Helps To Holiness - Brengle, Samuel Logan

INTRODUCTION

On January 9, 1885, at about nine o’clock in the morning, God sanctified my soul. I was in my own room at the time, but in a few minutes I went out and met a man and told him what God had done for me. The next morning, I met another friend on the street and told him the blessed story. He shouted and praised God and urged me to preach full salvation and confess it everywhere. God used him to encourage and help me. So the following day I preached on the subject as clearly and forcibly as I could, and ended with my testimony. God blessed the word mightily to others, but I think He blessed it most to myself. That confession put me on record. It cut the bridges down behind me. Three worlds were now looking at me as one who professed that God had given him a clean heart. I could not go back now.

I had to go forward. God saw that I meant to be true till death. So two mornings after that, just as I got out of bed and was reading some of the words of Jesus, He gave me such a blessing as I never had dreamed a man could have this side of Heaven. It was a heaven of love that came into my heart. I walked out over Boston Common before breakfast weeping for joy and praising God. Oh, how I loved! In that hour I knew Jesus and I loved Him till it seemed my heart would break with love. I loved the sparrows, I loved the dogs, I loved the horses, I loved the little urchins on the streets, I loved the strangers who hurried past me, I loved the heathen – I loved the whole world. Do you want to know what holiness is? It is pure love. Do you want to know what the baptism of the Holy Ghost is? It is not a mere sentiment.

It is not a happy sensation that passes away in a night. It is a baptism of love that brings every thought into captivity to the Lord Jesus (2 Cor. x. 5); that casts out all fear (I John iv. 18); that burns up doubt and unbelief as fire burns tow; that makes one “meek and lowly in heart” (Matt. xi. 29); that makes one hate uncleanness, lying and deceit, a flattering tongue and every evil way with a perfect hatred; that makes Heaven and Hell eternal realities; that makes one patient and gentle with the forward and sinful; that makes one  “pure … peaceable … easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy” (Jas. iii. 17); that brings one into perfect and unbroken sympathy with the Lord Jesus Christ in His toil and travail to bring a lost and rebel world back to God. God did all that for me, bless His holy name! Oh, how I had longed to be pure! Oh, how I had hungered and thirsted for God – the living God! And He gave me the desire of my heart.

He satisfied me – I weigh my words – He satisfied me! He satisfied me! These ten years have been wonderful. God has become my Teacher, my Guide, my Counselor, my All and in All. He has allowed me to be perplexed and tempted, but it has been for my good.

I have no complaint to make against Him. Sometimes it has seemed that He had left me alone, but it has been as the mother who stands away from her little child to teach him to use his own legs that he may walk. He has not suffered me to fall. He has been with my mouth and helped me to speak of Jesus and His great salvation in a way to instruct, comfort and save other souls. He has been light to my darkness, strength to my weakness, wisdom in my foolishness, knowledge in my ignorance. When my way has been hedged up and it seemed that no way could be found out of my temptations and difficulties, He has cut a way through for me, just as He opened the Red Sea for Israel. When my heart has ached, He has comforted me; when my feet had well-nigh slipped, He has held me up; when my faith has trembled, He has encouraged me; when I have been in sore need, He has supplied all my need; when I have been hungry, He has fed me; when I have thirsted, He has given me living water.

Oh, glory to God! What has He not done for me? What has He not been to me? I recommend Him to the world. He has taught me that sin is the only thing that can harm me, and that the only thing that can profit me in this world is “faith which worketh by love” (Gal. v. 6). He has taught me to hang upon Jesus by faith for my salvation from all sin and fear and shame, and to show my love by obeying Him in all things and by seeking in all ways to lead others to obey Him. I praise Him! I adore Him! I love Him! My whole being is His for time and eternity.

I am not my own. He can do with me as He pleases for I am His. I know that what He chooses must work out for my eternal good. He is too wise to make mistakes and too good to do me evil. I trust Him, I trust Him, I trust Him! “My expectation is from Him” (Ps. lxii. 5); not from man, not from myself; but from Him. He has been with me for ten years, and I know He will never fail me. During these ten years God has enabled me to keep a perfect, unbroken purpose to serve Him with my whole heart. No temptation has swerved that steadfast purpose. No worldly or ecclesiastical ambition has had an atom of weight to allure me. My whole heart has cried within me as did Ephraim’s: “What have I to do any more with idols? I have heard Him, and observed Him” (Hos. xiv. 8).

“Holiness to the Lord” (Exod. xxviii. 36) has been my motto. In fact, it has been the only motto that could express the deep desire and aspiration of my soul. For a year and a half at a stretch I have been laid aside from work by bodily weakness. At one time I should have thought this a cross too heavy to be borne; but in this, as in all things else, His grace was sufficient. Of late God has been especially blessing me. My heart pants after Him and, as I seek Him in fervent, patient, believing prayer and in diligent searching of His word, He is deepening the work of grace in my soul.
S. L. Brengle

Chapter 1 – HOLINESS – WHAT IS IT?

“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” (Matt. vii. 21). Now, “This is the will of God, even your sanctification… For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness” (I Thess. iv. 3, 7). Without holiness, “no man can see the Lord” (Heb. xii. 14). Therefore, “Be ye holy! ” (I Pet. i. 16). Any one who reads his Bible in sincerity, “not handling the word of God deceitfully” (2 Cor. iv. 2), will see that it plainly teaches that God expects His people to be holy, and that we must be holy to be happy and useful here and to enter the kingdom of Heaven hereafter. When once a true man is convinced that the Bible teaches these facts and that this is God’s will, he will next inquire, “What is this holiness? When can I get it, and how? ” There is much difference of opinion on all these points, although the Bible is simple and plain on each one to every honest seeker after truth. The Bible tells us that holiness is perfect deliverance from sin. “The Blood of Jesus Christ … cleanseth us from ALL sin” (I John 1:7). Not one bit of sin is left, for your old man is crucified with Him, “that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin” (Rom. vi. 6), for we are “made free from sin” (Rom. vi. 18). And we are henceforth to reckon ourselves “dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God, through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. vi. 11). The Bible also tells us that it is “perfect love, ” which must, in the very nature of the case, expel from the heart all hatred and every evil temper contrary to love, just as you must first empty a cup of all oil that may be in it before you can fill it with water.

Thus, holiness is a state in which there is no anger, malice, blasphemy, hypocrisy, envy, love of ease, selfish desires for good opinion of men, shame of the Cross, worldliness, deceit, debate, contention, covetousness, nor any evil desire or tendency in the heart. It is a state in which there is no longer any doubt or fear.

It is a state in which God is loved and trusted with a perfect heart. But though the heart may be perfect, the head may be very imperfect, and through the imperfections of his head – of his memory, his judgment, his reason – the holy man may make many mistakes. Yet God looks at the sincerity of his purpose, at the love and faith of his heart – not at the imperfections of the head – and calls him a holy man. Holiness is not absolute perfection, which belongs to God only; nor is it angelic perfection; nor is it Adamic perfection – for, no doubt, Adam had a perfect head as well as a perfect heart before he sinned against God. But it is Christian perfection – such perfection and obedience of the heart as a poor fallen creature, aided by almighty power and boundless grace, can give. It is that state of heart and life which consists in being and doing all the time – not by fits and starts, but steadily – just what God wants us to be and do. Jesus said, “Make the tree good, and his fruit good” (Matt. xii. 33).

Now, an apple-tree is an apple-tree all the time, and can bring forth nothing but apples. So holiness is that perfect renewal of our nature that makes us essentially good, so that we continually bring forth fruit unto God – “the fruit of the Spirit, ” which “is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance” (Gal. v. 22, 23), with never a single work of the flesh grafted in among this heavenly fruitage. Glory to God! It is possible, right down here, where sin and Satan have once ruined us, for the Son of God thus to transform us, by enabling us to “put off the old man” with his deeds, and to “put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness” (Eph. iv.

22, 24), being “renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him” But some objector says, “Yes, all you say is true, only I don’t believe we can be holy till the hour of death.

The Christian life is a warfare, and we must fight the good fight of faith until we die, and then I believe God will give us dying grace. ” A great many honest Christians hold exactly this view, and hence put forth no real effort to “stand perfect and complete in all the (present) will of God” (Col. iv. 12) for them. And though they pray daily, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven” (Matt. vi. 10), yet they do not believe it is possible for them to do the will of God, and so they really make Jesus the author of a vain prayer, which it is only idle mockery to repeat. But it is as easy for me to be and to do what God wants me to be and to do in this life, every day, as it is for Gabriel to be and do what God wants of him. If this is not so, then God is neither good nor just in His requirements of me. God requires me to love and serve Him with all my heart, and Gabriel can do no more than that.

And by God’s grace it is as easy for me as for the archangel. Besides, God promises me that if I will return unto the Lord and obey His voice… with all my heart, and with all my soul, that He will circumcise my heart… to love Him with all my heart, and all my soul (Deut. xxx. 2, 6). And again, He promises that He would “grant unto us, that we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies might serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him, all the days of our life” (Luke i. 74, 75).

This promise in itself ought to convince any honest soul that God means us to be holy in this life. The good fight of faith is a fight to retain this blessing against the assaults of Satan, the fogs of doubt, and the attacks of an ignorant and unbelieving church and world. It is not a fight against ourselves after we are sanctified, for Paul expressly declares that “we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against wicked spirits in heavenly places” (Eph. vi. 12; marginal reading).

Again, in the whole word of God, there is not one sentence to prove that this blessing is not received before death; and surely, it is only by accepting from God’s hands His offered living grace that we can hope to be granted dying grace. But the Bible declares (2 Cor. ix. 8) that “God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work” – not at death but in this life, when grace is needed and where our good works are to be done.

Chapter 2 – HOLINESS – HOW TO GET IT

“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hosea iv. 6). “And this is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent” (John xvii. 3). Said an old professor of over eighty years, in a certain holiness meeting: “I believe in holiness; but I don’t think it is all got at once, as you people say.

I believe we grow into it. ” This is a very common mistake, second only to that which makes death the saviour from sin and the giver of holiness, and it is one which has kept tens of thousands out of the blessed experience. It does not recognize the exceeding sinfulness of sin (Rom. vii. 13), nor does it know the simple way of faith by which alone sin can be destroyed. Entire sanctification is at once a process of subtraction and addition.

First, there are laid aside “all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings” (I Pet. ii. 1); in fact, every evil temper and selfish desire that is unlike Christ, and the soul is cleansed. In the very nature of the case this cannot be by growth, for this cleansing takes something from the soul, while growth always adds something to it.

The Bible says, “Now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth” (Col. iii. 8). The Apostle talks as though a man were to put these off in much the same way as he would his coat. It is not by growth that a man puts off his coat, but by an active, voluntary and immediate effort of his whole body. This is subtraction. But the Apostle adds: “Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering” (Col. iii. 12). No more does a man put on his coat by growth, but by a similar effort of his whole body.

A man may grow in his coat, but not into his coat; he must first get it on. Just so, a man may “grow in grace, ” but not into grace. A man may swim in water, but not into water.

It is not by growth that you get the weeds out of your garden, but by pulling them up and vigorously using your hoe and rake. It is not by growth that you expect that dirty little darling, who has been tumbling around with the dog and cat in the backyard, to get clean. He might grow to manhood and get dirtier every day.

It is by washing and much pure water that you expect to make him at all presentable. So the Bible speaks of “Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own Blood” (Rev. i. 5). “The Blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin” (I John i. 7). And it is just this we sing about:

To get this blest washing I all things forgo;
Now wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
There is a Fountain filled with Blood, Drawn from Immanuel‘s veins
And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.

Those facts were told to the old brother mentioned above, and he was asked if, after sixty years of Christian experience, he felt any nearer the priceless gift of a clean heart than when he first began to serve Christ. He honestly confessed that he did not. He was asked if he did not think sixty years were quite long enough to prove the growth theory, if it were true. He thought they were, and so was asked to come forward and seek the blessing at once. He did so, but did not win through that night, and the next night came forward again. He had scarcely knelt five minutes before he stood up, and, stretching out his arms, while the tears ran down his cheeks and his face glowed with Heaven’s light, he cried out, “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath He removed my “transgressions from” me (Ps. ciii. 12).

For some time after, he lived to witness to both small and great this wondrous grace of God in Christ, and then went in triumph to the bosom of that God whom without holiness no man can see. “But, ” said a man to me, as I urged him to seek holiness at once, “I got this when I was converted. God didn’t do a half work with me when He saved me. He did a thorough job. ” “True, God did a thorough work, brother. When He converted you, He forgave all your sins, every one of them. He did not leave half of them unforgiven, but blotted them all out as a thick cloud to be remembered against you no more for ever. He also adopted you into His family and sent His Holy Spirit into your heart to tell you that blessed bit of heavenly news; and that information made you feel happier than to have been told that you had fallen heir to a million dollars, or been elected governor of a state, for this made you an heir of God and a joint heir of all things with our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Glory to God! It is a great thing to be converted. But, brother, are you saved from all impatience, anger and like sins of the heart? Do you live a holy life? ” “Well, you see, I don’t look at this matter exactly as you do, ” said the man. “I do not believe we can be saved from all impatience and anger in this life. ” And so, when pressed to the point, he begged the question, and really contradicted his own assertion that he had got holiness when he was converted. As a friend writes, he “would rather deny the sickness than take the medicine.

” The fact is, that neither the Bible nor experience proves that a man gets a clean heart when he is converted, but just the contrary. He does have his sins forgiven; he does receive the witness of adoption into God’s own family; he does have his affections changed. But before he has gone very far he will find his patience mixed up with some degree of impatience, his kindness mixed with wrath, his meekness mixed with anger (which is of the heart and may not be seen of the world, but of which he is painfully conscious), his humility mixed with pride, his loyalty to Jesus mixed with a shame of the Cross, and, in fact, the fruit of the Spirit and the works of the flesh, in greater or less degree, are all mixed up together. But this will be done away with when he gets a clean heart, and it will take a second work of grace, preceded by a whole-hearted consecration and as definite an act of faith as that which preceded his conversion, to get it. After conversion, he finds his old sinful nature much like a tree which has been cut down, but the stump still left.

The tree causes no more bother, but the stump will still bring forth little shoots, if it is not watched. The quickest and most effective way is to put some dynamite under the stump and blow it up. Just so, God wants to put the dynamite of the Holy Ghost (the word “dynamite” comes from the Greek word “power, ” in Acts i. 8) into every converted soul, and for ever do away with that old troublesome, sinful nature, so that he can truly say, “Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Cor. v. 17). This is just what God did with the apostles on the day of Pentecost. Nobody will deny that they were converted before Pentecost, for Jesus Himself had told them to “rejoice, because your names are written in Heaven” (Luke x. 20), and a man must be converted before his name is written in Heaven. And again He said, “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world” (John xvii. 16), and this could not be said of unconverted men. So we must conclude that they were converted, yet did not have the blessing of a clean heart until the day of Pentecost.

That they did receive it there, Peter declares about as plainly as it is possible to do in Acts xv. 8, 9, where he says: “God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as He did with us; and put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith. ” Before Peter got this great blessing he was filled with presumption one day and with fear the next. One day he declared that, “Though all men shall be offended because of Thee, yet will I never be offended … Though I should die with Thee, yet will I not deny Thee” (Matt. xxvi. 33, 35).

And shortly after, when the mob came to take his Master he boldly attacked them with the sword; but in a few hours, when his blood had cooled a little and the excitement was over, he was so frightened by a maid that he cursed and swore, and denied his Master three times. He was like a good many soldiers, who are tremendously brave when there is a “big go” and everybody is favorable, or who can even stand an attack from persecutors, where muscle and physical courage can come to the front; but who have no moral courage to wear the uniform alone in their shop where they have to face the scorn of their mates and the jeers of the street urchin. These are soldiers who love dress parade, but do not want hard fighting at the front of the battle. But Peter got over that on the day of Pentecost.

He received the power of the Holy Ghost coming into him. He obtained a clean heart, from which perfect love had cast out all fear; and then, when shut in prison for preaching on the street and commanded by the supreme court of the land not to do so any more, he answered, “Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard” (Acts iv. 19, 20).

And then, just as soon as he was released, into the street he went again to preach the blessed good news of an uttermost salvation. You could not scare Peter after that nor could he be lifted up with spiritual pride either. For one day, after he had been used of God to heal a lame man and “the people ran together… greatly wondering, ” Peter saw it and said, “Ye men of Israel, why marvel ye at this? or why look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own power or holiness we had made this man to walk?

The God… of our fathers hath glorified His Son Jesus… And His name through faith in His name hath made this man strong… yea, the faith which is by Him hath given him this perfect soundness” (Acts iii. 12, 13, 16). Nor did the dear old apostle have any of that ugly temper he showed when he cut off that poor fellow’s ear the night Jesus was arrested, but armed himself with the mind that was in Christ (I Pet. iv. 1) and followed Him who left us an example that we should follow His steps. “But we cannot have what Peter obtained on the day of Pentecost, ” wrote someone to me recently. However, Peter himself, in that great sermon which he preached that day, declared that we can, for he says: “Ye shall receive the Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto you” Jews, to whom I am talking – “and to your children, ” and not to you only, but “to all that are afar off” – nineteen hundred years from now – even as many as the Lord our God shall call, ” or convert (Acts ii. 38, 39).

Any child of God can have this, if he will give himself wholly to God and ask for it in faith. “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find… 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. 9, 13). Seek Him with all your heart, and you shall find Him; you shall indeed, for God says so, and He is waiting to give Himself to you.

A dear young fellow, a candidate for Salvation Army work, felt his need of a clean heart, went home from the holiness meeting, took his Bible, knelt down by his bed, read the second chapter of Acts, and then told the Lord that he would not get up from his knees till he got a clean heart, full of the Holy Ghost. He had not prayed long before the Lord came suddenly to him and filled him with the glory of God; and his face did shine, and his testimony did burn in people’s hearts after that! You can have it, if you will go to the Lord in the Spirit and with the faith of that brother; and the Lord will do for you “exceeding abundantly above all that” you “ask or think, according to the power that worketh… in us (Eph. iii. 20).

Chapter 3 – HINDRANCES TO OBTAINING THE BLESSING

Holiness has not legs and does not go walking about visiting idle people, as a lazy Christian seemed to think who told me that he thought the experience would “come” to him “some day. ” A sister aptly remarked: “He might as well expect the hall to come to him. ” The fact is, there are hindrances in the way of holiness with most people; but you that are seeking the experience must put from you, forever, the thought that any of these hindrances are in God, or in your circumstances, for they are not, but are altogether in yourselves.

This being true, it is the extreme of folly to sit down with indifference and quietly wait, with folded hands, for the blessed experience to come to you. Be sure of this, it will not come, any more than a crop of potatoes will come to the lazy fellow who sits in the shade and never lifts his hoe, nor does a stroke of labor through all the spring and summer months. The rule in the spiritual world is this: “If any would not work, neither should he eat, ” and, “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Gal. vi. 7). Therefore, the part of wisdom is to begin at once, by a diligent study of God’s word, much secret prayer, unflinching self-examination, rigid self-denial, hearty obedience to all present light and a faithful attendance at the meetings of God’s people, to find out what these hindrances are, and, by the grace of God, to put them away, though it cost as much pain as to cut off a right hand or to pluck out a right eye.

Now, the Bible tells us – and the testimony and experience of all holy people agree with the Bible – that the two great practical hindrances to holiness are: First, imperfect consecration; and, second, imperfect faith. Before a watchmaker can clean and regulate my watch, I must give it unreservedly into his hands. Before a doctor can cure me, I must take his medicine in the manner and at the time he requires.

Before a captain can navigate me across the trackless ocean, I must get on board his ship and stay there. Just so, if I would have God cleanse and regulate my heart with all its affections, if I would have Him cure my sin-sick soul, if I would have Him take me safely across the ocean of time into that greater ocean of eternity, I must put myself fully into His hands and stay there. In other words, I must do what He tells me to. I must be perfectly consecrated to Him.

A Captain knelt with her soldiers, and sang: “Anywhere with Jesus I will go, ” adding: “Anywhere but to H____, Lord. ” Her consecration was imperfect, and today she is out of Salvation Army work. There were some things she would not do for Jesus, and therefore Jesus would not cleanse or keep her. The other day, a poor backslider told me that he knew, at one time, that he ought to give up tobacco. God wanted him to do so, but he held on to it and used it secretly. His imperfect consecration kept him from holiness and led to his downfall, and today he walks the streets a common drunkard, on the open road to Hell. In his heart was secret disloyalty, and God could not cleanse or keep him. God wants perfect loyalty in the secret of your own heart, and He demands it, not only for His glory, but also for your good; for, if you can understand it, God’s highest glory and your highest good are one and the same thing.

This consecration consists in a perfect putting off of your own will, your disposition, temper, desires, likes and dislikes, and a perfect putting on of Christ’s will, Christ’s disposition, temper, desires, likes and dislikes. In short, perfect consecration is a putting off self and a putting on Christ; a giving up your own will in all things and receiving the will of Jesus instead.

This may seem well-nigh impossible and very disagreeable to your unsanctified heart; but if you mean business for eternity, and will intelligently and unflinchingly look at this strait gate through which so few enter, and tell the Lord that you want to go through that way, though it cost you your life, the Holy Spirit will soon show you that it is not only possible, but easy and delightful thus to yield yourself to God.

The second hindrance in the way of him who would be holy is imperfect faith. When Paul wrote to his corps of Salvationists in Thessalonica, he praised them for being “ensamples to all that believe in Macedonia and Achaia, ” and added, “in every place your faith to God-ward is spread abroad” (I Thess. i. 7, 8).  love of ease, love of human admiration and applause, love of splendor, shame of the Cross, self- will and the like. It makes its possessors “meek and lowly in heart” (Matt. xi. 29), as Jesus was; patient, kind, full of forbearance. pitiful, full of tender compassion and love; full of faith, benevolent and zealous in every good word and work. Now I have heard some people claim the blessing of holiness because they had given up tobacco, feathers or something of that sort; while they were still impatient, unkind or absorbed with the cares of this life.

The result was, they soon got discouraged, concluded there was no such blessing, and became bitter opponents of the doctrine of holiness. Their trouble was in seeking too small a blessing. They gave up certain outward things, but the inward self-life was still uncrucified.

The gold miner washes the dirt off his ore, but he cannot wash the dross out of it. The fire must do that, and then the gold will be pure. So the laying aside of outward things is necessary; but only the baptism of the Holy Ghost and of fire can purify the secret desires and affections of the heart and make it holy.

And for this you must earnestly seek by perfect consecration and perfect faith. There are other people who fail to obtain the blessing because they are seeking something altogether distinct from holiness. They want a vision of Heaven, of balls of fire, of some angel; or they want an experience that will save them from all trials and temptations and from all possible mistakes and infirmities; or they want a power that will make sinners fall like dead men when they speak. They overlook the verse which declares that “the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned” (1 Tim. i. 5); which teaches us that holiness is nothing more than a pure heart filled with perfect love, a clear conscience toward God and man, which comes from a faithful discharge of duty and simple faith without any hypocrisy. They overlook the fact that purity and perfect love are so Christ-like and so rare in this world, that they are in themselves a great, great blessing. They overlook the fact that while Jesus was a great Man, King of kings and Lord of lords, He was also a lowly Carpenter and “made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant … and humbled Himself” (Phil. ii. 7, 8).

They overlook the fact that they are to be as Jesus was, “in this present world, ” and that “this present world” is the place of His humiliation, where He is “despised and rejected of men”; a “man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief”; with “no (outward) beauty that we should desire Him” (Isa. liii. 2, 3). “In this present world” His only beauty is that inward “beauty of holiness” (1 Chron. xvi. 29), that humble spirit of gentleness and love, that “ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price” (1 Pet. iii. 4). Is your soul hungering and thirsting for the righteousness of perfect love? Do you want to be like Jesus? Are you prepared to suffer with Him and to be “hated of all men for His name’s sake” (Matt. x. 22)? Then, “lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset” you (Heb. xii. 1); present your body “a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service” (Rom. xii. 1), and “run with patience the race which is set before you, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of your faith” (Heb. xii. 1, 2). Come to the Lord with the same simple faith that you did when you were saved; lay your case before Him, ask Him to take away all uncleanness and to perfect you in love, and then believe that He does it. If you will then resist all Satan’s temptations to doubt, you will soon find all your hindrances gone, and yourself rejoicing “with joy unspeakable and full of glory” (1 Pet. i. 8). “The very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is He that calleth you, who also will do it” (1 Thess. v. 23, 24)

That was the best believing corps in all Europe, and so real and sturdy was their faith that they could endure much persecution, as we see from chaps. i. 6, ii. 14, and iii. 2-5; so that Paul says, “We were comforted over you, in all our affliction and distress by your faith” (iii. 7). Strong faith that, but it was not perfect, for Paul adds, “Night and day praying exceedingly that we might see your face, and might perfect that which is lacking in your faith” (iii. 10). And because of their imperfect faith they were not sanctified; so we find the Apostle praying, “And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly” (v. 23). All who are born of God and have the witness of His Spirit to their justification know full well that it was not through any good works of their own, nor by growing into it, that they were saved, but it was “by grace through faith” (Eph. ii. 8). But very many of these dear people seem to think that we are to grow into sanctification, or are to get it by our own works. But the Lord settled that question, and made it as plain as words can make it, when He told Paul that He sent him to the Gentiles to “open their eyes, and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in Me” (Acts xxvi. 18). Not by works, nor by growth, but by faith were they to be made holy.

If you will be holy you must come to God “with a true heart in full assurance of faith” (Heb. x. 22), and then, if you will wait patiently before Him, the wonder-work shall be done. Consecration and faith are matters of the heart, and the trouble with most people is there; but, no doubt, there are some people whose trouble is with the head. They fail to get the blessing because they are seeking something altogether too small. Holiness is a great blessing. It is the renewal of the whole man in the image of Jesus. It is the utter destruction of all hatred, envy, malice, impatience, covetousness, pride, lust, fear of man,

Chapter 4 – THE TEMPTATIONS OF A SANCTIFIED MAN

How can a man that is “dead to sin” be “tempted? ” asked an earnest but unsanctified Christian of me some time ago. “If the very tendencies and inclinations to sin be destroyed, what is there in the man to respond to a solicitation to evil? This is a question which every man will ask sooner or later, and when God showed me the answer, it threw great light on my pathway and helped me to defeat Satan in many a pitched battle. The fact is, that the truly sanctified man who is “dead to sin” does not have any inclinations in him that respond to the ordinary temptations of men. As Paul declares, “We wrestle not against flesh and blood” – against the sensual, fleshly and worldly temptations which used to have such power over him – but “against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against wicked spirits in heavenly – as in his closet, in secret prayer-places” (Eph. vi. 12, marginal reading).

If he were once a drinking man, he is no longer tempted in the least to get drunk, for he is “dead” and his life” is hid with Christ in God” (Col. iii. 3). If he were ever proud and vain, delighting in dress and jewels, he is no longer allured by the cheap glitter and the vain pomp and glory of this world, for he has set his affection on things above, not on things on the earth (Col. iii. 2). Such things now have no more attraction for him than the brass trinkets, eagle feathers and war-paint of an Indian.

If be once coveted the honor and praise of men, he now counts such as dung and dross, that he may win Christ and have the honor that comes from God only. If he once desired riches and ease, he now gladly gives up all earthly possessions and comforts, that he may have treasure in Heaven and not be “entangled with the affairs of this life”; “that he may please Him who hath chosen him to be a soldier” (2 Tim. ii. 4).

I do not mean to say that Satan will never hold up any of these worldly and fleshly pleasures and honors to induce the soul to leave Christ, for he will. But what I do mean to say is, that the soul being now “dead to sin, ” having the very roots of sin destroyed, does not respond to the suggestion of Satan, but instantly rejects it. Satan may send along a beautiful adulteress, as he did to Joseph in Egypt; but this sanctified man will flee away and cry out, as Joseph did, “How … can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God? ” (Gen. xxxix. 9).

Or, Satan may offer him great power and honor and riches, as he did to Moses in Egypt; but comparing these with the infinite fullness of glory and power he has found in Christ, the sanctified man will instantly reject the Devil’s offer: “choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt” (Heb. xi. 25, 26).

Or again, Satan may tempt his palate with the dainty wines and rich viands of a king’s palace, as he did Daniel in Babylon; but, like Daniel, this sanctified man will have at once “purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s meat, nor with the wine which he drank” (Dan. i. 8). All these worldly baits were held out to Jesus (Matt. iv. 1-11 and Luke iv. 2-13), but we see in the account of the apostles how gloriously He triumphed over every suggestion of the Tempter. And just as He rejected Satan’s temptations and gained the victory, so will the sanctified man, for he has Christ Himself come to dwell in his heart and to fight his battles, and can now say with the Master, “The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me” (John xiv. 30).

In fact, he has found such satisfaction, such peace and joy, such comfort, such purity and power in Christ, that the power of temptation along any of the old lines is completely broken, and he now enjoys the liberty of the sons of God; he is free as any archangel, for “if the Son … shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed “(John vii”. 36), even with “the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free” (Gal. v. 1).

But while Christ has set this sanctified man at liberty, and he no longer has to fight against his old worldly passions and fleshly appetites, yet he has a continual warfare with Satan to keep this liberty. This warfare is what Paul calls” the good fight of faith” (1 Tim. vi. 12).

He must fight to hold fast his faith in the Father’s love. He must fight to hold fast his faith in the Saviour’s cleansing Blood. He must fight to hold fast his faith in the Holy Spirit’s sanctifying and keeping power. Although not seen by the world, this fight is as real as that of Waterloo or Gettysburg, and its far-reaching consequences for good or evil are infinitely greater. By faith, the sanctified man is made an heir of God and joint heir with Jesus Christ (Rom. viii. 17) of all things, and his faith makes his Heavenly Father and this heavenly inheritance so real to him, that the influence of these unseen things far surpasses the influence of the things he sees with his eyes, hears with his ears, and handles with his hands. The sanctified man says with Paul, and fully realizes it in his heart as he says it, that “the things which are seen are temporal, ” and will soon perish; “but the things which are not seen” with our natural eyes, but are seen by the eye of faith, “are eternal” (2 Cor. iv. 18) and will remain when” the elements shall melt with fervent heat” (2 Pet. iii. 10), and “the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll” (Isa. xxxiv. 14).

Now in the very nature of the case, these things can only be held by faith; but so long as the sanctified man thus holds them, Satan’s power over him is utterly broken. This the devil knows quite well, so he begins systematic warfare against the faith of such a man. He will accuse him of sin, when the man’s conscience is as clear of willfully breaking God’s law as is the conscience of an angel. But Satan knows if he can get him to listen to this accusation and lose faith in the cleansing Blood of Jesus, he has him at his mercy. Satan will in this way accuse a sanctified man, and then turn right about and declare that it is the Holy Spirit, instead of himself, condemning the man! He is “the accuser of the brethren” (Rev. xii. 10).

Here is the difference we want to notice: The devil accuses us of sin. The Holy Spirit condemns us for sin. If I tell a lie, get proud, or break any of God’s commandments, the Holy Spirit will condemn me at once. Satan will accuse me of having sinned when I have not, and he cannot prove it. For instance, a sanctified man talks to a sinner about his soul, urges him to flee from the wrath to come, and give his heart to God; but the sinner will not. Then Satan begins to accuse the Christian: “You did not say the right things to that sinner; if you had, he would have given in to God. ” It is of no use arguing with the devil. The only thing the man can do is to look away from the accuser to the Saviour and say: “Dear Lord, Thou knowest that I did the best I could at the time, and if I did anything wrong or left anything unsaid, I trust Thy Blood this moment to cleanse me. ” If Satan is met this way at the beginning of his accusation, the man’s faith will gain a victory, and he will rejoice in the Saviour’s cleansing Blood and the Spirit’s keeping power; but if he listens to the devil until his conscience and faith are both wounded, it may take a long time for his faith to regain the strength which will enable him to shout and triumph over all the power of the enemy.

When Satan has injured the faith of the sanctified man, he will begin to blacken the character of God. He will suggest to the man that the Father no longer loves him with that mighty love He had for His Son Jesus; yet Jesus declares that He does. Then he will suggest that, maybe, the Blood does not cleanse him from all sin and that the Holy Spirit cannot – or, at least, does not –keep anybody spotless and blameless, and that, after all, there is no such thing as a holy life down here in this world. As a further result of this wounded faith, the man’s secret prayer loses much of its blessedness; his intense desire to deal with souls will grow dull; the joy of testifying for Christ will grow less, and dry talk will take the place of burning testimony, and the Bible will cease to be a constant source of blessing and strength. Then the devil will tempt him to actual sin, through the neglect of some of these duties. Now if the man listens to Satan and begins to doubt, woe be to his faith! If he does not cry mightily to God, if he does not search the Bible to know God’s will and find His promises, and plead them day and night, as Jesus did, “who in the days of His flesh … offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save Him from death” (Heb. v. 7);

if he does not hurl these promises at Satan and resolutely shut his ears to every suggestion to doubt God, it is only a question of time when he will be numbered among those who have a name to live and are dead (Rev. lii. 1); “having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof” (2 Tim. iii. 5); whose prayer and testimonies are dead; whose Bible study and exhortations and works are dead, because there is no living faith in them; or he will become an out-and-out backslider. What shall the sanctified man do to overcome the devil? Listen to what Peter says: “Be sober, be vigilant” (that means, keep your eyes open), “because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: whom resist steadfast in the faith” (1 Pet. v. 8, 9).

Hear James: “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (iv. 7). Listen to Paul: “Fight the good fight of faith” (1 Tim. vs. 12). “The just shall live by faith (Rom. i. 17). “Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked” (Eph. vi. 16). And John: “This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith” (1 John v. 4).

“And they overcame him” (the devil, the accuser of the brethren) “by the Blood of the Lamb” (in which Blood they had childlike faith), “and by the word of their testimony” (for if a man will not testify his faith will soon die), “and they loved not their lives unto the death “(Rev. xii. 11);

they obeyed God at all costs, and denied themselves to the uttermost. Paul attaches the same importance to testimony when he says: “Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering” (Heb. x. 23). “Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God” (Heb. iii. 12). “Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward (Heb. x. 35).

Chapter 5 – AFTER THE HOLINESS MEETING

Were you at the holiness meeting? Did you come out to the Penitent-form? Did Jesus make your heart clean? And did you receive the Holy Ghost? If you gave yourself to God in the very best way you knew of; but did not receive the Holy Ghost, I beg of you not to be discouraged. Do not take a backward step. Stand where you are, and hold fast your faith. The Lord means to bless you. Keep looking unto Jesus, and fully expect Him to satisfy your heart’s desire.

Tell Him you expect it, and plead His promises. He says: “I know the thoughts I think toward you, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. Then shall ye call upon Me, and ye shall go and pray unto Me, and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall search for Me with all your heart. And I will be found of you” (Jer. xxix. 11, 14). This is a wonderful promise, and it is for you. Has the devil tempted you, more than ever, since then? Well, here is another promise for you: “O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires.

And I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones … in righteousness shalt thou be established” (Isa. liv. 11, 12, 14). God is going to do wonderful things for you, if you will not cast away your faith and your boldness.

No doubt some of you not only gave yourselves to God, but God gave Himself to you. You did receive the Holy Ghost. When He came in, self went out. You abhorred, you loathed yourself; and sank into nothingness, while Jesus became all and in all. That is the first thing the Holy Ghost does when He comes into the heart in all His fullness – He glorifies Jesus. We see Jesus as we never saw Him before; we love Him; we adore Him; we ascribe all honour and glory and power unto Him, and we realize, as we never did before, that through His precious Blood we are saved and sanctified. The Holy Spirit will not call your attention to Himself; but will point to Jesus. “He shall not speak of Himself … He shall glorify Me: for He shall receive of Mine, and shall shew it unto you, ” said Jesus; and again: “He shall testify of Me” (John xvi. 13, 14; xv. 26). Nor does He come to reveal to us any new truth, but rather to make us understand the old truth that Jesus spoke, and which the Prophets and Apostles, whom He inspired, spoke. “He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you” (John xiv. 26). He will make your Bible a new book to you. He will make you remember it. He will teach you how to apply it to your everyday life, so that you will be safely guided by it. The reason why people get mixed up over the Bible is because they have not the Holy Spirit to show them the meaning.

A cadet or humble soldier who is full of the Holy Ghost can tell more about the real, deep, spiritual meaning of the Bible than all the doctors of divinity and theological professors in the world who are not baptized with the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost will make you love your Bible, and you will say with Job, “I have esteemed the words of His mouth more than my necessary food – (Job xxiii. 12); and with the Psalmist you will declare His judgments to be “sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb” (Ps. xix. 10). No book or paper can take its place; but, like the “blessed” man, you will “meditate therein day and night” (Ps. 1. 2; Josh. i. 8).

He will make you tremble at the warnings of God’s word (Isa. lxvi. 2), exult in His promises, and take delight in the commandments. You can be satisfied with nothing less than the whole Bible, and you will say with Jesus, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (Matt. iv. 4); and you will understand what Jesus meant when He said, “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life” (John vi. 63). While you walk in humble obedience and childlike faith, trusting in the Blood of Jesus to cleanse you from all sin, the Comforter will abide with you, and the “low-water mark” of your experience will be “perfect peace. ” I will not dare to say what the high-water mark may be! Like Paul, you may get “caught up to the third heaven” at times, and hear “unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter “(2 Cor. xii. 4). Oh, there are unspeakable breadths, and lengths, and depths, and heights of the love of God for you to revel in and discover by the telescope and microscope of faith! Glory to God! You need not fear that the experience will wear out or grow tame. God is infinite, and your little mind and heart cannot exhaust the wonders of His wisdom and goodness and grace and glory in one short lifetime.

Bless the Lord! Hallelujah! Do not think, however, when the tide flows out to “low-water mark” that the Comforter has left you. I remember well how, after I had received the Holy Ghost, I walked for weeks under a weight of divine joy and glory that was almost too much for my body to bear.

Then the joy began to subside, and there would be alternate days of joy and peace; and on the days when there was no special experience, the devil would tempt me with the thought that I had in some way grieved the Holy Spirit and that He was leaving me. But God taught me it was the devil’s lie, and that I must “hold fast the profession of” my “faith without wavering” (Heb. x. 23). So I may say to you, Do not think He has left you because you are not overflowing with emotion. Hold fast your faith. He is with you, and will not leave you, after the hard time He has had to get fully into your heart, without first letting you know just why He goes. The Holy Spirit is not capricious and fickle. He has to strive long to get into your heart, and He will strive long before He will leave it, unless you willfully harden your heart and drive Him from you.

I am not writing this, however, for those who are careless and would as soon grieve Him as not, but for you whose hearts are tender, who love Him, and would rather die than lose Him out of your hearts. I say to you, trust Him! When I had almost yielded to the lie of Satan that the Lord had left me, God gave me this text: “The children of Israel … tempted the Lord, saying, Is the Lord among us, or not? ” (Ex. xvii. 7). I saw that to doubt God’s presence with me, even though I felt no special sign of His presence, was to tempt Him; so I promised the Lord then that I would not doubt, but would be strong in faith. Glory to God for ever! He has not left me yet, and I am persuaded He never will. I can trust my wife when I cannot see her, and so I have learned to trust my Lord, even if I do not always feel the same mighty stirrings of His power in me. I tell Him that I trust Hint, and I do believe He is with me, and I will not please the devil by doubting. Just at this stage, after having received the Holy Ghost, many people get into confusion. In time of temptation they think He has left them; and instead of trusting and acknowledging His presence and thanking Him for stooping so low as to dwell in their poor hearts, they begin to seek Him as though He had not already come, or had gone away.

They should stop seeking at once, and go to fighting the devil by faith, and telling him to get behind them, and go on praising the Lord for His presence with them. If you will seek light when you have light, you will find darkness and confusion; and if you begin to seek the Holy Spirit when you already have Him, you will grieve Him. What He wants is that you have faith. Therefore, having received Him into your hearts, continually acknowledge His presence, obey Him, glory in Him, and He will abide with you for ever, (John xiv. 16), and His presence will be power in you. Do not keep seeking and crying for more power; but rather seek by prayer and watchfulness and study of your Bible and the honest improvement of every opportunity to be a perfectly free channel for the power of the Holy Ghost, who is now in you. Believe God, and do not obstruct the way of the Holy Ghost, that He may work through you. Ask Him to teach and guide you, that you may not hinder Him in His work. Seek to think His thoughts, to speak His words, to feel His love, and exercise His faith. Seek to be so guided by Him that you will pray when He wants you to pray, sing when He wants you to sing, and last, but not least, be silent when He wants you to be silent. “Live in the Spirit, ” “Walk in the Spirit, ” (Gal. v. 25), “Be filled with the Spirit” (Eph. v. 18). Finally, do not be surprised if you have very unusual temptations. You remember that it was after Jesus was baptized with the Holy Ghost that He was led into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil for forty days and forty nights (see Matt. lii. 16, 17 and iv. 1-3). “The disciple is not above his Master” (Matt. x. 24). But when you are tempted count it all joy (James i. 2).

Your very trials and temptations will lead you into a deeper acquaintance with Jesus; for, as He was, so are you to be in this present world. Remember He has said: “My grace is sufficient for thee “(2 Cor.

xii. 9), and it is written of Him: “For in that He Himself hath suffered being tempted, He is able to succour them that are tempted” (Heb. ii. 18); and again: “We have not a High Priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. iv. 15). But, “What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? ” (Rom. viii. 31).

Be true, be full of faith, and you will be able to say with Paul: “In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. viii. 37-39).

Chapter 6 – “FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT OF FAITH” (1 Tim. vi. 12)

A friend with whom I once billeted claimed the blessing of a clean heart, and testified to it at the breakfast table the next morning. He said he had doubted whether there was such an experience; but, since going to The Salvation Army, he had been led to study the Bible, and to observe the lives of those who professed it, and he had since come to the conclusion that he could not serve God acceptably without holiness of heart. But the difficulty was, to come to the point where he would take it by faith.

He said he had expected to get it some time, he had hoped for it, he had looked forward to the time when he should be pure; but he saw that it must be claimed now, and right there began his fight of faith. He took hold of one end of the promise, and the devil got hold of the other end, and they pulled and fought for the victory now.

The devil had often gotten the victory before. This time the man would not cast away his confidence, but came “boldly unto the throne of grace, ” obtained mercy and found grace to help in time of need (Heb. iv. 16); the devil was conquered by faith, the brother walked off with the blessing of a clean heart, and this morning he said: “God filled me with the Spirit last night, ” while the glad tones of his voice and the bright light of his face backed up his words. The last thing a soul has to give up, when seeking salvation or sanctification, is “an evil heart of unbelief” (Heb. iii. 12). This is Satan’s stronghold.

You may drive him from all his outposts and he does not care much, but when you assail this citadel he will resist with all the lies and cunning he can command. He does not care much if people do give up outward sin. A respectable sinner will suit his purpose quite as well as the most disreputable. In fact, I am not sure but that some people are worse than the devil wants them to be, for they are a bad advertisement for him. Nor does he care very much if people indulge a hope of salvation or of purity; indeed, I suspect he likes them to do so, if he can get them to stop there. But let a poor soul say to himself, “I want to know I am saved now. I must have the blessing now.

I can’t live any longer without the witness of the Spirit that Jesus saves me now, and cleanses me now, ” and the devil will begin to roar and lie and use all his wits to deceive the soul and switch it on to some side track or rock it to sleep with a promise of victory at some future time. This is where the devil really begins. Many people say they are fighting the devil, who do not know what fighting the devil means. It is a fight of faith, in which the soul takes hold of the promise of God, and holds on to it, and believes it, and declares it to be true in spite of all the devil’s lies, in spite of all circumstances and feelings to the contrary, and in which it obeys God, whether God seems to be fulfilling the promise or not. When a soul gets to the point where he will do this, and will hold fast the profession of his faith without wavering, he will soon get out of the fogs and mists and twilight of doubt and uncertainty into the broad day of perfect assurance. Glory to God! He shall know that Jesus saves and sanctifies, and shall be filled with a humbling, yet unutterably joyful sense of His everlasting love and favor.

A comrade whom I love as my own soul sought the blessing of a clean heart, and gave up everything but his “evil heart of unbelief” But he did not understand that he was still holding on to that. He waited for God to give him the blessing. The devil whispered: “You say you are on the altar for God, but you don’t feel any different. ” The “evil heart of unbelief” in the poor fellow’s heart took the devil’s part and said, “That is so. ” The brother felt all discouraged, and the devil got the victory. Again he gave himself up, after a hard struggle – all but “the evil heart of unbelief. ” Again the devil whispered: “You say you are all the Lord’s, but you do not feel as other folks say they felt when they yielded all to God.

” The “evil heart of unbelief” again said, “That’s so, ” and again the man fell, through unbelief. A third time, after much effort, he sought the blessing, and gave God all but the “evil heart of unbelief. ” The third time the devil whispered: “You say you are all the Lord’s, but you know what a quick temper you have; now, how do you know but what next week an unlooked-for temptation may come that will overthrow you? “The third time the “evil heart of unbelief” said, “That’s so, “

and for the third time our brother was beaten back from the prize. But, at last, he got so desperate in his hunt for God and in his desire for holiness and the witness of the Spirit that there and then he was willing for God to show him all the depravity of his soul, and God showed him that his “evil heart of unbelief” had been listening to the devil’s voice and taking the devil’s part all the time. Good people, professing Christians, do not like to admit that they have any unbelief remaining in them; but until they acknowledge all the evil that is in them and take God’s part against themselves, He cannot sanctify them. Again he came and put his all on the altar, and told God he would trust Him. Again the devil whispered, “You don’t feel any different”; but this time the man hushed the “evil spirit of unbelief” and answered himself and said: “I do not care if I do not feel any different. I am all the Lord’s. ” “But you do not feel as other folks say they feel, ” whispered the devil. “I do not care if I do not. I am all the Lord’s, and He can bless me or not, just as He pleases. ” “But there is your quick temper. ” “I do not care; I am the Lord’s, and I will trust Him to manage my temper. I am the Lord’s! I am the Lord’s! ” And there he stood, resisting the devil, “steadfast in the faith” (I Pet. v. 9), and refusing to listen to the suggestions of “an evil heart of unbelief” all that day and night and the following day.

There was a stillness in his soul, and a fixed determination to stand on the promises of God for ever, whether God blessed him or not. About ten o’clock the second night, as he was getting ready to go to bed, without any thought of anything unusual going to happen, God fulfilled His ancient promise: “The Lord whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His temple” (Mal. iii. 1). Jesus, the Son of God – “He that liveth, and was dead, ” but is now “alive for evermore” (Rev. 1. 18) – was revealed in him, and manifested to his spiritual consciousness, until he was “lost in wonder, love and praise. ” Oh, how he exulted and triumphed in God his Saviour, and rejoiced that he had held fast his faith, and resisted the devil! Now, it is to this point that every soul which gets into the kingdom of God must come.

The soul must die to sin; he must renounce all unbelief and give up all doubts. He must consent to be “crucified with Christ” (Gal. ii. 20) now; and when he does this, he will touch God, and feel the fire of His love, and be filled with His power, as surely as an electric tram receives electric fire and power when proper connection is made with the wire above. God bless you, my brother, my sister, and help you to see that “now is the accepted time” (2 Cor. vi. 2).

Remember, if you are all given up to God, everything that makes you doubt is from Satan, and not from God; and God commands you to “resist the devil stedfast in the faith. ” “Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward” (Heb. x. 35).

Chapter 7 – THE HEART OF JESUS

Give me a heart like Thine; By Thy wonderful power, By Thy grace every hour, Give me a heart like Thine. We sang that verse with all our might, one morning, in one of those hours of heart-humbling and heart-searching, when I was a cadet in the training home, and at least one of the cadets looked through the words and caught the spirit of the song. At the close of the meeting he came to me with a serious look and a tone of earnest inquiry, and asked: “Do we really mean it, that we can have a heart like His? I told him that I was certain that we could, and that the dear Lord wanted to give us hearts just like His own: – A humble, lowly, contrite heart, Believing, true and clean. A heart in every thought renewed, And full of love Divine; Perfect and right and pure and good, A copy, Lord, of Thine. Indeed, Jesus was “the firstborn among many brethren” (Rom. viii. 29). He is our “elder brother, ” and we are to be like Him. “As He is, so are we in this world” (1 John iv. 17), and “He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also so to walk, even as He walked” (1 John ii. 6). Now, it is impossible for us to walk like Him, to live like Him, unless we have a heart like His. We cannot bear the same kind of fruit unless we are the same kind of tree. So He wants to make us like Himself. We judge trees by their fruit, and so we judge Jesus, and then we can find out what kind of a heart He had.

We find in Him love; therefore, Jesus had a loving heart. He bore the luscious fruit of perfect love. There was no hatred with His love, no venom, no spite, no selfishness; He loved His enemies and prayed for His murderers. It was not a fickle love, turning about every new moon, but a changeless, eternal love. “I have loved thee with an everlasting love” (Jer. xxxi. 3), God says. Oh, glory to God! How marvelous that is! It is just this kind of love He wants us to have. Listen! He says: “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you” (John xiii. 34). That is tremendous, to command me to love my brother even as Jesus loves me; but that is what He says, and to do that I must have a heart like the heart of Jesus.

I know if we examine love we find that it includes all the other graces; but we will look into the heart of Jesus for some of them. Jesus had a humble heart. He said of Himself “I am meek and lowly in heart” (Matt. xi. 29); and Paul tells us that He “made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and … humbled Himself. ” Bless His dear name! He did humble Himself, for, though He was the Lord of life and glory, yet He stooped to be born of a lowly virgin in a manger, and wrought as an unknown carpenter for thirty years, and then choose to live with the poor, the ignorant and the vile, instead of the rich, the noble and the learned. While Jesus never seemed ill at ease or constrained in the presence of those who were mighty with this world’s greatness, or wise with its learning, yet His simple, humble heart found its mates among the lowly, hardworking, common people.

He cleaved to them. He would not be lifted up. They wanted to do it for Him, but He slipped away for prayer among the mountains, and then returned and preached such a straight sermon that nearly all His disciples left Him. Just a short time before His death, He took the menial place of a slave, and washed His disciples’ feet, and then said, “I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you” (John xiii. 15). How that helped me in the training home! The second day I was there they sent me down into a dark little cellar to black half a cart-load of dirty boots for the cadets.

The devil came at me, and reminded me that, a few years before, I had graduated from a university, that I had spent a couple of years in a leading theological school, had been pastor of a metropolitan church, had just left evangelistic work in which I saw hundreds seeking the Saviour, and that now I was only blacking boots for a lot of ignorant lads. My old enemy is the devil! But I reminded him of the example of my Lord, and he left me. Jesus said, “If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them” (John xiii. “7). I was doing them – the devil knew it and let me alone, and I was happy. That little cellar was changed into one of Heaven’s ante-rooms, and my Lord visited me there. “God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble” (Jas. iv. 6). If you would have a heart like that of Jesus it will be one filled with humility, that “is not puffed up, ” that “seeketh not her own” (1 Cor. xiii. 4, 5). “Be clothed with humility” (1 Pet. v. 5).

Jesus had a meek and gentle heart. Paul speaks of “the meekness and gentleness of Christ” (2 Cor. x. 1); and Peter tells us that “when He was reviled, (He) reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened not, but committed Himself to Him who judgeth righteously” (1 Pet. ii. 23). He did not strike back when He was injured; He did not try to justify Himself but committed His cause to His heavenly Father, and waited. “He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth. He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He openeth not His mouth” (Isa. liii. 7). That was the very perfection of meekness, that not only would He not strike back when He was lied about, but suffered the most cruel and shameful wrongs.

“Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh” (Matt. xii. 34), and because His blessed heart was full of meekness He did not thunder back at His enemies. It is just this kind of heart He wants us to have when He commands us to “Resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also … and whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain” (Matt. v. 39, 41). I know a colored brother, over six feet tall, with a full chest and brawny arms, who was recently put off a street car, in the most indecent and brutal manner, but where he had as much right to be as the conductor himself.

Some one who knew his past fighting record said, “Why don’t you fight him, George? ” I couldn’t fight him, for God has taken all the fight out of me, ” replied George. “When you put your knife in the fire and draw the temper out of it, it won’t cut, ” he added and fairly shouted for Joy. “Blessed are the meek” (Matt. v. 5), for “He will beautify the meek with salvation” (Ps. cxlix. 4).

Chapter 8 – THE SECRET OF POWER

“They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength” (Isaiah xl. 31). If I were dying, and had the privilege of delivering a last exhortation to all the Christians of the world, and that message had to be condensed into three words, I would say, “Wait on God! ” Wherever I go I find backsliders – Methodist backsliders, Baptist backsliders, Salvationist backsliders – all kinds of backsliders by the thousand, until my heart aches as I think of the great army of discouraged souls, of the way in which the Holy Spirit has been grieved, and of the way in which Jesus has been treated. If these backsliders were asked the cause of their present condition, ten thousand different reasons would be given; but, after all, there is but one, and that is this: they did not wait on God.

If they had waited on Him when the fierce assault was made that overthrew their faith and robbed them of their courage and bankrupted their love, they would have renewed their strength and mounted over all obstacles as though on eagles’ wings. They would have run through their enemies and not been weary. They would have walked in the midst of trouble and not fainted. Waiting on God means more than a prayer of thirty seconds on getting up in the morning and going to bed at night. It may mean one prayer that gets hold of God and comes away with the blessing, or it may mean a dozen prayers that knock and persist and will not be put off, until God arises, and makes bare His arm on behalf of the pleading soul.

There is a drawing nigh to God, a knocking at Heaven’s doors, a pleading of the promises, a reasoning with Jesus, a forgetting of self a turning from all earthly concerns, a holding on with determination to never let go, that puts all the wealth of Heaven’s wisdom and power and love at the disposal of a little man, so that he shouts and triumphs when all others tremble and fail and fly, and becomes more than conqueror in the very face of death and Hell.

It is in the heat of just such seasons of waiting on God that every great soul gets the wisdom and strength that make it an astonishment to other men. They, too, might be “great in the sight of the Lord, ” if they would wait on God and be true, instead of getting excited and running to this man and that for help when the testing times come. The Psalmist had been in great trouble, and this is what he says of his deliverance: “I waited patiently for the Lord; and He inclined unto me, and heard my cry.

He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. And He hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the Lord” (Ps. xl. 1-3). The other day I went to a poor little corps where nearly everything had been going wrong. Many were cold and discouraged; but I found one sister with a wondrous glory in her face, and glad, sweet praises in her mouth. She told me how she had looked at others falling around her, had seen the carelessness of many, and noted the decline of vital piety in the corps, until her heart ached and she felt disheartened and her feet almost slipped.

But she went to God, and got down low before Him, and prayed and waited, until He drew near her, and showed her the awful precipice on which she herself was standing — showed her that her one business was to follow Jesus, to walk before Him with a perfect heart, and to cleave to Him, though the whole corps backslid.

Then she confessed all that God showed her; confessed how near she had come to joining the great army of backsliders herself through looking at others; humbled herself before Him, and renewed her covenant, until an unutterable joy came to her heart, and God put His fear in her soul, and filled her with the glory of His presence. She told me, further, that the next day she fairly trembled to think of the awful danger she had been in, and declared that that time of waiting on God in the silence of the night saved her, and now her heart was filled with the full assurance of hope for herself, and not only for herself, but also for the corps. Oh, for ten thousand such soldiers!

David said, “My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from Him (Ps. lxii. 5); and again he declares: “I wait for the Lord, my soul doth wait, and in His name do I hope. My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning” (Ps. cxxx. 5); and he sends out this ringing exhortation and note of encouragement to you and me: “Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord” (Ps. xxvii. 14). The secret of all failures, and of all true success, is hidden in the attitude of the soul in its private walk with God.

The man who courageously waits on God is bound to succeed. He cannot fail. To other men he may appear for the present to fail, but in the end they will see what he knew all the time: that God was with him, making him, in spite of all appearances, “a prosperous man. ” Jesus puts the secret into these words: “But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly” (Matt. vi. 6). Know, then, that all failure has its beginning in the closet, in neglecting to wait on God until filled with wisdom, clothed with power, and all on fire with love.

Chapter 9 – THE LEAKAGE OF SPIRITUAL POWER

That man of God and lover of souls, James Caughey, tells in one of his books how he was invited out to tea one evening; and though there was nothing harmful in the talk of the hour, yet when he went into the meeting at night his soul was like a loosely strung bow. He couldn’t shoot the King’s arrows into the hearts of the King’s enemies, for he had no power. It had been lost at the tea-table. I knew an officer once who let all his spiritual power leak out, until he was as dry as an old bone when he got into the meeting.

It was in this way. We had to ride three miles in a street car to get to the hall, and all the way there he was talking about things that had no bearing upon the coming meeting. There was nothing wrong or trifling said, but it was not to the point; it turned his mind from God and the souls he was so soon to face and plead with to be reconciled to Him; and the result was that, instead of going before the people clothed with power, he went stripped of power. I remember the meeting well. His prayer was good, but there was no power in it. It was words, words, words! The Bible reading and talk were good. He said many true and excellent things, but there was no power in them.

The soldiers looked indifferent, the sinners looked careless and sleepy, and altogether the meeting was a dull affair. Now, the officer was not a backslider; he had a good experience. Nor was he a dull stupid officer; on the contrary, he was one of the brightest, keenest officers I know. The trouble was that, instead of keeping quiet and communing with God in his own heart on that car, until his soul was ablaze with faith and hope and love and holy expectation, he had wasted his power in useless talk. God says: “If thou take forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as My mouth” (Jer. xv. 59).

Think of it! That officer might have gone into that meeting filled with power, and his mouth should have been to those people as the mouth of God, and his words should have been “quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, ” and proving to be “a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Heb. iv. 12). But instead of that, he was like Samson after his locks were shorn by Delilah – he was powerless as other men. There are many ways of letting power leak away. I knew a soldier who came to the hall very early every evening, and instead of getting his soul keyed up to a high pitch of faith and love, spent the time playing soft, dreamy music on his violin, and though faithfully, lovingly warned, continued that practice till he openly backslid. I have known men whose power leaked out through a joke.

They believed in having things go with a swing, and so they told funny stories and played the clown to make things lively. And things were lively, but it was not with Divine life. It was the liveliness of mere animal spirits, and not of the Holy Spirit. I do not mean by this that a man who is filled with the power of the Spirit will never make men laugh. He will. He may say tremendously funny things. But he will not be doing it just to have a good time. It will come naturally.

It will not be dragged in “on all fours, ” and it will be done in the fear of God, and not in a spirit of lightness and jesting. He who wants a meeting of life and power should remember that there is no substitute for the Holy Ghost. He is life. He is power. And if He is sought in earnest, faithful prayer, He will come, and when He comes the little meeting will be mighty in its results. The Holy Spirit should be earnestly sought, in earnest, secret prayer. Jesus said, “When thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly” (Matt. vi. 6).

He will do it; bless His holy name! I know of a man who, if possible, gets alone with God for an hour before every meeting, and when he speaks it is with the power and demonstration of the Spirit.

The man who wants power, just when it is most needed, must walk with God. He must be a friend of God. He must keep the way always open between his heart and God. God will be the friend of such a man, and will bless him and honor him. God will tell him His secrets; He will show him how to get at the hearts of men. God will make dark things light and crooked places straight and rough places smooth for that man. God will be on his side and help him. Such a man must keep a constant watch over his mouth and his heart. David prayed: “Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips” (Ps. cxli. 3); and Solomon said: “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life” (Prov. iv. 23). He must walk in unbroken communion with God.

He must cultivate a spirit of joyful recollection by which he will be always conscious that he is in the presence of God. “Delight thyself also in the Lord” (Ps. xxxvii. 4), said the Psalmist. Oh, how happy is that man who finds God to be his delight; who is never lonely, because He knows God, talks with God, delights in God; who feels how lovable God is, and gives himself up to loving, serving, trusting God with all his heart! Comrade,

“Quench not the Spirit” (I Thess. v.59), and He will lead you thus to know and love God, and God will make you the instrument of His own power.

Chapter 10 – THE MAN GOD USES

A while ago I was talking with a Christian merchant who expressed a great and important truth. He said: “People are crying to God to use them, but He cannot. They are not given up to Him; they are not humble and teachable and holy.

There are plenty of people who come to me and want work in my store, but I cannot use them; they are not fit for my work. When I must have someone, I have to go and advertise, and sometimes spend days in trying to find a man who will fit into the place I want him for, and then I have to try him and prove him to know whether he will suit me or not. ” The fact is, God is using everybody that He can, and using them to the full extent of their fitness for His service. So, instead of praying so much to be used, people should search themselves to know whether they are usable. God cannot use anybody and everybody who comes along any more than the merchant could.

It is only those who are “sanctified, and meet for the Master’s use, and prepared unto every good work” (2 Tim. ii. 21) that He can bless with great usefulness. God wants men and women, and He is hunting for them everywhere; but, like the merchant, He has to pass by hundreds before He finds the right individuals.

The Bible says: “The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew Himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward Him” (2 Chron. xvi. 9). Oh, how God wants to use you! But before you ask Him again to do so, see to it that your heart is “perfect toward Him. ” Then you may depend upon it that God will show Himself strong in your behalf. Glory to His dear, dear name!

When God searches for a man to work in His vineyard He does not ask, “Has he great natural abilities? Is he thoroughly educated? Is he a fine singer? Is he eloquent in prayer? Can he talk much? ” But, rather, He asks, “Is his heart perfect toward Me? Is he holy? Does he love much? Is he willing to walk by faith, and not by sight? Does he love Me so much and has he such childlike confidence in My love for him that he can trust Me to use him when he doesn’t see any sign that I am using him? Will he be weary and faint when I correct him and try to fit him for greater usefulness? Or will he, like Job, cry out, ‘Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him’? (Job xiii. 15).

Does he search My word, and ‘meditate therein day and night, ‘ in order to ‘do according to all that is written therein’? (Joshua i. 8). Does he wait on Me for My counsel and seek in everything to be led by My Spirit? Or is he stubborn and self-willed, like the horse and the mule, which have to be held in with bit and bridle (Ps. xxxii. 9), so that I cannot ‘guide him with Mine eye’? (Ps. xxxii. 8). Is he a manpleaser and a time-server, or is he willing to wait for his reward, and does he seek solely for ‘the honour that cometh from God only’? Does he ‘preach the word’ and is he ‘instant in season, out of season’? (2 Tim. iv. 2). Is he meek and lowly in heart and humble? ” When God finds such a man, He will use him.

God and that man will have such a friendly understanding with each other, and such mutual sympathy and love and confidence that they will at once become “workers together “(2 Cor. vi. 1). Paul was such a man, and the more they whipped him and stoned him and tried to rid the earth of him, the more God used him.

At last they shut him up in prison, but Paul declared with unshaken faith, “I suffer trouble as an evil doer, even unto bonds; but the word of God is not bound” (2 Tim. ii. 9); and so he spoke God’s word, and neither devils nor men could put shackles on it, but it pierced right through the prison walls, and flew across oceans and continents and down through the long centuries, bearing the glorious tidings of the blessed Gospel; overthrowing thrones and kingdoms and powers of evil, and everywhere bringing light and comfort and salvation to dark, troubled, sinful hearts. Though more than eighteen hundred years have passed since they cut off Paul’s head and thought they had done with him for ever, yet his usefulness increases and his mighty words and works are today bearing such fruit to the good of men and the glory of God as passes the comprehension of an archangel. Oh, how surprised Paul will be when he receives his final reward at the general judgment day, and enters into possession of all the treasures he has laid up in Heaven and the everlasting inheritance prepared for him! Poor, troubled soul, cheer up! Be of good courage! You think you are useless, but you do not know. Trust God! Paul saw dark days. He wrote to Timothy one day and said, “This thou knowest, that all they which are in Asia be turned away from me” (2 Tim. i. 15). Study his life in the Acts and the Epistles, and see what conflicts and discouragements he had, and take courage! Jesus said, “He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (But this spake He of the Spirit, which they that believe on Him should receive … ” (John vii. 38, 39). See to it that you are a believer. See to it that you are “filled with the Spirit, ” and Jesus will see to it that out of your life shall flow rivers of holy influence and power to bless the world; and you, too, will be surprised, at the reckoning day, to behold the vastness of your reward as compared with the littleness of your sacrifices and your work.

Chapter 11 – YOUR OWN SOUL

I was once asked the question by a woman: “Cannot one take too much care of one’s own soul? I see all about me, everywhere, so much sorrow and suffering and injustice that I am perplexed at God’s way of ruling the world; and it seems to me as though every Christian ought to be trying to help others, instead of looking out for one’s own soul. ” Here is a common perplexity.

Every Christian sees around him sorrow and suffering which he cannot help, and his perplexity at the sight is the Lord’s prompting for him to take the very uttermost care of his own soul, lest he stumble and fall through doubt and discouragement. By the care of his soul I do not mean that he shall coddle and pet and pity himself, nor work himself up into some pleasant feeling. But I mean that he should pray and pray and pray, and seek the presence and teaching of the Holy Spirit, until his soul is filled with light and strength, that he may have unquestioning faith in the wisdom and love of God, that he may have unwearied patience in learning His will (Heb. vi. 12), and that his love may be equal to the great need he sees all about him. Reader, maybe you, too, are troubled by the sight of unhelped wretchedness near you.

No living soul can answer to your satisfaction the questions that will rise up within you, and that Satan will suggest as you look on the misery of the world. But the blessed Comforter will satisfy your heart and your head, if you have the faith and patience to wait while He teaches you “all things” and leads you “into all truth” (John xvi. 13).

“They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength” (Isa. xl. 31). You cannot help people if you go to them robbed of your strength through doubts and fears and perplexities. So, wait on God till He strengthens your heart.

Do not become impatient. Do not try beforehand to find out what God will say, nor just how He will say it. He will surely teach you; but you must let Him do it in His own way, and then you will be able to help people with all the might and wisdom of Jehovah.

You must trust His love and you must abide His time; but you must wait on Him and expect Him to teach you. If the King of England is coming to Windsor Castle, the servants do not lie around listlessly nor hunt up a lot of work to do; but every one stands in his own place and waits with eager expectancy. This is what I mean by waiting upon God. Of this kind of taking care of your own soul you cannot do too much, and do not let any one drive you from it by ridicule or entreaty. The woodman would be very foolish who thought he had so much wood to cut that he could not take time to grind his axe. The servant would be useless who went to the city to buy things for his master, but was in such a hurry that he did not come to his master for orders and the needed money.

How much worse is he who attempts to do God’s work without God’s direction and God’s strength! One morning, after a half-night of prayer which I led, and in which I had worked very hard, I got up early to be sure of an hour with God and my Bible, and God blessed me till I wept. An officer who was with me was much moved, and then confessed: “I do not often find God in prayer – I have not time. People who do not find God in prayer must hinder His cause instead of hoping it.

Take time. Miss breakfast if necessary, but take time to wait on God, and when God has come and blessed you, then go to the miserable ones about you and pour upon them the wealth of joy, the love and peace God has given you. But do not go until you know you are going in His power. I once heard William Booth say in an officer’s council: “Take time to pray God’s blessing down on your own soul every day. If you do not, You will lose God. God is leaving men every day. They once had power. They walked in the glory and strength of God but they ceased to wait on Him and earnestly seek His face, and He left them.

I am a very busy man, but I take time to get alone with God every day and commune with Him. If I did not, He would soon leave me. ” God bless the dear Founder! Paul said, “Take heed therefore (1) unto yourselves, and (2) to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers” (Acts xx. 28). And again, “Take heed (1) unto thyself; and (2) to the doctrine; for in doing this thou shalt save both thyself; and them that hear thee” (2 Tim. iv. 16).

Paul did not mean to promote selfishness by telling us to first take heed to ourselves; but he did mean to teach that, unless we do take heed to ourselves and are full of faith and hope and love in our own souls, we shall be unable to help others.

Chapter 12 – GIDEON’S BAND

(Judges vi. and vii. ) One hundred and twenty thousand Midianites had come up to fight against Israel, and thirty-two thousand Israelites rose up to fight for their wives, their children, their homes, their liberty, their lives. But God saw that if one Israelite whipped nearly four Midianites he would he so puffed up with pride and conceit that he would forget God, and say, “Mine own hand hath saved me” (vii. 2).

The Lord also knew that there were a lot of weak-kneed followers among them, with cowardly hearts, who would like an excuse to run away, so He told Gideon to say: “Whosoever is fearful and afraid, let him return and depart early from mount Gilead. ” The sooner fearful folks leave us the better. “And there returned of the people twenty and two thousand; and there remained ten thousand” (vii. 3).

They were afraid to show the enemy their faces, but they were not ashamed to show them their backs. But the Lord saw that if one Israelite whipped twelve Midianites he would be all the more puffed up, so He made a still further test. He said unto Gideon: “The people are yet too many; bring them down unto the water, and I will try them for thee there. ” God often tries people at the table and the tea-pot. “And it shall be, that of whom I say unto thee, This shall go with thee, the same shall go with thee; and of whomsoever I say unto thee, This shall not go with thee, the same shall not go. So he brought down the people unto the water: and the Lord said unto Gideon, Every one that lappeth of the water with his tongue, as a dog lappeth, him shalt thou set by himself; likewise every one that boweth down upon his knees to drink.

And the number of them that lapped, putting their hand to their mouth, were three hundred men; but all the rest of the people bowed down upon their knees to drink water. And the Lord said unto Gideon, By the three hundred men that lapped will I save you, and deliver the Midianites into thine hand: and let all the other people go every man unto his place. So the people took victuals in their hand, and their trumpets: and he sent all the rest of Israel every man unto his tent, and retained those three hundred men” (Judges vii. 4-8).

These three hundred men meant business. They were not only unafraid, but they were not self- indulgent. They knew how to fight, but they knew something even more important – they knew how to deny themselves. They knew how to deny themselves, not only when there was very little water, but when a river rolled at their feet. They were, no doubt, quite as thirsty as the others, but they did not propose to throw down their arms and fall down on their faces to drink in the presence of the enemy. They stood up, kept their eyes open, watched the enemy, kept one hand on shield and bow, while with the other they brought water to their thirsty lips.

The other fellows were not afraid to fight, but they must drink first, even if the enemy did steal a march on them while prostrate on the ground satisfying their thirst. Number one must be cared for, if the army were crushed. They were self-indulgent and never dreamed of denying themselves for the common good; so God sent them home along with the fellows that were afraid, and with the three hundred He routed the Midianites. That was one to four hundred. No chance of self-conceit there! They won the victory and became immortal, but God got the glory.

There are fearful people who cannot face a laugh or a sneer, much less a determined foe. If they cannot be led to lay hold of the strength and boldness of the Lord, the sooner they quit the field the better; let them go back to their wives and babies and sweethearts and mothers. But there are many who are not afraid.

They rather enjoy a fight. They would as soon wear uniform, sell The War Cry, march the streets, face a mob, sing and pray and testify in the presence of enemies, as stay at home, perhaps rather. But they are self-indulgent! If they like a thing they must have it, however much it may hurt them and so unfit them for the fight.

I am acquainted with some people who know that tea and cake and candy injure them, but they like these things, and so they indulge themselves, at the risk of grieving the Spirit of God, and destroying their health, which is the capital God has given them to do His work with.

I know some people who ought to know that a big supper before a meeting taxes the digestive organs, draws the blood from the head to the stomach, makes one drowsy and dull and heavy, and unfits the soul to feel spiritual realities keenly and to stand between God and the people, pleading with God, in mighty, believing, Elijah – like prayer, and prevailing with the people in clear testimony and burning exhortation. But they are hungry, they like such and such things, and so they tickle their palate with the things they like, punish their stomachs, spoil their meetings, disappoint the starving, hungry souls of the people, and grieve the Holy Ghost – all to gratify their appetites. I know people who cannot watch with Jesus through a half-night of prayer without buns and coffee.

Imagine wrestling Jacob (Gen. Xxxii. ) stopping, in that desperate all-night of prayer with the angel for the blessing before meeting his injured brother Esau in the morning, to have buns and coffee! If his soul had been no more desperate than that, he could have had his buns, but on his return to wrestle he would have found the angel gone; and next morning, instead of learning that the angel who had disjointed his thigh, but left his blessing, had also melted Esau’s hard heart, he would have found an angry brother, who would have been ready to carry out his threat of twenty years before and take his life.

But Jacob was desperate. He wanted God’s blessing so much that he forgot all about his body. In fact, he prayed so earnestly that his thigh was put out of joint, and he did not complain. He had gained the blessing. Glory to God! When Jesus prayed and agonized and sweat, as it were, great drops of blood in the Garden, His disciples slept, and He was grieved that they could not watch with Him one hour.

And He must be grieved today that so many cannot, or will not, watch with Him; will not deny their inmost self to win victory over the powers of Hell and snatch souls from the bottomless pit. We read of Daniel (Dan. x. 3) that for three long weeks he ate no pleasant food, but gave himself to prayer during all the time he possibly could, so eager was he to know the will of God and get the blessing. And he got it.

One day God sent an angel to him who said “O man greatly beloved! ” and then told him all he wanted to know. In Acts xiv. 23 we read that Paul and Barnabas prayed and fasted – not feasted – that the people might be blessed before they left a certain corps.

They were greatly interested in the soldiers they left behind them. We know that Moses, and Elijah, and Jesus fasted and prayed for forty days, and immediately after mighty works were done. And so, almighty men of God have learned to deny themselves and keep their bodies under, and God has set their souls on fire, helped them to win victory against all odds, and bless the whole world. A man should not deny himself food and drink to the injury of his body. But one night of watching and fasting and praying can starve no one; and the man who is willing to forget his body occasionally for a short time, in the interest of his soul and the souls of others, will reap blessings which will amaze himself and all who know him. But this self-restraint must be constant. It will not do to fast all night and feast all next day. The Apostle writes of being “temperate in all things” (I Cor. ix. 25); and he might have added, “at all times. ” Again, Gideon’s band did some night work, or early morning work.

They got ahead of their enemies by getting up early. People who indulge their bodies in food and drink also usually indulge them in sleep. They eat late at night, and sleep heavily and lazily next morning, and usually need a cup of strong tea to clear their heads. Getting up late, the work of the day crowds upon them, and they have almost no time to praise the Lord, pray and read the Bible.

Then the cares of the day press upon them and their hearts get full of things other than the joy of the Lord. Jesus must wait till they have done everything else before He can catch their ear; and so their day is spoiled. Oh, that they knew the advantage, the luxury, the hilarious joy of early rising to fight the Midianites! It seems that Gideon, the captain, was up and about all night, and he roused his people early, and they had the Midianites all whipped and scattered before day-dawn. Four hundred devils cannot stand before the man who makes it the rule of his life to get up early to praise the Lord and plead for God’s blessing on his own soul and on the world.

They will flee away. John Fletcher used to mourn if he knew of a laborer getting out to his daily toil before he himself was up praising God and fighting the devil. He said: “What! Does that man’s earthly master deserve more ready service than my Heavenly Master? ” Another old saint lamented greatly if he heard the birds singing before he got up to praise God. We read that Jesus arose early and went out alone to pray. Joshua got up early in the morning to set battle in array against Jericho and Ai. John Wesley went to bed sharp at ten – unless he had an all-night of prayer – and got up promptly at four. Six hours of sleep was all he wanted.

And when eighty-two years old, he said he was a wonder to himself, for during the twelve years previous he had not been sick a day, nor felt weary, nor lost an hour’s sleep, although he traveled thousands of miles each year, in winter and summer, on horseback and in carriages, and preached hundreds of sermons, and did work that not one man out of a thousand could do – all of which he attributed to the blessing of God on his simple, plain way of living and to a clear conscience. He was a very wise and useful man, and he considered the matter of such grave importance that he wrote and published a sermon on Redeeming the Time from sleep.

A Captain wrote me the other day that he had begun to do his praying in the morning when his mind was fresh and before the cares of the day had got the start of him. It means more to belong to Gideon’s band than most people ever dreamed of; but I have joined it, glory to God! And my soul is on fire. It is a joy to live and belong to such a company.

Chapter 13 – THE CHAINED AMBASSADOR

“Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints; And for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel, For which I am an ambassador in bonds” (Eph. vi. 18-2D).

My soul was stirred within me the other morning by Paul’s appeal for the prayers of the Church, in which he declares himself to be “an ambassador in bonds, ” or, as the margin reads, “in a chain. ” You know what an ambassador is – a man who represents one government to another. The person of such a man is considered sacred. His word is with power. The dignity and authority of his country and government are behind him. Any injury or indignity to him is an injury and indignity to the country he represents.

Now Paul was an ambassador of Heaven, representing the Lord Jesus Christ to the people of this world. But instead of being respected and honored, he was thrust into prison and chained between two ignorant, and probably brutal, Roman soldiers. What stirred me were the quenchless zeal of the man and the work he did in the circumstances. Most Christians would have considered their work done, or, at least, broken off till they were free again.

But not so with Paul. From his prison and chains, he sent forth a few letters that have blessed the world, and will bless it to the end of time; and he also taught us that there is a ministry of prayer, as well as of more active work. We live in an age of restless work and rush and excitement, and we need to learn this lesson. Paul was the most active of all the Apostles – “in labours more abundant” – and it seemed as if he could ill be spared from the oversight of the converts and the new corps which he had so recently opened, and which were in such desperate circumstances and surrounded by implacable enemies.

But as he was set to be the chief exponent of the doctrines of the Gospel of Christ, so he was set to be the chief exponent of its saving and sanctifying power under the most trying conditions. It is difficult – if not quite impossible – to conceive of a trial to which Paul was not subjected, from being worshipped as a god to being whipped and stoned as the vilest slave. But he declared that none of these things moved him. He had learned in whatsoever state he was to be content (Phil. iv. 11), and he triumphantly wrote at the end of his life: “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith” (2 Tim. iv. 7). He did not backslide.

He did not even murmur, but kept on his way, trusting in the love of Jesus, and, through faith in Him, coming off more than conqueror. Many Salvationists have fairly well learned the lessons of activity taught us by Paul; but it will be well for us to be prepared to learn the lessons taught us by his imprisonment. Doubly important is it for sick and resting officers to learn these lessons. They get impatient of waiting, are tempted to murmur and repine, and imagine that they can do nothing. But the fact is, God may possibly use them more widely in prayer and praise, if they will believe and rejoice and watch and pray in the Holy Ghost, than He used them at the head of a battalion of soldiers. They should watch unto prayer for those who are at work and for those in need of the salvation of God.

I write from experience. For eighteen months I was laid aside with a broken head. God put His chain on me, and I had to learn the lessons of a passive ministry of prayer and praise and patience, or backslide altogether. It seemed as if I should never be able to work any more. But I did not backslide. He helped me to nestle down into His will, and, like David, to behave and quiet myself, as a child weaned of his mother, until my soul was even as a weaned child (Ps. cxxxi. 2).

Yet my heart longed for the glory of God and the salvation of nations, and I prayed, and watched reports of the salvation war, and studied the needs of some parts of the world, and prayed on until I knew God heard and answered me, and my heart was made as glad as though I had been in the thick of the fight. During that time I read of a great country, and my heart ached and burned and longed for God to send salvation there. In secret and in family prayer I poured out my heart to God, and I knew He heard and would yet do great things for that dark, sad country. Shortly after this, I learned of dreadful persecutions and the banishment of many simple, earnest Christians to this country; and while I was greatly grieved at their sufferings, yet I thanked God that He was taking this way to get the light of His glorious salvation into that loveless, needy land. The fact is, sick and resting officers and saints of God can move Him to bless the Army and the world, if they have faith and will storm Heaven with continuous prayers. There are more ways to chain God’s ambassadors than between Roman soldiers in Roman dungeons. If you are hopelessly sick, you are chained. If you are shut in by family cares and claims, you are chained. But remember Paul’s chain, and take courage.

I sometimes hear ex-officers, who have deserted their posts and become so entangled that it is impossible for them to get back into Salvation Army work, lamenting their sad fate, and declaring they can do nothing. Let them bow beneath the judgment of God, kiss the hand that smites them, no longer chafe under the chain that binds them, but cheerfully, patiently begin to exercise themselves in the ministry of prayer.

If they are faithful, God may yet unloose their chain, and let them out into the happier ministry of work. Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage, and missed the mighty blessing he should have had; still he got a blessing (Gen. xxvii. 38-40).

If a man really longs to see God’s glory and souls saved rather than to have a good time himself, why should he not content himself to lie on a sick-bed, or stand by a loom and pray, as well as to stand on a platform and preach, if God will bless one as much as the other? The platform man can see much of his work and its fruit. The praying man can only feel his.

But the certainty that he is in touch with God and being used by Him may be as great or greater than that of the man who sees with his eyes. Many a revival has had its secret source in the closet of some poor washerwoman or blacksmith who prayed in the Holy Ghost, but who was chained to a life of desperate daily toil. The platform man gets his glory on earth, but the neglected, unknown or despised chained ambassador who prayed will share largely in the general triumph, and, it may be, will march by the King’s side, while the platform man comes on behind. God sees not as man sees. He looks at the heart, and regards His children’s cry, and marks for future glory and renown and boundless reward all those who cry and sigh for His honor and the salvation of men. God could have loosed Paul, but He did not choose to do so. But Paul did not grumble, or get sulky, or fall into despair, or lose his joy and peace and faith and power.

He prayed and rejoiced and believed and thought about the poor little struggling corps and the weak converts he had left behind him, and he wrote to them, and bore them on his heart, and wept over them, and prayed for them night and day, and in so doing he saved his own soul, and moved God to bless ten thousand times ten thousand folks whom he never saw and of whom he never even dreamed. But let no one called of God to the work imagine that this lesson of the chained ambassador is for those who are free to go. It is not. It is only for those who are in chains.

Chapter 14 – FAITH: THE GRACE AND THE GIFT

“Be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises” (Heb. vi. 12). “Without faith it is impossible to please Him: for he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him” (Heb. xi. 6). “Ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise.

For yet a little while, and He that shell con” will come, and will not tarry” (Heb. x. 36, 37). There is an important difference between the grace of faith and the gift of faith, and I fear that a failure to note this difference and to act accordingly has led many people into darkness, and possibly some have even been led to cast away all faith and to plunge into the black night of skepticism.

The grace of faith is that which is given to every man to work with, and by which he can come to God. The gift of faith is that which is bestowed upon us by the Holy Ghost, at the point where we have made free use of the grace of faith. The man who is exercising the grace of faith, says: “I believe God will bless me, ” and he seeks God with his whole heart. He prays secretly and publicly.

He searches the Bible to know God’s will. He talks with Christians about the ways of God’s dealings with the soul.

He takes up every cross, and at last, when he has reached the limits of the grace of faith, God suddenly, by some word of Scripture, some testimony, some inward reasoning, bestows upon him the gift of faith, by which he is enabled to grasp the blessings he has been seeking, and then he no longer says: “I believe God will bless me, ” but he joyfully exclaims: “I believe God does bless me! ” Then the Holy Spirit witnesses that it is done, and he shouts for joy and declares: “I know God blesses me! ” and then he would not thank an angel to tell him that it is done, for he knows it is done, and neither men nor devils can rob him of his assurance. Indeed, what I have here called the gift of faith might be called, and probably is by some, the assurance of faith. However, it is not the name but the fact that is important. Now the danger lies in claiming the gift of faith before having fully exercised the grace of faith. For instance, a man is seeking the blessing of a clean heart. He says: “I believe there is such a blessing, and I believe God will give it to me. ” Now, believing this, he should at once seek it from God, and if he perseveres in seeking, he will surely find.

But if some one comes up and gets him to claim it before he has by the grace of faith fought his way through the doubts and difficulties he has to meet, and before God has bestowed upon him the gift of faith, he will probably drift along for a few days or weeks and then fall back, and probably come to the conclusion that there is no such blessing as a clean heart. He should be warned, instructed, exhorted and encouraged to seek till he gets the assurance. Or suppose he is sick, and he says: “There are some people who have been sick, and God has healed them, and I believe He will heal me. ” Having this faith, he should seek this healing from God.

But if someone persuades him to claim healing before he has, by the grace of faith, worked his way through the difficulties that oppose him, and before God has bestowed upon him the gift of faith by which he receives the healing, he will probably crawl out of bed for a short time, find out he is not healed, get discouraged and, maybe, call God a liar, or possibly declare that there is no God, and cast away all confidence for ever. Or, again, suppose he is an officer or a minister and his heart is set on seeing souls saved, and he reasons with himself that it is God’s will to save souls. Then he declares: “I am going to believe for twenty souls tonight”; but night comes, and twenty souls are not saved. Then he wonders what was the matter, the devil tempts him, and he gets into doubt and, probably, is at last landed into skepticism.

What was the trouble? Why, he said he was going to believe before he had earnestly and intelligently wrestled and pleaded with God in prayer, and listened for God’s voice till God wrought in him the assurance that twenty souls should be saved. “God is … a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. ” “But, ” says someone, “should we not urge seekers to believe that God does the work”? Yes, if you are certain that they have sought Him with all their hearts. If you feel sure they have exercised the grace of faith fully and yielded all, then urge them tenderly and earnestly to trust Jesus; but if you are not sure of this, beware of urging them to claim a blessing God has not given them.

Only the Holy Ghost knows when a man is ready to receive the gift of God, and He will notify that man when he is to be blessed. So, beware not to attempt to do the work of the Holy Ghost yourself. If you help seekers too much, they may die on your hands. But if you walk closely with God in a spirit of humility and prayer, He will reveal to you the right word to say that will help them through. Again, let no one suppose that the grace of faith will necessarily have to be exercised a long time before God gives the assurance. You may get the blessing almost at once, if you urge your claim with a perfect heart, fervently, without any doubt, and without any impatience toward God. But, as the prophet says, “Though it (the vision) tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry” (Hab. ii. 3).

“Yet a little while, and He will come; He will not tarry. ” If the blessing should tarry, do not think because it is delayed that, therefore, it is denied; but, like the Syro- phoenician woman (Mark vii. 26) who came to Jesus, press your claim in all meekness and lowliness of heart, with undaunted faith.

He will in love soon say to you: “O man, O woman, great is thy faith; be it unto thee even as thou wilt. “

Chapter 15 – DON’T ARGUE

“The servant a” the Lord must not strive (2 Tim. ii. 24). In seeking to lead a holy, blameless life, I have been helped at one point by the advice of two men and the example of two others.

1. COMMISSIONER DOWDLE

Some years ago, in Boston, I attended an “all-night of prayer. ” It was a blessed time, and scores of people sought the blessing of a clean heart that night.

The Scriptures were read, many prayers were offered, many songs were sung, many testimonies and exhortations were given; but of all the many excellent things said that night, there is only one I now remember: that burned itself into my memory never to be forgotten. Just before the meeting closed, Commissioner Dowdle, speaking to those who had been to the Penitent-form, said, “Remember, if you want to retain a clean heart, don’t argue! ” There were twenty years of practical holiness behind that advice, and it fell on my ears like the voice of God.

2. PAUL OF TARSUS

In writing to young Timothy, the aged Apostle poured out his heart to one he loved as a son of the Gospel. He sought to fully instruct him in the truth, so that, on the one hand, Timothy might escape all the snares of the devil, and walk in holy triumph and fellowship with God, and thus save himself; and, on the other hand, be “throughly furnished” (2 Tim. iii. 17) to instruct and train other men, and to save them. Among other earnest words, these have deeply impressed me: “Of these things put them in remembrance … that they strive not about words, to no profit, but to the subverting of the hearers (2 Tim. ii. 14).

I take it that Paul means by this, that instead of arguing with people and so losing time, and maybe temper, we are to go right for their hearts, and do our best to win them for Christ, and get them converted and sanctified. Again, he says: “But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes. And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves” (2 Tim. ii. 23-25).

Plainly, the Apostle thought this advice important for he repeats it in writing to Titus (iii. 9): “Avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions, and strivings about the law, for they are unprofitable and vain. ” I am certain that Paul is right in this. It takes fire to kindle fire, and it takes love to kindle love. Cold logic will not make a man love Jesus, and it is only he that loveth that “is born of God” (I John iv. 17).

3. MARQUIS DE RENTY

We who have had the Gospel taught us in such simplicity and purity can scarcely realize the awful darkness through which some men have had to struggle, even in so-called Christian countries, to find the true light. Some hundred years ago, among the luxurious and licentious nobility of France, and in the midst of the idolatrous forms and ceremonies of the Roman Catholic Church, the Marquis de Renty attained a purity of faith and a simplicity of life and character and a cloudless communion with God that greatly adorned the Gospel, and proved a blessing, not only to the people of his own community and age, but to many people of succeeding generations. His social position. his wealth and his great business ability led to his being associated with others in various enterprises of a secular and religious character, in all of which his faith and godly sincerity shone with remarkable luster.

In reading his life a few years ago, I was struck with his great humility, his sympathy for the poor and ignorant and his zealous, self-denying efforts to instruct and save them, his diligence and fervor in prayer and praise, and his constant hungering and thirsting after all the fullness of God. But what impressed me as much, or more, than all the rest was the way he avoided all argument of any nature, for fear he should grieve the Holy Spirit and quench the light in his soul. Whenever matters of a business or religious nature were being discussed, he carefully thought the subject over, and then expressed his views, and the reasons upon which he based them, clearly, fully and quietly, after which, however heated the discussion might become, he declined to be drawn into any further debate whatever. His quiet, peaceful manner, added to his clear statements, gave great force to his counsels. But whether his views were accepted or rejected, he always went to his opponents afterward and told them that, in expressing sentiments contrary to their own, he acted with no intention of opposing them personally, but simply that of declaring what seemed to him to be the truth. In this he seems to me to have been closely patterned after “the meekness and gentleness of Christ” (2 Cor. x. 1), and his example has encouraged me to follow a like course, and so “keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. iv. 3), when otherwise I should have been led into wranglings and disputes which would have clouded my soul and destroyed my peace, even if the Holy Spirit were not utterly driven from my heart.

4. JESUS
The enemies of Jesus were constantly trying to entangle Him in His words, and involve Him in arguments, but He always turned the subject in such a way as to confound His ides and take every argument out of their mouths.

They came to Him one day (Matt. xxii. ) and asked whether it was lawful to pay tribute to Caesar or not. Without any discussion whatever, He asked for a coin. He then asked whose image was on the coin “Caesar’s, ” they replied. “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s, ” said Jesus. Again, they brought to Him a woman taken in adultery. His loving heart was touched with compassion for the poor sinner; but instead of arguing with her captors as to whether she should be stoned or not, He simply said, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her” (John viii. 7). And the whole crowd of hypocrites were so convicted and baffled by His simplicity, that they sneaked out one by one till the sinner was left alone with her Saviour.

And so, all through the Gospels, I fail to find Jesus engaged in argument, and His example is of infinite importance to us. It is natural to the “carnal mind” to resent opposition. But we are to be “spiritually-minded. ” By nature we are proud of our persons and vain of our opinions, and we are ready to stoutly resist him who sets himself against either us or our principles. Our object at once is to subdue him – by force of argument or force of arms, but by some means subdue him. We are impatient of contradiction, and are hasty in judging men’s motives and condemning all who do not agree with us.

And then we are apt to call our haste and impatience “zeal for the truth, ” when, in fact, it is often a hotheaded, unkind and unreasoning zeal for our own way of thinking. Now, I am strongly inclined to believe that this is one of the last fruits of the carnal mind which grace ever subdues.

But let us who have become “partakers of the Divine nature” (2 Pet. i. 4) see to it that this root of the carnal nature is utterly destroyed. When men oppose us, let us not argue nor revile nor condemn, but lovingly instruct them – not with an air of superior wisdom and holiness, but with meekness, solemnly remembering that “the servant of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient” (2 Tim. ii. 23-25).

I find that often, after having plainly, fully and calmly stated my views to one who is opposing the truth as I see it, I am strongly tempted to strive for the last word; but I also find that God blesses me most when I there commit the matter into His hands, and by so doing I most often win my adversary. I believe this is the way of faith and the way of meekness. While it may seemingly leave us defeated, we generally in the end win our foe. And if we have true meekness, we shall rejoice more over having won him to an “acknowledging of the truth” (2 Tim. ii. 25) than in having won an argument.

Chapter 16 – LETTING THE TRUTH SLIP

“Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip” (Heb. iii. 1). The truth that saves the soul is not picked up as we would pick up the pebbles along the beach, but it is obtained rather as gold and silver, after diligent search and much digging. Solomon says: “If thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; if thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures, then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God” (Prov. ii. 3-5). The man who seeks to obtain the truth will have to use his wits; he will need much prayer, self-examination and self-denial. He must listen diligently in his own soul for God’s voice.

He must watch lest he fall into sin and forgetfulness, and he must meditate in the truth of God day and night. Getting saved is not like taking a holiday outing. The men and women who are full of the truth – who are walking embodiments of the troth – have not become so without effort. They have digged for truth; they have loved it; they have longed for it more than for their necessary food; they have sacrificed all for it. When they have fallen they have risen again, and when defeated they have not yielded to discouragement, but with more care and watchfulness and greater earnestness, they have renewed their efforts to attain to the truth. They have counted not their lives dear unto themselves that they might know the truth. Wealth, ease, a name among men, reputation, pleasure, everything the world holds, has been counted as dung and dross in their pursuit of truth, and just at that point where truth took precedence over all creation they found it – the truth that saves the soul, that satisfies the heart, that answers the questions of life, that brings fellowship with God and joy unutterable and perfect peace.

But just as it costs effort to find the truth, so it requires watching to keep it. “Riches have wings, ” and, if unguarded, flee away. So with truth. It will slip away if not earnestly heeded. “Buy the man who was once full of the truth. He loved his enemies and prayed for them; but, little by little, he neglected that truth that we should love our enemies, and it slipped away, and instead of love and prayer for his enemies, has come bitterness and sharpness.

Another once poured out his money upon the poor, and for the spread of the Gospel. He was not afraid to trust God to supply all his wants. He was so full of truth that all fear was gone, and he was certain that if he sought “first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, all other things would be added” (Matt. vi. 33) unto him. He did not fear that God would forget him and forsake him and leave his seed to beg bread. He served God gladly and with all his heart; was satisfied with a crust, and was happy and careless as the sparrow that tucks its tiny head under its little wing and goes to sleep, not knowing from where its breakfast is to come, but trusts to the great God, who “openeth His hand and satisfieth the desire of every living thing, and gives them their meat in due season. ” But, little by little, the devil’s prudence got into his heart, and, little by little, he let the truth of God’s faithfulness and fatherly, provident care slip, and now he is stingy and grasping and anxious about the morrow, and altogether unlike his liberal, loving Lord. Here is another man who was once praying all the time. He loved to pray. Prayer was the very breath of his life. But, little by little, he let the truth that “men ought always to pray and not faint” (Luke xviii. 1) slip, and now prayer is a cold, dead form with him. Another once went to every meeting he could find. But he began to neglect the truth that we should “not forsake the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is, ” (Heb. x. 25), and now he prefers going to the park, or the riverside, or the club-room, to going to religious meetings.

Another once sprang to his feet the moment an opportunity to testify was given, and whenever he met a comrade on the street he must speak of the good things of God; but, little by little, he truth, and sell it not (Prov. xxiii. 23). It usury slips away little by little.

It is lost as leaking water is lost – not all at once, but by degrees. Here is a gave way to “foolish talking and jesting, which are not convenient” (Eph. v.4)” and let the truth that “they which feared the Lord spake often one to another” slip, and at last he quite forgot the solemn words of our Lord Jesus, “that for every idle word that men shall speak they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment” (Matt. xii. 36). He no longer remembers that the Bible says, “Life and death are in the power of the tongue” (Prov. xviii. 21), and that we must let our “speech be always with grace seasoned with salt” (Col. iv. 6), and so, now he can talk glibly on every subject but that of personal religion and holiness.

The old, thoughtful, fiery testimony that stirred the hearts of men, that brought terrible warning to careless sinners, that encouraged fainting, timid hearts, and brought cheer and strength to soldiers and saints, has given place to a few set phrases which have lost their meaning to his own heart, which have about the same effect upon a meeting that big icicles would have on a fire, and which are altogether as fruitless as the broken shells in a last year’s bird’s-nest. Another once believed with all her heart that “women professing godliness” should “adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety, not with broidered hair or costly array, but with good works” (I Tim. ii. 9); but, little by little, she let the truth of God slip; she listened to the smooth whisperings of the tempter, and she fell as surely as Eve fell when she listened to the devil and ate the forbidden fruit. Now, instead of neat, “modest apparel, ” she is decked out with flowers and feathers and “costly array”; but she has lost the “ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price” (1 Pet. iii. 4).

But what shall these people do? Let them remember whence they have fallen, repent and do their first works over again. Let them dig for truth again as men dig for gold, and search for her as for hid treasures, and they will find her again. God “is a rewarder of all them that diligently seek Him” (Heb. xi. 6). This may be hard work. So it is hard to dig for gold. It may be slow work. So it is to search for hidden treasure.

But it is sure work. “Seek and ye shall find” (Luke xi. 9). And it is necessary work. Your soul’s eternal destiny depends upon it.

What shall those who have the truth do to prevent its slipping?

1. Heed the word of David to his son Solomon: “Keep and seek for all the commandments of the Lord your God” (I Chron. xxviii. 8).

2. Do what God commanded Joshua: “Meditate therein day and night. ” For what? “That thou mayest observe to do according to” – some of the things “written therein”? No! “All that is written therein” (Joshua i. 8). A young rabbi asked his old uncle if he might not study Greek philosophy. The old rabbi quoted the text: “This Book of the Law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, ” and then replied: “Find an hour that is neither day nor night; in that thou mayest study Greek philosophy. ” The “blessed man” of David is not only a “man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful, but, ” notice, “his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law doth he meditates day and night” (Ps. i. ).

If you want to hold the truth fast and not let it slip, you must read and read and re-read the Bible. You must constantly refresh your mind with its truths, just as the diligent student constantly refreshes his mind by reviewing his textbooks, just as the lawyer who wishes to succeed constantly studies his law books, or the doctor his medical works. John Wesley, in his old age, after having read and read and re-read the Bible all his life, said of himself: “I am homo unius libri” – a man of one book. The truth will surely slip, if you do not refresh your mind by constantly reading and meditating in the Bible.

The Bible is God’s recipe book for making holy people. You must follow the recipe exactly, if you want to be a holy, Christ-like person. The Bible is God’s guide-book to show men and women the way to Heaven. You must pay strict attention to its directions, and follow them accurately, if you are ever to get there. The Bible is God’s doctor’s book, to show people how to get rid of soul-sickness. You must diligently consider its diagnosis of soul-diseases, and its methods of cure, if you want soul-health. Jesus said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (Matt. iv. 4); and again He said, “The words I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life” (John vi. 63).

3. “Quench not the Spirit” (I Thess. v. 19). Jesus calls the Holy Spirit “the Spirit of truth. ” Then, if you do not wish the truth to slip, welcome the Spirit of truth to your heart, and pray Him to abide with you. Cherish Him in your soul. Delight yourself in Him. Live in Him. Yield yourself to Him. Trust Him. Commune with Him. Consider Him as your Friend, your Guide, your Teacher, your Comforter. Do not look upon Him as some school-children look upon their teacher – as an enemy, as one to be outwitted, as one who is constantly watching a chance to punish and reprove and discipline. Of course, the Holy Spirit will do this when necessary, but such a necessity grieves Him. His delight is to comfort and cheer the children of God. He is love! Bless His holy name! “Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption” (Eph. iv. 30).

Chapter 17 – IF YOU HAVE LOST THE BLESSING – WHAT?

“Turn, O backsliding children, saith the Lord; for I am married unto you. Only acknowledge thine iniquity, that thou hast transgressed against the Lord thy God… and ye have not obeyed My voice. Return … and I will not cause Mine anger to fall upon you: for I am merciful, saith the Lord, and I will not keep anger for ever” (Jer. iii. 14, 13, 12). The difficulty in the way of the backslider’s restoration is in himself; and not in the Lord. It is difficult for us to trust one whom we have wronged, and the difficulty is doubled when that one has been a tender, loving friend. See the case of Joseph’s brethren. They grievously wronged him by selling him into Egypt, and at last, when they discovered that he was alive and they were in his power, they were filled with fear. But he assured them of his goodwill, and finally won their confidence by his kindness.

This confidence was apparently perfect until the death of Jacob, their father, and then all their old fears revived. “And when Joseph’s brethren saw that their father was dead, they said, Joseph will peradventure hate us, and will certainly requite us all the evil which we did unto him. And they sent a messenger unto Joseph, saying, Thy father did command before he died, saying, So shall ye say unto Joseph, Forgive, I pray thee now, the trespass of thy brethren, and their sin; for they did unto thee evil: and now, we pray thee, forgive the trespass of the servants of the God of thy father. And Joseph wept then they spake unto him … and Joseph said unto them, Fear not … I will nourish you, and your little ones. And he comforted them, and spake kindly to their hearts” (Gen. 1. 15-17; 19, 21 – margin).

Dear backslidden comrade, see in this simple story your difficulty. By your sin you have done violence to your own sense of justice, and now it is next to impossible for you to trust your grievously wronged Brother, Jesus; and yet His tender heart is well-nigh breaking over your distrust. “And Joseph wept when they spake unto him. ” Brother, if you have not committed the unpardonable sin – and you have not, if you have any desire whatever to be the Lord’s – your first step is to renew your consecration to the Lord, confessing your backslidings; and then your second and only step is to cry out with Job, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him” (Job. xiii. 15); and this ground you must steadfastly hold, till the witness comes of your acceptance. Many people fail at this point by constantly looking for the same emotions and joy they had when they were first saved, and they refuse to believe because they do not have that same old experience.

Do you remember that the children of Israel went into captivity several times after they had entered Canaan? – but never did God divide Jordan for them again. God never took them in again in the same manner as at first. God says, “I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known” (Isa. xlii. 16). But if you are seeking the old experience, you are refusing to acknowledge that you are blind and are insisting upon going in the paths you have known. In other words, you want to walk by sight and not by faith. You must yield yourself to the Holy Spirit, and He will surely lead you into the Promised Land. Seek simply to be right with God. Do whatever He tells you to do. Trust Him, love Him, and He Himself will come to you, for “He (Jesus) is made unto us … sanctification” (1 Cor. i. 30). It is not a blessing you want, but the Blesser, whom you have shut out by your unbelief. Said a recently sanctified man at the School of Theology in Boston: “Brethren, I have been here studying theology for three years, but now I have the Theos (God) in me. “

Be satisfied with Him by whatever way He may come, whether as King of kings and Lord of lords, or as a humble, simple, peasant Carpenter. Be satisfied with Him, and He will more and more fully reveal Himself to your childlike faith. Do not be frightened by the lions: they are chained. Steadfastly refuse to wonder about the future, but trustfully rest in Him for the present moment. “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself” (Matt. vi. 34).

Satan wants to create great concern in your mind about your ability to hold out. Especially if you lost your experience through disobedience will Satan flaunt that fact in your face. Remember, “My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Cor. xii. 9). Be sure to “take no thought for tomorrow. ” Said a dear comrade in prayer: “Father, You know what intolerable anguish I have suffered by looking ahead and wondering if I could do so-and-so at such-and-such a time and place. ” Of course, he would suffer. The simple remedy was, not to look into the future, but to take “the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked” (Eph. vi. 16). He was suffering from fiery darts. Be sure of this, it is not Jesus that is torturing you with thoughts of the future, for He has commanded you to “take no thought for the morrow. ” “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (Jas. iv. 7).

But when you come up to the point of obedience, be true, if it takes your life. “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life” (Rev. ii. 10). “And they loved not their lives unto the death” (Rev. xii. 11). Said a woman who had lost the experience: “I gave myself back to Jesus and trusted for some time without any feeling. A young lady came to the house, and I felt I ought to speak to her about her soul. It seemed very hard, but I told the Lord I would be true. I spoke to her, tears filled her eyes, and joy filled my heart. The Blesser had come, and now she is sweetly trusting in Jesus.

” Give yourself back to God, and let your very life enter into the consecration. As a sister, backslidden for ten years, but just reclaimed and filled with the Holy Ghost, said the other night: “Put your all on the altar, and leave it there; do not take it back, and God’s fire will surely come and consume the offering. ” Do it, do it! God will surely come if you can wait; and you can wait, if you mean business for eternity. “Therefore also now, saith the Lord, turn ye even to Me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning: and rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God: for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil” (Joel ii. 12, 13).

Chapter 18 – SOUL-WINNERS AND THEIR PRAYERS

“The inwrought fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much” (James v. 16, R. V. ). All great soul-winners have been men of much and mighty prayer, and all great revivals have been preceded and carried out by persevering, prevailing knee-work in the closet. Before Jesus began His ministry, when great multitudes followed Him, He spent forty days and nights in secret prayer and fasting (Matt. iv. 1-11). Paul prayed without ceasing. Day and night his prayers and pleadings and intercessions went up to God (Acts xvi. 25; Phil. i. 3-11; Col. i. 3, 9-11). The Pentecostal baptism of the Spirit and the three thousand conversions in one day were preceded by ten days of prayer and praise and heart-searching and Bible-searching. And they continued in prayer until, on another day, five thousand were converted, and “a great company of the priests became obedient to the faith” (Acts ii. 4-6; iv. 4; vi. 4-7).

Luther used to pray three hours a day, and he broke the spell of ages and set captive nations free. John Knox used to spend nights in prayer, and cry to God, saying, “Give me Scotland, or I die! ” and God gave him Scotland. Baxter stained the walls of his study with praying breath, and sent a tide of salvation through all the land.

Over and over again, Mr. Wesley in his Journals – which, for lively interest, are next to the Acts of the Apostles – tells us of half, and whole, nights of prayer, in which God drew near and blessed people beyond expectation, and then he and his helpers were empowered to rescue England from paganism and send a revival of pure, aggressive religion throughout the whole earth. David Brainerd used to lie on the frozen ground at night, wrapped in a bear’s skin, and spit blood, and cry to God to save the Indians; and God heard him, and converted and sanctified the poor, ignorant, heathenish, quarrelsome, drunken beings by the scores and hundreds. The night before Jonathan Edwards preached the wonderful sermon that started the revival which convulsed New England, he and some others spent the night in prayer.

A young man named Livingstone, in Scotland, was appointed to preach at one of the great assemblies. Feeling his own utter weakness, he spent the night in prayer, and next day preached a sermon, and five hundred people were converted. Glory to God! Oh, my Lord, raise up some praying people! Mr. Finney used to pray till whole communities were put under the spell of the Spirit of God and men could not resist the mighty influence. At one time, he was so prostrated by his labors that his friends sent him on a voyage of rest to the Mediterranean Sea. But he was so intent upon the salvation of men that he could not rest, and, on his return, he got into an agony of soul for the evangelization of the world.

At last, the earnestness and agony of his soul became so great that he prayed all day, till in the evening he got a restful assurance that God would carry on the work. On reaching New York, he delivered his “Revival Lectures, ” which were published at home and abroad, and resulted in revivals all over the world.

Then his writings fell into the hands of Catherine Booth and mightily influenced her; so that The Salvation Army is in part God’s answer to that man’s agonizing, pleading, prevailing prayer that God would glorify His own name and save the world. There is a young evangelist in America who was saved from Roman Catholicism. Everywhere he goes a “revival tornado” strikes the place and hundreds of people are converted. I wondered wherein lay the secret of his power, till a lady at whose house he stopped said he prayed all the time. She could hardly get him to his meals from his mighty wrestlings with God. Before joining The Salvation Army, I was one day talking with Dr. Cullis, of Boston, that man of simple, wonder-working faith. He was showing me some photographs, and among them was one of Bramwell Booth, our Chief of the Staff. “There, ” said the doctor, “that man leads the mightiest holiness meetings in all England. ” He then told me about those famous Whitechapel meetings. When I went to England, I determined, if possible, to find out the secret of them. “For one thing, ” said an officer, “Mr. Bramwell used to conduct young men’s meetings at headquarters at that time, and he used to ask each saved young fellow to spend five minutes alone with God every day, wherever they could get it, praying for those Friday night meetings. One, who is a Brigadier now and was then employed in a large warehouse, had to squeeze himself into a great wicker packing-case to get a chance to pray for five minutes. ” God has not changed. He waits to do the will of praying men. Mr. Finney tells of a church in which there was a continuous revival for thirteen years. At last the revival stopped, and everybody feared and questioned why, till on day a tearful man arose and told how for thirteen years he had prayed every Saturday night till after midnight for God to glorify Himself and save the people. But two weeks before, he had stopped this praying, and then the revival had stopped. If God will answer prayer like that, what a tremendous responsibility rests on us all to pray! Oh, for a holy soldier in every corps and a believing member in every church, who would spend half of every Saturday night in prayer! Here is work for resting officers, and for people who cannot go into Salvation Army work because of insurmountable difficulties. You can do some needed knee-work.

But let no one imagine that this is easy work. It is difficult and amounts sometimes to an agony, but it will turn to an agony of joy in union and fellowship with Jesus. How Jesus prayed! The other day a Captain, who prays an hour or more each morning and half an hour before his evening meeting, and who is very successful in getting souls saved, was lamenting to me that he often has to force himself to secret prayer. But in this he is tempted and tried like his brethren.

All men of much prayer have suffered the same. The Rev. Wm. Bramwell, who used to see hundreds of people converted and sanctified everywhere he went, prayed six hours a day, and yet he said he always went to secret prayer reluctantly. He had to pull himself up to it. And after he began to pray, he would often have dry seasons, but he persevered in faith, and the heavens would open, and he would wrestle with God until the victory came.

Then, when he preached, the clouds would break and rain down blessings on the people. One man asked another the reason why Mr. Bramwell was able to say such new and wonderful things, that brought blessings to so many people. “Because he lives so near the Throne that God tells him His secrets, and then he tells them to us, ” said the other. The Rev. John Smith, whose life, William Booth once told me, had been a marvelous inspiration to him, like Bramwell, always spent much time in prayer. He always found it hard to begin, and then got so blessed that it was hard to stop.

Everywhere he went, mighty revival waves went also with him. This reluctance to secret prayer may arise from one or more of several causes:

1. From wicked spirits. I imagine the devil does not care much to see the majority of cold-hearted people on their knees in public, for he knows they do it simply because it is proper and the fashion. But he hates to see one on his knees in secret, for that man means business, and, if he perseveres in faith, is bound to move God and all Heaven in the interests he represents. So the devils oppose that man.

2. From the sluggishness of the body and mind, caused by sickness, loss of sleep, too much sleep, or overeating, which unduly taxes the digestive organs, clogs the blood, and dulls all the higher and nobler powers of the soul.

3. From a failure to respond quickly when we feel led by the Spirit to go to secret prayer. If; when we feel we should pray, we hesitate longer than is necessary and continue reading or talking when we could just as well be praying, the spirit of prayer will be quenched.

We should cultivate gladness at the thought of getting alone with Jesus in secret communion and prayer, as much as lovers expect pleasure and joy in each other’s society. We should promptly respond to the inward call to prayer. “Resist the devil and he will flee from you, ” and, “Keep our bodies under, lest after having preached to others we ourselves should be castaways. ” Jesus said, “Men ought always to pray, and not to faint” (Luke xviii. 1); and Paul said, “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. v. 17). One dare-devil, praying, believing man can get the victory for a whole city or nation sometimes. Elijah did on Mount Carmel. Moses did for backsliding Israel; Daniel did in Babylon. But if a number of people can be led to pray in this way, the victory will be all the more sweeping. Let no one imagine, in a wicked heart of unbelief; that God is grudging and unwilling to answer prayer. He is more willing to answer those whose hearts are right with Him than parents are to give bread to their children. When Abraham prayed for Sodom, God answered till Abraham stopped asking (Gen. xviii. 22-33). And is He not often angry with us because we ask so timidly, and for such small blessings, just as the prophet Elisha was angry with the king who smote but thrice when he should have smitten five or six times? (2 Kings xiii. 18, 19). Let us come boldly to the Throne of Grace and ask largely, that our joy may be full! (Heb. iv. 16).

Chapter 19 – PRESENT-DAY WITNESSES TO THE RESURRECTION

Several years ago, I knelt in prayer with a young woman who wanted to be holy. I asked her if she would give up everything for Jesus. She answered that she would. I then thought I would put a hard test to her, and asked her if she would be willing to go to Africa as a missionary for Jesus. She said, “Yes. ” Then we prayed, and while we were praying, she burst into tears and cried out, “O Jesus! ” She had never seen Jesus. She had never heard His voice, and before this hour she had no more idea of such a revelation of Jesus to her soul than a man born blind has of a rainbow. But she knew Him! She had no more need that some one should tell her this was Jesus than you have need of the light of a tallow candle to see the sun come up.

The sun brings its own light, and so did Jesus. She knew Him, she loved Him, she rejoiced in Him with “joy unspeakable and full of glory”; and from that hour she testified of Him and followed Him – followed Him to Africa, to help Him win the heathen to Himself; till one day He said to her, “Well done, good and faithful servant … enter thou into the joy of thy Lord” (Matt. xxv. 23), and then she went up to Heaven, to behold with open vision His unveiled glory.

This young woman was a witness for Jesus – a witness that He is not dead but living, and as such was a witness to His resurrection. Such witnesses are needed in every age. They are needed today as much as in the days of the Apostles. Men’s hearts are just as wicked, their pride just as stubborn, their selfishness is just as universal, and their unbelief is just as obstinate as at any time in the world’s history, and it takes just as powerful evidence to subdue their hearts and beget in them living faith as it ever did.

There are two kinds of evidence, each of which seems to be necessary to get men to accept the truth and be saved. They are: the evidence we get from history, and the evidence we get from living men who tell about that of which they are conscious. In the Bible and in the writings of early Christians, we have the historical evidences of God’s plans for men and His dealings with them; of the life and death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and of the coming of the Holy Spirit. But these records alone do not seem sufficient to destroy the unbelief of men and bring them into humble, glad submission to God, and into childlike faith in His dear love. They may produce an historical faith.

That is, men may believe what they say about God, about men, about sin, life, death, judgment, Heaven and Hell, just as they believe what history says about Julius Caesar, Bonaparte or Washington; and this faith may lead men to be very religious, to build temples, to deny themselves, and go through many forms of worship; to forsake gross outward sin and to live lives of decorum and morality, and yet leave them dead to God. It does not lead them into that living union with the Lord Jesus which slays inward and outward sin, and takes away the fear of death, and fills the heart with joyful hope of immortality. The faith that saves, is the faith that brings the life and power of God into the soul – a faith that makes the proud man humble, the impatient man patient, the haughty man lowly in heart, the stingy man openhanded and liberal, the lustful man clean and chaste, the fighting, quarrelsome man meek and gentle, the liar truthful, the thief honest, the light and foolish sober and grave, a faith that purifies the heart, that sets the Lord always before the eyes, and fills the soul with humble, holy, patient love toward God and man.

To beget this faith, is needed not only the Bible, with its historical evidences, but also a living witness; one who has “tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come” (Heb. vi. 5); one who knows that Jesus is not dead, but alive; one who can witness to the resurrection, because he is acquainted with the Lord who was resurrected, and knows the Lord, who is “the Resurrection and the Life” (John xi. 25). I remember a little girl in Boston, whose quiet, earnest testimony for Jesus drew people to our meetings just to hear her speak. One day, as we were walking along the street, she said to me: “The other evening, as I was in my room getting ready for the meeting, Jesus was with me. I felt He was there, and I knew Him. ” I replied, “We may be more conscious of His presence than of any earthly friend. ” Then, to my surprise and joy, she said, “Yes, for He is in our hearts. ” Paul had to be such a witness, in order to bring salvation to the Gentiles.

He was not a witness of the resurrection, in the lower sense, that he saw Jesus in the body with his natural eyes; but in the higher, spiritual sense, in that he had the Son of God “revealed” in him – (Gal. i. 16) – and his testimony was just as mighty in convincing men of the truth and slaying their unbelief; as was that of Peter or John. And this power to so witness was not confined to the Apostles, who had been with Jesus, and to Paul, who was specially chosen to be an Apostle, but is the common heritage of believers. Many years after Pentecost, Paul wrote to the Corinthians, away off in Europe, “Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates? ” (2 Cor. xiii. 5).

And, in writing to the Colossians about the mystery of the Gospel, he said it is “Christ in you, the hope of glory (Col. i. 27). In fact, this is the very highest purpose for which Jesus promised to send the Holy Ghost. He said, “When He, the Spirit of truth, is come … He shall not speak of Himself … He shall testify of Me. He shall glorify Me, for He shall receive of Mine, and shall shew it unto you” (John xvi. 14).

This is His chief work – to reveal Jesus to the spiritual consciousness of each individual believer, and by so doing to purify his heart, to destroy all evil dispositions, and to implant in the soul of the believer the very tempers and dispositions of Jesus Himself. Indeed, the inward revelation of the mind and heart of Jesus, through the baptism of the Holy Ghost, was necessary in order to make fit witnesses out of the very men who had been with Him for three years and who were eye-witnesses of His death and resurrection. He did not rise from the dead and send them out at once to tell the fact to every one they met.

He remained with them a few days, teaching them certain things, and then, just before He ascended to Heaven, instead of saying to them, “You have been with Me for three years, you know My life, you have heard My teachings, you saw Me die, you witnessed My resurrection – now go into all the world, and tell them about these things, ” we read that He “commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith He, ye have heard of Me. For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence … ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto Me” (Acts i. 4, 5, 8). They had been with Him for three years, but they did not understand Him.

He had been revealed to them in flesh and blood, but now He was to be revealed in them by the Spirit; and in that hour they knew His divinity, and understood His character, His mission, His holiness, His everlasting love and His saving power as they otherwise could not had He lived with them in the flesh to all eternity. This it was that led Jesus to say to them, just before His death, “It is expedient (better) for you that I go away; for if I go not away the Comforter will not come unto you” (John xvi. 7); and if the Comforter had not come, they could not possibly have known Jesus except in the flesh. Oh, how tenderly Jesus loved them, and with what unutterable longings did He wish to make Himself fully known to them! Just so, today, does He want to make Himself fully known to His people, and to reveal Himself in their hearts. It is this knowledge of Jesus that sinners demand Christians shall have before they believe.

Now, if it is true that the children of God can so know Christ, that the Holy Ghost does so reveal Him, that Jesus does so earnestly wish to be known by His people, and that sinners demand that Christians shall have such knowledge before they will believe, is it not the duty of every follower of Jesus to seek Him with the whole heart, till he is filled with this knowledge and this power to so witness? Further, this knowledge should be sought, not simply for usefulness, but for personal comfort and safety, because it is salvation – it is eternal life. Jesus said, “This is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent” (John xvii. 3). One may know ten thousand things about the Lord, may be very eloquent in speaking about His character and His works, and yet be utterly destitute of any heart-acquaintance with Him. A peasant may know many things about an earthly ruler – may believe in his justice, and be ready to trust his clemency, though he has never seen him; but it is his son and daughter and the members of his household who really know him.

This universal revelation of the Lord Jesus is more than conversion – it is the positive side of that experience which we call a “clean heart” or “holiness. ” Do you want to know Him in this way? If your whole soul desires it, you may. First, be sure your sins are forgiven. If you have wronged anybody, undo the wrong so far as you can. Zacchaeus said to Jesus, “The half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken anything from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold” (Luke xix. 8), and Jesus saved him right on the spot. Submit to God, confess your sins, then trust Jesus, and as sure as you live all your sins shall be forgiven, and He will blot out all your transgressions as a thick cloud, “and remember them no more. ” Second, now that you are forgiven, come to Him with your will, your affection, your very self, and ask Him to cleanse you from every evil temper, from every selfish wish, from every secret doubt, and to come and dwell in your heart and keep you pure, and use you for His own glory. Then struggle no more, but walk in the light He gives you, and patiently, expectantly trust Him to answer your prayer, and as sure as you live you shall soon “be filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph. iii. 19).

Just at this point, do not become impatient and yield to secret doubts and fears, but “hold fast the profession of your faith” (Heb. x. 23); for, as Paul says, “Ye have need of patience that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise; for yet a little while, and He that shall come will come, and will not tarry” (Heb. x. 36, 37). God will come to you! He will! And when He comes, He will satisfy the uttermost longings of your heart.

Chapter 20 – THE RADICALISM OF HOLINESS

“Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates? ” (2 Cor. xiii. 5). “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. i. 27). Dear brother, do not think you can make holiness popular. It cannot be done. There is no such thing as holiness separate from “Christ in you, ” and it is an impossibility to make Christ Jesus popular in this world. To sinners and carnal professors, the real Christ Jesus has always been and always will be “as a root out of a dry ground, despised and rejected of men. ” “Christ in you” is “the same yesterday, today, and for ever” – hated, reviled, persecuted, crucified. “Christ in you” came not to send peace on earth, but a sword; came “to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a man’s foes shall be they of his own household” (Matt. x. 35, 36). “Christ in you “will not quench the smoking flax, nor break the bruised reed of penitence and humility; but He will pronounce the most terrible, yet tearful, maledictions against the hypocritical formalist and the lukewarm professor who are the friends of the world and, consequently, the enemies of God. “Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God” (Jas. iv. 4). “If any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John ii. 15).

In the homes of the poor and the haunts of the outcast, “Christ in you” will seek and save the lost, and will sweetly, tenderly whisper, “Come unto Me, I will give you rest”; but in stately church and cathedral, where pomp and pride and conformity to the world mock God, He will cry out with weeping and holy indignation, “The publicans and harlots shall go into the Kingdom of Heaven before you. ” Christ in you is not a gorgeously robed aristocrat, arrayed in purple and fine linen and gold and pearls, but is a lowly, peasant Carpenter, horny-handed, truth-telling, a Servant of servants, seeking always the lowest seats in the synagogues and feasts, condescending to wash the disciples” feet. He “respecteth not the proud” (Ps. xl. 4), nor is He of those who “flatter with their tongue” (Ps. v. 9); but His “words are pure words; as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times” (Ps. xii. 6); words “quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, discerning the thoughts and intents of the heart. ” Seek to know and follow in the footsteps of the true, real Jesus; the humble, holy Peasant of Galilee; for, truly, many “false Christs” as well as “false prophets” have gone out into the world. There are dreamy, poetical Christs, the words of whose mouths are “smoother than butter, but in whose hearts is war; whose words are softer than oil, yet are they drawn swords” (Ps. lv. 21). There are gay, fashionable Christs, “lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God having forms of godliness, but denying the power (holiness of heart) thereof; which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim. iii. 4-7). There are mercantile Christs, who make God’s house a den of thieves (Matt. xxi. 13).

There are feeding Christs, who would catch men by feeding the stomach rather than the heart and head (Rom. xvi. 18). There are learned, philosophical Christs, who “spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world” (Col. ii. 8). There are political-reform Christs, who forget their Father’s business in an all-absorbing effort to be elected, or elect, a ruler over this world; who travel half-way across the continent to deliver a speech on prohibition or women’s rights, while a hundred thousand sinners are going to Hell at home; who vainly endeavor to club the fruit off the branches rather than to lay the axe at the root of the tree, that the tree may be good (Matt. iii. 10). They wanted to make the “Christ in you” a king one day, but He wouldn’t be a king, save of men’s hearts. They wanted to make Him a judge one day for about five minutes, but He wouldn’t be a judge. He made Himself of no reputation (Phil. ii. 7).

He might have stopped on the throne of imperial Rome, or among the upper classes of society, or the middle classes, but He went from His Father’s bosom, down past the thrones and the upper, middle and lower classes of society to the lowest place on earth, and became a Servant of all, that He might lift us to the bosom of the Father, and make us partakers of the Divine nature and of His holiness (2 Pet. i. 4; Heb. xii. 10). “Christ in you” gets under men and lifts them from the bottom up. If He had stopped on the throne He never would have reached the poor fishermen of Galilee; but, going down among the fishermen, He soon shook the throne. It will not be popular, but “Christ in you” will go down. He will not seek the honor that cometh from men, but the honor that cometh from God only (John v.44; xii. 42, 43). One day a rich young man – a ruler – came to Jesus and said, “Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? ” (Mark x. 17). No doubt, this young man reasoned somewhat thus with himself: “The Master is poor, I am rich. He will welcome me, for I can give Him financial prestige. The Master is without influence in the state – I am a ruler; I can give Him political power. The Master is under a social ban, associating with those poor, ignorant fishermen; I, a wealthy young ruler, can give Him social influence. ” But the Master struck at the heart of his worldly wisdom and self-conceit, by saying unto him, “Go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor; and come, follow Me. ” Come, you can serve Me only in poverty, in reproach, in humility, in social obscurity; for My kingdom is not of this

world, and the weapons of this warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds. You must deny yourself, for if you have not My spirit you are none of me (Rom. viii. 9), and My spirit is one of self-sacrifice.

You must give up your elegant Jerusalem home, and come with Me; but, remember, the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head. You will be considered little better than a common tramp. You must sacrifice your ease. You must give up your riches, for “hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom”? (Jas. ii. 5). And it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter that kingdom. Remember, when you do this, you will lose your reputation. The bankers and belles of Jerusalem will say you are beside yourself, and your old friends will not acknowledge you when they meet you on the street.

My heart is drawn to you; yea, I love you (Mark x. 21), but I tell you plainly that if you will not take up the cross and follow Me, you cannot be My disciple; yea, “if any man come to Me, and hate not *[That is, to love the human in a lesser degree than the Divine. ] father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple” (Luke xiv. 26). If you will do this, you shall have treasure in Heaven (Matt. xix. 21). Do you not see the impossibility of making such a radical Gospel as this popular? This spirit and the spirit of the world are as fully opposed to each other as two locomotives on the same track running toward each other at the rate of sixty miles an hour. Fire and water will consort together as quickly as the “Christ in you” and the spirit of the world. Do not waste your time trying to fix up a popular holiness. Just be holy because the Lord God is holy. Seek to please Him without regard to the likes or dislikes of men, and those who are disposed to be saved will soon see “Christ in you, ” and will cry out with Isaiah: 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”; and, falling at His feet, they will say with the leper, “Lord, if Thou wilt Thou canst make me clean. ” And Jesus, having compassion on them, will say, “I will, be thou clean. “

Chapter 21 – PERFECT PEACE

“Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee because he trusteth in Thee” (Isaiah xxvi. 3). A wonderful promise is that, and it ought to be the aim of every one of us to make it our experience. The way to do this is simple: it is to keep our minds stayed on our Lord. But while it is simple, I confess it is no easy matter for most men to do it. They would rather think about business, about pleasure, about the news of the day, about politics, education, music, or about the work of the Lord, than about the Lord Himself.

Now, business and other things must needs take some of our thought, and we must pay attention to the work of the Lord, if we love Him and the souls for whom He died; but, just as the maiden in all her work and pleasure thinks of her lover, and just as the young bride filled with new cares is in her heart communing with her husband, though he may be far from her, so we should in everything think of, and commune with, Jesus, and let our hearts fully trust His wisdom, love and power, and then we shall be kept in “perfect peace. ” Just think of it! “All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hid” in Him, and we, in our ignorance and foolishness, are “complete in Him. ” We may not understand, but He understands. We may not know, but He knows.

We may be perplexed, but He is not perplexed. Then we ought to trust Him if we are His, and we shall be kept in “perfect peace. ” Ten thousand times I have been at my wits’ end, but, oh! how it comforted me to know that Jesus saw the end from the beginning and was making all things work together for my good because I loved and trusted Him! Jesus is never at His wits” end, and when we are most puzzled and confounded by our foolishness and short-sightedness, Jesus, in the fullness of His love and with all the infinity of His wisdom and power, is working out the desires of our hearts, if they be holy desires; for does He not say, “He will fulfil the desire of them that fear Him” (Ps. cxlv. 19)? Jesus not only has wisdom and love, but He assures us that “all power in Heaven and earth” is His, so that the counsels of His wisdom and the tender desire of His love cannot fail for lack of power to fulfill them. He can turn the hearts of kings, and make them do His will, and His faithful love will lead Him to do it, if we but trust Him.

Nothing is more surprising to the children of God, who trust Him and watch His ways, than the marvelous and unexpected deliverances He works out for them, and the kind of people He uses to fulfill His will. Our hearts long to see the glory of the Lord and the prosperity of Zion, and we pray to God and wonder how the desire of our hearts is to be obtained; but we trust and look unto God, and He sets to work, with the most unlikely people and in the most unheard-of way, to answer our prayers and reward our patient faith. And so, in all the little vexatious trials and delays of our everyday, plodding life, if we trust and keep on rejoicing right through all that bothers us, we will find God at work for us, for He says He is a “present help in trouble” – all trouble – and so He is to all who keep their minds stayed on Him.

Only a short period has elapsed since the Lord has been allowing me to pass through a series of the most troublesome little times, just calculated to annoy me to the uttermost. But while waiting on Him in prayer, He showed me that if I had more confidence in Him in my difficulties, I would keep on rejoicing, and so get blessings out of my trials, as Samson got honey out of the carcass of the lion he slew, and so I proved it to be. Bless His holy name! I did rejoice, and one trial after the other vanished away, and only the sweetness of my Lord’s presence and blessing remained, and my heart has been kept in perfect peace since.

Does not God do all this to hide pride from us, to humble us, and make us see that our character before Him is of more consequence than our service to Him; to teach us to walk by faith and not by sight, and to encourage us to trust and be at peace? Now, let no honest soul whose faith is small, nor any of those big busybodies, who seem to think that if they did not worry and fret and rush about and make a great noise the universe would come to a standstill and go to ruin, suppose for an instant that there is any likeness whatever between “perfect peace” and perfect indifference. Indifference is a child of sloth. Peace is the offspring of a faith that is ceaseless in its activity – an activity that is the most perfect, and the mightiest of which man is capable, for through it, poor unarmed men have “subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens, women received their dead raised to life again” (Heb. xi. 33-35).

To exercise this mighty faith which brings “perfect peace, ” we must receive the Holy Ghost into our hearts, and recognize Him, not as an influence or an attribute of God, but as God Himself. He is a Person, and He will make us know Jesus, and understand His mind and will, and realize His constant presence, if we trust Him. Jesus is ever present with us, and, if we long for Him, it will so please Him that He will always help us to stay our minds on Him. It will require some effort on our part, however; for the world, business, the weakness of the flesh, the infirmities of our minds, the careless example of the people about us, and the devil with all his wiles, will so seek to turn our thoughts from our Lord and make us forget Him, that, maybe, not more than once or twice in twenty-four hours shall our thoughts and affections turn to Him, and then only by a strong and prolonged effort, and even in times of prayer we may not really find God.

Let us then cultivate the habit of communing with Jesus. When our thoughts wander from Him, let us turn them back again; but let us do this quietly and patiently, for any impatience, even with ourselves, is dangerous, disturbing our inward peace, drowning the still small voice of the Spirit, and hindering the grace of God from mastering us and subduing our hearts.

But if, in all meekness and lowliness of heart, we allow the Holy Spirit to dwell in us, and are obedient to His voice, He will keep our hearts in a holy calm in the midst of ten thousand cares and weaknesses and troubles “Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep garrison your hearts and mind through Christ Jesus” (Phil. iv. 6, 7).

Chapter 22 – SOME OF MY EXPERIENCES IN TEACHING HOLINESS

I once received a letter from one of the most devoted young officers I know, in which he said, “I love holiness more and more, but I am just about discouraged.

It seems to me that I shall never be able to teach holiness, for it seems that I get things too straight, or not straight enough. ” God bless him! I think I know just how he feels. One day, a few months after I got the blessing of holiness, I felt most gloomy about my inability to get people sanctified. I knew, beyond the possibility of a doubt, that I had a clean heart; but, somehow, I felt I couldn’t properly teach others how to get it. That morning I met a certain brother who gets more people sanctified than any man I know, and I asked him, “How shall I teach holiness so that my people will get it? ” His reply was, “Load and fire, load and fire. ” Light broke in on me at once.

I saw that it was my business to pray and study my Bible and talk with those who had the blessing, until I got myself so loaded that it would almost talk itself, and then fire away as best I could, and that it was God’s business to make the people receive the truth and become holy. That was on the Saturday. The next day, I went to my people loaded with truth, backed by love and faith, and I fired as hard and straight as I knew how, when lo! twenty people came to the Penitent-form for holiness. I had never seen anything like that before in my life, but I have seen it many times since.

From then till now I have attended strictly to my part of the business, and trusted God to do His part, and I have had some success everywhere I have gone. But everywhere, also, Satan has sorely tempted me at times, especially when the people hardened their hearts and would not believe and obey. Then I have often felt that the trouble must be in my way of preaching the truth. At one time the devil would say, “You are too straight; you will drive all the people away. ” Then again he would remark, “You are not straight enough, and that is the reason the people don’t get holy. ” In this way I have suffered very much at times. But I have always gone to the Lord with my trouble and told Him that He knew my earnest desire was to preach the truth just right, so that the people would love and trust Him with perfect hearts. Then the Lord has comforted me, and shown me that the devil was tempting me, in order to get me to stop preaching holiness. A few times, professors of religion have come to me and told me I was doing more harm than good. But they were the kind Paul describes, “who have a form of godliness, but deny the power thereof, ” and I have followed his command, “From such turn away, ” and have not dared to listen to them any more than to the devil himself. And so I have kept at it, through evil report and through good report, and the dear Lord has never left me alone, but has stood by me and given me the victory, and I have constantly seen some one led into the glorious light of liberty and perfect love.

Satan has tried in many ways to get me to stop preaching holiness, for he knew that if he could get me to stop he would soon get me to sin, and so overthrow me altogether. But the Lord put a godly fear in me from the beginning, by calling my attention to Jeremiah i. 6, 8 and 17. The last verse made me very careful to speak just what the Lord said. Then Ezekiel ii. 4-8 and iii. 8-11 impressed me very much. In these Scriptures the Lord commanded me to speak His truth as He gave it to me, whether the people would hear or not. In Ephesians iv. 15, He told me how I was to preach it – that is, “in love. ” I then saw that I must preach the truth Just as straight as I possibly could, but that I must be careful always to keep my heart full of love for the people to whom I was talking.

I read in 2 Corinthians xii. 14, 15, how Paul loved the people. He said, “I seek not yours, but you … and I will very gladly spend and be spent for you; though the more abundantly I love you, the less I be loved. ” Then in Acts xx. 20 and 27, “I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you … for I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God. ” This made me feel that to withhold the truth of holiness from the people – which is necessary to their eternal salvation – was worse than keeping back bread from starving children, or as the murder of souls is worse than the murder of bodies. So I earnestly prayed to the Lord to help me love the people, and preach the whole truth to them, though they hate me for it – and, bless Him! He answered my prayer.

There are three points in teaching holiness that the Lord has led me to emphasize continually. First, that men cannot make themselves holy, any more than the Ethiopian can change his skin, or the leopard his spots. That no amount of good works, of self-sacrifice and denial, of labors for the salvation of others, can cleanse the heart, can take out the roots of pride, vanity, temper, impatience, fear and shame of the Cross, lust, hatred, emulation, strife, self-indulgence and the like, and in their stead put unmixed, perfect love, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance. ” Truly, millions who have labored to purify the secret springs of their hearts, only to fail, can testify, “It is not of works lest any man should boast. ” Second, I keep prominent the fact that the blessing is received by faith.

A poor woman wanted some grapes from the king’s garden for her sick boy. She offered the gardener money, but he would not sell the grapes. She came again, and met the king’s daughter, and offered her money for the grapes. The daughter said, “father is a king; he does not sell his grapes. ” Then she led the poor woman into the king’s presence, and told him her story, and he gave her as many as she wanted. Our God, your Father, is King of kings. He will not sell His holiness and the graces of His Spirit, but He will give them to all who will ask in simple, childlike faith.

Truly He will. “Ask, and ye shall receive. Where is boasting, then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? Nay: but by the law of faith … Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law. ” By faith the law of God is written on our hearts, so that when we read the command, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, ” we find a law of love in us because we have within us a law that corresponds to the command.

The Apostle says, “With the heart man believeth unto righteousness” (Rom. x. 10), and that statement is true to our experience, for where real heart- faith is, it makes the impatient man patient, the proud man humble, the lustful man chaste, the covetous man benevolent, the quarrelsome man meek, the liar truthful, the man who hates loving; it turns misery into joy, and gives peace and constant comfort. Third, I emphasize the truth that the blessing is to be received by faith NOW.

The man who expects to get it by works will always have something more to do before he can claim the blessing, and so never comes to the point where he can say, “The blessing is now mine. But the humble soul, who expects to get it by faith, sees that it is a gift; and, believing that God is as willing to give it now as at some future time, trusts and receives it at once. By thus urging the people to expect the blessing “just now, ” I have sometimes had them get it just while I was talking. People who had often been to the Penitent-form, and had wrestled and prayed for the blessing, have received it while sitting in their seats listening to the simple “word of faith which we preach. ” “Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless His holy name “(Ps. ciii. 1).

Chapter 23 – ANOTHER CHANCE FOR YOU!

“They that stood by … said to Peter, Surely thou also art one of them? Then began he to curse and to swear, saying, “I know not the Man” (Matthew xxvi. 73, 74). “Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jones, lovest thou Me more thou these? He saith unto Him, yea, Lord; Thou knowest that I love Thee. He saith unto him, Feed My lambs. He saith to him again the second time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me? He saith unto him, yea, Lord; Thou knowest that I love Thee. He saith unto him, Feed My sheep. He saith unto him the third time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me? Peter was grieved because He said unto him the third time, lovest thou Me? And he said unto Him, Lord, Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest that I love Thee.

Jesus saith unto him, Feed My sheep” (John xxi. 15-17). Peter vowed before his comrades that he would die with Jesus rather than deny Him. In a few hours the opportunity of doing so presented itself but Peter’s heart failed him. He forgot his vow and threw away for ever this unparalleled chance of proving his love for the Saviour. When the cock crew, and Jesus turned and looked at him, Peter remembered his broken vow, and went out and wept bitterly.

The tenderest sorrow for the way he had treated Jesus must have mingled with the fiercest regret for the lost chance, to bring those bitter tears. Oh, how his love must have reproached him, his conscience stung him, and the devil taunted him! I doubt not he was tempted to give up all hope, and say to himself: “It is of no use for me to try to be a Christian; I have made a miserable failure, and I will not try any longer. ” And over and over again, by day and by night, in the company of others and when by himself, Peter must have been reminded by the devil of his lost chance, and told it was no use for him to try any longer to be a Christian. And I imagine Peter sighed within himself, and would have given the world to have that chance come back once more. But it was gone, and gone for ever!

Peter did love Jesus, however, and while he had lost that chance, Jesus gave him another. A very simple, everyday, matter-of-fact chance it was, nothing like the startling, splendid one of dying with the Son of God on the cross, but probably of far more value to the world and the cause of Christ. All over the country where Jesus had been there were, doubtless, many who believed with a trembling faith in Him.

They needed to be faithfully fed with the truths about Jesus, and with those which He had taught. So Jesus called Peter to Him, and asked him three times the searching question: “Lovest thou Me? ” It must have most painfully recalled to Peter’s mind the three times he had denied Jesus. And in reply to Peter’s positive assertion that he did love Him, Jesus three times commanded him to feed His lambs and sheep. And then Jesus assured him that at last he should die on a cross – as he probably would have died had he not denied his Lord. I suspect there are many Peters among the disciples of Jesus today; many in our own ranks, who, somewhere in the past, since they began to follow Jesus, vowed they would do the thing He by His Spirit through their conscience asked them to do; vowed they would die for Him, and meant it, too; who, when the testing time came, forgot their vows, denied Jesus by word or act, and practically left Him to be crucified afresh and alone. I remember such a time in my own experience years ago, before I joined The Salvation Army, but after I was sanctified. It was not a sin of commission, but one of omission – a failure to do what I felt the Lord would have me do.

It was an unusual thing, but not an unreasonable one. The suggestion to act came suddenly, and it seemed to me that all Heaven bent over me to bless me, if I obeyed; and Hell yawned to swallow me, if I did not. I did not say I would not, but it seemed to me I simply could not, and I did not. Oh, how I was humbled, and how I wept bitter tears, and begged forgiveness, and promised God I would be true! I felt God had given me a chance that I had let slip by, and that would never, never come again, and that I never could be the mighty man of faith and obedience that I might have been had I been true.

Then I promised God that I would do that very same thing, and I did it again and again, but no real blessing came to me, and so Satan took advantage of me and taunted me and accused me through my conscience till life became an intolerable burden to me; and at last I felt I had grieved the Holy Spirit for ever and that I was lost, and so I threw away my shield of faith, cast away my confidence in the love of Jesus for me, and for twenty-eight days suffered, it seemed to me, the pains of Hell. I still prayed, but the heavens were like brass to me. I read my Bible, but the promises fled away from me, while the commandments and threatenings were like flames of fire and two- edged swords to my quivering conscience. When it was night I longed for day; when it was day I longed for night. I went to meetings, but no blessing came to me. The curse of God seemed to follow me, and yet through it all I saw that God is love. Satan tempted me to commit sin, to curse God and die, as Job’s wife bade him; but God’s mercy and grace followed me, and enabled me to say “No, ” and to tell the devil that I would not sin, and that though I went to Hell, I would go there loving Jesus and seeking to get others to trust and obey Him, and that in Hell I would declare that the Blood of Jesus could cleanse from all sin. I thought I was doomed.

Those terrible passages of Scripture in Hebrews vi. and x. seemed just to fit my case, and I said: “I have lost my chance for ever. ” But God’s love is Higher than the highest heaven, Deeper than the deepest sea. In twenty-eight days He drew me up out of that horrible pit and that miry clay with these words: “Hold it for certain that all such thoughts as create disquiet proceed not from God, who is the Prince of Peace, but proceed either from the devil, or from self-love, or from the good opinion we hold of ourselves. ” Quick as thought I saw it. God is the Prince of Peace. “His thoughts are thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give us an expected end. ” I saw I had no self-love, nor good opinion of myself, and longed to be forever rid of myself. Then I saw that the devil was deceiving me, and instantly it was as though a devil-fish loosened his long arms from about my spirit and fled away, leaving me free.

The next Saturday and Sunday I saw about fifty souls at the Penitent-form for salvation and holiness, and from that hour God has blessed me and given me souls everywhere. He has asked me, through those words He spoke to Peter, “Lovest thou Me? ” and when, out of the fullness of my clean heart – emptied of self, and made clean through His precious Blood – I have said, “Yea, Lord, Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest that I love Thee, ” He has tenderly bidden me feed His lambs and sheep; that is, to live the Gospel so fully in my life, and preach it so fully in my words, that His people should be blessed and comforted, and encouraged to love and serve and trust Him with all their hearts. This is my other chance; and it is yours, whoever you are who have denied Him in the past.

Do not seek to do some great thing, but feed the lambs and sheep of God, and pray and work for the salvation of all men. Study your Bible, pray, talk often and much with God, and ask Him so to teach you that, whenever you open your mouth, you may say something that will bless somebody – something that will encourage a discouraged brother, strengthen a weak one, instruct an ignorant one, comfort a feeble-minded one, warn an erring one, enlighten a darkened one, and rebuke a sinning one. Notice: Peter was not only to feed the lambs, but also the sheep. We must seek to get sinners saved, and after they are saved, after they are “born again, ” we must feed them. We must feed the young converts on those promises and instructions in God’s Word that will lead them into entire sanctification. We must show them that this is God’s will for them, and that Jesus has opened a way for them into “the most holy place” (Heb. x. ).

We must warn them not to turn back into Egypt, not to be afraid of the giants in the promised land, nor to make any unholy alliance with the Ammonites in the wilderness. They are to come out and be separate. They are to be holy. This is their high and happy privilege and their solemn duty, since they have been redeemed, not with corruptible things such as silver and gold, but with the precious Blood of Christ. They are not to faint when chastened and corrected by the Lord, nor grow weary in well- doing. They are to watch and pray, and give thanks, and rejoice always. And they are not to get the blessing of a clean heart by hard work, and just in the hour of death, but by simple faith in Jesus just now. We must feed the sheep, the sanctified ones, on the strong meat of the Gospel. Feed a strong man on white bread and tea, and he will soon be unfit for work. But give him good brown bread, butter and milk, and suitable fruits and vegetables, and the harder he works, other things being equal, the better he is in health and strength.

Just so with Christians. Feed them on the chaff of stale jokes, and old, last-year’s Bible-readings that have lost their power on your own heart, and you will starve the sheep. But feed them on the deep things of God’s Word, which reveal His everlasting love, His faithfulness, His saving power, His tender, minute care, His shining holiness, His exact justice, His hatred of sin, His pity for the sinner, His sympathy for the weak and erring, His eternal judgments upon the finally impenitent and ungodly, and His never-ending glory and blessedness bestowed upon the righteous, and you will make them so strong that “one shall chase a thousand, and two shall put ten thousand to flight. ” Know Jesus, and you will be able to feed His lambs and sheep. You feed them by revealing Him to them as He is revealed by the Father through the Spirit in the Bible. Walk with Him.

Talk with Him. Search the Bible on your knees, asking Him to open your understanding as He did that of the disciples on the way to Emmaus, teaching you what the scriptures say of Him, and you will have another chance of showing your love for Him and of blessing your fellow-men that the angels might well covet.

Chapter 24 – BIRDS OF PREY

Against the entire sanctification of believers Satan brings to bear all his devices, his sophistical arguments, and the full force of his powerful will; but the resolute soul, determined to be all the Lord’s, will find him a conquered foe, with no power but to deceive.

The way to overcome him surely is to will to steadfastly believe and agree with God, in spite of all Satan’s suggested doubts. In the fifteenth chapter of Genesis, we have an account of Abraham’s sacrifice, which is very suggestive to the seeker after full salvation. Abraham took certain beasts and birds, and offered them to God. But after he had made the offering, and while he was waiting for the witness of God’s acceptance, birds of prey came to snatch away the sacrifice. Abraham drove them away. This continued until the evening, and then the fire of God consumed the offering. Just so, he who would be entirely sanctified must make an unreserved offering of himself to God. This act must be real, not imaginary – a real transfer of self, with all hopes, plans, prospects, property, powers of body and mind, time, cares, burdens, joys, sorrows, reputation, friends, to God, in a “perpetual covenant not to be forgotten.

” When he has thus given himself to God, to be anything or nothing, go anywhere or stay anywhere for Jesus, he must, like Abraham, patiently, trustingly, expectantly wait for God to witness that he is accepted. “Though the vision tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry … but the just shall live by his faith” (Hab. ii. 3, 4). Now, during this short or long period of waiting, the devil will surely send his birds of prey to snatch away the offering. He will say, “You ought to feel different if you have given yourself wholly to God. ” Remember,that is the devil’s bird of prey – drive it away. Feeling is always produced by some appropriate object.

To have the feeling of love, I must think of some loved one; but the very moment I get my thought off the object of my love, and begin to examine the state of my feelings, that moment my feelings subside. Look unto Jesus and pay no attention to your emotions; they are involuntary, but will soon adjust themselves to the fixed habit of your faith and will. “But, maybe, ” something suggests, “your consecration is not complete; go over it again and be sure. ” Another evil bird of prey – drive it away. Satan becomes exceedingly pious just at this point, and wants to keep you eternally on the treadmill of consecration, knowing that, as long as he can keep you examining your consecration, you will not get your eyes on the promise of God, and, consequently, will not believe; and without faith that your offering is now accepted, it is only so much dead works. “But you do not have the joy, the deep and powerful emotions that others say they have. ” That is another bird of prey – drive it away.

A woman recently said to me: “I have given up all, but I have not the happiness I expected. ” “Ah, sister, ” said I, “the promise is not unto them that seek happiness, but, to them “which hunger and thirst after righteousness, they shall be filled. ” Seek righteousness, not happiness. ” She did so, and in a few moments she was satisfied, for with righteousness came fullness of joy. “But faith is such an incomprehensible something, you cannot exercise it; pray to God to help your unbelief.

The devil’s bird of prey – drive it away. Faith is almost too simple to be defined. It is trust in the word of Jesus, simple confidence that He means just what He says in all the promises, and that He means all the promises for you. Beware of being “corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ” (2 Cor. xi. 3). I tell you, dear comrade, everything that is contrary to present faith in the promise of God for full salvation is one of the devil’s birds of prey, and you must resolutely drive it away if you ever get saved. Quit reasoning with the devil! “Cast down reasonings (2 Cor. x. 5, margin), and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, ” and trust. Reason with God. “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord” (Isa. i. 18).

At one of our watch-night services, a man knelt at the table with quite a number of others, seeking a clean heart. He was told to give himself wholly to God, and trust. Finally, he began to pray, and then he said: “I do give myself to God, and now I am going to live and work for Him with what power I have, and let Him give me the fullness of the blessing and power just when He chooses. He has promised to give it to me, and He will do it, will He not? ” “Yes, my brother; He has promised, and He will surely perform, ” I replied. “Yes, yes; He had promised it, ” said the man.

Just then light shot through his soul, and his next words were: “Praise the Lord! Glory to God! “He reasoned together with God, and, looking to the promise, was delivered. Others about him reasoned with the devil, looked to their feelings, and were not sanctified. But after you have taken the step of faith, God’s plan is for you to talk your faith. The men of character, of force and influence, are the men who put themselves on record.

The man who has convictions, and who is not afraid to announce them to the world and defend them, is the man who has true stability. It is so in politics, in business, in all moral reforms, in salvation. There is a universal law underlying the declaration: “With the mouth confession is made unto salvation. ” If you are sanctified, and would remain sanctified, you must at the earliest opportunity put yourself on record before all the devils in Hell and all your acquaintances on earth and all the angels in Heaven. You must stand out before the world as a professor and a possessor of heart purity, of “Holiness unto the Lord. ” Only in this way can you burn all the bridges behind you; and until they are destroyed, you are not safe.

The other day a lady said to me: “I have always hesitated to say, ‘The Lord sanctifies me wholly’; but not until recently did I see the reason. I now see that I secretly desired a bridge behind me, so that I might escape back from my position without injury to myself. If I profess sanctification, I must be careful lest I bring myself into disrepute; but if I do not profess it, I can do questionable things and then shield myself by saying, ‘I do not profess to be perfect. ‘” Ah, that is the secret! Be careful, dear reader, or you will become a religious fence rider, and the devil will get you; for all who are astride the fence are really on the devil’s side. “He that is not for Me is against Me. ” Get away over on God’s side, by a definite profession of your faith. But the devil will say: “You had better not say anything about this, till you find out whether you will be able to keep it. Be careful, lest you do more harm than good. ” Drive that bird of prey away quickly, or all you have done thus far will be of no avail. That bird has devoured tens of thousands of offerings just as honestly made as yours. You are not to “keep the blessing” at all; but you are to boldly assert your faith in the Blesser, and He will keep you.

Only yesterday a brother said to me: “When I sought this experience, I gave myself definitely and fully to God, and told Him I would trust Him; but I felt as dry as that post. Shortly after this, a friend asked me if I were sanctified, and before I had time to examine my feelings, I said ‘Yes’; and God that minute blessed me and filled me full of His Spirit, and since then He has sweetly kept me. ” He talked his faith, and agreed with God.

“But you want to be honest, and not claim more than you possess, ” says Satan. A bird of prey! You must assert that you believe God to be honest, and that He has promised that “What things so ever ye desire when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them” (Mark xi. 24). Count God faithful. A former soldier of mine gave herself to God, but did not feel any difference, and so hesitated to say that God had sanctified her wholly. “But, ” she said, “I began to reason over the matter thus: I know I have given myself wholly to God. I am willing to be anything, do anything, suffer anything for Jesus.

I am willing to forego all pleasure, honor and all my cherished hopes and plans for His sake, but I do not feel that God sanctifies me; and yet He promises to do so, on the simple condition that I give myself to Him and believe His Word. Knowing that I have given myself to Him, I must believe or make Him a liar; I will believe that He does now sanctify me. But, ” said she, “I did not get any witness that the work was done just then. However, I rested in God, and some days after this I went to one of the holiness conventions, and there, while a number were testifying, I thought I would rise and tell them God sanctified me.

I did so, and between rising up and sitting down, God came and witnessed that it was done. Now I know I am sanctified. ” And her shining face was a sufficient evidence that the work was, indeed, done. Dear reader, “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. ” Give yourself wholly to God, trust Him, then confess your faith. “And the Lord whom you seek, shall suddenly come to His temple, even the Messenger of the Covenant, whom ye delight in: behold He shall come, saith the Lord of Hosts” (Mal. iii. 1).

Chapter 25 – “WITH PEACE UNBROKEN”

“In holiness and righteousness before Him, all the days of their life (Luke i. 75). The Rev. John Fletcher, whom Wesley thought was the holiest man who had lived since the days of the Apostle John, lost the blessing five times before he was finally established in the grace of holiness, and Wesley declared that he was persuaded, from his observations, that people usually lose the blessing several times before they learn the secret of keeping it. So, if any one who reads this has lost the blessing, and is tormented by the old enemy of souls – the devil – with the thought that you can never get and keep it, let me urge you to try again and again and again.

You prove your real desire and purpose to be holy, not by giving up in the presence of defeat, but by rising from ten thousand falls, and going at it again with renewed faith and consecration. If you do this, you shall surely win the prize, and be able to keep it in the end.

The promise is: “Seek, and ye shall find. “

“But how long shall I seek? “

Seek till you find!

“But suppose I lose it? ” Seek again till you find it.

God will surprise you some day by pouring out such a full baptism of His Spirit upon you, that all your darkness and doubts and uncertainty will vanish for ever, and you will never fall again, and God’s smile will be no more withdrawn, and your sun will never more go down. Oh, my discouraged brother, my disheartened sister, let me urge you to look up and trust Jesus,

and keep on seeking, remembering that God’s delays are not denial – Jesus is your Joshua to lead you into the promised land, and He can cast down all your foes before you.

People who give up in the midst of defeat have much to learn yet of the deceitfulness and hardness of their own hearts, and of the tender forbearance, and longsuffering, and mighty saving power of God. But it is not God’s will that any who receive the blessing should ever lose it, and it is possible to keep it for ever. But how? One day, as an old divinity school chum of mine, who had finished his course of study, was going to his field of labor, I followed him on to the train to have a hearty handshake and to say good- bye, perhaps for ever. He looked up and said: “Sam, give me a text that will do for a life motto. ” Instantly I lifted my heart to God for light. Now, if you want to keep the blessing, that is one of the things you must constantly do – lift your heart to God and look to Him for light, not only in the crises and great events of life, but in all its little and seemingly trifling details.

By practice, you can get into such a habit of doing this that it will become as natural for you as breathing, and it will prove quite as important to your spiritual life as breathing is to your natural life. Keep within whispering distance of God always, if you would keep the blessing. Well, I proved to be in whisper touch with Jesus that morning on the train, and immediately the first eleven verses of the first chapter of 2 Peter were suggested to my mind; not simply as a motto, but as a plain rule laid down by the Holy Ghost, by the following out of which we may not only keep the blessing and never fall, but also prove fruitful in the knowledge of God, and gain an abundant entrance into the Kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Notice it, all you who wish to keep the blessing of holiness. You see in verse 4 the Apostle speaks of being made “partakers of the Divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. ” That is holiness, to escape from the corruption of our evil hearts and receive the

Divine nature. Now, the Apostle urges these holy people to diligence, and not only diligence, but “all diligence. ” A lazy, sleepy man cannot keep the blessing; in fact, he cannot get it.

To get it you must seek it with all your heart. You must dig as for hidden treasure, and to keep it you must use diligence. Some people say, “Once saved, always saved, ” but God does not say anything of the kind. He urges us to watch and be sober and diligent, for we are in the enemy’s country. This world is not a friend to grace. If you had one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of diamonds in a land of robbers, you would watch and keep your treasure with all diligence. Well, you are in the enemy’s country, with a holy heart and “the earnest of the Spirit, ” your passport to Heaven, your pledge of eternal life. Be diligent to keep it.

The Apostle says: “Beside this, add to your faith, virtue. ” You had to have faith in “the exceeding great and precious promises” to get this blessing, but you will have to add something more to your faith to keep it. This word “virtue” comes from the old Latin word which means courage, and that is probably its meaning here. You must have courage to keep this blessing. The devil will roar like a lion at you at times; the world will frown upon you, and maybe club you, and possibly kill you. Your friends will pity you, or curse you, and predict all sorts of calamities as sure to befall you, and at times your own flesh may cry out against you.

Then you will need courage. They told me I would go crazy, and it almost seemed that I would, so earnest was I to know all the mind of God for me. They said I would land in a bog of fanaticism; they said I would end in the poor-house; they said I would utterly ruin my health, and become a lifelong, useless invalid, a torment to myself and a burden to my friends.

The very bishop whose book on holiness had stirred my soul to its depths, after I got the blessing, urged me to say very little about it, as it caused much division and trouble. (I afterward learned that he had lost the blessing. ) The devil followed me by day and by night with a thousand spiritual temptations that I had never dreamed of, and then at last stirred up a rough to nearly knock my brains out, and for many months I was prostrated with bodily weakness, until the writing of a post card plunged me into distress and robbed me of a night’s rest. So I found it took courage to keep this “pearl of great price, ” but – hallelujah for ever! – “the Lion of the tribe of Judah, ” who is my Lord and Saviour, is as full of courage as He is of strength and love and pity; and He has said in the Book of instruction and encouragement He has left us: “Be strong, and of a good courage. ” Yea, He puts it stronger, and says: “Have not I commanded thee to be strong and of good courage? ” It is a positive command, which we are under obligation to obey. Over and over again He has said this, and seventy-two times He says: “Fear not, ” and He adds, as a sufficient reason why we should not fear: “For I am with thee. ” Glory to God! If He is with me, why should I be afraid? And why should you, my comrade? My little boy is very much afraid of a dog. I think fear was born in him.

But when he gets hold of my hand he will march boldly past the biggest dog in the country. God says: “I the Lord thy God will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, 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; I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. ” Never! Jesus, the very same Jesus who died for us, says: “All power is given unto Me in Heaven and in earth; and lo! I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. ” Why fear? The devil is an old hand at deceiving and overthrowing souls, but remember that Jesus is the “Ancient of Days.

” From everlasting to everlasting He is God, and He has put all the wisdom and power and courage of His Godhead at the disposal of our faith for our salvation, and certainly that ought to fill us with courage. Are you downhearted and afraid? Cheer up! Pluck up courage, and let us boldly say with King David, who had a good deal more trouble and cause for fear than either of us: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble: therefore, will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.

” I have been helped very much by one experience of David’s. Once upon a time he had to flee from Saul, who hunted for his life as men hunt for partridges on the mountains; so David went down into Philistia, and dwelt in a village which the king gave him. Then the Philistines went to war against Saul, and David went too. But they were afraid David might turn against them in the hour of battle, and so they sent him home. When David and his men returned to their homes, they found some enemies had been there and burned their village to the ground, and had carried off their goods, their cattle, their wives and the little ones. The men were mad with grief, and determined to stone David.

Certainly there was reason for fear; but the Bible says: “David encouraged himself in the Lord. ” Read the story for yourself, and see how wonderfully God helped him to get everything back again (1 Sam. xxx. ). As for me, I am determined to be of good courage. God has been better to me than all my fears, and the fears of all my friends, and He has outwitted all my enemies, and proved stronger than all my foes, and. enabled me, by His power, and infinite love and goodness, to walk in holiness before Him for almost ten years.

Chapter 26 – SANCTIFICATION v. CONSECRATION

A state senator’s wife regularly attended a series of our holiness meetings, and apparently became quite interested. One day she came to me, and said, “Brother Brengle, I wish you would call it “consecration” instead of ‘sanctification. ‘ We could all agree on that. ” “But I don’t mean consecration, sister; I mean sanctification; and there is as big a difference between the two as there is between earth and Heaven, between man’s work and God’s work, ” I replied. This woman’s mistake is a very common one. She wanted to rob religion of its supernatural element and rest in her own works. It is quite the fashion now to be “consecrated” and to talk much about “consecration.

” Lovely ladies, robed in silk, bedecked with jewels, gay with feathers and flowers, and gentlemen, with soft hands and raiment, and odorous with perfume, talk with honeyed words and sweet, low voices about being consecrated to the Lord. And I would not discourage them; but I do want to lift up my voice with a loud warning that consecration, as such people ordinarily think of it, is simply man’s work, and is not enough to save the soul. Elijah piled his altar on Mount Carmel, slew his bullock and placed him on the altar, and then poured water over the whole. That was consecration. But Baal’s priests had done that, with the exception of putting on the water.

They had built their altar, they had slain their bullocks, they had spent the day in the most earnest religious devotions, and, so far as men could see, their zeal far exceeded that of Elijah.

What did Elijah more than they? Nothing, except to put a few barrels of water on his sacrifice – a big venture of faith. If he had stopped there, the world would never have heard of him. But he believed for Gad to do something. He expected it, he prayed for it” and God split the heavens and poured down fire to consume his sacrifice, and the stones of his altar, and the very water that lay in the trenches.

meant business, who wanted God more than all creation, and so He there and then baptized him with the Holy Ghost. But a Captain and Lieutenant whom I know found that “the vision tarried, ” so they waited for it, and spent all the spare time they had for three weeks, crying to God to fill them with the Spirit. They did not get discouraged; they held on to God with a desperate faith; they would not let Him go, and they got their heart’s desire. I saw that Lieutenant some time afterward, and oh! how I was amazed at the wonders of God’s grace in him.

The spirit of the prophets was upon him. “All Heaven is free plunder to faith, ” says a friend of mine. Oh, this waiting on God! It is far easier to plunge madly at this thing and that, and do, do, do, till life and heart are exhausted in joyless and comparatively fruitless toil, than it is to wait on God in patient, unwavering, heart-searching faith, till He comes and fills you with the Almighty power of the Holy Ghost, which gives you supernatural endurance and wisdom and might, and enables you to do in a day what otherwise you could not do in a thousand years, and yet strips you of all pride, and leads you to give all the glory to your Lord.

Waiting on God empties us that we may be filled. Few wait until they are emptied, and hence so few are filled. Few will bear the heart-searchings, the humiliations, the suspense, the taunt of Satan as he inquires, “Where is your God now? ” Oh! the questionings and whisperings of unbelief that are involved in waiting upon God, hence the people are but few who, in understanding, are men and women in Christ Jesus and pillars in the temple of God. Jesus commanded the disciples, saying: “Tarry in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high” (Luke xxiv. 49). That must have been quite a restraint put on restless, impulsive Peter; but he waited with his brethren, and they cried to God, and searched their hearts, and forgot their fears and the angry rulers who had murdered their Lord, forgot their jealousies and selfish ambitions and childish differences, until they were exhausted of all self-love and self-

That was sanctification! What power had cold stones and water and a dead bullock to glorify God and convert an apostate nation? But when they were flaming, and being consumed with the fire from Heaven, then “the people fell on their faces, and said, The Lord, He is the God; the Lord, He is the God. ” What do great gifts and talk and so-called consecration amount to in saving the world and glorifying God? “Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing” (I Cor. xiii. 3).

It is God in men that enables them to glorify Him, and work together with Him for the salvation of the world. God wants sanctified men. Of course, men must be consecrated – that is, given up to God – in order to be sanctified. But when once they have yielded themselves to Him, yielded their very inmost selves, their memories, minds and wills, their tongues, their hands and feet, their reputations, not only among sinners, but also among saints; their doubts and fears, their likes and dislikes, their disposition to talk back at God and pity themselves and murmur and repine when He puts their consecration to the test; when they have really done this and taken their hands off; as Elijah placed his bullock on the altar and took his hands off for ever, then they must wait on God and cry to Him with a humble, yet bold, persistent faith till He baptizes them with the Holy Ghost and fire. He promised to do it, and He will do it, but men must expect it, look for it, pray for it, and if it tarry, wait for it. A soldier went home from one of our meetings, fell on his knees, and said: “Lord, I will not get up from here till You baptize me with the Holy Ghost! ” God saw He had a man on His hands who goodness and self-trust, and their hearts were as the heart of one man, and they had but one desire, and that a mighty, consuming hunger for God; and then suddenly God came – came in power, came with fire, came to purge, and cleanse, and sanctify them through and through, and dwell in their hearts, and make them bold in the presence of their enemies, humble in the midst of success, patient in fiery conflicts and persecutions, steadfast and unswerving in spite of threats and whippings and imprisonment, joyful in loneliness and misrepresentations, and fearless and triumphant in the face of death. God made them wise to win souls, and filled them with the very spirit of their Master, till they – poor humble men that they were – turned the world upside down, and took none of the glory to themselves, either. So, sanctification is the result not only of giving, but also of receiving. And hence we are under as solemn an obligation to receive the Holy Ghost and “be filled with the Spirit, ” as we are to give ourselves to God.

And if we are not filled at once, we are not to suppose that the blessing is not for us, and, in the subtle, mock-humility of unbelief, fold our hands and stop our crying to God. But we should cry all the more, and search the Scriptures for light and truth, and search and humble ourselves, and take God’s part against unbelief, against our own hearts and the devil, and never faint until we have taken the kingdom of Heaven by violence, and He says, “O man, O woman, great is thy faith; be it unto thee even as thou wilt. ” God loves to be compelled, God wants to be compelled, God will be compelled by the importunate prayer and faith of His children.

I imagine God is often grieved and disappointed and angry with us, as the prophet was with the king who shot but three arrows when he should have shot half a dozen or more, because we ask so little, and are so easily turned away without the blessing we profess to want, and so quickly satisfied with a little comfort when it is the Comforter Himself we need. The Syro-Phoenician woman, who came to Jesus to have the devil cast out of her daughter, is a sample believer, and puts most Christians to shame by the boldness and persistence of her faith.

She would not be turned away without the blessing she sought. At first, Jesus answered her not a word, and so He often treats us today. We pray and get no answer. God is silent. Then He rebuffed her by saying that He had not come to such as she, but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. That was enough to make blaspheming skeptics of most nineteenth-century folks. But not so with her. Her desperate faith grows awfully sublime.

At last, Jesus seemed to add insult to injury by declaring: “It is not meet to give the children’s bread to *[pet – see original] dogs. ” Then the woman’s faith conquered, and compelled Him, for she said: “Truth, Lord, but the dogs eat of the crumbs that fall from the children’s table. ” She was willing to take the dogs’ place and receive the dogs’ portion. Glory to God! Oh, how her faith triumphed, and Jesus, amazed, said: “O woman, great is thy faith; be it unto thee even as thou wilt. ” Jesus meant to bless her all the time, if her faith would hold out. And so He means to bless you. Now, there are two classes of people who progress to consecrate themselves to God, but upon inquiry it will usually appear that they are consecrated more to some line of work than to God Himself. They are God’s housekeepers, rather than the bride of His Son – very busy people, with little or no time nor inclination for real heart-fellowship with Jesus. The first class might be termed pleasure-seekers. They see that sanctified people are happy, and, thinking it is due to what they have given and done, they begin to give and to do, never dreaming of the infinite Treasure these sanctified ones have received.

The secret of him who said, “God, my exceeding joy, ” and, “The Lord is the portion of my soul, ” is hidden from them. So they never find God. They are seeking happiness, not holiness. They will hardly admit their need of holiness – they were always good – and God is found only by those who, feeling the deep depravity and need of their hearts, want to be holy. “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled” (Matt. v. 6). This class are usually good livers, hearty eaters, very sociable, always dressed in the fashion – religious epicures The other class may be rightly called misery-hunters. They are always seeking something hard to do. They believe in being on the rack perpetually. Like Baal’s priests, they cut themselves – not their bodies, but their minds and souls; they give their goods to feed the poor, they give their bodies to be burned, and yet it profits them nothing (I Cor. xiii. 3). They wear themselves out in a hard bond-service. It is not joy they want, but misery. They judge of their acceptance with God, not by the joy-producing presence of the indwelling Comforter that makes the yoke easy and the burden light, but rather by the amount of misery they are ready to endure or have endured; and they are not happy, and they fear they are not saved, unless there is some sacrifice for them to make that will produce in them the most exquisite torment. They have died a thousand deaths, and yet are not dead. Their religion does not consist in “righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost, ” but rather of grit and resolution and misery. But these people do not really make greater sacrifices than sanctified people, only they make more ado over them. Not being dead, it hurts them to submit to God, and yet they feel compelled to do so. Nor are their sorrows greater than those of sanctified people, only they are of a different kind, and spring from a different root.

They have misery and sorrow because of the sacrifices they have to make, while the sanctified man counts these things all joy for Jesus’ sake; and yet he has continual sorrow, for the sorrows and woes of a world are upon his heart, and, but for the comfort and sympathy Jesus gives him, his heart would sometimes break. Still, these people are good and do good. God bless them! But what they need is a faith that sanctifies (Acts xxvi. 18), that, through the operation of the Spirit, will kill them and put them out of their misery for ever, and bring joy and peace into their tired hearts, so that in newness of life they can drink of the river of God’s pleasures and never thirst any more, and make all manner of sacrifices for Jesus’ sake with all gladness. It is sanctification, then, that we need, and that God wants us to have, and that the Holy Spirit is urging upon us, every one.

It is a way of childlike faith that receives all God has to give, and of perfect love that joyfully gives all back to God; a way that keeps the soul from Laodicean sloth and ease on the one hand, and from hard, cold Pharisaical bondage on the other; a way of inward peace and pleasantness and abounding spiritual life, in which the soul, always wary of its enemies, is not unduly elated by success, nor cast down by disappointment, does not measure itself by others, nor compare itself with others, but, looking unto Jesus, attends strictly to its own business, walking by faith, and trusting Him in due time and order to fulfill all the exceeding great and precious promises of His love.

Chapter 27 – SHOUTING

Nothing is more completely hidden from wise and prudent folk than the blessed fact that there is a secret spring of power and victory in shouting and praising God. The devil often throws a spell over people which can be broken in no other way. Many an honest, seeking soul, who might step forth into perfect and perpetual liberty if he would only dare to look the devil in the eye and shout “Glory to God! ” goes mourning all his days under this spell. Frequently whole congregations will be under it. There will be a vacant or a listless or a restless look in their eyes. There is no attention, no expectation.

A stifling stillness and the serenity of “death” settles upon them. But let a Spirit-baptized man, with a weight of glory in his soul, bless the Lord, and the spell will be broken. Every man there will come to his senses, will wake up, will remember where he is, and will begin to expect something to happen. Shouting and praising God is to salvation what flame is to fire. You may have a very hot and useful fire without a blaze, but not till it bursts forth into flame does it become irresistible and sweep everything before it. So people may be very good and have a measure of salvation, but it is not until they become so full of the Holy Ghost that they are likely to burst forth in praises to their glorious God at any hour of the day or night, both in private and public, that their salvation becomes irresistibly catching.

The shouting of some people is as terrible as the noise of an empty wagon rolling over cobble stones; it is like the firing of blank cartridges. It is all noise. Their religion consists in making a racket. But there are others who wait on God in secret places, who seek His face with their whole hearts, who groan in prayer with unutterable longing to know God in all His fullness and to see His kingdom come with power; who plead the promises, who search the word of God and meditate on it day and night, until they are full of the great though and truths of God, and faith is made perfect. Then the Holy Ghost comes pressing down on them with an eternal weight of glory that compels praise, and when they shout it takes effect. Every cartridge is loaded, and at times their shouting will be like the boom of a big gun, and will have the speed and power of a cannon-ball. An old friend of mine in Vermont once remarked, that “when he went into a store or railway station, he found the place full of devils, and the atmosphere choked his soul till he shouted; then every devil hied himself away, the atmosphere was purified, and he had possession of the place, and could say and do what he pleased.

” The Marechale once wrote: “Nothing fills all Hell with dismay like a reckless, dare-devil shouting faith. ” Nothing can stand before a man with a genuine shout in his soul. Earth and Hell flee before him, and all Heaven throngs about him to help him fight his battles. When Joshua’s armies shouted, the walls of Jericho “fell down flat” before them. When Jehoshaphat’s people “began to sing and praise, the Lord set ambushments against Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, and they were smitten. ” When Paul and Silas, with bruised and bleeding backs, in the inner dungeon of that horrible Philippian jail, at midnight, “prayed and sang praises unto God, ” the Lord sent an earthquake, shook the foundations of the prison, loosed the prisoners, and converted the jailer and all his family. And there is no conceivable difficulty that will not vanish before the man who prays and praises God. When Billy Bray wanted bread, he prayed and shouted, to give the devil to understand that he felt under no obligation to him, but had perfect confidence in his Heavenly Father.

When Dr. Cullis, of Boston, had not a penny in his treasury, and heavy obligations rested upon him, and he knew not how he could buy food for the patients in his home for consumptives, he would go into his office and read the Bible and pray and walk the floor, praising God and telling Him he would trust, and money would roll in from the ends of the earth. Victory always comes where a man, having poured Out his heart in prayer, dares to trust God and express his faith in praise.

Shouting is the final and highest expression of faith made perfect in its various stages. When a sinner comes to God in hearty repentance and surrender, and, throwing himself fully on the mercy of God, looks to Jesus only for salvation, and by faith fully and fearlessly grasps the blessing of justification, the first expression of that faith will be one of confidence and praise. No doubt, there are many who claim justification who never praise God; but either they are deceived, or their faith is weak and mixed with doubt and fear.

When it is perfect, praise will be spontaneous. And when this justified man comes to see the holiness of God, and the exceeding breadth of His commandment, and the absolute claim of God upon every power of his being, and realizes the remaining selfishness and earthiness of his heart; when he, after many failures to purify himself, and inward questionings of soul, and debatings of conscience, and haltings of faith, comes to God to be made holy through the precious Blood and the baptism of the Holy Ghost and of fire, the final expression of the faith that resolutely and perfectly grasps the blessing will not be prayer, but praise and hallelujahs.

And when this saved and sanctified man, seeing the woes of a lost world and feeling the holy passion of Jesus working mightily in Him, goes forth to war with “principalities, and powers, and the rulers of the darkness of this world, and wicked spirits in heavenly places, ” in order to rescue the slaves of sin and Hell, after weeping and agonizing in prayer to God for an outpouring of the Spirit, and after preaching to, and teaching men, and pleading with them to yield utterly to God, and after many fastings and trials and conflicts, in which faith and patience for other men are made perfect and victorious, prayer will be transformed into praise, and weeping into shouting, and apparent defeat into overwhelming victory! Where there is victory, there is shouting, and where there is no shouting, faith and patience are either in retreat, or are engaged in conflict, the issue of which for the time being seems uncertain. But: Oh, for a faith that will not shrink Though pressed by every foe, That will not tremble on the brink Of any earthly woe.

Faith, mighty faith, the promise sees, And looks to that alone, Laughs at impossibilities, And cries, “It shall be done! ” And what is true in individual experience is revealed to be true of the Church in its final triumph.

For after the long ages of stress and conflict and patient waiting and fiery trial; after the ceaseless intercessions of Jesus, and the unutterable groaning of the Spirit in the hearts of believers, the Church shall finally come to perfect faith and patience and unity of love, according to the prayer of Jesus in John xvli. , and then “The Lord Himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the Archangel, and with the trump of God” (I Thess. iv. 16), and seeming defeat shall be turned into eternal victory. But let no one hastily conclude that he should not shout and praise God unless he feels a mighty wave of triumph rushing through his soul. Paul says, “We know not what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered” (Rom. viii. 26).

But if a man refused to pray till he felt this tremendous pleading of the Spirit in his heart, which John Fletcher said is “like a God wrestling with a God, ” he would never pray at all. We must stir up the gift of prayer that is within us, we must exercise ourselves in prayer until our souls sweat, and then we shall realize the mighty energy of the Holy Ghost interceding within us. We must never forget that “the spirit of the prophets is subject unto the prophets. ” Just so we must stir up and exercise the gift of praise within us. We must put our will into it. When Habakkuk the prophet had lost everything, and was surrounded with utter desolation, he shouted: “Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, and joy in the God of my salvation! ” We are workers together with God, and if we will praise Him, He will see to it that we have something for which to praise Him. We often hear of Daniel praying three times a day, but we pass over the fact that at the same time “he gave thanks, ” which is a kind of praise. David says: “Seven times a day do I praise Thee. ” Over and over, again and again, we are exhorted and commanded to praise God and shout aloud and rejoice evermore. But if, through fear or shame, men will not rejoice, they need not be surprised that they have no joy and no sweeping victories.

But if they will get alone with God in their own hearts-note, alone with God, alone with God in their own hearts; there is the place to get alone with God, and a shout is nothing more or less than an expression of joy at finding God in our hearts – and will praise Him for His wonderful works, praise Him because He is worthy of praise, praise Him whether they feel like it or not, praise Him in the darkness as well as the light, praise Him in seasons of fierce conflict as well as in moments of victory; they will soon be able to shout aloud for joy. And their joy no man will be able to take from them, but God will make them to drink of the river of His pleasures, and He Himself will be their “exceeding joy. ” Many a soul, in fierce temptation and hellish darkness, has poured out his heart in prayer and then sunk back in despair, who, if he had only closed his prayer with thanks, and dared in the name of God to shout, would have filled Hell with confusion, and won a victory that would have struck all the harps of Heaven and made the angels shout with glee.

Many a prayer meeting has failed at the shouting point. Songs were sung, testimonies had been given, the Bible had been read and explained, sinners had been warned and entreated, prayers had been poured forth to God, but no one wrestled through to the point where he could and would intelligently praise God for victory, and, so far as could be seen, the battle was lost for want of a shout. From the moment we are born of God, straight through our pilgrim journey, up to the moment of open vision, where we are for ever glorified and see Jesus as He is, we have a right to rejoice, and we ought to do it. It is our highest privilege and our most solemn duty. And if we do it not, I think it must fill the angels with confusion, and the fiends of the bottomless pit with a kind of hideous joy.

We ought to do it, for this is almost the only thing we do on earth that we shall not cease to do in Heaven. Weeping and fasting and watching and praying and self-denying and cross-bearing and conflict with Hell will cease; but praise to God, and hallelujahs “unto Him that loved us and washed us from our sins in His own Blood, and made us kings and priests unto God and His Father, ” shall ring through Heaven eternally. Blessed be God and the Lamb for evermore!

Chapter 28 – SOME OF GOD’S WORDS TO ME
“God doth talk with man, and he liveth” (Deut. v.24). God did not cease speaking to men when the canon of Scripture was complete. Though the manner of communication may have changed somewhat yet the communication itself is something to which every Spirit-born soul can joyfully testify.

Every one sorry for sin, and sighing and crying for deliverance, and hungering and thirsting for righteousness, will soon find Out, as did the Israelites, that “God doth talk with man. ” God has most commonly and most powerfully spoken to me through the words of Scripture. Some of them stand out to my mental and spiritual vision like mighty mountain-peaks, rising from a vast, extended plain. The Spirit that moved “holy men of old” to write the words of the Bible has moved me to understand them, by leading me along the lines of spiritual experience first trodden by these men, and has “taken the things of Christ and revealed them” unto me, until I have been filled with a Divine certainty as altogether satisfactory and absolute as that wrought in my intellect by a mathematical demonstration.

The first words which I now remember coming to me with this irresistible Divine force, came when I was seeking the blessing of a clean heart. Although I was hungering and thirsting for the blessing, yet at times a feeling of utter indifference – a kind of spiritual stupor – would come over me and threaten to devour all my holy longings, as Pharaoh’s lean kine devoured the fat ones. I was in great distress, and did not know what to do.

To stop seeking I saw meant infinite, eternal loss; yet to continue seeking seemed quite out of the question with such a paralysis of desire and feeling. But one day I read: “There is none that calleth upon Thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of Thee” (Isa. lxiv. 7). God spoke to me in these words as unmistakably as He spoke to Moses from the burning bush or the children of Israel from the cloudy mount. It was an altogether new experience to me. The word came as a rebuke to my unbelief and lazy indifference, and yet it put hope into me, and I said to myself: “By the grace of God, if nobody else does I will stir myself up to seek Him, feeling or no feelings. ” That was ten years ago, but from then till now, regardless of my feeling, I have sought God. I have not waited to be stirred up, but when necessary I have fasted and prayed and stirred myself up. I have often prayed, as did the royal Psalmist, “quicken me, O Lord, according to Thy lovingkindness”; but, whether I have felt any immediate quickening or not, I have laid hold of Him, I have sought Him, and, bless Him! I have found Him. “Seek, and ye shall find. ” So that before finding God in the fullness of His love and favor, hindrances must be removed, “weights” and “easily-besetting sins” must be laid aside, and self smitten in the citadel of its ambitions and hopes. The young man of today is ambitious. He wants to be Prime Minister if he goes into politics. He must be a multi-millionaire if he goes into business, and he aims to be a bishop if he enters the Church.

The ruling passion of my soul, and that which for years I longed after more than for holiness or Heaven, was to do something and be somebody who should win the esteem and compel the applause of thoughtful, educated men; and just as the Angel smote Jacob’s thigh and put it out of joint, causing him for ever after to limp on it, the strongest part of his body, so God, in order to sanctify me wholly, and “bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, ” smote and humbled me in this ruling propensity and strongest passion of my nature.

For several years before God sanctified me wholly, I knew there was such an experience, and I prayed by fits and starts for it, and all the time I hungered and thirsted for – I hardly knew what! Holiness in itself seemed desirable, but I saw as clearly then as I have since I obtained the blessing,

that with it came the cross and an irrepressible conflict with the carnal mind in each human being I met, whether he professed to be a Christian or avowed himself a sinner; whether cultured and thoughtful, or a raw, ignorant pagan; and this I knew instinctively would as surely bar my way to the esteem and applause of the people, whose goodwill and admiration I valued, as it did that of Jesus and Paul. And yet, so subtle is the deceitfulness of the unsanctified heart, that I would not then have acknowledged it to myself, although I am now persuaded that unwillingness to take up this cross was for years the lurking foe that barred the gates against the willing, waiting Sanctifier.

At last I heard a distinguished evangelist and soul-winner preach a sermon on the baptism of the Holy Ghost, and I said to myself, “That is what I need and want; I must have it! ” And I began to seek and pray for this, all the time with a secret thought in my heart that I, too, should become a great soul-winner and live in the eye of the world. I sought with considerable earnestness; but God was very merciful and hid Himself away from me, in this way arousing the wholesome fear of the Lord in my heart, and, at the same time, intensifying my spiritual hunger.

I wept and prayed and besought the Lord to baptize me with the Spirit, and wondered why He did not, until one day I read those words of Paul, “That no flesh should glory in His presence” (I Cor. i. 29). Here I saw the enemy of the Lord – self. There stood the idol of my soul – the passionate, consuming desire for glory – no longer hidden and nourished in the secret chambers of my heart, but discovered before the Lord as Agag was before Samuel; and those words, “No flesh shall glory in His presence, ” constituted “the sword of the Spirit, ” which pierced self through and through, and showed me I never could be holy and receive the baptism of the Spirit while I secretly cherished a desire for the honor that comes from man, and sought not “the honour that cometh from God only.

” That word was with power, and from then till now I have not sought the glory of this world. But while I no longer sought the glory of the world, yet this same powerful principle in me had to be yet further uncovered and smitten, in order to make me willing to lose what little glory I already had, or imagined I had, and be content to be accounted a fool for Christ.

The ruling propensity of the carnal nature seeks for gratification. If it can secure this lawfully, well; but gratification it will have, if it has to gain it unlawfully. Every way is unlawful for me which would be unlawful for Jesus. The Christian who is not entirely sanctified does not deliberately plan to do that which he knows to be wrong, but is rather betrayed by the deceitful heart within.

He is overcome, if he is overcome (which, thank God, he need not be), secretly or suddenly, in a way which makes him abhor himself, but which, it seems, is the only way by which God can convince him of his depravity and need of a clean heart. Now, twice I was so betrayed – once to cheat in an examination, and once to use the outline of another man’s sermon.

The first deed I bitterly repented of and confessed but the second was not so clearly wrong, since I had used materials of my own to fill in an outline, and especially since the outline was probably much better than any I could prepare. It was one of Finney’s. In fact, if I had used the outline in the right spirit, I do not know that it would have been wrong at all. But God’s word, which is a “discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart, ” searched me out, and revealed to my astonished, humbled soul, not merely the bearing and character of my act, but also of my spirit. He smote and humbled me again with these words: “If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God; if any man minister, let him do it as of the ability which God giveth” (1 Pet. iv. 11). When I read those words I felt as mean and guilty as though I had stolen ten thousand dollars. I began to see then the true character and mission of a preacher and a prophet: that he is a man sent from God and must, if he would please God and seek the glory He alone gives, wait upon God in prayer and diligent searching of His Word till he gets his message direct from the Throne. Then only can he speak “as the oracles of God, ” and “minister as of the ability which God giveth.

” I was not led to despise human teachers and human learning where God is in them, but I was led to exalt direct inspiration, and to see the absolute necessity of it for every one who sets himself to turn men to righteousness, and tell them how to find God and get to Heaven.

I saw that instead of everlastingly sitting at the feet of human teachers, poring over commentaries, studying another man’s sermons and diving into other men’s volumes of anecdotes, and then tickling the ears of people with pretty speeches and winning their one-day, empty applause by elaborately finished sermons, logically and rhetorically, Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null, God meant the man He sent to speak His words, to sit at the feet of Jesus and learn of Him, to get alone in some secret place on his knees and study the word of God under the direct illumination of the Holy Ghost, to study the holiness and righteous judgments of God until he got some red-hot thunderbolts that would burn the itching ears of the people, arouse their slumbering consciences, prick their hard hearts, and make them cry, “What shall we do? ” I saw that he must study and meditate on the tender, boundless compassion and love of God in Christ, the perfect atonement for sin in its root and trunk and branch, and the simple way to appropriate it in penitence and self-surrender by faith, until he was fully possessed of it himself, and knew how to lead every broken heart directly to Jesus for perfect healing, to comfort mourners, to loose prisoners, to set captives free, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God. This view greatly humbled me, and what to do I did not know. At last it was suggested to my mind that, as I had confessed the false examination, so now I ought to stand before the people and confess the stolen sermon outline. This fairly peeled my conscience, and it quivered with an indescribable agony. For about three weeks I struggled with this problem. I argued the matter with myself. I pleaded with God to show me if it were His will, and over and over again I promised Him I would do it, only to draw back in my heart.

At last I told an intimate friend. He assured me it was not of God, and said he was going to preach in a revival meeting that night, and use materials he had gathered from another man’s sermon.

I coveted his freedom, but this brought no relief to me. I could not get away from my sin. Like David’s, it was “ever before me. ” One morning, while in this frame of mind, I picked up a little book on experimental religion, hoping to get light, when, on opening it, the very first subject that my eyes fell on was “Confession. ” I was cornered. My soul was brought to a full halt. I could seek no further light. I wanted to die, and that moment my heart broke within me. “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart … “; and from the depths of my broken heart, my conquered spirit said to God, “I will. ” I had said it before with my lips, but now I said it with my heart. Then God spoke directly to my soul, not by printed words through my eyes, but by His Spirit in my heart. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (I John i. 9).

The first part about forgiveness I knew, but the last clause about cleansing was a revelation to me. I did not remember ever to have seen or to have heard it before. The word was with power, and I bowed my head in my hands and said, “Father, I believe that. ” Then a great rest came into my soul, and I knew I was clean. In that instant, “The Blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, ” purged my “conscience from dead works to serve the living God” (Heb. ix. 14). God did not require Abraham to slay Isaac. All He wanted was a willing heart. So He did not require me to confess to the people.

When my heart was willing, He swept the whole subject out of my mind and freed me utterly from slavish fear. My idol-self was gone. God knew I withheld nothing from Him, so He filled my soul with peace and showed me that “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth, ” and that the whole will of God was summed up in five words: “Faith which worketh by love. ” Shortly after this, I ran into my friend’s room with a borrowed book. The moment his eyes fell upon me, he said, “What is the matter; something has happened to you? ” My face was witnessing to a pure heart before my lips did. But my lips soon followed, and have continued to this day. The Psalmist said: “I have preached righteousness in the great congregation: lo, I have not refrained my lips, O Lord, Thou knowest. I have not hid thy righteousness within my heart; I have declared Thy faithfulness and Thy salvation:

I have not concealed Thy lovingkindness and Thy truth from the great congregation” (Ps. xl. 9, 10). Satan hates holy testimony, and he nearly entrapped me at this point. I felt I ought to preach it, but I shrank from the odium and conflict I saw it would surely bring, and I hesitated to declare publicly that I was sanctified, lest I might do more harm than good. I saw only reproach. The glory that was to follow was hidden from my eyes. Beautiful, flowery sermons which appealed to the imagination and aroused the emotions, with just enough thought to properly balance them, were my ideal. I shrank from coming down to plain, heart-searching talks that laid hold of the consciences of men and made saints of them, or turned them into foes as implacable as the Pharisees were to Jesus, or the Jews to Paul. But before I got the blessing, God held me to it, and I had promised Him I would preach it if He would give me the experience. It was Friday that He cleansed me, and I determined to preach about it on the following Sunday. But I felt weak and faint. On Saturday morning, however, I met a noisy, shouting coachman on the street, who had the blessing, and I told him what God had done for me. He shouted and praised God, and said: “Now, Brother Brengle, you preach it.

The Church is dying for this. ” Then we walked across Boston Common and Garden, and talked about the matter, and my heart burned within me as did the hearts of the two disciples with whom Jesus talked on the road to Emmaus; and in my inmost soul I recounted the cost, threw in my lot with Jesus crucified, and determined I would teach holiness, if it banished me for ever from the pulpit, and made me a hiss and a byword to all my acquaintances. Then I felt strong. The way to get strength is to throw yourself away for Jesus. The next day I went to my church and preached as best I could out of a two-days-old experience, from “Let us go on unto perfection” (Heb. vi. 1). I closed with my experience, and the people broke down and wept, and some of them came to me afterward and said they wanted that same experience, and, bless God! some of them got it! I did not know what I was doing that morning, but I knew afterward.

I was burning up my ships and casting down my bridges behind me. I was now in the enemy’s land, fully committed to a warfare of utter extermination to all sin. I was on record now before Heaven, earth and Hell. Angels, men and devils had heard my testimony, and I must go forward, or openly and ignominiously retreat in the face of a jeering foe. I see now that there is a Divine philosophy in requiring us not only to believe with our hearts unto righteousness, but to confess with the mouth unto salvation (Rom. x. 10). God led me along these lines. No man taught me. Well, after I had put myself on record, I walked softly with God, desiring nothing but His will, and looking to Him to keep me every instant. I did not know there was anything more for me, but I meant, by God’s grace, to hold what I had by doing His will as He had made it known to me and by trusting Him with all my heart. But God meant greater things for me. On the following Tuesday morning, just after rising, with a heart full of eager desire for God, I read these words of Jesus at the grave of Lazarus: “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die. Believest thou this?

” The Holy Ghost, the other “Comforter, ” was in those words, and in an instant my soul melted before the Lord like wax before fire, and I knew Jesus. He was revealed in me as He had promised, and I loved Him with an unutterable love. I wept, and adored, and loved, and loved, and loved. I walked out over Boston Common before breakfast, and still wept, and adored, and loved. Talk about the occupation of Heaven! I do not know what it will be – though, of course, it will be suited to, and commensurate with, our redeemed capacities and powers; but this I then knew, that if I could lie prostrate at the feet of Jesus to all eternity and love and adore Him, I should be satisfied. My soul was satisfied – satisfied – satisfied! That experience fixed my theology.

From then till now, men and devils might as well try to get me to question the presence of the sun in the heavens as to question the existence of God, the divinity of Jesus Christ, and the sanctifying power of an ever-present, Almighty Holy Spirit. I am as sure the Bible is the word of God as I am of my own existence, while Heaven and Hell are as much realities to me as day and night, or winter and summer, or good and evil. I feel the powers of the world to come and the pull of Heaven in my own soul. Glory to God! It is some years now since the Comforter came, and He abides in me still.

He has not stopped speaking to me yet. He has set my soul on fire, but, like the burning bush Moses saw in the Mount, it is not consumed. To all who want such an experience I would say, “Ask, and it shall be given you. ” If it does not come for the asking, “Seek, and ye shall find. ” If it is still delayed, “Knock, and it shall be opened unto you” (Luke xi. 9). In other words, seek until you have sought with your whole heart, and there and then you will find Him.

“Be not faithless, but believing. ” “If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established. ” I do not consider myself beyond the possibility of falling. I know I stand by faith, and must watch and pray lest I enter into temptation, and take heed lest I fall. Yet, in view of all God’s marvelous loving kindnesses and tender mercies to me, I constantly sing, with the Apostle Jude: “Now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, To the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power. Both now and ever. Amen. “