, 73 excerpt from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85, 86 quotation from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128, 207

Day of Pentecost: Holy Spirit embodied in the church at . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Death: division of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Disciple: requirements of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Dispensation: mystery and glory of . . . . . . . . . . 25 Divine love: source of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 Divine ministries: succession of . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Ephesians: description in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Exodus; typical illustration of . . . . . . . . . . . 58

Father: Jesus’ return to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Felix: reference to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 Fuller, Andrew: statement of . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191

Gaussen’s Theopneustia: quotation from . . . . . . . . 164 Gentiles: door opened to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 God: omnipresence of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 union of, to humanity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 indwelling with men . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 becomes known . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 emanation from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 witness of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 withholding from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 claims of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Christ, pattern of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 total surrender to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 action of Spirit of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 manifestation of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 all in all . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 created all men . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 communion with, imperiled . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 Godet: beautiful words of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Godhead: mysterious unity of . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 persons of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 co-equal partner in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 earthly ministry of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 distinctly foreshadowed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Paraclete a member of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 mutual converse of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 our relations to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 executive of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 God-Jehovah: economy of, incomplete . . . . . . . . . 26 God’s communion: broken and restored . . . . . . . . . 30 Great Commission: meagre giving for the . . . . . . . 158 record of giving of the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 Gregory Nazianzen: quoted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

Hare, Julius Charles: extract from . . . . . . . . . . 186 Harnack, Prof.: statement of . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Heresy: meaning of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 Holiness: explanation of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 synonymous name for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 Holy Ghost: “dies natalis” of . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 personality of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 office of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 work of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 communicates power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 great work of begun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 statement of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 all filled with . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 baptized in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 unction of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 incorporation into body of Christ through . . . . . 59 baptism of the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 unceasing work of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 view of, urged . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 possession of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 faith toward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 traits of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 blessings of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 ignorance regarding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Christ begotten by . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 fullness of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 incidents regarding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83, 84 inheritance in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 the gift of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 crisis brought by a full reception of . . . . . . . 94 has been given . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 present office-work of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 operation of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 hidden life of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 completed in us . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 the one Administrator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 prerogative of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 insubordination to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 appoints leaders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136,137 elders chosen by . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 ignoring voice of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 preaching in the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 inspiration of, ignored . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 God’s interpreter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 prayer in the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 office of, magnified . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 unction of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 attempted purchase of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 minute directions of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 action of, supreme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166 renewing power of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 breathes within the Bible . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 position regarding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 testimony of Paul to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 regeneration by . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 David’s words concerning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 disciples, recipients of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 presentation of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190 the gift of the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 sent by the Lord . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196 temporal mission of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 administration of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 age-ministry of, terminates . . . . . . . . . . . . 208 Holy Spirit: lack of attention to . . . . . . . . . . 13 consideration of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 best treatise on . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 age-ministry of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 vagueness of doctrine of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Jesus’ presence by . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 temporal mission of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 dispensation of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 made partakers of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 came into the world . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 resides on earth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 abides perpetually in church . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 deference paid to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 indwelling of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Son revealed by . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 relation of stated by Tophel . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 descent of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 commended by Christ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 office of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 sent down . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 filled with . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 a witness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 “dies natalis” of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 named by our Lord . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 subordination to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 distributes the estate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 the divine Conveyancer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 communicates power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 advent of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 prays with church . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 history of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 union through . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 duty to receive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 personality of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 ignorance regarding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 reception of gift of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 our signet ring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 will be the seal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 interprets himself . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 is the anointing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 recognition of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 agent for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 power of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 conveyance of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 the Executor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 subdues sinful nature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 subjection to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 designation of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 guidance of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 administration of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 in church service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 witness of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 supremacy of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 prayer inspired by . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 in missions of the church . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 acts and speaks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 directing power of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176 sovereign individuality of . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 inimitableness of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 authenticates books for us . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 ground of conviction of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 an evangel of grace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198 imparts to us . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198 church translated by . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206 Person of the Godhead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 work of, elective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 a divine agent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210 Human system: life and death . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

Inspiration: significance of . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 gospel a stereotyped . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 Scripture given by . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 verbal, essential . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 Jesus claims verbal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 of the Holy Ghost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 of Scripture writers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173,174 Irving, Edward: beautiful statement of . . . . . . . . 121 quotation from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204 Isaiah: passion-prophecy of . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192 reference to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198

James: words of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 exhortation of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 Jesus: surprising saying of . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 pre-existence of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 agent in creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 birth of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 sublime word of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 mysterious saying of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 not yet glorified . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 paschal talk of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 atoning blood of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 farewell sermon of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43,44 teaching of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 parousia of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 All in all . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 replies of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 full of the Spirit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 spirit of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 significant saying of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 question of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 scribes’ question concerning . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 words of concerning Spirit . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166 doctrine of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 claims of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 charged with blasphemy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 limitation of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 prophecy at birth of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 literal fulfillment of promise of . . . . . . . . . 194 strange paradox of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196 words of at the cross . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 spake literal truth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 government of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 Jesus Christ: ministry of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 time-ministry of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 gives Great Commission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 dualism of teaching of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 Jews: charge of against Jesus . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 denial of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 church gathered from the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 John: mentioned . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 Jordan: symbolism of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 Jukes, Andrew: extract from . . . . . . . . . . . . 68, 69 excerpt from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

Kelly, William: observation of . . . . . . . . . . . 69, 70

Lee, Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures: quotation from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175,176 Leper: cleansing of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Lord: farewell discourse of . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 question concerning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 deference paid to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 glory shines forth from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 presentation of sheaf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 words of risen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 named the Holy Ghost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 words of concerning “Paracletos” . . . . . . . . . . 36 Paraclete distinct from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 speaks concerning Spirit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 valedictory discourse of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 return of to glory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 dying of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 complement of the church . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 resurrection of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 advent of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 appropriating to himself . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 assumed prerogative of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 words of to Nicodemus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 antithesis of two natures in . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 constant words of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

fashioned to image of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 mystical body of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 coming of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 experience of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 guiding the church . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 post-ascension gospel of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 ascent of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 calls Saul of Tarsus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 power of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 conditions imposed by . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 voice of heard in church . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 commission to speak for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 Spirit breathed by . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 testimony of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 Apocalyptic words of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 Abigail’s prayer to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 words of, concerning Comforter . . . . . . . . . . . 187 messengers sent by . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188 a sin against the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190 exaltation of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 sent the Holy Ghost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196 harvest at return of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 Luther: pointed statement of . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 wise words of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172

Manning, Henry E.: quotation from . . . . . . . . . . 12 best treatise from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Master: instructions of to disciples . . . . . . . . 36, 37 Method: that employed in writing . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Milton: quotation from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Ministry: of Jesus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Moberly: divisions of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 quotation from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Morrison: comment of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Moule, H. C. G.: excerpt from . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Murray, Andrew: quotation from . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

Neander, Church History: excerpt from . . . . . . . . 168 New birth: definition of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 acquirement of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 New Testament Scriptures: authoritative voice of the Lord . . . . . . . . 167

Old Testament: words of Peter concerning . . . . . . . 170 as oracles of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 Olshausen’s Commentary: note from . . . . . . . . 165, 166 Owen, John: summing up of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

Paraclete: sent by Christ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 meaning of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 attributes of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 conclusion regarding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 duties of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 teaching of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 difference of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 realization of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 question and answer of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 related to limitation of Jesus . . . . . . . . . . . 187 certifies to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 with the Father . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 statement concerning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 Parousia: Lord’s second coming . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 introduces the church . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Paschal lamb: typology of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Paul: epistles of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41, 42 words of . . . . . . . . . . 71, 111, 112, 120, 180, 211 exponent of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 subject of preaching of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 work of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 words of, interpreted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 testimony of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 words of, before Felix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 observation of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 Pentecost: work inaugurated at . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 styled “dies natalis” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 promise fulfilled at . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 impossible precedence of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 typology of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 predetermined . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 has come . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 church began its history at . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 story of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 body of Christ baptized at . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Holy Ghost descended at . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 foretaste of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 once for all . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 Persons of the Trinity: deference of . . . . . . . . . 27 Peter: question of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 bold testimony of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 deep saying of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 statement of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 reference of to Old Testament . . . . . . . . . . . 171 talk of, on Pentecost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194 defense of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194 words of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198 inspired saying of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210 Prayer: a vital element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 in the name of Jesus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 high ground regarding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 connected with Holy Ghost . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 Preaching: importance of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 of the cross . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 the inspiration of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

Redemption by Incarnation: doctrine of in vogue . . . 67 Regeneration: what is it? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 power of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 examples of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 Resurrection: time fixed for . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Romans eighth: deep teachings of . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Roos: quotation from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Rothe, Dogmatics: excerpt from . . . . . . . . . . . . 178

Salvation: two sides to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Sanctification: continuous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 instantaneousness of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 Saul of Tarsus: sealed with the Spirit . . . . . . . . 136 Saviour: lived before incarnation . . . . . . . . . . 13 redemptive work of, completed . . . . . . . . . . . 30 promise of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 follow teachings of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 and a comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 departure of, conditioning . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Scriptures: teaching of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 confounding of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 examined, regarding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 given by inspiration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 definition of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 minute study of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 literal inspiration of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 the style of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 divine Author of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 alleged discrepancies of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 veracity of, confirmed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 infallibility of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 contrast exhibited in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 harmony of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 Shechinah: resting-place of . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Son of God: naming of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 self-emptying of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Sonship: doctrine of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Spirit; descending on Jesus . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 study of doctrine of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 indwelling of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 sending down of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 teaching of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 typology of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 work of, begun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 history of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 best dictionary of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 promise of advent of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 the measure of the Son . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 signified time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 nature and offices of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 influence of, manifested . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 baptistery of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 baptism of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 walk in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 praying in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 fell on house of Cornelius . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 supreme work of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 the indwelling of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 enduement of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68, 76 gift subsequent to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 appropriation of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 God’s gift . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 reception of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 traits of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 baptism in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Christ waited for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 anointing of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 sealing of the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77, 81 possession of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79, 80 great office of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 fullness of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 reception of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 infilling of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 supreme place of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 anointing of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 sanctification in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 manifestation of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 appellations of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 Christian’s privilege in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 illustrations of enduement of . . . . . . . . . . . 93 yearning of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 energy of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 communicates to us . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 life by . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 incorporation by . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 of holiness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 supremacy of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 effects exclusion of sin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 behind all . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 surrender to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 of glory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 change wrought by . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 working in us . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 perfecting power of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 descent of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 power of, ignored . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 is the breath of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 dispensation of the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 doctrine of the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 deepest work of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 ministry of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 strengthening power of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 access by, unto the Father . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 method of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 inspirer of worship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 imitation of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 story of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 directing enterprises . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160, 161 Christians possessors of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 Jesus’ words concerning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166 authoritative voice of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 intercedes for us . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 thoughts regarding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 of Christ necessary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 universal diffusion of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 conviction of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188 sent unto the church . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188 the witness to grace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 proceeds from God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 sent to convince the world . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 reflects Christ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 co-witness of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 distinctive work of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206 elective work of, completed . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 Stephen: words of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 error in statement of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 Streams of life: two contrasted . . . . . . . . . . . 104

Testimonies: of new life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Tophel, Pastor: quotation from . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 excerpt from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 criticism of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 Types: accuracy of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 foretell accurately . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

Webb, Bishop: extract from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Word of God: a unique book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 infallible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Fundamental Doctrines of the Christian
faith, by R. A. Torrey

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
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Title: The Fundamental Doctrines of the Christian faith

Author: R. A. Torrey

Release Date: July 25, 2016 [EBook #52648]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FUNDAMENTAL DOCTRINES--CHRISTIAN FAITH ***




Produced by Heiko Evermann, Lisa Reigel, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
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material from the Google Books project.)

THE FUNDAMENTAL DOCTRINES OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH

---

BY

R. A. TORREY Author of “How to Bring Men to Christ,” “What the Bible Teaches,” etc., etc.

NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

---

Copyright, 1918, By R. A. Torrey

Printed in the United States of America

---

PREFACE

The author of these sermons has had a feeling for a long time that the great need in our churches in this day is systematic indoctrination. He put his theory into practice last winter in his own church, and these sermons are the result. We were having a great many accessions to our church. In the two years of the church’s history we had had something like six hundred accessions to the church, and every month considerable numbers of new members were being added. While many of these came by letter from other churches, many of them were new converts and had had practically no systematic instruction in the fundamental truths of the Christian faith, so we announced a series of sermons on The Fundamental Doctrines of the Christian Faith. There was immediately a large increase in the attendance at the services where these addresses were given, and this increase has kept up until on the last Lord’s Day we had much the largest attendance we have ever had, excepting on Easter Sunday. Many have testified to the blessing received from these sermons, and there has been a great demand that the sermons be printed for general circulation. This request has come from ministers of various denominations, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, and others. It is hoped that this volume will be useful to other pastors in suggesting lines of teaching in their regular pastoral work, and also that it may be used widely by pastors [vi]and others for circulation among Christians. We live in a day in which many of our church members are all at sea as to what they believe on the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith. These sermons have already helped many through their delivery. It is hoped they will reach and help far more in the printed form.

R. A. Torrey.

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[vii]

CONTENTS

CHAPTER	PAGE
I	Inspiration, or To What Extent is the Bible Inspired of God?	11
II	The Christian Conception of God, or the God of the Bible as Distinguished from the God of Christian Science and the God of Modern Philosophy	38
III	The Christian Conception of God—The Infinite Perfection and Unity of God	56
IV	The Deity of Jesus Christ	73
V	Jesus Christ a Real Man	93
VI	The Personality of the Holy Spirit	112
VII	The Deity of the Holy Spirit and the Distinction Between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit	144
VIII	The Atonement: God’s Doctrine of the Atonement vs. Unitarian and Christian Science Doctrines of the Atonement	162
IX	The Distinctive Doctrine of Protestantism: Justification by Faith	186
X	The New Birth	206
XI	Sanctification	225
XII	The Resurrection of the Body of Jesus and of Our Bodies	245
XIII	The Devil	263
XIV	Is There a Literal Hell?	284
XV	Is Future Punishment Everlasting?	303

[viii]

---

[ix]

THE FUNDAMENTAL DOCTRINES OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH

[x]

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THE FUNDAMENTAL DOCTRINES OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH

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I Inspiration, or to What Extent Is the Bible Inspired of God?

“For no prophecy ever came by the will of man, but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit.”—2 Pet. 1:21.

“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.”—2 Tim. 3:16, 17.

Our subject this morning is “The Inspiration of the Bible, or to What Extent Is the Bible Inspired of God?” The subject is of vital and fundamental importance. If we can make it clear that the writers of the various books of the Bible were inspired of God in a sense that no other men were ever inspired of God, that they were so gifted and taught and led and governed by the Holy Spirit in their utterances as recorded in the Bible, that they taught the truth and nothing [12]but the truth, that their teachings were absolutely without error,—then we have in the Bible a court of final appeal and of infallible wisdom to which we can go to settle every question of doctrine or duty. But if the writers of the Bible were “inspired” only in the vague and uncertain sense that Shakespeare, Browning and many other men of genius were inspired, only inspired to the extent that their minds were made more keen to see the truth than ordinary men, but still only in such a way that they made mistakes, or chose the wrong word to express their thought, so that we must recast their thought by discovering, if we may, what the inspired thought back of the uninspired words was, then we are all at sea, in hopeless confusion, so that each generation must settle for itself what the Holy Spirit meant to say through the blundering reporters; and it is absolutely certain that no generation can determine with anything approximating accuracy what the Spirit meant, and so no generation can arrive at the truth, but simply promulgate blunders for the next and wiser generation to correct, to be corrected in turn by the next generation that follows it. Thank God that this latter subtle but popular doctrine can be proven to be utterly untrue!

There is great need of crystal clear teaching on this subject, because our colleges and seminaries and pulpits and Sunday schools and religious papers are full of teaching that is vague, [13]inaccurate, misleading, un-Scriptural, and oftentimes grossly false. There are many in these days who say “I believe that the Bible is inspired” when by “inspired” they do not mean at all what you understand or what the mighty men of faith in the past meant by “inspired.” They often say that they “believe the Bible is the Word of God,” when at the same time they believe it is full of errors.

Now the Bible is as clear as crystal in its teachings and claims regarding itself, and either those claims are true, or else the Bible is the biggest fraud in all the literature of the human race. The position held by so many to-day, that the Bible is a good book, perhaps the best book in the world, but at the same time it is full of errors that must be corrected by the higher wisdom of our day, is utterly illogical and absolutely ridiculous. If the Bible is not what it claims to be, it is a fraud—an outrageous fraud.

What does the Bible teach and claim concerning itself? What does it teach and claim regarding the fact and extent of its own inspiration?

I. THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT IN APOSTLES AND PROPHETS DIFFERENT IN CHARACTER FROM HIS WORK IN ALL OTHER PERSONS

The first thing that the Bible teaches on this point and claims for itself is, that the work of the Holy Spirit in apostles and prophets, in the various [14]human authors of the different books of the Bible, differs from His work in other men, even in other believers in Christ. It teaches that the Holy Spirit imparts to apostles and prophets an especial gift for an especial purpose. We find this clearly taught in 1 Cor. 12:4, 8-11, 28, 29, where we read, “Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. . . . (8) for to one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom; and to another the word of knowledge, according to the same Spirit; (9) to another faith, in the same Spirit; and to another gifts of healing, in the same Spirit; (10) and to another workings of miracles (powers); and to another prophecy; and to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues, and to another the interpretation of tongues; (11) but all these worketh the one and the same Spirit, dividing to each one severally even as He will. . . . (28) And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, divers kinds of tongues. (29) Are all apostles? are all prophets? are all teachers? are all workers of miracles?” This chapter is the fullest and clearest chapter in the Bible on the subject of the various gifts of the Holy Spirit. It is the classical chapter on the whole subject, and the teaching of these verses is as plain as language can make it, and it states in terms, the meaning of which is unmistakable, that the gift bestowed on apostles and prophets [15]differed in kindfrom the gifts bestowed on other believers, even though those believers were filled with the Holy Spirit. Not only did the work of the Holy Spirit in the apostles and prophets differ from His work in men of genius, but even from His work in other believers. These verses make it as plain as day that the doctrine which has become so common and so popular in our day, that the work of the Holy Spirit in preachers and teachers and in ordinary believers, illuminating them and guiding them into the truth and into the understanding of the Word of God, is the same in kind and differs only in degree from the work of the Holy Spirit in Apostles and Prophets is thoroughly unscriptural and untrue. This doctrine overlooks what is here so clearly stated and so carefully elucidated, that while there is “the same Spirit” “there are diversities of gifts” “diversities of ministrations,” “diversities of workings” (1 Cor. 12:406 R. V.) and that not all are Prophets or Apostles. (1 Cor.12:29.)

Those who desire to minimise the difference between the work of the Holy Spirit in Apostles and Prophets, and His work in other men, often refer to the fact that the Bible itself says that Bezaleel, the architect of the tabernacle, was to be “filled with the Spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship,” “to devise the work of the tabernacle” (Ex. 31:1-11), as a proof that the inspiration of the Prophet does not differ in kind [16]from the inspiration of the artist or the architect. This argument at first glance seems plausible, but when we bear in mind the facts about the tabernacle, especially the fact that the tabernacle was to be built after the pattern shown to Moses in the mount (Ex. 25:8, 9, 40) and that therefore it was itself a revelation from God, a prophecy, a setting forth of the truth of God, the argument loses all its force. The tabernacle was the Word of God done into wood, gold, silver, brass, cloth, skin, etc., just as truly the Word of God and the revealing of God’s truth as if the truth were printed on a page. So, of course, Bezaleel needed to be inspired, he was a prophet, a prophet who uttered his prophecies in the details of the tabernacle. There is much reasoning about inspiration to-day that appear at first sight very learned, but that will not bear much scrutiny or candid comparison with the teachings of the Word of God. There is nothing in the Bible more inspired than the tabernacle, and if the destructive critics would study the tabernacle more carefully and thoroughly they would be led to give up their ingenious but untenable theories, not only about the construction of the tabernacle, but about many other things as well. I have never heard or known of a single destructive critic who had ever given a thorough study to the real meaning of the tabernacle in all its parts, or who had any considerable understanding of the types of Scripture. I have challenged the critics in the University centres of[17]England, Ireland and Scotland to name one single destructive critic who had ever made any thorough study of the types, and no one has ever attempted to even suggest one.

II. TRUTH HIDDEN FROM MEN FOR AGES, AND WHICH THEY HAD NOT DISCOVERED AND COULD NOT DISCOVER, BY THE UNAIDED PROCESSES OF HUMAN REASONING, HAS BEEN REVEALED TO APOSTLES AND PROPHETS IN THE SPIRIT

The second thing taught in the Bible regarding the inspiration of the Apostles and Prophets, the inspiration of the various authors of the books of the Bible, is that truth hidden from men for ages, and which they had not discovered, and could not discover, by the unaided processes of human reasoning, even human reasoning at its very best and highest, has been revealed to Apostles and Prophets in the Holy Spirit. We find this very clearly taught in Eph. 3:2-5: “If so be that ye have heard of the dispensation of that grace of God which was given me to you-ward; (3) how that by revelation was made known unto me the mystery, as I wrote before in few words, (4) whereby when ye read, ye can perceive my understanding in the mystery of Christ; (5) which in other generations was not made known unto the sons of men, as it hath now been revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit.” The meaning of these words is unmistakable. Paul here declares in words the [18]meaning of which is perfectly plain, that God “in the Spirit” had revealed “unto His holy apostles and prophets” “the mystery of Christ” which in former generations had not been made known unto the sons of men, which they had not discovered and could not discover except by revelation from God; Paul and the other apostles and prophets knew it by direct revelation from God himself through the Holy Ghost. The teaching is inescapable that the Bible contains truth that men never had discovered and never could have discovered if left to themselves, but truth which the Father in great grace has revealed to His children through His servants the prophets and apostles. We see in this the folly, a folly so common in our day, of seeking to test the statements of Scripture by the conclusions of human reasoning, or by the intuitions of the “Christian consciousness.” The revelation of God transcends human reasoning, and therefore human reasoning cannot be its test. Furthermore, a consciousness that is truly and fully Christian is the product of the study and absorption of Bible truth. It is not the test of the truth of the Bible,—it is the product of meditation on the Bible. If our “consciousness” differs from the statements of the Bible, it is not as yet a fully “Christian consciousness,” and the thing for us to do is not to try to pull God’s revelation down to the level of our consciousness but to tone our consciousness up to the level of God’s Word.

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III. THE REVELATION MADE TO THE PROPHETS BY THE HOLY SPIRIT WAS INDEPENDENT OF THEIR OWN THINKING

The third thing that the Bible makes perfectly clear as to the inspiration of the Prophets and Apostles is, that the revelation made by God through His Holy Spirit to the Prophets was independent of the Prophets’ own thinking, that it was made to them by the Spirit of Christ which was in them, and that they themselves oftentimes did not thoroughly understand the full meaning of what the Spirit was saying through them, and that what they said was a subject of diligent search and inquiry to their own mind as to its meaning. This comes out very plainly in 1 Pet. 1:10-12, “Concerning which salvation the prophets sought and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come to you; searching what time, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did point unto, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that should follow them. Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto you, did they minister these things which now have been announced unto you through them that preached the Gospel unto you by the Holy Spirit sent forth from Heaven; which things angels desire to look into.” Here again the meaning is as clear as day and inescapable. We are told that the prophets had a revelation made to them by [20]the Holy Spirit, the meaning of which they did not thoroughly comprehend, and that they themselves “sought and searched diligently” as to the meaning of this revelation which was made to them and which they recorded. The Spirit, through them testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ (e.g. in Isa. 53:3, Ps. 22) and the glories that should follow them. They recorded what the Spirit testified, but what it meant they did not thoroughly understand. It was not merely that their minds were made keen to see things which they would not otherwise see, and which they therefore more or less accurately recorded. No, there was a very definite revelation, arising not from their own minds at all, but from the Spirit of God Who made the revelation to them and this they recorded, but it was not of themselves to that extent that they themselves wondered as to what its meaning might be. What they recorded was not at all their own thought, it was the thought of the Holy Spirit who spoke through them. How utterly different this conception is from that which is so persistently taught in many of our colleges and theological seminaries and pulpits,—how utterly different it is from the conception that was taught a week ago to-day in one of the pulpits of our own city.

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IV. NO PROPHETIC UTTERANCE WAS OF THE PROPHET’S OWN WILL, BUT THE PROPHET SPOKE FROM GOD AND THE PROPHET WAS CARRIED ALONG BY THE HOLY SPIRIT AND NOT BY HIS OWN IMPULSE OR REASONING IN WHAT HE SAID

The fourth thing that the Bible makes perfectly clear is, that not one single prophetic utterance was of the prophet’s own will (i.e., it was not in any sense merely what he wished to say), but in every instance the Prophet spoke from God, and the Prophet was carried along in the prophetic utterance by the Holy Spirit, regardless of his own will or thought. We find this stated practically in so many words in 2 Pet. 1:21 where we read: “For no prophecy (literally, not a prophecy) ever came(literally, was brought) by the will of man; but men spake from God being moved (literally, carried along, or borne) by the Holy Spirit.” There can be no honest mistaking of the meaning of this language. The Prophet never thought that there was something that needed to be said and therefore said it, but God took possession of the prophet, carried him along in his utterance, by the power of the Holy Spirit, and he spake, not from his own consciousness, and not from his own reasoning, nor from his own intuition, but “from God.” As God’s messenger he spoke what God told him to say.

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V. THE HOLY SPIRIT WAS THE REAL SPEAKER WHO SPOKE IN THE PROPHETIC UTTERANCES

The fifth thing that the Bible teaches regarding the Inspiration of the Prophets and the Apostles and their utterances, is that the Holy Spirit was the real speaker in the prophetic utterances, that what was said or written was the Holy Spirit’s Word that was upon the Apostle’s tongue, and not the word of the Prophet or Apostle. This is said in the Bible in so many words, over and over again. For example, in Heb. 3:7 we read: “Wherefore, even as the Holy Spirit saith, To-day if ye shall hear His voice, harden not your hearts, etc.” The author of the epistle to the Hebrews is quoting Ps.95:7, 8 and says that what the Psalmist is recorded as saying “the Holy Spirit saith.” Again in Heb.10:15, 16, we read: “And the Holy Spirit also beareth witness to us; for after He had said, This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord: I will put my laws on their heart, and upon their mind also will I write them.” Now the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews is quoting Jer. 31:33, and he does not hesitate to say that the testimony that Jeremiah there bore is the testimony of the Holy Ghost, that the Holy Ghost was the real speaker.

Again we read in Acts 28:25, 26 that Paul said, “Well spake the Holy Spirit through Isaiah the prophet, unto your fathers, (26) saying, Go thou unto this people and say, By hearing ye shall hear [23]and shall in no wise understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall in no wise perceive, etc.” Here Paul is quoting Isaiah’s words as recorded in the 6th chapter of Isaiah, the 9th and 10thverses, and he distinctly says that the real speaker was not Isaiah, but “the Holy Spirit” who spoke “through Isaiah the prophet.”

Turning now to the old Testament we read in 2 Sam. 23:2 this assertion by David regarding the things that he said and wrote: “The Spirit of Jehovah spake by me, and his word was upon my tongue.” There can be no mistaking the meaning of these words on the part of any one who goes to the Bible to find out what it really claims and teaches. The Holy Spirit was the real speaker in the prophetic utterance. It was the Holy Spirit’s utterance that was upon the prophet’s tongue. The prophet was simply the mouth by which the Holy Spirit spoke. Merely as a man, except as the Holy Spirit taught him and used him, the prophet was fallible as other men are fallible, but when the Spirit was upon him, when he was taken up and borne along by the Holy Spirit, then he became infallible in his teachings; for his teachings were not his, but the teachings of the Holy Spirit. It was God who was then speaking, not the Prophet. For example, Paul merely as a man, even as a Christian man, doubtless had many mistaken notions on many things, and was more or less subject to the ideas and opinions of his time, but when he taught as an [24]Apostle, under the power of the Holy Spirit he was infallible, or rather the Spirit who taught through him was infallible, and the teachings that resulted from the Spirit’s teaching through him, were infallible, as infallible as God. Common sense demands of us that we carefully distinguish between what Paul may have thought as a man, and what he actually taught as an apostle. In the Bible we have the record of what he taught as an Apostle. Some one may cite as a possible exception to this statement 1 Cor. 7:6, 25, where he says: “But this I say by way of concession, not of commandment. . . . Now concerning virgins, I have no commandment of the Lord, but I give my judgment, as one that hath obtained mercy of the Lord to be trustworthy.” There are those who think that Paul does not seem to have been sure here that he had the word of the Lord in this particular matter, but that is not the meaning of the passage. The meaning of v. 6 is that his teaching which he had just given was by way of concession to their weakness, and not a commandment as to what they must do. And the teaching of v. 25 is that the Lord, during His earthly life, had given no commandment on this subject, but that Paul was giving his judgment; but he says distinctly that he was giving it as one who had obtained mercy of the Lord to be trustworthy and furthermore, in the 40th verse of the chapter he distinctly says that in his judgment he had the Spirit of God. But even allowing that the [25]other interpretation of this passage is the correct one, and that Paul was not absolutely sure in this case that he had the Word of the Lord and the mind of the Lord, that would only show that where Paul was not absolutely sure that he was teaching in the Holy Ghost he was careful to note the fact, and this would only give additional certainty to all other passages that he wrote.

It is sometimes said that Paul taught in his earlier epistles that the Lord would return during his lifetime, and that in this matter he certainly was mistaken. But Paul never taught in his earlier epistles, or any other epistles, he never taught anywhere, that the Lord would return during his lifetime. This assertion is contrary to fact. He does say in 1 Thess. which was his first epistle, the 4thchapter and 17th verse: “Then we that are alive, that are left, shall together with them (i.e., the believers who had already fallen asleep) be caught up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” He does here put himself in the same class with those who were still alive when he wrote the words. He naturally and necessarily did not include himself with those who had already fallen asleep. In speaking of the Lord’s return he does not say nor hint that he will be still alive when the Lord returns. It is quite probable that Paul did believe at this time that he might be alive when the Lord returned but he never taught that he would be alive. The attitude of expectancy is the [26]true attitude in all ages for every believer. This was the attitude that Paul took until it was distinctly revealed to him that he would depart before the Lord came. I think it very probable that Paul in the earlier part of his ministry was inclined to believe that he would live until the coming of the Lord, but the Holy Ghost kept him from so teaching, and also kept him from all other errors in his teachings.

VI. THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE APOSTLES GAVE NOT ONLY THE THOUGHT, BUT THE WORDS IN WHICH THE THOUGHT WAS TO BE EXPRESSED

The 6th thing that the Bible makes clear as to the inspiration of the apostle and prophets is that, the Holy Spirit in the Prophets and Apostles gave not only the thought but also gave the words in which the thought was to be expressed. We find this very clearly stated in 1 Cor. 2:13: “Which things also we speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Spirit teacheth; combining spiritual things with spiritual words.” One of the most popular of the false theories of Inspiration in our day is that the Holy Spirit was the author of the thought, but that the Apostles were left to their own choice of words in the expression of the thought, and that therefore in studying the Bible we cannot emphasise the exact meaning of the words, but must try to find the thought of God that was back of the words, [27]and which the writer has more or less inaccurately expressed. There are many teachers in our theological seminaries to-day, and in our pulpits, who speak very sneeringly and superciliously of those who believe in Verbal Inspiration,—i.e., those who believe that the Holy Spirit chose the very words in which the thought he was teaching was to be expressed, but however sneeringly they may speak of those who believe in Verbal Inspiration, certainly the Bible claims that it was verbally inspired. The passage which I have just read makes it as plain as language can possibly make it that the “words” in which the Apostle spoke were not “words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Spirit teacheth.” Now if this is not the fact, if only the thought that was given to Paul was the thought of God, and he clothed the thought in his own words, then Paul was a thoroughly deceived man on a fundamental point, in which case no dependence at all can be placed in his teachings on any point, or else he was a deliberate fraud, in which case the quicker we burn up his books the better for us and all concerned. There is no possibility of finding any middle ground, and the attempts to find a middle ground have landed those who have tried it in all kinds of absurdities. If you have an exact and logical mind, you must take your choice between Verbal Inspiration and bald infidelity. Paul distinctly states that the words in which he conveyed to others the truth that was revealed to him were [28]the words which the Holy Spirit taught him. The Holy Spirit himself has anticipated all these modern ingenious, but wholly unbiblical and utterly illogical and entirely false theories regarding his own work in the Apostles. The theory that “the concept” was inspired but the words in which the concept was expressed were not, was anticipated by the Holy Spirit Himself and exploded 1800 years before our supposedly wise 19thcentury theological teachers conceived it, and attempted to foist it upon an unsuspecting public. It was exploded eighteen centuries before it was exploited. Furthermore, the theory is absurd in itself. As the only way in which thought can be conveyed from one mind to another, from one man’s mind to another man’s mind, or from the mind of God to the mind of man is by words, therefore if the words are imperfect the thought expressed in those words is necessarily imperfect. The theory is an absurdity on its very face, and it is difficult to see how intelligent men could have ever deceived themselves into believing such a thoroughly illogical theory. If the words are not inspired the Bible is not inspired. Let us not deceive ourselves; let us face facts.

Furthermore, the more carefully and minutely one studies the wording of the statements of this wonderful book—the Bible—the more he will become convinced of the marvellous accuracy of the very words used to express the thought. To a superficial thinker the doctrine of Verbal [29]Inspiration may appear questionable or even absurd, but any regenerate and Spirit-taught man who ponders the words of the Scripture day by day, and year after year, will become thoroughly and immovably convinced that the wisdom of God is in the very words used as well as in the thought which is expressed in the words. It is a significant and deeply impressive fact that our difficulties with the Bible rapidly disappear as we note the precise language used. The changing of a word or letter, or of a tense, case or number, would oftentimes land us in contradiction or untruth, but taking the words exactly as written, difficulties disappear and truth shines forth. Countless times people have come to me with apparent difficulties and supposed contradictions in the Bible and asked a solution, and I have pointed them to the exact words used and the solution was found in taking the words exactly as written. It was because they changed in a slight degree the very words that God spoke that a difficulty had seemed to arise. The Divine origin of nature shines forth more and more clearly the more closely we examine it under the microscope. As by the use of a powerful microscope we see the perfection of form and the adaptation of means to end in the minutest particles of matter, we are overwhelmingly convinced that God, a God of infinite wisdom and power, a wisdom extending down to the minutest parts of matter, is the author of the material universe: so likewise the divine origin of [30]the Bible shines forth more and more clearly under the microscope. The more minutely we study the Bible the more we note the perfection with which the turn of a word reveals the absolute thought of God.

An important question, and a question that has puzzled many writers at this point, is: If the Holy Spirit is the author of the very words of Scripture how do we account for the variations in style and diction? How is it, for example, that Paul always used Pauline language, and John used Johannean language, and Peter used language that was characteristic of himself? The answer to this question is very simple and is two-fold: First, even though we could not account at all for this fact, it would have little weight against the explicit statement of God’s Word with any one who is humble enough and wise enough to recognise that there are a great many things which he cannot account for at all which could be easily accounted for if he knew a little more. It is only the man who has such amazing and stupendous conceit that he thinks he knows as much as God, in other words, that he is infinite in wisdom, who will give up an explicit statement of God’s Word simply because he sees a difficulty in the way of the acceptance of that statement, which he in his limited knowledge cannot solve. But there is a second answer, and an all-sufficient one, and that is this: these variations in style and diction are easily accounted for. The Holy Spirit is infinitely [31]wise. He Himself is the Creator of Man, and of man’s power of speech, and therefore he is quite wise enough and has quite enough facility in the use of language in revealing truth to and through any individual to use words, phrases and forms of expression that are in that person’s ordinary vocabulary and forms of thought, and He is also quite wise enough to make use of that person’s peculiar individuality in revealing the truth through him. It is one of the marks of the Divine wisdom of this book that the same Divine truth is expressed with absolute accuracy in such widely variant forms of expression.

VII. ALL SCRIPTURE IS INSPIRED OF GOD

The seventh thing that the Bible makes plain regarding the work of the Holy Spirit in the various writers of Scripture, is that all Scripture, that is everything contained in all the books of the Old and New Testament, is inspired of God. We are distinctly taught this in 2 Tim. 3:16, 17. Here we read, “All Scripture (more exactly, every Scripture) is given by inspiration of God (more literally, God-breathed), and is profitable for doctrine, (or teaching), for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness (rather, instruction which is in righteousness), that the man of God may be perfect (rather, complete) thoroughly furnished (better, furnished completely) unto all good works(rather, every good work).” An [32]attempt has been made to obscure the full force of these words by a revised translation given in both the English Revision and American Standard Version. In this revised translation, the words are rendered as follows: “Every Scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction which is in righteousness; that the man of God may be complete, furnished completely unto every good work.” There is absolutely no warrant in the Greek text for changing “Every Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, etc.,” into “Every Scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching, etc.” “Every” is in the Greek. There is no “is” in the Greek. It must be supplied, as is often the case in translating from Greek into English. “Is” must be supplied somewhere, either before “given by inspiration” (or God-breathed), or else supplied after it, in the latter case necessitating the change of “and” into “also” (a change which is possible, but very uncommon); and there is not a single instance in the New Testament outside of this in which two adjectives coupled by the simplest copulative “and (kai)” are ripped apart and the “is” placed between them and an “and” changed into “also.” The other construction, that of the Authorised Version, is not at all uncommon. The translation of the Revisers does violence to all customary usage of the Greek language. But we do not need to dwell upon that, for, even accepting [33]the changes given in the Revision, the thought is not essentially changed; for if Paul had said what the revisers make him say that “Every Scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching, etc.,” there can be no question but by “every scripture inspired of God” he referred to every Scripture contained in the Old Testament. Here, then, taking whichever translation you will, we have the plain teaching that every Scripture of the Old Testament is “God-breathed” or “inspired of God.” Certainly if we can believe this about the Old Testament there is no difficulty in believing it about the New, and there can be no question that Paul claimed for his own teaching an equal authority with the O. T. teaching. This we shall see clearly under the next head. And not only did Paul so claim, but the Apostle Peter also classes the teaching of Paul with the O. T. teaching as being “Scripture.” Peter says in 2 Pet. 3:15, 16, “Even as our beloved brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given unto him, wrote unto you; (16) as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, wherein are some things hard to be understood, which the ignorant and unstedfast wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, unto their own destruction.” Here Peter clearly speaks of Paul’s epistles as being “Scripture.”

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VIII. THE BIBLE IS THE WORD OF GOD

The eighth thing that the Bible teaches concerning the extent of the inspiration of its writings is that because of this inspiration of Prophets and Apostles, the writers of the Bible, the whole Bible as originally given becomes the absolutely inerrant Word of God. In the O. T. David says of his own writings, in 2 Sam. 23:2, a passage already referred to, “The Spirit of Jehovah spake by me, and His Word was upon my tongue.” In Mark 7:13 Our Lord Jesus Himself calls the law of Moses “the Word of God.” He says “making void the Word of God by your tradition, which ye have delivered.” In the verses immediately preceding, He has been drawing a contrast between the teachings of the Mosaic law (not merely the teachings of the Ten Commandments, but other parts of the Mosaic law as well) and the traditions of the Scribes and Pharisees, and has shown how the traditions of the Scribes and Pharisees flatly contradicted the requirements of the law as given through Moses, and in summing up the matter he says in the verse just quoted, that the Scribes and Pharisees made void “the Word of God” by their traditions, thus calling the law of Moses “the Word of God.” When I was in England a high dignitary and scholar in the Church of England in a private correspondence tried to call me down by saying that the Bible nowhere claimed to be “the Word of God,” but I replied to him by showing [35]him that not only did the Bible claim it, but that the Lord Jesus Himself said in so many words that the law given through Moses was “the Word of God.” In 1 Thess.2:13 the Apostle Paul claims that his own epistles and teachings are “the Word of God.” He says: “And for this cause we also thank God without ceasing, that when ye received from us the word of the message, even the word of God, ye accepted it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also worketh in you that believe.” Here the Apostle Paul claims for his own teaching in the most absolute way that the message that he gave was “the Word of God.” When we read the words that Jeremiah wrote and Isaiah wrote and Paul wrote and John wrote and James wrote and Jude wrote and the other Bible writers wrote, we are reading what God says. We are not listening to the voice of man, but we are listening to the voice of God. “The Word of God” which we have in the Old and New Testaments, as originally given, is absolutely inerrant down to the smallest word and smallest letter or part of a letter. Our Lord Jesus Himself says of the Pentateuch in Matt. 5:18: “For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law till all things be accomplished.” Now a “jot” is the Hebrew character “yodh,” the smallest character in the Hebrew alphabet, less than half the size of any other letter in the Hebrew alphabet, and a “tittle” [36]is a part of a letter, the little horn put on some of the Hebrew consonants, less than the cross we put on a “t,” and here our Lord says that the law given through Moses was absolutely inerrant, down to its smallest letter or part of a letter. That certainly is verbal inspiration with a vengeance. Again he said, as recorded in John 10:35, after having quoted from the 82nd Psalm and the 6th verse, as conclusive proof of a point, “The Scripture CANNOT BE BROKEN,” thus asserting the absolute irrefragability or inerrancy and finality of the Scriptures. If the Scriptures as originally given were not the inerrant Word of God, then not only is the Bible a fraud, but Jesus Christ Himself was utterly misled and is therefore utterly unreliable as a teacher. I have said that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as originally given were absolutely inerrant, and the question of course arises to what extent is the Authorized Version, or the Revised Version, the inerrant Word of God. The answer is simple; they are the inerrant Word of God just to that extent that they are an accurate rendering of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as originally given, and to all practical intents and purposes they are a thoroughly accurate rendering of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as originally given. There are, it is true, many variations in the many manuscripts we possess, thousands of variations, but by a careful study of these very variations, we are able to find [37]with marvellous accuracy what the original manuscripts said. A very large share of the variations are of no value whatever, as it is evident from a comparison of different manuscripts that they are mistakes of a transcriber. Many other variations simply concern the order of the words used, and in translating into English, in which the order of words is often different from what it is in the Greek, the variation is not translatable. Many other variations are of small Greek particles, many of which are not translatable into English any way. When all the variations of any significance have been reduced to the minimum to which it is possible to reduce them by a careful study of manuscripts, there is not one single variation left that affects any doctrine held by the evangelical churches, and the Scriptures as we have them to-day translated into our English language, either in the A. V. or R. V., are to all practical intents and purposes the inerrant Word of God.

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II The Christian Conception of God, or the God of the Bible as Distinguished from the God of Christian Science and the God of Modern Philosophy

“God is Spirit.”—John 4:24.

“God is Light.”—1 John 1:5.

“God is Love.”—1 John 4:8, 16.

Our subject this morning is “The Christian Conception of God, or The God of the Bible as Distinguished from the God of Christian Science and the God of Modern Philosophy.” I have three texts: John 4:24: “God is Spirit.” 1 John 1:5: “God is Light.” 1 John 4:8, 16: “God is Love.”These three texts give three of the most remarkable statements that were ever uttered and set before us in the clearest possible way the Christian conception of God as distinguished from every other conception of God. The Christian Scientists constantly quote one of our texts: “God is Love.” In fact they quote it more than almost any other passage in the Bible, but they do not mean at all by “God is Love” what 1 John 4:8 or 1 John 4:16 evidently mean when taken in their connection. By “love” the Christian [39]Scientists do not mean a personal attribute of God, but an impersonal abstraction which is itself God. Mrs. Eddy frankly and flatly denies the personality of God. The Christian Scientists not only say, “God is love,” but they also say, “Love is God.” They not only say, “God is good,” but they also say, “Good is God.” To say “Love is God” is an utterly different statement from saying, “God is love.” You might just as well say “Spirit is God,” because God says, “God is spirit,” but all spirit is not God. Or you might as well say, “Light is God,” because “God is light,” but light is not God and love is not God, though God is love and God is light and God is spirit. What is meant by “love” in the inspired statement, “God is Love”? What is meant by the statement, “God is Love,” is shown by the definition or description of love given in the context and in the immediately preceding chapter—1 John 3:13-18. These verses clearly show that by the statement in 1 John 4:8 and 1 John 4:16, “God is Love” is not meant that God is an abstract quality, “love,” and that the abstract quality of love is God, but what is meant is that God is a person whose whole being and conduct are dominated by the quality of love, that is, by a desire for and delight in the highest welfare of others. This will be evident to you if I read from the immediately preceding chapter (1 John 3:13-17): “Marvel not, brethren, if the world hateth you. (14) We know that we have passed out of death into life, because [40]we love the brethren. He that loveth not abideth in death. (15) Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him. (16) Hereby know we love, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. (17) But whoso hath the world’s goods, and beholdeth his brother in need, and shutteth up his compassion from him, how doth the love of God abide in him? (18) My little children, let us not love in word, neither with the tongue; but in deed and truth.” And from this chapter (1 John 4:7-17): “Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is begotten of God, and knoweth God. (8) He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. (9) Herein was the love of God manifested in us, that God hath sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him. (10) Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. (11) Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. (12) No man hath beheld God at any time: If we love one another, God abideth in us, and his love is perfected in us: (13) Hereby we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he hath given us of his spirit. (14) And we have beheld and bear witness that the father hath sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. (15) Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the son of God, God abideth in him, and he in God. (16) And we know [41]and have believed the love which God hath in us. God is Love; and he that hath abideth in love abideth in God, and God abideth in him. (17) Herein is love made perfect with us, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as he is, even so are we in this world.”

The God of what is called “Modern Philosophy” is “The Absolute,” and by “The Absolute” is generally meant a cold abstraction and not a clear, definite and warm personality Who loves, grieves, suffers, and Who works intelligently for others. And oftentimes the God of modern philosophy is not only “in all things” but is all things and all things are God. Such a God is no God at all. Whereas the God of the Bible, as we shall see as we proceed, is a Divine Person who exists apart from the world which He has created and Who existed before the world He created, Who bears definite relations to the world He has made and Who works along definite and clearly revealed lines. So we come face to face with the question, What sort of a Being is the God of the Bible, the real God, the one true God, the God of Christianity, the only God Whom we should worship and love and obey? The Kaiser also talks much about God and his followers are fond of saying, “Gott mit uns,” but if any one will carefully study the Kaiser’s utterances it becomes plain that he does not mean by God the God of the Bible, the Christian God, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

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I. GOD IS SPIRIT

First of all “God is Spirit.” This we read in our first text: John 4:24, “God is Spirit.” You will note that in your Bible, both the Authorised and Revised Versions, you read, “God is a Spirit.” But there is no indefinite article in the Greek language, and wherever it is necessary in the English translation to fit the English idiom, it has to be supplied, and it is supplied, in this case. But there is really no reason for supplying it here any more than there is for supplying it in 1 John 4:8 and translating, “God is a Love,” or in 1 John 1:5 and translating “God is a Light.” The preferable translation is as I have given it: “God is Spirit.” This is a definition of the essential nature of God. What does it mean? Our Lord Jesus Himself has defined what is meant by “spirit” in Luke 24:39, where He is recorded as saying after His resurrection: “See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; handle Me, and see, for a spirit not flesh and blood, as ye behold Me having.” It is evident from these words of our Lord that spirit is that which is contrasted to body. That is to say, spirit is incorporeal, invisible reality. To say, “God is Spirit” is to say that God is essentially incorporeal and invisible (cf. 1 Tim. 6:16), that God in His essential nature is not material but immaterial and invisible, but none the less real. This thought is also found in the very heart of that [43]revelation of Himself which God made to Moses in the first division of the Old Testament. For example, we read in Deut. 4:15-18: “Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves; for ye saw no manner of form on the day that Jehovah spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire; (16) lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, (17) the likeness of any beast that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flieth in the Heavens. (18) The likeness of anything that creepeth on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth.” This is a plain declaration way back fifteen centuries before Christ, of the spirituality of God in His essential nature. God is essentially invisible spirit.

But it is also clearly revealed in the Word of God that “spirit” may be manifested in visible, bodily form. We read in John 1:32 these words of John the Baptist speaking about what his own eyes had seen: “And John bore witness, saying, I have beheld the Spirit descending as a dove out of heaven; and it abode upon him.” Here, then, we see Him who was essentially spirit manifesting Himself in a bodily, visible form.

Furthermore in the Bible we are told that God has manifested Himself in visible form. We read in Ex. 24:9, 10: “Then went up Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel: (10) and they saw the God of Israel; and [44]there was under his feet as it were a paved work of sapphire stone, and as it were the very heaven for clearness.”

What they saw was not God in His essential nature as Spiritual Being. Indeed, what we see when we see one another is not our essential self, but the house we live in, and so John could say, as he does say in John 1:18: “No man hath seen God at any time.” And so I could say to you now that you do not see me. Nevertheless, it was a real manifestation of God Himself that they saw, and so it could also be said, and said truthfully, that they had seen God, as it could be truthfully said, “you see me.”

Furthermore still, though God is essentially spirit, God has a visible form. This is taught in the most unmistakable terms in Phil. 2:6, where we are told of our Lord Jesus that He existed originally “in the form of God.” The Greek word which is translated “form” in this passage means “visible form,” “the form by which a person or thing strikes the vision,” “the external appearance.” It cannot mean anything else. This is the definition given in the best Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament, of the word here translated “form.” Now as Jesus existed originally “in the form of God,” it is evident that God Himself must have a form, this form in which our Lord Jesus is said to have existed originally.

That God in His external form, though not in His invisible essence, is seeable, is also clear from [45]Acts 7:55, 56, where we read: “But he (i.e., Stephen), being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, and said, Behold, I see the heavens open, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.” Now if God has not a form that can be seen, then, of course, the Lord Jesus could not be seen standing upon the right hand of God. God is, as we shall see later, everywhere; but God is not everywhere in the same sense. There is a locality where God is visibly and manifestly present in a way in which He is not present anywhere else. There is a place where He is present visibly and manifests Himself as He does not elsewhere. The place of God’s visible presence and full manifestation of Himself is Heaven, though in His spiritual presence He pervades the universe. This is evident from many passages in the Scriptures. For example, it is clear from the prayer that our Lord taught us—a portion of Scripture that many accept who reject most of the Bible. Our Lord began the prayer that He taught His disciples with these words “Our Father Which Art in Heaven.” If these words mean anything, they certainly mean that God, our Father, is in heaven in a way in which He is not elsewhere. That was where God was when Jesus was addressing Him. We read again in Matt. 3:17: “Lo, a voice out of the heavens, saying, this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” If these words mean anything, they [46]mean that God was in heaven and that His voice came out of the heavens to the Lord Jesus who was here on earth. Again in John 14:28 Jesus is recorded as saying:

“Ye heard how I said to you, I go away and I come again unto you. If ye loved me, ye would have rejoiced, because I go unto the Father: for the Father is greater than I.” If these words mean anything, taken in the light of the events that were to follow on the next day and the days following, they mean that Jesus was going away from the place where He then was—earth—to another place where He was not when He spoke, i.e., heaven—and that in going to heaven he was going to where God was, from earth where God was not in the sense in which He was in heaven. Again we read in Acts 11:9: “A voice answered the second time out of heaven, What God hath cleansed make not thou common.” Here again God is represented as speaking from heaven where He was. Again our Lord Jesus Christ is recorded in John 20:17 as saying to Mary Magdalene after His resurrection: “Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended unto the Father: but go unto my brethren and say to them, I ascend unto my father and to your father and my God and your God,” from which it is unmistakably evident that in the conception of our Lord Jesus after His resurrection there was a place where God was and to which He was going, and that place was up in heaven. There is no possibility of explaining this away by saying it is a [47]figure of speech, the whole passage loses its meaning by any such interpretation, and to attempt to so explain it is a trick and a subterfuge that will not bear close examination. Again the Apostle Paul tells us regarding our Lord Jesus Christ that God the Father “raised Him from the dead, and made Him to sit at His right hand in the heavenly places” (Eph. 1:20) which makes it as clear as language can make anything that there is a place, heaven, where God is in a sense that He is nowhere else, and where one can be placed at His right hand. The same thing is evident from the verses that we have already quoted in another connection, Acts 7:55, 56, where we are told that Stephen “being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up steadfastly into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and said, Behold, I see the heavens open, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.” The meaning of these words to anybody who wishes to know what words are intended to convey and not merely to distort them to fit his own conception, is that God is in heaven locally present. There is no escaping this by any fair, honest interpretation. Men who are skilful in the art of discrediting truth by giving it bad names, and names that sound very scholarly, may call this “anthropomorphism,” and that sounds very learned. Nevertheless, be it “anthropomorphism” or what not, this is the clear teaching of the Word of God in spite of this or any other frightful terms used to scare [48]immature college boys and immature college girls. There is no mistaking that this is the teaching of the Bible, and we have already proven that the Bible is God’s Word, and is to be taken at its face value in spite of all the attempts that men, who “counting themselves wise, have become fools,” make to explain it away.

II. GOD IS A PERSON

The next thing that the Bible teaches about God is that God is a person. That is to say He is a being who knows, feels, loves, hears prayer, speaks, acts, a being who acts intelligently upon us and upon whom we can act.

While God is in all things, He is a personality distinct from the persons and things in which He is, which He has created. The Bible, both in the Old and New Testaments is full of this vital conception of “a living God” as distinguished from the mere cold abstraction of “The Absolute,” or “The Infinite,” or “The Supreme Being,” or “The Great First Cause” of which “Modern Philosophy” loves to prate. For example, we read in Jer. 10:10-16: “But Jehovah is the true God; he is the living God, and an everlasting king: at his wrath the earth trembleth, and the nations are not able to abide his indignation. (11) Thus shall ye say unto them, the gods that have not made the heaven and the earth, these shall perish from the earth, and from under the [49]heavens. (12) He hath made the earth by his power, he hath established the world by his wisdom, and by his understanding hath he stretched out the heavens. (13) When he uttereth his voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens, and he causeth the vapours to ascend from the ends of the earth; he maketh lightnings for the rain, and bringeth forth the wind out of his treasuries. (14) Every man is become brutish and is without knowledge; every goldsmith is put to shame by his graven image; for his molten image is falsehood, and there is no breath in them. (15) They are vanity, a work of delusion; in the time of their visitation they shall perish. (16) The portion of Jacob is not like these; for he is the former of all things; and Israel is the tribe of his inheritance: Jehovah of hosts is his name.” In this passage God is distinguished from idols which are things and not persons, things which “speak not” “cannot act,” “cannot do good neither is it in them to do evil”; and we are told that Jehovah is wiser than “all the wise men.” Is “the living God,” “an everlasting King,” a being who hath “wrath and indignation,” separate from His creatures—”at His wrath the earth trembleth and the nations are not able to abide His indignation.”

In Acts 14:15 we read: “Sirs, why do ye these things? We also are men of like passions with you, and bring you good tidings, that ye should turn from these things unto the living God, who made heaven and earth and sea, and all that in [50]them is.” Here also we have the representation of God as a personal being distinct from His created work, and also to be clearly distinguished from the idols which are not living gods. In 1 Thess. 1:9, the converts at Thessalonica are represented as turning from dead gods, “idols, to serve the living and true God.”

In 2 Chron. 16:9 we are told that “The eyes of Jehovah run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him,” and in Ps. 94:9, 10 we read: “He that planteth the ear, shall he not hear? He that formed the eye, shall he not see? He that punisheth nations, shall not he correct? Even he that teacheth men knowledge?” This is clearly the representation of a personal God and not a mere abstraction like “The Absolute,” or “The Infinite,” or “The Supreme Being.” The clear distinction between God, who is immanent in all things, and dwells in believers, and the beings and persons in whom He dwells, is brought out very clearly by our Lord Himself in John 14:10: “Believest thou not that I am in the Father and the Father in me? The words that I say unto you I speak not from myself: But the Father abiding in me doeth his work.” And again in the 24th verse of the same chapter where our Lord Jesus distinguishes between His own personality and that of the Father, who dwelt in Him, in these words: “He that loveth me not keepeth not my words: and the word which ye hear is not [51]mine, but the Father’s who sent me.” This conception of God pervades the entire Bible. The view of God presented in the Bible is utterly different from the conception of Pantheism and Buddhism and Theosophy and Christian Science. This conception is found in the opening words of the Bible, Gen. 1:1: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” Here the God of the Bible is clearly differentiated from the so-called God of Pantheism, and the God of Christian Science. And this same conception of God is found in the last chapter of the Bible, and it is found in every chapter of the Bible between the first and the last. The God of the Bible is a Personal Being Who, while He created all things and is in all things, is a distinct personality separate from the persons and things He has created.

III. GOD’S PRESENT RELATION TO THE WORLD AND TO MEN

We turn now to a consideration of the present relation of this Personal God presented to us in the Bible, to the world He has created and to the men whom He has created.

1. In the first place we find that God sustains, governs and cares for the world He has created. He shapes the whole present history of the world. This comes out again and again. A few illustrations must suffice. We read in Ps. 104:27-30: “These wait all for thee, that thou mayest [52]give them their food in due season. (28) Thou givest unto them, they gather; thou openest thy hand, they are satisfied with good. (29) Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled; thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust. (30) Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created; and thou renewest the face of the ground.” And again in Ps. 75:6, 7: “For neither from the east, nor from the west, nor yet from the south, cometh lifting up. (7) But God is the judge: he putteth down one, and lifteth up another.” All these passages and others that could be cited, set forth the same conception of God’s present relation to the world which He has created. They show, as we have said, that God sustains, governs and cares for the work He has created; that He shapes the whole present history of the world.

2. Now let us look at His relation to the affairs of men. We will find that God has a present, personal interest and an active hand in the affairs of men; that He makes a path for His people and leads them; that He delivers, saves and punishes. Here four illustrations from the Bible must suffice. First of all Joshua 3:10: “And Joshua said, Hereby ye shall know that the living God is among you, and that he will without fail drive out from before you the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Hivite, and the Perizzite, and the Girgashite, and the Amorite, and the Jebusite.” Now turn to Dan. 6:20-22, 26, 27. “And when he came near unto the den to Daniel, he cried with a lamentable voice: [53]the king spake and said to Daniel, O Daniel, servant of the living God, is thy God, whom thou servest continually, able to deliver thee from the lions? (21) Then said Daniel unto the king, O king, live for ever. (22) My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions’ mouths, and they have not hurt me: forasmuch as before him innocency was found in me; and also before thee, O king, have I done no hurt.” . . . “(26) I make a decree, that in all the dominion of my kingdom men tremble and fear before the God of Daniel; for he is the living God, and stedfast for ever, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed and his dominion shall be even unto the end. (27) He delivereth and rescueth, and he worketh signs and wonders in heaven and in earth, who hath delivered Daniel from the power of the lions.” Now turn to 1 Tim. 4:10: “For to this end we labour and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of them that believe,” and now turn to Heb. 10:28-31: “A man that hath set at nought Moses’ law dieth without compassion on the word of two or three witnesses: (29) Of how much sorer punishment, think ye, shall he be judged worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God? and hath counted the blood of the covenant wherewith he was sanctified an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace? (30) For we know him that said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I [54]will recompense. And again, The Lord shall judge his people. (31) It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” In all of these passages we have this same conception of God in His relation to man, viz., that God has a personal interest and an active hand in the affairs of men; that He makes a path for His people and leads them; that He delivers, saves and punishes them.

The God of the Bible is to be clearly distinguished not merely from the God of the Pantheists who has no existence separate from His creation, but also from the God of the Deists who has created the world and put into it all the necessary powers of self-government and development and set it going and left it to go of itself. The God of the Bible is a God who is personally and actively present in the affairs of the universe to-day. He sustains, governs, cares for the world He has created, He shapes the whole present history of the world. He has a present personal interest and an active hand in the affairs of men and He it is that is back of all the events that are occurring to-day. He reigns and makes even the wrath of men to praise Him, and the remainder of wrath doth He restrain. The Kaiser may rage, armies may clash, force and violence and outrage may seem triumphant for the passing hour, but God stands back of all; and through all the confusion and the discord and the turmoil and the agony and the ruin, through all the outrageous atrocities that are making [55]men’s hearts stand still with horror, He is carrying out His own purposes of love and making all things work together for good to those who love Him.

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III The Christian Conception of God—The Infinite Perfection and Unity of God

“God is Light.”—1 John 1:5.

“God is Love.”—1 John 4:8, 16.

“With God All Things are Possible.”—Matt. 19:26.

“His Understanding is Infinite.”—Ps. 147:5.

We are to consider again to-day the Christian conception of God. We saw a week ago to-day that God is Spirit, that God is a person and that God has a personal interest and an active hand in the affairs of men to-day, that He sustains, governs and cares for the world He has created and that He shapes the whole present history of the world.

I. THE INFINITE PERFECTION OF GOD

The next thing to be noted about the Christian conception of God is, that God is perfect and infinite in all His intellectual and moral attributes and in power.

1. First of all, fix your attention upon our first text: “God is Light” (1 John 1:5). These three words form a marvellously beautiful and overwhelmingly impressive statement of the truth. [57]They set forth the Absolute Holiness and Perfect Wisdom of God. The words need rather to be meditated upon than to be expounded. “In Him is no darkness at all.” That is to say, in Him is no darkness of error, no darkness of ignorance, no darkness of sin, no darkness of moral imperfection or intellectual imperfection of any kind. The three words, “God is Light,” form one of the most beautiful, one of the most striking and one of the most stupendous statements of truth that was ever penned.

2. To come to things more specific, the God of the Bible is omnipotent. This great truth comes out again and again in the Word of God. One direct statement of this great truth especially striking because of the connection in which it is found, occurs in Jer. 32:17, 27: “Ah Lord Jehovah! Behold, thou hast made the heavens and the earth by thy great power and by thine outstretched arm: there is nothing too hard for thee.” Here it is Jeremiah who makes the statement, but in the 27thverse it is Jehovah Himself who says: “Behold, I am Jehovah, the God of all flesh: is there anything too hard for me?”

In Job 42:2 we read these words of Job, when at last he has been brought to see and to recognise the true nature of Jehovah: “I know that thou canst do all things and that no purpose of thine can be restrained.” In Matt. 19:26 our Lord Jesus says: “With God all things are possible.” Taking these passages together, we are plainly taught [58]by our Lord Himself and by others that God can do all things, that nothing is too hard for Him, that all things are possible with Him. In a word, that God is omnipotent. A very impressive passage in the book of Psalms setting forth this same great truth is Ps.33:6-9: “By the word of Jehovah were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. (7) He gathereth the waters of the sea together as a heap: he layeth up the deeps in storehouses. (8) Let all the earth fear Jehovah: let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him. (9) For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast.” Here we see God by the mere utterance of His voice bringing to pass anything that He desires to be brought to pass. We find this same lofty conception of God in the very first chapter of the Bible, that chapter that so many people who imagine themselves scholarly are telling us is outgrown and not up to date, and yet which contains some of the sublimest utterances that were ever written, unmatched by anything that any philosopher or scientist or platform orator is saying to-day. The very first words of that chapter read: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Gen. 1:1), a description of the origin of things that has never been matched for simplicity, sublimity and profundity; and two verses further down, in the third verse, we read: “And God said, Let there be light: and light was.” These words need no comment. There is here a [59]sublimity of thought in the setting forth of the omnipotence of God’s mere word before which any truly intelligent and alert soul will stand in wonder and awe. There is nothing in poetry or in philosophical dissertation, ancient or modern, that can for one moment be put in comparison with these sublime words. Over and over again the thought is brought out in the Word of God that all nature is absolutely subject to God’s will and word. We see this, for example, in Ps. 107:25-29: “For he commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof. (26) They mount up to the heavens, they go down again to the depths: their soul melteth away because of trouble. (27) They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wits’ end. (28) Then they cry unto Jehovah in their trouble, and he bringeth them out of their distresses. (29) He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still.” Another description of a similar character is found in Nahum 1:3-6: “Jehovah is slow to anger, and great in power, and will by no means clear the guilty: Jehovah hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet. (4) He rebuketh the sea, and maketh it dry, and drieth up all the rivers: Bashan languisheth, and Carmel and the flower of Lebanon languisheth. (5) The mountains quake at him, and the hills melt; and the earth is upheaved at his presence, yea, the world, and all that dwell therein. (6) Who can stand [60]before his indignation? and who can abide in the fierceness of his anger? His wrath is poured out like fire, and the rocks are broken asunder by him.” What a picture we have here of the omnipotence and awful majesty of God!

Not only is nature represented as being absolutely subject to God’s will and word, but men also are represented as being absolutely subject to His will and word. For example, we read in Jas. 4:12-15: “One only is the lawgiver and judge, even he who is able to save and to destroy: But who art thou that judgest thy neighbour? (13) Come now, ye that say, to-day or to-morrow we will go into this city, and spend a year there, and trade, and get gain: (14) Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. What is your life? For ye are a vapour that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. (15) For that ye ought to say, if the Lord will, we shall both live, and do this or that.”

Happy is the man who voluntarily subjects himself to God’s will and word, but whether we voluntarily subject ourselves to God’s will and word or not, we are subject to His will and word whether or no. The angels also are subject to His will and word (Heb. 1:13, 14) and even Satan himself is, although entirely against his own will, absolutely subject to the will and word of God, as is evident from Job 1:12 and Job 2:6.

The exercise of God’s omnipotence is limited by His own wise and holy and loving will. God can [61]do anything, but will do only that which infinite wisdom and holiness and love dictate. This comes out, for example, in Isa. 59:1, 2: “Behold, Jehovah’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear: (2) But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.”

3. The God of the Bible is also omniscient. In 1 John 3:20 we read: “God knoweth all things.”Turning to the Old Testament, in Ps. 147:5, we read: “Great is our Lord, and mighty in power; his understanding is infinite.” The literal translation of the last clause of this passage is “Of his understanding there is no number.” In these passages it is plainly declared that “God knoweth all things” and that “His understanding is infinite.” In Job 37:16 Elihu the messenger of God is represented as saying that Jehovah is “perfect in knowledge.” Along the same line, in Acts 15:18 we read: “Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world.” The Revised Version makes a change in the translation of this verse but this change does not alter the sense of the truth here set forth that God knows all His works and all things from the beginning of the world. Known to Him is everything from the most vast to the most minute detail. In Ps. 147:4 we are told that, “He telleth the number of the stars; he knoweth them all by name.” While in Matt. 10:29 we are told that not a sparrow falleth [62]to the ground without Him. The stars in all their stupendous magnitude and the sparrows in all their insignificance are all equally in His mind.

We are further told that everything has a part in His purpose and plan. In Acts 3:17, 18, the Apostle Peter says of the crucifixion of our Lord, the wickedest act in all the history of the human race: “And now, brethren, I wot that in ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers. But the things which God foreshowed by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ should suffer, he thus fulfilled.” In Acts 2:23 Peter declared on the day of Pentecost (although the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus was the wickedest act in all history) that nevertheless the Lord Jesus was “Delivered up by the determinate council and foreknowledge of God.” According to the Psalmist (Ps. 76:10) God takes the acts of the wickedest men into His plans and makes the wrath of men to praise Him, and the remainder of wrath doth He restrain. Even the present war with all its horrors, with all its atrocities, with all its abominations and all its nameless wickednesses, was foreknown of God and taken into His own gracious plan of the ages; and He will make every event in this present war, even the most shocking things, designed by the vilest conspiracy of unprincipled men, utterly unhuman and beastly men and Devil inspired men, work together for good to those who love God, for those who are the called according to His purpose (Rom. 8:28).

[63]The whole plan of the ages, not merely of the centuries, but of the immeasurable ages of God, and every man’s part in it, has been known to God from all eternity. This is made very clear in Eph. 1:9-12, where we read: “Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he purposed in him unto a dispensation of the fullness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth; in him, I say, in whom also we were made a heritage, having been foreordained according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his will; to the end that we should be to the praise of his glory, we who before hoped in Christ.” And in Eph. 3:4-9, we read: “Wherefore when ye read, ye can perceive my understanding in the mystery of Christ; which in other generations was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy prophets and apostles in the Spirit; to wit, that the Gentiles are fellow-heirs, and fellow-members of the body, and fellow-partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel, whereof I was made a minister, according to the gift of that grace of God which was given me according to the working of his power. Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, was this grace given, to preach unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ; and to make all men see what is the dispensation of the mystery which from all ages has been hid in God who [64]created all things.”There are no after-thoughts with God. Everything is seen, known, purposed and planned for from the outset. Well may we exclaim: “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God: how unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out.” (Rom. 11:33.) God knows from all eternity what He will do to all eternity.

4. God is also absolutely and infinitely holy. This is a point of central and fundamental importance in the Bible conception of God. It comes out in our first text: “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” John when he wrote these words gave them as the summary of “The message which we have heard from God.” (1 John 1:5.) In Isa. 6:3 in the vision of Jehovah which was given to Isaiah in the year that King Uzziah died, the “seraphim,” or “burning ones,” burning in their own intense holiness, are represented as standing before Jehovah with covered faces and covered feet and constantly crying, “Holy, holy, holy, is Jehovah of Hosts.” And in 1 Pet. 1:16 God cries to us, “Be ye holy, for I am holy.”

This thought of the infinite and awe-inspiring holiness of God pervades the entire Bible. It underlies everything in it. The entire Mosaic system is built upon and about this fundamental and central truth. Its system of washings; the divisions of the tabernacle; the divisions of the people into ordinary Israelites, Levites, Priests and High Priests, who were permitted different [65]degrees of approach to God under strictly defined conditions, insistence upon sacrifices of blood as the necessary medium of approach to God; God’s directions to Moses in Ex. 3:5, to Joshua in Josh. 5:15, the punishment of Uzziah in 2 Chron. 26:16-26, the strict orders to Israel in regard to approaching Sinai when Jehovah came down upon it; the doom of Korah, Dathan and Abiram in Num. 16:1-33; and the destruction of Nadab and Abihu in Lev. 10:1-3: all these were intended to teach, emphasise and burn into the minds and hearts of the Israelites the fundamental truth that God is holy, unapproachably holy. The truth that God is holy is the fundamental truth of the Bible, of the Old Testament and the New Testament, of the Jewish religion and the Christian religion. It is the preëminent factor in the Christian conception of God. There is no fact in the Christian Conception of God that needs more to be emphasised in our day than the fact of the absolute, unqualified and uncompromising holiness of God. That is the chief note that is lacking in Christian Science, Theosophy, Occultism, Buddhism, New Thought, the New Theology and all the base but boasted cults of the day. That great truth underlies those fundamental doctrines of the Bible,—the Atonement by Shed Blood and Justification by Faith. The doctrine of the holiness of God is the keystone in the arch of Christian truth.

5. God is also love. This truth is declared in [66]one of our texts. The words “God is love” are found twice in the same chapter (1 John 4:8, 16). This truth is essentially the same truth as that “God is light” and “God is holy,” for the very essence of true holiness is love, and “light” is “love” and “love” is “light.”

6. Furthermore, God is not only perfect in His intellectual and moral attributes and in power, He is also omnipresent. This thought of God comes out in both the Old Testament and the New. In Ps.139:7-10 we read: “Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence? (8) If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: If I make my bed in Sheol, behold thou art there. (9) If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost part of the sea; (10) Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.” There is no place where one can flee from God’s presence, for God is everywhere. This great truth is set forth in a remarkable way in Jer. 23:23, 24: “Am I a God at hand, saith Jehovah, and not a God afar off? (24) Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith Jehovah. Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith Jehovah.”

Last week we saw that God has a local habitation, that there is a place where He exists and manifests Himself in a way in which He does not manifest Himself everywhere; but while we insist upon that clearly revealed truth, we must also never lose sight of the fact that God is everywhere. [67]We find this same truth set forth by Paul in his sermon to the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers on Mars Hill, Acts 17:24-28: “The God that made the world, and all things therein, he, being Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands: (25) Neither is served by men’s hands as though he needed anything, seeing he himself giveth to all life and breath and all things. (26) And he made of one every nation of men who dwell on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed seasons, and the bounds of their habitations. (27) For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain even of your own poets have said, for we are also his offspring.”

From these passages we see that God is everywhere. He is in all parts of the universe and near each individual. In Him each individual lives and moves and has his being. He is in every rose and lily and blade of grass.

7. There is one other thought in the Christian conception of God that needs to be placed alongside of His omnipresence and that is His eternity. God is eternal. His existence had no beginning and will have no ending, He always was, always is and always shall be. God is not only everywhere present in space, He is everywhere present in time. This conception of God appears constantly in the Bible. We are told way back in Gen. 21:33 that Abraham called “On the name of Jehovah, the everlasting God.” In Isa. 40:28 we read this description of Jehovah: “Hast thou [68]not known? Hast thou not heard? The everlasting God, Jehovah, the creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary; there is no searching of his understanding.” Here again He is called “The Everlasting God.” Habakkuk in Hab. 1:12 sets forth the same conception of God. He says, “Art not thou from everlasting, O Jehovah my God, mine holy one?” The Psalmist gives us the same representation of God in Ps. 90:2, 4: “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hast formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting thou art God. (4) For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is passed, and as a watch in the night.” We have the same representation of God in the 102nd Ps., verses 24-27: “I said, O my God, take me not away in the midst of my days: Thy years are throughout all generations. (25) Of old didst thou lay the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the work of thy hands. (26) They shall perish, but thou shalt endure; yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed; (27) But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end.”

The very name of God, His covenant name, Jehovah, sets forth His eternity. He is the eternal “I am,” the One who is, was and ever shall be. (Cf. Ex. 3:14, 15.)

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II. THERE IS ONE GOD

One more fact about the Christian conception of God remains to be mentioned and that is: There is but one God. The Unity of God comes out again and again in both the Old Testament and the New. For example, we read in Deut. 4:35: “Jehovah he is God. There is none else beside him.” And in Deut. 6:4 we read: “Hear O Israel: Jehovah our God is one Jehovah.” Turning to the New Testament in 1 Tim. 2:5 we read: “There is one God, one mediator also between God and man, himself man, Christ Jesus.” And in Mark 12:29 our Lord Jesus Himself says: “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.”

But we must bear in mind the character of the Divine Unity. It is clearly revealed in the Bible that in this Divine Unity, in this one Godhead, there is a multiplicity of persons. This comes out in a variety of ways.

1. First of all, the Hebrew word translated “One” in these various passages given denotes a compound unity, not a simple unity. (Cf. 1 Cor. 3:6-8; 1 Cor. 12:13; John 17:22, 23; Gal. 3:28.)

2. In the second place, the Old Testament word most frequently used for God is a plural noun. The Hebrew grammarians and lexicographers tried to explain this by saying that it was the “pluralis majestatis,” but the very simple explanation is that the Hebrews, in spite of their [70]intense monotheism, used a plural name for God because there is a plurality of persons in the one Godhead.

3. More striking yet, as a proof of the plurality of persons in the one Godhead, is the fact that God Himself uses plural pronouns in speaking of Himself. For example, in the first chapter of the Bible, Gen. 1:26, we read that God said: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” And in Gen. 11:7, He is further recorded as saying: “Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they cannot understand one another’s speech.” In Gen. 3:22 we read: “And Jehovah God said, Behold, man is become as one of us to know good and evil.” And in that wonderful vision to which reference has already been made, in which Isaiah saw Jehovah, we read this statement of Isaiah’s in Isa. 6:8: “And I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.”

4. Another illustration of the plurality of persons in the one Godhead in the Old Testament conception of God is found in Zech. 2:10, 11; where Jehovah speaks of Himself as sent by Jehovahin these words: “Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion; for, lo, I come, and I will dwell in the midst of thee, saith Jehovah. (11) And many nations shall join themselves to Jehovah in that day, and shall be my people and I will dwell in the midst of thee, and thou shalt know that Jehovah of hosts [71]hath sent me unto thee.” Here Jehovah clearly speaks of himself as sent by Jehovah, thus clearly indicating two persons in the Deity.

5. Another indication of the plurality of persons in the Godhead in the Old Testament conception of God is found in the fact that “The Angel of Jehovah” in the Old Testament is at the same time distinguished from and identified with Jehovah.

6. This same thought of the plurality of persons in the one Godhead is brought out in John 1:1, where we reach the very climax of this thought. Here we are told in so many words: “In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.” We shall see later, when we come to study the Deity of Christ and the Personality and Deity of the Holy Spirit, that the Lord Jesus and the Holy Spirit are clearly designated as divine beings and at the same time distinguished from one another, and from God the Father. So it is clear that in the Christian conception of God while there is but one God there is a multiplicity of persons in the one Godhead.

In these two sermons on “The Christian Conception of God” we have very inadequately stated that conception. This conception of God runs through the whole Bible from the first chapter of the book of Genesis to the last chapter of Revelation, and this is one of the many marvellous illustrations of the divine unity of the Book. How [72]wonderful is that Book, in that there is this unity of thought on this very profound doctrine pervading the whole book! It is a clear indication that the Bible is the Word of God. There is in the Bible a profounder philosophy than is found in any human philosophy, ancient or modern, and the only way to account for it is that God Himself is the author of this incomparable philosophy. What a wondrous God we have! How we ought to meditate upon His person! With what awe and at the same time with what delight we should come into His presence and bow before Him in adoring contemplation of the wonder and beauty and majesty and glory of His being!

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[73]

IV The Deity of Jesus Christ

“Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, saying, What think ye of the Christ? whose son is He?”—Matt. 22:41, 42.

The question that our Lord Jesus here puts to the Pharisees is the most fundamental question concerning Christian thought and faith that can be put to anybody in any age. Jesus Christ Himself is the centre of Christianity, so the most fundamental questions of faith are those that concern the person of Christ. If a man really holds right views concerning the person of Jesus Christ he will sooner or later get right views on every other question. If he holds a wrong view concerning the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, he is pretty sure to go wrong on everything else sooner or later. What think ye of Christ? That is the great central question, that is the vital question.

And the most fundamental question concerning the person of Christ is, is Jesus Christ really God? Not merely is He Divine, but is He actually God? When I was a boy, to say you believed in the Divinity of Christ, meant that you believed in the [74]real Deity of Christ, that you believed that Jesus was actually a Divine person, that He was God. It no longer means that. The Devil is wise, shrewd, subtle, and he knows that the most effectual way to instil error into the minds of the inexpert and unwary is to use old and precious words and put a new meaning into them. So when his messengers masquerading as “ministers of righteousness” seek to lead, if possible, the elect astray, they use the old precious words but with an entirely new and entirely different and entirely false meaning. They talk about “the Divinity of Christ,” but they do not mean at all by it what intelligent Christians in former days meant by it. Just so they talk of “the atonement,” but they do not mean at all by the atonement the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ in our place, by which eternal life is secured for us. And oftentimes when they talk about Christ they do not mean at all our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the actual historic Jesus of the four gospels, they mean an ideal Christ, or a Christ principle. So our subject this morning is not the Divinity of Christ, but the Deity of Christ, and our question is not is Jesus Christ Divine, but is Jesus Christ God? Was that person who was born at Bethlehem nineteen hundred and twenty-one years ago, and who lived thirty-three or thirty-four years here upon earth as recorded in the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, who was crucified on Calvary’s cross, who rose from the dead the third [75]day, and was exalted from earth to heaven, to the right hand of the Father, was He God manifested in the flesh, was He God embodied in a human being? Was He and is He a being worthy of our absolute faith, and supreme love, and our unhesitating obedience, and our whole-hearted worship, just as God the Father is worthy of our absolute faith and supreme love and unhesitating obedience and our whole-hearted worship? Should all men honour Jesus Christ even as they honour God the Father (John 5:23)? Not merely is He an example that we can wisely follow, or a Master whom we can wisely serve, but is He a God Whom we can rightly worship?

I presume that most of us do believe that He was God manifested in the flesh, and that He is God to-day at the right hand of the Father, but why do you believe so? Are you so intelligent in your faith, and therefore so well grounded in your faith, that no glib talker or reasoner, no Unitarian or Russellite or Christian Scientist or Theosophist, or other errorist can confuse you and upset you and lead you astray? It is important that we be thoroughly sound in our faith at this point, and thoroughly well-informed, wherever else we may be in ignorance or error, for we are distinctly told in John 20:31 that “These are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing, ye may have life in His name.” It is evident from these words of the inspired Apostle John that this question is not [76]merely a matter of theoretical opinion, that it is a matter that concerns our salvation. It is to confirm and instruct you in your blessed faith, your saving faith in Jesus Christ as a Divine person, that I speak this morning. When I studied the subject of the Divinity of Christ in the theological seminary I got the impression that there were a few proof-texts in the Bible that conclusively proved that He was Divine. Years later I found that there were not merely a few proof-texts that proved this, but that the Bible in many ways and in countless passages clearly taught that Jesus Christ was God manifest in the flesh. Indeed I found that the Doctrine of the Deity of Jesus Christ formed the very warp and woof of the Bible.

I. DIVINE NAMES

The first line of proof of the absolute Deity of our Lord Jesus is that many names and titles clearly implying Deity are used of Jesus Christ in the Bible, some of them over and over again, the total number of passages reaching far into the hundreds. Of course, I can give you only a few illustrations. Turn with me first of all to Rev. 1:17, “And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as one dead. And he laid his right hand upon me saying, Fear not; I am the first and the last.” The context shows clearly that our Lord Jesus was the speaker, and here our Lord Jesus distinctly calls Himself “the First and the Last.” [77]Now this beyond a question is a Divine name, for in Isa. 44:6 we read, “Thus sayeth Jehovah, the king of Israel, and his redeemer, Jehovah of hosts: I am the first, and I am the last; and besides me there is no God.” In Rev. 22:12, 13, our Lord Jesus says that He is the Alpha and Omega. His words are, “Behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to render to each man according as his work is. I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” Now in this same book in the first chapter and the eighth verse the Lord God declares that He is the Alpha and the Omega. His words are, “I am the Alpha, and the Omega, saith the Lord God, which is and which was and which is to come, the Almighty.” In 1 Cor. 2:8, the Apostle Paul speaks of our crucified Lord Jesus as “the Lord of glory.” His exact words are, “Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” There can be no question that “the Lord of glory” is Jehovah God, for we read in Ps. 24:8-10, “Who is this king of glory? Jehovah strong and mighty, Jehovah mighty in battle. Lift up your heads, O ye gates; yea lift them up, ye everlasting doors, and the king of glory will come in. Who is the king of glory? Jehovah of hosts. He is the king of glory.” And we are told in the passage already referred to that our crucified Lord Jesus was the King of Glory, therefore He must be Jehovah. In John 20:28 Thomas addressed the [78]Lord Jesus as his Lord and his God, “And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.” Unitarians have endeavoured to get around the force of this utterance of Thomas by saying that Thomas was excited and that he was not addressing the Lord Jesus, but was saying “my Lord and my God” as an ejaculation of astonishment, just in the way that profane people sometimes use these exclamations to-day, but this interpretation is impossible, and shows to what desperate straits the Unitarians are driven; for Jesus Himself commended Thomas for seeing it and saying it. Our Lord Jesus’ words immediately following those of Thomas are, “Because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed” (John 20:29). In the correct translation of Titus 2:13, the translation given in the English revision, not in the American Standard Revision, our Lord Jesus is spoken of as, “our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ.” In Rom. 9:5, Paul tells us that “Christ is over all, God blessed forever.” The Unitarians have made desperate efforts to overcome the force of these words, but the only fair translation and interpretation of the words that Paul wrote in Greek are the translation and interpretation found in both our Authorised and Revised Versions. There can be no honest doubt to one who goes to the Bible to find out what it actually teaches, and not to read his own thought into it, that Jesus is spoken of by various names [79]and titles that beyond a question imply Deity, and that He in so many words is called God. In Heb. 1:8 it is said in so many words, of the Son, “But unto the Son he saith, thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever; a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom.” If we should go no further it is evidently the clear and often repeated teaching of the Bible that Jesus Christ was really God.

II. DIVINE ATTRIBUTES

But there is a second line of proof that Jesus Christ was God, a proof equally convincing, and that is, all the five distinctively Divine attributes are ascribed to Jesus Christ, and “all the fulness of the Godhead” is said to dwell in Him. There are five distinctively Divine attributes, that is five attributes that God alone possesses. These are Omnipotence, Omniscience, Omnipresence, Eternity, and Immutability. Each one of these distinctively Divine attributes are ascribed to Jesus Christ. First of all, omnipotence is ascribed to Jesus Christ. Not only are we taught that Jesus had power over disease and death and winds and sea and demons, that they were all subject to His word, and that He is far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world but also in the world to come (Eph. 1:20-23), but in Heb. 1:3 it is said in so many words that He “Upholds all things by the word of his power.” [80]Omniscience is also ascribed to Him. We are taught in the Bible that Jesus knew men’s lives, even their secret history (John 4:16, 19), that He knew the secret thoughts of men, knew all men, knew what was in man (Mark 2:8; Luke 5:22; John 2:24, 25) which knowledge we are distinctly told in 2 Chron. 6:30 and Jer. 17:9, 10, God only possesses, but we are told in so many words in John 16:30 that Jesus knew “all things,” and in Col.2:3 we are told that in Him “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” Omnipresence is also ascribed to Him. We are told in Matt. 18:20 that where two or three are gathered together in His name, that He is in the midst of them, and in Matt. 28:20 that wherever His obedient disciples should go He would be with them, even unto the end of the age, and in John 14:20 and 2 Cor. 13:5 we are told that He dwells in each believer, in all the millions of believers scattered over the earth. In Eph.1:23 we are told in so many words that He “filleth all in all.” Eternity is also ascribed to Him. We are told in John 1:1 that “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” In John 8:57 Jesus Himself said, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was, I am.” Note that the Lord Jesus did not merely say that “before Abraham was I was,” but that “before Abraham was, I am,” thus declaring Himself to be the eternal “I am.” Even in the Old Testament we have a declaration of the eternity of the Christ [81]who was to be born in Bethlehem. In Micah 5:2 we read, “But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.” And in Isa. 9:6 we are told of the child that is to be born, “For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder; and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.” And in Heb. 13:8 we are told that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.” His immutability is also taught in the passage just quoted from Hebrews, and in the first chapter of the same book, the twelfth verse we are told that while even the heavens change, the Lord Jesus does not change. The exact words are, “They shall perish, but thou remainest: They all shall wax old as doth a garment; and as a mantle shalt thou roll them up, as a garment, and they shall be changed: but thou art the same. And thy years shall not fail.”So we see that each one of the five distinctly Divine attributes were ascribed to our Lord Jesus Christ. And in Col. 2:9 we are told in so many words, “In him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (i.e., in a bodily form). Here again we might rest our case, for what has been said under this head, even if taken alone, clearly proves the absolute Deity of our Lord Jesus Christ. It shows [82]that He possessed every perfection of nature and character that God the Father possesses.

III. DIVINE OFFICES

But we do not need to rest the case here. There is a third unanswerable line of proof that Jesus Christ is God, namely, all the distinctively Divine offices are predicated of Jesus Christ. There are seven distinctively Divine offices. That is to say, there are seven things that God alone can do, and each one of these seven distinctively Divine offices are ascribed to Jesus Christ. The seven distinctively Divine offices are: Creation, Preservation, Forgiveness of Sin, the Raising of the Dead, the Transformation of Bodies, Judgment, and the Bestowal of Eternal Life, and each of these is ascribed to Jesus Christ. Creation is ascribed to Him. In Heb. 1:10 these words are spoken to our Lord: “And thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thy hands.” The context clearly shows that the Lord addressed is the Lord Jesus. In John 1:3 we are told that “All things were made through him; and without him was not anything made that was made.” Preservation of the universe and of everything is also ascribed to Him in Heb. 1:3 where it is said of the Lord Jesus, “Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his (i.e., God’s) substance and upholding all things by the word of his power, [83]when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high.”The forgiveness of sin is ascribed to Him. He Himself says in Mark 2:5-10 when His power to forgive sins was questioned, because that was recognised as a Divine power, “That ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins.” The future raising of the dead is distinctly ascribed to Him in John 6:39, 44, “And this is the Father’s will which hath sent me, that of all which He hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day. No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.” The transformation of our bodies is ascribed to Him in Phil. 3:21, R. V. In 2 Tim.4:1 judgment is ascribed to Him: we are told that He shall “judge the quick and the dead.” Jesus Himself declared that He would be the judge of all mankind, and emphasised the fact of the Divine character of that office. In John 5:22, 23 He said, “For neither doth the Father judge any man, but He hath given all judgment unto the Son, that all men may honour the Son, even as they honour the Father.” The bestowal of eternal life is ascribed to Him time and time again. In John 10:28 He Himself says, “And I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.” And in John 17:1, 2, He says, “Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that the Son may glorify thee: even as thou gavest Him authority [84]over all flesh, that to all whom thou hast given him, He should give eternal life.” Here then we have the seven distinctively Divine offices all predicated of Jesus Christ. This alone would prove that He is God, and we might rest the case here, but there are still other proofs of His absolute Deity.

IV. STATEMENTS WHICH IN THE OLD TESTAMENT ARE MADE DISTINCTLY OF JEHOVAH, GOD, TAKEN IN THE NEW TESTAMENT TO REFER TO JESUS CHRIST

The fourth line of proof of the absolute Deity of Jesus Christ is found in the fact that over and over again statements which in the Old Testament are made distinctly of Jehovah, God, are taken in the New Testament to refer to Jesus Christ. We have not time to illustrate this at length, but will give but one illustration where many might be given. In Jer. 11:20 the prophet says, “But, O Lord of hosts, that judgest righteously, that triest the reins and the heart, let me see thy vengeance on them: for unto thee have I revealed my cause.” Here the prophet distinctly says that it is Jehovah of Hosts who judgest and triest the reins and the heart. And in the 17th chapter and the tenth verse Jeremiah represents Jehovah Himself as saying the same thing in these words, “I, Jehovah, search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings.” But in the New Testament in Rev. 2:23 the Lord Jesus says, “I am he which searcheth [85]the reins and the hearts: and I will give unto every one of you according to your works.” We are distinctly told in the context that it is “The Son of God” who is speaking here. So Jesus claims for Himself in the N. T. what Jehovah in the O. T. says is true of Himself and of Himself alone, and in very many other instances statements which in the Old Testament are made distinctly of Jehovah, God, are taken in the N. T. to refer to Jesus Christ. This is to say, in New Testament thought and doctrine Jesus Christ occupies the place that Jehovah occupies in Old Testament thought and doctrine.

V. THE WAY IN WHICH THE NAME OF GOD THE FATHER AND JESUS CHRIST THE SON ARE COUPLED TOGETHER

The fifth line of proof of the absolute Deity of our Lord is found in the way in which the name of Jesus Christ is coupled with that of God the Father. In numerous passages His name is coupled with the name of God the Father in a way in which it would be impossible to couple the name of any finite being with that of the Deity. We have time for but a few of the many illustrations that might be given. A striking instance is in the words of our Lord Himself in John 14:23 where we read, “Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and he will come unto him, and make [86]our abode with him.” Here our Lord Jesus does not hesitate to couple Himself with the Father in such a way as to say “we,” i.e., God the Father and Iwill come and make our abode with him. In John 14:1 He says, “Let not your heart be troubled: Believe in God, believe also in me.” If Jesus Christ was not God this is shocking blasphemy. There is absolutely no middle ground between admitting the Deity of Jesus Christ and charging Christ with the most daring and appalling blasphemy of which any man in all history was ever guilty.

VI. DIVINE WORSHIP TO BE GIVEN TO JESUS CHRIST

There is a sixth line of proof of the absolute Deity of our Lord Jesus. Those already given have been decisive, each one of the five has been decisive, but this, if possible, is the most decisive of them all, and that is, that we are taught in so many words that Jesus Christ should be worshipped as God, both by angels and men. In numerous places in the gospels we see Jesus Christ accepting without hesitation a worship which good men and angels declined with fear, and which He Himself taught should be rendered only to God (Matt. 28:9; Luke 24:52; Mark 14:33; cf. Acts 10:25, 26; Rev.22:8, 9, R. V.; Matt. 4:9, 10). A curious and very misleading comment is made in the margin of the American Standard Revision upon the meaning of the word translated [87]“worship” in these passages, and that is that “the Greek word translated worship denotes an act of reverence, whether paid to a creature or to the Creator.” Now this is true, but it is utterly misleading; for while this word is used to denote “an act of reverence paid to a creature” by idolators, our Lord Jesus Himself distinctly says, using exactly the same Greek word, “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve,” and on the other hand He says in John 5:23 that “All men should honour the Son even as they honour the Father.” And in Rev. 5:8, 9, 12, 13 the four living creatures and the four and twenty elders are represented as falling down before the Lamb and offering worship to Him just as worship is offered to Him that sitteth upon the throne, i.e., God the Father. In Heb. 1:6 we are told in so many words, “And again, when he bringeth in the first begotten into the world, he saith, and let all the angels of God worship him.” One night in the inquiry room in Chicago I stepped up to an intelligent looking man at the back of the room and said to him, “Are you a Christian?” He replied, “I do not suppose you would consider me a Christian.” I said, “Why not?” He said, “I am a Unitarian.” I said, “What you mean then is that you do not think that Jesus Christ is a person who should be worshipped.” He replied, “That is exactly what I think,” and added, “the Bible nowhere says we ought to worship Him.” I said, “Who told you that?” He replied, “My [88]pastor,” mentioning a prominent Unitarian minister in the City of Boston. I said, “Let me show you something,” and I opened my Bible to Heb. 1:6 and read, “And again, when he bringeth in the first begotten into the world, he saith, and let all the angels of God worship him,” and he said, “Does it say that?” I handed him the Bible and said, “Read it for yourself,” and he read it and said, “I did not know that was in the Bible.” I said, “Well it is there, isn’t it?” “Yes it is there.” Language could not make it plainer. The Bible clearly teaches that Jesus, the Son of God, is to be worshipped as God by angels and men, even as God the Father is worshipped.

VII. INCIDENTAL PROOFS OF THE DEITY OF JESUS CHRIST

The six lines of proof of the Deity of Jesus Christ which I have given you leave no possibility of doubting that Jesus Christ is God, that Jesus of Nazareth is God manifest in a human person, that He is a being to be worshipped, even as God the Father is worshipped; but there are also incidental proofs of His absolute Deity which, if possible, are in some ways even more convincing than the direct assertions of His Deity.

1. Our Lord Jesus says in Matt. 11:28, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Now any one that makes a promise like that must either be God, or a lunatic, [89]or an impostor. No one can give rest to all who labour and are heavy laden who come to him unless he is God, and yet Jesus Christ offers to do it. If He offers to do it and fails to do it when men come to Him, then He is either a lunatic or an impostor. If He actually does it, then beyond a question He is God. And thousands can testify that He really does it. Thousands and tens of thousands who have laboured and were heavy laden and crushed, and for whom there was no help in man, have come to Jesus Christ and He actually has given them rest. Surely then He is not merely a great man, He is God.

2. Again in John 14:1 Jesus Christ demands that we put the same faith in Him that we put in God the Father, and promises that in such faith we will find a cure for all trouble and anxiety of heart. His words are, “Let not your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me.” It is clear that He demands that the same absolute faith be put in Himself that is to be put in God Almighty. Now in Jer.17:5, scripture with which our Lord Jesus was perfectly familiar, we read “Thus saith Jehovah: Cursed is the man that trusteth in man,” and yet with this clear curse pronounced upon all who trust in man, Jesus Christ demands that we put trust in Him just as we put trust in God. It is the strongest possible assertion of Deity on His part. No one but God has a right to make such a demand, and Jesus Christ, when He makes this demand, must either [90]be God or an impostor, but thousands and tens of thousands have found that when they did believe in Him just as they believe in God, their hearts were delivered from trouble no matter what their bereavement or circumstances might be.

3. Again, the Lord Jesus demanded supreme and absolute love for Himself. It is clear as day that no one but God has a right to demand such a love, but there can be no question that Jesus did demand it. In Matt. 10:37 He said to His disciples, “He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” And in Luke 14:26, 33, He says, “If any man cometh unto me, and hateth not his own father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. . . . So therefore whosoever he be of you that renounceth not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.” There can be no question that this is a demand on Jesus’ part of supreme and absolute love to Himself, a love that puts even the dearest relations of life in an entirely secondary place. No one but God has a right to make any such demand, but our Lord Jesus made it, and, therefore, He must be God.

4. In John 10:30 the Lord Jesus claimed absolute equality with the Father. He said, “I and the Father are one.”

5. In John 14:9 our Lord Jesus went so far as to say, “He that hath seen me, hath seen the [91]Father.” He claims here to be so absolutely God that to see Him is to see the Father Who dwelleth in Him.

6. In John 17:3 He says, “And this is eternal life, to know thee, the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ.” In other words, he claims that the knowledge of Himself is as essential a part of eternal life as knowledge of God the Father.

Conclusion: There is no room left to doubt the absolute Deity of Jesus Christ. It is a glorious truth. The Saviour in whom we believe is God, a Saviour for whom nothing is too hard, a Saviour who can save from the uttermost and save to the uttermost. Oh, how we should rejoice that we have no merely human Saviour, but a Saviour that is absolutely God. On the other hand, how black is the guilt of rejecting such a Saviour as this! Whoever refuses to accept Jesus as his Divine Saviour and Lord is guilty of the enormous sin of rejecting a Saviour Who is God. Many a man thinks he is good because he never stole, or committed murder, or cheated. “Of what great sin am I guilty?” he complacently asks. Have you ever accepted Jesus Christ? “No.” Well, then you are guilty of the awful and damning sin of rejecting a Saviour Who is God. “But,” you answer, “I do not believe that He is God.” That does not change the fact nor lessen your guilt. Questioning a fact or denying a fact never changes it, regardless of what Mary Baker Eddy may say [92]to the contrary. Suppose a man had a wife who was one of the noblest, purest, truest women that ever lived, would her husband’s questioning her purity and nobility change the fact? It would not. It would simply make that husband guilty of awful slander, it would simply prove that man to be an outrageous scoundrel. So denying the Deity of Jesus Christ, does not make his Deity any less a fact, but it does make the denier of His Deity guilty of awful, incredible, blasphemous slander. It does prove you who deny His Deity to be——. I leave your own conscience to finish the sentence.

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[93]

V Jesus Christ a Real Man

“And the word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father), full of grace and truth.”—John 1:14.

“Who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of man; and being found in fashion as man, he emptied himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea the death of the cross.”—Phil. 2:6-8.

“There is one God, one mediator also between God and men, himself man, Christ Jesus.”—1 Tim. 2:5.

Our subject in this chapter is “Jesus Christ a Real Man.” I have three texts, and the substance of all that I shall say is these three texts. The first text is John 1:14: “And the word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father), full of grace and truth.” The second text is Phil. 2:6-8: “Who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of man; and being found in fashion as a man, he emptied himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea the death of the cross.” And [94]the third text is 1 Tim. 2:5: “There is one God, one mediator also between God and man, himself man, Christ Jesus.”

We saw in the preceding chapter that Jesus Christ was God, that in Him dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, that He possessed all the distinctively divine attributes, that He exercised all the distinctively divine functions, that He occupied the position in New Testament thought that Jehovah occupied in Old Testament thought, that He was a being worthy of our absolute faith, our supreme love, our unhesitating obedience, and our whole-hearted worship, that He was God and is God. But in the passages which we have taken for our texts to-day, we are told that this Divine One, who had existed from all eternity with God, the Father, and who was God, became a man. In becoming a man, He did not cease to be God; but the Word, the Eternal Word, which was with God and was God, took human nature upon Himself. While He was very God of very God, He was real man, as truly and completely a man as any man who ever walked on this earth. The doctrine of the real humanity of Christ is as essential a part of the Christian faith as the doctrine of His real Deity. There is one very large class of people who do not see the real Deity of Jesus Christ. They are in fundamental error. There is another large class of people who see only His Deity, and who do not see the reality of His manhood. They also are in error. A doctrine of a Saviour who is [95]only man is false doctrine; and a doctrine of a Saviour who is only God is equally false doctrine. The doctrine of the Bible is that, One Who from all eternity was God in the person of Jesus of Nazareth became man. There are many passages in the Bible which set forth the Deity of our Lord Jesus in a way that is unmistakable and inescapable. There are many other passages in the Bible which set forth the complete humanity of our Lord Jesus in a way which is equally unmistakable and inescapable. It is with the doctrine of His real humanity, i.e., that He was a real man, that we are concerned this morning.

I. THE HUMAN PARENTAGE OF JESUS CHRIST

First of all, the Bible teaches us that Jesus Christ had a human parentage. We read in Luke 2:7, “And she (i.e., Mary) brought forth her first born Son; and she wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.” Here we are told that our Lord Jesus Christ, though supernaturally conceived, was Mary’s Son. Mary was as truly His mother as God was His Father. He had a human parentage as truly as He had a divine parentage. In the first chapter of this same Gospel of Luke, in the 35th verse, we read, “And the angel answered and said unto her (i.e., Mary), the Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee: [96]wherefore also the holy thing, which is begotten shall be called the Son of God.” He was called the Son of God because He was begotten directly by the power of the Holy Spirit; but the Holy Spirit came upon Mary and she became the mother of this One who was to be called the “Son of God.” Not only was He descended from Mary and in that way of human parentage, we are clearly told also in Rom. 1:3 that God’s Son “Was born of the seed of David according to the flesh.” And in Acts 2:30 we are told that He was “The fruit of his (i.e., David’s) loins, according to the flesh.” And in Hebrews 7:14, we are told that “Our Lord sprang out of Judah.” While we are told in Gal. 4:4 that “When the fulness of the time came, God sent forth His Son,” we are also told with equal plainness in the same verse that this Son of God was “Born of a woman.” The human parentage of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was just as real and just as essential a part of His personality as His divine parentage.

II. THE HUMAN PHYSICAL NATURE OF JESUS CHRIST

But not only did Jesus Christ have a human parentage, He had a human physical nature, a human body. This comes out in the first of our texts, “The Word Became Flesh,” and in Hebrews 2:14 we are taught “Since then the children are sharers in flesh and blood, he also (i.e., our Lord Jesus also) himself in like manner partook of the [97]same; that through death he might bring to naught him that had the power of death, that is, the devil.” Words could not make it plainer that our Lord Jesus had a real human body, a real human physical nature. Indeed, the Apostle John teaches us in 1 John 4:2, 3, that not to believe in the actuality of His human body, is a mark of the Anti-Christ. He says, “Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: and every spirit that confesseth not Jesus is not of God: and this is the spirit of the anti-Christ, whereof ye have heard that it cometh; and now it is in the world already.” There were those in John’s day who denied the reality of Jesus’ human nature, who asserted that His body was only a seeming or apparent body, that it was an illusion, or as the Christian Scientists now put it, “mortal thought,” and John, speaking in the wisdom and power of the Holy Ghost, asserts that this doctrine is a mark of the Anti-Christ. It is the one supreme mark to-day, that “Christian Science” is of the Anti-Christ.

Jesus Christ not only had a human body during His life here upon earth, but after His resurrection He still had a human body. The Millennial Dawnists (Pastor-Russellites) teach us that this is not so; that, whereas before His incarnation He was wholly a spiritual being, that at His incarnation He became wholly a human being, and that since His death and resurrection He is wholly a [98]divine being: all of which is not Scriptural, and therefore is not true. He himself said after His resurrection, “See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye behold me have. And when he said this, he showed them his hands and his feet”(Luke 24:39, 40). And to Thomas in John 20:27, after Thomas had doubted the reality of His resurrection, He said, “Reach hither thy finger, and see my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and put it into my side: and be not faithless but believing.” Not only after His resurrection while still here on earth did He have a real human body, but He still has a human body in the glory. In that wonderful view into heaven that was given to Stephen at the time he was stoned and killed we read in Acts 7:55, 56, “But he, being full of the Holy Spirit, looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, and said, Behold I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.” And when He comes again to take His rightful authority on this earth, He shall come with a human body, coming as “the Son of Man.” He Himself said to the High Priest when He stood before him on trial, in Matt. 26:64, “Nevertheless I say unto you, henceforth ye shall see the son of man standing at the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven.” In this utterance of our Lord we have a declaration of His Deity, but an equally clear [99]declaration that He was a real man, and that He will come again as a man with a human, though glorified body. Indeed, we are told in Phil. 1:20, 21 that when He does thus come, He is going to transform these our present human bodies, the bodies of our present humiliation, into the likeness of His own glorious body, His glorified human body.

III. SUBJECT TO HUMAN LIMITATIONS

But the reality and completeness of our Lord’s human nature comes out not only in the fact that He had a human parentage and a human body: we are also clearly taught that, while as God he possessed all the attributes and exercised all the offices of Deity, as a man He was subject to human limitations.

1. He was subject to the physical limitations which are essential to humanity. In John 4:6 we read that Jesus Christ was weary. The words are “Jesus, therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well: and it was about the sixth hour.” But God is never weary. We read explicitly in Isa. 40:28 “Hast thou not known? Hast thou not heard? The everlasting God, Jehovah, the creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary.”

We are told in Matt. 8:24 that Jesus Christ slept. But God never sleeps. We read in Ps. 121:4, 5, “Behold he that keepeth Israel shall [100]neither slumber nor sleep. Jehovah is thy keeper: Jehovah is thy shade upon thy right hand.” By comparison of these two verses, we see distinctly that Jehovah never sleeps. Yet Jesus did sleep, so while He was Jehovah, He was not Jehovah only. He was man as truly as He was God.

In Matt. 21:18 we read that Jesus Christ hungered; in John 19:28 we read that Jesus Christ thirsted; in Luke 22:44 we read that Jesus Christ suffered physical agony, His agony was so great that He was on the point of dying with agony; and in 1 Cor. 15:3 we read that “Christ died,” that His death is an essential part of the Gospel. Paul says in this passage, “For I delivered unto you first of all that which I received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures.” It was no merely apparent death, it was a real death. It was no “illusion.” Our salvation depends on the reality of His death. “Christian Science” cuts the very heart out of the Gospel. We are oftentimes asked was it the human nature of Jesus Christ that died or was it the divine nature that died. It was neither the one nor the other, natures do not die, a person dies. It was Jesus who died, the Person who was at once God and man. We are told in so many words in 1 Cor. 2:8, that they “Crucified the Lord of glory,” and we saw in the last chapter that the “Lord of Glory” is unquestionably a divine title. It was the one Person Jesus who was at once human and divine, who died upon the cross of Calvary.

[101]2. He was also, as a man subject to intellectual and moral limitations.

We read in Luke 2:52, “Jesus advanced in wisdom and stature and in favour with God and man.” As we are told here that He grew in wisdom, He must have been more perfect in wisdom after He grew than He was before He grew, and as He grew in favour with God and man, He must have attained to a higher type of moral perfection when He grew than He had attained to before He grew. While in the Babe of Bethlehem God was incarnate, nevertheless He was a real babe and grew not only in stature, but in wisdom and in favour with God and man. As a man He was limited in knowledge, He Himself says in Mark 13:32, “But of that day and that hour (i.e., the day and the hour of His own return) knoweth no man; no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son but the Father.” Of course, His knowledge was self-limited: to set an example for you and me to follow in His steps, He voluntarily as man put away His knowledge of the time of His own return.

Furthermore still, we are definitely and explicitly taught in Heb. 4:15 that Jesus Christ was “In all points tempted like as we are.” But in bearing this in mind as being clear and complete proof of the reality of His humanity, not only physical but mental and moral, we should also bear in mind what is stated in the same verse, that He was tempted “Apart from Sin,” i.e., that [102]there was not the slightest taint or tinge of sin in His temptation, not one moment’s yielding to it in thought or desire or act. Nevertheless, He was tempted and overcame temptation in the same way that we may overcome it, by the Word of God and prayer. He Himself voluntarily placed Himself under the essential moral limitations that man is under in order to redeem man.

3. He was also, as a man, subject to limitations in the way in which He obtained power and in which He exercised power. Jesus Christ obtained the power for the Divine work that He did while here upon earth, not by His incarnate Deity, but by prayer. We read in Mark 1:35, “And in the morning, a great while before day, he rose up and went out, and departed unto a desert place, and there prayed.” And we read also that before He raised Lazarus from the dead, called him forth from the tomb by His Word, that He lifted up His eyes to God and said, “Father, I thank thee that thou heardest me,” showing conclusively that the power by which He raised Lazarus from the dead was not His inherent, inborn, Divine power, but was power obtained by prayer. It is mentioned not less than twenty-five times that He prayed. He obtained power for work and for moral victory as other men do, by prayer. He was subject to human conditions for obtaining what He desired. He obtained power for the divine works and miracles which he wrought by the anointing of the Holy Spirit. We read in Acts 10:38, that “God [103]anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him.” And we are taught, furthermore, that He was subject during the days of His humiliation to limitations in the exercise of power. He himself said just before His crucifixion and subsequent glorification, in John 14:12, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; for I go unto my Father,” the evident meaning of which is, that during the days of His flesh there was a limitation to His exercise of power, but after His glorification, when He was glorified with the Father with the glory which He had with Him since the world was, there would be no limitations to the exercise of His power, and therefore, that we, being united, not to our Lord Jesus in His humiliation, but in His exaltation and restoration to His divine glory, will do greater works than he did during the days of His humiliation.

IV. THE HUMAN RELATION OF JESUS CHRIST TO GOD

The completeness of the humanity of Jesus Christ comes out in still another matter, and that is, the relation that He bore to God as a man was the relation of a man, so that God was His God. He himself says to Mary in John 20:17, “Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended unto the father: [104]but go unto my brethren, and say to them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and my God and your God.” The evident meaning of this is that Jesus Christ’s relation to God, the Father, was the relation of man. He speaks of God the Father as “My God.” Though possessed of all the attributes and exercising all the functions of Deity, Jesus Christ the Son was subordinate to the Father. This explains utterances of our Lord which have puzzled many who believe in His Deity, such utterances, for example, as that in John 14:28, where Jesus says, “Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If ye loved me ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: For my Father is greater than I.” The question is often asked, “If Jesus Christ is God, how could the Father be greater than He?” The very simple answer to which is; that He, as the Son, was subordinate to the Father, equal to the Father in the possession of all the distinctively Divine attributes and exercising all the Divine offices, and as an object of our wholehearted worship, but subordinate to the Father in His office. Jesus Christ’s relation to the Father is like the relation of the wife to the husband in this respect, that the wife may be fully the equal of the husband, but nevertheless, the “Head of the Woman is the Man,” she is subordinate to the man, just as we are told in the same verse (1 Cor. 11:12) “The head of Christ is God,” i.e., Jesus Christ the Son is subordinate to the Father.

[105]It is evident from what we have read from God’s Word, that Jesus Christ in every respect was a true man, a real man, a complete man. He was made “In all things” “like unto his brethren” (cf. Heb. 2:17). He was subject to all the physical, mental and moral conditions of existence essential to human nature. He was in every respect a real man. He became so voluntarily in order to redeem men. From all eternity He had existed “in the form of God” and could have remained “in the form of God,” but if He had so remained, we would have been lost. Therefore, out of love to us, the fallen race, as we are taught in one of our texts (Phil. 2:5-8), He “Counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of man; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross.” Oh, wondrous love! that out of love to us He should take our nature upon Him, turning His back upon the glory that had been His from all eternity and taking upon Himself all the shame and suffering that was involved in our redemption, and becoming one of us that He might die for us and redeem us! Oh, how wondrous the “Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich yet for our sakes He became poor, that we through his poverty might become rich.” (2 Cor. 8:9.) He partook of human nature that we might become partakers of the Divine nature. The philosophy [106]of the divine and human natures of Christ, the philosophy of the New Testament, is a most wonderful philosophy, the most wonderful philosophy the world ever heard, and thank God it is a true philosophy.

But some one may ask, “How shall we reconcile the Bible doctrine of the true Deity of Jesus Christ with the Bible doctrine of the real human nature of Jesus Christ, the doctrine that He was real God with the doctrine that He was equally truly man?” The answer to this is very simple. Reconciling doctrines is not our main business. Our first business is to find out what the various passages in the Bible mean, taken in their natural, grammatical interpretation. Then, if we can reconcile them, well and good; if not, we should still believe them both and leave the reconciliation of the two apparently conflicting doctrines to our increasing knowledge as we go on communing with God and studying His Word. It is an utterly foolish and vicious principle of Biblical interpretation that we must interpret every passage of the Bible so that we can readily reconcile it with every other passage. It is this principle of interpretation that gives rise to a one-sided, and therefore untrue, theology. One man, for example, takes the Calvinistic passages in the Bible and believes them and twists and distorts the other passages; that teach the freedom of man, to make them fit with those that teach the sovereignty of God, and he becomes a one-sided Calvinist. Another man [107]sees only those passages that clearly teach man’s power of self-determination and seeks to twist all that teach the sovereignty of God and the foreordaining wisdom and will of God to fit into his ideas, and he becomes a one-sided Arminian, and so on through the whole gamut of doctrine. It is utter foolishness, to say nothing of presumption, to thus handle the Word of God deceitfully. Our business is to find out the plainly intended sense of a passage that we are studying, as determined by the usage of words, grammatical construction and context; and when we have found out the plainly intended meaning, believe it whether we can reconcile it with something else that we have found out and believe, or not. We should always remember that in many cases two truths, both clearly true, that at one time seemed utterly irreconcilable or flatly contradictory to one another, are now, with our increased knowledge seen to beautifully harmonise. So we should have no difficulty in recognising the fact that truths that still seem to us to be contradictory, do now perfectly harmonise in the infinite wisdom of God, and will some day perfectly harmonise to our minds when we approach more nearly to God’s omniscience. The Bible, in the most fearless way, puts the absolute Deity of Jesus Christ in closest juxtaposition with the real manhood of Jesus Christ. For example, we read in Matt. 8:24, “And behold, there arose a great tempest in the sea, insomuch that the boat was covered with the waves; but He[108](Jesus) was asleep.” Here we have a plain statement of the real manhood of our Lord, but two verses later, in the 26th verse, we read, “And He saith unto them, why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith? Then He arose, and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm.” Here we have a clear shining forth of His Deity, even the winds and the waves subject to His word. No wonder the disciples asked one another, “What manner of man is this that even the winds and the sea obey him?” (Matt. 8:27). The answer is plain: a Divine Man.

Again we read in Luke 3:21, “Now it came to pass, when all the people were baptised, that Jesus also having been baptised, and praying, . . .” Here we see Jesus in His humanity, baptisedand praying. Surely this is a man. But in the remainder of the verse and in the next verse we read, “And the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended in a bodily form, as a dove, upon him, and a voice came out of heaven, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased.”Here God with an audible voice declares Him to be Divine, to be His Son. Again in John 11:38 we read, “Jesus, therefore, again groaning in himself cometh to the tomb. Now it was a cave, and a stone laid against it.” Here we see Jesus in His humanity, but four verses further down, the 43rd and 44th verses, we read, “And when He had thus spoken, He cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come [109]forth. And he that was dead came forth.” Here again his Deity shines forth.

In Luke 9:28 we read, “And it came to pass about eight days after these sayings, that he took with him Peter and John and James, and went up into the mountain to pray.” Here we very clearly see His humanity, His limitation, His dependence upon God; but in the very next verse, the 29th verse, we read, “And as He was praying the fashion of his countenance was altered and His raiment became white and glistering.” Here we see His Divinity shining forth, and then again in the 35th verse, we read of the voice coming out of the cloud, saying, “This is my son, my chosen; hear ye him.” Here His Deity unmistakably is seen again.

In Matt. 16:16, 17, we read, “And Simon Peter answered and said, thou art the Christ, the son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my father who is in heaven.” Here is a clear declaration by Jesus Himself of His Deity. But four verses further down in the chapter, the 24th verse, we read, “From that time began Jesus to show unto his disciples that he must go up unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and the third day rise from the dead.” Here we have the clearest declaration of the reality and completeness of His humanity.

[110]In Heb. 1:6, we read of our Lord Jesus, “And when He (i.e., God the Father) again bringeth in the first-begotten into the world he saith, and let all the angels of God worship him.” Here is a most unmistakable and inescapable declaration that Jesus Christ is a Divine Person, to be worshipped as God by angels as well as men, and two verses further down we read this further declaration of His absolute Deity, “But of the son he saith, Thy throne O God, is for ever and ever.” Here again the Son is declared in so many words to be God, He is called God. But in the very next chapter, Heb.2:18, we read, “For in that He himself hath suffered being tempted, He is able to succor them that are tempted.” Here we have the clearest possible declaration of the reality of His human nature.

In Heb. 4:14 we read, “Having then a great high priest, who hath passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession.” Here we have a plain declaration of His Deity; but in the very next verse, we read, “For we have not an high priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but one that hath been in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” One of the plainest declarations of the fullness and completeness of His humanity to be found in the Bible.

The doctrine of the Deity of Jesus Christ and the doctrine that Jesus Christ was a real man, go hand in hand in the Bible. What kind of a [111]Saviour, what kind of a Lord Jesus, do you believe in? Do you believe in a Saviour that is a man and man only? Then you do not believe in the Saviour that is presented in the Bible. On the other hand, do you believe in a Saviour that is God and God only? Then you do not believe in the Saviour of the Bible. The Lord Jesus, our Lord and Saviour, presented to us in the Bible, is very God of very God and at the same time He is our brother, our fellowman, and is not ashamed to call us brethren. Oh, I thank God that I have a Saviour that is God, possessed of all the attributes and powers of Deity, all the perfections of Deity, a Saviour for whom nothing is too hard. I thank God that my Saviour is One who made the heavens and the earth, and who holds all the powers of nature and of history in His control; but I equally thank God that my Saviour is my brother man, One who was tempted in all points like as I am, One who is in a position to bear my sins, on the one hand because He is God, on the other hand because He is man. A merely divine Saviour could not be a Saviour for me. A merely human Saviour could not be a Saviour for me. But a Saviour in whom Deity and humanity meet; a Saviour who is at once God and man, is just the Saviour I need, and the Saviour that you need, a Saviour that is able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God through Him.

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[112]

VI The Personality of the Holy Spirit

“The Communion of the Holy Ghost.”—2 Cor. 13:14.

Our subject this morning is “The Personality of the Holy Spirit.” No series of sermons upon the Fundamentals of our Christian faith would be complete without a sermon on the Personality and Deity of the Holy Spirit. The doctrine of the Personality of the Holy Spirit is both fundamental and vital. Any one who does not know the Holy Spirit as a person has not attained to a complete and well-rounded Christian experience. Any one who knows God the Father and God the Son, but who does not know God the Holy Spirit has not attained unto the Christian conception of God, nor to a fully Christian experience. It may seem to you at first thought as if the doctrine of the Personality of the Holy Spirit were a purely technical and apparently impractical doctrine, but it is not so. As we shall see shortly, the doctrine of the Personality of the Holy Spirit is a doctrine of the very first practical importance.

[113]

I. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE PERSONALITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

1. The Doctrine of the Personality of the Holy Spirit is of the highest importance from the standpoint of worship. If the Holy Spirit is a person and a Divine Person, and He is, and if we do not know Him as such, if we think of the Holy Spirit only as an impersonal influence or power, then we are robbing a Divine Person of the worship which is His due, and the love which is His due, and the confidence and surrender and obedience which are His due. And may I stop at this point to ask each one of you, “Do you worship the Holy Spirit?” Theoretically we all do, every time we sing the long metre Doxology,”Praise God from whom all blessings flow,Praise Him all creatures here below.Praise Him above, ye heavenly hosts,Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.”

Theoretically we all do every time we sing the Gloria Patri: “Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.” But it is one thing to do a thing theoretically and quite another thing to actually do it. It is one thing to sing words, quite another thing to realise the meaning and the force of the words that you sing. I had a striking [114]illustration of this some years ago. I was going to a Bible Conference in New York State. I had to pass through a city four miles from the grounds where the Conference was held. I had a relative living in that city and on the way to the Conference stopped to call upon my relative, who went with me to the Conference. This relative was a Christian, she was much older than I, had been a Christian much longer than I, a member of the Presbyterian Church, brought up on the Shorter Catechism, and thoroughly orthodox. I spoke that morning at the Conference on the Personality of the Holy Spirit. When the address was over, we were waiting on the veranda of the hotel for the trolley to take us back to the city. My relative turned to me and said, “Archie, I never thought of it before as a person.” Well, I had never thought of it as a person, but thank God I had come to know Him as a person.

2. In the second place, it is of the highest importance from a practical standpoint that we know the Holy Spirit as a person. If you think of the Holy Spirit, as so many even among Christian people do, as a mere influence or power, then your thought will be, “How can I get hold of the Holy Spirit and use it.” But if you think of Him in the Biblical way as a Divine person, your thought will be, “How can the Holy Spirit get hold of me and use me?” Is there no difference between the thought of man, the worm, using God to thresh the mountain, or God using man, the [115]worm, to thresh the mountain? The former conception is heathenish, it does not differ essentially from the conception of the African fetich worshipper who uses his god. The latter conception, of God the Holy Ghost getting hold of and using us, is lofty and Christian. If you think of the Holy Spirit merely as an influence or power, your thought will be, “How can I get more of the Holy Spirit?” But if you think of Him in the Biblical way as a person, your thought will be, “How can the Holy Spirit get more of me?” The former conception, the conception of the Holy Spirit as a mere influence or power, inevitably leads to self-confidence, to self-exaltation, to the parade of self. If you think of the Holy Spirit as an influence or power and then fancy that you have received the Holy Spirit, the inevitable result will be that you will strut around as if you belonged to a superior order of Christians. I remember a woman who came to me one afternoon at the Northfield Bible Conference at the close of an address and said to me, “Brother Torrey, I want to ask you a question; but before I do, I want you to understand that I am a Holy Ghost woman.” It made me shudder. It did not sound like it. But on the other hand, if you think of the Holy Spirit in the Biblical way as a Divine Person of infinite majesty, who comes to dwell in our hearts and take possession of us and use us, it leads to self-renunciation, self-abnegation, self-humiliation. I know of no thought that is more [116]calculated to put one in the dust and keep one in the dust than this great Biblical truth of the Holy Ghost as a Divine Person coming to take up His dwelling in our hearts, and to take possession of our lives and to use us.

3. The doctrine of the personality of the Holy Spirit is of the highest importance from the standpoint of experience. Thousands and tens of thousands of Christian men and women can testify to an entire transformation of their experience through coming to know the Holy Spirit as a person. In fact, this address upon the Personality of the Holy Spirit which, for substance, I have given in almost every city in which I have ever held a series of meetings, is in some respects apparently the most abstruse and technical subject that I ever attempted to handle before a popular audience, and yet, notwithstanding that fact, more men and women have come to me at the close of the address and more have written to me, testifying of personal blessing received, than of any other address which God has permitted me to give.

II. FOUR LINES OF PROOF OF THE PERSONALITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

There are four separate and distinct lines of proof of the Personality of the Holy Spirit.

1. The first line of proof of the Personality of the Holy Spirit is that all the distinctive marks or characteristics of personality are ascribed to the [117]Holy Spirit in the Bible. What are the distinctive characteristics of personality? Knowledge, feeling and will. Any being who knows and feels and wills is a person. Oftentimes when you say that the Holy Spirit is a person, people understand you to mean that the Holy Spirit has hands and feet and fingers and toes and eyes and ears and nose and mouth, and so on. But these are not the marks of personality, these are the marks of corporeity. Any being who knows, thinks and wills is a person whether he have a body or not. Now all these characteristics of personality are ascribed to the Holy Spirit in the Bible.

(1) Turn in your Bibles to 1 Cor. 2:11. “For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.” Here knowledge is ascribed to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit in other words, is not a mere illumination that comes to your mind and mine whereby our minds are cleared and strengthened to see truth that they would not otherwise discover. The Holy Spirit is a Person who Himself knows the things of God and reveals to us what He Himself knows.

(2) Now turn to 1 Cor. 12:11: “But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He will.” Here will is ascribed to the Holy Spirit. The thought clearly is that the Holy Spirit is not a divine power that we get hold of and use according to our will, but [118]that the Holy Spirit is a person who gets hold of us and uses us according to His will. This is one of the most fundamental facts in regard to the Holy Spirit that we must bear in mind if we are to get into right relations to Him. More people are going astray at this point than almost any other. They are trying to get hold of some divine power which they can use according to their will. I do thank God that there is no divine power that I can get hold of and use according to my will. What could I, in my foolishness and ignorance, do with a divine power, what evil I might work! But on the other hand, I am still more glad that while there is no divine power that I can get hold of and use according to my foolish will, there is a Divine Person who can get hold of me and use me according to His infinitely wise and loving will.

(3) Turn now to Rom. 8:27. “And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.” What I wish you to notice here is expression, “the mind of the Spirit.” The Greek word here translated “mind” is a comprehensive word that has in it the ideas of both thought and purpose. It is the same word which is used in the 7th verse of the chapter where we read, “The mind of the flesh is enmity against God,” where the thought is that not merely the thought of the flesh is against God, but the whole [119]moral and intellectual life of the flesh is enmity against God.

(4) We now turn to a most remarkable passage—Rom. 15:30. “Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, and for the love of the Spirit, that ye strive together with me in your prayers to God for me.” What I wish you to notice in this verse are the words “The love of the Spirit.” It is a wonderful thought. It teaches us that the Holy Spirit is not a mere blind influence or power, no matter how beneficent, that comes into our hearts and lives, but that He is a Divine Person, loving us with the tenderest love. I wonder how many of us have ever thought much regarding “the love of the Spirit.” I wonder how many of us ministers who are here to-day have ever preached a sermon on the love of the Spirit. I wonder how many of you have ever heard a sermon on the love of the Spirit. Every day of your life you kneel down before God the Father, at least I hope you do, and say, “Heavenly Father, I thank thee for thy great love that led thee to give thy Son to come down to this world and die upon the cross of Calvary in my place.” Every day of your life you kneel down and look up into the face of Jesus Christ the Son and say, “Thou blessed Son of God, I thank thee for that great love of thine that led thee to come down to this world in obedience to the Father and die in my place upon the cross of Calvary.” But did you ever kneel down and look up to the Holy [120]Spirit and say to him, “Holy Spirit, I thank thee for that great love of thine”? And yet we owe our salvation as truly to the love of the Holy Spirit as we do to the love of the Father and the love of the Son. If it had not been for the love of God the Father to me, looking down upon me in my lost estate, yes, anticipating my fall and ruin and sending His Son down to this world to die upon the cross, to die in my place, I would have been in hell to-day. If it had not been for the love of Jesus Christ, the Son, coming down to this world in obedience to the Father to lay down His life, a perfect atoning sacrifice on the cross of Cavalry in my stead, I would have been in hell to-day. But if it had not been for the love of the Holy Spirit to me, coming down to this world in obedience to the Father and the Son, seeking me out in my lost condition, following me day after day, and week after week, and month after month, and year after year, when I would not listen to Him, when I deliberately turned my back upon Him, when I insulted Him, following me into places where it must have been agony for One so holy to go, following me day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, until at last He succeeded in bringing me to my senses and bringing me to realise my utterly lost condition and revealed the Lord Jesus to me as just the Saviour I needed and induced me and enabled me to receive the Lord Jesus as my Saviour and my Lord; if it had not been for this [121]patient, long-suffering, never-wearying love of the Spirit of God to me, I would have been in hell to-day.

(5) Turn now to a passage in the Old Testament. Neh. 9:20. “Thou gavest also thy good Spirit to instruct them, and withheldest not thy manna from their mouth, and gavest them water for their thirst.” Here both intelligence and goodness are ascribed to the Holy Spirit. This passage does not add anything to the thought that we have already had: I brought it in simply because it is from the Old Testament. There are those who say that the doctrine of the Personality of the Holy Spirit is in the New Testament, but is not in the Old Testament; but here we find it as clearly in the Old Testament as in the New. Of course, we do not find it as frequently in the Old Testament as in the New, for this is the dispensation of the Holy Spirit: but the doctrine of the Personality of the Holy Spirit is there in the Old Testament. There are many who say that the doctrine of the Trinity is not in the Old Testament, that while it is in the New, it is not in the Old. But it is in the Old, in the very first chapter of the Bible. In Gen. 1:26 we read, “And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” Here the plurality of the persons in the Godhead comes out clearly. God did not say, “I will” or “Let me make man in my image.” He said, “Let us make man in our image, after ourlikeness.” The three persons of the Trinity are found [122]in the first three verses of the Bible: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” There you have God the Father. “And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” There you have the Holy Spirit. “And God said,” there you have the Word, “Let there be light: and there was light.” Here we have the three persons of the Trinity in the first three verses of the Bible. In fact the doctrine of the Trinity is found hundreds of times in the Old Testament. In the Hebrew Bible it occurs in every place where you find the word God in your English Bible, for the Hebrew word for God is a plural noun. Literally translated, it would be “Gods” and not God. In the very passage to which the Unitarians and the Jews, who reject the Deity of Christ, refer so often as proving conclusively that the Deity of Christ cannot be true, namely Deut. 6:4, the very doctrine that they are seeking to disprove is found; for Deut. 6:4 literally translated would read “Hear, O Israel: Jehovah our Gods is one Jehovah.” Why did the Hebrews with their intense monotheism, use a plural name for God? This was the question that puzzled the Hebrew grammarians and lexicographers, and the best explanation they could arrive at was that the plural for God here used was the pluralis majestatis, the plural of majesty. The explanation is entirely inadequate, to say nothing of the fact that the [123]pluralis majestatis in the Old Testament is a figure of very doubtful validity. There is another explanation far nearer at hand, and far more adequate and satisfactory, and that is that the Hebrew inspired writers use a plural name for God in spite of their intense monotheism, because there is a plurality of persons in the one Godhead.

(6) Now turn to Eph. 4:30. “And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.” Here grief is ascribed to the Holy Spirit. In other words, the Holy Spirit is not a mere blind impersonal influence or power that comes to dwell in your heart and mine, but a person, a person who loves us, a person who is holy and intensely sensitive against sin, a person who recoils from sin in what we call its slightest forms as the holiest woman of earth never recoiled from sin in its grossest and most repulsive forms. And He sees whatever we do, He hears whatever we say, He sees our very thoughts, not a vagrant fancy is allowed a moment’s lodgment in our mind but what He sees it. And if there is anything impure, unholy, immodest, untrue, false, censorious, or unChristlike in any way, He is grieved beyond expression. This is a wonderful thought and it is to me the mightiest incentive that I know to a Christian walk. How many a young man is kept back from doing things that he would otherwise do, by the thought that, if he did do that, his mother might hear of it and it would grieve her beyond expression. How many [124]a young man has come to the great city and in some hour of temptation has been about to go into a place that no self-respecting man ought ever to enter, but just as his hand is on the doorknob and he is about to open the door, the thought comes to him, “If I should enter there mother might hear of it, and if she did, it would nearly kill her,” and he has turned away without entering; but there is One holier than the holiest mother that any of us ever knew, One who loves us with a tenderer love than our own mother loves us, and Who sees everything we do, not only in the daylight but under the cover of night; Who hears every word we utter, every careless word that escapes our lips; Who sees every thought we entertain, yes, Who sees every fleeting fancy that we allow a moment’s lodgment in our mind; and if there is anything unholy, impure, immodest, indecorous, unkind, harsh, censorious or unchristlike in any way in act or word or thought, He sees it and is grieved beyond expression. Oh, how often there has come into my mind some thought or imagination, I know not from what source, but that I ought not to entertain, and just as I was about to give it lodgment, the thought has come, “The Holy Spirit sees that and will be grieved by it,” and the thought has gone. Bearing this thought of the Holy Spirit in our mind will help us to solve all the questions that perplex the young believer to-day. For example, the question, “Ought I as a Christian go to the theatre or the [125]movies?” Well, if you go the Holy Spirit will go; for He dwells in the heart of every believer and goes wherever the believer goes. Were you ever at a theatre or at a moving picture show in your life where you thought the atmosphere of the place would be congenial to the Holy Spirit? If not, don’t go. Ought I as a Christian go to the dance? Well, here again, if you go, the Holy Spirit will surely go. Were you ever at a dance in your life where you believed the atmosphere of the place would be congenial to the Holy Spirit? Shall I as a Christian play cards? Were you ever at a card party in all your life, even the most select little neighbourhood gathering, or even a home gathering to play cards, where you thought the atmosphere of the place would be congenial to the Holy Spirit? If not, don’t play. So with all the questions that come up and that some of us find so hard to settle, this thought of the Holy Spirit will help you to settle them all, and to settle them right, if you really desire to settle them right and not merely to do the thing that pleases yourself.

2. The second line of proof of the personality of the Holy Spirit is that, many actions are ascribed to the Holy Spirit that only a person can perform. There are many illustrations of this in the Bible; but I will limit our consideration this morning to three instances.

(1) Turn again to the 2nd chapter of 1 Corinthians. In the 10th verse, we read, “But unto us, [126]God revealed them through the Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.” Here the Holy Spirit is represented as searching the deep things of God. In other words, as we said under our previous heading, the Holy Spirit is not a mere illumination whereby our minds are made clear and strong to apprehend truth that they would not otherwise discover, but the Holy Spirit is a person Who Himself searches into the deep things of God and reveals to us the things which He discovers. Such words could only be spoken of a person.

(2) Now turn to Rom. 8:26 “And in like manner the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity: for we know not how to pray as we ought but the spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered.” Here the Holy Spirit is represented as doing what only a person can do, praying. The Holy Spirit is not a mere influence that comes to impel us to prayer, and not a mere guidance to us in offering our prayers. He is a person who Himself prays. Every believer in Christ has two Divine Persons praying for Him. First, the Son, our Advocate with the Father, who ever liveth to make intercession for us up yonder at the right hand of God in the place of power (John 2:1 and Heb. 7:25). Second, the Holy Spirit who prays through us down here. Oh, what a wonderful thought, that we have these two divine persons praying for us every day. What a sense it gives us of our security.

[127](3) Now turn to two other closely related passages. John 14:26. “But the comforter, even the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said unto you.” Here the Holy Spirit is represented as doing what only a person could do, namely, teaching. We have the same thought in John 16:12-14. “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He shall guide you into all the truth: for He shall not speak from Himself; but what things soever He shall hear, these shall He speak: and He shall declare unto you the things that are to come. He shall glorify me; for He shall take of mine, and shall declare it unto you.”Here again the Holy Spirit is represented as a living personal teacher. It is our privilege to have the Holy Spirit as a living person to-day as our teacher. Every time we study our Bibles, it is possible for us to have this Divine Person the author of the Book, to interpret it to us and to teach us its meaning. It is a precious thought. How many of us have often thought when we heard some great human teacher whom God has especially blessed to us, “Oh, if I could only hear that man every day, then I might make some progress in my Christian life,” but we can have a teacher more competent by far than the greatest human teacher that ever spoke for our teacher every day, the Holy Spirit.

3. The third line of proof of the personality [128]of the Holy Spirit is that an office is predicated of the Holy Spirit that could only be predicated of a person. Look for example at John 14:16, 17. Here we read, “And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you forever, even the Spirit of truth: whom the world cannot receive; for it seeth him not. Neither knoweth him: ye know him; for He abideth with you, and shall be in you.” Here the Holy Spirit is represented as another Comforter who is coming to take the place of our Lord Jesus. Up to this time our Lord Jesus had been the friend always at hand to help them in every emergency that arose. But now He was going and their hearts were filled with consternation, and He tells them that while He is going, another is coming to take His place. Can you imagine our Lord Jesus saying this if the other that was coming to take His place was a mere impersonal influence or power? Can you imagine our Lord Jesus saying what He says in John 16:7, “Nevertheless I tell you the truth, it is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I go, I will send him unto you,” if that which was coming to take His place was not another person but a mere influence or power. In that case, is it for a moment conceivable that our Lord could say that it was expedient for Him, a Divine Person, to go and a mere influence or power, no matter how divine, come to take His place? No! No! What our Lord said [129]was that He, one Divine Person, was going, but that another Person, just as Divine, was coming to take His place. This promise is to me one of the most precious promises in the whole Word of God for this present dispensation, the thought that during the absence of my Lord, until that glad day when He shall come back again, another Person, just as divine as He, is by my side, yes, dwells in my heart every moment to commune with me and to help me in every emergency that can possibly arise. I suppose you know that the Greek word translated Comforter in these verses means more than Comforter. It means Comforter plus a whole lot beside. The Greek word so translated is parakletos. This word is a compound word, compounded of the word para which means alongside, and kletos, one called, “One called to stand alongside another” to take his part and help him in every emergency that arises. It is the same word that is translated “advocate” in 1 John 2:1, “If any man sin, we have an advocate(parakleton) with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” But the word “Advocate” does not give the full force of the word. Etymologically it means about the same. Advocate is a Latin word transliterated into the English. The word is compounded of two words, ad, meaning to, and vocatus, one called, that is to say, one called to another to take his part, or to help him. But in our English usage it has obtained a restricted sense. The Greek word, as already said, means [130]“one called alongside another,” and the thought is of a helper always at hand with his counsel and his strength and any form of help needed. Up to this time the Lord Jesus Himself had been their Paraclete, or friend always at hand to help. Whenever they got into any trouble they simply turned to Him. For example, on one occasion they were perplexed on the subject of prayer and they said to the Lord, “Lord teach us to pray.” And He taught them to pray. On another occasion when Jesus was coming to them walking on the water, when their first fear was over and He had said, “It is I, be not afraid,” then Peter said to Him, “Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee upon the water.” And the Lord said, “Come.” Then Peter clambered over the side of the fishing smack and commenced to go to Jesus walking on the water. Seemingly he turned around, took his eyes off the Lord and looked at the fishing smack to see if the other disciples, John and James, and the rest, were noticing how well he was getting on, but no sooner had he got his eyes off the Lord than he began to sink, and he cried out saying, “Lord, save me,” and Jesus reached out His hand and held him up. Just so, when they got into any other emergency they turned to the Lord and He delivered them. But now He was going, and consternation filled their hearts, and the Lord said to them, “Yes, I am going but another just as divine, just as able to help, is coming to take my place,” and this other Paraclete is with us [131]wherever we go, every hour of the day or night. He is always by our side. If this thought gets into your heart and stays there, you will never have another moment of fear no matter how long you live. How can we fear in any circumstances, if He is by our side? You may be surrounded by a howling mob. But what of it if He walks between you and the mob? That thought will banish all fear. I had a striking illustration of this in my own experience some years ago. I was speaking at a Bible Conference on Lake Kenka in New York State. I had a cousin who had a cottage four miles up the lake and I went up there and spent my rest day with him. The next day he brought me down in his steam launch to the pier where the Conference was held. As I stepped off the launch onto the pier he said to me, “Come back again to-night and spend the night with us,” and I promised him that I would; but I did not realise what I was promising. That night, when the address was over as I went out of the hotel and started on my walk, I found that I had undertaken a large contract. The cottage was four miles away, but a four mile walk or an eight mile walk was nothing under ordinary circumstances, but a storm was coming up, the whole heaven was overcast. The path led along a bluff bordering the lake, the path was near the edge of the bluff. Sometimes the lake was perhaps not more than ten or twelve feet below, at other times some thirty or forty feet below. I had never gone over the path before and [132]as there was no starlight, I couldn’t see the path at all. Furthermore, there had already been a storm that had gulleyed out deep ditches across the path into which one might fall and break his leg. I couldn’t see these ditches except when there would be a sudden flash of lightning, and then I would see one and then it would be darker and I blinder than ever. As I walked along this path, so near the edge of the bluff with all the furrows cut through it, I felt it was perilous to take the walk and thought of going back; and then the thought came to me, “You promised that you would come to-night and they may be sitting up waiting for you.” So I felt that I must go on. But it seemed creepy and uncanny to walk along the edge of that bluff on such an uncertain path that I couldn’t see, and could only hear the sobbing and wailing and the moaning of the lake at the foot of the bluff as it rose in the fast approaching storm. Then the thought came to me, what was it you told the people there at the conference about the Holy Spirit being a Person always by our side? And I at once realised that the Holy Spirit walked between me and the edge of the bluff; and that four miles through the dark was four miles without a fear, a gladsome instead of a fearsome walk. I once threw this thought out in the Royal Albert Hall in London, one dark dismal February afternoon. There was a young lady in the audience who was very much afraid of the dark. It simply seemed impossible for her to go into a dark room alone. [133]After the meeting was over she hurried home and rushed in to the room where her mother was sitting and cried, “O mother, I have heard the most wonderful address this afternoon about the Holy Spirit always being by our side as our ever-present helper and protector. I shall never be afraid of the dark again.” Her mother was a practical English woman and said to her, “Well, let us see how real that is. Now go upstairs to the top floor, into the dark room, and shut the door and stay in there alone in the dark.” The daughter went bounding up the stairs, went into the dark room, closed the door and it was pitch dark, and “Oh,” she wrote me the next day, “it was dark, utterly dark, but that room was bright and glorious with the presence of the Holy Spirit.”

In this thought is also the cure for insomnia. Did any of you ever have insomnia? I did. For two dark, awful years. Night after night, I would go to bed, almost dead, as it seemed to me, for sleep, and I thought I would certainly sleep as I could scarcely keep awake; but scarcely had my head touched the pillow when I knew I wouldn’t sleep and I would hear the clock strike twelve, one, two, three, four, five, six, and then it was time to get up. It seemed as though I didn’t sleep at all, though I have no doubt I did: for I believe that people who suffer from insomnia sleep more than they think they do, else we would die: but it seemed as if I didn’t sleep at all, and this went on for two whole years, until I thought that if I [134]couldn’t get sleep I would lose my mind. And then I got deliverance. For years I would retire and fall asleep about as soon as my head touched the pillow. But one night I went to bed in the Bible Institute in Chicago where I was then stopping. I expected to fall asleep almost immediately, as had become my custom, but scarcely had my head touched the pillow when I knew I was not going to sleep. Insomnia was back. If you have ever had him you will always recognise him. It seemed as if Insomnia was sitting on the footboard looking like an imp, grinning at me and saying “I am back for two more years.” “Oh,” I thought, “two more years of this awful insomnia.” But that very morning I had been teaching the students in the lecture room on the floor below on the Personality of the Holy Spirit, and the thought came to me almost immediately, “What was that you were telling the students down stairs this morning about the Holy Spirit being always with us?” And I said, “Why don’t you practice what you preach?” And I looked up and said, “O thou blessed Holy Spirit of God, thou art here, if thou hast anything to say to me, I will listen.” And He opened to me some of the sweet and precious things about Jesus Christ, filling my soul with calm and peace and joy, and the next thing I knew I was asleep and the next thing I knew it was to-morrow morning; and whenever Insomnia has come around since and sat on my [135]footboard, I have done the same thing and it has never failed.

In this thought also is a cure for all loneliness. If the thought of the Holy Spirit as an Ever-present Friend always at hand, once enters your heart and stays there, you will never have another lonely moment as long as you live. My life for the larger part of the last sixteen years has been a lonely life. I have often been separated from all my family for months at a time. I have not seen my wife sometimes for two or three months at a time and for eighteen months I did not see any member of my family but my wife. One night I was walking the deck of a steamer in the South Seas between New Zealand and Tasmania. It was a stormy night. Most of the other passengers were below sick, none of the officers nor sailors could walk with me for they had their hands full looking after the boat. I had to walk the deck alone. Four of the five other members of my family were on the other side of the globe, seventeen thousand miles away by the nearest route that I could get to them, and the one member of my family who was nearer was not with me that night. As I walked the deck alone I got to thinking of the four children seventeen thousand miles away and was about to get lonesome, when the thought came to me of the Holy Spirit by my side, and that as I walked He took every step with me, and all loneliness was gone. I gave expression to this thought some years ago in the city of St.[136]Paul, and at the close of the address a physician came to me and said, “I wish to thank you for that thought. I am often called at night to go out alone through darkness and storm far into the country, and I have been very lonely, but I will never be lonely again, for I will know that every step of the way the Holy Spirit is beside me in my doctor’s gig.”

In this same precious truth there is a cure for a broken heart. Oh, how many broken-hearted people there are in the world to-day, especially in these days of war and bloodshed and death! Many of us here have lost loved ones. Many more of us in all probability will during the months that are just ahead of us. But we need not have a moment’s heartache if we only know the communion of the Holy Ghost. There is perhaps here to-day some woman who a year ago, or a few months ago, or a few weeks ago, or a few days ago, had by her side a man whom she dearly loved, a man so strong and wise that she was freed from all sense of responsibility and care; for all the burdens were upon him, and how bright and happy life was in his companionship! But the dark day came when that loved one was taken away, and how lonely and empty and barren, and full of burden and care, life is to-day! Listen! There is One who walks right by your side, wiser and stronger and more loving than the wisest and strongest and most loving husband that ever lived, ready to bear all the burdens and responsibilities of life, yes, [137]ready to do far more: to come in and dwell in your heart and fill every nook and corner of your empty, aching heart, and thus banish all loneliness and heartache forever. I said this one afternoon in Saint Andrews Hall in Glasgow. At the close of the address, when I passed out into the reception room, a lady who had hurried along to meet me, approached me. She wore a widow’s bonnet, her face bore the marks of deep sorrow, but now there was a happy look in her face. She hurried to me and said, “Doctor Torrey, this is the anniversary of my dear husband’s death” (her husband was one of the most highly esteemed Christian men in Glasgow) “and I came to Saint Andrews Hall to-day saying to myself, ‘Doctor Torrey will have something to say that will help me.’ Oh,” she continued, “you have said just the right word! I will never be lonesome again, never have a heartache again. I will let the Holy Spirit come in and fill every aching corner of my heart.” Eighteen months passed; I was in Scotland again, taking a short vacation on the lochs of the Clyde on the private yacht of a friend. One day we stopped off a point, a little boat put off from the point and came alongside the steam yacht. The first one who clambered up the side of the yacht and onto the deck was this widow. Seeing me standing on the deck, she hurried across and took my hand in both of hers and with a radiant smile on her face she said, “Oh, Doctor Torrey, the thought you gave me in Saint Andrews [138]Hall that afternoon stays with me still and I have not had a lonely or sad hour from that day to this.”

But it is in our Christian work that the thought comes to us with greatest power and helpfulness. Take my own experience. I became a minister simply because I had to, or be forever lost. I do not mean that I am saved by preaching the Gospel; I am saved simply on the ground of Christ’s atoning blood and that alone; but my becoming a Christian and accepting Him as my Saviour turned upon my preaching the Gospel. For six years I refused to come out as a Christian because I was unwilling to preach, and I felt that if I became a Christian I must preach. The night that I was converted I did not say, “I will accept Christ” or “I will give up my sins”; I said, “I will preach.” But if there was ever a man who by natural temperament was unfitted to preach, it was I. I was one of these abnormally bashful boys. A stranger could scarcely speak to me without my blushing to the roots of my hair. Of all the tortures I endured at school there was none so great as that of reciting a piece. To stand up on the platform and have all the scholars looking at me, I could scarcely endure it, and when I had to recite and my own mother and father asked me to recite the piece before I went to school, I simply could not recite it before my own father and mother. Think of a man like that going into the ministry. Even after I was in Yale College, [139]when I would go home on a vacation and my mother would have callers and send for me to come in and meet them, I couldn’t say a word. After they were gone my mother would say to me, “Archie, why didn’t you say something to Mrs. S. or Mrs. D.?” and I would say, “Why, mother, I did!” and she would reply, “You didn’t utter a sound.” I thought I did, but it would come no further than my throat and there be smothered. I was so bashful that I never even spoke in a church prayer meeting until after I entered the theological seminary. Then I thought, if I was to be a preacher I must at least be able to speak in my own church prayer meeting. I made up my mind I would. I learned a piece by heart. I remember some of it now. I think I forgot some of it when I got up to speak that night. As soon as the meeting was thrown open I grasped the back of the settee in front of me and pulled myself up to my feet and held on to it lest I should fall. One Niagara went rushing up one side and another down the other, and I tremblingly repeated as much of my little piece as I could remember and then dropped back into the seat. At the close of the meeting a dear old maid, a lovely Christian woman, came to me and cheeringly said, “Oh, Mr. Torrey, I want to thank you for what you said to-night. It did me so much good. You spoke with so much feeling.” Feeling! The only feeling I had was that I was scared nearly to death. Think of a man like that going into the [140]ministry. My first years in the ministry were torture. I preached three times a day. I committed my sermons to memory and then I stood up and twisted the top button of my coat until I had twisted the sermon out and then when the third sermon was preached and finished, I dropped back into the haircloth settee back of the pulpit with a great sense of relief that that was over for another week. And then the thought would take possession of me, Well you have to begin to-morrow morning to get ready for next Sunday! But a glad day came when the thought I am trying to teach you this morning took possession of me, viz., that when I stood up to preach, that, though people saw me, that there was Another who stood by my side whom they did not see, but upon whom was all the responsibility for the meeting, and all that I had to do was to get as far back out of sight as possible and let Him do the preaching. From that day preaching has been the joy of my life. I would rather preach than eat. Sometimes when I rise to preach, before I have uttered a word, the thought of Him, standing beside me, able and willing to take charge of the whole meeting and do whatever needs to be done, has so filled my heart with exultant joy that I have felt like shouting. Just so in your Sunday School teaching. Some of you worry about your Sunday School classes for fear that you will say something that ought not to be said, or leave unsaid something that ought to be said, and the [141]thought of the burden and responsibility almost crushes you. Listen! Always remember this as you sit there teaching your class: there is One right beside you Who knows just what ought to be said and just what ought to be done. Instead of carrying the responsibility of the class, let Him carry it, let Him do the teaching. One Monday morning I met one of the most faithful laymen I ever knew and a very gifted Bible teacher. He was deep in the blues, over his failure with his class the day before—at least, what he regarded as failure. He unburdened his heart to me. I said to him, “Mr. Dyer, did you not ask God to give you wisdom as you went before that class?” He said, “I did.” I said, “Did you not expect Him to give it?” He said, “I did.” Then I said, “What right have you to doubt that He did?” He replied, “I never thought of that before. I will never worry about my class again.” Just so in personal work. When I or some one else urges you at the close of the meeting to go and speak to some one else, oh, how many of you want to go, but you don’t stir. You think to yourself, “I might say the wrong thing.” You will, if you say it. You will certainly say the wrong thing; but trust the Holy Spirit, He will say the right thing. Let Him have your lips to speak through. It may not appear the right thing at the time, but some time you will find out that it was just the right thing. One night in Launceston, Tasmania, as Mrs. Torrey and I came away from the meeting, [142]my wife said to me, “Archie, I wasted my whole evening. I have been talking to the most frivolous girl. I don’t think that she has a serious thought in her head.” I replied, “Clara, how do you know? Did you not trust God to guide you?” “Yes.” “Well, leave it with Him.” The very next night at the close of the meeting the same seemingly utterly frivolous young woman came up to Mrs. Torrey, leading her mother by the hand, and said, “Mrs. Torrey, won’t you speak to my mother? You led me to Christ last night, now please lead my mother to Christ.”

4. But I must close. There is another line of proof of the personality of the Holy Spirit, but we have no time to dwell upon it. This line of proof is that a treatment is predicated of the Holy Spirit that could only be predicated of a person. In Isa. 63:10 we are taught that the Holy Spirit is rebelled against and grieved. You cannot rebel against or grieve a mere influence or power. Only a person can be rebelled against and grieved. In Heb. 10:29 we are taught that the Holy Spirit is “done despite unto,” or “treated with contumely,” insulted. You cannot treat an influence or power with contumely; only a person. In Acts 5:3 we are taught that the Holy Spirit is lied to. You can only lie to a person. In Matt. 12:31 we are taught that the Holy Spirit is blasphemed against. We are told that the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost is more serious than the blasphemy against the Lord Jesus, and [143]this certainly could only be said of a person and a Divine Person.

To sum it all up, the Holy Spirit is a Person. Theoretically we probably all believed this before, but do we in our real thought of Him, in our practical attitude toward Him, treat Him as a person? Do we really regard Him as real a person as Jesus Christ is, as loving, as wise, as strong, as worthy of our confidence and love, and surrender as He? A Divine Person always by our side? The Holy Spirit came into this world to be to the disciples of our Lord after our Lord’s own departure, and to be to us, what Jesus Christ had been to them during the days of His personal companionship with them. Is He that to you to-day? Do you know the “communion of the Holy Spirit?” the companionship of the Holy Spirit, the partnership of the Holy Spirit, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, the comradeship of the Holy Spirit? To put it into a single word, the whole object of this address this morning, I say it reverently, is to introduce you to my Friend, the Holy Spirit.

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[144]

VII The Deity of the Holy Spirit and the Distinction Between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit

I spoke in a previous chapter on the personality of the Holy Spirit. We saw clearly that the Holy Spirit was a person. Incidentally I referred to His Deity in passing, but did not dwell upon it, so the question remains, Is the Holy Spirit a Divine person? and still another question, If the Holy Spirit is a Divine person, is He a separate and distinct personality from the Father and the Son? We shall consider this morning what the Bible teaches upon these points.

I. THE DEITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

We take up first the question of the Deity of the Holy Spirit. The fact that the Holy Spirit is a person does not prove that He is divine. There are spirits who are persons but who are not God. There are five distinct lines of proof of the Deity of the Holy Spirit, that the Holy Spirit is God.

1. The first line of proof of the Deity of the Holy Spirit is that each of the four distinctively [145]Divine attributes are ascribed to the Holy Spirit in the Bible. There are four distinctively divine attributes; that is to say, there are four attributes which God alone possesses, and any person who has these attributes must therefore be God. The four distinctively divine attributes are omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence and eternity.

(1) First of all, omnipotence is ascribed to the Holy Spirit, for example, in Luke 1:35: “And the angel answered and said unto her, the Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the most high shall overshadow thee: wherefore also that which is to be born shall be called holy, the Son of God.” This passage plainly declares that the Holy Spirit has the power of the Most High, that He is omnipotent.

(2) In the next place, omniscience is ascribed to the Holy Spirit. This is done, for example, in ICorinthians 2:10, 11: “But unto us God revealed them through the Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For who among men knoweth the things of a man, save the Spirit of the man, which is in him? Even so the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God.” Here we are distinctly told that the Holy Spirit searcheth all things and knoweth all things, even the deep things of God. We find the same thought again in John 14:26: “But the Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He shall teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said [146]unto you.” Here we are distinctly told that the Holy Spirit teaches all things, and therefore must know all things. This is stated even more explicitly in John 16:12-13: “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He shall guide you into all the truth.” In all these passages it is either directly declared or unmistakably implied that the Holy Spirit knows all things, that He is omniscient.

(3) In the third place, omnipresence is ascribed to the Holy Spirit. We find this in Psalms 139:7-10: “Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in Sheol, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.” Here we are told in the most explicit and unmistakable way that the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, is everywhere; that there is no place in heaven, earth or hades whither we can go from His presence.

(4) Eternity is also ascribed to the Holy Spirit. This we find in Hebrews 9:14, where we read: “How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the Eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish unto God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?”Here we find the words “the Eternal Spirit” just as elsewhere we find the words “the Eternal God” [147](e.g., Deut. 33:27): Putting these different passages together, we see clearly that each of the four distinctively divine attributes, the four attributes that no one but God possesses, are ascribed to the Holy Spirit.

2. The second line of proof of the true Deity of the Holy Spirit is found in the fact that three distinctively divine works are ascribed to the Holy Spirit—that is to say, the Holy Spirit is said to do three things which God alone can do.

(1) The first of these distinctively divine works that are ascribed to the Holy Spirit is the work which we always think of first when we think of God and His work—that is to say, the work of creation. We find creation ascribed to the Holy Spirit in Job 33:4: “The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty giveth me life.” We find the same thing implied in Psalms 104:30: “Thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they are created; and thou renewest the face of the ground.” In these two passages creation, the most distinctively divine of all works, is ascribed to the Holy Spirit.

(2) The impartation of life is ascribed to the Holy Spirit. This we find, for example, in John 6:63: “It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing.” We find the same thing again in Romans 8:11: “But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that [148]dwelleth in you.” In this passage we have not merely impartation of life to the spirit of man, but the impartation of life to the body in the resurrection of the body ascribed to the Holy Spirit. Man’s creation and the impartation of life to man are ascribed to the operation of the Holy Spirit in the first book in the Bible, where we read in Genesis 2:7: “And Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”Here we are told that man was created and became a living soul through God’s breathing into him the breath of life. This clearly implies that it was through the instrumentality of the Holy Spirit; for the Holy Spirit is the breath of God going out in a personal way.

(3) The third divine work ascribed to the Holy Spirit is the authorship of divine prophecies. We find this, for example, in II Peter 1:21: “For no prophecy ever came by the will of man: but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit.” Here we are distinctly told that it was through the operation of the Holy Spirit that men were made the mouthpiece of God and uttered God’s truth. We find this same thought also in the Old Testament in II Samuel 23:2, 3: “The Spirit of Jehovah spake by me, and His word was upon my tongue. The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me.” In this passage, also, the authorship of God’s prophecies is ascribed to the Holy Spirit. Taking these passages together, we [149]see that three distinctively divine works are ascribed to the Holy Spirit.

3. The third line of proof of the Deity of the Holy Spirit is found in the fact that passages which refer to Jehovah in the Old Testament are taken to refer to the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. There are numerous instances of this, not as numerous as in the case of Jesus Christ, the Son, and yet enough to make it perfectly clear that the Holy Spirit occupies the same place in New Testament thought which Jehovah occupies in Old Testament thought.

(1) A striking illustration of this is found in Isaiah 6:8-10; cf. Acts 28:25-27. In Isaiah 6:8-10, we read: “And I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then I said, here am I; send me. And he said, go, and tell this people, hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not. Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn again, and be healed.” Here we are distinctly told it is the “Lord,” and the context shows that the Lord is the Lord Jehovah who is speaking, but when we turn to Acts 28:25-27, we read these words: “And when they agreed not among themselves, they departed after that Paul had spoken one word, well spake the Holy Spirit through Isaiah the prophet unto your fathers” (notice that in the passage in Isaiah we [150]are told it is the Lord Jehovah who spoke, and here we are told by Paul that it is the Holy Spirit who spake through the prophet), “saying, go thou unto this people, and say, by hearing ye shall hear, and shall in no wise understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall in no wise perceive: for this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest haply they should perceive with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and should turn again, and I should heal them.” In the one place, the place in the Old Testament, we are told that the Lord Jehovah is the speaker; in the other place, in the New Testament, we are told that the Holy Spirit is the speaker; that is to say, the Holy Spirit occupies the place in New Testament thought that the Lord Jehovah occupies in Old Testament thought. It is noticeable that this same passage in another place is applied to Jesus Christ (John 12:39-41). May it not be that in the threefold “Holy” in the seraphic cry recorded in this chapter in Isaiah (Isaiah 6:3) we have a hint of the tri-personality of Jehovah of Hosts, and hence the propriety of the threefold application of the vision?

(2) Another illustration of a statement, which in the Old Testament is given as referring to Jehovah, being applied to the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, is found by a comparison of Exodus 16:7 with Hebrews 3:7-9. In Exodus 16:7 we read: “And in the morning, then shall [151]ye see the glory of Jehovah; for that he heareth your murmurings against Jehovah: and what are we, that ye murmur against us?” Here we are told that the murmuring and provocation of the children of Israel in the wilderness were against Jehovah, but in Hebrews 3:7-9, we read: “Wherefore, even as the Holy Spirit saith, to-day if ye shall hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, like as in the day of the trial in the wilderness, where your fathers tried me by proving me, and saw my works forty years.” In this New Testament passage we are told that it was the Holy Spirit that they provoked in the wilderness, making it clear that the Holy Spirit occupies here in New Testament thought the position Jehovah occupied in Old Testament thought in Exodus 16:7.

To sum up the passages under this head, we see that statements which in the Old Testament distinctly name the Lord, God or Jehovah, as their subject, are applied to the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. That is to say, the Holy Spirit occupies the position of Deity in New Testament thought.

4. The fourth way in which the Deity of the Holy Spirit is clearly taught in the New Testament is that the name of the Holy Spirit is coupled with that of God the Father in a way that it would be impossible for a reverent and thoughtful mind to couple the name of any finite being with that of [152]Deity. There are numerous illustrations of this. Three will answer for our present purpose.

(1) We read, for example, in I Corinthians 12:4-6: “Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are diversities of ministrations, and the same Lord. And there are diversities of workings, but the same God, who worketh all things in all.” In this passage we see the name of the Holy Spirit coupled with that of God and of the Lord in a way in which it would be impossible for an intelligent worshipper of God to couple the name of any finite being with that of the Deity.

(2) We see the same thing again in Matthew 28:19: “Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptising them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”If the Holy Spirit is not God, it would be shocking to couple His name in this way with that of God, the Father, and of the Lord Jesus, His Son.

(3) Another striking illustration of this is found in II Corinthians 13:14: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.” Here the name of the Holy Spirit is coupled on a ground of equality with that of the Father and of the Son. In all these passages, the name of the Holy Spirit is coupled with that of God in a way in which it would be impossible for a reverent, thoughtful mind to couple the name of any finite being with that of Deity.

[153]5. The fifth and last, and, if possible, more decisive way in which the Deity of the Holy Spirit is taught in the Bible is that the Holy Spirit in so many words is called God. This we find in Acts 5:3, 4:“But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thy heart to lie to the Holy Spirit, and to keep back part of the price of the land? While it remained, did it not remain thine own? And after it was sold, was it not in thy power? How is it that thou hast conceived this thing in thy heart? Thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God.” In the third verse we are distinctly told that it was to the Holy Spirit to Whom Ananias lied, and in the fourth verse we are told that it was to God that Ananias lied. Putting the two statements together, it is evident that the Holy Spirit is God.

To sum up all that we have said under the head of the Deity of the Holy Spirit, we see that by the ascription of all the distinctively divine attributes, and several distinctively divine works, by referring statements which in the Old Testament distinctly named Jehovah, the Lord or God, as their subject, to the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, by coupling the name of the Holy Spirit with that of God in a way in which it would be impossible to couple the name of any finite being with that of Deity, by calling the Holy Spirit “God,” in all these unmistakable ways God in His Word distinctly proclaims that the Holy Spirit is a Divine Person. It is absolutely impossible for any one to go to the Bible to find out what it actually teaches, [154]and not merely to twist and distort it to fit into his own preconceived notions, and come to any other conclusion but that the Holy Spirit is a Divine Person, that He is God.

II. THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE FATHER, THE SON AND THE HOLY SPIRIT

But now we come to the question, Is the Holy Spirit a distinct personality from the Father and from the Son? He might be a person, as we have clearly seen that He is, and He might be a divine person, as we have just seen that He is, and at the same time He might be only the same person who manifested Himself at times as the Father and at other times as the Son, and in that case there would not be three divine Persons in the Godhead, but one divine Person, who variously manifested Himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So the question that now confronts us is, Is the Holy Spirit a distinct personality separate and distinct from the Father and from the Son? This question is plainly answered in various passages in the New Testament.

1. We find this question answered in the first place in John 14:26 and John 15:26. In John 14:26 we read: “But the Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He shall teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said unto you.” In John 15:26 we read: “But when the Comforter is come, [155]whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of Truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall bear witness of me.” In both of these passages we are told that the Holy Spirit is an entirely distinct personality from the Father and the Son, that He is sent from the Father by the Son. We are elsewhere taught that Jesus Christ was sent by the Father (John 6:29; 8:29, 42). It is as clear as language can make it in these passages that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not one and the same Person manifesting Himself in three different forms, but that they are three distinct personalities.

2. We find clear proof that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three distinct personalities in John 16:13, where we read: “Howbeit when He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, he shall guide you into all the truth: for He shall not speak from Himself; but what things soever He shall hear, these shall He speak: and He shall declare unto you the things that are to come.” In this passage the clearest possible distinction is drawn between the Holy Spirit who speaks and the One from whom He speaks, and we are told in so many words that this One from whom He speaks is not Himself, but another.

3. In the next verse the same thought is brought out in still another way. In this verse, John 16:14, we read: “He shall glorify me: for He shall take of mine, and shall declare it unto you.” Here the clearest distinction is drawn [156]between He, the Holy Spirit, and Me, Jesus Christ. It is the work of the Holy Spirit not to glorify Himself, but another, and this Other is Jesus Christ, and He takes what belongs to another; that is, to Christ, and declares it unto believers. It would be impossible to express in human language a distinction between two personalities more plainly than the distinction between the Son and the Holy Ghost is expressed in this verse.

4. The distinction between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit is very clearly brought out in Luke 3:21, 22: “Now it came to pass, when all the people were baptised, that, Jesus also having been baptised, and praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended in a bodily form, as a dove, upon him, and a voice came out of heaven, thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased.” Here a clear distinction is drawn between Jesus Christ who was on the earth, and the Father who spake to Him from heaven, and the Holy Spirit who descended in bodily form as a dove from the Father upon the Son.

5. Still another striking illustration is found in Matthew 28:19: “Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptising them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Here a clear distinction is drawn between the name “of the Father,” and the name “of the Son,” and the name “of the Holy Spirit.”

6. A very striking setting forth of a clear distinction between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit [157]is found in John 14:16, 17: “And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter that He may be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth.” Here the clearest possible distinction is drawn between the Son who prays, and the Father to whom He prays, and “another Comforter,” who is given in answer to His prayer. Nothing could possibly be plainer than the distinction that Jesus Christ draws in this passage between Himself and the Father and the Holy Spirit.

7. We find the same thing again in John 16:7: “Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I go, I will send Him unto you.” Here the Lord Jesus Himself draws a clear distinction between Himself, who is about to go away, and the Holy Spirit, the other Comforter who is coming to take His place after He has gone away.

8. The same thing is brought out again in Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2:33, where Peter is recorded as saying: “Being therefore by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He hath poured forth this, which ye see and hear.” Here a clear distinction is drawn between the Son exalted to the right hand of the Father, and the Father Himself, and the Holy Spirit whom the Son receives from the Father, [158]and sheds upon the Church. To sum up all under this head: again and again the Bible draws the clearest possible distinction between the Holy Spirit, and the Father, and the Son. They are three separate personalities, having mutual relations to one another, acting upon one another, speaking of or to one another, applying the pronouns of the second and third persons to one another.

We have seen that the Bible makes it plain that the Holy Spirit is a Divine Person and that He is an entirely separate personality from the Father and from the Son. In other words, that there are three divine Persons in the Godhead. It has oftentimes been said that the doctrine of the Trinity is not taught in the Bible. It is true that the doctrine of the Trinity is not directly taught in the Bible in so many words, but the doctrine of the Trinity is simply the putting together of truths that are clearly and unmistakably taught in the Bible. It is clearly taught in the Bible that there is but one God (Deuteronomy 6:4). But it is taught with equal clearness, as we have seen to-day, that there are three Divine Persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost; and the doctrine of the Trinity is the putting together of these truths which are taught with equal plainness.

But, some one may ask, How can God be three and one at the same time? The answer to this question is very simple and easily understandable. [159]He cannot be three in one in the same sense, nor does the Bible teach that He is. But in what sense can He be one and three? A perfectly satisfactory answer to this question is manifestly impossible from the very nature of the case—first, because God is Spirit and numbers belong primarily to the physical world, and difficulty must always arise when we attempt to conceive of spiritual being in the forms of physical thought. In the second place, a perfectly satisfactory answer to the question is impossible because God is infinite and we are finite. “God dwells in the light that no man can approach unto,” and our attempts at a philosophical explanation of the Trinity of God is an attempt to put the facts of infinite being into the forms of finite thought, and of necessity such an attempt can at the very best be only partially successful. This much we know, that God is essentially one, and also that there are three Persons in this one Godhead. There is but one God, but this one God makes Himself known to us as three distinct Persons—Father, Son and Holy Spirit. There is one God, eternally existing, and manifesting Himself in three Persons—Father, Son and Holy Spirit. If we were to go into the realm of philosophy, it could be shown that from the very necessities of the case, that if God were to be God, there must be in the eternal Godhead before the creation of finite beings a multiplicity of persons; for otherwise God could not love, for [160]there would be no one to love, and therefore God could not be God. The ease with which one can grasp the Unitarian conception of God is not in its favour but against it. Any god who could be thoroughly comprehended by a finite mind would not be an infinite God. It would be impossible for a thoroughly intelligent mind to really worship a god whom he could thoroughly understand. If God is to be really God, He must be beyond our complete understanding.

The doctrine of the Trinity is not merely a speculative doctrine. It is a doctrine of tremendous daily practical importance. It enters into the very warp and woof of our experience, if our experience is a truly Christian experience. For example, in our prayer we need God, the Father, to Whom we pray, we need God, the Son, through Whom we pray, and we need God, the Holy Spirit, in Whom we pray. So also in our worship we need God, the Father, the very centre of our worship, we need the Son, through Whom we approach Him in our worship, and we need to worship by the Holy Spirit. But all three—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—are the objects of our worship. The long metre doxology is thoroughly Christian in its worship when it sings:”Praise God from whom all blessings flow,Praise Him all creatures here below,Praise Him above, ye heavenly hosts,Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.”

[161]And so, also, is the Gloria Patri, the words of which we so often sing, but the thought of which we so seldom grasp:

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end, Amen.

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[162]

VIII The Atonement: God’s Doctrine of the Atonement vs. Unitarian and Christian Science Doctrines of the Atonement

“Apart from the shedding of blood there is no remission.”—Hebrews 9:22.

Our subject in this chapter is “God’s Doctrine of the Atonement vs. the Unitarian and Christian Science Doctrines of the Atonement.” One of the most fundamental, central and vital doctrines of the Christian faith is the Christian doctrine of the Atonement. Without the Bible Doctrine of the Atonement you have no Christianity, but the Devil’s substitute for Christianity. Without the Bible Doctrine of the Atonement you have no real gospel, but an utterly false and soul-destroying philosophy. In speaking on the doctrine of the Deity of Christ I said: “If a man really holds to right views concerning the person of Jesus Christ he will sooner or later get right views on every other question, but if he holds a wrong view concerning the person of the Lord Jesus Christ he is pretty sure to go wrong on everything else sooner or later.” The same is [163]true regarding the doctrine of the Atonement: If a man really holds to right views concerning the Atonement made by our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ on the Cross of Calvary, he will sooner or later get right on every other question; but if he holds a wrong view regarding the Atonement made by our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, he is pretty sure to go wrong on everything else sooner or later. There is a great need in this day of teaching on this subject that is definite, clear, accurate, exact, complete; because not only in Unitarian and Christian Science circles, but also in circles that are nominally orthodox, in professedly Christian colleges, seminaries, pulpits, Sunday School classes, and religious papers, magazines, pamphlets, books, there is much teaching to-day that is vague, inaccurate, misleading, unscriptural, and oftentimes utterly false and devilish, teaching that is essentially Unitarian or Eddyistic. Men and women use the old words with a new meaning; so as to deceive, if it were possible, the very elect. Even the Christian Scientist will tell you he believes in the Atonement, and that Mrs. Eddy taught the Atonement. But when you begin to ask direct and pointed questions regarding his belief and teaching you will find that by Atonement he meant, and that Mrs. Eddy meant, something utterly different from what you mean and what the Bible teaches. Paul tells us that the Devil camouflages as an angel of light (II Cor. 11:14), but never has he done it more successfully and [164]dangerously than in the teaching regarding the Atonement which he has inspired in Mrs. Eddy and in Unitarian teachers, and also in the teachers in many supposedly orthodox pulpits, in many Congregational pulpits, in some Methodist pulpits, in many Baptist pulpits, and even in some Presbyterian pulpits. Some years ago in teaching a Bible class in Minneapolis, attended by people from all the churches, I remarked incidentally that Christian Science denied the doctrine of the Atonement through the shed blood of Jesus Christ. A very intelligent lady, a lady perfect in her manners, came to me at the close of the class and said: “Mr. Torrey, you ought not to have said what you said to-day about Christian Science; for you do not understand its teachings. They do teach the Atonement.” I replied: “I said that Christian Science denies the Doctrine of the Atonement through the shed blood of Jesus Christ. Do you believe that Jesus Christ bore your sins in His own body on the cross?” She answered: “I think Christian Science is a beautiful system of teaching.” I said: “That is not what I asked you. Do you believe that Jesus Christ bore your sins in His own body on the cross?” She replied: “Christian Science has done me a great deal of good.” “That is not what I asked you. Do you believe that Jesus Christ bore your sins in His own body on the cross?” “I think that Jesus Christ’s life was the most beautiful life ever lived here on earth.” “That is not what I asked you. [165]Do you believe Jesus Christ bore your sins in His own body on the cross?” “The Christian Scientists are lovely people.” “That is not what I asked you. Do you believe that Jesus Christ bore your sins in His own body on the cross?” “I believe in following the Lord Jesus Christ.” “Do you believe that Jesus Christ bore your sins in His own body on the cross?” “Oh,” she said, “that is a doctrinal question.” “Now,” I said, “you are yourself an illustration of the truth of the very thing I said. You do not believe in the Atonement through the shed blood of Jesus Christ.” The Christian Scientist uses the word “atonement,” but he means something entirely different from what the Bible teaches regarding the atoning death of Jesus Christ. So does the Unitarian. So do many of the ministers supposedly of orthodox denominations. The pastor of a Congregational church in this city said recently: “I have my own kind of religion; it answers for me, but I hope I have sense enough to see that it would not answer for everybody. I imagine the Salvation Army captain preaching my kind of religious doctrine, without a devil, without a hell, without an atonement of blood and recompense, without an infallible Bible—and I see his audience melting away like snow in the rain. Is his doctrine truer than mine, or is mine truer than his? Why, neither; his is true for him and mine for me—that is all—each after his own kind.” Now this may sound tolerant and lovely, but it is utter [166]nonsense. Any doctrine which is not true for everybody is not for anybody true, and any doctrine which is true is true for everybody. If a doctrine that leaves out “an atonement of blood” is not true for the Salvation Army—and it certainly is not—it is not truefor anybody else. Truth is not relative; it is absolute. What is true is true, and what is false is false. So we come face to face with the question, What does the Bible teach on this great fundamental doctrine?

I. THE NECESSITY AND IMPORTANCE OF HIS DEATH

The first thing that the Bible plainly teaches on this question is the absolute necessity and fundamental importance of the death of Jesus Christ, the absolute necessity and fundamental importance of the shedding of His blood. The tendency of our day in Unitarian circles, and in orthodox circles that have been leavened by the corrupting leaven of Unitarianism, is to minimise the importance of the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. The tendency is to make His life and character, His teaching and leadership, the main thing. Christian Science even goes so far as to deny the fact of His death. To them His supposed death is “an illusion,” it is “only mortal thought,” but the Bible puts the emphasis upon His atoning death.

1. The death of Jesus Christ is mentioned directly more than 175 times in the New Testament. [167]Besides this there are very many prophetic and typical references to the death of Jesus Christ in the Old Testament. When Mr. Alexander and I were holding our meetings in the Royal Albert Hall in London, some one took away one of our hymn books and went through it and cut out every reference to the blood, and then sent it back to me through the mail, saying, “I have gone through your hymn book and cut out every reference to the blood. These references to the blood are foolish. Now sing your hymns with the blood left out and there will be some sense in them.” If any of you should take your Bible and go through it in that way and cut out of the New Testament and the Old Testament every passage that referred to the death of Christ, or to His atoning blood, you would have only a sadly torn and tattered Bible left, a Bible without a heart and a Gospel without saving power. If I were a member of a church where the pastor said that he preached a system of “religious doctrine, without a devil, without a hell, without an atonement of blood and recompense, without an infallible Bible,” to use his own language, he would see his audience “melting away like snow in the rain” as far as I was concerned. I would either take my hat and get out of that church, or else the pastor would take his hat and get out of the pulpit; for I should know that he was not preaching God’s pure, saving gospel, but the Devil’s poisonous substitute for the gospel.

2. Not only are the references to the death of [168]Christ so numerous in Old Testament and New Testament, but we are taught distinctly in Hebrews 2:14 that Jesus Christ became a man for the specific purpose of dying, that He became a partaker of flesh and blood in order that He might die. In this passage we read, “For as much as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same; that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is the Devil” (Heb. 2:14). The meaning of these words is as plain as day. They tell us that the incarnation was for the purpose of the death. They tell us that Jesus Christ’s death was not a mere accident or incident of His human life (as many would have us believe), but that it was the supreme purpose of it. He became man in order that He might die as man and for man. This is the doctrine of the Bible, and it is true for anybody and for everybody.

3. Furthermore, He died for a specific purpose, as a ransom for us. He Himself said so. In Matt.20:28 He says, “The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.”

4. One of the most remarkable scenes recorded in the New Testament is that of the transfiguration, when Moses and Elijah came back from the other world to commune with Jesus. And what did they talk about in that great moment of human history? Luke tells us in the 9th chapter of his Gospel, the 30th and 31st verses, “And behold, [169]there talked with Him (i.e., with Jesus) two men, which were Moses and Elijah: who appeared in glory, and spake of His decease which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.” His atoning death was the one subject that engrossed the attention of these two who came back from the glory world. We are also told in I Peter 1:10-12 that the death of Jesus Christ is a subject of intensest interest and earnest inquiry on the part of the angels.

5. The death of Christ is the central theme of heaven’s song. Rev. 5:8-12 gives us a picture of heaven with its wonderful choir of ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands, and this is the description of the song they sing: “And when he had taken the book, the four living creatures and the four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having each one a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sing a new song, saying, Worthy art thou to take the book and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and didst purchase unto God with thy blood men of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation, and madest them to be unto our God a kingdom and priests; and they reign upon the earth. And I saw, and I heard a voice of many angels round about the throne and the living creatures and elders; and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands; saying with a great voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was [170]slain to receive the power, and riches, and wisdom, and might, and honour, and glory, and blessing. And every created thing which is in the heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and on the sea, and all things that are in them, heard I saying, Unto him that sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb, be the blessing, and the honour, and the glory, and the dominion, for ever and ever”(Rev. 5:8-12). So it is evident that the great central theme of heaven’s song is the atoning death of Jesus Christ, and the shed “blood” by which He redeemed “men of every tribe, and tongue, and nation.” If the Unitarian or the Christian Scientist or the New Theologian should get to heaven they would have no song to sing. The glorious song of that wondrous choir would sound to him like a song “of the shambles.” He would be very lonesome and feel that he had got into the wrong pew.

II. THE PURPOSE OF THE DEATH OF JESUS CHRIST

So much for the fundamental and central importance of His death, or of the shedding of His blood. But what was the purpose of the shedding of His blood?

1. First of all, the Bible distinctly and repeatedly tells us by direct statement, and by countless typical reference in the Old Testament, that He died as a vicarious offering for sin; that is, that He, an absolutely perfect, righteous one, who [171]deserved to live, died in the place of unjust men who deserved to die. For example, we read in Isa. 53:5, “But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed.” And in the eighth verse we read, “By oppression and judgment He was taken away; and as for His generation, who among them considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people to whom the stroke was due?” And in the 11th and 12th verses we read, “He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied: by the knowledge of Himself shall my righteous servant justify many; and He shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong; because He poured out His soul unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors: yet He bare the sin of many. And made intercession for the transgressors.” In IPeter, 3:18 we read, “Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God; being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit.” And in 1 Peter 2:24 we read, “Who His own self bare our sins in His own body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness; by whose stripes ye were healed.” Now the meaning of these verses and many other verses, is inescapable. They teach in language the meaning of which no one can [172]misunderstand (unless he is determined not to see) that the death of Jesus Christ was a vicarious atonement, that is, a just one, who deserved to live, dying in the place of unjust ones who deserved to die. It was, to use the language of the Los Angeles minister who denied his belief in it, “an atonement of blood and recompense.” This is God’s doctrine of the Atonement versus the Unitarian and Christian Science doctrine of the Atonement.

2. But this is not all. We are further taught that He died as a ransom, that is, His death was the price paid to redeem others from death. He Himself says so. His own words are, “The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.” If His life was not a ransom, that is to say, if He did not redeem others from death by dying in their place, then He was the greatest fool in the whole history of this universe. Was He a fool or was He a ransom? No one who in any real sense can be said to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ can hesitate as to his answer.

3. But even this is not all. The Bible distinctly tells us that He died as a sin offering, i.e., it was on the ground of His death, and on this ground alone, that forgiveness of sin is made possible for and offered to sinners. This we are told in the 53rd chapter of Isaiah, to which reference has already been made. In the 10th verse it is written, “Yet it pleased Jehovah to bruise him; He (i.e., Jehovah) hath put him to grief (literally, [173]made him sick): when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of Jehovah shall prosper in his hand.” Now the meaning of “offering for sin” is unquestionable to any one who has studied the Old Testament offerings. An “offering for sin” or a “guilt offering,” which is the exact force of the Hebrew word translated “an offering for sin,” was a death of a sacrificial victim on the ground of which pardon was offered to sinners (Lev. 6:6-10, R. V.). The Holy Spirit says expressly in Heb.9:22, in words the meaning of which is unmistakable, and the force of which is inescapable, “Apart from shedding of blood there is no remission,” and the whole context in which the passage is found shows that the blood, to which all the blood of the Old Testament types as sacrifices pointed forward, was the blood of Jesus Christ. So then the Word of God declares that apart from the shedding of the blood of Jesus Christ there is absolutely no pardon for sin. There is absolutely no forgiveness outside the atoning blood of Christ. Without Christ’s atoning blood every member of the human race must have perished forever.

4. Fourth and further yet, the Bible teaches that Jesus Christ died as a propitiation for our sins. God the Father gave Christ the Son to be a propitiation by His blood. That is to say that Jesus Christ, through the shedding of His blood, is that by which God’s holy wrath at sin is [174]appeased. We read in 1 John 4:10, “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” And we read in Rom. 3:25, 26, “Whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, in His blood, to show His righteousness because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God; (26) for the showing, I say, of His righteousness at this present season: that He might Himself be just, and the justifier of Him that hath faith in Jesus.” The meaning of these words also is as plain as day. The two Greek words in these two passages are not exactly the same words (hilasmos and hilasterion) but are from the same root. The word used in 1 John 4:10 is hilasmos and the word used in Rom. 3:25 is hilasterion. The definition given of the first in Thayer’s Dictionary of New Testament Greek, the standard work, is “a means of appeasing.” The definition given in the same lexicon of the second word is “an expiatory sacrifice.” So the thought that is in both passages is that the death of Jesus Christ was a “propitiation,” “an expiatory sacrifice,” the “means of appeasing” God’s holy wrath at sin, or in other words, that Jesus, through the shedding of His blood, is that by which the wrath of God against us as sinners is appeased. God’s holiness and consequent hatred of sin, like every other attribute of His character, is real and must manifest itself. His wrath at sin must strike somewhere, either on the sinner himself or upon [175]a lawful substitute. It struck upon Jesus Christ, a lawful substitute. As we read in Isa. 53:6, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” The word translated “hath laid,” according to the margin of the Revised Version, means literally, “hath made to light.” More literally still it means, “hath made to strike.” Reading it this way, what God says is, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath made to strike on him (i.e., on the Lord Jesus) the iniquity of us all.” And in the eighth verse of the same chapter we are taught that “the stroke due” to others fell upon Him, and He was consequently “cut off out of the land of the living.” The death of Jesus Christ has its first cause in the demands of God’s holiness. This is the Bible doctrine versus the Unitarian and Christian Science doctrine of atonement. The doctrine is often misrepresented and caricatured as being that “God, a holy first person, took the sins of man, the guilty second person, and put them on Jesus Christ, an innocent third person,” and it is objected that this would not be just. No; this would not be just, and it is not for a moment the doctrine of the Bible, for the Bible clearly teaches that Jesus Christ was not “a third person,” but was Himself God, and that He was Himself man, so He is not a third person at all, but both the first person and the second person, and [176]the doctrine is that God Himself, the offended first person, substitutes His atoning action whereby He expresses His hatred against sin, for His punitive action whereby He would express the same thing; that God, instead of visiting the sins of the sinner upon the sinner, takes the punishment upon Himself. This certainly is something more than just, it is wondrous love.

5. Further yet, the Bible teaches us that Jesus Christ died to redeem us from the curse of the law by bearing that curse Himself. We read in Gal. 3:10, “As many as are of the works of the law are under a curse, for it is written: Cursed is every one who continueth not in all things that are written in the Book of the Law, to do them.” So then, every one of us is under the curse of the broken law, for not one of us has continued “in all things that are written in the book of the law, to do them.” But we read in the 13th verse, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (literally, in our behalf): for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.” By His death by crucifixion He redeemed us from the curse which we deserved by taking that curse upon Himself. This certainly is “an atonement of blood and recompense.”

6. The Bible puts essentially the same truth in still another form, viz., that Jesus Christ died as our Passover sacrifice—that is, that His shed blood might serve as a ground upon which God would pass over and spare us. We read in 1 Cor. [177]5:7, “For our passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ.” Now what a passover sacrifice was and signified we learn from Ex. 12:12, 13, where our Lord told the children of Israel at the inauguration of the passover, “For I will go through the land of Egypt in that night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the Gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am Jehovah, and the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are: and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and there shall be no plague upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.” And again we read in the 23rd verse of the same chapter, “For Jehovah will pass through to smite the Egyptians; and when He seeth the blood upon the lintel, and on the two side-posts, Jehovah will pass over the door, and will not suffer the destroyer to come in unto your houses to smite you.”Paul wrote his words with all this in mind, and in saying that Christ is our Passover sacrifice beyond a question he meant that the shed blood of Jesus Christ serves as a ground, and the only ground, upon which God passes over and spares us.

III. THE RESULTS OF THE ATONING DEATH

We have seen then the gracious and glorious purposes of the Atoning Death of Jesus Christ. What are the results of that death? They are [178]even more glorious. I can speak of them this morning only in part.

1. The first result of the atoning death of Jesus Christ is that a propitiation is provided for the whole world. We read in 1 John 2:2, “He is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world.” This plainly means that by the death of Jesus Christ a basis is provided upon which God can deal in mercy and does deal in mercy with the whole world. All of God’s dealings in mercy with any man are on the ground of Christ’s death. Only on the ground of Christ’s death could God deal in mercy with any man. God’s dealings in mercy with the rankest blasphemer or the most blatant atheist is on the ground of the atoning death of Jesus Christ.

2. In the second place through the atoning death of Jesus Christ all men obtain resurrection from the dead. We read in Rom. 5:18, “So then as through one trespass (i.e., the trespass of Adam) the judgment came unto all men to condemnation; even so through one act of righteousness (i.e., through Christ’s righteous act in dying on the cross in obedience to the will of God) the free gift came unto all men to justification of life.” And we are told in 1 Cor. 15:22, “As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” The Apostle Paul in the whole chapter is speaking aboutthe resurrection of the body, not about eternal life, and he here distinctly teaches that as every child of Adam loses life (physical [179]life—see Gen. 3:19) in the first Adam, so also in Jesus Christ, the second Adam, he obtains resurrection from the dead, through the atoning death of Jesus Christ. Every man, the rankest infidel as well as the most devout believer, will some day be raised from the dead because Christ died in his place. Whether the resurrection which he obtains through the death of Jesus Christ shall be a “resurrection of life” or a “resurrection of condemnation,” “shame and everlasting contempt” (John 5:28, 29; Dan. 12:2) depends entirely upon what attitude the individual takes toward the Christ in whom he gets the resurrection.

3. By the atoning death of Jesus Christ all believers in Jesus Christ have forgiveness of all their sins. We read in Eph. 1:7, “In whom (i.e., in Jesus Christ) we have our redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace.” Because Jesus Christ died as a full satisfaction for our sins, forgiveness of sin is not something which believers are to do something to secure, it is something which the blood of Jesus Christ has already secured and which our faith has already appropriated to ourselves; “we have forgiveness,” we are forgiven. Every believer in Jesus Christ is forgiven every sin he ever committed or ever shall commit, because Jesus Christ shed His blood in his place. Through Christ’s atoning death all believers in Him, although they once “were enemies,” are now “reconciled to God by the death of His [180]Son.” As we read in Rom. 5:10, “While we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son.” That is to say, the enmity between God and the sinner is done away with, or, as Paul puts it in Col. 1:20, Christ has “made peace through the blood of His cross,” or, as he puts it in the next verse but one, Col. 1:22, Christ “hath reconciled” believers “in the body of His flesh through death.” The story is told of a faithful vicar in England who was told that one of his parishioners was dying. She was a good woman, but he hurried to her side to talk with her. As he sat down by the side of the dying woman he said to her very gently but solemnly, “They tell me you have not long to live.” “No,” she replied, “I know I have not.” “They tell me you will probably not live through the night.” “No,” she replied, “I do not expect to live through the night.” Then he said very earnestly, “Have you made your peace with God?” She replied, “No, I have not.” “And are you not afraid to meet God without having made your peace with Him?” “No, not at all,” she calmly replied. Again he said to her, “Do you understand what I am saying? Do you realise that you are at the point of death?” “Yes.” “Do you realise you will probably not live through the night?” “Yes.” “And you have not made your peace with God?” “No.” “And you are not afraid to meet God?” “No, not at all.” There was something about the woman’s manner that made him feel there was [181]something back of her words, and he said to her, “What do you mean?” She replied, “I know I am dying. I know I am very near death. I know I shall not live through the night. I know I must soon meet God, and I am not at all disturbed, for I know that I did not need to make my peace with God, because Jesus Christ made peace with God for me more than eighteen hundred years ago by His death on the cross of Calvary, and I am resting in the peace that Jesus Christ has already made.” The woman was right: no man needs to make his peace with God, Jesus Christ has already made peace by His atoning death, and all we have to do is to enter into the peace which Jesus Christ has made for us, and we enter into that peace by simply believing in the One who made peace by His death upon the cross. Jesus Christ’s work was a complete and perfect work. There is nothing to be added to it. We cannot add anything to it, and we do not need to add anything to it. Jesus Christ has “made peace through the blood of His cross.”

4. The fourth result of the atoning death of Jesus Christ is that because of the atoning death of Jesus Christ all believers in Him are justified. We read in Rom. 5:9, “Being now justified by His blood.” Justification is more than forgiveness. Forgiveness is negative, the putting away of our sins, manifested in God’s treating us as if we never had sinned. Justification is positive, the reckoning of us positively righteous, the imputing [182]to us the perfect righteousness of God in Jesus Christ, not merely the treating us as if we had never sinned, but the reckoning us clothed upon with perfect righteousness. By reason of Jesus Christ’s atoning death there is an absolute interchange of position between Jesus Christ and His people. In His death upon the cross Jesus Christ took our place of condemnation before God, and the moment we accept Him we step into His place of perfect acceptance before God. As Paul puts it in 2 Cor. 5:21, “Him who knew no sin He made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” Jesus Christ stepped into our place in the curse and rejection, and the moment we accept Him we step into His place of perfect acceptance, or as it has been expressed by another:”Near, so very near to God,Nearer I cannot be;For in the person of His Son,I’m just as near as He.Dear, so very dear to God,Dearer I cannot be;For in the person of His Son,I’m just as dear as He.”

5. Furthermore, because of the full atonement that Jesus Christ has made by the shedding of His blood, by His atoning death on the cross, every believer in Him can enter boldly into the holy [183]place, into the very presence of God. As it is put in Heb. 10:19, 20, “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holy place (i.e., into the very presence of God) by the blood of Jesus, by the way which He dedicated for us, a new and living way, through the veil, that is to say, His flesh; and having a great priest over the house of God; let us draw near with a true heart in fullness of faith.” Oh, how some of us hesitate to come into the presence of God when we think of the greatness and the number of our sins, and when we think how holy God is, how the very seraphim (the “burning ones,” burning in their own intense holiness) veil their faces and feet in His presence and unceasingly cry “Holy, holy, holy, is Jehovah of Hosts” (Isa. 6:2, 3). “God is Holy,” we think. “Yes.” “And I am a sinner.” “Yes.” But by the wondrous offering of Christ “once for all” I am “perfected forever,” and on the ground of that blood so precious and so sufficient unto God, I can march boldly into the very presence of God, look up with unveiled face into His face and call Him “Father,” and pour out before Him every desire of my heart. Oh, wondrous blood!

6. But this is not all. Because of the atoning death of Jesus Christ those who believe in Him shall ever live with Him. How plainly Paul puts it in 1 Thess. 5:10, “Who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, (i.e., at His coming), we should live together with Him.”

[184]7. Further yet, because of the atoning death of Jesus Christ, all those who believe on Him receive the promise of the eternal inheritance. This is what we are told in Heb. 9:15, “And for this cause He is the mediator of a new covenant, that a death having taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant, they that have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.” I wish I had time to dwell upon that.

8. There are other results of the atoning death of Jesus Christ as regards the Devil and his angels, into which we have no time to go. Just one more thing as regards the results of the atoning death of Jesus Christ as it relates to the material universe. God teaches us that through the death of Jesus Christ the material universe—”all things, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven”—is reconciled unto God. These are His words, “For it was the good pleasure of the Father that in Him (i.e., in Jesus Christ) should all the fullness dwell and, having made peace through the blood of His cross, by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself; by Him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in Heaven” (Col. 1:19, 20). These are wonderful words. They tell us that the death of Jesus Christ has a relation to the material universe, to things on earth and to things in heaven, as well as to us and our sins. The material universe has fallen away from God in connection with sin (Rom. 8:20, R. V.; Gen. [185]3:18). Not only earth but heaven has been invaded and polluted by sin (Eph. 6:12, R. V.; Heb. 9:23, 24). Through the death of Jesus Christ this pollution is put away. Just as the blood of the Old Testament sacrifice was taken into the most holy place, the type of heaven, so Christ has taken the blood of the better sacrifice into heaven itself and cleansed it. “All things . . . whether they be things in earth or things in heaven” are now reconciled to God. “The creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21). “We look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness” (2 Peter 3:13). The atonement of Jesus Christ has an immense sweep—far beyond the reach of our human philosophies. We have just begun to understand what the blood that was spilled on Calvary means. Sin is a far more awful, ruinous, and far-reaching evil than we have been wont to think, but the blood of Christ has a power and efficiency, the fullness of which only eternity will disclose.

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[186]

IX The Distinctive Doctrine of Protestantism: Justification by Faith

“Be it known unto you therefore, brethren, that through this man is proclaimed unto you, remission of sins: and by him every one that believeth is justified from all things, from which he could not be justified by the law of Moses.”—Acts 13:38, 39.

“But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is reckoned for righteousness.”—Rom. 4:5.

These are two remarkable passages and this chapter will be occupied with an exposition of them. Our subject this morning is, The Distinctive Doctrine of Protestantism: Justification by Faith. The doctrine of Justification by Faith was the doctrine that made the Reformation. It is to-day one of the cardinal doctrines of the Evangelical Faith. This doctrine, though first fully expounded and constantly emphasised by Paul, runs throughout the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation. It is in the first book of the Bible, the book of Genesis, that we read, “Abraham believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for righteousness.” (Gen. 15:6.) In these words in the very first book in the Bible we [187]have the germ of the whole gracious and precious doctrine of Justification by Faith.

I. WHAT IS JUSTIFICATION?

The first thing for us to understand clearly is just what justification is. It is at this point that many go astray in their study of this great truth. There are two fundamentally different definitions of the meaning of the words “justify” and “justification.” The one definition of Justify is, to make righteous, and of Justification, the being made righteous. The other definition of “justify” is, to reckon, declare, or show to be righteous, and of “justification,” the being declared or reckoned righteous. On these two different definitions two different schools of thought depart from one another. Which is the true definition? The way to settle the meaning of any word in the Bible is by an examination of all the passages in which that word and its derivatives is found. If any one will go through the Bible, the Old Testament and the New, and carefully study all the passages in which the word “justify” and its derivatives is found, he will discover that beyond a question, in Biblical usage, to “justify” means, not to make righteous, but to reckon righteousness, declare righteous, or show to be righteous. A man is justified before God when God reckons him righteous. This appears, for example, in the fourth chapter of Romans, 2nd to 8th verses, R. V. “For if Abraham [188]was justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not toward God. For what saith the scripture? And Abraham believed God and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness. Now to him that worketh, the reward is not reckoned as of grace, but as of debt. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is reckoned for righteousness even as David also pronounced blessing upon the man unto whom God reckoneth righteousness apart from works, saying, blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered, blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not reckon sin.” It is plain from this passage, as from many other passages, that a man is justified when God reckons him righteous, no matter what his principles of character and of conduct may have been. We shall see later that justification means more than mere forgiveness.

II. HOW ARE MEN JUSTIFIED?

We come now to the second question, and the all-important question, How are men justified? In general there are two opposing views of justification: one that men are justified by their own works, i.e., on the ground of something which they do themselves. This view may be variously expressed. The good works that men speak of as a ground of their justification may be their good moral conduct, or their keeping the Golden Rule, [189]or something of that sort. Or they may be works of religion, such as doing penance, saying prayers, joining the church, going to church, being baptised, or partaking of the Lord’s Supper, or the performance of some other religious duties. But these all amount to the same thing: it is something that we ourselves do that brings justification, some works of our own, some works that we do, are taken as the ground of our justification. The other view of justification is that we are justified, not by our own works in any sense, but entirely by the work of another, i.e., by the atoning death of Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary, that our own works have nothing to do with our justification, but that we are justified entirely by Christ’s finished and complete work of atonement, by His death for us on the Cross, and that all that we have to do with our justification is merely to appropriate it to ourselves by simply trusting in Him who made the atonement. Which is the correct view? We shall go directly to the Bible for the answer to this all-important question.

1. The first part of the answer we will find in Rom. 3:20, “Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for through the law cometh the knowledge of sin.”It is here very plainly stated that we are not justified by keeping the law of God, either the Mosaic law or any other law, and that the law is given, not to bring us justification, but to bring us a knowledge of sin, i.e., to bring us to the realisation of [190]our need of justification by grace. It is plainly stated here that no man is justified by works of the law. The same great truth is found in Gal. 2:16: “Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, save through faith in Jesus Christ, even we believed on Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.” Justification by any works of our own is an impossibility. It is an impossibility because to be justified by works of the law, or by anything we can do, we must perfectly keep the law of God. The law demands perfect obedience as a ground of justification. It says, “Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them.” (Gal. 3:10.). But not one of us has perfectly kept the law of God, and the moment we break the law of God at any point, justification by works becomes an absolute impossibility. So as far as the law of God is concerned, every one of us is “under the curse,” and if we are justified at all we must find some other way of justification than by keeping the law of God. God did not give man the law with the expectation or intention that he would keep it and be justified thereby. He gave them the law to produce conviction of sin, to stop men’s mouths, and to lead them to Christ. Or, as Paul puts it in Rom. 3:19, 20, “Now ye know that what things soever the law saith, it speaketh to them that are under the law; that every mouth[191]may be stopped, and all the world may be brought under the judgment of God: because by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for through the law cometh the knowledge of sin.” As plain as these words of God are, strangely enough there are many to-day who are preaching the law as a way of salvation. But when they so preach they are preaching another way of salvation than that laid down in God’s own word.

2. The second part of the answer to the question as to how we are justified we find in Rom. 3:24. “Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” The word translated “freely” in this passage means, as a free gift, and the verse tells us that men are justified as a free gift by God’s grace (i.e., God’s unmerited favour) through (i.e., on the ground of) the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. In other words, justification is not on the ground of any desert there is in us, not on the ground of anything that we have done, we are not justified by our own doing nor by our own character. Justification is a free gift that God bestows absolutely without pay. The channel through which this free gift is bestowed is the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. We shall see later that this means through the purchase price that Christ paid for our redemption, i.e., the shedding of His blood on the cross of Calvary.

3. This leads us to the third part of the answer to the question, how men are justified. We find [192]this third part of the answer in Rom. 5:9, “Much more then, being now justified by his blood, shall we be saved from the wrath of God through Him.” Here we are told in so many words that we are justified, or counted righteous “by,” or more literally, “in,” Christ’s blood, i.e., on the ground of Christ’s propitiatory death. We were all under the curse of the broken law of God, for we had all broken it, but by dying in our stead on the cross of Calvary our Lord Jesus “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us; for it is written, cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.” (Gal. 3:13.) Or, as Peter puts it in 1 Pet. 2:24, “Who his own self bare our sins in his own body upon the tree.” Or as Paul puts it again in 2 Cor. 5:21, “Him who knew no sin he (God) made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” We shall have occasion to come back to this passage later. All that I wish you to notice in it at this time is that it is on the ground of Jesus Christ becoming a substitute for us, on the ground of His taking the place we deserved; on the cross, that we are reckoned righteous. The one and only ground of justification is the shed blood of Jesus Christ. Of course, this doctrine is entirely different from the teaching of Christian Science, and entirely different from the teaching of much that is called New Theology, and entirely different from the teaching of New Thought and Theosophy, and [193]entirely different from the teaching of Unitarianism, but it is the teaching of the Word of God. We find this same teaching clearly given by the prophet Isaiah seven hundred years before our Lord was born, in Isaiah 53:6, where he says, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord hath laid (literally, made to strike) on him (i.e., on the Lord Jesus) the iniquity of us all.” Get this point clearly settled in your mind, that the sole but all-sufficient ground upon which men are justified before God is the shed blood of Jesus Christ, offered by Jesus Christ as an atonement for our sins and accepted by God the Father as an all-sufficient atonement.

4. The fourth part of the answer to the question how men are justified we find in Rom. 3:26, “For the showing, I say, of his (i.e., God’s) righteousness at this present season: that he (i.e., God) might himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus.” Here we are taught that men are justified on the condition of faith in Jesus. If possible, Rom. 4:5 makes this even more plain, “But to him that worketh not but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is reckoned for righteousness.” Here the Holy Spirit, speaking through the Apostle Paul, tells us that to those who believe in Jesus their faith is counted for righteousness. In other words, faith makes ours the shed blood which is the ground of justification, and we are justified when we [194]believe. All men are potentially justified by the death of Christ on the cross, but believers are actually justified by appropriating to themselves what there is of justifying value in the shed blood of Christ by simple faith in Him. In other words, the shed blood of Christ is the sole and all-sufficient ground of justification: simple faith in Jesus Christ who shed the blood is the sole condition of justification. God asks nothing else of the sinner than that he should believe on His Son, Jesus Christ, and when he does thus believe he is justified. When we believe we are justified, whether we have any works to offer or not; or, as Paul puts it in Rom. 3:28, “We reckon therefore that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” Or, as it is put in the verse already quoted, Rom. 4:5, “But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is reckoned for righteousness.” A man is justified entirely apart from works of the law, i.e., he is justified on condition that he believes on Jesus Christ, even though he has no works to offer as the ground upon which to claim justification. When we cease to work for justification and simply “believe on Him who justifieth the ungodly,” that faith is reckoned to us for righteousness, and therefore we are counted righteous. The question then is not, have you any works to offer, but do you believe on Him who justifies the ungodly. Works have nothing to do with justification except to hinder it when we trust in them. The blood of [195]Jesus Christ secures it, faith in Jesus Christ appropriates it. We are justified not by our works, but by His work. We are justified upon the simple and single ground of His shed blood and upon the simple and single condition of our faith in Him Who shed the blood. So great is the pride of the natural heart that it is exceedingly difficult to hold men to this doctrine of justification by faith alone apart from works of law. We are constantly seeking to bring in our works somewhere.

5. But we have not as yet completely answered the question of how men are justified. There is another side to the truth and if our doctrine of justification is to be complete and well-balanced, we must look at that other side. You will find part of this other side in Rom. 10:8, 10, “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thy heart that God raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved; for with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” God here tells us that the faith that appropriates justification is a faith with the heart, i.e., a faith that is not a mere notion, or opinion, but a faith that leads to action along the line of that faith, and it is therefore a faith that leads to open confession with the mouth, of Jesus as our Lord. If some one has some kind of faith, or what he calls faith, that does not lead him to an open confession of Christ, he has a faith that does not justify; for it is not a faith with the heart. [196]Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself tells us that heart faith leads to open confession; for He says in Matt. 12:34, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.” Faith in Jesus Christ in the heart leads inevitably to a confession of Jesus as Lord with the mouth, and if you are not confessing Jesus as your Lord with your mouth you have not justifying faith and you are not justified.

6. The rest of the other side of the truth about being justified by faith, you will find in Jas. 2:14, 18-24, R. V. “What doth it profit, my brethren, if a man say he hath faith but have not works? Can that faith save him?” We see here that a faith that a man merely says he has, but that does not lead to works along the line of that which he claims to believe, cannot justify, but to go on, verses 18-24, “Yea, a man will say, thou hast faith, and I have works, show me thy faith apart from thy works, and I by my works will show thee my faith. Thou believest that God is one; thou doest well: the devils also believe and shudder. But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith apart from works is barren? Was not Abraham our father justified by works, in that he offered up Isaac his son, upon the altar? Thou seest that faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect (i.e., in the works to which Abraham’s faith led, faith had its perfect manifestation); and the scripture was fulfilled which saith, and Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness; and he was called the friend of God. Ye see [197]that by works a man is justified, and not only by faith.” Some see in these words a contradiction between the teaching of James and the teaching of Paul, but there is no contradiction whatever. But James here teaches us an important truth, namely, that the faith that one says he has, but which does not manifest itself in action along the line of the faith professed, will not justify. The faith that justifies is real faith that leads to action accordant with the truth we profess to believe. It is true that we are justified simply upon faith apart from the works of the law, but it must be a real faith, otherwise it does not justify. As some one has put it, “We are justified by faith without works, but we are not justified by a faith that is without works.” The faith which God sees and upon which He justifies, leads inevitably to works which men can see. God saw the faith of Abraham the moment Abraham believed, and before there was any opportunity to work, and counted that faith to Abraham for righteousness. But the faith that God saw was a real faith and led Abraham to works that all could see, and these works proved the reality of his faith. The proof to us of the faith is the works, and we know that he that does not work has not justifying faith.

We must not lose sight on the one side of the truth which Paul emphasises against legalism, namely, that we are justified on the single and simple condition of a real faith in Christ; but on the other side we must not lose sight of the truth [198]which James emphasises against antinomianism, namely, that it is only a real faith that proves its genuineness by works, that justifies. To the legalist who is seeking to do something to merit justification we must say, “Stop working and believe on Him that justifieth the ungodly” (Rom. 4:5). To the antinomian, i.e., to the one who thinks he can live a lawless, careless, unseparated, sinful life and still be justified, the one who boasts that he has faith and is justified by it, but who does not show his faith by his works, we must say, “What doth it profit, if a man say he have faith, but have not works? Can that faith save him?” (Jas. 2:14, R. V.) We are justified by faith alone, but we are not justified by a faith that is alone, but a faith that is accompanied by works.

III. THE EXTENT OF JUSTIFICATION

I think we have made it plain just how one is justified, and now we come to another question and that is, the extent of justification. To what extent is a man who believes in the Lord Jesus justified? This question is very plainly answered and wonderfully answered, and gloriously answered in Acts 13:38, 39, “Be it known unto you therefore, brethren, that through this man is proclaimed unto you remission of sins: and by him every one that believeth is justified from all things, from which he could not be justified by the law of Moses.” These words very plainly declare [199]to us that every believer in Jesus Christ is justified “from all things.” In other words, the old account against the believer is all wiped out. No matter how bad and how black the account is, the moment a man believes in Jesus Christ, the account is wiped out. God has absolutely nothing which He reckons against the one who believes in Jesus Christ. Even though he is still a very imperfect believer, a very young man and immature Christian, he is perfectly justified. As Paul puts it in Rom. 8:1, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.” Or, as he puts it further down in the chapter, verses 33, 34, “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth; who is he that shall condemn? It is Christ Jesus that died, yea rather, that was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.” If the vilest murderer or sinner of any kind on earth should come in here this morning and right here now, hearing the gospel of God’s grace, should believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, put confidence in Him as his Saviour, and accept Him as such, surrendering to Him and confessing Him as His Lord, the moment he did it every sin he ever committed would be blotted out and his record would be as white in God’s sight as that of the purest angel in heaven. God has absolutely nothing that He reckons against the believer in Jesus Christ. But even that is not all. Paul goes even beyond this in 2 Cor.5:21, “He who [200]knew no sin he (God) made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God in him.” Here we are explicitly told that the believer in Jesus Christ is made the righteousness of God in Christ. In Phil. 3:9, R. V. we are told that when one is in Christ he has a righteousness not of his own, but a “righteousness which is of God upon faith.” In other words, there is an absolute interchange of positions between Christ and the justified believer. Christ took our place, the place of the curse on the cross (Gal. 3:13). He was “made to be sin on our behalf” (2 Cor.5:21). God reckoned Him a sinner and dealt with Him as a sinner, so that in the sinner’s place, as He died, He cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” And when we are justified we step into His place, the place of perfect acceptance before God, or to use the exact words of Scripture, we “Become the righteousness of God in him.” To be justified is more than to be forgiven! Forgiveness is negative, the putting away of sin; Justification is positive, the reckoning of positive and perfect righteousness to the one justified. Jesus Christ is so united to the believer in Him that God reckons our sins to Him. The believer, on the other hand, is so united to Christ that God reckons His righteousness to us. God sees us, not as we are in ourselves, but as we are in Him and reckons us as righteous as He is. When Christ’s work in us is completed we shall be in actual fact what we are already in God’s [201]reckoning, but the moment one believes, as far as God’s reckoning is concerned, he is as absolutely perfect as he ever shall be. Our present standing before God is absolutely perfect, though our present state may be very imperfect. To use again the familiar couplet:”Near, so very near to God,Nearer I cannot be;For in the person of His Son,I am just as near as He.Dear, so very dear to God,Dearer I cannot be;For in the person of His Son,I am just as dear as He.”

IV. THE TIME OF JUSTIFICATION

There remains one question still to consider, though we have really answered it in what has already been said, and that is, the time of justification, or when a believer is justified. When is a believer justified? This question is answered plainly in one of our texts, Acts 13:39, “And by him every one that believeth is justified from all things, from which he could not be justified by the law of Moses.” What I wish you to notice particularly now in this verse is the word Is, “Everyone that believeth is justified from all things.” This answers plainly the question as to when a believer is justified. In Christ Jesus every [202]believer in Him is justified from all things the moment he believes. The moment a man believes in Jesus Christ that moment he becomes united to Christ, and that moment God reckons the righteousness of God to him. I repeat again, if the vilest murderer or sinner of any kind in the world should come into this room this morning while I am preaching and should here and now believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, the moment that he did it, not only would every sin he ever committed be blotted out, but all the perfect righteousness of God in Christ would be put to his account, and his standing before God would be as perfect as it will be when he has been in heaven ten million years. Let me repeat to you again the incident I told you one Sunday night some weeks ago. I was preaching one Sunday morning in the Moody church in Chicago on Rom. 8:1, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus,” and in the course of my preaching I said, “If the vilest woman there is in Chicago should come into the Chicago Avenue church this morning, and should here and now accept Jesus Christ as her Saviour, the moment she did it every sin she ever committed would be blotted out and her record would be as white in God’s sight as that of the purest woman in the room.” Unknown to me, one of the members of my congregation that very morning had gone down into a low den of iniquity near the river and had invited a woman who was an outcast to come and hear me preach. The [203]woman replied, “I never go to church. Church is not for the likes of me. I would not be welcome at the church if I did go.” The woman who was a saint replied, “You would be welcome at our church,” which, thank God, was true. But, “No,” the woman urged, “it would not do for me to go to church, church is not for the likes of me.” But the woman who was a saint urged the woman who was a sinner to go. She offered to accompany her to the church, but the other said, “No, that would never do. The policemen know me and the boys on the street know me and sometimes throw stones at me, and if they saw you going up the street with me they would think you such as I am.” But the woman who was a saint had the Spirit of the Master and said, “I don’t care what they think of me. If you will accompany me to hear Mr. Torrey preach I will go along with you.” The other woman refused. But the saved woman was so insistent that the woman who was an outcast finally said, “If you will go up the street a few steps ahead I will follow you up the street.” So up La Salle Avenue they came, the woman who was a saint a few steps ahead and the woman who was a sinner a few steps behind. Block after block they came until they reached the corner of La Salle and Chicago Avenues. The woman who was a saint entered the tower door at the corner, went up the steps, entered the church, and the woman who was a sinner followed her. On reaching the door the woman who was a sinner looked [204]in, saw a vacant seat under the gallery in the very last row at the back, and slipped into it, and scarcely had she taken the seat when I made the remark that I just quoted, “If the vilest woman there is in Chicago should come into the Chicago Avenue church this morning and should here and now accept Jesus Christ as her personal Saviour, the moment she did it every sin she ever committed would be blotted out and her record would be as white in God’s sight as that of the purest woman in the room.” My words went floating down over the audience and dropped into the heart of the woman who was a sinner. She believed it, she believed that Jesus died for her, she believed that by the shedding of His blood she could be saved, she believed, and found pardon and peace and justification then and there. And when the meeting was over she came up the aisle to the front as I stepped down from the pulpit, tears streaming down her face, and thanked me for the blessing that she had received. And I repeat it here this morning, not knowing who may be here, not knowing what may be the secret life of any one of you who is here, not knowing what may be the sins that may be hidden in your heart, if the vilest man or woman on earth should come into the Church of the Open Door this morning and should here and now put their trust in Jesus Christ, the moment you did it every sin you ever committed would be blotted out and in an instant your record would be as white in God’s sight, not only as that of the [205]purest woman in the room, but as that of the purest angel in heaven, and not only that, but all the perfect righteousness of God that clothed our Lord Jesus Christ would be put to your account and you would be just as near and just as dear to God as the Lord Jesus Christ Himself is. That is the doctrine of justification by faith. Wondrous doctrine! Glorious doctrine!

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[206]

X The New Birth

“Jesus answered and said unto him, verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God. . . . Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”—John 3:3, 5.

Our subject in this chapter is Regeneration, or the New Birth. I spoke on this subject a year or so ago, but I am going to treat it in an entirely different way in this chapter and furthermore no course of sermons on the Fundamental Doctrines of the Christian Faith would be complete without a sermon on the New Birth. What we have to say in this chapter will come under four heads: I. What Is the New Birth? II. The Results of the New Birth, III. The Necessity of the New Birth, IV. How One Is Born Again.

I. What is the New Birth?

The first question that confronts us is, What is the New Birth? Many speak of the New Birth or of Regeneration without any definite conception of just what the New Birth is, and so are [207]never sure whether they themselves have been born again or not.

As plain and clear a definition of the New Birth as we can find in the Word of God is given in 2 Pet. 1:4, “Whereby he hath granted unto us his precious and exceeding great promises; that through these ye may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world by lust.” From these words of Peter it is evident that the New Birth is the impartation to the one who is born again, of a new nature, God’s own nature. By being born again we become actual partakers of the Divine nature. We are all born into this world with a corrupted intellectual and moral nature. The natural man, or unregenerate man, is intellectually blind, blind to the truth of God, “the things of the Spirit” he cannot see or receive. “They are foolishness unto him, and he cannot know them” (1 Cor. 2:14). His affections are corrupt, he loves the things he ought to hate and hates the things he ought to love. A definite description of the affections and tastes and desires of the unregenerate man is found in Gal. 5:19, 20, 21. He is also perverse in his will, as Paul puts it in Rom. 8:7, “The mind of the flesh is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” This state of intellectual spiritual blindness and moral corruption is the condition of every unregenerate man. No matter how cultured or refined or moral he may be outwardly, his inner [208]life is radically wrong. In the New Birth God imparts to the one who is born again His own wise and holy nature, a nature that thinks as God thinks (“He is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him”—Col. 3:10); he feels as God feels, loves the things that God loves, hates the things that God hates, wills as God wills (1 John 3:14; 4:7, 8). It is evident then that regeneration is a deep thorough-going change in the deepest springs of thought, feeling and action. A change so thorough-going that Paul says in 2 Cor. 5:17, “If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature (more exactly, Creation): the old things are passed away; behold they are become new.” To use the inspired language of the Apostle John, regeneration is a passing “out of death into life.” John says in 1 John 3:14, “We know that we have passed out of death into life.” Until we are thus born again we are in a condition of moral and spiritual death. When we are born again we are “quickened” (or made alive), we who “were dead through our trespasses and sins.” (Eph. 2:1). There is a profound contrast between regeneration and mere conversion. Conversion is an outward thing, a turning around. One is faced the wrong way, faced away from God; he turns around and faces toward God. That is conversion. But regeneration is not a mere outward change, but a thorough-going change in the deepest depths of one’s being, that leads to a genuine conversion or genuine outward change. Many an apparently [209]thorough conversion is a temporary thing because it did not go deep enough, but regeneration is a permanent thing. When God imparts His nature to a man, that nature abides in the man. When he is born again he cannot be unborn, or as John puts it in 1 John 3:9, “Whosoever is begotten of God doth no sin, because his (God’s) seed abideth in him.” A man may be converted a thousand times, he can be regenerated but once.

II. RESULTS OF THE NEW BIRTH

We now come to the second question, closely related to the first, and it will help us to understand even more clearly what the New Birth is. What are the results that follow when one is born again?They are numerous.

1. The first of these results is found in 1 Cor. 6:19, where we read: “Know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have from God?” These words were spoken to believers, to regenerated men, and they plainly tell us that when one is born again, the Holy Spirit comes to take up His permanent dwelling in the man and that the man who is born again thus becomes a temple of the Holy Spirit. It is true that we may not always be conscious of this indwelling of the Holy Spirit, nevertheless He dwells in us.

2. The second result of the New Birth is found in Rom. 8:2-4, where we read: “For the law of [210]the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” In the 7th chapter of Romans, we have a picture of the man who is awakened by the law of God which he approves after the inward man, which he sees “is holy and just and good,” which he tries to keep in his own strength, but utterly fails to keep, until at last he comes to an end of himself and is filled with despair of ever being able to keep the law of God outside of him, because of the law of sin and death inside him, which law of sin and death says, “the good which you would do you cannot do, and the evil which you hate and would not do, you must keep on doing.” When a man is thus brought to a consciousness of his own utter helplessness and turns to God and accepts Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus Christ gives to him who dwells in him, sets him free from this law of sin and death so that by the power of the indwelling Spirit he is enabled to obey the law of God and to get the victory over the evil things that he would not do and to do the things which he would do. Whereas in a man merely awakened by the law of God, “the law of sin and death” gets a perpetual victory, in a regenerate man, the “law of the Spirit of life [211]in Christ Jesus” gets the perpetual victory. Doubtless many of you here to-day are still struggling to keep the law of God and utterly failing in your attempt to do so. What you need is to be born again, and thus have the Holy Spirit come to dwell in you, and then to walk by the Spirit, and by the power of this indwelling Spirit to get victory every day and hour over the law of sin and death that wars in your members against the law of God.

3. The third result of the New Birth is found in Rom. 12:2, where we read, “And be not fashioned according to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.” From this it appears that the third result of the New Birth is in outward transformation of our lives by the inward renewing of our minds so that we no longer are fashioned according to this world. Of course the regenerated man does not at once manifest perfectly that of which he has the germ in himself. He begins the new life just as we begin our natural lives, as a babe, and he must grow. As Peter puts it in 1 Pet. 2:2, we must “As new born babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that we may grow thereby.” This new life must be fed and developed. It is irrational, and unwarranted by the Word of God, to expect one who has just been born again, and who is consequently a babe in Christ, to be as perfect in character as one who was born years ago and who has grown to maturity. But the moment we are born again [212]we receive in germ all the moral perfection that is to be ours when this germ is fully developed within us and comes to its perfect manifestation.

4. The fourth result of the New Birth we find in 1 John 5:1, “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is begotten of God.” The fourth result of being born again is that the regenerated man believes that Jesus is the Christ. Of course this faith that comes from the New Birth is a real faith. The faith that John here speaks of is not a faith that is a mere opinion, but that real faith that Jesus is the anointed of God that leads us to enthrone Jesus as King in our lives. If you are not making Jesus King in your heart and life you have not been born again. But if you are making Jesus King in your heart and life and absolute ruler of your thoughts and conduct, then you are born again, for “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is Christ is begotten of God.”

5. The fifth result of being born again we find three verses further down in this same chapter, 1 John 5:4: “For whatsoever is begotten of God overcometh the world.” The fifth result of being born of God is that the one thus born again overcomes the world. The world is at variance with God, “The whole world lieth in the Evil One” (1 John 5:19). It is under the dominion of the Evil One, ruled by his ambitions and ideas. The world is at variance with God in its commercial life, social life, domestic life, and all the phases of intellectual life and educational life, and is constantly [213]exercising a power over each of us to draw us into disobedience to God (see 1 John 5:3); but the one born of God by the power of the faith that comes through being born again, gets the victory over the world. He gets the victory over the world’s ideas, purposes, plans, ambitions. He gets the victory over the world in his personal life, domestic life, commercial life, political life, intellectual life every day.

6. The sixth result of being born of God is found in 1 John 3:9, R. V., “Whosoever is begotten of God doeth no sin; because his (i.e., God’s) seed abideth in him: and he cannot sin (rather, cannot be sinning), because he is begotten of God.” The sixth result, then, of being born of God is that in the one born of God the seed of God remains; and, therefore, the one born of God is not making a practice of sin. Some one will ask, just what does this mean? It means exactly what it says, if we look carefully at the exact force of the words used and give due emphasis to the tense of the verbs used. First of all, let us look at the exact force of the word translated “Sin.” What does sin mean? John himself has been careful to define it in the verse itself and in the context in which our verse is found. The first thing that is evident from 1 John 3:9 is that sin is a something done, not merely a something left undone, and not merely sinful thoughts and desires. What kind of a something done it is defined five verses back in verse 4. “Everyone that doeth sin doeth also [214]lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness.” Sin here by John’s own definition (and we have no right to bring the definition of any one else into the verse we are studying) is “lawlessness,” i.e., such acts as reveal conscious disregard for the will of God as revealed in His word. So we see that sin, as used here, means, a conscious intentional violation of the law of God. The regenerate man will not be doing that which he knows to be contrary to the will of God. He may do that which is contrary to God’s will, but which he does not know to be contrary to God’s will. It is not therefore “lawlessness.” Perhaps he ought to have known that it was contrary to God’s will and when he is led to see that it is, he will confess his guilt to God. Furthermore, we should note the tense of the verb used in this verse. It is the present tense which denotes progressive or continuous action. A literal translation of the passage would be, “Everyone begotten out of God, sin is not doing, because His (God’s) seed in him is remaining; and he cannot be sinning, because out of God he is begotten.” It is not taught here that one born of God never sins in a single act, but it is taught that he is not going on sinning, not making a practice of sin. Of what he is making a practice appears in 1 John 2:29, “If ye know that he is righteous, ye know that everyone also that doeth righteousness is begotten of him.” The result, then, of being born again is that the one begotten again does not go on consciously day after day [215]doing that which he knows to be contrary to the will of God, but he does make a practice of “doing righteousness,” i.e., doing that which is conformed to the will of God as revealed in His Word. The new nature imparted in regeneration renders the continuous practice of sin impossible and renders the practice of righteousness inevitable.

7. The seventh result of the New Birth is found in 1 John 3:14, R. V., “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not abideth in death.” The seventh result of being born again is that we love the brethren. We should note carefully what the thought of “love” is as brought out in the context. It is not love as a mere sentiment. It is love in that higher and deeper sense of a desire for and delight in the welfare of others, the sort of love that leads us to make sacrifices for those we love, or as we read further down in this same chapter, verses 16-18, “Hereby know we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoso hath this world’s goods, and behold his brother in need, and shutteth up his compassion from him, how doth the love of God abide in him? My little children, let us not love in word neither with the tongue; but in deed and truth.” This makes it very evident that what the Holy Spirit here means by love is not a mere affection or fondness for others, not a mere delight in their society; it means that deep and genuine interest in [216]their welfare that leads us to go down into our pockets when they are in need and supply their need; it leads us to sacrifice our own interest for the sake of their interests even to the point of laying down our lives for them. The objects of this love are “the brethren,” i.e., all those who are begotten of God, as we read in 1 John 5:1, “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is begotten of God: and whosoever loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him.”Any man who is born again will love every other man who is begotten of God. The other one who is begotten of God may be an American or a German, or an Englishman, or a negro, or a Chinaman, or an Indian. He may be educated or uneducated; but he is a child of God and a brother, and as such if you are born of God, he will be the object of your love. This is a searching test of whether or not one is born of God.

8. The final result of being born of God that we will consider this morning is found in 2 Cor. 5:17, R. V., “Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature (creation): the old things are passed away, behold, they are become new.” The ninth result of being born again, including all the other results that we have been considering, is that in the regenerate man, old things are passed away, they are become new. In the place of the old ideas, old affection, old purposes, old choices, are new ideas, new affections, new purposes, new choices.

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III. THE NECESSITY OF THE NEW BIRTH

For just a few moments let us look at the necessity of the New Birth. This is set forth in one of our texts and in the verses following, 1 John 3:5, 6: “Verily, Verily, I say unto you, except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.” We see here that the New Birth is a universal necessity, and we see why it is a necessity. The words translated, “Except a man be born,” etc. more literally translated would be, “If any man be not born out of water and Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” And why he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God the following verse says, and that is because all that one gets by natural generation is “Flesh” and the Kingdom of God is spiritual, and, therefore, to enter it one must be born of the Spirit. No matter how refined and intelligent our ancestry, no matter how godly our fathers and mothers may have been, we do not get the Holy Spirit from them. All we get is “flesh.” It may be refined flesh, moral flesh, upright and very attractive flesh, but it is flesh; and “they that are in the flesh cannot please God,” nor “inherit the kingdom of God.” The flesh is incapable of improvement. No more “can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots” than can a man [218]who is unregenerate attain to a life pleasing to God. (See Jer. 13:23.) He must be born again. The necessity is also absolute and imperative, so absolute and imperative that Jesus said to Nicodemus, though he was a man of most exemplary morality, a man of high moral and spiritual education, a teacher of Israel, a leader in the religious life of Israel, “You must be born again.” (John 3:7.) Nothing else will take the place of the New Birth. Men are trying to substitute education, morality, religion, orthodoxy, baptism, outward reform, “new thought,” “theosophy” or the knowledge of God, and other such things, for the New Birth; but none of these, or all of them together, are sufficient, you must be born again. There is absolutely no exception to this rule. As Jesus says in John 3:3, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except any man be born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

IV. HOW CAN ONE BE BORN AGAIN?

The question, therefore, confronts each one of you, Have you been born again? There is no more important question that you could possibly face. Face it in these pages and don’t dodge it. And that brings us to the immediately practical question, How are men born again, or what must any one here to-day, who is not born again, do in order to be born again right here this morning? This question also is plainly answered in the Word of [219]God; and I can give you the answer in a very few minutes and give it so that any one here can understand it. There are three parts to the answer.

1. The first part of the answer you will find in Titus 3:4, “Not by works done in righteousness, which we did ourselves, but according to his mercy, he (i.e., God) saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost.” These words tell us very plainly that it is God who regenerates and that He does it through the power of His Holy Spirit. The same thought is found in our text, John 3:5, 6: “Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.” Regeneration is God’s work; wrought by Him by the power of His Holy Spirit working in the mind, feelings and will of the one born again, in your heart and mine.

2. Some one might infer from the fact that regeneration is God’s work, which He works in our hearts by His Holy Spirit, that all we have to do is to wait until God sees fit to work; but we see plainly from other passages in the Word that this is not true. We are taught the second thing about how regeneration is wrought in James 1:18, “Of His own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of His creatures.” Here we are taught that the [220]Word of Truth, the Word of God, is the instrument that God uses in regeneration. The same thought is found in 1 Pet. 1:23, “Having been begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the word of God, which liveth and abideth.” And Paul gives voice to the same great thought in 1 Cor. 4:15, where he says: “For though ye should have ten thousand tutors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I begat you through the gospel.” From these passages it is evident that the New Birth is wrought by God through the instrumentality of His Word. It is God who works it through the power of His Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit works through the Word, and thus God begets men anew by “The Word of Truth,” or the “Word of God,” i.e., the Word which is preached by “the Gospel.” So then, if you or I wish to be born again we should get in contact with the Word of God by studying the Bible and asking God that the Holy Spirit may make that Word which we are studying a living thing in our own hearts. We should get in contact especially with that part of God’s Word which is found in the Gospel of John, for John tells us in John 20:31 that “These (i.e., these things in the Gospel of John) are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God; and that believing ye may have life in his name.” If we wish to see others born again we should bring the Word of God to bear upon their minds and hearts either by preaching [221]the Word, or by teaching it, or in personal work; and we should look to the Holy Spirit to quicken that Word in the hearts of men as we sow it in their hearts, and in this way the New Birth will result.

3. The third and last and decisive truth as to how we are born again is found in Gal. 3:26 and John 1:12, 13. In Gal. 3:26 we read, “For ye are all sons of God, through faith, in Christ Jesus.” This tells us plainly that we become born again through putting our faith in Christ Jesus. This is even more explicitly stated in John 1:12, 13: “But as many as received him (i.e. the Lord Jesus), to them gave He the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on His name: which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” Here we are told that the decisive thing in our becoming children of God is that we believe in, or receive, Jesus Christ. Any one who receives Jesus Christ as his personal Saviour and trusts God to forgive him because Jesus Christ died in his place and receives him as his Lord and King, and surrenders his thoughts to His absolute control as his Lord and his life to His absolute control as his King and confesses Jesus Christ as Lord before the world, such a one immediately becomes a child of God, is immediately born again, is immediately made a partaker of the Divine nature. The same thought is illustrated by Jesus Himself in John 3:14, 15, where our Lord Jesus [222]is recorded as saying, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up; that whosoever believeth in Him may have eternal life.” The reference is to the story of the Israelites in the Old Testament when they were bitten by fiery serpents. As the dying Israelite with the poison of the fiery serpent coursing through his veins, was saved by simply looking at the brazen serpent on the pole, a serpent made in the likeness of the one that had bitten him, and had new life coursing through his veins as soon as he looked, so we dying men, with the poison of sin coursing through our veins, are saved by looking at Jesus Christ “Made in the likeness of sinful flesh,” lifted up on the cross, and have new life coursing through our veins the moment we look. All we have to do with our regeneration is to receive Christ as He is presented to us in the Word, by which we are born again. Therefore, “If any man be in Christ he is a new creature (creation). The old things are passed away, behold all things are become new.”

In the New Birth the Word of God is the seed; the human heart is the soil; the preacher of the Word is the sower, and drops the seed of the Word of God into the soil of the human heart; God by His Spirit opens the heart to receive the seed (Acts 16:14); the hearer believes; the Spirit quickens the seed into life in the receptive heart; the heart closes around the seed by faith; the new [223]nature, the Divine Nature springs up out of the Divine Word; the believer is “born again,” “created anew,” “made alive,” “passed out of death into life.”

Conclusion.

Have you been born again? I put this question to every man and woman here. I do not ask you whether you are a church member. I do not ask if you have been baptised. I do not ask, have you gone regularly to the communion. I do not ask, have you turned over a new leaf. I do not ask, are you an amiable, cultured, intelligent, moral, socially delightful gentleman or lady. I ask you, have you been born again? If not, you are outside of the Kingdom of God and you are bound for an everlasting hell unless you are born again. But if you are not already born again you may be born again to-day, you may be born again before you leave this building, you may be born again right now; for the Word of God says, “As many as received him, to them gave he the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” And it says again in Rom. 10:9, 10, “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord and shalt believe in thy heart that God raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved: for with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” [224]These verses make it plain as day just what you must do right here and now to become a child of God. It is up to you to say whether or not you will do it.

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XI Sanctification

“And the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved entire, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”—1 Thess. 5:23.

Our subject now before us is Sanctification. The subject is one of great importance. Not only is there much ignorance and error and misconception about the subject, but there is, strange to say, most bitter controversy over the subject. So bitter is the controversy over the subject that some years ago there were two rival “holiness conventions” held at the same time in Chicago at different hours of the day, in the same church, and the animosity between these two companies of “holiness brethren” was so intense that on one occasion they came near to having blows at the altar of the church. The subject of Sanctification has given rise to such bitterness and such extravagances in some quarters that many even dread the use of the word “Sanctification.” But the word is not only a Bible word, but a deeply significant word, a word full of precious meaning; and it would not be the part of wisdom on our part to give up this good Bible word simply [226]because the word is so often abused. On one occasion a man said to me in the Bible Institute of Chicago, “Are you not afraid of holiness?” Of course what the man meant was, was I not afraid of certain phases of “holiness doctrine” so-called. I replied that I was not nearly as much afraid of holiness as I was of unholiness. The teaching of the Bible on the subject is very plain and very precious. What we have to say this morning will come under three headings. First, What Sanctification Is: 2. How to be Sanctified; 3. When Sanctification Takes Place.

I. WHAT SANCTIFICATION IS

First, then, let us consider what Sanctification is.

1. In the first place let me make it clear that, Sanctification is not the “Baptism with the Holy Spirit.” The two are constantly confused. There is an intimate relation between the two, but they are not at all one and the same thing; and only confusion and misconception can arise from confounding two experiences which God keeps separate. That Sanctification is not the baptism with the Holy Spirit and that the baptism with the Holy Spirit is not Sanctification, will become clear as we proceed and find out from a study of the Bible just what Sanctification is.

2. In the second place, let me say that Sanctification is not the eradication of the carnal nature. [227]We will see this when we come to examine God’s definition of Sanctification; for God has very clearly defined what Sanctification is and when it takes place. Those who teach “the eradication of the carnal nature” are grasping after a great and precious truth, but they have expressed that truth in a very inaccurate, unfortunate, and unscriptural way, and this way of stating it leads to grave misapprehensions and errors and abuses. The whole controversy about “the eradication of the carnal nature” arises from a misapprehension and from using terms for which there is no warrant in the Bible. The Bible nowhere speaks about “the carnal nature,” and so certainly not about “the eradication of the carnal nature.” There is such a thing as a carnal nature, but it is not a material thing, not a substance, not a something that can be eradicated as you pull a tooth or remove the vermiform appendix. “A carnal nature” is a nature controlled by the flesh. Certainly it is a believer’s privilege not to have his nature governed by the flesh. Our nature should be and may be under the control of the Holy Spirit, and then it is not a carnal nature; but one nature has not been eradicated and another nature put in its place, but our nature is taken out from under the control of the flesh and put under the control of the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, while it is our privilege to have our nature under the control of the Holy Spirit and delivered from the control of the flesh, we still [228]have “the flesh,” and shall have the flesh as long as we are in this body. But if we “walk by the Spirit” we do not “fulfil the lusts of the flesh” (Gal. 5:16). The 8th chapter of Romans describes the life of victory, just as the 7th chapter, 9-24 verse describes the life of defeat, when men are “carnal, sold under sin,” but it is in the 8th chapter where life “in the Spirit” is described (Rom. 8:9) that we are told that we still have the flesh, but that it is our privilege not to “live after the flesh,” but “by the Spirit,” to “put to death the deeds of the body.” So we see that the body is there, but in the power of the Spirit we do, day by day and (if we live up to our privilege) every day and every hour and every minute, continuously “put to death the deeds of the body.”

3. So much as to what Sanctification is not. We will see exactly what it is if we look at God’s definition of Sanctification. We shall find that the word Sanctification is used in the Bible in a two-fold sense.

(1) The first meaning of Sanctification we will find in Lev. 8:10-12, “And Moses took the anointing oil, and anointed the tabernacle and all that was therein, and sanctified them. And he sprinkled thereof upon the altar seven times, and anointed the altar and all its vessels, and the laver and its base, to sanctify them. And he poured of the anointing oil upon Aaron’s head and anointed him to sanctify him.” Now it is perfectly clear in this passage that to sanctify means to separate or set [229]apart for God, and that Sanctification is the process of setting apart or state of being set apart for God. The word Sanctify is used in this sense over and over again. Another illustration is Lev. 27:14, 17. “And when a man shall sanctify his house to be holy unto God, then the priest shall estimate it, whether it be good or bad: as the priest shall estimate it, so shall it stand . . . and if a man shall sanctify unto Jehovah part of a field of his possession, then the estimation shall be according to the sowing thereof.” Here again it is plain that to sanctify means to separate or set apart for God, and that Sanctification is the process of setting apart or state of being set apart for God. Still another illustration of this same use of the word sanctify is found in Num. 8:17, “For all the firstborn among the children of Israel are mine, both man and beast: on the day that I smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt I sanctified them for myself.” This, of course, does not mean that God, at the time that He smote the firstborn in Egypt, eradicated the carnal nature from the first-born of Israel. It does mean that He set apart all the first-born to be peculiarly His own. Another very suggestive illustration of the same usage of the word is found in the case of Jeremiah as stated by himself in Jer. 1:4, 5, “Now the word of Jehovah came unto me saying, before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee: I have appointed thee a prophet unto the nations.” [230]This plainly means that before his birth God set Jeremiah apart for Himself. There would still be much imperfection and infirmity in him, but he was set apart for God. Another suggestive illustration of the same use of the word Sanctify is found in Matt. 23:27, in the words of our Lord Jesus Himself: “Ye fools and blind; for which is greater, the gold, or the temple that hath sanctified the gold?” But perhaps the most striking illustration of all is in what our Lord says about His own sanctification in John 17:19, “And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.” Here the plain meaning is that our Lord Jesus set Himself apart for this work for God and He did it in order that believers might be set apart for God “in truth,” or “in the truth.” This is the most frequent use of the word sanctify. There are numerous illustrations of it in the Bible. So to sanctify means to separate or set apart for God; and Sanctification is the process of setting apart or the state of being set apart for God. This is the primary meaning of the words.

(2) But the word as used in the Bible has also a secondary signification closely related to this primary meaning. An illustration of this secondary meaning will be found in II Chron. 29:5, “Hear me, ye Levites; now sanctify yourselves, and sanctify the house of Jehovah, the God of your fathers, and carry forth the filthiness out of the holy place.” Bearing in mind the “parallelism” [231]which is the chief characteristic of Hebrew poetry, it is plain that to sanctify here is synonymous with the “Carry forth the filthiness out of the holy places” found in the last part of the verse. So to sanctify here means to separate from ceremonial or moral defilement, to cleanse; and Sanctification is the process of separating, or state of being separated from ceremonial or moral defilement. The same use of the word is found in Lev. 11:44, “For I am Jehovah thy God: sanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy; for I am holy: neither shall ye defile yourselves with any manner of creeping thing that moveth upon the earth.” Here again it is clear that “sanctify yourselves” is synonymous with “be ye holy” and is contrasted with “defile yourselves” and means to separate from ceremonial or moral defilement, to cleanse; and Sanctification is the process of separating or state of being separated from ceremonial or moral defilement. The same meaning of sanctification is found in the New Testament in I Thess. 5:23, “And the God of Peace, Himself sanctify you wholly and may your Spirit and soul and body be preserved entire, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Here we see the close relation between entire sanctification and preserving wholly, without blame, and to sanctify here clearly means to separate from moral defilement, and sanctification here again is the process of separating or state of being separated from moral defilement. The same thing is evident [232]from the 4th chapter of this same epistle in the 7th verse (I Thess. 4:7), “For God called us not for uncleanness, but in sanctification.” Our “Sanctification” is here set in direct contrast with “uncleanness,” and hence it is evident that sanctification here means the state of being separated from all moral defilement. The same thing is evident from the 3rd verse of this same chapter, “For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye abstain from fornication.” Here again it is evident that Sanctification means separation from impurity or moral defilement. The two meanings, then, of Sanctification are: the process of separating or setting apart, or state of being separated or set apart, for God; and the process of separating or state of being separated from ceremonial or moral defilement. These two meanings of the word are closely allied—one cannot be truly separated to God without being separated from sin.

II. HOW MEN ARE SANCTIFIED

We come now to the second question, How are men sanctified? There are several parts to the complete answer of this question.

1. The first part of the answer is found in our text of this chapter, I Thess. 5:23, “And the God of Peace himself sanctify you wholly and may your Spirit and soul and body be preserved entire, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” [233]It appears from this verse that God sanctifies men, and Sanctification is God’s work. Both the separation of men from sin and their separation unto God, is God’s work. As it was God who in the old dispensation set apart the first-born of Israel unto Himself, so it is God who in the new dispensation sets apart the believer unto Himself and separates him from sin. Sanctification is primarily not our work but God’s.

2. The second part of the answer is found in Eph. 5:25, 26, “Husbands love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for it; that he might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing of water by the word.” Here we are taught that Christ sanctifies the church and that Sanctification is Christ’s work. The question, of course, arises, in what sense does Christ sanctify the church. The answer is found in Heb. 10:10, “By which will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” Here it appears that Jesus Christ sanctifies the church by giving Himself up a sacrifice for it. By thus giving Himself up for it as a sacrifice Christ sets the Church apart for God. Just as the blood of the Passover Lamb in the 11th and 12th chapters of Exodus set a difference between Israel and the Egyptians, so our Lord Jesus by the offering of His own body has forever put a difference between the believer in Himself and the world, and has forever set every believer apart for God. The Cross of Christ stands between the [234]believer and the world. The shed blood of Christ separates the believer from the world, purchases him to God and thus makes him to belong to God.

3. The third part of the answer to the question, how men are sanctified, is found in 2 Thess. 2:13 and in other passages, “But we are bound to give thanks always to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, for that God chose you from the beginning unto salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth.” It appears from this passage, as from other passages in the Bible, that it is the Holy Spirit who sanctifies the believer, and that Sanctification is the Holy Spirit’s work. Here the question arises, In what sense does the Holy Spirit sanctify the believer? In this sense, just as in the Old Testament type, tabernacle, altar and priest were set apart for God by the anointing oil (Lev. 8:10-12), so in the New Testament anti-type, the believer, who is both tabernacle and priest, is set apart for God by the anointing of the Holy Spirit. Further than that, it is the Holy Spirit’s work in the heart that overcomes the flesh and its defilements, and thus separates the believer from sin and clothes him with divine graces of character, and makes him fit to be God’s own. As Paul puts it in Gal. 5:22, 23, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control.” In opposition to this work of the Holy Spirit, we read in the immediately preceding verses what “the works of the flesh” are, an awful [235]catalogue of vileness and sin, and we are told in the 16th verse, “Walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.”

4. The fourth part of the answer to the question how we are sanctified is found in Heb. 13:12, “Wherefore, Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people through his own blood suffered without the gate.” It is plain from this passage that believers are sanctified through the blood of Jesus Christ. Here the question arises, In what sense does the blood of Jesus sanctify? The answer is plain: The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all the guilt of sin, and thus separates us from the mass of men under the curse of the broken law, and sets us apart for God (cf. 1 John 1:7, 9). In the Old Testament dispensation the blood of the sacrifice cleansed the Israelites from the guilt of ceremonial offenses and set them apart for God; in the New Testament anti-type the blood of Christ cleanseth the believer from the guilt of moral offenses and sets him apart for God.

5. The fifth part of the answer to the question, how men are sanctified, is found in John 17:17, “Sanctify them in the truth: thy word is truth.” Here our Lord Jesus in His prayer indicates that we are sanctified in the truth, and that the truth is the Word of God. In what sense does the Word of God sanctify? This question is plainly answered in different parts of the Word of God, where we are taught that the Word of God cleanses from the presence of sin, and thus [236]separates us from it and sets us apart to God. (Ps. 119:9, 11; John 15:3.) As we bring our lives into daily contact with the Word, the sins and imperfections of our lives and hearts are disclosed and put away, and thus we are more and more separated from sin unto God. (cf. John 13:10.)

6. The sixth part of the answer to the question, how men are sanctified, is found in 1 Cor. 1:30, “But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who was made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.” In this passage we are taught that Jesus Christ was made unto us from God sanctification. Just what does that mean? Simply this: that separation from sin and separation to God are provided for us in Christ Jesus and by the appropriation of Jesus Christ we obtain this sanctification thus provided. The more completely we appropriate Christ the more completely are we sanctified. But perfect sanctification is provided for us in Him, just as perfect wisdom is provided in Him (Col. 2:3). We appropriate either wisdom or sanctification or anything else that is provided for us in Christ in ever-increasing measure. Through the indwelling Christ presented to us by the Spirit in the Word, we are made Christlike and bear fruit.

7. The seventh part of the answer to the question of how men are sanctified is found in Heb.12:14, “Follow after peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no man shall see the Lord.” Here we are taught that we have our [237]own part in sanctification, and that if we are to be sanctified in the fullest sense, sanctification is something that we must pursue, or seek earnestly, if we are to obtain it. While sanctification is God’s work, we have our part in it, viz., to make it the object of our earnest desire and eager pursuit.

8. The eighth part of the answer to the question of how we are sanctified is found in Rom. 6:19, 22, “As ye presented your members as servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity, even so present your members as servants to righteousness unto sanctification. . . . But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto sanctification.”The meaning of these words is plain, and the teaching important and practical. We are here taught that we attain unto sanctification through presenting our members as servants (bondservants, or slaves) to righteousness and becoming ourselves bondservants unto God. In other words, if we wish to attain unto sanctification we should present our whole body and every member of it to God, to be His servants, belonging wholly unto Him, and we should present ourselves to God as His servants, to be His absolute property. This is the practical method of attaining unto sanctification, a method that is open to each one of us here to-day, no matter how weak we are in ourselves.

9. The ninth and final part of the answer to the question of how we are sanctified, is found in [238]Acts 26:18, “To open their eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive remission of sins and an inheritance among them that are sanctified by faith in Me.” Here we are told that we are sanctified by faith in Christ. Sanctification, just as justification, regeneration, and adoption, is conditioned upon faith. Faith is the hand that appropriates to ourselves the blessing of sanctification that God has provided for us through His Son Jesus Christ by His death on the cross, and through the power of the Holy Spirit working in us. And we claim sanctification by simple faith in Him who shed His blood and by surrendering ourselves to the control of the Holy Spirit, Whom Jesus Christ gives.

III. WHEN DOES SANCTIFICATION TAKE PLACE

We now come to the question about which there has been the most discussion, the most differences of opinion, the most controversy. When does sanctification take place? If we will go to our Bibles to get the answer to the question there need be no difference of opinion. There are three parts to the answer.

1. The first part of the answer is found in I Cor. 1:2, “Unto the Church of God, which is at Corinth, even them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place, [239]their Lord and ours.” Here the Holy Spirit speaking through the Apostle Paul, plainly declares that all the members of the church of God are already sanctified in Christ Jesus. Sanctification in this sense is not something that we are to look for in the future, it is something that has already taken place. The moment any one becomes a member of the Church of God by simple faith in Christ Jesus, for all who have faith in Christ Jesus are members of the Church of God, that moment that person is sanctified. Every saved man and woman in this building this morning, every one who has living faith in Jesus Christ, is sanctified. Our sanctification is involved in our salvation. But in what sense are we, that is, all believers, already sanctified? The answer to this question is found in a passage of Scripture to which we have already referred, Heb.10:10, 14, “By which will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. . . . For by one offering He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified.”The meaning is plain. By the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all on the Cross of Calvary as a perfect atonement for sin, every believer is cleansed forever from the guilt of sin. We are “perfected forever” as far as our standing before God is concerned, and are set apart for God. The sacrifice of Christ does not need to be repeated as were the Jewish sacrifices (V. I). The work is done once for all, sin is put away, and forever put away (Heb. 9:26; [240]cf. Gal. 3:13), and we are set apart forever as God’s peculiar and eternal possession. If any one asks you if you are sanctified; if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, i.e., if you have a living faith, in Jesus Christ, you have a right to say, “I am.” Every believer in Christ is a saint, a saint not in the sense in which that word is oftentimes used in modern usage, but in the Bible sense, as being set apart for God and belonging to God and being God’s peculiar property. But there is another sense in which every believer may be fully sanctified to-day. This is found in Rom. 12:1, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service.”In this passage we see that it is the believer’s present and blessed privilege, and important and solemn duty, to present his body to God a living sacrifice—not some part or parts of the body, but the whole body with its every member and every faculty. And when we do thus present our whole body to God a living sacrifice, then we are wholly sanctified. Such an offering is well-pleasing to God. As God in the Old Testament showed His pleasure in the offering by sending down fire to take it to Himself, so when the whole body is thus offered to God, God will send down fire again, the fire of the Holy Ghost, and take to Himself what is thus presented. The moment a believer does thus present himself a living sacrifice to God, then, so far as his will, the governing [241]purpose of his life, the very centre of his being, is concerned, he is wholly God’s, or “perfectly sanctified.” He may still, and will still, daily discover, as he studies the Word of God and is illumined by the Holy Spirit, acts of his, habits of life, forms of feeling, speech and action, that are not in conformity with this central purpose of his will, and these must be confessed to God as blameworthy and put away, and this department of his being and life brought, by God’s Spirit and the indwelling Christ, into conformity with God’s will as revealed in His Word. The victory in this newly discovered and unclaimed territory may be instantaneous. For example, I may discover in myself an irritability of temper that is manifestly displeasing to God. I can go to God, confess it, renounce it and then instantly, not by my own strength, but by looking to Jesus and claiming His patience and gentleness, overcome it and never have another failure in that direction. And so it is with every other sin and weakness in my life that I am brought to see is displeasing to God.

2. But this is not the whole answer to the question of when we are sanctified. The second part of the answer is found in I Thess. 3:12, “And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, even as we also do towards you.” And the 4th chapter of this same epistle, the 1st and 10th verses, “Finally then, brethren, we beseech you and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received of us how ye [242]ought to walk and to please God, even as ye do walk, that ye abound more and more. . . . For indeed ye do it toward all the brethren that are in all Macedonia. But we exhort you, brethren, that ye abound more and more.” And in II Pet. 3:18, “Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” And II Cor. 3:18, R. V., “But we all, with unveiled face reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, and even as from the Lord the Spirit.”And in Eph. 4:15, 16, “But speaking truth in love, may grow up in all things unto him, who is the head, even Christ; from whom all the body fitly framed and knit together through that which every joint supplieth, according to the working in due measure of each several part, maketh the increase of the body unto the building up of itself in love.” From these passages we see that there is a progressive work of Sanctification, an increasing in love, an abounding more and more in a godly walk and in pleasing God, a growing in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, a being transformed into the image of our Lord from glory unto glory, each new gaze at Him making us more like Him; a growing up into Christ in all things, until we attain unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Here we see there is a progressive work of Sanctification.

3. But we have not found the whole answer to [243]the question of When Men are Sanctified, even yet. We find the remainder of the answer to the question in our text, 1 Thess. 5:23 accurately translated as it is in the Revised Version, “And the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved entire, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Here we are plainly told that the complete sanctification of believers, complete in the fullest sense, is something to be sought for in prayer and that is to be accomplished by God in the future and perfected at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The same thought is found in this same book, the 3rd chapter and 12th and 13th verses, “And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, even as we do toward you, to the end that he may establish your hearts unblamable in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with his saints.” It is “at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His saints” that He is to establish our hearts unblamable in holiness before our God and Father and that our spirit and soul and body are to be preserved entire without blame. The same thought is found in I John 3:2, “Beloved, now are we children of God, it is not yet made manifest what we shall be. We know that, if he shall be manifested, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” It is not in the life that now is, and it is not at death, that we are entirely sanctified, spirit, soul, and body. It is at [244]the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is one of the many reasons why the well-instructed believer constantly cries, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus. Come quickly.“

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XII The Resurrection of the Body of Jesus and of Our Bodies

“Remember that Jesus Christ of the seed of David, was raised from the dead, according to my gospel.”—2 Tim. 2:8.

“For I delivered unto you first of all that which also I received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried; and that he hath been raised on the third day according to the scriptures.”—1 Cor. 15:3, 4.

“Now, if Christ is preached that he hath been raised from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, neither hath Christ been raised: and if Christ hath not been raised, then is our preaching vain, your faith also is vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God, because we witnessed of God that he hath raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that he did not rise. But if the dead are not raised; neither hath Christ been raised: and if Christ hath not been raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also that are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most pitiable.”—1 Cor. 15:12-19.

We commemorate to-day the resurrection of Christ from the dead. We shall see that the resurrection of Christ was a resurrection of the body of Christ, that it was not merely the indwelling Spirit of Jesus Christ, clothed upon with a new and entirely different body, that appeared to the disciples on the first [246]resurrection day, but that it was the body that was buried, raised again, and that this involves for us not merely the immortality of our souls, but the resurrection and eternal continuance of our bodies. Yet there are many who call themselves Christians and who say that they believe in the Bible, and who consider themselves perfectly orthodox Christians, who do not believe in the Resurrection of the Body, they merely believe in the immortality of the soul.

I. THE FACT OF THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY OF CHRIST AND OF OUR BODIES

We shall consider first the fact of the resurrection of the body of Jesus Christ and of our bodies.

1. Turn first, please, to II Tim. 2:8, “Remember that Jesus Christ of the seed of David, was raised from the dead, according to my gospel.” Here Paul explicitly declares that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead according to the gospel which he preached. Now what was raised? Certainly not His soul. That did not die. Turning to Acts 2:27-31, we find that the soul of the Lord Jesus went into Hades, the abode of the dead. These are Peter’s words, spoken on the day of Pentecost, there recorded, “Because thou wilt not leave my soul unto Hades, neither wilt thou give thy holy one to see corruption (i.e., in His body). Thou madest known unto me the ways of life; [247]thou shalt make me full of gladness with thy countenance. Brethren, I may say unto you freely of the patriarch David, that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us unto this day. Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God has sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne; he foreseeing this spake of the resurrection of Christ, that neither was he left unto Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus did God raise up, whereof we all are witnesses.” Peter here declares that the soul of Jesus went to Hades and that it was “His flesh,” i.e., His body, that was kept from corruption and afterwards raised. Turning now to I Cor. 15:3, 4, we read these words of Paul: “For we delivered unto you first of all that which also I received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried; and that he hath been raised on the third day according to the scriptures.” Paul here declares that Jesus Christ died and was buried and was raised. What was raised? Paul says, that that which “was buried” was raised. But what was buried? Not the soul of the Lord Jesus, but His body. Peter makes this even plainer, if possible, in I Pet. 3:18-20: “Because Christ also suffered for our sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God; being put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the spirit; in which also he went and preached to the spirits in prison; which aforetime [248]were disobedient, when the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah.” These words clearly mean that it was the body of Jesus that was put to death, but that the spirit still lived and went into Hades; so it was the bodythat was raised and to which the spirit that had not died or become unconscious came back. I Cor.15:12-19 removes all possibility of doubt on this point on the part of any man who goes to the Bible to find out what it actually teaches and not merely to see how he can twist and distort it to fit it into his own preconceived opinions. Paul’s Spirit-given words here read, “Now if Christ be preached that he hath been raised from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? (Mark, not no immortality of the soul, but no resurrection of the dead.) But if there is no resurrection of the dead neither hath Christ been raised: and if Christ hath not been raised, then is our preaching vain, your faith also is vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we witness of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up if so be that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised neither hath Christ been raised: and if Christ hath not been raised, your faith is vain, ye are yet in your sins. Then they also that have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most pitiable.” There is no honest mistaking the plain meaning of these words: by the “resurrection of the dead” Paul [249]plainly means a resurrection of the body; and in the whole chapter, beyond an honest doubt, he is not talking about the immortality of the soul, but the resurrection of the body. The whole argument turns on that, and Paul here clearly says if the body of Jesus was not raised, then the whole Christian system is a sham and our faith vain and that we Christians of all men are most to be pitied. For if the body of Jesus was not raised, and if our bodies are not to be raised, then we Christians are making tremendous sacrifices for a lie. Paul says further that if our bodies are not to be raised, then Christ’s body has not been raised and Christianity is a humbug. Christianity as taught in the New Testament stands or falls with the resurrection of the body of Jesus and the resurrection of our bodies. There is no room in this argument of Paul’s for “Pastor” Russell’s doctrine, that the resurrection of Jesus Christ was not a resurrection of the body that was laid in the grave, the body that was crucified, and that the body of Jesus Christ, the body that was laid in the sepulchre, was carried away and preserved somewhere, or else dissolved into gases. Paul says here, if the body that was laid in the sepulchre was not raised, “then is our preaching vain” and your “faith also is vain.”

In Luke 24:5, 6, the angels at the tomb from which the body of Jesus had disappeared are recorded as saying to the women who were seeking the body of Jesus to embalm it, “Why seek ye the [250]living among the dead? He is not here but is risen.” Now what were the women seeking? The body of Jesus to embalm it, and the angels say that what they were seeking was not there but was risen, had been raised. Furthermore, in the remainder of the 6th verse and verse 7, they say: “Remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, saying that the Son of Man must be delivered up into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.” Here they told the women plainly that what was crucified, which of course was the body of Jesus, was raised. If the actual, literal body of Jesus had not been raised, then these angels were liars. Do you believe that? These are only a few of the very many passages in which it is very clearly taught that the very body of Jesus was raised from the dead. The body of Jesus was raised from the dead and our bodies shall be raised from the dead, else Christianity is a lie from start to finish. But Christ was raised from the dead and we shall be raised. Or, as Paul puts it in the 20th verse of this same chapter, “But now hath Christ been raised from the dead, the first fruits of them that are asleep.” Our resurrection, the resurrection of our bodies, will be the harvest that follows the resurrection of the body of Christ, which was “the first fruits.”

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II. THE CHARACTER OF OUR RESURRECTION BODIES

Having clearly settled the fact of the resurrection of the body of Jesus Christ and of our bodies, let us next consider the character of our resurrection bodies.

1. First of all, we know that the body which is raised will not be exactly the same body that it was when it was laid in the grave. This appears from I Cor. 15:35-38: “But some will say, how are the dead raised? And with what manner of body do they come? Thou foolish one, that which thou thyself sowest is not quickened, except it die: and that which thou sowest, thou sowest not in the body that shall be, but a bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other kind; but God giveth it a body even as it pleased him, and to each seed a body of its own.” Here we are told that our bodies when they are raised will not be exactly the same as our bodies when they are buried, any more than the wheat that springs from the kernel of wheat that is planted is the same as the kernel that was planted. But just as what grows from the seed comes from the seed and bears the most intimate relation to the seed, so our resurrection bodies come from the body that is buried and bear the most intimate relation to it. The resurrection body is the outcome of the body that is buried. It is the old body quickened and transformed; or, as Paul puts it in Phil. 3:20, 21: “Jesus Christ [252] . . . shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, according to the working whereby he is able even to subject all things unto himself.”

2. The next thing that the Bible teaches about our resurrection bodies is that they are like the glorified body of Jesus Christ. This appears from the verses just quoted, Phil. 3:20, 21: “The Lord Jesus Christ . . . shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, according to the work whereby he is able even to subject all things unto himself.” Christ’s resurrection body was not the same body that was laid in the sepulchre. It was the old body transformed and delivered from the limitations of the body that He had while living here among men, and new qualities imparted to it, and our bodies will also be transformed into the likeness of this glorious body of Christ and thus delivered from the limitations to which they are subjected now, and new qualities imparted to them. It will be a transformed body; the character of its transformation is indicated by the transformation that took place in the body of Jesus Christ. Some suggestion as to what that transformed body of Jesus Christ was like is found in that anticipation of His resurrection which was seen by Peter, James and John on the mount of transfiguration. Matthew in his description of the appearance of Jesus at His transfiguration, tells us that “His face did shine as the sun, and his garments [253]became white as the light” (Matt. 17:2). Luke tells us that “the fashion of his countenance was altered and His raiment became white and dazzling” (Luke 9:29). Mark tells us that “He was transfigured before them: and his garments became glistering, exceeding white; so as no fuller on earth can whiten them” (Mark 9:2, 3).

3. The next thing that we are told about our resurrection bodies is that they will not be flesh and blood. In I Cor. 15:50, 51 we read, “Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” Paul is here talking about our resurrection bodies. It is in the resurrection chapter he says this, and he distinctly tells us that our resurrection bodies will not be “flesh and blood.”

4. But while our resurrection bodies will not be “flesh and blood,” they will have “flesh and bones.” This appears from what our Lord Himself says about His own resurrection body in Luke 24:39. Here we read that Jesus said: “See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye behold me having.” As our resurrection bodies are to be transformed into the likeness of His, we also must have “flesh and bones” in our resurrection bodies. Some have fancied that they saw a contradiction between what our Lord says here and what Paul says in the passage quoted above (I Cor. 15:50, 51), but there is no contradiction. “Flesh” we shall have, but not “flesh and blood,” [254]i.e., not flesh, the animating principle of which is blood. The question arises, What takes the place of the blood in our resurrection bodies? The answer seems to be that in the present life, “blood is the life” of the natural body, but in the life to come our bodies are to be, as we are told elsewhere in this same chapter, “spiritual bodies,” i.e., bodies, the animating principle of which is the Spirit of God, not our own blood. Our not having “blood” in our resurrection bodies involves many great and glorious possibilities, upon which we cannot dwell now.

5. In the fifth place (and closely connected with 3 and 4), our resurrection bodies will be incorruptible. We read in I Cor. 15:42: “So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption.” The thought of this word “incorruption” is that the body is not subject to decay, it is imperishable. Our present bodies are decaying all the time. We are perishing every day and every minute. My present body is disintegrating while I talk to you. But the bodies that we shall receive in the resurrection will be absolutely free from the liability to corruption or decay. They cannot disintegrate or suffer decay or deterioration of any kind.

6. The next thing that we are taught about the resurrection body is that it is a glorious body. This comes out in the first part of the following verse, I Cor. 15:43, “It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory.” Some idea of the glory, the [255]glorious beauty, of that body is suggested by the representation of our glorified Lord that we have in Rev. 1:13-17: “And in the midst of the candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot and girt about the breasts with a golden girdle. And his head and his hair were white as white wool, white as snow, and his eyes were as a flame of fire and his feet like unto burnished brass, as if it had been refined in a furnace, and his voice as the voice of many waters. And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth proceeded a sharp two-edged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength. And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as one dead, and he laid his right hand upon me saying, Fear not; I am the first and the last.” Our resurrection bodies will be like that.

7. Furthermore, our resurrection bodies will be powerful, or as we read in the last half of this same verse (1 Cor. 15:43), “It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.” Then all our weariness and weakness will be forever at an end. In our present bodies our bodies are oftentimes a hindrance to our highest aspirations, they thwart the carrying out of our loftiest purposes, we cannot put into execution our loftiest purposes, “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” But in our resurrection bodies the body will be able to accomplish all that the spirit purposes. The redeemed body will be a perfect counterpart of the [256]redeemed spirit that inhabits it. No deafness, dimsightedness nor blindness, no tired hands and feet, no maimed soldier boys coming home from the war.

8. It will be a heavenly body. This appears from the 47th to the 49th verses of this same chapter. “The first man is of (literally, out of) the earth, earthy: the second man is of (literally, out of) heaven: as is the earth, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.” The thought plainly is that our present bodies are of an earthly origin and an earthly character, but that the transformed body will be of a heavenly character. Paul explains it at length in 2 Cor. 5:1-4 where he says, “For we know that if the earthly house of our tabernacle be dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens. For verily in this (i.e., in this present earthly house, earthy body) we groan, longing to be clothed upon with our habitation which is from heaven (i.e., our heavenly body): if so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked. For indeed we that are in this tabernacle (i.e., in the present earthy body) groan, being burdened; not for that we would be unclothed, but that we would be clothed upon (i.e., with our heavenly body), that what is mortal may be swallowed up of life.”

9. Our transformed bodies will be luminous, [257]shining, dazzling, bright like the sun. This is seen in many passages. For example, Matt. 13:43, “Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” This is to be taken literally for it is in the interpretation of the parable and not in the parable. This suggests what we have already seen about the transfigured body of Jesus in Matt. 17:2, where we are told that “His face did shine as the sun, and his garments became white as the light.” We have the same thought also in the Old Testament in Dan. 12:3, where we are told, “And they that are wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever.” They shall shine literally as well as figuratively. Some suggestion of what the luminous glory of our faces and forms in our resurrection bodies will be is seen in the light that Paul tells us that he saw beaming from the person of Jesus when the glorified Jesus met him on the Damascus road. In Paul’s description of what he saw on that occasion, as given in Acts 26:12, 13, we read, “Whereupon as I journeyed to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests, at midday, O king, I saw on the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shining around about me and them that journeyed with me.” The light that Saul saw, as is evident from the whole account, was the light that shone from the person of our glorified Lord, [258]and in our resurrection bodies we shall be like Him.

10. Three interesting facts regarding our resurrection bodies are stated in Matt. 22:30 and Luke 20:35, 36. In Matt. 22:30 we read: “For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as angels in heaven.” In Luke 20:35, 36 we read: “But they that are counted worthy to attain to that world, and the resurrection of the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: for neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.” Taking these two passages together, we learn that our resurrection bodies are like the angels, that we do not marry in our resurrection bodies and that these bodies cannot die any more.

11. Though all these resurrection bodies are glorious, they differ from one another, each one having its own peculiar glory. This appears from 1 Cor. 15:41, 42: “There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differeth from another star in glory. So also is the resurrection from the dead.” Glorious as all our bodies shall be, there will be no tiresome uniformity even of glory in the world of resurrection bodies. Each body will have its own peculiar glory.

12. Let us say finally in regard to the character of our resurrection body, that the resurrection of our body will be the consummation of our [259]adoption, i.e., of our placing as sons, our manifestations as sons of God. In Rom. 8:23 we read: “We, which have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for our adoption (i.e., our placing as sons), to wit, the redemption of our body.” The resurrection body will be the consummation of our placing as sons, i.e., in the resurrection body it will be outwardly manifested that we are sons of God. Before His incarnation Christ was “in the form of God.” (Phil. 2:6), i.e., in the visible appearance of God. So shall we also be in the resurrection, for our bodies shall be like His. This throws light upon what Paul meant when he said in Col. 3:4: “When Christ, who is our life, shall be manifested, then shall we also with him be manifested in glory.” And also it throws light on what John meant when he says in I John 3:2, R. V.: “Beloved, now are we the children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be. We know that, if he shall be manifested, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.”

III. WHEN WILL THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY TAKE PLACE?

There remains but one question to be considered and we can deal with that very briefly. That question is, when will the resurrection of the body take place? This question is plainly answered time and again in the Bible. For example, it is [260]answered in Phil. 3:20, 21: “For our citizenship is in heaven; from whence also we wait for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, according to the working whereby he is able even to subject all things unto himself.” Here it is plainly declared that the transformation of our bodies into the likeness of the glorious body of Christ will take place when the Lord Jesus whom we are awaiting shall appear from heaven. The same thought is given in I Thess. 4:16, 17: “For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven, with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we which are alive, that are left, shall together with them be caught up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” The question will arise in some of our minds, what about us in the meantime if we chance to die before the coming of the Lord? This question also is plainly answered in II Cor. 5:1-8: “For we know that if the earthly house of our tabernacle (our present bodies) be dissolved (die and decay) we have a building from God, a house not made with hands (our resurrection body that we are to get at the coming of the Lord), eternal, in the heavens. For verily in this (i.e., while living in this present body) we groan, longing to be clothed upon with our habitation which is from heaven (our resurrection body) if so be that being clothed [261]we shall not be found naked. For indeed we that are in this tabernacle(this present earthy body) do groan, being burdened; not for that we would be unclothed (i.e., not that we would merely get rid of our present bodies), but that we would be clothed upon (i.e., that we would receive our resurrection bodies) that what is mortal may be swallowed up of life. Now he that wrought us for this very thing is God, who gave unto us the earnest of the Spirit (i.e., the Holy Ghost, whom we have received as the earnest of the full redemption in our resurrection bodies which are to be obtained at the coming of the Lord). Being therefore always of good courage and knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body (i.e., while we are still in our earthly life in this present earthly body) we are absent from the Lord (for we walk by faith not by sight); we are of good courage, I say, and are willing rather to be absent from the body (i.e., to have our present earthly body die even before we get our resurrection bodies, which we shall not get until the return of the Lord), and to be at home with the Lord.” The teaching of this plainly is that if we die before the return of the Lord and therefore before we obtain our resurrection body, our spirits are unclothed, i.e., they are unclothed from this present body and not yet clothed upon with the resurrection body, but that we are “at home with the Lord” in conscious blessedness, in a condition that is far better than that that we are in in this present life (see [262]Phil. 1:23, R. V.), but not so perfect as that condition which shall be when our redeemed spirits are clothed upon with our resurrection bodies. It will be at the return of the Lord Jesus that we get our full redemption. That is one reason why “we wait” (literally, assiduously wait) for Him (Phil. 3:20, 21, see Greek). That is one reason why we long for the return of the Lord. There are many reasons why we long for the return of our Lord. All the great problems that are confronting us at this present time in national and international life, in social, commercial and political life, will be solved when He comes, and will never be solved until He comes; and for these reasons we long for Him. But we long for Him also because while this present body serves many a useful purpose for the redeemed spirit that inhabits it, it is often a hindrance. It is often subject to aches and pains, to frailties, and it is a constant temptation to folly. But when our Lord Jesus comes again He will transform this present body of our humiliation into the likeness of His own glorious body and at that time we shall know what “full salvation” means, when we shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of our Father.

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[263]

XIII THE DEVIL

“The Devil. . . .is.”—John 8:44.

“The Devil Sinneth.”—1 John 3:8.

INTRODUCTION

Our subject in this chapter is The Devil. I have two texts—John 8:44: “The Devil. . . .is.”

The second text is 1 John 3:8: “The Devil Sinneth.” The Bible doctrine concerning the Devil, his Existence, Nature, Character, Work and Destiny is a fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith, and is of vital importance. The teaching of the Bible on this subject is not a mere matter of theory or dogma. It is a matter of most practical every day importance. Experience shows that if men are in error in regard to this subject, they are pretty sure to be in error on other questions that are fundamental. When men and women begin to question the existence of a personal Devil it is pretty sure that before long they will be questioning a good many other things regarding which a true child of God should have no questions. Doubt of the existence of a personal [264]Devil is widespread to-day. Many preachers in supposedly orthodox pulpits do not hesitate to say, “I do not believe in the existence of a personal Devil.” Denial of the existence of a personal Devil is one of the main points in the system which is so widespread to-day, and which is doing so much evil, that with considerable reason it has been called “The Devil’s Masterpiece”—Christian Science. A well-known and popular pastor in this city some months ago proclaimed to his people that he was going to preach to them a gospel “without an atonement of blood, without an infallible Bible, without hell, and without a personal Devil.” If he does preach to them a system of doctrine without any of these he will preach some other system of doctrine than that which is contained in the book, which our Lord Jesus Christ has endorsed as the Word of God, i.e., the Bible.

I. THERE IS A DEVIL

The first point to make clear is that there is a Devil. This is plain from our first text, John 8:44: “The Devil. . . .is.” The whole verse reads: “Ye are of your father, the devil, and the lusts of your father it is your will to do: He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father thereof.” These are the words of Jesus Christ. With any one who has any [265]right to call himself a Christian, the words of Jesus Christ have infinitely more weight than the words of Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy or any one else, or all others together, and Jesus here says, “The Devil. . . .is.” But this is not the only passage by any means in which our Lord Jesus asserts in the most emphatic and most unmistakable terms the existence of the Devil. Turn to Matt. 13:19, and you will read these words: “When any one heareth the word of God, and understandeth it not, then cometh the evil one and snatcheth away that which has been sown in his heart.” These words are found in the interpretation of a parable—the Parable of the Sower. It is impossible to say that these words are figurative. In parables we have figures, in the explanation of the parables we have the literal facts that the figures symbolise, and these words are not taken from the parable, but from our Lord’s own explanation of the parable, and here we are distinctly told that there is a person, who is here called “The Evil One,” whose business it is to snatch away the Word of God when it has been sown in hearts that do not understand and heed it. If evil is only impersonal and our Lord had only referred to impersonal influences, or human influences, as taking away the Word out of the hearts where it had been sown, these words of His would be utterly without meaning. That Jesus Christ believed that there was a person of whom He here speaks as “The Evil One” and of whom [266]He elsewhere speaks, as we shall see directly, as “The Devil,” admits of no doubt if we grant that the Lord Jesus was an honest man. We must, therefore, if we believe in the Lord Jesus, believe that there is a Devil. We can deny his existence only by questioning either the honesty or the intelligence of our Lord. He certainly taught that there was a Devil. It would be easy to show from the teachings of Peter (1 Pet. 5:8, 9; Acts 5:3) and from the teachings of John (John 13:2) and from the teachings of Paul (Eph. 6:10-12) also that there is a Devil; but that is unnecessary for any one who has any right to call himself a Christian, for if the Lord says so, that settles it, and the Lord Jesus does say “The devil. . . .is.” If there is no Devil, then our Lord Jesus was either a fool or a fraud. The question of believing in the personality of the Devil involves the honour of our Lord Jesus. If His teaching is not to be trusted on this point, it is not to be trusted on any other point, and the denial of a personal Devil involves the trustworthiness of the Lord Jesus as a Teacher and a Saviour at every point. So we see that the question of the existence of the Devil is fundamental and of vital importance.

II. THE NATURE OF THE DEVIL

Having settled it that there is a Devil, we now face the question as to the nature of the Devil.

1. First of all, the Bible teaches us that the [267]Devil is a person. This comes out in our second text, 1 John 3:8: “The devil sinneth.” Only a person can sin. When we say that the Devil is a person we do not mean that necessarily he has a body, certainly not such a body as he is pictured as having in various paintings and engravings that are supposed to represent the Devil. A person is any being who knows and feels and wills. When we say that the Devil is a person we mean that he is a being who has intelligence, feeling and will, that he is not a mere principle of evil. The personality of the Devil is taught over and over again in the Bible. Just a few illustrations in addition to our texts. Turn again to Matt. 13:19: “When any one heareth the word of God, and understandeth it not, then cometh the evil one, and snatcheth away that which hath been sown in his heart.” The representation of this passage is the representation of a person. He is called “The Evil One,” not merely “evil,” but “The Evil One,” which of course is the representation of a person. If evil is only impersonal, or if it only works through human beings, these words of our Lord Jesus would be without meaning. The personality of the Devil comes out again very clearly and very forcibly in Eph. 6:10-12: “Finally, brethren, be strong in the Lord and the strength of his might. (11) Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. (12) For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the [268]principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” Here Paul distinctly tells us that the great reason why we need to be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might and why we need to put on the whole armour of God, is because there is a being of great cunning, subtlety and power, a person named “The Devil,” and that this being has under him a multitude of other personalities of such dignity and power as to be called by the titles: “principalities,” “powers,” “world rulers,” “spiritual hosts of wickedness.” Beyond a question our Lord Jesus, and the Apostle Peter and the Apostle John and the Apostle Paul believed in and taught the existence of a personal Devil. If there is not a personal Devil we may as well give up our Bible, for in that case it is a book that is full of folly and of fraud. If there is not a personal Devil we must give up our belief in the inspired authority of the Apostle Paul, the Apostle Peter, the Apostle John, and we must give up our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. No intelligent student of the Bible can retain his faith in the inspiration and authority of that Book, or his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, if he gives up belief in the existence of a personal Devil. As intelligent men and women, we must take our choice between believing in the existence of a personal Devil or giving up our faith in Jesus Christ and Christianity. Any system of doctrine that denies the [269]existence of a personal Devil is radically unchristian whatever name it may arrogate to itself.

2. The second thing that the Bible teaches as to the nature of the Devil, is that, the Devil is a being of very great power and authority. This comes out in the verses we have just read, Eph. 6:10, 11: “Finally be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. (11) Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.” These words make it clear that the Devil is so mighty that the people of God cannot resist his cunning wiles without having on the whole armour of God, and it is also evident from the 10th verse that we cannot resist his power unless we are strengthened with the strength of God. And this is not all: in the 12th verse we read: (12) “For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” These are tremendous words. If they mean anything, they certainly mean that there are beings of great authority and dignity who are under the leadership of the one supreme being of evil, the Devil. The conflict that we have on hand as believers in Christ is terrific. The conflict that the Allies have on hand with the mighty military forces of the Kaiser is nothing to the battle we have on hand with the Devil and his hosts. We are fools if we underestimate the battle. On the other hand, we must [270]not over-estimate it. While our conflict is with the Devil, and while our wrestling is against “the principalities,” against “the powers,” against “the world-rulers,” against “the spiritual hosts of wickedness,” nevertheless He that is for us is far mightier than they. The Devil is mighty but our Saviour is almighty. It is quite possible for one to become morbid over this subject of the Devil, and to become utterly discouraged and even deranged. That is entirely unnecessary and unwarranted. While our conflict is with the Devil and his mighty hosts, God has provided for us a strength and an armour whereby we may “be able to quench all the fiery darts of the Evil One” and to “withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand” (v. 13).

3. The third thing that the Bible teaches us as to the Nature of the Devil is that, the Devil is a being of great majesty and dignity of position. Turn to Jude 8, 9: “Yet in like manner these also in their dreamings defile the flesh, and set at nought dominion, and rail at dignities (the literal translation of the Greek word rendered dignities is “glories“). (9) But Michael the Archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing judgment, but said, The Lord rebuke thee.” From these words it is evident that the position of the Devil was so exalted that even Michael the archangel did not dare to bring a railing judgment against him. The context seems to [271]imply that the position of the Devil was more exalted than that of Michael the archangel himself. The Devil of the Bible is not at all the Devil of common thought. He is not a being hideous in appearance, with hoofs and horns and tail. He is not even the being pictured by Milton or Bunyan. He is a being of very great original majesty and dignity, a being of great wisdom and power. When people talk lightly and contemptuously about the Devil they display gross ignorance of what the Bible teaches about him. It is true that he is evil in character and therefore called “The Evil One” (John 5:19, R. V.). It is true he is a liar and a murderer (John 8:44), it is true that he is full of malignity (II Cor. 4:4): but he is a being of great dignity and majesty, so that even Michael the archangel durst not bring against him a railing accusation.

4. The Bible teaches furthermore that the Devil is “the prince of this world.” Our Lord Jesus Himself taught this. He says in John 12:31: “Now is the judgment of this world; now shall the prince of this world be cast out.” The Greek word translated “world” in this passage is kosmos, and the thought is of the present world order, and our Lord’s teaching is that the Devil is the prince of this present world order. We have the same teaching of our Lord in John 14:30, where we read: “I will no more speak much with you, for the prince of the world cometh: and he hath nothing in me.”These words of our Lord [272]are found in what many regard as the most precious chapter in the Bible, the 14th chapter of John, and if we give up this teaching of our Lord regarding Satan we must give up, not merely the Bible as a whole, but this most precious chapter in the Bible. We find the Lord teaching the same thing again on that same night, the night before His crucifixion, in John 16:11 where he says: “The prince of this world is judged”—the evident reference being to Satan.

How the Devil came to be Prince of this world it may be impossible for us to say, but that he is so admits of no question, if we are to accept the teaching of Jesus Christ, and any one who will study the ruling principles of commercial life, of political life, of social life, and above all of international relations, to such an one it will become perfectly evident that the Devil is the one who is master of the present order of things. If we ever doubted before that there was a Devil, and just such a Devil as the Bible pictures, we can scarcely doubt it now, when we consider the action of the rulers of the earth in this present mad world war. How could beings so intelligent in matters of science and philosophy and economics as the present rulers of Germany are, ever be guilty of plunging the nations of the earth into this mad war? There is but one reasonable answer: because there is a Devil who rules the present Kosmos, or world order, and he controls the Kaisers and the Reichstags of the world and will [273]until the true Prince comes, the Prince of Peace, our Lord Jesus Christ.

III. THE CHARACTER OF THE DEVIL

1. As to the character of the Devil, the Bible teaches us that he is a being absolutely wicked. In Matt. 13:19 he is called, “The Wicked One.” That is to say, he is one who is the personal embodiment of absolute wickedness. In I John 5:19 R. V. also he is called “The Wicked One.” God is “The Holy One,” that is to say the One who is the personal embodiment of perfect holiness. The Devil is just His opposite, the personal embodiment of consummate wickedness.

2. The Devil is to evil what God is to good. In I John 3:8, we read: “He that doeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. To this end was the son of God manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.” This does not mean that the Devil sinned from the very origin of all things and that he was created sinful, for we learn from Ezek. 28:15 that the Devil was created upright. The verse does mean, however, that Satan is the original sinner. The expression “from the beginning” is characteristic of the epistle from which these words are taken and does not necessarily mean from the origin of things (see for example verse 11). In a similar way we are told in one of our texts—John 8:44—that the Devil was a murderer from the beginning and [274]that he is “A liar and the father of it.” There is absolutely “no truth in him.” So much for the nature and character of the Devil.

IV. THE WORK OF THE DEVIL

We come now to the question of the Work of the Devil, or How the Devil Manifests Himself, and What He Does.

1. In the first place we are taught that the Devil tempts men to sin. We have a most striking illustration of this in his temptation of our Lord. We have in the Bible three accounts of this temptation. We will look at Matthew’s account. Matt. 4:1-9: “Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. (2) And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he afterward hungered. (3) And the tempter came and said unto him, If thou art the son of God, command that these stones become bread. (4) But he answered and said, It is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. (5) Then the devil taketh him into the Holy City; and he set him on the pinnacle of the temple. (6) And saith unto Him, If thou art the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, he shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and, on their hands they shall bear thee up, lest haply thou dash thy foot against a stone. (7) Jesus said unto him, Again it is written, thou shalt not make trial of [275]the Lord thy God. (8) Again, the devil taketh him unto an exceeding high mountain, and showeth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; (9) And He said unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.” Of course we have not time this morning to go into the whole question of our Lord’s temptation, but this much is certainly plain, that the Devil is represented as the tempter, tempting our Lord. If there is no personal Devil, as so many would have us believe, or if he is not the tempter, there would be absolutely no reason for bringing him into this account. As the Devil tempted our Lord, so he tempts us to-day. And it is to be noticed that he does not tempt us merely to gross animal lusts and vile sins, but with subtle spiritual temptations, and above all he tempts us to doubt God’s Word. It was with this form of temptation that he first assaulted our Lord. God had just said to the Lord Jesus at His baptism, “Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22), and Satan came insinuating doubt of God’s Word by beginning his temptation with these words: “If thou art the Son of God,” and again further down in the temptation, he repeats the doubt, saying to the Lord Jesus again: “If thou art the Son of God.” In just the same way Satan began his assault upon Eve in the Garden of Eden, by insinuating a doubt of God’s Word and of God’s goodness. He began [276]by saying: “Yea, hath God said. . . .?” (Gen. 3:2), and further on when Eve stated exactly what God had said, the Devil flatly contradicted and said: “Ye shall not surely die” (literally, Dying, thou shalt not die) when God had said: “Thou shalt surely die” (Dying, thou shalt die). This is Satan’s favourite method of attack to-day. He gets us to doubt God’s Word. Satan’s most effective mode of work is by leading men into doubt and into error on fundamental points. The saloons and the gambling hells and the brothels are not the chief spheres of Satan’s activities, but the schools and colleges and theological seminaries where he is inducing men and women, and callow youths and maidens, to doubt the truth of God’s Word, and to reject the fundamental truths of God’s word and accept Satan’s errors in their place. Satan knows well; that, if he can get men to doubting God’s Word, it is easy to lead them into the vilest sins. False doctrine has been a more prolific source of the vilest sins than even the saloons.

2. But Satan not merely tempts men to sin by insinuating doubts of God’s Word, he also has hissynagogues and ministers among men to do his work. Turn to Rev. 3:9: “Behold, I give of the synagogue of Satan, of them that say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee.” What I wish you [277]to notice here are the words, “The synagogue of Satan.” In this case it was a Jewish synagogue, but now-a-days, it is often a so-called Christian church. In II Cor. 11:14, 15 we have an even more remarkable passage: “For even Satan fashioneth himself into an angel of light. (15) It is no great thing therefore if his ministers also fashion themselves as ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.” Here we are told that Satan has his ministers. They do not advertise themselves as ministers of Satan, oftentimes they are not even conscious that they are; but they put themselves forward as “ministers of righteousness.” They advocate “ethical culture,” a system of salvation without atoning blood. They are frequently men of very attractive personality and great intellectual brilliance and ability, but they are doing the Devil’s work. Satan is never so dangerous as when he “Fashioneth himself into an angel of light,” and no other ministers of his are so dangerous as the men and women of attractive personality and brilliant intellectual gifts who are undermining the faith of God’s children, or who are teaching various forms of seductive and alluring error, “Christian Science,” “New Thought,” “Theosophy,” “Occultism” (Spiritualism), and all that species of cults.

3. We have not time to speak here of Satan’s work as the author of sickness (Acts 10:38; Luke 13:16), and as the one who has the power of death (Heb. 2:14).

[278]4. But we must also speak of another work of the Devil. It is set forth in II Cor. 4:3, 4, R. V.: “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled in them that perish: (4) In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God should not dawn upon them.” We read here that it is the work of Satan to blind the minds of unbelievers in order “That the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not dawn upon them.” It is evident then that the Devil is the author of false views, especially false views of the person of Christ. He is the author of Unitarianism, and the denial of the Deity of our Lord in all its forms. He so blinds the minds of men who submit to his blinding that the Divine “Glory of Christ,” “who is the very image of God,” is hidden from them. This explains why it is that Unitarianism in all its various forms persists even after its folly has been so often exposed. Satan’s work along this line is to culminate at the appearing of the Anti-Christ, “Even he, whose coming is according to the working of Satan with all power, and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceit of unrighteousness for them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.” (II Thess. 2:9, 10, R. V.)

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V. THE DEVIL’S DESTINY

We come now to the fifth general division of our subject—The Devil’s Destiny.

1. Turn in the first place to Rev. 20:1-3: “And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the keys of the abyss and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold of the dragon, the old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and cast him into the abyss, and shut it, and sealed it over him, that he should deceive the nations no more, until the thousand years should be finished: After this he must be loosed for a little time.” We are here taught that at the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ Satan shall be bound with a great chain and cast into the abyss for a thousand years. The abyss, or as it is translated in the Authorised Version, “bottomless pit,” does not mean hell. Satan, as we shall see further on, shall be cast into hell later.

2. Turn now to Rev. 20:7, 8: “And when the thousand years are finished, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall come forth to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to the war: The number of whom is as the sand of the sea.” We are here taught that at the end of the Millennium, the thousand years, Satan shall be loosed for a little season from the abyss into which he has been cast chained, and that he shall [280]come forth to deceive the nations. But the time of his power then will be very brief.

3. In Rev. 20:10 we find the ultimate destiny of the Devil: “And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where are also the beast and the false prophet; and they shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.” Here is one of the points at which the theories of the “Reconciliation” people and “Universalists” generally break down. The argument of the Reconciliationists and Universalists, by which they attempt to prove that all men must ultimately be saved, carried to its logical issue, if it proved anything, would prove the salvation of Satan also, and this many of them do teach. They say plainly that the Devil will ultimately be brought to repentance and saved. Indeed that is what I believed and taught in my early ministry. But this passage which we have just read shows the impossibility of this being true. “The lake of fire” was “prepared for the Devil and his angels.” Our Lord Himself says in Matt. 25:41 that when He comes back to judge this world He will say to those on His left hand: “Depart from me, ye cursed into the eternal fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels.” Hell was not prepared for men, but for the Devil and his angels. If any man goes there it will be because he has chosen to cast in his lot with the Devil rather than with God. Therefore they go where [281]the Devil goes. Every one who rejects Jesus Christ is throwing in his lot with the Devil.

VI. HOW TO GET VICTORY OVER THE DEVIL

Now just for a few moments let me show you from the Word of God, how, in practical every day life, to get the victory over the Devil. There are four things to be borne in mind.

1. Read first, James 4:7, “Be subject therefore unto God: but resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” This teaches us that, we are first of all to surrender to God and then to resist the Devil and that, if we do resist him, for all his cunning and power, he will flee from us. Although the Devil is strong, it is ours in God’s strength to withstand him and overcome him.

2. Now turn to I John 2:14: “I have written unto you, fathers, because ye know him which is from the beginning. I have written unto you young men, because ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the evil one.” This passage teaches us that, it is when we feed upon the Word of God and store the Word of God in our hearts, thus having it abiding in us, that we shall be able to overcome the Devil. If we neglect the study of the Bible for a single day, we leave an open door for the Devil to enter. I have been a Christian for forty-three years, but I would not dare to neglect the study of God’s word for one single day. Why not? Because there is a [282]Devil; and, if I neglect the study of the Word of God for a single day, I leave a window open for him to enter and leave myself too weak to cope with him and conquer him. But if we will feed upon the Word of God daily, and trust in God, we can resist the devil at every point. Though the Devil is cunning and strong, God is stronger, and God imparts His strength to us through His written word.

3. Turn now to Eph. 6:11: “Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.” Here we are taught that, in order “to stand against the wiles of the Devil” we must “Put on the whole armour of God.” What that armour is, is found in the verses that immediately follow. This armour, this whole armour, this “panoply of God,” is at our disposal. The fact that there is a Devil, that he is a being of such majesty, dignity, cunning, and power, that he is so incessantly plotting our ruin and to undermine our faith, is no reason for fear or discouragement. By taking “the shield of faith” we shall be “able to quench all the fiery darts of the evil one,” by taking “the helmet of salvation,” and the “sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God,” and by “praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit,” it is our privilege to have victory over the Devil every day of our lives, every hour of the day, and every minute of the hour.

4. The final step in the way to get victory [283]over Satan is found in Eph. 6:10: “Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of his might.” The way to get victory over Satan is to give up all confidence in our own strength and believe in the almighty strength of Jesus Christ and claim that strength for ourselves. It is in the strength of Jesus Christ’s might that we shall get the victory over “the evil one.” In the strength of His might, as we have already said, it is our privilege to have victory over the Devil every day of our lives, every hour of the day and every minute in the hour. Hallelujah!

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XIV Is There a Literal Hell?

“In danger of the hell of fire.”—Matt. 5:22.

My subject is “Is There a Literal Hell?” I wish that the things that I am going to preach to you were not true. God wishes so, too, “The Lord is longsuffering to usward, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). But God has made us in His own image, with a moral nature, with a capacity for self-determination, with a power of choice; and men can if they will choose darkness instead of light. They can choose to trample God’s saving love under foot. They can choose to reject the One who was wounded for their transgressions and bruised for their iniquities, and upon whom the chastisement of their peace was laid; and some will so choose. I am sorry that they will. I would be willing to die to save them. The Lord Jesus did die to save them. But they spurn Him. So these things that I am to speak to-night are true and I am going to preach them in order that you may know them, and in order that you may be sure of them. I am [285]going to preach about hell to keep as many of you as possible from going there.

Is There a Literal Hell? Almost all intelligent people who believe that there is a future life at all, believe that men and women who sin in the present life and who die impenitent and unsaved will be punished to some extent at least in the life that is to come. They believe that whoever sins must suffer, and that the suffering which sin causes will not be limited to this present life. But, while almost all intelligent people who believe in a future life at all believe that there is some kind of future punishment, there are many that do not believe in a literal hell, that is, in a place of awful and unutterable torment. Is there a hell? Is there a place to which impenitent men and women will go some time after death and suffer agonies far beyond those that any one suffers here on earth? Some say, “yes,” there is a hell. Many, even including not a few supposedly orthodox preachers, say, “No, the only hell is the inward hell in a man’s heart.” How are we to settle this question? How are we to determine who is right? We cannot settle it as some are trying to settle it by “counting noses.” Majorities are not always right. Especially is it true that majorities are not always right in science and in philosophy and in theology. What the majority of scientists firmly believed a century ago the majority of scientists laugh at to-day. What the majority of philosophers once [286]believed, the majority of philosophers to-day regard as ridiculous. So majorities cannot always be right. And, therefore, we cannot settle this question by asking what the majority believe.

We cannot settle the question by reasoning as to what such a being as God must do, for how can finite and foolish man judge what an infinitely holy and infinitely wise God would do? Man never appears more foolish than when he tries to reason out what an infinite God must do. All these arguments about hell by reasoning as to what God must, or must not, do are stupid. A child of seven cannot reason infallibly as to what a wise and good man of fifty will do, much less can puny creatures of the dust (such as you and I are, such as the most learned philosophers and theologians are) reason infallibly as to what an infinitely wise and infinitely holy God must do. It is, however, far easier to believe in a literal hell, and an everlasting hell, from the standpoint of pure reasoning to-day than it was three years and a half ago. Nevertheless, we cannot settle the question as to whether there is a literal hell by reasoning even to-day as to what such a being as God must do.

There is only one way to settle this question right, that is by going to the Bible and finding out what it says, and taking our stand firmly and unhesitatingly upon that. We have seen the last three Sunday nights that the Bible is beyond an honest question God’s word, so whatever the Bible [287]says on this subject, or any other subject, is true and is sure. Especially is it true that we must go to the Bible and find what it says in the matter of future punishment and future blessedness. All we know about the future is what the Bible tells us. All reasoning about the future outside of what the Bible tells us is pure guessing, it is a waste of time. We know nothing about heaven but what the Bible tells us, and we know nothing about hell but what the Bible tells us. On a subject like this one ounce of God’s revelation is worth a thousand tons of man’s speculation. The whole question is what does the Bible say about Hell? But while we are dependent entirely upon the Bible, the Bible clearly reveals all that we need to know. The Bible tells us a great deal about heaven, and it tells us still more about hell, and it is an interesting fact that the Lord Jesus Himself, whose authority many are ready to accept who do not accept the authority of the rest of the Bible, is the One Who tells us the most about hell, and the most clearly about hell. Indeed, all that I am going to show you is what the Lord Jesus Himself says on this subject.

I. HELL AND HADES ARE NOT THE SAME

First of all, in order to clear the way for the study of what Jesus says on this subject, let me call your attention to the fact that Hell and Hades [288]are not the same. There are numerous places in the Authorised Version where we find the word “Hell” but where that word does not occur in the Revised Version, and where the word “Hades” is substituted for the word “Hell.” The Revised Version is right at that point, as every Greek scholar knows. Hades is not Hell. “Hades” is the Greek equivalent of the Old Testament Hebrew word “Sheol.” This Hebrew word “Sheol” is frequently translated in the Authorised Version of the Old Testament by the English word “Grave.” It ought never to be so translated, as it never means “Grave.” I have taken the pains to look up every passage where this Hebrew word is used and in not a single instance does it mean “Grave.” There is an entirely different Hebrew word which can properly be translated in that way. “Sheol,” or New Testament “Hades,” means the place of departed spirits. Sheol (or Hades) before the coming, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord, was the place where all the spirits of the dead, good and bad, went. Before the ascension of Christ, in Hades was Paradise, the place of the blessed dead, and Tartaros, the place of the wicked dead. At His ascension Christ emptied the Paradise of Hades, and took it up to Heaven with Him, as we read in Eph. 4:8, “When he ascended on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men.” Before Christ ascended Paradise was down, now it is up. Christ said to the repentant thief on the [289]cross, “Verily I say unto thee, to-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise,”and Jesus Himself taught us He went down into “the heart of the earth” (Luke 12:40) and the dying thief went down with Him into this subterranean Paradise. I think Jesus Himself went also into that part of Hades where the lost spirits were (1 Peter 3:18-20), but that is another story that we will consider later. All that is important now is that the repentant, dying thief went down into Paradise, but after the ascension of the Lord, when Paul went to Paradise, he was “caught up even to the third heaven into Paradise” (II Cor. 12:2-4). No blessed dead are now left in Hades, and ultimately “death” and “Hades,” i.e., all that are dead who have not yet been raised, or caught up into the Celestial Paradise, all who are still in Hades, shall be “cast into the lake of fire” (Rev. 20:14). This “lake of fire” into which death and Hades are to be cast, is the true and ultimate Hell.

II. THERE IS TO BE A LITERAL HELL

Having cleared the way by removing the misapprehension so common in the minds of people to-day, that Hades and Hell are the same, now let us say next that there is to be a Hell. The Bible says so, Jesus says in Matt. 5:22, “but I say unto you, that every one who is angry with his brother, shall be in danger of the judgment; and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger [290]of the council; and whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of the hell of fire.”In the 29th verse of the same chapter the Lord Jesus says: “And if thy right eye causeth thee to stumble pluck it out, and cast it from thee; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.” And in the 30th verse He says: “And if thy right hand causeth thee to stumble, cut it off, and cast it from thee; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.” We read again what our Lord Jesus said in Mark 9:45-48, “and if thy foot causeth thee to stumble, cut it off; it is good for thee to enter into life halt, rather than having thy two feet to be cast into hell. And if thine eye causeth thee to stumble, cast it out; it is good for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell; where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.” Some one may say that these words of our Lord are figurative. There is not the slightest suggestion that they are figurative. The whole context is against their being taken figuratively. It is indeed wrong to interpret figurative language as if it were literal, but it is just as unwarranted and just as wrong to interpret literal language as if it were figurative. Of course, the word “Gehenna,” which is translated “Hell” is derived from the valley of Hinnom, [291]where in ancient times human sacrifices were offered, but the useof the word is literal throughout the New Testament, though its derivation is figurative. Many words that are figurative in their derivation are literal in their use, and the meaning of words is never determined by derivation, but by usage. For example, our word “eclipse” is a figure of speech. According to the figure it is a leaving or failing or fainting of the moon or sun, whichever it may be that is eclipsed. But though it is figurative in its derivation, the ordinary usage of it is literal. The universal use in the New Testament of “Gehenna” or “Hell” is literal. The word here translated “Hell” is found twelve times in the New Testament, eleven of these twelve times it is used by our Lord Jesus Himself, and He uniformly uses it, as in the passages which I have just read, of a literal hell. If there is no literal hell, then our Lord Jesus was either a fool or a fraud. He certainly meant to convey the impression that there was a literal hell. There can be no doubt of that, if we go to His words to find out what is the natural meaning of them. If there is no literal hell then either Jesus thought there was one when there was not, in which case He was a fool; or else He knew that there was not, but tried to make men think that there was, in which case He was a fraud. There is no other alternative but either to believe that there is a literal hell or else to believe that Jesus of Nazareth, our Lord and [292]Saviour, was a fool or a fraud. I know that Jesus was not a fool. I know that He was the only begotten Son of God, that in Him dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, that He and the Father are one, that all men should honour the Son even as they honour the Father. I know that He spoke the very words of God, therefore I know that there is a literal hell, for He said so. It is worthy of note, furthermore, that most of these words about hell that I have read you to-night are taken from the Sermon on the Mount, the one part of the Bible that pretty much all men claim to believe. There are many who say they do not know about the Bible as a whole, but they do accept the Sermon on the Mount. Well, these passages are for the most part from the Sermon on the Mount. Either accept this part of the Sermon on the Mount or else throw the whole thing overboard as the utterance of a fool or a fraud. There is no other ground possible for any man who is willing to think things through.

III. IS THE FIRE OF HELL LITERAL FIRE?

The next question that confronts us is, Is the fire of hell mentioned in some of the passages we have read, literal fire? This is not so vital a question as the question, is there a literal hell, but nevertheless it is an important question, and I believe the question is plainly answered in the Bible, and plainly answered by Jesus Christ Himself. [293]To turn again to the passage already referred to, Matt.5:22, we read: “But I say unto you, that every one who is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judgment; and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council; and whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of the hell of fire.” These are Christ’s own words. He not only speaks of hell, but a “hell of fire,” and this too is from the Sermon on the Mount. In Matt. 18:9 the Lord Jesus says again, “And if thine eye cause thee to stumble, pluck it out, and cast it from thee; it is good for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into the hell of fire.” And again in Mark 9:43-49, the passage read a few moments ago, we read, “And if thy hand cause thee to stumble, cut it off; it is good for thee to enter into life maimed, rather than having thy two hands to go into hell, into the unquenchable fire. And if thy foot cause thee to stumble, cut it off; it is good for thee to enter into life halt, rather than having thy two feet to be cast into hell. And if thine eye cause thee to stumble, cast it out; it is good for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell, where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.” Here again some may say the fire is figurative. Turn to Matt. 13:30, 41, 42, we read these words: “Let both grow together until the harvest; and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, gather up first [294]the tares, and bind them in bundles to barn them; but gather the wheat into my barn.”Now here is a parable and we have figures and there would be warrant, if this were all that we had, for saying that the fire was figurative, as other things in the verse are figurative; but in the 41st and 42nd verses of the same chapter we read, “The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that cause stumbling, and they that do iniquity, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire; there shall be the weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Here we have the interpretation of the parable. Now in parables, as already said, we have figures, but in the interpretation of parables we have the literal facts which the figures represent, but we see clearly that here in the interpretation as well as in the parable, we have fire. Everything else in the parable is explained, every item in the parable except the fire, but that remains fire in the interpretation of the parable as well as in the parable itself. We find the same thing in another parable in verses 47 to 50, the parable of the net cast into the sea. Here, also, in the interpretation of the parable as well as in the parable itself we have fire. Every other figure of the parable is explained by the literal fact that it represents, but in the interpretation of the parable we have “fire.” In the light of these facts we cannot deny the literal fire of hell without doing violence to every reasonable law of interpretation. Furthermore [295]still, we read in Rev. 20:15 that at the judgment of the great white throne, “and if any was not found written in the Book of Life, he was cast into the lake of fire.” There is nothing in the whole context that suggests a figure. And in the 21st chapter and the 8th verse we read: “But for the fearful, and unbelieving, and abominable, and murderers, and fornicators, and sorcerers, and idolators, and all liars, their part shall be in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone; which is the second death.”

Remember furthermore that the wicked in the eternal world are not mere disembodied spirits. This is plain both from the Old Testament and the New. We read in Dan. 12:2: “And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” Now this says “them that sleep in the dust of the earth.” The soul departs into Hades. It is the body that crumbles into dust, and it is the body that is to be raised. In the New Testament, in John 5:28, 29, our Lord is recorded as saying: “Marvel not at this; for the hour cometh, in which all that are in the tombs shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment.” Now it is not the souls of men that are in the tombs, it is the bodies of men, and this passage teaches the resurrection of the bodies, both of the good and of the wicked. In I Cor. [296]15:22 we read, “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” What Paul is talking about in this entire chapter is the resurrection of the body, not merely the immortality of the soul, and we are here distinctly told that every child of Adam gets resurrection of his body in Christ.

Furthermore, in Matt. 5:30 Jesus says: “If thy right hand causeth thee to stumble, cut it off, and cast it from thee; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not thy whole body go into hell.” Here in the plainest possible terms the body is spoken of as going into hell, and in a similar way in Matt. 10:28, the Lord Jesus says: “Be not afraid of them that kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” From these plain and definite words of our Lord it is plain as day that in the future life we are to have bodies, and that the bodies of the lost are to have a place in a literal physical hell of fire. While the bodily torments of hell fire are not the most appalling feature of hell, while the mental agony, the agony of remorse, the agony of shame, and the agony of despair, is worse, immeasurably worse; nevertheless, physical suffering, a physical suffering to which no pain on earth is anything in comparison, is a feature of hell.

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IV. IS THE LAKE OF FIRE A PLACE OF CONSCIOUS TORMENT, OR IS IT A PLACE OF ANNIHILATION, I.E., A PLACE OF NON-EXISTENCE OR IS IT A PLACE OF NON-CONSCIOUS EXISTENCE?

There is one other question that remains to be answered, and that is, is the lake of fire a place of conscious torment, or is it a place of annihilation, i.e., a place of non-existence, or is it a place of non-conscious existence? There are those who believe in a literal hell, but they do not believe that those who are consigned to it will consciously suffer there for any great length of time. They hold either that those who are sent to hell are annihilated, or else that they exist there in a non-conscious state. Of course, this would be an everlasting hell, and everlasting punishment, but is it the hell that is taught in the Bible? Is the lake of fire a place of continued conscious torment, or is it a place of non-conscious existence? In answer to this question let me call your attention to the fact that the punishment of the wicked is spoken of in the Bible most frequently as “Death” and “Destruction.” What do these words mean in biblical usage?

1. Let us look first at the biblical usage of the word “Death.” Many tell us, time and time again, that death means non-existence, or at least non-conscious existence, and therefore that is what it must mean in the passages where it is spoken of [298]as the future punishment of the impenitent. But does “death” as used in the Bible mean either non-conscious existence, or annihilation? Look first at 1 Tim. 5:6; here we read, “She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth.” Death here certainly does not mean either non-existence, or non-conscious existence. The woman that lives in pleasure still exists, and she certainly exists consciously, but she is “dead.” Death means wrong existence rather than non-existence. It is just the opposite of life, and life in the New Testament usage does not mean mere existence, it means right existence. God-like existence, holy existence. It means the ennoblement and glorification and deification of existence; and death means just the opposite, it means wrong existence, debased existence, the ruin, the shame, and the ignominy and the despair of existence. In a similar way we are told in Eph. 2:1, that men until they are quickened, or made alive, by the power of God are “Dead in trespasses and sins.” It is perfectly clear then that death does not mean either non-existence, or non-conscious existence. But even more decisive than this is the fact that God Himself has defined death very accurately and very fully in Rev. 21:8: “But the fearful and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolators, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone; which is the second death.” Here we are told in so many words that the “death” which is [299]the final outcome of persistent sin and unbelief is a portion in the place of torment, the lake of fire. That this lake of fire is a place of conscious suffering is made clear in the preceding chapter, Rev. 20:10, where we are told that “the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.” The beast and false prophet had already been there a thousand years when the devil was cast into the lake of fire, and they were tormented consciously, without rest.

2. Now let us look at what “Destruction” means in the New Testament. We are told by a certain school of religious thought that “destruction” means destruction. Yes, “destruction” means destruction, but what does destruction mean? They say it means annihilation, or ceasing to be, but the Greek word so translated never means that in the Bible, nor even out of the Bible. In the best Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament extant, Thayer’s translation of Grimm’s great work, we are told that when a thing is said to “perish” (and the verb from which the noun commonly translated “destruction” and “perdition” is derived, is the one translated “to perish”) it is not meant that it ceases to be, but that it is “so ruined that it no longer subserves the use for which it was designed.” Furthermore, here again God has been careful to define His terms. He Himself has given us in the [300]Bible a definition of “destruction.” We read in Rev. 17:8, 11: “The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition; and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder . . . and the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition.” Here we are told that the beast goes into “perdition.” The word here translated “perdition” is precisely the same word that is elsewhere translated “destruction” and should be so translated here; or else in the other instances it should be translated, as here, “perdition.” Now if we can find what the beast goes into, then we shall know exactly what “destruction” means, for we are told that he goeth “into destruction.” In the 19th chapter of Revelation, the 20th verse, we are told exactly where the beast goes: “And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.” Now looking forward to the next chapter, the 10th verse, which I have already quoted, we read: “And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where are also the beast and the false prophet, and they shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.” Putting these passages together we see that the beast goeth into “destruction,” and the destruction into [301]which he goes is a place in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, where for a thousand years he is in conscious torment, and where after the thousand years are over he is still there and is still tormented. So then “destruction” is clearly defined in the New Testament in the same way in which “death” is defined, as the condition of beings in a place of conscious torment.

Again in Rev. 14:10, 11, we read regarding those who worship the beast and his image and receive his mark in their foreheads or in their hands: “The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb; and the smoke of their torment ascendeth for ever and ever; and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.” The Bible makes it clear as language can make it that the lake of fire to which “whoever is not written in the Lamb’s book of life” is consigned, is a place of continued, conscious torment. There is no escaping the clear teaching of the Word of God unless we throw our Bibles away and discredit the teaching of the Apostles and the teaching of Jesus Christ Himself.

Next Sunday night we will take up the question, Is the Punishment of the Wicked Everlasting, but we must stop at this point to-night. Sherman said, [302]“War is hell.” Of course, in the way in which Sherman meant it, this is true. It is far more true of war to-day than it was in the worst and most inexcusable phases of our Civil War—Libby and Andersonville, for example, on the part of the South, and the march through Georgia on the part of the North. But even war to-day as carried on by Germany in all its appalling frightfulness, is not hell. Hell is incomparably more awful than the war now raging in Europe, and this awful hell of which we have been studying to-night is the destiny of some of you here in this room, unless you soon repent and accept the Lord Jesus Christ. Other appalling facts about hell we will take up next Sunday night, but we have already seen enough to make any true Christian determine to work with all his might to save others from this awful hell. And we have seen enough to make every honest and sensible person here to-night determine to escape this awful hell at any cost.

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XV Is Future Punishment Everlasting?

Jesus Christ plainly taught that there was to be a literal hell and that this hell would be a place of conscious suffering, suffering far beyond that experienced by any one here in this present life, but we are faced by another question of great importance, Is this future, conscious suffering of the impenitent to be endless? There are many who believe in future punishment of a very severe and awful character, and who indeed believe in a literal hell of awful, conscious suffering, but they deny, or at least doubt, that this future hell will be a place of endless, conscious suffering. Many of them admit and teach that the suffering may go on for a long time, and perhaps for thousands of years, but they hold that it will end at last and that all men will ultimately come to repentance, accept Jesus Christ, and be saved. What is the exact truth about the matter? We cannot decide this by asking what the majority of supposedly reliable theologians believe, for majorities are often wrong and minorities are often right. Neither can we decide it by reasoning as to what such a being as God is must [304]do. It is impossible for finite and foolish men such as we are, and such as the wisest philosophers and theologians are, to judge what an Infinitely wise and Infinitely holy God must do. All reasonings by finite men as to what an Infinitely wise God must do are utterly futile and an utter waste of time. All we know about the future is what God has been pleased to tell us in His Word. The Bible, as we have seen, is beyond a question the Word of God, and therefore what it has to say on this subject, or any other subject, is true and absolutely sure, and in a question of this character one ounce of God’s revelation is worth more than a thousand tons of man’s speculation. The whole question then is, what does the Bible teach in regard to this matter?

I. WHAT THE BIBLE TEACHES REGARDING THE ENDLESSNESS OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT

1. To find out exactly what the Bible teaches as to the endlessness of future punishment let us turn first of all to the words of our Lord Jesus Himself in Matt. 25:46 (R. V.), “And these shall go away into eternal punishment: but the righteous into eternal life.” The first question that confronts us in studying this passage is what the word aionios (aionion) which is here translated “eternal” means. The best Greek-English dictionary of the New Testament is Thayer’s. In this dictionary Thayer after a careful study of the [305]word, its derivation and its usage, gives these three definitions of the word, and these three only: (1) “Without beginning or end, that which always has been and always will be.” (2) “Without beginning.” (3) “Without end, never to cease, everlasting.” It is frequently said that the word aionios according to its derivation means age-lasting, and therefore may refer to a limited period. Even admitting this to be true, we should bear in mind that the meaning of words is not determined by their derivation but by their usage, and the most important question is not what the derivation of this word may be, but as to how it is used in the New Testament. It is used 72 times in the New Testament. Forty-four of these 72 times it is used in the phrase “eternal life,” or as it is sometimes rendered, “everlasting life.” No one questions that everlasting life is endless and that in connection with the word “life” “age lasting” (if that be its proper derivation of the word) means lasting through all ages, never ending. Once it is used in connection with the word “habitations,” referring to the habitations which the blessed are to have in the world to come, and, of course, these also are never-ending. Once it is used of the “weight of glory” that in the world to come awaits the believer in Jesus Christ who endures affliction for Christ in the life that now is. In this case again, of course, by universal consent it means endless. Once it is used of the “house not made with hands” that believers in Christ are [306]to receive at the coming of the Lord Jesus (II Cor. 5:1-8). Of course, this “house not made with hands” is everlasting. In fact the very point that is being brought forward in this passage is the contrast between our present bodies which are but for a brief time and our resurrection bodies which are to exist throughout all eternity. Once it is used of the future unseen things that never end, contrasted with the present seen things that are for a season (II Cor. 4:18). Of course, these are never-ending. That is the very point that is being brought out in the contrast. Once it is used of the everlasting “comfort” (R. V.) or “consolation” (A. V.) that “our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God our Father” give us, and that is certainly never ending. Twice it is used of the “glory” that those in Christ obtain (II Tim. 2:10). That, of course, by universal consent is endless. Once it is used of the “salvation” Christ brings, which is beyond question never ending. Once (Heb.9:12) it is used of the “redemption” that Jesus Christ secures for us by His blood. This redemption is never ending. In fact, the chief point of contrast in the context in this case is between the temporary redemption secured by the constantly repeated sacrifices of the Mosaic ritual and the never ending redemption secured by the perfect sacrifice of Christ made once for all. Once it is used of the “inheritance” that those who are in Christ receive (Heb. 9:15). Here again beyond a question it is never ending. Once it is used of [307]the “everlasting covenant” through Christ’s blood contrasted with the temporary covenant, based on the blood of bulls and goats, given through Moses. Here again it necessarily and emphatically means never ending. That is the very point at issue. Once it is used of the “everlasting kingdom” of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (II Peter 1:11), and we are told in Luke 1:33, “of His kingdom there shall be no end.” Once it is used of “everlasting gospel” (or good news) and that, of course, also never ends. Once it is used of the “everlasting God” (Rom. 16:26) and He certainly endures not merely through long ages, but without end. Once it is used of the Holy Spirit who is called “the eternal (or everlasting) Spirit,” and He certainly endures, not merely through long ages, but throughout an absolutely endless eternity. This covers fifty-nine of the seventy-two times it is used, and in these fifty-nine instances the thought of endlessness is absolutely necessary to the sense, and in not a single one of the thirteen remaining times where it is used is it used of anything that is known to end. If usage can determine the meaning of any word then certainly the New Testament use of this word determines it to mean never ending, or, as Thayer defines it, “without end, never to cease, everlasting.”

Nor is this all, God Himself determines it to mean never ending: He defines it to mean never-ending by specifically using it in contrast with that [308]which does end. For example, in 2 Cor. 4:18 we read, “While we look not on the things which are seen, but the things which are unseen: for the things which are seen are temporal (literally, for a season); but the things which are not seen are eternal.” Here the whole point is that the unseen things in distinction from the seen which are for a season are for a never ending duration.

But even allowing that the word according to its usage could be used of that which, though it last throughout an age, or ages, has an end; even if that were true (which it is not), then the meaning of the word in any given instance would have to be determined by the context in which it is found. Now what is the context in the passage which we are studying? Let us read it again, “And these shall go away into eternal punishment: but the righteous into eternal life.” The same Greek adjective is used in connection with “punishment” and with “life.” (In the Authorised Version it is differently rendered, but in the Greek and in the Revised Version it is exactly the same.) Certainly this qualifying adjective must mean the same in the one half of the sentence that it means in the other half of the sentence. We must at least admit that Jesus Christ was an honest man, and He certainly was too honest to juggle with words: He would not use a word to mean one thing in one half of a sentence and something utterly different in the other half. He evidently sought to convey the impression that the punishment [309]of the unsaved was of the same duration as the life of the saved. No one questions that the life is endless. It would be the destruction of all our hopes if it were not endless. Therefore, if we are to deal honestly with our Lord’s words, He taught that the punishment of the unsaved was to be endless. We have exactly the same reason in God’s Word for believing in endless punishment that we have for believing in endless life. If you give up the one you must give up the other, or else deal dishonestly with the words of Jesus Christ.

2. We might rest the case here and call it proven, but let us turn to another passage, Rev. 14:9-11, “And another angel, a third, followed them, saying with a great voice, If any man worshipeth the beast and his image and receiveth a mark on his forehead, or upon his hand, he also shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is prepared unmixed in the cup of His anger; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: and the smoke of their torment goeth up for ever and ever; and they have no rest day and night, they that worship the beast and his image, and whoso receiveth the mark of his name.” Here we have another expression for the duration of the punishment and suffering of the impenitent, the expression rendered for ever and ever. There are in the Greek two slightly differing forms of expression that are so translated. [310]The one form of expression literally rendered is “unto the ages of the ages,” the other form is “unto ages of ages.” What thought do these expressions convey. It has been said by those who seek to escape the force of these words as referring to absolute endlessness, that the expression “is a Hebraism for the supreme one of its class,” and as an illustration of the same alleged Hebraism the expressions, “Lord of Lords” and “Holy of Holies” are cited. But this is not so. In the first place, the form of neither of the two expressions is the same; and, in the second place, that is not the meaning of the expression “The Lord of Lords” or the meaning of the expression “The Holy of Holies.” The expression “Lord of Lords” does not mean merely the supreme Lord, but one who is Himself Lord of all other Lords, and this expression “unto the ages of the ages” never means merely the ages which are the supreme ages in distinction from other ages (nor as another puts it, the ages which come out of the other ages, i.e., the closing ages before eternity). The expression according to its form means ages which are themselves composed of ages. It represents not years tumbling upon years, nor centuries tumbling upon centuries, but ages tumbling upon ages in endless procession. It is the strongest possible form of expression for absolute endlessness. Furthermore, the way to determine conclusively what the expression means is by considering its usage. Usage is always the [311]decisive thing in determining the meaning of words and phrases. What is the usage of these expressions in the book from which we have taken our passage? These expressions are used twelve times in this book. In eight of the twelve times they refer to the duration of the existence, or reign, or glory of God and His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Of course, in these instances it must stand not merely for the supreme ages, or any individual ages, it must refer to absolute eternity and endlessness. Once it is used of the duration of the blessed reign of the righteous, and, of course, here again it refers to an endless eternity: and in the three remaining instances it is used of the duration of the torment of the Devil, the Beast, the False Prophet, and the finally impenitent. It is urged by those who would deny that the expression means an absolutely endless eternity, that it is used in Rev. 11:15, where we are told that “the kingdom of the world is become the kingdom of our Lord, and of His Christ: and He shall reign for ever and ever (unto the ages of the ages),” and that we are told in 1 Cor. 15:24 that Christ “shall deliver up the kingdom to God, even the Father”; and that therefore His kingdom must come to an end, and consequently “for ever and ever” in this passage cannot mean without end. There are two answers to this objection, either of which is sufficient. The first is that the “he” in “he shall reign for ever and ever” in Rev. 11:15, does not necessarily refer to the Christ, but [312]rather to the Lord Jehovah, in which case the argument falls to the ground. The second answer is that while we are taught in I Cor. 15:24, etc., that Jesus Christ will deliver up His mediatorial kingdom to the Father, nevertheless we are distinctly taught that He shall rule with the Father, and we are told in so many words in Luke 1:33 that “of His kingdom there shall be no end,” so that even if the “he” in Rev. 11:15 referred to the Christ and not to the Lord Jehovah, still the statement would be exactly correct that He, the Christ, was to reign for ever and ever, i.e., without end. There is not a single passage in the whole book in which this expression is used of anything but that which is absolutely endless. So the question is answered again and answered decisively that the conscious suffering of the persistently impenitent is absolutely endless.

3. Now let us look at another passage, II Thess. 1:7-9: “The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power.” Here we are told that the punishment of those that know not God and obey not the gospel is “everlasting destruction.”

What does “everlasting destruction” mean? In Rev. 17:8, 11 we are told that the beast goeth into [313]“destruction,” so if we can find out where the beast goes, or into what he goes, we shall know what “destruction” means in the Bible usage. In Rev. 19:20 we are told that “the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought the signs in his sight, wherewith he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast and them that worshipped his image: they two were cast alive into the lake of fire that burneth with brimstone,” so we see that “destruction” is a portion in the lake of fire. And in the next chapter, Rev. 20:10, we are told that “The devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where are also the beast and the false prophet(after having already been there for one thousand years, see context); and they shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.” So we see that destruction means a portion in the lake of fire where its inhabitants are consciously suffering without cessation for ever and ever. It is clear then, from a comparison of II Thess. 1:7-9 with these passages, that those who know not God and obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ shall be punished with never-ending, conscious suffering.

4. Let us look at one more passage, Matt. 25:41 (these again are the words of the Lord Jesus Himself): “Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels.” What I wish you to [314]notice here is that the punishment into which the impenitent are sent is the “eternal fire” which is “prepared for the devil and his angels.” We have an exact description of just what the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels is in the passage read a few moments ago, Rev. 20:10: “And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where are also the beast and the false prophet; and they shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.” By a comparison of these two statements we have another explicit declaration of our Lord that the punishment of the impenitent is to be a conscious agony, where they are punished without rest day and night for ever and ever.

From any one of these passages and especially from all taken together, it is clear that the Scriptures make it as plain as language can make it that THE FUTURE PUNISHMENT OF THE PERSISTENTLY IMPENITENT IS ABSOLUTELY ENDLESS.

II. OBJECTIONS

There are several passages of Scripture which those who believe that all men will ultimately repent and be brought to accept Christ and thus saved, urge against what seems to be the plain teaching of the passages we have been studying.

1. The first of these is 1 Peter 3:18-20: “Because Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us [315]to God; being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit; in which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison, that aforetime were disobedient, when the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water.” It is urged that as Christ went and preached to the spirits in prison there will be another chance after men have died. But this the passage in question does not assert or imply in any way.

(1) First of all there is no proof that “the spirits in prison” refers to the departed spirits of men who once lived here on earth. In the Bible departed spirits of men are not spoken of in this way. These words are used of other spirits, but not of human spirits disembodied, and there is every reason for supposing that these “spirits in prison” were not the sinful men that were on earth when the ark was preparing, but the angels who sinned at that time, just as we are told in Gen. 6:1, 2 that they did sin (cf. Jude 6, 7).

(2) Furthermore, even if “the spirits in prison” here spoken of were the spirits of men who were disobedient in the time of Noah, there is not a hint in the passage that they were saved through the preaching of Christ to them, or that they had another chance. There are two words commonly used in the New Testament for preaching, one is kerusso and the other is euaggelizo. The first of these means to herald, as to herald a king, or to [316]herald the kingdom. It may, however, be used of preaching a message, the gospel message or some other message. The second word euaggelizo, means to preach the gospel. In the passage that we are studying it is the first word that is used, and there is not a hint that Christ preached the gospel to these spirits in prison. He simply heralded the triumph of the kingdom. It was not a saving message. So there is nothing in this passage to put up even inferentially against the plain, direct statements regarding the destiny of the wicked found in the passages we have been studying.

2. The second passage that is appealed to by those who deny the endlessness of future punishment is Phil. 2:9-11: “Wherefore also God highly exalted Him, and gave unto Him the name which is above every name; that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Here it is said, we are told, that all those “under the earth” as well as in heaven and on earth should bow the knee in the name of Jesus and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, and that this implies that they are saved. But it does not imply that they are saved. Every knee of lost men and of the devil and his angels too will be forced some day to bow in the name of Jesus and every tongue forced to confess that He is Lord. If any [317]one does that in the present life of his own free choice, he will be saved, but otherwise he will do it by compulsion in the age to come and every one has his choice between doing it now willingly and gladly and being saved, or doing it by compulsion hereafter and being lost. There is absolutely nothing in this passage to teach universal salvation or to militate even inferentially against the plain statements we have been studying.

3. The third passage that is appealed to is Acts 3:19-21: “Repent ye therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that so there may come seasons of refreshing from the presence of the Lord; and that He may send the Christ who hath been appointed for you, even Jesus: Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things whereof God spake by the mouth of His holy prophets that have been from of old.” Here we are told of a coming “restoration of all things” and those who contend for the doctrine of universal salvation hold that this means the restoration to righteousness of all persons. But that is not what it says, and that is not what it refers to. We are taught in Old Testament prophecy and also in the book of Romans, that in connection with the return of our Lord Jesus there is to be a restoration of all nature, of the whole physical universe, from its fallen state. For example, in Rom. 8:19-21 we read: “For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God. For the [318]creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by reason of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God.” And in Isa. 55:13 we read: “Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree; and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle-tree: and it shall be to Jehovah for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.” And in Isa. 65:25 we are told: “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox; and dust shall be the serpent’s food. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith Jehovah,” and in Isa. 32:15, we are told that “until the Spirit be poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness become a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be esteemed as a forest.” It is to this restoration of the physical universe, here plainly predicted in Rom. 8:19-21 and these Old Testament prophecies, that the “restoration of all things” spoken of in Acts 3:21 refers. There is not a hint, not the slightest suggestion, of a restoration of impenitent sinners.

4. Still another passage that is urged is Eph. 1:9, 10, where we read: “Having made known unto us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Him unto a dispensation of the fulness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth.” Here it is urged that [319]things in heaven and things in earth are to be summed up in Christ. This is true, but it should be noticed that the Holy Spirit has specifically omitted here the phrase that is found in Phil. 2:10, the “things under the earth,” that is the abode of the lost, so this passage, so far from suggesting that the lost ones in hell will be restored, suggests exactly the opposite thing. There is then certainly nothing in this passage to militate even inferentially against the plain statements we have been studying.

5. One more passage that is urged against the doctrine we have been studying remains to be considered, that is 1 Cor. 15:22. Here we read, “For as in Adam all died, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” It is urged in connection with this passage that we are distinctly told here that all who die in Adam, that is every human being, shall be made alive in Christ, and that “made alive” means “obtain eternal life,” or “be saved.” For years I thought that this was the true interpretation of this passage, and for that reason in part, I held and preached at that time that all men ultimately, some time, somewhere, somehow, would be brought to accept Jesus Christ and be saved; but when I came to study the passage more carefully I saw that this was a misinterpretation of the passage. Every passage in the Bible, or in any other book, must be interpreted in its context. The whole subject that Paul is [320]talking about in this chapter is not eternal life, not the immortality of the soul, but the resurrection of the body, and all this passage declares is that as all lose physical life in Adam, so also all will obtain a resurrection of the body in Christ. Whether that resurrection of the body is a resurrection to everlasting life or a resurrection to shame and everlasting contempt (Dan. 12:2) depends entirely upon what men do with the Christ in whom they get it. There is absolutely nothing here to teach universal salvation. It only teaches a universal resurrection, resurrection of the wicked as well as of the righteous.

To sum up the teaching of all these passages that are so often urged to prove universal salvation, there is nothing in any one of the passages, nor in all of them together, to teach that all men will ultimately be saved, and there is nothing in them to in any way conflict with what we have seen to be the honest meaning of the passages studied above, namely, that the future punishment of sin is absolutely endless. There is not a passage to be found in the Bible that teaches universal salvation, or that all men will ultimately come to repentance and be saved. I wish that there were, but there is not. I have been searching diligently for such a passage for nearly forty years and I have not found it, and it cannot be found.

[321]

III. WHERE ARE THE ISSUES OF ETERNITY SETTLED?

There remains one other important question; and that is, where are the issues of eternity settled. There are those who believe that the punishment of the persistently impenitent is everlasting, that it has no end, but they also believe that the issues of eternity are not settled in the life that now is, but that with many they are settled after death and that when men die impenitent they will have another chance. Believing in endless punishment does not necessarily involve believing that there is no chance after death. There are many who believe that there will be a chance after death, and that many will accept it, who also believe that some will not accept it and will therefore be punished for ever and ever. Now what is the teaching of the Word of God on this point? Let me call your attention to four passages, any one of which settles the question, and taken together they leave no possible room for doubt for any candid man who is willing to take the Bible as meaning what it says, any man who is really trying to find out what the Bible teaches and not merely trying to support a theory.

1. The first passage in 2 Cor. 5:10: “For we must all be made manifest before the judgment seat of Christ; that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he hath done, whether it be good or bad.” In this passage we [322]are plainly told that the basis of judgment in the world to come is “the things done in the body,” i.e., the things done this side the grave, the things done before we shuffle off this mortal coil, the things done before the spirit leaves the body. Of course, this particular passage has to do primarily with the judgment of the believer, but it shows what the basis of future judgment is, viz., the things done this side of the grave.

2. The second passage is Heb. 9:27: “It is appointed unto men once to die, and after this cometh judgment.” Here we are distinctly told that “after death” there is to be, not an opportunity to prepare for judgment, but “judgment,” and that, therefore, our destiny is settled at death, and that there is no chance of salvation “after death.”

3. The third passage is John 5:28, 29: “Marvel not at this: for the hour cometh, in which all that are in the tombs shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment.” Here also it is clearly implied that the resurrection of good and bad is for the purpose of judgment regarding the things done before their bodies were laid in their graves.

4. A fourth passage, if possible more decisive than any of these, gives our Lord’s words, John 8:21: “He said therefore again unto them; I go away, and ye shall seek me, and shall die in your [323]sin, whither I go, ye cannot come.” Here our Lord distinctly declares that the question whether men shall come to be with Him or not depends upon what they do before they die, that if they die impenitent, if they “die in their sins,” that whither He goes they cannot come. To sum up the teaching of all these passages, the issues of eternity, the issues of eternal life or eternal destruction, the issues of eternal blessedness and glory, or eternal agony and shame, are settled in the life that now is.

IV. CONCLUSION

The future state of those who reject in the life that now is the redemption offered to them in Christ Jesus is plainly declared in the Word of God to be a state of conscious, unutterable, endless torment and anguish. This conception is an appalling one, but it is the Scriptural conception. It is the unmistakable, inescapable teaching of God’s own word.

I wish that all men would repent and accept Christ. If any one could show me one single passage in the Bible that clearly taught that all men would ultimately repent, accept Christ and be saved, it would be the happiest day of my life, but it cannot be found. I once thought it could, and I so believed and taught. These ideas so widely noised about to-day as something new, these theories of “Pastor” Russell, formerly of Pittsburg, [324]Mr. Gelesnoff of this city, and Dr. Mabie of Long Beach, and Mr. Pridgeon of Pittsburg, and many others, are not at all new to me. I held and taught substantially the same views regarding ultimate universal salvation years before these men were heard of, indeed nearly forty years ago. I was familiar with the arguments that they now urge, and other arguments which they do not seem to know, but which were to me more decisive than those that they urge. But the time came, as I studied the Bible more carefully, when I could not reconcile my teaching with what I found to be the unmistakable teaching of God’s Word. I had to do one of three things: I had to either give up my belief that the Bible was the Word of God, or else I must twist the words of Jesus (and others in the New Testament) to mean something else than what they clearly appeared to teach, or else I must give up my doctrine of ultimate universal restoration and salvation. I could not give up my faith that the Bible was the Word of God, for I had found absolutely overwhelming proof that it was God’s Word. I could not twist the words of Jesus and of others to mean something else than what was clearly their intended meaning, for I was an honest man. There was only one thing left to do and that was to give up my doctrine of universal restoration and salvation. I gave it up with great reluctance, but I was compelled to give it up or be untrue to my own reason and conscience. It is the inescapable teaching of the [325]Word of God that all who go out of this world without having accepted Jesus Christ, will spend eternity in hell, in a hell of unutterable, conscious anguish.

This Bible conception is also a reasonable one when we come to see the appalling nature of sin, and especially the appalling nature of the sin of trampling under foot God’s mercy toward sinners, and rejecting God’s glorious Son, Whom in His love He has provided as a Saviour.

Shallow views of sin and of God’s holiness and of the glory of Jesus Christ lie at the bottom of weak theories of the doom of the impenitent. When we see Sin in all its hideousness and enormity, the Holiness of God in all its perfection, and the Glory of Jesus Christ in all its infinity, nothing but a doctrine that those who persist in the choice of sin, who love darkness rather than light, and who persist in the rejection of the Son of God, shall endure everlasting anguish, will satisfy the demands of our own moral intuitions. Nothing but the fact that we dread suffering more than we loathe sin, and more than we love the glory of Jesus Christ, makes us repudiate the thought that beings who eternally choose sin should eternally suffer, or that men who despise God’s mercy and spurn His Son should be given over to endless anguish.

If, after men have sinned and God still offers them mercy, and makes the tremendous sacrifice of His Son to save them—if they still despise that [326]mercy and trample God’s Son under foot, if then they are consigned to everlasting torment, I cannot but say, “Amen! Hallelujah! True and righteous are thy judgments, O Lord!”

At all events the doctrine of conscious, eternal torment for impenitent men is clearly revealed in the Word of God, and whether we can defend it on philosophical grounds or not, it is our business to believe it; and leave it to the clearer light of eternity to explain what we cannot now understand, realising that God may have many infinitely wise reasons for doing things for which we in our ignorance can see no sufficient reason at all. It is the most ludicrous conceit for beings so limited and foolish as the wisest of men are, to attempt to dogmatise how a God of infinite wisdom must act. All we know as to how God is to act is what God has seen fit to tell us.

In conclusion, two things are certain. First, the more closely men walk with God and the more devoted they become in His service, the more likely they are to believe this doctrine. Many there are who tell us they love their fellow men too much to believe this doctrine; but the men who show their love in more practical ways than by sentimental protestations about it, the men who show their love for their fellow men as Jesus Christ showed His, by laying down their lives for them, they believe this doctrine, even as Jesus Christ Himself believed it.

As Christians become worldly and easy-going [327]they grow loose in their doctrine concerning the doom of the impenitent. The fact that loose doctrines are spreading so rapidly and widely in our day is nothing for them, but against them, for worldliness is also spreading in the church (1 Tim. 4:1; 2 Tim. 3:1; 4:2, 3). Increasing laxity of life and increasing laxity of doctrine go arm in arm.

Second, men who accept a loose doctrine regarding the ultimate penalty of sin, be it Universalism, Restorationism, or Annihilationism, or that fantastic combination, or conglomeration, of them all, Millennial Dawnism, lose their power for God. I have seen this proven over and over again. These men may be and are very clever at argument, and very zealous in proselyting, but they are seldom found beseeching men to be reconciled to God. They are far more likely to be found trying to upset the faith of those already won by the efforts of those who do believe in everlasting punishment than trying to win men who have no faith at all. If you really believe the doctrine of the endless torment of the impenitent, if the doctrine really gets hold of you, you will work as you never worked before for the salvation of the lost. If you in any wise abate the doctrine, it will abate your zeal. Time and time again I have come up to this awful doctrine and tried to find some way of escape from it, but when I have failed, as I always have failed at last, when I have determined to be honest with the Bible and myself, I have [328]returned to my work with an increased burden for souls and an intensified determination to spend and be spent for their salvation.

Eternal, conscious suffering, suffering without the least ray of hope of relief, awaits every one of you here to-night who goes on persistently rejecting Jesus Christ, as you are rejecting Him to-night, and who shall pass out of this world having rejected Him. In that world of never ending gloom there will be no possibility of repentance. As you look out into the future there will not be one single ray of hope. “Forever and ever” will be the unceasing wail of that restless sea of fire. After you have been there ten million years and look out toward the future you will see eternity still stretching on and on and on and on, with no hope. Oh, men and women out of Christ, why will you risk such a doom for a single year, or a month, or a week, or a day? Hell is too awful to risk for five minutes the chance of going there. There is but one rational thing for you to do, that is to accept Christ and accept Him right now as your Saviour, surrender to Him as your Lord and Master, confess Him as such before the world, and strive from this time on to please Him in everything day by day. Any other course is utter madness.

---

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

When a book of the Bible has multiple volumes, the volume is sometimes referenced with a number and sometimes with a Roman numeral. These references remain as in the original.

The abbreviations “i.e.” and “e.g.” were both spaced and unspaced in the original. Spelling has been made consistent throughout the text.

Variations in spelling and hyphenation remain as in the original.

Ellipses match the original.

The following corrections have been made to the original text:

Page iv: By R. A.[period missing in original] Torrey

Page 15: (1 Cor. 12:406 R. V.[original has “RV”])

Page 48: make to explain it away.[period missing in original]

Page 48: nations are not able to abide his indignation.[original has extraneous quotation mark]

Page 51: conception of Pantheism and Buddhism[original has “Bhuddhism”]

Page 69: Gal. 3:28[original has “328”]

Page 70: In Gen. 3:22[original has a period instead of a colon] we read

Page 81: the thousands of Judah, yet[original has “Judah? Yet”]

Page 82: shows that[original has “that that”] the Lord addressed

Page 90: demand on Jesus'[apostrophe missing in original] part

Page 123: He is grieved beyond[original has “beyong”] expression

Page 127: “[quotation mark missing in original]I have yet many things to say

Page 133: you ever have insomnia[original has “insomia”]

Page 142: Spirit is “[original has single quote]done despite unto,”

Page 180: at the point of death?

Page 188: means more than mere forgiveness.[period missing in original]

Page 192: literally, “in,” Christ’s blood,[original has extraneous quotation mark]

Page 198: Can that faith save him?”[quotation mark missing in original]

Page 208: “[quotation mark missing in original]He is renewed in knowledge

Page 214: sin is not doing,[original has a period] because His (God’s) seed

Page 219: Regeneration is God’s work; wrought by Him by the power of His Holy Spirit working in the mind, feelings and will of[italics ended here in the original] the one born again

Page 236: sin unto God. (cf.[original has “c.”] John 13:10.)

Page 239: every place, their Lord and ours.”[quotation mark missing in original]

Page 251: “[quotation mark missing in original]But some will say

Page 264: our first text, John[original has “Jno.”] 8:44

Page 267: our second text, 1 John[original has “Jno.”] 3:8

Page 277: “New[original has extraneous quotation mark] Thought,” “Theosophy,” “Occultism”

Page 295: judgment of the great white throne[original has “thorn”]

Page 296: I Cor. 15:22[original has a period instead of a colon]

Page 314: 1 Peter 3:18-20[original has “3:18:20”]

Pages viii and x are blank in the original.

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