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BY
MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
THE CAMPFIELD PRESS, ST. ALBANS
I only regret that pressing public duties have prevented the shorthand
writer's notes being revised as thoroughly as I could have wished,
especially as they are reports of what were themselves largely
unpremeditated utterances.
CATHERINE BOOTH.
London, December, 1880
'Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.'
'And I said, Who art Thou, Lord? And He said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest. But rise, and stand upon thy feet: for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee: Delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee, to open their eyes, and to 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.'
(speaking after the manner of men), and producing, as it did, in the first century of its existence, such gigantic and momentous results. We should have said, if we knew nothing of what has intervened from that time to this, that, no doubt the world where that war commenced, and for which it was organized, would have long since been subjugated to the influence of that system, and brought under the power of its great originator and founder! I say, from reading these Acts, and from observing the spirit which animated the early disciples, and from the way in which everything fell before them, we should have anticipated that ten thousand times greater results would have followed, and, in my judgment, this anticipation would have been perfectly rational and just.
We Christians profess to possess in the Gospel of Christ a mighty lever
which, rightly and universally applied, would lift the entire burden of sin
and misery from the shoulders, that is, from the souls, of our
fellow-men--a panacea, we believe it to be, for all the moral and
spiritual woes of humanity, and in curing their spiritual plagues we should
go far to cure their physical plagues also. We all profess to believe this.
Christians have professed to believe this for generations gone by, ever
since the time of which we have been reading, and yet look at the world,
look at so-called Christian England, in this end of the nineteenth century!
The great majority of the nation utterly ignoring God, and not even making
any pretence of remembering Him one day in the week. And then look at the
rest of the world. I have frequently got so
depressed with this view of things that I have felt as if my heart would break. I don't know how other Christians feel, but I can truly say that 'rivers of water do often run down my eyes because men keep not His law,' and because it seems to me that this dispensation, compared with what God intended it to be, has been, and still is, as great a failure as that which preceded it.
Now, I ask, how is this? I do not for a moment believe that this is in
accordance with the purpose of God. Some people have a very convenient way
of hiding behind God's purposes, and saying, 'Oh! He will do His
own will.' I wish He did! They say, 'You know God's will
is done after all.' I wish it were! He says it is
not done, and over and over again laments the fact that it is
not done. He wants it to be done, but it is NOT DONE!
'It is of no use to stand up and propound theories that are at
variance with things as they are.' There has been a great deal too
much of this, and it has had a very bad effect. The world is in this
condition, and here is a system launched under such auspices, with such
purposes, with such promises, and with such prospects, and yet nearly
nineteen hundred years have rolled away and here we are. How little has
been done, comparatively. What a little alteration has been effected in the
habits and dispositions of the race.
But some of you will say, 'Well, but there is a good deal
done.' Thank God for that. It would be sad if there were
nothing done; but it looks like a drop in the ocean compared
with what should have been done. Now I cannot accept any theory which
so far reflects upon the love and goodness of God as to make Him to blame for this effeteness of Christianity, and, so far as my influence extends, I will not allow the responsibility and the blame of all this to be rolled back upon God, who so loved the world that He gave His only Son to ignominy and death in order to redeem it. I do not believe it for a moment. I believe that the old arch-enemy has done in this dispensation what he did in former ones--so far circumvented the purposes of God, that he has succeeded in bringing about this state of things--in retarding the accomplishment of God's purposes and keeping the world thus largely under his own power and influence, and I believe he has succeeded in doing this, as he has succeeded always before, by DECEIVING GOD'S OWN PEOPLE. He has always done so. He has always got up a caricature of God's real thing, and the nearer he can get it to be like the original the more successful he is. He has succeeded in deceiving God's people:
First--AS TO THE STANDARD OF THEIR OWN RELIGIOUS
LIFE.
And, Secondly, he has succeeded in deceiving them AS
TO THEIR DUTIES AND OBLIGATIONS TO THE WORLD.
He has succeeded, first, in deceiving them as to the standard of their
own religious life. He has got the Church, nearly as a whole, to receive
what I call an 'Oh, wretched man that I am' religion! He has
got them to lower the standard which Jesus Christ Himself established in
this Book--a standard, not only to be aimed at, but to be attained
unto--a standard of victory over sin, the world, the flesh,
and the Devil, real, living, reigning, triumphing, Christianity! Satan knew what was the secret of the great success of those early disciples. It was their whole-hearted devotion, their absorbing love to Christ, their utter abnegation of the world. It was their entire absorption in the Salvation of their fellow-men and the glory of their God. It was an enthusiastic religion that swallowed them up, and made them willing to become wanderers and vagabonds on the face of the earth--for His sake to dwell in dens and caves, to be torn asunder, and to be persecuted in every form.
It was this degree of devotion before which Satan saw he had no chance.
Such people as these, he knew, must ultimately subdue the world. It is not
in human nature to stand before that kind of spirit, that amount of love
and zeal, and if Christians had only gone on as they began long since, the
glorious prophecy would have been fulfilled, 'The kingdoms of this
world' would have 'become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his
Christ.'
Therefore, the arch-enemy said, 'What must I do? I shall be
defeated after all. I shall lose my supremacy as the god of this world.
What shall I do?' No use to bring in a gigantic system of error,
which everybody will see to be error. Oh, dear no! That has never been
Satan's way; but his plan has been to get hold of a good man here and
there, who shall creep in, as the Apostle said, unawares, and preach
another doctrine, and who shall deceive, if it were possible, the very
elect. And he did it. He accomplished his design. He gradually
lowered the standard of Christian life and character, and
though, in every revival, God has raised it again to a certain extent, we have never got back thoroughly to the simplicity, purity, and devotion set before us in these Acts of the Apostles and in the Epistles. And just in the degree that it has approximated thereto, in every age, Satan has got somebody to oppose and to show that this was too high a standard for human nature, altogether beyond us, and that, therefore, Christians must sit down and just be content to be 'Oh, wretched man that I am' people to the end of their days. He has got the Church into a condition that makes one, sometimes, positively ashamed to hear professing Christians talk, and ashamed also that the world should hear them talk. I do not wonder at thoughtful, intelligent men being driven from such Christianity as this. It would have driven me off, if I had not known the power of godliness. I believe this kind of Christianity has made more infidels than all the infidel books ever written.
Yes, Satan knew that he must get Christians down from the high pinnace
of whole-hearted consecration to God. He knew that he had no chance till he
tempted them down from that blessed vantage ground, qnd so he began to
spread those false doctrines, to counteract which John wrote his epistles,
for, before he died, he saw what was coming, and sounded down the
ages--'Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth
righteousness is righteous, even as He is righteous. He that committeth sin
is of the Devil; for the Devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose
the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the
works of the Devil.' The Lord revive that doctrine! Help us afresh to put up the standard!
Oh! the great evil is, that dishonest-hearted people, because they feel
it condemns them, lower the standard to their miserable experience. I said,
when I was young, and I repeat it in my maturer years, that if it sent me
to Hell I would never pull it down. Oh! that God's people felt like
that. There is the glorious standard put before us. The power is proffered,
the conditions laid down, and we CAN all attain it if we will;
but if we will not--for the sake of the children, and for generations
yet unborn, do not let us drag it down, and try to make it meet our little,
paltry, circumscribed experience. LET US KEEP IT UP. This is
the way to get the world to look at it. Show the world a real, living,
self-sacrificing, hard-working, toiling, triumphing religion, and the world
will be influenced by it; but anything short of that they will turn round
and spit upon.
Secondly--Satan has deceived even those whom he could
not succeed in getting to lower the standard of their own lives with
respect to their duties and obligations to the world. I have been reading
of late the New Testament with special reference to the aggressive spirit
of Primitive Christianity, and it is wonderful what floods of light come
upon you when you read the Bible with reference to any particular topic on
which you are seeking for help. When God sees you are panting after the
light, in order that you may use it, He pours it in upon you.
It is an indispensable condition of receiving light that you are willing to
follow it. People say they
don't see this and that; no, because they do not wish to see. They are not willing to walk in it, and, therefore, they do not get it; but those who are willing to obey shall have all the light they want.
It seems to me that we come infinitely short of any right and rational
idea of the aggressive spirit of the New Testament saints. Satan has got
Christians to accept what I may call a namby-pamby, kid-glove kind of
system of presenting the Gospel to people. 'Will they be so kind as
to read this tract or book, or would they not like to hear this popular and
eloquent preacher. They will be pleased with him quite apart from
religion.' That is the sort of half-frightened, timid way of putting
the truth before unconverted people, and of talking to them about the
Salvation of their souls. It seems to me this is utterly antagonistic and
repugnant to the spirit of the early saints: 'Go ye, and preach the
Gospel to EVERY CREATURE'; and again the same
idea--'Unto whom now I send thee.' Look what is implied in
these commissions. It seems to me that no people have ever yet fathomed the
meaning of these two Divine commissions. I believe we of The Salvation Army
have come nearer to it than any people that have ever preceded us. Look at
them. Would it ever occur to you that the language meant, 'Go and
build chapels and churches and invite the people to come in, and if they
will not, let them alone'? 'GO YE.' If you
sent your servant to do something for you, and said, 'Go and
accomplish that piece of business for me,' you know what it would
involve. You know that he must see certain persons; and run about the city
to certain offices and banks and agents, involving a deal of trouble and sacrifice; but you have nothing to do with that. He is your servant. He is employed by you to do that business, and you simply commission him to 'Go and do it.' What would you think if he went and took an office and sent out a number of circulars inviting your customers or clients to come and wait on his pleasure, and when they chose to come just to put your business before them? No, you would say, 'Ridiculous.' Divesting our minds of all conventionalities and traditionalisms, what would the language mean? 'Go ye!' 'To whom? 'To every creature.' Where am I to get at them? WHERE THEY ARE. 'Every creature.' There is the extent of your commission. Seek them out; run after them, wherever you can get at them. 'Every creature'--wherever you find a creature that has a soul--there go and preach My Gospel to him. If I understand it, that is the meaning and the spirit of the commission.
And then again, to Paul He says, 'Unto whom now I send thee, to
open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness
to light, and from the power of Satan unto God.' They
are asleep--go and wake them up. They do not see their danger. If they
did, there would be no necessity for you to run after them. They are
preoccupied. Open their eyes, and turn them round by your
desperate earnestness and moral suasion and moral force; Oh! it makes me
tremble to think what a great deal one man can do for another! 'Turn
them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God.'
How did Paul understand it? He says, 'We persuade men.'
Do not rest content with just putting it before them, giving them gentle invitations, and then leaving them alone. He ran after them, poor things, and pulled them out of the fire. Take the bandage off their eyes which Satan has bound round them; knock and hammer and burn in, with the fire of the Holy Ghost, your words into their poor, hardened, darkened hearts, until they begin to realize that they are IN DANGER; that there is something amiss. Go after them. If I understand it, that is the spirit of the Apostles and of the early Christians; for we read that when they were scattered by persecution, they 'went everywhere, preaching the Word.' The laity, the new converts, the young babes in Christ. It does not mean always in set discourses, and public assemblies, but they went after men and women, like ancient Israel--'Every man after his man,' to try and win him for Christ.
Some people seem to think that the Apostles laid the foundations of all
the churches. They are quite mistaken. Churches sprang up where the
Apostles had never been. The Apostles went to visit and organize them after
they had sprung up, as the result of the work of the early laymen and women
going everywhere and preaching the Word. Oh! may the Lord shower upon us in
this day the same spirit! We should build churches and chapels; we should
invite the people to them; but do you think it is consistent with these two
commissions, and with many others, that we should rest in this, when three
parts of the population utterly ignore our invitations and take no notice
whatever of our buildings and of our services? They will not
come
to us. That is an established fact. What is to be done? They have souls. You profess to believe that as much as I do, and that they must live for ever. Where are they going? What is to be done? Jesus Christ says, 'Go after them.' When all the civil methods have failed; when the genteel invitations have failed; when one man says that he has married a wife, and another that he has bought a yoke of oxen, and another that he has bought a piece of land--then does the Master of the feast say, 'The ungrateful wretches, let them alone'? No. He says, 'Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.' 'I will have guests, and if you can't get them in by civil measures, use military measures. Go and COMPEL them to come in.' It seems to me that we want more of this determined aggressive spirit. Those of you who are right with God this afternoon--you want more of this spirit to thrust the truth upon the attention of your fellow-men.
Oh! people say, you must be very careful, very judicious. You must not
thrust religion down people's throats. Then, I say, you will never get
it down. What! Am I to wait till an unconverted, godless man
wants to be saved before I try to save him? He will never want
to be saved till the death-rattle is in his throat. What! Am I to let my
unconverted friends and acquaintances drift down quietly to damnation, and
never tell them about their souls, until they say, 'If you please, I
want you to preach to me'? Is this anything like the spirit of early
Christianity? No. Verily we must make them look--tear the
bandages off, open their
eyes, make them bear it, and if they run away from you in one place, meet them in another, and let them have no peace until they submit to God and get their souls saved. This is what Christianity ought to be doing in this land, and there are plenty of Christians to do it. Why, we might give the world such a time of it that they would get saved in very self-defence, if we were only up and doing, and determined that they should have no peace in their sins. Where is our zeal for the Lord? We talk of Old Testament saints, but I would we were all like David. Rivers of water ran down his eyes because men kept not the Law of his God. But you say, 'We cannot all hold services.' Perhaps not. Go as you like. Go as quietly and softly as the morning dew. Have meetings like the Friends if you like. ONLY DO IT. Don't let your relatives, and friends, and acquaintances die, and their blood be found on your skirts!!!
I shall never forget the agony depicted on the face of a young lady who
once came to see me. My heart went out to her in pity. She told me her
story. She said, 'I had a proud, ungodly father, and the Lord
converted me three years before his death, and, from the very day of my
conversion, I felt I ought to talk to him, and plead, and pray with him
about his soul, but I could not muster up courage. I kept intending to do
it, and intending to do it, until he was taken ill. It was a sudden and
serious illness. He lost his mind, and died unsaved,' and she said,
'I have never smiled since, and I think I never shall any
more.' Don't be like that. Do it quietly, if you like;
privately, if you like; but do it, and do it as
if you felt the value of their souls, and as if you intended to save them, if by any possible means in your power it could be done.
I had been speaking in a town, in the West of England, on the subject of
responsibility of Christians for the Salvation of souls. The
gentleman with whom I was staying had winced a bit under the truth, and
instead of taking it to heart in love, and making it the means of drawing
him nearer to God, and enabling him to serve Him better, he said, 'I
thought you were rather hard on us this morning.' I said, 'Did
you? I should be very sorry to be harder on anybody than the Lord Jesus
Christ would be.' He said, 'You can push things to extremes,
you know. You were talking about seeking souls, and making sacrifices. Now,
you are aware that we build the chapels and churches, and pay the
ministers, and if the people won't be saved, we can't help
it.' (I think he had given pretty largely to a chapel in the town.) I
said, 'It is very heartless and ungrateful of the people, I grant;
but, my dear sir, you would not reason thus in any temporal matter. Suppose
a plague were to break out in London, and suppose that the Board of Health
were to meet and to appropriate all the hospitals and public buildings they
could get to the treatment of those diseased, and suppose they were to
issue proclamations to say that whoever would come to these buildings
should be treated free of cost, and every care and kindness bestowed on
them, and, moreover, that the treatment would certainly cure them; but,
supposing the people were so blind to their own interests, so indifferent
and besotted
that they refused to come, and consequently, the plague was increasing and thousands dying, what would you in the provinces say? Would you say, "Well, the Board of Health have done what they could, and if the people will not go to be healed, they deserve to perish; let them alone"? No, you would say, "It is certainly very foolish and wicked of the people, but these men are in a superior position. They understand the matter. They know and are responsible for the consequences. What in the world are they going to do? Let the whole land be depopulated? No! If the people will not come to them, they must go to the people, and force upon them the means of health, and insist that proper measures should be used for the suppression of the plague."' It needed no application. He understood it, and I believe, by the Spirit of God, he was enabled to see his mistake, to take it home, and set to work to do something for perishing souls.
Men are preoccupied, and it is for us to go and force it upon their
attention. Remember, you can do it. There is some one soul
that you have more influence with than any other person on earth--some
soul or souls. Are you doing all you can for their Salvation? Your
relatives, friends, and acquaintances are to be rescued. Thank
God! we are rescuing the poor people all over the land by thousands. There
they are, to be looked at, and talked with, and questioned--people
rescued from the depths of sin, degradation, and woe--saved from the
worst forms of crime and infamy; and, if He can do that, He can save your
genteel friends, if only you will go to them desperately and
deter-
minedly. Take them lovingly by the button-hole, and say, 'My dear friend, I never spoke to you closely, carefully, and prayerfully about your soul.' Let them see the tears in your eyes; or, if you cannot weep, let them hear the tears in your voice, and let them realize that you feel their danger, and are in distress for them. God will give His Holy Spirit, and they will be saved.
I was going to note that both texts imply opposition--for, He adds,
'Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world.' As
much as if He had said, 'You will have need of My presence. Such
aggressive, determined warfare as this will raise all earth and Hell
against you'; and then He says to Paul, 'I will be with thee,
delivering thee from the people and the Gentiles unto whom I send
thee.' Why would they need this? Because the Gentiles would soon be
up in arms against Him--and indeed they were.
Opposition! It is a bad sign for the Christianity of this day that it
provokes so little opposition. If there were no other evidence of it being
wrong, I should know it from that. When the Church and the world can jog
along comfortably together, you may be sure there is something wrong. The
world has not altered. Its spirit is exactly the same as it ever was, and
if Christians were equally faithful and devoted to the Lord, and separated
from the world, living so that their lives were a reproof to all
ungodliness, the world would hate them as much as ever it did. It is the
Church that has altered, not the world. You say,
'We should be getting into endless turmoil.' Yes; 'I came
not to bring peace
on the earth, but a sword.' There would be uproar. Yes; and the Acts of the Apostles are full of stories of uproars. One uproar was so great that the Chief Captain had to get Paul over the shoulders of the people lest he should have been torn in pieces. 'What a commotion!' you say. Yes; and, bless God, if we had the like now we should have thousands of sinners saved.
'But,' you say, 'see what a very undignified position
this would bring the Gospel into.' That depends on what sort of
dignity you mean. You say, 'We should always be getting into
collision with the powers that be, and with the world, and what very
unpleasant consequences would result.' Yes, dear friends, there
always have been unpleasant consequences to the flesh, when people were
following God and doing His will. 'But,' you say,
'wouldn't it be inconsistent with the dignity of the
Gospel?' It depends from what standpoint you look at it. It depends
upon what really constitutes the dignity of the Gospel. What does
constitute the dignity of the Gospel? Is it human dignity, or is it Divine?
Is it earthly, or is it heavenly dignity? It was a very undignified thing,
looked at humanly, to die on a cross between two thieves. That was the most
undignified thing ever done in this world, and yet, looked at on moral and
spiritual grounds, it was the grandest spectacle that ever earth or Heaven
gazed upon, and methinks that the inhabitants of Heaven stood still and
looked over the battlements at that glorious, illustrious Sufferer, as He
hung there between Heaven and earth. The Pharisees, I know, spat upon the
humbled Sufferer, and wagged
their heads and said, 'He saved others, Himself He cannot save.' Ah! but He was intent on saving others. That was the dignity of Almighty strength allying itself with human weakness, in order to raise it. It was the dignity of eternal wisdom shrouding itself in human ignorance, in order to enlighten it. It was the dignity of everlasting, unquenchable love, baring its bosom to suffer in the stead of its rebellious creature--man. Ah! it was incarnate God standing in the place of condemned, apostate man --the dignity of love! love! LOVE!
Oh, precious Saviour! save us from maligning Thy Gospel and Thy name by
clothing it with our paltry notions of earthly dignity, and forgetting the
dignity which crowned Thy sacred brow as Thou didst hang upon the cross!
That is the dignity for us, and it will never suffer by any gentleman here
carrying the Gospel into the back slums or alleys of any town or city in
which he lives. That dignity will never suffer by any employer talking
lovingly to his servant maid or errand boy, and looking into his eyes with
tears of sympathy and love and trying to bring his soul to Jesus. That
dignity will never suffer even though you should have to be dragged through
the streets with a howling mob at your heels, like Jesus Christ, if you
have gone into those streets for the souls of your fellow-men and the glory
of God. Though you should be tied to a stake, as were the martyrs of old,
and surrounded by laughing and taunting fiends and their howling
followers--that will be a dignity which shall be crowned in Heaven,
crowned with everlasting glory. If I understand it, that is
the dignity of the Gospel--the
dignity of love. I do not envy, I do not covet any other. I desire no other--God is my Witness--than the dignity of love.
Oh, friends! will you get this baptism of love! Then you will, like the
Apostles, be willing to push your limbs into a basket, and so be let down
by the wall, if need be, or suffer shipwreck, hunger, peril, nakedness,
fire, or sword, or even go to the block itself, if thereby you may extend
His Kingdom and win souls for whom He shed His Blood. The Lord fill us with
this love and baptise us with this fire, and then the Gospel will arise and
become glorious in the earth, and men will believe in us, and in it. They
will feel its power, and they will go down under it by thousands, and, by
the grace of God, they SHALL.
--'And I said, Who art Thou, Lord? And He said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest. But rise, and stand upon thy feet: for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee: delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee, to open their eyes, and to 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. Whereupon, O king Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision: but shewed first unto them of Damascus, and at Jerusalem, and throughout all the coasts of Judea, and then to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance.'
There seems, nowadays, in the Church and the world, as many different
views of the Gospel as there are of secondary matters and of minor
doctrines. One person has one notion of the Gospel, another has another,
until there has come to be a fearful distraction in the minds of many who
are constantly listening to what is called the Gospel. May God the Holy
Ghost help us this afternoon to look at it impartially and carefully.
And, firstly, let me try to define what is the
Gospel.
'Oh!' people say, 'it is good news.' Yes, thank God, it is good news, indeed--news without which we must all have been lost. It is the news of the free, measureless, undeserved, reconciling mercy of God, offered to me through the vicarious, infinite, glorious sacrifice of His Son, to the end that I may BE SAVED from sin here and from Hell hereafter!! But this news involves a great deal. It is the news of a definite, practical end, involving conditions; for even good news to me involves certain conditions on my part, if I am to procure the good which the news brings. Then, secondly, I will try to explain the conditions on which the Gospel is available to me.
Let me illustrate this; and I am particularly anxious that you should
all understand me. Supposing that a province of this empire were in
rebellion against our Sovereign. Supposing that the people of that province
had trampled under foot our laws, and set up their own in opposition; and
suppose the Queen, in her gracious clemency, desired not to destroy these
rebels, but to save them, what would be the necessary and indispensable
condition in the very nature of the case, in order for her to save them?
Not merely a proclamation of pardon. That would be a glorious movement
towards the result, but there would want something else; for a proclamation
of pardon merely, whilst the rebels remained in an unchanged state, would
only be giving them greater facilities for further rebellion. Evidently, in
the nature of the case, it is a necessity that a change of mind should be
produced in the rebels themselves, for the Queen not only wants to save
them from destruction, but to restore them to
allegi-
ance and obedience to herself, and, unless she does this, they will never become dutiful and obedient subjects. There will never be anything but anarchy, confusion, and rebellion in that province unless those rebels undergo a change of mind. They must be brought back to allegiance and obedience to the Queen.
Just so with God's proclamation of Salvation. The mischief is in
us. Take the illustration of the Prodigal Son. The mischief was all in
him--not in his father. The father loved him before he went away, and
the father loved him afterwards. The father's benevolent heart yearned
over him all the time he was away, and many a time, perchance, he went to
the roof of his house to look over the expanse of country over which the
rebellious lad had gone and wondered whether he would ever come back. The
father's heart was yearning over him all the time. How was it that he
could not be reinstated in the father's love and in the family
privileges? Because there needed a change of heart--a change of mind
in HIM. If he had come back to the old homestead with the same
rebellious spirit in him, the same desire to be free from the father's
oversight, the same unwillingness to be put under the FATHER's
DOMINION and DISCIPLINE, he would still have been a
rebel and a prodigal. In the very nature of the case, until there was the
necessary change, a wise and righteous father could not pardon him; he must
insist, though he loves him dearly, upon a certain change of mind before he
can consistently pardon him.
Just so. The laws of mind are the same when
operated upon by either God or man. This is not laying any necessity upon God any more than He has laid upon Himself. He has made us with a certain mental constitution, and therefore He must adapt the conditions and means of our Salvation to that mental constitution, otherwise He would reflect upon His own wisdom in having given it to us at the first. Therefore when He purposes to save man He must save him as man--not as a beast or a machine! He must save him as man, and He must propound such a scheme as will fit and adapt itself to man's nature. Just as the father might not pardon the prodigal, irrespective of the prodigal's state of mind and heart, so neither can God pardon the sinner irrespective of the state of his mind and heart.
I know, by personal contact with hundreds of souls, that there is an
alarming amount of misunderstanding and of what I consider false
apprehension of the Gospel of Christ at this point. Hence, you have
speakers saying, without anything to guard or qualify their words,
'Only believe, and you shall be saved'; 'Whosoever
believeth hath everlasting life.' Blessed and glorious truth,
when rightly applied, and applied to the right characters; but
dangerous error, in my opinion, when applied indiscriminately to
unawakened, unrepenting, rebellious sinners. I have met with
disastrous consequences of this all over the land--so disastrous that
I would not like to repeat them here. Now, I say, we should be careful to
let the people understand what we mean by the Gospel: I dare not do any
other. I am so satisfied of the thousands of souls that are deceived at
this point, that, while God gives me voice to speak, I
dare not but try to warn them, and show them their fatal mistake.
Returning to our illustration--you say, 'The man is, so to
speak, dead in trespasses and sins. How can he see his own error? How can
he lay down the weapons of rebellion? How can he, by himself, come back to
the Father?' Granted. Hence, God, in His wisdom and love, has
provided for that incapacity which man has induced by his rebellion, by the
gift of His Spirit. You say, 'The parallel is not perfect between
your illustration and the thing illustrated.' No, it is not in that
point; because temporal rebels can find out by themselves the insanity and
wickedness of their course. They can see where it will lead them. They can
see the destructive consequences, and be sorry for the course they have
taken. They can lay down their weapons of rebellion, and they can conform
to the conditions on which the Queen issues her proclamation. You say,
'Yes, that they can do, but this man
cannot.' Of course, because he has so hardened his heart that even if
he can, he never will without the Holy Spirit of
God. Hence, God has taken compassion on us, and sent His Spirit into the
world for this purpose--'To convince the world of sin, of
righteousness, and of judgment.' Thus He opens our eyes, and shows us
our lost estate. Having, by the Holy Ghost, made us realize our desperate
condition, then comes the Gospel to meet us just where we are, on condition
that we abandon our evil ways, and do the works meet for repentance, which
we are able to do by the power of the Holy Spirit, as well as
to lay down the weapons of our rebellion and accept of Christ, put our neck
under
His yoke, and pledge ourselves in heart to FOLLOW HIM ALL THE DAYS OF OUR LIFE. These are the conditions involved, and this is the end the Gospel contemplates, and there you see the Gospel accomplishes its END in this case. The heart of the rebel is won back to its Lord, and the indispensable change has taken place in the being himself. He has come back to God. His eyes are opened to see the evil of sin, and the desperate state he is in. Tired of himself, and tired of his evil ways, as the Prodigal was of the swineyard, he arises, leaves them, and goes to his father.
But now I must stop to meet a difficulty which I know will arise in many
sincere minds. I feel myself such a tender jealousy for the glory of God,
that I do highly respect this feeling in others, and if any one disagrees
with my views, or my way of putting them, through a feeling of jealousy for
the glory of God, they have my profound respect. You will say, 'If we
are able to abandon our evil courses, and lay down the weapons of
rebellion, is that not saving ourselves?' No, dear friends; it is
altogether different. You see it is the indispensable condition of
Salvation in every one of the nine passages we read, and in many
others--that we abandon our evil ways. Now, what does that mean? A
gentleman in a letter to me said, 'We cannot save ourselves from
heart sins.' Granted; but we can will to be saved from
them. Then, there is a great distinction between those sins of the heart,
which are involuntary, and those deliberate transgressions of God's
law, which unregenerate men commit. God requires me to abandon all that I
CAN, as a condition of
Salvation, and then, when He saves, He will give me power to abandon all that I could; not before. The Prodigal had to come away from the swine-yard, the filth, and the husks, before he got into the father's house, and sat down at the father's feast, but when he had done so, then the father said, 'Come in,' and he brought the best robe and put it on him, and killed the fatted calf, and put the ring of forgiveness upon his hand. Hence, as the old divines used to put it, 'You must wait for the Lord in the path of His ordinances,' the path of obedience, as far as is possible to you. And is there any other way? Can the drunkard wait for Him while he abides at his cup? Can the thief wait for Him while he continues in his diabolical trade? Can any man indulging in absolute open sin find the Lord? Must he not, as the Saviour says, cut off that right hand, and pluck out that right eye? He never can cleanse his guilt, but he CAN cut off his hand, and when he does that, then the Holy Spirit will come in and apply the Blood, and do the cleansing.
Therefore, you perceive, I take the Gospel to be aiming not merely at
saving, but restoring us. If it were merely to save me without
restoring me, what would it do for me? As a moral agent, if the Gospel
fails to PUT ME RIGHT it will fail eternally to make me happy;
and if you were to transplant me before the throne, and put me down in the
inner circle of archangels with a sense of wrong in my heart, being morally
out of harmony with the laws of God, and the moral laws of the universe, I
should be as miserable as if I were in Hell, and should want to get away. I
must be MADE RIGHT, as well as
treated as if I were right. I must be changed as well as justified. This is the Gospel put as clearly in our text as it could be, and also the Epistles written by the Apostle Paul, the great expounder of the doctrine of justification by faith. It was through the lips of the glorified Lord Himself, after He had risen to the great Apostle of the Gentiles, after the Gospel dispensation was fully opened, that this most unmistakable commission was given, 'Unto whom now I send thee to open their eyes.' What to? Their sins. As Peter opened the eyes of the murderers of our Lord, on the Day of Pentecost, 'Whom ye have crucified and slain,' driving in the convicting truth of God until, in their agony, they cried out, 'WHAT MUST WE DO?' He tore off the bandages which Satan had wrapped around them, and drove them as with the schoolmaster's lash, until he drove them to the Cross of the crucified One. 'Open their eyes'--that is the first thing. Oh! how my soul has often shrunk and wept under the sense of the awful responsibility this brings upon us Christians. The world is asleep. Yes, friends, your relations, your neighbours--they are asleep. They are preoccupied. They are full of the world, and the things of the world. They will not think--they will not see--they will not look into the Word of Life. Your responsibility comes here tenfold. Go AND WAKE THEM! You CAN DO IT, if you have the Holy Ghost in you!
Some people would have said to the Lord Jesus, 'What a great deal
you are making of human agency, for, after all, Paul is but a man, and you
are setting him to open the eyes of the unconverted,
and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God. Are you not making too much of human effort? But the Lord Jesus knew what He was about. He knew that Paul had a power in him which every really renewed child of God has--the Holy Ghost--to equip him for this work; and He says, 'Unto whom now I send thee to open their eyes.' Go and awake them to a sense of their danger. Take them, metaphorically speaking, by the collar and shake them and make them realize their peril, as you would if they were asleep in a burning house!! And then when you have awakened them, what are you to do? Leave them alone? No, no, for Christ's sake, no! Take hold of them by the mighty power of your moral suasion and zeal, and love, and energy, and turn them right round from sin and Satan unto God.
Jesus Christ set Paul to do this, and Paul did it. He says,
'Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men.'
His was no meek and mild putting of the truth, and leaving people to do as
they liked. 'Knowing, therefore, the TERROR of the Lord,
we PERSUADE men, because we thus judge that if one died for
all, then were all dead'; and, oh! what success the Lord gave him in
his desperate enterprise. What multitudes did he persuade, and succeed in
turning round from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God!
Turn them round! 'Oh! but,' you say, 'if they are turned
round from darkness, which represents evil, to light, which represents
righteousness, are they not saved?' No, not yet. This is only the
change effected in their will, which is beautifully exemplified by Paul in
Romans vii.--willing to keep the law, willing to obey God, willing to do His will, and follow Him; yea, struggling, but yet unable; though they are brought round from the voluntary choice or embrace of evil, and the voluntary service of the Devil, round to the voluntary choice and embrace of righteousness and the service of God, they are not yet able to do it.
Now, friends, don't say I said they were able.
Don't misrepresent me, as some people do. I will try to be clear, and
I say there is all the difference in the world between BEING WILLING
TO LET JESUS CHRIST SAVE ME FROM MY SINS, AND SAVING MYSELF FROM
THEM. It is exactly this change in the attitude of the will which
God demands as a CONDITION OF THE EXERCISE OF HIS POWER. It is
so in all the miracles. 'Wilt thou be made whole?' He says to
the man with the withered hand, 'Stretch out thy hand.' The man
might have said, 'Lord, what an unreasonable request. Are You come to
mock me in my misery?' Oh! but Jesus Christ knew what He wanted in
the man. He wanted the response of the MAN'S WILL. He
wanted the man to say, 'Yes, Lord'; and when He said that, the
Lord put the strength into the shoulder-bone, and He stretched it out, and
it was made whole. There are many souls just there--they will not say,
'Yes, Lord,' to some condition which the Spirit puts upon them.
I could give you some heartrending illustrations on this point. I am
satisfied that this Gospel-enlightened England of ours is full of people
just at this point, who come crying, and praying, and longing, as they call
it, after God. They come up to Jesus Christ again and again. They try to
believe; they want to follow Him, but they are kept back by the right hand and the right eye which the Holy Ghost has told them they must cut off and pluck out before He will receive them. They will not do it, and so they are ever learning, and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth. You must renounce evil in your will. You must will to 'obey the truth.' You must say, 'Yes, Lord.'
I remember, on one occasion, in the West of England, I had been
delivering week-day morning addresses. We had a blessed Meeting on this
particular day. We began at half-past ten, and the Lord was so with us that
He supplied the want of refreshment till we had it at 5.30. He made up for
the want of dinner or tea. A gentleman was there, with whose appearance I
was struck. He was tall, and intelligent, a man of about forty or
forty-five. He knelt down without any emotion, more than deep solemnity, at
the end of the Communion rail. I had been talking about the reason people
walked in darkness--controversy with the Holy Spirit. I said to him,
'My dear sir, have you had a controversy with the Holy Spirit?'
'Yes,' he said, 'I have had one for fifteen years. I am
ashamed to say it, and it has eaten up all the joy and power of my
Christian life, and I have been a useless cumberer of the ground.' I
did not know till afterwards that he was a deacon of the church, and had
come up there in the sight of all the congregation. I said, 'Well, my
dear sir, you know the Gospel as well as I do. It is of no use to preach
faith to you until you are willing to renounce your idol.' He said,
most emphatically, 'I know it.' I
said, 'Are you willing?' Oh, with what tenacity the human heart holds on to its idols! Though he had come up to the rail in the face of that congregation, so deeply was he under the power of the Spirit, yet he hesitated. I said, 'Well, my dear sir, you must make up your mind. In your case, it is between the choice of this, whatever it may be, and Christ'; and I retired under the pulpit pillars for a minute, and left him to himself and the Lord. I lifted up my heart to God for him, and then I went back, and said, 'Will you renounce it?' and, lifting up his eyes to Heaven, and, bringing his hand down upon the Communion rail, he said, 'By the grace of God, I do,' and his whole frame heaved with agony, but he stepped into immediate liberty. His blessed Saviour was waiting with arms wide open. There was only this accursed thing which had stood between them, and when he trampled it under his feet, and was willing to forsake it, as a natural consequence, he sprang into the everlasting arms, and received the assurance of Salvation. It was all over the town for the next fortnight. People remarked, 'Did you ever see such a change come over a man, as has come over Mr. So-and-so? He is like a new man. He prays in the Prayer Meeting with such fervour. He was at the chapel doors, speaking to the unconverted, and inviting them to come back. He is visiting up and down the town--why, he's a new man!' Was there any change in the Gospel? Had he received any fresh light? It was only the old story--only that he had put away the idol, and trampled under foot that which was keeping the life-power of God out of his soul.
Here is another case. At some services in the West of England, a
gentleman, largely interested in an unlawful business, came every night for
five weeks, and used to sit there, the picture of despair and wretchedness,
till after ten o'clock. He went on in this way until his friends
thought he would lose his reason. He was walking about his bedroom with his
Bible open, kneeling down every now and then, struggling and wrestling and
trying to believe; but every time he thought of this ungodly business which
he could not give up, despair seized him, for he thought of his
money--he thought of the consequences to his family; until at last he
said, 'Money or no money, I will settle it.' He gave it up,
came out, and got saved at once.
Now I think these illustrations make clear what I mean, by the
abandonment, the turning from the embrace of evil to the embrace of
righteousness as an indispensable condition of forgiveness. Hence the Holy
Ghost has carefully maintained this order--'to open their eyes
and to turn them (round) from darkness to light, and from the power of
Satan unto God that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance
among them that are sanctified by faith that is in me.' You see what
a different thing this is to presenting Christ to people just as they are,
where they are, doing what they like. You see what a different
Gospel it comes to, insisting upon a thorough renouncement and abandonment
of evil as a condition of Jesus Christ receiving the sinner. This was
Paul's Gospel. Will you give me any other definition of it? Can you
explain it in any other way? Paul goes on to show us, how he
understood: 'Whereupon, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision: but shewed first unto them of Damascus and at Jerusalem: and then to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance. Was this like saying 'Only believe'? without respect to any antecedent change of mind? Can anybody show me anything here in the slightest degree approximating to the Antinomian Gospel which has been grafted on to some other of Paul's utterances? And yet surely the Apostle could not contradict himself. His writings about faith must be in harmony with this most unmistakable putting of the Gospel to both Jews and Gentiles. Moreover, did he tell Agrippa and Festus to believe? No, he left them trembling at his words, because they were not willing to abandon their sins and put away the accursed thing; but to the Philippian jailer, who said, 'Men and brethren, what must I do?' and who brought them out and began to wash their stripes, thus doing works meet for repentance at once, he said, 'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.' Ah, my friend, you may try to get hold of Christ to your dying hour and at the last be lost, while you are holding on to your idols. If He could have saved us after that fashion, we needed no Christ, we could have gone into Heaven without a Saviour; but He came to save His people from their sins, and while you are in love with your sins, you may struggle and tremble as Agrippa and Felix did, and as the young Ruler did, and you will meet a similar fate. You must let go your idols and be willing that Jesus should come and save you; not
down among the dirt and mud of sin, but lift you out of it: wash you: make you clean: and keep you clean: circumcise your hearts; and put His law in them; and then you shall know the gladness of His Salvation!
I have some people writing to me in this condition. If they are here
this afternoon, let me say to them--This is what you have to
do--let go your idols and say as the gentleman said of whom I have
told you, 'Poverty or no poverty, business or no business, position
or no position, suffering or prosperity; never mind--Christ, Christ, I
let go all for Thee!'
Have you forsaken evil? Have you cut off the right hand? Have you
plucked out the right eye? I have people coming to me in services of this
character, groaning and sometimes worn to skeletons. They tell me they are
in distress, they have got into bondage, they want the joy of the Lord and
His daily fellowship; and when I ask the reason, they generally say,
'Well, I don't know, but it seems to be want of faith.'
Now, I say to such people:
'Now let us see what this want of faith arises from.' There
must be a cause. I am afraid that sin lieth at the door, and when we come
to close quarters, we generally find there is some idol, some course of
conduct, or some doubtful conduct which keeps God out of the
soul, and when this is confessed and renounced people get the presence of
God and go away rejoicing in Him. It is so in nearly every case. God does
not arbitrarily withdraw Himself from His people. He wants to dwell with
them. We are His proper abode. He has promised to come and abide with his
people, and if He does not, depend
upon it there is something in the temple offensive to Him, something with which He will not dwell. Will you put that away, and consecrate your hearts this day unto the Lord to be His temple, His temple only, and leave consequences with Him? He will be able to look after His own.
Then, lastly, when you have come to this decision, then look and live;
take the final leap into the arms of a crucified Saviour. With some souls
who have been the subjects of the drawings of the Spirit for years, the
difficulty is in the surrendering of their wills. They have learned to
reason with God; they have lost the little children's way; they are
afraid to take the final leap, and there they stand before the Cross, not
conscious of anything between them and Christ. What are you to
do? What Paul told the Philippian jailer to do--'Believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ'; and you say, 'What is that, and how am I to
believe?' Wonderful how it has got mystified! Believe what? That He
just means what He says; and that when you come, He does receive--not
He will to-morrow, nor He did yesterday, but that He does now, this moment.
When did He receive the sinners who came to Him on earth? When they came.
Just the same will He receive you. 'Oh, but,' you say, 'I
do not feel right.' No, of course not. Do you not see, you are to be
saved by faith. If you are to be saved by faith, you must
exercise faith before you will be saved. If it is by faith you are to be
saved, you must believe first, and be saved afterwards; if it is only the
next second. 'But,' you say, 'I do not feel it.'
No, but you will feel it when you have got it. You must
believe it before you get
it, on the testimony of His Word--'I will in no wise cast you out'; 'Him that cometh'; 'Now I come, Lord, I come. I have put away my idols; I have put away everything that consciously stood between me and Thee. I will to serve Thee, I will to follow Thee, I will to put my neck under Thy yoke for ever, asking no more questions, but being willing for Thee to lead me whithersoever Thou wilt. Now, Lord, I come--Thou dost receive.' Leap off the poor old stranded wreck of your own effort, or your own righteousness, or your own sinfulness, or your own unworthiness, or anything else of your own, into the glorious life-boat. It is on the top of the wave this afternoon--another step, and you will be in--one bound, and you will feel the loving arms of your Saviour around you. Faith is trust, TRUST. He will do for you what He promised. Believe that God does now accept you wholly for the sake of the sacrifice of His blessed Son; that He justifies you freely from all things from which you could not be justified by the law. You stand a condemned, guilty, Hell-bound criminal, and nothing but His free, sovereign mercy can save you. Throw yourself upon this, and the moment you do so in real faith you will be saved. Perhaps you will say, as a curate of the Church of England, writing to me last week, said, 'I refuse to be saved by logic.' Amen, amen. So did I, and I struggled for six weeks because I refused to be saved by logic--because I would have a living, personal Christ. I admire your decision, my brother, if you are here, but let this logic help you: nevertheless, Jesus Christ has promised, if I come, that He will receive me--then, I do come, and He does receive me,
for He cannot lie. Let that help you. Faith is not logic, but logic may help faith.
Oh! how I should rejoice if some of you were to launch into the arms of
Jesus this afternoon. It often happens that while I am speaking souls
do get into the ark of God's mercy, and come, or write to
tell me afterwards that the Spirit has come, and he is crying 'Abba
Father,' and now they KNOW they have passed from death
unto life. They don't want logic then. It is a matter of demonstration
with them. When you have come up to the place where saving faith is
possible to you, you have no more to do, no more to suffer, no more to pay.
By simple trust we are saved. This is the way every saint on earth was
saved. This is the way every saint in glory was saved. This is the way we
are kept saved too, by LIVING DAILY, OBEDIENT FAITH. The Lord
help you just now. Let the idol go. Put away the ungodly companion. Give up
the unlawful business, or the worldly conformity. Put away whatever has
stood between you and Jesus. Trample it under foot and press through the
crowd of difficulties as the woman did, and go right up and touch Him with
this touch of faith, and you shall LIVE and KNOW THAT
YOU ARE HEALED. Then this Gospel will be good news indeed to you,
and Jesus will be the author of eternal Salvation to you, because you
OBEY HIM!
'And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law; to them that are without law, as without law (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ), that I might gain them that are without law.'
'To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.'
The Lord give us the like spirit! Again, 1 Corinthians xii. 4-6:
'Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit; and there are differences of administration, but the same Lord; and there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all.'
Some people want the Spirit to work in every one alike, and in all times
the same, but He chooses to have diversities. Again, Galatians
iii. 27, 28:
'For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither bond nor free; there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.'
'For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love.'
'Preach the word: be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.'
'And of some have compassion, making a difference: and others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire.'
Now, we have spent the two last Sabbath afternoons in trying to point
out our view of the characteristics of a pure Gospel, and I think we have
succeeded in doing this so clearly that no person who followed us carefully
can imagine for a
moment that we would hold or teach any adaptation of the Gospel itself. As we stated before, we deemed this so above all adaptation--so above any change, that we would not be responsible for transposing its order, much less altering its matter, that we would not take a dot off one of the 'i's,' so sacredly intact do we believe the Gospel of Christ in its matter ought to be kept. We believe also that the ORDER of God ought to be strictly maintained; that it is as rational and true in philosophy as it is in divinity; and that the way the Spirit operates upon the minds of men is just the same as ever. This we clearly and most carefully pointed out, so that what we have to say this afternoon, you will please bear in mind, has nothing to do with the GOSPEL MESSAGE ITSELF. We have tried to show our idea (or what we believe to be the Holy Spirit's idea) of a pure Gospel; but when we come to speak of modes and measures, that is quite another thing. I think, from the texts we have read, and from many others equally plain and relevant, that we find a most easily gathered truth running all the way through the New Testament, namely, that forms and ceremonies are nothing except as they embody and express real spiritual life and truth. That circumcision is nothing, and that uncircumcision is nothing; baptism is nothing, and being unbaptized is nothing; the Lord's Supper is nothing, and abstaining from the Lord's Supper is nothing, in itself, as a matter of form, for he embraces under circumcision all mere outward forms and ceremonies; all these are nothing, but 'KEEPING THE COMMANDMENTS OF GOD': that is, you may have all
these performed upon you, and regularly perform them yourselves, and be but sounding brass and tinkling cymbals, if you keep not the commandments of God; for circumcision availeth nothing, in another place, and uncircumcision availeth nothing, but faith--of what sort?--that WORKETH BY LOVE: that proves its obedience by its deeds. Therefore, we start with that fundamental truth lying clearly before us in every page of the New Testament, that forms and ceremonies, whatsoever they may be, are nothing except as they embody and represent REAL SPIRITUAL LIFE, and truth and action--action! Now, it was the great sin--the crowning condemnation of the Jews--that they had frittered away the spirituality and practical bearing of the Divine Law, clinging to those forms and ceremonies which were instituted only to embody and symbolize it. Would to God they had let go the form when they let go the spirit. Jesus Christ wishes they had. He tells them it would have been far better. He told them they were children of the Devil, notwithstanding their holding on to their relationship to Abraham and all the outward forms and ceremonies of their ritual.
They had better have come out and avowed themselves unbelievers, than
have gone on professing to be the children of God, while they were doing
the work of the Devil. But they would not receive this teaching. It was too
cutting for them, and so they would not have it. It was true, nevertheless.
They held on to the form whilst the spirit had gone. They were
'making clean the outside of the platter, but within they are full of
extortion and excess,
appearing beautiful outward, but within they are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness.' And, dear friends, all corpses are very much alike, when the spirit is gone out of them--no is found to be about as good as another.
Alas! there is this tendency still in our fallen human nature. It is so
much easier, or Satan makes it look so much easier, to an unregenerate man,
to rest in a form, than to seek till he finds the spiritual grace which
that form represents. That is to say, it is so much easier for an
unregenerate man to be circumcised, or to be baptized, as the case may be,
to partake of the Lord's Supper, to keep outwardly the Sabbath Day, to
abstain from acts of immorality and open sin, and to be decently moral and
religious--all this he can understand and do for himself, and it looks
to him so much easier, and so it is, in the first instance, than bringing
his evil, unregenerate heart to God for Him to circumcise it, and write His
law in it, as He promises to do under the new covenant.
Now, that is what God wants every man to do. He wants him to bring this
heart to Him, and let Him renew it. He says,
'I will circumcise your hearts to keep My law.' But, no! the
unregenerate man rests in the outward form. He will not be at the trouble
to sacrifice his idols, and cry mightily unto God. He will not seek until
he attains the fulfilment of these promises; so he sits down and rests in
the form.
Alas! alas! how many thousands in this so-called Christian England of
ours to-day are just there. They have got the form; they are like the
Jews--they
are Pharisees with a Christian creed instead of a Jewish, the same in CHARACTER, only different in name. That is all the difference, hanging on to the creed of Jesus Christ, while they know nothing of its spirit; the form without the power; and they deny their professed Lord every day. Oh! are there any of this class here? My friend, my friend, if you never find it out until you come to die, you will find it out then, but it may be too late. May God, the Holy Spirit, help you to find it out this afternoon, and bring that unrenewed, unrepentant, evil heart of yours to the Cross; bring it to God, and wait, and weep, if need be, and struggle, and knock, and cry, as He tells you, until He does renew it and write His law in it; then the outward form will be the expression of the inward grace. Then the fruit will be good, because it springs from a good root inside. The Lord help you!
This tendency to rest in form is just as great as ever, and instead of
putting away their idols, and bringing their conscience to be cleansed and
kept clean by the precious Blood, prayerfully and carefully walking before
God, striving in all things to please Him, people get an outside form, but
LIVE just like the world around them, calling Jesus,
'Lord, Lord,' but doing not the things that He says. Now, I say
that a pure Gospel requires that we bring our evil HEARTS to
God to be renewed, and that we resolutely put away our idols, and that we
wait on Him by the Cross until He renews our motives, tempers, tendencies,
feelings, and dispositions, and makes us new creatures in Christ Jesus.
Instead of doing this, people go on being circumcised or
baptized, as the Jews did, and they call themselves 'Israel,' as they did; whereas, of the spiritual Israel they are utterly ignorant. They are the children of Hagar (as Paul says), and not the children of the promise. May the Lord help you to come and be made children of the promise!
Now, as in the individual there is such a tendency to rest in form, so
in the Church collectively; hence this tendency to a formal religion. Just
as it was with the Jews--their Temple service and the paraphernalia of
Judaism was all in all to them, and they thought that Jesus Christ was the
most awfully severe and uncharitable person who ever appeared on the face
of the earth, because He told them the truth. And the same class of
character presents the same attitude now. We shall see when we get to the
Judgment-seat of Christ which is the true charity--that which covers
up things, or that which tears off the bandages and shows people their
hypocrisy and, as we have just read, reveals to them the secrets of their
hearts. I fear that we are very largely in the same condition as the Jews
were when Christ came. I say 'very largely,' for I know that
there are grand and glorious exceptions; but I speak of the great whole,
and I am backed up in this opinion by some of the most thoughtful and
spiritual men of this age. It is the lamentation everywhere this formality
and death. It reaches us from all parts of the land, yea, from all parts of
all lands. I once heard a great divine, a leader of spiritual thought in
his day, who has recently passed to Heaven, say, 'I consider that the
writings of the Prophets are far more applicable to the state of the
churches now than the writings of the New Testament, for we are in the same lapsed and fallen condition, as churches, as Israel of old was.' So many think, and so many teach.
If this be the case, WHAT IS TO BE DONE? What would strike
you should be done in this state of comparative--spiritual eclipse?
Evidently it would be madness to go on as we are. That will
mend nothing! Somebody must strike and do something worthy of the
emergency. 'There is no improving the future, without disturbing the
present,' and the difficulty is to get people to be willing to be
disturbed! We are so conservative by nature--especially some of us. We
have such a rooted dislike to have anything rooted up, disturbed, or
knocked down. It is as much the work of God, however, to 'root out,
and to pull down, and to destroy,' as 'to build and to
plant'; and God's real ambassadors frequently have to do as much
of the one kind of work as of the other. This is not pleasant work; but
what is necessary to be done? Is it not manifestly necessary
that we should go back to the simplicity and SPIRITUALITY of
the Gospel, and to the early modes of propagating it amongst men?
On the two last Sunday afternoons we tried to show what was the pure
Acts of the Apostles Gospel--calling men to forsake their sins, to
cast away their idols, come out from the world of the ungodly and be
separate in order that their sins might be forgiven, and that God might
receive them, and they become His sons and His daughters. Last Sunday we
spoke of faith and what it would do for us.
Now, with respect to the outward manifestations and propagation of the
Gospel it is equally necessary to go back. We have such a heap of rubbish
to carry away--the accumulated traditionalism of ages to go through
and dig under--that it sometimes takes a considerable amount of time,
and force of character, and a great deal of the Spirit of God to enable us
to do it. Nevertheless, it must be done if we are to reach a better state
of things.
It seems to me, in order to do this we should not shrink from a
recognition of our lapsed and fallen condition. That was what the Jews did
at the teaching of Jesus. They would not have His reproach. They would not
have the light because it condemned them. They rejected it. They persisted
they were the children of Abraham--the children of the promise. They
persisted they were all right, and they pointed to the Temple and to their
ceremonialism as a proof of it; they would not have His testimony, would
not admit that they were wrong. Do not let us imitate them. Let us
recognize this state of things. Let us look it fairly in the face. Honesty
is always the best policy both in spiritual and in temporal things. There
is nothing gained by ignoring a disagreeable truth. It is best to face it.
Now there it is, and the best wav is to hail any ray of light that comes to
us from any part of the heavens, even though a carpenter should bring it,
as He brought it to them--or a fisherman, or a woman. Never
mind--let us hail the light and apply it to ourselves. Let us bring
our hearts and lives out into its blaze, and examine them by it, and
improve it to our own Salvation and to the Salvation
of others. If the Jews had done that they would have been saved, and their nation. 'If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day'--this twelfth hour of the last day--'the things that belong unto thy peace; but now'--because of thy obstinate rejection--'they are hid from thine eyes.' The Lord help us to take the light home to ourselves, each one.
We have seen that it is clearly laid down in the texts I have read this
afternoon that the law of adaptation is the only law laid down in the New
Testament with respect to modes and measures. I challenge anybody to find
me any other. While the Gospel message is laid down with unerring
exactness, we are left at perfect freedom to adapt our measures and modes
of bringing it to bear upon men to the circumstances, times, and conditions
in which we live--free as air. 'I became all things to all
men.' The great Apostle of the Gentiles who had thrown off the
paraphernalia of Judaism years before, yet became as a Jew that he might
win the Jews. The great, strong intellect became as a weak man that he
might win the weak. He conformed himself to the conditions and
circumstances of his hearers, in all lawful things, that he might win them;
he let no mere conventionalifies, or ideas of propriety, stand in his way
when it was necessary to abandon them. He who was brave as a lion, and
hailed a crown of martyrdom like a conquering hero, as he was, yet was
willing to submit to anything when the requirements of his mission rendered
it necessary. He suffered his limbs to be ignominiously thrust into a
basket, and himself let
down over the wall, when necessary for the success of his work. He adapted himself to the circumstances. He was instant in season and out of season. Oh! what a hue and cry there is about out-of-season Christianity; 'of some making a difference'--pulling them out of the fire by the hair of the head, if needful! Never mind--save them, SAVE THEM. That is the great desideratum. Save them--pulling them out of the fire. Adapt your measures to your circumstances and to the necessities of the times in which you live. Now, here it seems to me that the Church--I speak universally--has made a grand mistake, the same old mistake which we are so prone to fall into, of exalting the traditions of the elders into the same importance and authority as the Word of God, as the clearly laid down principles of the New Testament.
People contend that we must have quiet, proper, decorous services. I
say, WHERE IS YOUR AUTHORITY FOR THIS? Not here. I defy any
man to show it. I have a great deal more authority in this book for such a
lively, gushing, spontaneous, and what you call disorderly, service, as our
Army services sometimes are, in this 14th of Corinthians than you can find
for yours. The best insight we get into the internal working of a religious
service in Apostolic times is in this chapter, and I ask you--is it
anything like the ordinary services of to-day? Can the utmost stretch of
ingenuity make it into anything like them? But even that is not complete.
We cannot get the order of a single service from the New Testament, nor can
we get the form of govern-
ment of a single church. Hence one denomination think theirs is the best form, and another theirs; so Christendom has been divided into so many camps ever since; but this very quarrelling shows the impossibility of getting from the New Testament the routine, the order, and the fashion of mere modes. They cannot get it, because it is not there!! Do you think God had no purpose in this omission? The form, modes, and measures are not laid down as in the Old Testament dispensation. There is nothing of this stereotyped routinism in the whole of the New Testament. Why? Now there may be some who may have difficulties in this matter. I said to a gentleman, who came to me with this and that difficulty about our modes and measures, 'I will meet your difficulties by bringing them face to face with the bare principles of the New Testament. If I cannot substantiate and defend them by that I will give them up for ever. I am not wedded to any forms and measures. To many of them I have been driven by the necessities of the case. God has driven me to them as at the point of the bayonet, as well as led me by the pillar of cloud, and when I have brought my reluctance and all my own conventional notions, in which I was brought up like other people, face to face with the naked bare principles of the New Testament, I have not found anything to stand upon! I find things here far more extravagant and extreme than anvthing we do--looked at carefully.' Here is the principle laid down that you are to adapt your measures to the necessity of the people to whom you minister; you are to take the Gospel to them in such modes and habitudes of thought and expression
and circumstances, as will gain for it from them a HEARING. You are to speak in other tongues--go and preach it to them in such a way as they will look at it and listen to it! Oh! in that lesson we read what beautiful freedom from all set form and formula there was! What freedom for the gushing freshness, enthusiasm, and love of those new Converts! What scope for the different manifestations of the same spirit. Everything was not cut and dried. Everything was not pre-arranged. It was left to the operation of the Spirit, and the argument that this has been abused is no argument against it, for then you might argue against every privilege. Here is abundant evidence that these new Converts, each one, had opportunity to witness for Jesus, opportunity and scope to give forth the gushing utterance of his soul, and tell other people how he got saved, or the experience the Holy Ghost has wrought in him. And look at the result! 'If there come in one that believeth not, or one unlearned, he is convinced of all, he is judged of all; and thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest, and so, falling down on his face, he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth.' What unkind things have been said of The Salvation Army, because people have fallen on their faces under the convicting power of the Spirit at our Meetings, but you see this is Apostolic! And, Oh, friends, what a glorious service this would be! You say, it would look so strange. More the pity. More the pity that this natural, easy, domestic, familiar kind of testimony and witnessing of divine things should have become strange. May it not be
because the experience which prompted it has become strange? May it not be that there is no more desire to testify because there is little to testify about? May it not be that there is want of the utterance of the Holy Spirit through the tongue because there is less of it in the soul? Oh! then, should we not make haste back to those days of simplicity and power? Should we not pray to be set free from the traditionalism and routinism in which Satan has succeeded in lulling us to sleep? I ask any saved man--Do you not remember the gushing love and enthusiasm of your first-found liberty? how you longed to tell everybody, and if you had been placed in such circumstances as these Corinthian converts, how gladly you would have testified to what Jesus had done for you? It was only the repressing, keeping down, and ultimately, I am afraid, the all-but extinguishing of the Holy Spirit's urgings that has led to the state in which many of you now are, and also to the dead wav in which many of our services are conducted.
Now, let us look fairly at these things. I maintain that the only
qualification--the only indispensable qualification--for
witnessing for Christ is the Holy Ghost. Paul, expressly, over and over
again, abjures all merely human equipment. He expressly declares that these
things were not the power, even where they existed, but that it was the
Holy Ghost. Therefore, give me man, woman, or child, with the Holy Ghost,
full of love and zeal for God, and I say it is a great strength and joy to
that Convert to testify to the Church and to the world, and it is the
bounden duty of the Church to give him the
opportunity to do so. The Lord is going to demonstrate in this land that He is not going to evangelize it by finished sermons and disquisitions, but by the simple testimony of people saved from sin and the Devil, by His power and His grace. He is going to do it by WITNESSING, as He began.
Now, I say, read your New Testament on this point, and you will be
struck with the amazing amount of evidence for this unconventional kind of
service. The world wants some more PENTECOSTS. When shall
Peters and Marys be so filled with the Spirit that they cannot help telling
what God has done for them--male and female, men, women, and
children--like the woman of Samaria, who, when she had found Him of
whom Moses and the Prophets wrote, went and fetched her fellow-townsmen and
women to hear Him? He wishes you to do the same, and this is the way the
Lord is going to gather out His great and glorious kingdom in these latter
days by the power of testimony in the Holy Ghost. He only wants witnesses
to be able to go and say, 'We speak that we do
know'--that is the qualification. The Lord is
multiplying such witnesses. Bless His holy name.
But you may say--what did the Master Himself do? Well, He adopted
these very measures. I was so struck with this, when some one said,
'Why, you are sending people to preach who cannot read or
write.' For a moment I was staggered, but I asked him, 'How
many of the Apostles do you suppose could read and write when they were
first sent out?' And then it was the questioner's turn to be
staggered. There is no reason to suppose, with but
two or three exceptions, that any of them could. Education then was far more uncommon than now. It was not reading and writing that was the great qualification for preaching Christ; it was KNOWING AND SEEING! It was not the power of eloquence, but it was being able to cast out devils, that was the test. Give me somebody able to cast out devils, and I don't care whether they can read or write, or put a grammatical sentence together. That is of no consequence whatever. Why did not Jesus Christ call the doctors and scribes of His day? There were plenty of them--highly educated men with trained and disciplined minds. He was amongst them in the Temple, when He was twelve years old. He knew them. How was it He did not select these? He who could have commanded a legion of angels, could surely have commanded a few scribes and doctors to go to preach the Gospel. Why not? He acted on the law of adaptation. He wanted His Gospel preached to the great masses--not to the select few. Not to the educated 'upper ten,' but to the great masses of mankind. How was He to have His Gospel so preached, but by men like unto themselves? They fled from the educated doctors. They would not listen to the doctors, and they will not now. It may be very wicked, and obstinate, and foolish, but such is the fact--they never have and they never will. Hence, Jesus Christ, instead of working a miracle, which He never did when it was unnecessary, chose the weak things of the earth to confound the mighty. He would, in the other case, have had first to have untaught all those scribes and doctors almost all they had learned.
He would have had to set them free from the bonds of traditionalism. He would have had to remould their minds, and then equip them. There was no necessity for this, when He found the fishermen ready to His hand. They were just the men He wanted. They only required tempering with the Holy Ghost, and they were ready for the work. They thought as the people thought; they spoke with and associated with the people, and, in fact, were of them. As He wanted the masses of men evangelized, He chose men from amongst the masses to evangelize them. Here was infinite wisdom: 'I thank Thee, O Father, that Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight.' But He had a purpose in it, and the purpose was this--that the Gospel might be propagated in all climes and conditions of men, through any kind of an agent--Greek, Jew, Barbarian, Scythian, man, woman, child. Any person who has experienced its power in their souls may go and speak it to anybody they can get to hear them and everywhere! We are free as air and sunlight as to our choice of agencies, and it is time the Church woke up to this. The Lord have mercy on us! Is there not work enough to do? It makes my ears tingle and burn with shame when I hear people saying, 'You must not send agencies here and there, and we can't have our organization interfered with.' I say, 'Are all the sinners converted in your neighbourhood?' Nay; has every poor, lost, wretched soul heard the name of Jesus, and the testimony of His Gospel? Are there not
teeming thousands round about you who never heard His name, and who care nothing for Him, who live every day trampling His law under their feet? For Christ's sake, send somebody after them. If they will not have your doctors of divinity and your polished divines, get hold of fishermen and costermongers and send them! Let the people have a chance for their souls. Let them hear, for if they hear not, how shall they believe? Oh, they are dying for lack of knowledge--they are, friends; thousands are dying for the lack of knowledge. It is quite a common thing for us to get people into our services who say, 'I never knew there was anything so pretty as that in the Bible. I didn't know you were reading from the Bible. We never heard anything like that before.' Hundreds of men in this country were never in a place of worship, save to be christened or to be married, and a good many, sad to say, are living without being married. While we have been standing UPON OUR DIGNITY, WHOLE GENERATIONS HAVE GONE TO HELL!--if the Bible is true. How much longer shall we stand there? If Jesus had stood upon His dignity He would never have come to die between two thieves. The whole work of redemption is a work of humiliation, selfsacrifice, and suffering; and if we are not willing to follow Him in that, we may as well give up professing His name.
The Lord help us to go down, down amongst the fishermen, amongst the
poor, the weak, the unlearned, the vulgar, to 'condescend to men of
low estate.'
--'For what the Law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.'
to see, and only longing and desiring to know the whole truth, as it is in Jesus. Let every sincere soul put up this prayer for himself and for me, as I put it up for myself and for you, that the Holy Spirit may lead us into all truth, at any rate as far as it is important to our own Salvation and our practical exhibition of the Salvation of Christ to other people, for a dying world is hanging upon our skirts. They are looking at us to find out what religion is. They will not come to this Book. They will not even hear about it, but they are looking to us to find it out; how momentously important it is, therefore, that we should be truly living Epistles, known and read of all men. We are epistles, whatever sort of doctrine our lives teach. We cannot help ourselves, for while we profess to be the Lord's we are living epistles, known and read of all men.
Specially, then, I want first to look at the third verse of the eighth
chapter. Now, I thought it would, perhaps, be the most profitable way to
look at this subject, and would meet the experience of some who I know are
here, to try to answer the question--
Wherein does the Law fail to save us? Then we shall be able to
see wherein and how Jesus Christ transcends the Law.
First, then, the Law does not fail in giving a knowledge of
sin, for it is by the Law, as the Apostle says, that I know sin. Without
the Law I was dead, so dead in sin that I did not realize it at all. Its
power was so complete over me that I did not realize it was sin, and,
therefore, was asleep and comparatively happy; but when the commandment
came,
'sin revived and I died'--that is, to all hope of making myself righteous. The commandment showed me the awful chasm there was between me and it. The Holy Commandment, just and pure and good--and myself unholy, impure, and unrighteous. A light from Sinai flashed upon it, and I died in despair and utter helplessness. Thus, I say, the Law does not fail in giving knowledge of sin, for it is by the Law that I get the knowledge of sin.
Secondly.--Neither does the Law fail in begetting a sense
of guilt and condemnation on account of sin, for it is by the Law again
that I get this. I not only get the knowledge of sin by the Law, but I get
the sense of guilt and condemnation for sin by the Law, for the Law comes
in and condemns me. It is the spirit of death and condemnation to me: it
says, 'You should have done this; and because you have not done it,
you shall die.' I feel that the Law is just and good, and yet I feel
that I do not keep it; and, therefore, I have the sentence of condemnation
upon me because I do not keep it. Then the Law does not fail in begetting a
sense of condemnation and guilt on account of sin.
Thirdly.--Neither does the Law fail in producing
desire after righteousness and effort to attain it. The Law
begets in me the desire after righteousness, by contrasting my condition
with the purity and Holiness of God's law. I see the Law to be good
and holy, I see it to be desirable, and I desire to attain the
righteousness of the Law. I am speaking now of a convicted sinner, as the
Apostle did when speaking of the same character. A convicted sinner sees
the righteousness and beauty of the Law of God.
He sees that it is holy, just, and good. He sees that it is intended to make him holy, just, and good, for the Law is not sin, as the Apostle says, but is ordained unto righteousness, which the sinner has failed to attain because of weakness, but struggles to attain. The first thing is to set himself to strive to attain the righteousness of the Law by his own efforts. This was the case with the Apostle. He longed to do what he could not, and he constantly did what he would not; and, as it was with the Apostle, so it is with every convicted sinner on earth. We were constantly longing after righteousness. We could not help looking on the beautiful, pure, and holy law of God, and we longed to keep it, and tried again and again, until we were tripped down again and again, and died in utter despair, never being able to attain it for ourselves and of ourselves. So you see the Law begets first a knowledge of sin; secondly, it begets guilt and condemnation on account of sin; and, thirdly, desire after righteousness and effort to attain it.
Thus far I think we must all be agreed. Wherein does the Law fail? It
does all this for me. It brings me right up, as it were, my schoolmaster
lashing me right up to the cross, opening my eyes, creating intense desire
after Holiness and efforts for it, and then it just fails me. Where?
At the vital point. It cannot give me power. That
is where the Law fails. It cannot give me power to fulfil itself. I am
strengthless through the weakness of the flesh and the sinfulness of my
nature to keep it, and so I struggle and wrestle for power to keep it, but
I have not power. 'What the Law could not do, in
that it was weak, God sent his Son to do,' and I maintain HE DOES IT, and that is the one vital point where the Son transcends the Law.
Oh! but there is a Gospel nowadays, a Law-Gospel. A great deal of the
Gospel of these days never gets any farther than the Law, and some people
tell me that it is never intended to do so, and then I ask, Wherein does
Christ Jesus advantage me? What am I better for such a Gospel, if my Gospel
cannot deliver me from the power of sin? If through the Gospel I cannot get
deliverance from this 'I-would-if-I-could religion,' this
'Oh!-wretched-man-that-I-am religion,' wherein am I benefited
by it? Wherein does your Gospel do more for me than the Law? The Law
convinced me of sin, and set me desiring and longing after righteousness;
but wherein is the superiority of Jesus Christ, if He cannot lead me
further than that? And I say, 'Very well; your faith is vain, and
Christ died in vain, and you are yet in your sins, if that is all it can
do.' If that is all Jesus Christ can do, His coming is vain, and I am
yet in my sins, and am doomed to hug this dead corpse to the last, and go
down to Hell; for death will never do for me what the Blood and sacrifice
of Jesus Christ cannot do for me. If Christ cannot supersede the Law, then
I am lost, and lost for ever. Wherein then does this
'Oh!-wretched-man Gospel' supersede the Law? Will anybody point
it out to me?
Oh! but the real Gospel does. The Gospel that represents
Jesus Christ, not as a system of truth to be received into the mind, as I
should receive a system of philosophy, or astronomy, but it represents
Him as a REAL, LIVING, MIGHTY Saviour, ABLE TO SAVE ME now.
I said to a lady once, who was seeking this deliverance, and who was
struggling and wrestling, as I kneeled by her side, 'Wait a minute.
Suppose Jesus Christ were here in His flesh, as He once was. Suppose He
were to come to your side now, and put His hand upon you and say,
'Hush! I know your desire; I see your heart; I know what you are
longing after. You are longing to be delivered from everything that grieves
Me, upon which My pure eyes cannot look with allowance. You are wanting to
be brought into full conformity to My will, and that is what I have come to
do now. I have come to live with you. I am taking up My abode under this
roof, and I will never leave your side. I will be with you by day, and I
will be with you by night. I will sit at the dinner-table and tea-table
with you, and walk out with you, and go to bed with you, and rise up with
you. Don't be troubled. I will never leave you and never forsake
you.' Do you think if He were to come and say that, you would be able
to trust Him?'
'Oh! yes.'
'You would not be afraid?'
'Oh! no.'
'Now, what would it be that would save you? Would it be the bodily
presence of Jesus, which they laid in the sepulchre, and which was as dead
and helpless as any other clay when the spirit was gone out of it?
NO. It would be His spiritual presence, would it not? and His
spiritual eyes seeing you, and His spiritual tongue speaking to
you?'
'Yes.'
'Well, then, this is just the presence that He has promised to be
with every one of His people, and now He is here and able to do this, and
will abide with you and enable you to abide in Him, if you will just trust
Him. Now, just trust Him.' And the Lord, by His blessed Spirit, did
take and reveal this truth unto her, and just then and there she did leap
into the arms of her Saviour and realize that He did save her.
Oh! friends, some people do not think we make enough of Christ. We make
all of Christ, only it is a living Christ instead of a dead
one. It is Christ in us, as well as for us. We believe in Christ for us,
and we should not have been here at all, but for Christ for us up there for
ever and ever, and nobody will hasten to throw the crown at His feet
readier than I shall; but we believe in order to do it we must have Him in
us, and if He is not in us, then it is sounding brass and tinkling cymbal
to call upon Him for us. He must be in us. Christ in us as well as for us,
and those whom He is not in He will not be for.
If He dwell not 'in you,' ye are 'reprobates.' But
Christ in us--an ever-loving, ever-present, Almighty Saviour--is
just able to do what the angels said He should do, that for which He was
called Jesus, viz. to save His people from their sin.
Then how does He this? Wherein does He supersede the Law? Wherein does
Christ do for me and wherein is He made to me, what the Law could not do or
be to me? We have seen what the Law could do and how far it could go. We
have seen that it fails just at the vital point of power. Now,
how does Christ become this power to me? How is
He made unto me--not for me, up in Heaven; He is there, too; but how is He made unto me down here--wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption? How does He deliver His people from their sins? How does He save us from the power of sin? Now, you who are longing to get free, try to listen to me, and, Oh! may the HOLY GHOST TEACH US.
He does this, first, by giving--
Assurance of Salvation. He saves and then He makes us conscious
of the fact, which the Law could not do. All it could do was to set us
struggling after it. It could not give us assurance. Now, by assurance, I
mean the personal realization of my acceptance in Christ; my acceptance by
the Father; my present acceptance--I mean the inward assurance, which
men and women find for themselves, or have revealed in themselves, which
they know as a matter of consciousness. Not that which their minister tells
them; not that which they learn from books; not even that which the Bible
only tells them, for there are thousands of people who read the Bible, who
are not saved, and who know they are not. You all know there are thousands
of people who believe it in vain.
I was walking down the Anxious Room at one of Mr. Moody's meetings,
when two ladies came and said:
'Will you please speak to us?'
I don't know why they came to me, except it was my plain dress
which made them think I ought to know, even if I did not, how to deal with
souls. We took three chairs and sat down. The youngest was a
lady about thirty or thirty-three, and very intelligent, evidently an educated person, and the elder was an old lady, gorgeously attired. They sat down; and as to the younger one there was no mistake about her earnestness. Mr. Moody had been preaching on 'The Cities of Refuge,' and showing how the soul who desired to be saved had nothing to do and nothing to suffer, but only to run into the Cities of Refuge and be saved--a beautiful sermon for convicted sinners--and this lady said to me, almost passionately--'How is it? there must be something wrong somewhere; there must be a mistake somewhere. I believe all that Mr. Moody has been saying, every word of it. I have believed every word since I was a little girl; in fact, I believe the whole of the New Testament--all about Jesus Christ, and I believe, moreover, that He died for me, and that He makes intercession for me, and yet I'm not saved a bit. I have no more power over sin than other people, and I know I am not saved. Now, what can be the reason? I am afraid it is want of faith.'
That is the universal resort to fall back upon by all souls in that
condition. I said, 'Will you be honest with me? It is of no use
coming to a spiritual doctor any more than to a physical doctor if you are
not frank; you would only mislead him. If you really want to be saved, be
honest with me, and I will try, by the help of the Spirit, to help
you.'
'I do indeed want to be saved,' she said. 'I often go
into my room, and weep, and struggle, and pray for hours. I try to believe.
I think I have believed, and I come out and I am no better.'
'Oh,' I said to myself, 'alas! here is the experience
of thousands.' 'Tell me, in these times when you say you go
into your room, and struggle, and pray, and strive, and believe; tell me,
is there anything that comes up before the eye of your soul as an obstacle
and difficulty that has to be put away or embraced; anything that comes up
and that the Spirit of God said "You must sacrifice this, or cut off
that, or do the other?" Just tell me that.'
She was quiet for a moment and speechless. She waited; then she drew her
breath and said, 'Well, yes, I am afraid there is.'
'Ah!' I said, 'that is it; it is not want of faith, it
is want of obedience. Now you may go on another ten years, going into your
room, struggling and striving, and until you trample that under your feet,
and say, "Lord, I will follow Thee at all costs," you will not
be able to believe. I don't want you to tell me what it is; sufficient
that you know it, and that the Lord knows it; but, after an experience of
dealing with hundreds of souls just at this point, I tell you: you must
give up that idol or embrace that cross, whatever it may be; I believe that
here is the cause of your trouble.'
'Then,' she said, 'I will make no secret of it. I am
the only member of an unconverted family that has any desire after God. My
husband is a worldly, unconverted man, and I am in a worldly, unconverted
circle, and always when I come to the Lord Jesus it comes up before me that
I will have to confess Him and to live like a Christian, and I am not
willing to do so.'
'Then, my dear lady, it is the old story over again
of the Young Ruler. Now, you know, I should be untrue to your soul if I were to go on plastering you with untempered mortar. There you are; make your choice. You cannot be a Christian, and not confess Christ. You cannot be a Christian, and not live like one before your unconverted relatives; and, therefore, if you are not willing to take up the cross and follow Him, you cannot become His disciple.'
Then I went down on my knees with her, and we talked and prayed, and, at
last, she said:
'By the grace of God, I WILL confess Him.'
Bless the Lord! and the light of Salvation soon gladdened her eye, for
it shone through her face. She found herself able to believe at once, and
this is just the condition of thousands of souls. She got assurance then.
She got saved. Before, she had being trying to believe she was saved, when
she was not--quite a different thing to getting saved and then knowing
it. People are told to believe this, that, and the other. As a gentleman
said, at whose house I once stayed:
'I had a curious episode the other morning. I have had a gentleman
here of some note in the evangelistic world for two or three days, and he
came in the other morning at breakfast-time and said, 'I am happy to
tell you that both your gardeners are converted.' I was very thankful
to hear it; and surprised to hear that the work had been so quickly and
thoroughly done. Well, I was walking in the grounds, and saw one of the
gardeners. 'John,' I said, 'I am glad to hear the happy
news.' He didn't seem to know what I meant.
'"What news, sir?"
'"Well, I hear you have given your heart to God this
morning. You are converted, saved?"
'"Well," John said, "I could hardly say that,
sir."
'"Then what has happened? Something has happened in your
experience--some change taken place?"
'"Well," he said, "I don't hardly know
that. The gentleman brought a Bible to me and read two or three verses, and
asked me if I believed, and talked very nicely to me, and asked me again if
I believed; then I said I did, and then he said I was all right; but I
can't say I feel any different."'
Now, I am afraid there has been sadly too much of that. There is all the
difference between believing the letter of the Word and knowing that you
are saved. I say, that man was not saved--was he? I say,
the lady who spoke to me in the Anxious Room was not
saved--was she? And I say there are, alas! thousands to-day in just
that position. They are not saved. They manifest it by their fruits. They
confess it. They write it to me in their letters on the right hand and on
the left. Members of churches ten, fifteen, and twenty years, some of them
Ministers of the Gospel, and yet they tell me they are NOT
SAVED!!
Thus, you see it is something more than the belief after all. It is
something more than what my minister tells me, something more than what
books tell me, and what the Bible tells me. It implies and includes this,
but something more than this. It is believing in a living, personal, and
almighty Saviour, and believing in Him now, and that faith
brings the realization. The other brings nothing. When people believe thus, the Spirit comes into their hearts, crying, 'Abba, Father!' To them there is no condemnation. They have the witness of the Spirit that they are in Christ Jesus. The Spirit of the Son comes into their hearts, crying, 'Abba, Father!' and they know by demonstration, by inward consciousness, that they have passed from death unto life. You see there is all the difference between the means of Salvation and Salvation itself. The means of Salvation is not Salvation. The means only brings Salvation. 'Thy faith hath saved thee.' 'By faith are ye saved,' and when you are saved by faith, then consciousness attests the fact. Your own spirit attests the fact, and God's Spirit attests the fact, and you know it beyond controversy. You have assurance, and this is the first indispensable condition of power over sin, for while I remain unassured of my Salvation, Oh! what power the Devil has over me. 'Oh,' he says, 'you're not saved at all. What is the good of your standing out on this point, for you are not saved at all. You may as well go all the way. You are under the power of sin, and may as well remain there. You have not got the witness of your Salvation, and, therefore, what is the use of standing out here or there? 'But when we have the witness of the Spirit in our souls of our acceptance with God, that He does now for Christ's sake pardon and receive us, what power it brings! This is what the old Divines called assurance of faith, a conviction wrought in the soul by the Holy Ghost that Jesus Christ has given Himself for me, that God has accepted that offering
in view of my sin and transgression, and for its sake, and its sake only, has justified me freely from all things by which I could not be justified by the Law of Moses, and that in Him God becomes my Father, and now accepts me and looks upon me well pleased--a conviction wrought in my soul by the Holy Spirit; for, as the Apostle says, 'No man can call Jesus "Lord" but by the Holy Ghost.' There must he the spiritual realization of Him as Lord. Why, anybody can call Him 'Lord.' Tens of thousands of people call Him 'Lord' nowadays, whom nobody supposes to have the Spirit. What did he mean? He must have meant a confession of Jesus out of a heart which has a revelation and recognizes its Lord; such a confession as Thomas made when the conviction of His Master's Deity shone into his doubting soul: 'My Lord and my God.' To this relationship only the Holy Ghost can testify. Don't ever tell anybody he is saved. I never do. I leave that for the Holy Ghost to do. I tell them how to get saved. I try to help them to the way of faith. I will bring them up as close as ever I can to the blessed broken body of their Lord, and I will try to show them how willing He is to receive them, and I know that when really they do receive Him, the Spirit of God will tell them quickly enough that they are saved. He will not want my assistance to tell that. I have proved it in hundreds of cases. Nobody knows the soul but God. Nobody can see the secret windings of the depraved heart but God. Nobody can tell when a full surrender is made but God. Nobody can tell when the right hand is cut off, or the right eye plucked out, but God.
Nobody can tell when a soul is whole-hearted but God, and as soon as He sees it He will tell that soul that it is saved; but, if God has not told you, be up and stirring, and strive to make your calling and election sure, for you are not saved yet, or you would know it. What are you to believe unto? Hope? Oh, dear, no! you don't believe unto hope. Effort? Oh, no! you had that before in the Law. SALVATION? Yes! and if you 'believe unto Salvation,' you will get 'saved,' and if you are not saved, you have never believed unto Salvation. Instead of trying to make yourself happy in this state of uncertainty and misery, for Christ's sake get up and get saved. It is a great deal easier to get saved than it is to make yourself believe you are saved, when you are not. The one is a philosophical impossibility; the other is a glorious possibility at any moment, when you get low enough before God, and give up all, and take His Son as your precious and almighty Saviour. God's Gospel is beautifully adjusted to the laws of our mental constitution. He who wrote, framed, and conceived it, created us, and He has made it like a key to fit the lock, and knows just the conditions that are necessary, and He has conformed His Gospel to those conditions.
My friend, if you want to know you are saved, this is the only response
I can give, and the only way I know, and I have talked to hundreds of souls
of all grades and conditions, to many ministers of the Gospel, deacons and
leaders, in just this state. For years my labours were exclusively carried
on in churches and chapels, where, naturally, church members have come, and
they have told me by
hundreds with their own lips that they have been members so many years and were never saved. I am not, therefore, speaking without experience in this matter. I tell you, when you 'believe' in a Scriptural sense, you will get 'saved' in a Scriptural sense. When you put out of your head all these new-fangled notions about faith, and cease to credit any faith that does not save the soul and bring it into conscious union with Jesus Christ, and resolve to have such a faith as will do that for you, then you will get Salvation. I never in my life knew a soul come to that resolve who did not get saved. I have had people before me who were worn almost to skeletons and were driven almost mad, and the first thing they have said has been, when I have asked the reason, 'Oh! I have no faith. It is want of faith!' This is the universal lament, and, when we have come to close quarters, I have invariably found it has been no such thing, but want of OBEDIENCE, which spiritual teachers have not had the wisdom to discern, as Christ did in the heart of the young Ruler, 'one thing thou lackest.' He saw that young man's besetting sin to be covetousness. I do not know that He would have said the same to every rich man, but in the case of the young Ruler He saw that the love of his possessions was so paramount, that unless he let them go and made a clean sweep, he could not follow Him and be a consistent disciple; and so He said, 'Sell all, and come, follow Me,' and the young man went away sorrowful; and, mark you, Jesus Christ did not call him back, and yet He looked after him and loved him. His great, bene-
volent heart panted after him, and He desired to have him; but He saw it would be a greater evil to call him back and compromise the conditions of Salvation, than to let him be lost. And yet, methinks, if there was any case in which a compromise could be made, it would have been in this. He did not do, as many would have done in our day--call him back and say, 'Here, young man, I think I have been a little too hard on you. You shall sell half, and keep the other half and come and follow me.' Oh, no! Everybody would be saved at that rate. There would be no test of whole-hearted consecration to Him then. If you can let people into Heaven on terms like these, they would be only too ready to close with them. But whether ministers teach people the truth or not, the Holy Ghost does; and He puts His finger on the sore spot, and says, 'If you want to follow Me, you will have to renounce this, and give up that, or embrace the other,' and if the soul says, 'No, Lord, I would follow, but suffer me first to go and hug this idol'; then Jesus Christ says, 'Very well, go!' That is the sort of faith most people are resting in.
I see we shall not get any farther in this address than assurance of
Salvation. You are panting after it. You are longing for it. You may have
it. God wants every one of His people to have it. Get saved, and you will
know it. Use your Heavenly Father's letter to find your way up to Him.
It is not the letter you are to rest in: it is the God who wrote it. Use
the letter to get at the Spirit, for the letter will not save you--it
is the Spirit that saves you. Hug his volume to your heart as the
expres-
sion of your Father's will and the record through which you are to believe on His Son, but it is the Son who is to save you. People talk about exalting Christ. I think this is His glory, that He can save His people and make them know it, and make them feel it, and carry them as He did Paul and Silas through the prison and the stocks singing His praises, and make them unspeakably happy in His love. Assurance of Salvation! All want it when they come to die. Why don't people get it while they live? Did you ever know a professing Christian come to die who did not want it? Did you ever know one dare to die without it? or, if you ever knew such, you know what a miserable death it was. Then, I contend, that what is necessary to die with, is necessary to live with. Why not get it while you live? Assurance! Assurance! And you can have it just now. Hallelujah! Amen.
--'Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to Him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.'
Now, do not think, friends, that I underestimate the
letter. Perhaps few of you, if any, value this word more than
I do, but I have known very few of those who have rested merely in the
letter (and
I have known many do so), who, when I have come into close conversation with them, have not been miserably dissatisfied, unassured, sin-conquered souls; and that fact alone convinces me that there is something wrong. That is not the glorious liberty of the children of God. That is not knowing God in the scriptural sense.
Take God's way, and then the witnessing Spirit will come. Of
course, people are not assured because they have nothing to be
assured of! They have no Salvation, and, therefore, they cannot be
assured of it. Get Salvation, and you will get assurance. Oh! friends. This
is what you want. IT IS FOR YOU. Here it is. There is no other
religion recognized in this Book. All the saints to whom Paul wrote, knew
they were saved. Here and there was an exception, where they had fallen
back and got into bondage, as some of you have; but, as a rule, be
recognizes the fact that they all were saved, and were
rejoicing in the assurance of it, and this is the normal condition of the
children of God. I do not say such a person may not occasionally slip. He
may occasionally. He may lose his scroll, as Pilgrim did, but he cannot,
will not rest till he finds it again!
Then you say, 'I am not to believe, I suppose.' Oh, yes! you
are. Take the blessed record to your heart, but do not rest in the letter.
Do not rest in the letter. GO ON until you find the
substance of things hoped for--the
substance. There is a substance in spiritual things quite as
much as there is in natural things, and those who really and truly believe,
know it. No one can testify when
you do really and truly believe but God's Spirit, for the things of a man knoweth no man save the spirit of a man that is in him, and just so with the things of God. He searcheth the hearts and minds, and knows when you are sincere and real and true; and when you seek Him with all your heart you will find Him, and He will come and testify to that fact--and, Oh! if you have not this testimony suspect yourself. Do not throw discredit upon God. Begin over again and get assurance.
Oh! what POWER assurance of Salvation gives! when the
individual can say I know; not merely I believe,
but I know. St. John seems to have written his First Epistle
mainly to enable the believers to know: and then several times shows how we
may 'know' we are saved. Faith is the means to assurance, but
assurance is not faith, and faith is not assurance. Assurance is the
result of faith, and when you have the right sort of faith you
will have assurance. 'He that believeth hath the witness in
himself,' and until you get assurance do not trust yourself.
Persevere until you get it. God will never leave a sincere soul in the
dark. You must come down to the foot of the Cross in the little
children's way--give up all for Christ, and make up your mind
that you will follow Him at all costs, and then cast your guilty soul upon
His broken, bleeding sacrifice, and, as soon as you do this, God
will send the answer of His Spirit.
But this afternoon I want to go a little farther in showing how Christ
supersedes the Law.
We have noted in a former sermon that He does so, first, by
giving assurance.
Secondly, I want to show that He does so, by giving POWER
OVER SIN. Now we shall be safe here. I trust this will not be
controverted ground. I believe He can do a great deal more for His people
than this, but we will stop here this afternoon. By and by we may, perhaps,
go farther. Christ gives His people power over sin. Now, this
is a necessity of our position. We have, as we saw last Sunday, been all
slaves of sin. Sin is, indeed, the sting of death. Now, how is it, if there
is no deliverance from this dreadful plague and scourge of God's
people--how is it that the Holy Ghost sets every real child of God
struggling after it? Whatever may be a man's theory in his creed, you
get him on his knees, and he will begin to pray to God to save him
from sin. Sin is the abominable thing which he hates, and longs to
be delivered from; and the universal experience of God's people is
that the Spirit urges them to seek to be saved from sin. I
have heard people argue powerfully against the possibility of being
delivered from sin, and the next time I have heard them pray they have
asked God for the very thing, and I have said, 'Thank God, that is
the Holy Ghost teaching him now; he cannot help praying for it, whether he
believes in it or not.' If I have been under the power of sin, so as
to become its complete slave, and Jesus Christ comes and pardons me for the
past, and delivers me from the guilt and condemnation which came upon me in
consequence of the past, what do I want? I want some new power. I want
something besides pardon. I want power to stand, or I shall be
down again the next minute.
What God does for us through Jesus Christ outside of us is one thing,
and what He does in us by Jesus Christ is another thing, but the two are
simultaneous, or one so immediately succeeds the other, that we hardly
discern the interval. Now, I say, I want power to enable me to meet that
temptation which is coming on me to-morrow, as it came on me yesterday,
and, if Jesus Christ pardons me ever so, and leaves me under the reigning
power of my old appetites, what has He done for me? I shall be down in the
mud, and to-morrow night I shall be as condemned as ever. I want power. I
want regeneration--as the Holy Spirit has put it. I want the
renewing of the spirit of my mind. I want to be
created anew in Christ Jesus; 'made a new creature.'
Now, this is where Jesus Christ transcends the Law. The Law could not
renew the spirit of my mind. It could only show me what a guilty rebel I
was. It could not put a better spirit in me. It could not extract the
venom, but only show it to me, and make me writhe on account of it. But
Jesus Christ comes and does this for me--gives me power. How?
Now, I hope those friends who think that I do not sufficiently exalt the
Saviour, will mark this. How does He give it to me? He unites me to
Himself. I am dead to the Law. He delivers me from the condemning
power of the Law when He pardons me, and then He does not leave me there,
but He 'marries' me to Himself. He unites me 'to
another' husband, and then I attain power to bring forth fruit unto
God. A beautiful--a
wonderful figure! We may not pursue it; but, Oh! what a wonderful figure! Alone under the Law's power, my old husband, I could do nothing but agonize, wrestle, and desire. There was no power in me but when Jesus Christ comes and unites me to Himself; then He gives me power to bring forth fruit unto God. It is by the UNION OF MY SOUL WITH HIM. You say, 'Explain it!' I cannot. God Himself cannot explain it. We cannot explain it, but we know it. As Jesus said to Nicodemus: 'The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.' The mystery is too great to be explained, but there is the beautiful illustration; united to Christ I have power to conquer, to subdue, to trample under foot those things which heretofore have been my master, and by virtue of Him I retain the power, and no other way. Oh! dear friends, what a delusion there is on the subject of Christian knowledge. If knowledge could save people, what a wonderful world we should have to-day.
Knowledge is as powerless as ignorance. A man is not a whit nearer God,
or more like Christ, because he has his head crammed with this Word. In
fact, some I have known who have been best acquainted with the Word, who
have been the greatest slaves of sin; and even ministers of Jesus Christ
have confessed to me that they have been bond-slaves of some besetting sin.
The power is not in knowledge--and God is raising up thousands of
witnesses to this fact, that it is not in knowledge
--it is in union with Him, and the little child in intellect and intelligence, who has the real, vital union with Jesus, has more power than the most cultivated theologian has without Christ. The things of God can only be understood by those who have the Spirit of God. The world by wisdom knows not God any more now than it did in Paul's days. The things of the Spirit are only spiritually comprehended. Hence this beautiful union cannot be explained; I only know it is spoken of all through the Bible, both in the Old Testament and in the New, as knowing God. After God has summed up the failures of His people, He gives them a promise, and says, 'I will betroth thee unto Me in righteousness for ever, and thou shalt KNOW the Lord,' as though that were the end of the whole matter, really and truly to know Him. When they come to that living union of soul with Him, it brings the vital sap as it were into the branch of the tree--another of his own beautiful illustrations. 'Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in Me.' You know what the branch is when it is broken off. It is a branch. It retains the form of a branch; and for a while the beauty and the greenness of a branch, but it is broken off. There is no power in it. Suppose it could maintain that form. Alas! human branches often maintain their verdure in a certain beauty, as when first lopped off. But it can never bear fruit. Why? Because the communication is cut between itself and the vine, and there is no sap in its fibre. Its life is cut off. Now, my friends, you
can see why a soul who has never been truly united to Christ in this living spiritual marriage, cannot bear fruit unto God.
You can be like a branch. You can get so much scriptural knowledge, that
you can look just like a real Christian. Alas! You can get many of the
feelings of a Christian, and of the sentiments, as well as a great many of
the aspirations and desires, of a Christian. You can be so like a branch
that nobody, but Jesus Christ, may know you are not in that true Vine, and
yet you have never, as the Apostle says, been grafted on to the olive tree.
And, therefore, you go on weeping, and struggling, and trying to perform
the function of a living branch, when all the while you are a dead one. You
go on trying to bring forth fruit unto God when the one indispensable
condition of fruitfulness is wanting. You have got every other condition.
You may even be nailed up to the wall close to the vine. You may be such a
professor that nobody may ever doubt you. You may be so close to the vine
that nobody can detect your want of union, excepting the Gardener who comes
and closely inspects you, and yet you may not have one fibre truly
circulating the real spiritual sap. HENCE YOU HAVE NO POWER,
and down you go when the temptation comes. Ah! what weary years of strife
some professing Christians have--they would be ashamed to tell; death
sometimes forces it from their lips before they die--trying to perform
the functions of living men when they have never been spiritually made
alive. All they have ever had has been what Paul depicts as the struggle of
a
poor convicted sinner unable to bring forth any fruit unto God.
Now, you say, this union with Him--what is it? Well, I cannot
explain it. You, who know what it is cannot explain it--so to know the
Lord as to be conscious of the living sap circulating through your soul,
anointing your eyes with eye-salve, giving you eyes to see, a voice to
speak, feet to run, and hands to serve--making you in all respects a
'new creature.'
Now, my dear friends, those of you who have not experienced this, never
mind who comes to you and brings a Bible, and says, 'Do you believe
this and that? if you do you are saved.' Say, 'Miserable
comforters are ye all: I will never be content until I know
God.'
I made up my mind to this when I was fifteen years of age. I had had the
strivings of God's Spirit all my life, since I was about two years
old. My dear mother has often told me how she went upstairs to find me
crying, and when she questioned me, I said I was crying because I had
sinned against God. Thank the Lord, I do not say this boastingly. I have
good cause to be ashamed that I was so long before I fully gave myself up;
but all through my childhood I was graciously sheltered by a watchful
mother from outward sin, and, in fact, brought up as a Christian. When I
came to be between fifteen and sixteen, when I believe I was thoroughly
converted, the great temptation of Satan to me was this: 'You must
not expect such a change as you read of in books. You have been half a
Christian all your life. You always feared God. You must
content yourself with this.' Oh! how I was frightened! It must have been the Spirit of God that taught me. I was frightened at it. I said, 'No. no.' My heart is as bad as other people's, and if I have not sinned outwardly I have inwardly. I cried to God to show me the evil of my heart, and said, 'I will never rest till I am as thoroughly and truly changed, and know it, as any thief, or any great outward sinner.' I went on seeking God in this way for six weeks, often till two o'clock in the morning, wrestling, and I told the Lord I would never give up, if I died in the search, until I found God, and I did find Him, as every soul does, when it comes to him in that way. I cried for nothing on earth or in Heaven but that I might find Him whom my soul panted after, and I did find Him, and you can find Him. I knew Him. I can't tell how, but I knew Him. I knew He was well pleased with me. I knew that we held sweet converse often to the small hours of the morning together, and I know that I was as happy in His love, and far more happy than I ever was in any human love before or since.
Now, friends, you can all have this union. He is no respecter of
persons. He has bought it for us. He saw our weakness. He contemplated our
moral inability. He need not have come if we could have known God by the
Law. If that old covenant had been perfect, there would have been no room
for a second. It brought us not into the full realization and enjoyment of
God, but the new covenant does. It cleanses the conscience from dead works
to serve the living God, and God is henceforth revealed to His people, and
they walk
with Him. 'If a man love Me, he will keep My words; and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him and make Our abode with him.' And when a man has got the Father and the Son, he is a match for Satan and all his forces. Union with Christ!
Oh! do you think this is a mere allegory of the Apostle's? It is a
beautiful illustration. When He delivers us from the condemning, reigning
power of the Law, we become married to Jesus Christ. Then we get a power to
produce, in our affections, and hearts, and lives, and all about us, such
things as God delights in.
Now, mark, all through the New Testament, and, indeed, the Bible, no
truth is taught with greater force and frequency than this, that without a
vital union of soul with Christ, all ceremonies, creeds, beliefs,
professions, church ordinances, are sounding brass and tinkling cymbals,
and all who trust in them will be deceived. This is the very essence of the
Gospel. This is what He came for, and (Oh! how my heart bleeds to think and
say it) all who do not attain to this real vital union with Him will be
lost. Everything else falls short of our need and the purpose
and end of the Gospel of Christ. He came on purpose for us to have this
union with Himself. Neither circumcision, nor uncircumcision, nor anything
else availeth anything, but this faith, which worketh by love, and brings
the Spirit of Christ into our hearts. Oh! bear with me; dear friends, have
you got it? Have you got this vital union with Christ? Are you bringing
forth fruit unto God? If not, I beseech you give up daubing
yourselves with untempered mortar, and trying to make yourselves believe you are right, when you are all wrong. However much desire, purpose, hope, aspiration, struggle, or whatever else you have, if you have not attained to this, you are not saved yet, and you are not in the Kingdom.
In conclusion, 'bring forth fruit unto God,' or, as the
Apostle has it, 'having your fruit unto Holiness and the end
everlasting life'--and in another place, for the 'end of
the commandment,' the purpose of the commandment, the ultimatum of
the commandment, 'is charity,' love, 'out of a pure
heart,' and so in many other passages; but we just take these at
random.
The result! What is the result? 'That we may bring forth fruit
unto God.' Jesus Christ in this union recognizes the fact that we are
still in the body; still in the world; and that we are open to the attacks
of Satan. He knows--has foreseen, and has provided for, the
temptations of the flesh, that is, the temptations which come to us through
our natural appetites, and instincts, and desires, as they came to Him. He
was hungry after enduring the great temptation in the wilderness. There was
no sin in being hungry. He was intensely hungry, for He had nerves, and a
brain, and a heart, as we have. He was a perfect man, and He suffered all
the consequences of that lengthened strain upon His nervous system, and the
Devil took advantage of the existence of that intensely excited condition
of His body by tempting Him unlawfully to gratify it. For he said,
'Command these stones that they be made bread.' This was
unlawful under the
circumstances (we will not stop now to inquire why), and, therefore, He said, 'Get thee behind Me, Satan.' He would rather suffer the hunger than unlawfully gratify it, and, therefore, He did not commit sin. It matters not (and this will meet the case of some who have written to me) how intensely excited any physical appetite may be--that is not sin. The more you suffer through the excitement of the physical appetite, of whatever kind it may be, the more Jesus Christ sympathizes with you, for He was tempted in all points, like as we are, yet without sin; and if you endure temptation, He will sympathize with you, more than with the man who does not have to endure and resist. You do not sin because of the appetite merely being excited. I think Satan gets some sincere souls to bring themselves into condemnation when God does not condemn them. If you resist as He did; if you say, 'Get thee behind me, Satan'--you sin not. What was Eve's sin? Unlawful self-gratification. The Devil might have tempted her until now, if she had lived so long; but if she had steadily resisted him, she would not have brought sin into the world.
Under the Law you see that it is sin, and you struggle against it, but
you have no power to resist, and down you go. United to Christ, you see
that it is sin, and you have power to resist, and you resist it, and the
Devil runs away; and that is the difference. You are married to a new
husband now, and He is more than a match for the old Devil. He is a
conquered foe, while you abide in Christ. He can torment, harass, and
excite you, and stimulate
your natural appetites, but he cannot make you sin, while you abide in Christ. 'He that is begotten of God keepeth himself and that Wicked One toucheth him not.' 'Ye are strong and have overcome the Wicked One.'
Then, again, we are open to the temptations of the world, but this is
provided for. Jesus Christ knows that we are susceptible to the liking of
nice things like other people, and great things, and ambitious schemes, and
the world's praises and censures. God's people are only sadly too
familiar with this, and the weak part of their nature would respond to it,
and they would fall; but now they are united to Christ, and He opens their
eyes to see that it is Satan and the world. When the Devil takes them to
the top of the pinnacle, and shows them all the glory of the world, he
tries to make them think it would be very nice to have it; he tempts them
to think it hard that they should be regarded as such paltry and mean
people, because they belong to Christ; but when they are thoroughly and
truly united to Jesus, He gives them power to say, as He did, 'Get
thee behind Me, Satan,' for it is written, 'Thou shalt love the
Lord thy God, and Him ONLY shalt thou serve'--not
Him and the world. Oh! thank God, if you have got there. Praise the Lord,
if you understand that.
Then he comes not only through these avenues, but he comes again with
direct, subtle, spiritual influence, with his old insinuation, as he came
to Eve, and says, 'Hath God said' this, or that? He tries to
inject doubts as to God's goodness and veracity into the
believer's soul, as he used to do
under the Law, and under the Law the convicted sinner's soul used to swell with rebellion, and say, 'Yes, it is hard and cruel.'
Now, Satan still comes and vomits these thoughts, and tries to excite
these ill feelings and these chargings of God foolishly in the
believer's soul, but by virtue of his union with Christ, who came not
to do His own will, but His Father's, and who spoke only the things
that His Father bade Him, the believer says, 'Though He slay me, yet
will I trust in Him.' 'Shall not the Judge of all the earth do
right?'--and the Devil is gone. And then when the Devil is
foiled at all these points, he tries higher ground. 'Really you are a
wonderful Christian--you are. You have had special grace, for surely
very few people can have resisted the amount of temptation that you have.
Really you must be one of God's specially favoured ones. Now cast
yourself down. It is written, "He shall give His angels charge
concerning you."' Spiritual presumption next. When he is foiled
through the world, and the flesh, and the Devil, and then he doffs his old
robe and comes as an angel of light. But the soul's Bridegroom is hard
by, and He says, 'Be not ignorant of Satan's devices. Behold I
am thy Salvation. Trust and be not afraid.' And so the soul refuses
to cast itself into unnecessary troubles, and is content to abide in, and
walk with its Lord. That is how He gives us the victory. He shows us
Satan's devices, and gives us power. I cannot tell you how. We
don't know how. We only know that He gives it to us, and we only know
that if one instant
separated from Him we fall and become as other men. We only know that in those seasons when our faith has relaxed its grasp, we have gone down in the mud and been overcome as others. It is by faith we stand, and while, like Peter, we keep our eye on Him, and hold Him fast, the waves may roar, and the winds may howl, but He holds us by virtue of this union, and we bring forth fruit unto God. We have power over the Devil. He said, 'I will give you power over all the power of the enemy.' This is the deliverance of the SAINTS. This is the life of the saints. This is the fight of faith. THIS IS THE JOY OF SALVATION. This is the SORT OF RELIGION THAT DOES TO DIE WITH!!!
People all over the land are astounded at our poor, weak, illiterate
Salvation Army Soldiers. A gentleman, in a Meeting on Easter Monday, a
leading man of thought and experience in the Holiness world, who was there
all day--when my daughter said, 'Why don't you
speak?'--said, 'One feels as if one can't speak in
these Meetings.' 'Why?' These people have such unction
from the Holy One that they are wiser than their teachers. Another
gentleman, of considerable position, too, in the religious world, said,
'I feel like getting down at their feet. I feel as if they could
teach me.' How is it that they have such power--these babes in
intellect and intelligence? All over the land people say this to me. People
who talk and go ahead in other meetings, when they get into our Meetings,
say, 'I can't. They are so far ahead of me that, to tell you the
truth, I have nothing to say.' I say, the Lord have mercy upon you,
and
make haste and come up after them. Only get down from your high mightiness as low as these people, and you will get it. It is not because they are poor and illiterate, that they have power, but because they are babes in spirit. Even as Christ said, 'I thank Thee, O Father, that Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.' The simple spirit, the teachable, believing soul--Oh! how much more it learns of God, in one hour's precious communion, than Doctors of Divinity learn in weeks of close study, who have not got it, because it is the SPIRIT that teaches the things of God. This is union with Jesus that bringeth forth fruit unto God, and, Oh! the wonderful things it enables us to bring forth. If you would all follow me, as far as I have gone this afternoon, and make the resolution I made at fifteen years of age, not to be put off with theories, but that you will KNOW THE LORD, that you will have this Divine union, and that you will never rest till you get it and know you have it--if we could all get thus far by next Sunday--what happiness there would be amongst you. There would be some Hallelujahs. Many of you would be surprised--how you would find your tongues. A gentleman once said to me, 'I never did shout in my life, but upon my word I couldn't help it.' I said, 'Amen. It's time, then, you began.' I hope it may be the same with many of you. When the Lord comes to His Temple and fills it with His glory, you won't know what to do. You must find vent somewhere, or you will be as the poor old negro said he was--'Ready to bust his waistcoat.'
We feel so about temporal things. People drop down dead with joy. People shriek with grief. People's hearts stand still with wonder at the news they have heard, perhaps from some prodigal boy. I heard of a mother, not long ago, whom some one injudiciously told of the sudden return of her son, who dropped down dead, and never spoke. And when the Master cames to His Temple, that glorious blessed Holy Saviour, whom you profess so to long after and to love, and who has been absent so many years, and whom you have been seeking after with strong crying and tears, when He comes, do you think it will be too much to shout your song, or go on your face, or do any extravagant thing? Oh! no, if there is reality, you cannot help yourself. The manifestation will be according to your nature. One will fall down and weep in quietness, and the other will get up and shout and jump. You cannot help it. I have read of two martyrs one of whom rejoiced in the realization of God's presence, and the other was in darkness, yet did not deny his Lord. He continued in the way of obedience, and the other was encouraging him to hope and believe that the Master would come; but He had not come, when they started from the dungeon to the stake; so they fixed upon a sign, and the one said to the other, 'If He comes, you will give me the sign on the road.' The Master did come, but the martyr could not confine himself to the sign. He shouted, raising his arms to his fellow-martyr, 'He's come, He's come, He's come.' He couldn't help it. When He comes you won't be ashamed who knows it. When you really get a living Christ for your
husband, you will be prouder than the bride, you will have got a husband worth being proud of, and you will love to acknowledge and praise Him, and the day is coming when you will crown Him before all the host of Heaven. The Lord help you to accept Him, and put away everything that hinders His coming. Amen.
--'That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.'
have nothing to do with the Law. Hence, there has come to be a spirit of Antinomianism abroad in the land, compared with which the Antinomianism of bygone ages was harmless. God helping me, I shall never cease to lift up my voice against it.
Now please, first note that there is, in this writing,
talking, and singing about the Law a great deal of mental fog and
confusion. People should be very careful, when they come to such matters as
these, to be clear in their own minds as to what the Apostle is writing
about; but I find frequently in such writings and songs a total
misapprehension as to the meaning of the Apostle, and a total confounding
of the Moral with the Ceremonial Law. Now, always mind, when you read
anything about the Law, to examine and find out which Law is meant, whether
it is the great Moral Law, which never has been, and never can be,
abrogated, or the Ceremonial Law, which, in Christ, confessedly was done
away. Mind which, because your Salvation may depend upon that point. If you
make a mistake there, you may be lost through it; therefore, be very
careful. Now, I say that people confound these, and, consequently, there is
a perfect hotch-potch of theology in this day, which I defy anybody to
understand. People do not know what they are to believe, or what they are
not to believe. As a gentleman said, not long ago, 'It is confusion
confounded. I go to one meeting and hear this, and then I go to another
meeting and hear that, and, very often, in the very same meeting, the
speakers will get up and flatly contradict each other!'
'Exactly,' I said, 'but you have got the Bible. Why don't you study that for yourself? Why not use your own common sense--why not let your conscience speak?' 'But,' said he, 'why do not our ministers do it?' 'Because,' said I, 'many of them do not know it themselves. Let your conscience speak, and God will not let you go wrong.' It is an honest heart people want, and then they will get the light. People sing about the Law, talk about the Law, and glory in being free from the Law, in a lawless, Antinomian spirit, as far from anything Paul ever wrote or meant, as Hell is from Heaven! Oh, it is an awfully bad sign, when people are out of love with the Law of God. David made his boast in the Law of his God, he meditated on it by day and by night, and its precepts were his delight; he loved it with all his soul, and so did David's Son, and He is too much in love with His Father's Law and Will to hold fellowship with anybody who does not love it. As He said to the Jews, 'He that is of God, heareth God's words; ye, therefore, hear them not, because ye are not of God'; and, again, of His disciples, 'For I have given unto them the words which Thou gavest me.' So, mind, if you do not love the words, the expression of the will of God, you do not love God, and if you do not love the Father, neither do you love the Son. This is the very accusation which He brought against the Jews, that they had made void His Father's Law. Let us mind, then, the distinction always made between the great Moral and the Ceremonial Law.
In the second place: I want you to note, that when
you have ascertained that the Apostle is speaking of the Moral
Law--and he appears to speak disparagingly of it--he is always
referring to its inability to justify a sinner, or to produce spiritual
life. This, he says, it could not do; but he never speaks disparagingly of
it as the guide and standard of spiritual life, after life
is given. No! he goes back to it as the only standard, and so
did Jesus Christ. They continually refer to the Law as the highest
expression of the holiness and righteousness of God, and as the standard by
which we are to set our souls and consciences. What other standard have we
but the Law? How am I to judge of my thoughts, words, and actions but by
the Law? Where has Jesus Christ given me any other gauge? And if people
would but read on, and let the Apostle explain himself, they
would understand him better, and not get into such tanglements and mazes!
Paul is most careful to guard himself against the Antinomian conclusions
which he saw might be drawn from isolated parts of his
writings. He says, 'Do we, then, make void the Law through faith?
nay, we establish the Law.' And, again, 'Wherefore the Law is
holy, and the commandment holy, just, and good'; and, again, when he
says, that 'To them that are without Law He became as without
Law'; he guards himself by a parenthesis, 'Being not without
Law to God, but under the Law to Christ.' That is under the great
universal Law of love, which fulfils all other law; for 'Love is the
fulfilling of the Law.' Love is the very spirit and essence of the
Law. The Law is to me the highest expression of what I OUGHT
to be, in my relations to my Creator and in my
tions to my fellow-creatures. Now, can what ought to be ever
be abrogated? Does it stand to sense? Can the rightness of things ever be
altered? Can God ever make two and two five, and can God make evil good and
good evil? He can make an evil person good, by saving him from
the evil and making him good; but God cannot make evil itself good, and
good evil, and He never professes to do it.
climax of his argument, the great end and purpose towards which he has been
advancing in his preceding reasonings: 'THAT the
righteousness of the Law might be FULFILLED in us.' As
though he had said, 'This great and glorious end which was lost in
Adam shall be re-found and restored.' So the old serpent shall be
circumvented at last, and God's people shall be able to fulfil this
beautiful ideal of rectitude and righteousness which God has planned for
man--Jesus Christ shall destroy the work of the Devil, restore man,
and enable him to walk in the light, even as He is in the light. What
the Law tried to do by a restraining power from without, the Gospel does by
an inspiring power from within. That is the difference. I could not
keep it in the letter, but, united to my heavenly Bridegroom, I can keep it
in the Spirit. He fills me with His love, and this enables me to keep the
Law, for love is the furfilling of the Law. 'Love worketh no ill to
his neighbour' of any kind, and, again, the great Teacher said,
'For all the Law is fulfilled in one word--Thou
shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.' If you do that, will you injure
your neighbour? See how the Spirit fulfils the Law! If you love your
neighbour, will you misrepresent him, cheat him, envy him anything that he
possesses or enjoys? 'No,' you say, 'of course not; it is
a contradiction.' Very well, then, get this love in your soul and you
will fulfil the Law. Love is the fulfilling of the Law, and he that loveth
in this sense dwelleth in God and God in him. Love is the fulfilling of the
Law, and the great glory of the Gospel of Christ is that it brings us back
to love His Law, and as the
angels delight in it, and as all holy intelligences delight in it, so we
delight in it, and the righteousness of the Law--high, deep, and
broad, and long as it is--shall be fulfilled in us, 'who walk
not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.'
People talk about glorifying Christ; but, it seems to me, this does glorify
Him. It seems to me here is something to glory in, that He has circumvented
the old serpent and snatched the prey from his teeth, and restored it, and
enabled man, after all, to fulfil the righteousness of God. Not only in
what Christ does for us; but what He does IN US, that God
should look on you and say, 'I am well pleased. There is nothing
there contrary to My will.' He will give you the testimony, as He did
Enoch, that your ways please Him, that your thoughts please Him, that your
motives, and purposes and desires, and actions please Him. That is what the
Gospel proposes to do. We have seen how this spirit is produced. Now let us
look at the fruits, and first:
say with the Apostle, 'All men seek their own, and not the things
that are Jesus Christ's.' Alas! I fear it is very largely so.
You talk with a lady about the Salvation of her children's souls, the
souls of her neighbours, and her servants, or about the cause of God in
general, and she will talk 'good' with you, so to speak, and
you will feel, 'yes, it is all very well,' but it doesn't
seem to come up from the depths. It seems to come from the throat, so to
speak; a sort of superficial, surface kind of thing. But, if a child is
dangerously ill, how quick the mother's sympathies, how ready to
listen, how willing to do anything that you suggest to help the child. If
the business is in danger, if a man has got into difficulties and you can
suggest any plan by which he may get out of them, how quickly his attention
is aroused. His interest doesn't flag, because the subject touches him
to the quick. It is his concern, and just so in many other
things. God forbid I should judge all Christians. No, no, no!--there
are blessed exceptions. There are many like David--rivers of water do
run down their eyes; but I am speaking of the mass of professors. I am
afraid that in their affections there is a great deal of this lukewarm
superficiality. Why is it? Because such people do not abide in Christ, if
ever they were in Him. They do not keep the freshness and the quickness of
the Spirit of Jesus. They do not give themselves time to do it for one
thing, or care about it for another. We want the constant indwelling of the
Holy Spirit to quicken our spiritual perceptions and keep us awake. It is
Satan's great desire to rock us to sleep, and there is no quality in
which the
dis-
ciples have been more conspicuous than in going to sleep since the time
when the professed watchers went to sleep in the garden; but Jesus, in His
mercy and love, is always wakening them. But, oh! this disposition to go to
sleep, to lose our quickness of perception. Now, friends, what must you do?
You must do as you did at first. Cry and believe till your soul is filled
with the love of God.
made up my mind it should be first always--not in time merely, but in
degree--all the way through. If I love Him best, I shall feel for Him
deepest, and shall act for Him first. If I love Him best, I shall feel for
Him more deeply than for my husband or children, near and precious as they
are and dearer than my own life a thousand times; but He will be dearer
still, and His interests; and if, as Jesus Christ says, His interests
require me to sacrifice these precious and beloved ones of my soul, then I
shall sacrifice them; for the philosophical reason that I love Him
better than I love them, and, therefore, I shall lay them on His
altar, to promote His glory. If I understand it, this is the fruit of the
Spirit in the affections--God first. I am afraid, in a great many
instances, it is husband first, wife first, children first, and, I am
afraid, in some cases, business first, and then God may take what there is
left and be thankful for that! Now, if you are in this condition you need
not expect joy, peace, power. You will never get it if you do. God will
have to make you over again before you can get it, and to alter the
conditions of His Salvation. Oh! but if you will lay it all on His altar,
that is quite another thing.
your soul enough to do it, if you let these things prevent that
whole-hearted consecration which He requires.' We are in His hands.
'Whom He loveth He chasteneth,' and if you want to keep the
precious things you have, oh! put them at His feet, and hold them in
subordination to Him. First, in your affections! He is a jealous God, and
jealousy in God is very much like jealousy in us. It is the same
characteristic of mind, only purified from selfishness. He is a jealous
God, and if you will love these things better than Him, and if you will not
give Him your affections, then He will chastise you, or--what is worse
still--He will take His Holy Spirit from you.
became a mother; and He has helped me to keep that promise (though I have
not been as faithful to it as I ought), casting aside resolutely every
temptation to the contrary. And now He is giving me the fruit of my
self-denial in the souls and labours of my precious children. One after
another, as they grow up, they take their natural place in the temple of
the Lord, and I believe they shall go out no more for ever. Oh, that
parents would do it! Parents might save their children. I know
what a mother's feelings are. I know the temptation there is to see
them shine in competition with others, and to excel others. I know it all;
but I said, 'No; "Get thee behind me, Satan." I will keep
them for God'; and He has enabled me to keep them for
Him. Bless His holy name!
and feet, and the whole of your body to Him--your members instruments
of righteousness unto God. Hence, such a person will not feel his eyes are
his own, to rove at random wherever he lists. Such a person will not feel
his tongue is his own, to speak as he pleases. He will 'bridle
it,' as James says, when tempted to speak unadvisedly. Such a person
will not feel that his hands are his own, to waste the time in which he
ought to be doing something for God. Such a person will not feel his feet
his own, to carry him where he likes, but where his Master would have him
go--his whole body consecrated, and, especially, his
tongue--consecrated to God, to testify for Him. He will
feel that he must feed his body, as my husband often says, on the same
principle that a man feeds his horse--to keep it in the best working
condition for God--never eating anything that will bring the devils of
dyspepsia dancing round his soul. And, not only so, with eating and
drinking, but all his surroundings and deportment must be in keeping. It is
the Lord's body; and, if you love Him best, you will keep
it for Him: as the bride and the bridegroom keep themselves for each other,
so you will keep it for Him.
the man who does these is a perfect man, and fulfils the law; and when you
have the fullness of love that enables you to love God best and your
neighbour as yourself--enables you to do for the souls and bodies of
your fellows what you would like that they should do for you, if you
changed places, then the Law is fulfilled in you. Such people cannot sit
365 days in the year at the table with unconverted people, and never try to
get them saved. Such people cannot abide in the same house with
unbelievers, and not make them miserable. Oh, no. The unconverted say,
'It's too wretched to live here. I must get out of this crying
and praying for me all day long.' As a servant once said, she
couldn't stand it. She had had praying enough at home, without coming
there to have it. She did stand it for six weeks, and broke down at the
family altar and GOT SAVED, and became a preacher afterwards.
This spirit of love will make every unconverted sinner within your reach so
miserable that they will have to be converted or run away. How would you do
if they were DYING? You would run about in every direction to
get a minister. What a pity you did not feel like this twelve years ago.
You might have got the sinner converted then, and he have been serving the
Lord all the time? But, now he is dying, what a stir you make. What a
purely selfish religion that is. You want him saved, so that he may get
into HEAVEN, not that he might serve, honour, and glorify God.
You don't care at all about that. He might live on in disobedience.
Oh, be as much concerned for the honour of God as you are for your
friend's Salvation at the last, and then God will know how to save
them.
lapse altogether and be lost to the kingdom for ever. So God must be
represented, and, praise His name, He has had His faithful witnesses from
the beginning until now. As the apostle says--'He left not
Himself without witness.' Down from the days of Enoch, who walked
with God, to this present hour, God has always had His true and faithful
witnesses. In the worst times there have been some burning and shining
lights. Sometimes few and far between, sometimes, like Noah, one solitary
man in a whole generation of men, witnessing for God--but one, at
least, there has been. God has not left Himself without
witness.
most of God's faithful witnesses from the beginning: it persecuted
Him; it slew Him, as it would every faithful witness for
God--if God allowed it--and would leave itself without a single
spiritual light: for the spirit that worketh in the children of
disobedience hath an eternal and devilish hatred of every real, living,
spiritual child of God. It hates him as it hates the Son Himself, and it is
not the Devil's fault if he does not extinguish and exterminate every
such witness. It is because God will not allow him, but holds us, keeps us,
saves us, in spite of him.
to the things and claims of God--that there are twu sides to this. The
great mass of mankind say, that God's truth is a lie. They say it
virtually, if they do not say it in words; and many thousands of them,
alas! in words, also. They deny, many of them, His very existence, and say
there is neither Heaven nor Hell--that Jesus Christ was a mere
man--that religion is a myth, and that there is no such thing as the
knowledge of forgiveness of sins--that this witnessing is a grand
delusion of the imagination, and nothing further.
virtually, 'Look at me:--the way I live and act--WHAT
I AM--this is the religion of Jesus Christ.' I say, such
a man had far better have a millstone hanged about his neck and be drowned
in the depths of the sea. There would, then, be an end of his mischief; but
a false witness on behalf of Jesus Christ is the most mischievous traitor
on the face of the earth. He does more harm than a thousand false hostile
witnesses against Him. Oh! my friends, to be good witnesses
for Jesus Christ. The more a witness is supposed to know of the truth to
which he testified, the greater his responsibility. Oh! for a minister to
be a bad witness, as some of the prophets of old were. Look at the awful
things God says about them that lead His people into the ditch, caring more
about the fleece than the sheep--awful! For a mother to be a bad
witness in her family, and to take her little children, clinging on to her
skirts, right to the edge of the pit! For a master to be a bad
witness--to profess to be a Christian, and to be a bad witness before
his men; for a Sunday-school teacher to be a bad, inconsistent, false
witness of Jesus Christ in his class; for members of Christian Churches to
be bad witnesses to one another, and to the world; who can tell the awful
results? Oh! it is this inconsistent witnessing that has lowered and
lowered the standard of practical Christianity till we have not got any
standard left--till the landmarks are so obliterated, that there are
not any to be seen.
faithful witness, and, oh, may the Holy Spirit help us.
it will be possible for God to save them. This is altogether different from
a fine-spun theory about religion--this telling them that
God has SAVED YOU. Not what we have learned in books. The
world is sick of that. I don't wonder at intelligent men flying off
from religion. I can make great excuse when I think what many of them have
to listen to from Sunday to Sunday. As a gentleman said to me,
'It's enough to sicken anybody. We do get something in
The Times, but, upon my word, I can't keep awake at
church. It is not that I would not, if I could, but I can't.'
Poor fellow! how I pitied him.
What have I got to do with that? I have to preach the truth--the
beautiful, whole, round, diamond, luminous with Divine light, and not a
base, muddy, paste imitation, half truths manufactured into damning errors,
by which Satan is decoying thousands to Hell. Give men the whole
truth--both sides: the side that relates to God; and the side that
relates to man; and be done with the nonsense of making God contradict
Himself, for 'God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.'
If there were contradictions, there would be darkness. No; the darkness is
in our own poor, blind, puny brains, and not in God or in His Book. In His
Book, rightly interpreted, there is no contradiction whatsoever. The
whole truth: the convicting truth as well as the healing
truth; the sword as well as the balm; the running in of the Divine knife as
well as the pouring in of the Divine oil. As Paul says, in the 26th chapter
and 18th verse, 'To open their eves, and to turn them from darkness
to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive
forgiveness of sins.' He says he preached to the Jews and Gentiles
that they should repent. This is the Apostle Paul, the great expounder of
Justification by Faith, 'That they should repent,' and
what?--oh, you legal Paul, what?--'Do works meet for
repentance.' Oh, Paul, I thought you were saved from works altogether
and had done with the Law. Oh! you preach works, and doing works meet for
repentance. That is not Gospel, Paul! He significantly adds, 'For
this cause the Jews caught me, and tried to kill me': and for that
cause the Pharisees have been trying to kill God's true,
whole-truth witnesses ever since, for they don't like the doctrine
that cuts idols and sin in twain, and that says, 'Bring forth fruits
meet for repentance.'
way; we know, we see, we feel--walk ye in it.' Turn ye, turn ye,
for why will ye die? They want outspoken witnesses. There are plenty of
false witnesses now, as there ever were, and what does Jesus Christ want?
He wants His true witnesses to come out and face them, and be a match for
them--not to sneak away in holes and corners, and be ashamed of their
religion, and talk about an 'unobtrusive
religion'--unobtrusive nonsense. There is no such thing! Come
out before the world. As Elijah said, 'If the Lord be God, follow
Him,' serve Him, speak for Him; 'but if Baal' be God,
'then follow him.' Then away with all this nonsense, your
sanctuaries, and Bibles, and profession--have done with it all and
follow Baal. Be one thing or the other. Methinks there wants an Elijah now
to come and ring it through all England. I would like to see any man get up
and make a straightforward recognition of, and appeal to, God in our Houses
of Parliament, and I would like to see how he would be greeted.
thing, and the kings of the earth set themselves, He is laughing at them,
and by and by will come their calamity.
an honest fellow. He knew where he was going, and he said it.
from testimony of scores of souls. In fact, I could not repeat it, it would
make your faces burn to hear what men of intelligence, thought, and
standing have said to me in many an ante-room where I have been labouring.
It is time there was a change. The world is famishing for lack of real
spiritual bread. It wants something to eat, and you give it a stone! but
God is raising a people who know what it wants and how to give
it, who know how to break the bread of life, and testify what God
has done for them, and what He can do for other poor famishing souls; who
can go and say: 'Here, my friend, He can save such as you. I was such
a one once. I was a slave of sin, the slave of drink, or a blasphemer, or a
liar, or a thief, or addicted to some bad secret habit worse than any of
these. I was such a slave, and He has saved me. He has broken my fetters
and set me free, and I am the Lord's free-man. He has saved me and He
can save you,' That is what the world wants--TESTIMONY
WITNESSING.
must be a true witness, even if he has to seal his testimony with his
blood.
unwashed and unpardoned and unsaved--where is he gone? I got so
wrought up once upon this point that I thought I should have lost my
reason. I could not sleep at night with thinking of the state of those who
die unsaved. Dare I think about it? WHERE IS HE GONE? Oh! it was this
view of the case that led me to open my mouth first in public for
God.
to me by His Spirit. I had no vision, but a revelation to my mind. He
seemed to take me back to the time when I was fifteen and sixteen, when I
first gave my heart to Him. He seemed to show me, all the bitter way, how
this one thing had been the fly in the pot of ointment, the bitter in the
cup, and prevented me from realizing what I should otherwise have done. I
felt how it had hindered the revelation of Himself to me, and hindered me
from growing in grace, and learning more of the deep things of God. He
showed it to me, and then I remember prostrating myself upon my face before
Him, and I promised Him there in the sick room: 'Lord, if Thou wilt
return unto me, as in the days of old, and re-visit me with those urgings
of Thy Spirit which I used to have, I will obey, if I die in the attempt. I
care not; I will obey.' However, the Lord did not revisit me
immediately. He let me recover, and I went out again. About three months
after that I went to the chapel of which my husband was a minister, and he
had an extraordinary service. Even then he was ever trying something new to
get the outside people. They were having a meeting in which ministers and
friends in the town were taking part, and all giving their testimony and
speaking for God. I was in the minister's pew, with my eldest boy,
then four years old, and there were some thousand people present. I felt
much more depressed than usual in spirit, and not expecting anything
particular, but, as the testimonies went on, I felt the Spirit come upon
me. You alone who have felt it know what it means. It cannot be described.
I felt it to the extremities of my fingers and toes. It seemed as if a
voice said to
me, 'Now, if you were to go and testify, you know I would bless it to
your own soul as well as to the souls of the people,' and I gasped
again, and I said, in my soul, 'Yes, Lord, I believe Thou wouldst,
but I cannot do it.' I had forgotten my vow--it did not occur to
me at all. All in a moment, after I had said that to the Lord I seemed to
see the bedroom where I had lain, and to see myself as though I had been
there prostrate before the Lord promising Him that, and then the voice
seemed to say to me, 'Is this consistent with that promise?'
and I almost jumped up and said, 'No, Lord, it is the old thing over
again, but I cannot do it,' and I felt as though I would sooner die
than do it. And then the Devil said, 'Besides, you are not prepared
to speak. You will look like a fool, and have nothing to say.' He
made a mistake. He overdid himself for once. It was that word settled it. I
said, 'Ah! this is just the point. I have never yet been willing to
be a fool for Christ, now I will be one'; and without stopping
another moment, I rose up in the seat, and walked up the chapel. My dear
husband was just going to conclude. He thought something had happened to
me, and so did the people. We had been there two years, and they knew my
timid, bashful nature. He stepped down to ask me, 'What is the
matter, my dear.' I said, 'I want to say a word.' He was
so taken by surprise, he could only say, 'My dear wife wants to say a
word,' and sat down. He had been trying to persuade me to do it for
ten years. He and a lady in the church, only that very week, had been
trying to persuade me to go and address a little cottage meeting, of some
twenty working people, but
could not. I got up--God only knows how--and if any mortal ever
did hang on the arm of Omnipotence, I did. I felt as if I were clinging to
some human arm--and yet it was a Divine arm--to hold me. I just
got up and told the people how it came about. I confessed, as I think
everybody should, when they have been in the wrong and misrepresented the
religion of Jesus Christ. I told the people, although I had been occupying
all the ordinary positions of a minister's wife, though I was young
then, I had been doing a great deal more than many an elderly one does in
the Church of God, in the way of meeting believers, and visiting and
working behind the scenes, so that they had all been regarding me as a very
devoted woman, and I told them so. I said, 'I dare say many of you
have been looking upon me as a very devoted woman, and one who has been
living faithfully to God, but I have come to know that I have been living
in disobedience, and to that extent I have brought darkness and leanness
into my soul, but I promised the Lord three or four months ago, and I dare
not disobey. I have come to tell you this, and to promise the Lord that I
will be obedient to the Heavenly vision.'
what I was going to say next Sunday, and between times noted down with a
pencil the thoughts as they struck me. And then I would appear sometimes,
with an outline scratched in pencil, trusting in tho Lord to give me the
power of His Holy Spirit; and I think I can say that from that
day--and it is about nineteen years and nine months since--He has
never allowed me to open my mouth without giving me signs of His presence
and blessing. Don't you see that while the Devil kept me silent, he
kept me comparatively fruitless; now I have ground to hope and expect to
meet hundreds in Glory, whom God has made me instrumental in saving. The
Lord dealt very tenderly with me: giving me great encouragement, but some
things were dreadful to me at first. I would not go into pulpits till the
people demanded it. And the first time I saw my name on a wall!--I
shall never forget the sensation. Then my dear husband said, 'When
you gave yourself to the Lord, did you not give Him your name?' Thus
he used to go from one thing to another, until now I have learned to glory
in the Cross. When a dear friend was talking, the other day about the
tremendous undertaking it was to go to France and begin there; I said,
'My dear sir, I should not feel any more discomposed to go to France,
and open there next Sunday, than I should to appear in St. Andrew's
Hall, simply for this reason, that I believe God is the same in every
place, and the same faith, and the same truths and the same faithfulness
will bring Him to our help.' 'Ye are my witnesses,' saith
the Lord, 'And, lo, I am with you ALWAYS!'
were to be in desperate earnest, thousands would be won; but they are not
likely to be won by the genteel fashion of putting the truth before
them--so common nowadays--because nobody thinks they are in any
danger! If you believe it, begin. The Apostle says you are to
be good, valiant soldiers of Jesus Christ: the old Christians were all
this; they fought a good warfare, and they overcame the Devil by the
'Blood of the Lamb and the word of their
testimony.' Be soldiers for the Lord, and He will give the
victory, and you shall go and take prisoners. Great big giants,
black-hearted infidels, black-hearted blasphemers, they shall go down
before you like little children, because the Lord of Hosts will put His
Spirit in you. 'Ye are My witnesses.' Witness!
WITNESS! of Me everywhere and always. The Lord help you.
Amen.
a higher life, and I am afraid that those people who rest in the lower life
will find themselves awfully mistaken at last. I believe that religion is
all or nothing. God is either first or He is nowhere with us, individually.
The very essence and core of religion is, 'God first,' and
allegiance and obedience to Him first.
way. No, no!--God will have you, or He will not have you. He will know
you, or will say, 'Depart from Me, I know you not.' The Lord
help you every one.
going back into the world (there would be ten times more hope of them if
they did that), they cling on to the profession and kindle a fire of their
own, and walk in the sparks they have kindled. But He says He is against
them, and 'they shall lie down in sorrow.' Oh! there is a deal
of this. People must have a God and a religion. They will have one, and
when they shrink from the true one, and will not follow the Divine counsel,
then they make one for themselves, and a great many of them go to sleep and
never wake again. They go out of the world comfortably under the influence
of narcotics, and they never wake. They die deceived; or, if they do awake,
we know what sort of an awakening it is, and what sort of deathbed theirs
is. Our poor Salvation Army people--these
'fishermen'--these young women--are sent for to pray
with these people when they get awakened. And Oh! what scenes are
witnessed. Oh! see to it that you get awake and keep awake, and be willing
to follow the Spirit's teaching, in everything, at all costs and
sacrifices.
salem. Imagine what state of mind would be theirs. How would they wait for
the promise?
they all feel? Oh! they would feel indeed unholy, untrue, cowards, and
would go down, over and over again, on their faces, to wait in deep
self-abasement.
appreciation of its importance. Ah! they had enough to make them do it. How
do you think they felt when they got into the upper room? We are told that
there were about one hundred and twenty of them. How do you think they felt
as they thought of the past, remembered the ignominious crucifixion of
their Lord, looked forward to the future, and contemplated the work to
which He had called them? And what was it? It was not to go and set up an
idol of Jesus Christ alongside of other idols in the temples of heathen
gods, but it was to go into the city of Jerusalem, where they had just
crucified Him between two thieves, and proclaim Him as the long-expected
Messiah of the Jews. It was to begin to set up the Royal Spiritual Kingdom
in contradistinction to their temporal and earthly kingdom, and then to go
out from Jerusalem and subjugate the world to His sway! How would they
feel? Poor Peter, and Thomas, and John, and Mary and the rest of the women
(thanks to the Holy Ghost, He has taken care to put it in that they were
there)--how would they feel? They would feel, 'We might as well
stop and die here, as go out as we are, until we do get the equipment of
power. We want something more than we have got.' And there they
waited, and they said, 'Lord, pour it out upon us; we are ready. We
are helpless, we are powerless--we can do nothing. Thou knowest what
Thou hast called us to do, and Thou hast promised this power to perform it.
Now, here we are. It is useless for us to begin until we get power.'
They appreciated its importance. God never gave this gift to any human soul
who had not come to the
point that he would sell all he had to get it. Oh! it is the most precious
gift He has to give in earth or in Heaven--to be filled with the
Spirit, filled with Himself (as we said last Sunday), taken possession of
by God; moved, inspired, energized, empowered by God, by the great
indwelling Spirit moving through all our faculties, and energizing our
whole being for Him. That is the greatest and most glorious gift He has. He
is not likely to give it to people who do not highly appreciate it, and so
highly that they are willing to forgo all other gifts for
it--everything else, creature love, creature comfort, ease, enjoyment,
and aggrandizement for this one thing. Have you come to that? Are you
telling the Lord so? Are you sincere? If you are really sincere in what
some of you write me, then some of you have come to it; but, Oh, how people
can deceive themselves! My heart has been awfully pained during this last
week with one or two instances of this kind that have come to my notice. I
have been half the week, I think, with Elijah under the juniper tree. I
have cried, 'Lord, who hath believed our report?' Who will thus
take hold of God for this special and full salvation? Alas! how few. One
draws back for one reason, and another for another. One feels how far they
come with us. You can hear the tread of their feet, and you can hear how
they falter and draw back. None but those who travail for souls can ever
understand the agony of feeling that souls are drawing back when you have
brought them on the road so far. I have thought many a time of the Saviour,
when so many who had been hearing Him forsook Him and fled. It was after
He had been trying to lead them higher, even to real spiritual union with
Himself.
Mary might have said, 'I have been running about ministering to the
Saviour a long time, I'm afraid my friends will think I am neglecting
home duties and the claims of old friends. I really must go home and see to
matters a bit; I may as well wait there for the Holy Ghost as at
Jerusalem.' No, Mary had learned better. She went back to Jerusalem.
We have got their names. And they entered into the upper room, and shut the
door, and waited-obedient faith! One of your poets said:
their throats, for the Holy Ghost, and see how they talk the
minute they get up from their knees, and know how they live and whom they
associate with, and how they spend their time, I say, 'Yes, you may
pray till your dying day, but you will never get it.' If they
expected anything, they would wait for it: common sense tells us that.
you did not wait until it came. You got hungry, or you fell asleep, or
hugged your idol. You did not wait TILL IT CAME.
you not become a temple of the indwelling Spirit of God? Put a
MUST in there, if you please. Far more important is the soul
than the body. Friends, are these things so, or am I only imagining them?
Are these great truths, or are they fables? These are the most
common-sense, simple exhibitions and illustrations of these truths that
could possibly be given. Was it not so? Did they not thus wait, and did not
the Holy Ghost come?--and when He came He sat upon each of
them. Bless His name.
could not. It was the power of God. The Holy Ghost
does come, and because, in coming thus into our souls, and
thus filling us, He sometimes prostrates our bodies, people rebel, as they
did on this occasion, and reject the manifestation, and say,
'Excitement! fanaticism!' What right have you to say that the
Holy Spirit coming into a human soul can operate upon that soul to the full
extent without, to some degree, prostrating the body? We know how people
fall under great emotions of anger, grief, and joy. Why? Because the
influence of the mind has so affected the body that the body cannot bear
it, and when the Holy Spirit of God comes into a human soul and opens its
eyes, and quickens its perceptions, and enlarges its capacity, and swells
it with glory, is it an unlikely or improbable thing that the body should
sometimes be prostrated under His power? What did Paul say?--'I
bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus,' and I have been into
'the third heaven and heard unspeakable words which it is not lawful
to utter.' Do you think God intended such experiences and visions
only for Paul and the Apostles? Ah! there have been many since his day who
have had such experiences, and many more of God's people
might have them, if they would, but they are not willing to be
wrapped in His arms; they are not willing to be pressed to His bosom; they
are not willing to know Him in the Scriptural sense; they are not willing
to be given up and consumed by His Spirit. Their heart and flesh do not cry
out after the living God, as David's did. They are not panting after
Him as the hart after the water-brooks. They are not longing to
come and appear before God. If they were so longing that they could not
live without it, then God would come and be revealed to them. Will you,
then, wait in obedient faith?
the lives of the Apostles and early Christians! How utterly careless they
seemed to be of everything compared with this--this was the first
thing with them everywhere! How Paul, at the very threshold, counted
nothing else of any consequence, but willingly, cheerfully gave up every
other consideration to live for this; and how he speaks of other Apostles
and helpers in the Gospel who had been nigh unto death, and laid down their
necks for the work's sake; and we know how he travelled, worked,
prayed, wept, and suffered, bled and died, for this one end. And so with
the early Christians, who were scattered through the persecutions, how they
went everywhere preaching the Word; how earnest and zealous they were, even
after the Apostolic age, we learn from ecclesiastical history--how
they would push themselves in everywhere; how they made converts, and won
real, self-denying followers even in kings' courts; how they would not
be kept out, and could not be put down, and could not be hindered or
silenced. 'These Christians are everywhere,' said one of their
bitterest persecutors. Yes, they were instant in season and out of season;
they won men and women on every hand, to the vexation and annoyance of
those who hated them. Like their Master, they could not be hid; they could
not be repressed; so aggressive, so constraining, was the spirit which
inspired and urged them on.
thou readest?' Oh! friends, study your New Testament on this
question, and you will be alarmed to find to what an awful extent you are
your brother's keeper--to what an awful and alarming extent God
holds you responsible for the Salvation of those around you.
utterance, after the first burst of praise to God for deliverance from the
bondage of sin and death, is a prayer gasped to the throne for some other
soul still in darkness. And is not this the legitimate fruit of the Spirit?
Is not this what we should expect? I take any one here, who has been truly
saved, to record if the first gushings of his soul, after his own
deliverance, was not for somebody else--father, mother, child,
brother, sister, friend? Oh! yes, some of you could not go to sleep until
you had written to a distant relative, and poured out your soul in anxious
longings for his Salvation; you could not take your necessary food until
you had spoken or written to somebody in whose soul you were deeply
interested. The Spirit began at once to urge you to seek for souls; and so
it is frequently the last cry of the Spirit in the believer's soul
before it leaves the body. You have sat beside many a dying saint, and what
has been the last prayer? Has it been anything about self, money, family,
circumstances? Oh! those things are now all left behind, and the last
expressed anxiety has been for some prodigal soul outside the kingdom of
God. When the light of eternity comes streaming upon the soul, and its eyes
get wide open to the value of souls, it neither hears nor sees anything
else! It goes out of time into eternity, praying as the Redeemer did, for
the souls it is leaving behind. This is the first and last utterance of the
Spirit in the believer's soul on earth; and oh! if Christians were
only true to the promptings of this blessed Spirit, it would be the
prevailing impulse, the first desire and effort all the way through life.
It is not God's fault that it is not so. In personal
dealing with souls there is no point comes out more frequently than this:
nothing which those who have really been converted and have become
backsliders in heart more frequently confess and bemoan than their
unfaithfulness to the monitions of the Spirit with respect to other souls.
In fact, backsliding begins here in thousands of instances. Satan gets
people to yield to considerations of ease, propriety, being out of season,
being injudicious, and so on; and they lose opportunities of dealing with
souls, and so the Spirit is grieved and grieved. Oh! what numbers of people
have confessed this to me.
being filled with the Spirit; and some of you are puzzled as to how you
ought to wait--whether you ought to go on with your lawful avocations
and wait. I say: My friends, I could quite justify the position I took up
last Sunday, but I will not stop, for I do not care about circumstantials;
but mind, this is the great point--you must so wait,
wherever it may be--so plead, and wrestle, and believe--SO
THAT YOU GET IT. Then I care not whether it be in Jerusalem, in the
Upper Room, or anywhere else--only, get it. Don't
let us lose the substance in quibbling about the way. Wait in that way
congenial to your present circumstances; but, Oh! wait for it until you get
it, for this is the life of your souls, and the life of many souls,
perchance, besides yours. You want this spirit--the
spirit that yearns over the souls of your fellow-men; to weep over them as
you look at them in their sin, and folly, and misery; the spirit that
cannot be satisfied with your own enjoyments or with feeling that
you are safe, or even that your children are safe; but that
yearns over every living soul while there is one left unsaved, and can
never rest satisfied until it is brought into the kingdom.
eclipse is through grieving and quenching the Spirit.
He has done for us. And what is that? Oh! you say, I cannot
tell. No, no; we shall have to get home first, and then we
shall never be able to tell. We shall never be able to cast up
that sum, not even for the gratification of the angels. That
will remain an unexplored quantity for ever, what He has done for us! We
shall have to find out what it would have been to have been lost! and what
it is to be saved in all its fullness and eternity, before we can tell what
He has done for us!
as you have been kneeling at the Cross? Did you ever gaze upon that
illustrious sufferer, and hear His voice, as you looked back into the
paltry past? 'What hast thou done for Me?'
for yourself, what profit is that to the Lord? But you say--'I
am bringing up my family.' Exactly; so are the worldly people around
you, but what for? For God or for yourself? Oh, let us look at these
things, friends. I am afraid a great deal of the religion is a mere
transition of the selfishness of the human heart from the world to
religion. I am afraid a great deal of the religion of this day ends in
getting all you can and doing as little as you can--like some of your
servants. You know the sort, who will do no more than they are
forced--just get through, because they are hired. There is a great
deal of that kind of service in these days, both towards man and towards
God.
the world, but from half-hearted professors and Pharisees, bearing the
Cross, enduring the shame of unkind reproaches in living and striving to
save them? Oh, what have you been doing, brother and sister?
people come to me with their fastidious objections, I say--'My
friends, all I know is--souls are dying, dying.'
does. Never mind if you do stammer. They will believe you when it comes
from the heart. They will say, 'He talked to me quite natural,'
as a man said, some time ago--wondering that he should be talked to
about religion in a natural way; but mind, no mock feeling, for they will
detect it in a minute. Go to the closet until you get filled with the
Spirit, and then go and let it out upon them. Finney says 'I went and
let my heart out on the people.' Get your heart full of the living
water and then open the gates and let it flow out. Look them in the face
and take hold of them lovingly by the hand and say, 'My friend, you
are dying, you are going to everlasting death. If nobody has ever told you
till now--I have come to tell you. My friend, you have a precious
soul. Is it saved?' They can understand that! not beginning in a
roundabout way, but talking to them straight: 'Do you ever think
about your precious soul? Is it saved? Are your sins pardoned? Are you
ready to die?' Your rich neighbours and your servant-girls and your
stable-men alike, can understand that.
put your hand to the plough and He will give you strength to push it
along.
to every spiritual and thoughtful Christian that there is a great want
somewhere in connexion with the preaching of the Gospel, and the
instrumentalities of the church at large. That there are many blessed
exceptions I joyfully and gladly admit. No one hails them with greater
gladness than I do. That there are blessed green spots here and there in
the wilderness is quite true, and when these are gathered together and
descanted on in articles, they look very nice, and we are apt to take the
flattering unction to our souls that things are not so bad after all; but,
when we come to travel the country over and find how few and far between
these green spots are, and hear what a tide of lamentation and mourning
reaches us all round the land as to the deadness, coldness, and dearth of
Christian churches, we cannot help feeling that there is a GREAT WANT
SOMEWHERE! This is not only my opinion, but it is almost universally
admitted, that, with the enormous expenditure of means, the great amount of
human effort, the multiplication of instrumentalities during the past
century, there has not been a corresponding result.
anxious for results, but, alas! alas! the conversions are but few and far
between.' And then, not only are those conversions few, but in the
mass of instances superficial--we should expect from such a putting of
the truth as that we have been reading about, numerous and continual
turnings to the Lord as in those days--we should expect men coming out
openly from sin and from God-dishonouring courses, businesses, and
professions--coming out from fashionable and worldly circles, abjuring
the world, and literally and absolutely following the Christ as in those
days. That is what we have a right to expect, and yet how comparatively
rare they are, so that when people do this, there is quite a commotion, and
it is talked about all over the land. Now I say this is universally
admitted, and it behoves us to ask before God and with an earnest
heart-yearning, desiring to improve this state of things, Where is
the lack, what is the want?
What becomes of the five hundred or seven hundred unbelievers, who come and
go, Sunday after Sunday, like a door on its hinges, neither the better nor
worse?--nay, God grant it might be so, but they are worse. They get
enough light to light them down to damnation, but they do not get enough
power to lift them into Salvation. What IS THE MATTER? There
must be something wrong. Will you account for it? It ought to be accounted
for! It ought not so to be. God is not changed. Surely He is as anxious for
the Salvation of men now as He ever was. Human hearts are not changed; they
are neither better nor worse; they are depraved, vile, devilish--just
the same. The Gospel is exactly the same power it ever was, rightly
experienced, lived, and preached. It is still the power of God unto
Salvation. Then what is the matter? The truth is preached. The people hear
it, and yet they remain as they were. Where is the lack?
pierce to the dividing asunder soul and spirit. 'You shall receive
power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.'
'Until you be endued with'--not the truth, not faith (they
had faith before that), but-'power'; and, as He says in another
place, 'I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your
adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist.' Though they may
stone you, as they did Stephen, they shall be cut to the heart, and made to
feel the power of your testimony.
--the want of the direct, pungent, enlightening, convicting,
restoring, transforming power of the Holy Ghost; and I care not how
gigantic the intellect of the agent, or how equipped from the school of
human learning, I would rather have a Hallelujah Lass, a little child, with
the power of the Holy Ghost, hardly able to put two sentences of the
Queen's English together, to come to help, bless, and benefit my soul,
than I would have the most learned divine in the kingdom without it, for it
is 'not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit.' Oh! that you
would learn it. When you have learnt that, you will be made:
when you experience it, you will lay hold on God. It is not by
might, any kind of might--might or intellect, or learning, or
eloquence, or position, or influence; it is not by might, nor by
power--man's power--of any sort, but by My Spirit. That is
as true as it ever was. HERE IS THE SECRET OF THE CHURCH'S
FAILURE! She is like Israel of old. She hath multiplied her defenced
cities and her palaces, but she hath forgotten the God of Israel, in whom
her strength is. If you will read the history of the church from the
beginning you will find that true which I say, that just to the degree that
the church has increased in the material she has decreased in the
spiritual. I do not say it ought to be so; I do not say that is a
necessity. I only give you a significant fact that it has been
so.
when He makes us realize our own nothingness and utter helplesness, and
gives us hold of Him with the grasp of despair, then we will begin to be of
some use--and never till them. It is God worketh in us
and by us. The Apostle labours all the way through to show and convince
everybody that it was God in him and not of himself at all. Though he could
have preached with enticing words of man's wisdom, and, no doubt, had
many a temptation to do it, as everybody has who has dipped into the
flowery paths of human rhetoric and learning, yet he eschewed this as he
would the Devil. He said, no!--'this one thing I
do'--putting aside absolutely all else, he went on straight to
that work, till they cut his head off.
equally need it?--we poor things, in our day, as they did in theirs,
we equally need it: first, because the character of the agents is the
same. We are very much like them, and they were very much like us.
Thank God. It has often encouraged me. If they had been men of gigantic
intellects and extraordinary education, training, and position; if they had
possessed all human equipment and qualifications, we might have looked back
through the ages in despair, and said, 'I can never be such as they
were.' Look what they were, naturally, apart from this gift of power.
The Holy Ghost has taken care to give us their true characters. They were
men of like passions, weaknesses, tendencies, liability to fall, with
ourselves--just such poor, frail, weak, easily-tripped-up creatures,
and, in many instances, unbelieving and disobedient, before Pentecost. Now,
I say this is encouraging for us all.
come and comply with the conditions, He will look on you, heal
you, and baptize you with power. Did they not all forsake Him and flee,
except a few poor faithful women? All the world forsook Him and fled in the
hour of His extremity. 'Ah!' you say, 'well, I have done
the same myself. I would not watch with Him one hour. I have betrayed Him
before my friends and acquaintances in the world, where I have been brought
into circumstances that have tested my fidelity. My courage has failed, and
I have failed to witness for Him.' Yes, I know and agree with you
that it was base ingratitude. You were a traitor, indeed, but still, if you
will come back. 'Peter,' and repent, and do your first works,
He will receive you--baptize you with power. Oh! what they were before
Pentecost, and what they were after! Poor Peter, who could not stand the
questionings of a servant maid, who could not dare to have it said that he
was one of the despised Nazarenes, what a valiant soldier he afterwards
became for the Lord Jesus Christ, and how tradition says he was crucified
for his Master at the last. Anyway, we know he was a faithful and valiant
soldier to the end of his journey.
his soul against God and all about God. You set yourself to bring down
that--to transform that evil, wicked heart, to subdue that soul to
submission and obedience!--you try it, try it without the Spirit of
God. Oh! no, you want that Spirit. You want the same measure of that
Spirit, just the same, which Paul had.
withhold it? Why, the Book, rightly read and understood, is
full of promise and exhortation to get it. Is it likely that if we are as
frail as they were, if the work is the same, is it likely that the God of
all grace, and our Father as much as theirs, and as much in sympathy with
the souls of men, will withhold it from us? No, no. But our Saviour
distinctly told us that He bought it for us--that it was more
expedient that His people should have it than that He should remain with
them. It is promised to all believers to the end of time. The conditions
you know--simply putting away everything that hinders, casting aside
every doubtful thing, trampling it in the dust; then a full, whole-hearted
surrender to Him, embracing the Cross, embracing His will at all costs and
sacrifices, and then a determined march to the upper room at Jerusalem and
a determined abiding there until you get it--these are the conditions.
Anybody can have it on these terms.
You knew where you could have got the power. You knew the conditions. You
might have had it. Where are the souls you might have saved? Where are the
children that I would have given you? Where is the fruit?' O friends,
these are solemn and awful realities. If I did not believe them I should
not stand here. Oh, what you might do! Who can tell? Who would ever have
thought, twenty years ago, when I first raised my voice, a feeble,
trembling woman, one of the most timid and bashful the Lord ever saved, the
hundreds of precious souls that would be given me? I only refer to myself
because I know my own case better than that of another; but, let me ask
you--supposing I had held back and been disobedient to the Heavenly
vision, what would God have said to me for the loss of all this fruit?
Thank God, much of it is already gathered into Heaven, people who have sent
me word from their dying beds, that they blessed God they had ever heard my
voice, saying that they should wait for me on the other side, prepared to
lead me to the throne--what would have become of the fruit?
I should not have had it, anyway. They would never have become
my crown of rejoicing in the day of the Lord. Oh, who can tell
what God can do by any man or woman, however timid, however faint, if only
fully given up to Him? My brother, He holds you responsible. He holds you
responsible, my sister--you, who wrote me about your difficulties and
temptations in testifying of Jesus--He holds you responsible. What are
you going to do? Ask yourself. It is coming. You believe it. You say you
do. Unless you are a
confirmed hypocrite, you do believe--that you are going to stand
before the throne of His glory. You believe you are going to stand before
Him by and by, when you shall receive according to the things you have done
in your body. What shall you say? The world is dying--souls are being
damned at an awful rate every day. Men are running to destruction. Torrents
of iniquity are rolling down our streets and through our world. God is
almost tired of the cry of our sins and iniquities going up into His ears.
What are you going to do, brother? What are you going to do? Will you set
to work? Will you get this power? Will you put away everything that
hinders? Will you have it at all costs?
amongst the ungodly. Testify against them. Reprove them. Entreat them with
tears. But be determined to deliver your soul of their blood. God will give
you the power, and He holds you responsible for doing this--you people
who have been coming here who have received the light. WILL YOU DO
IT? If you will, we shall meet again, and rejoice with joy
unspeakable. If you do, we shall praise God for ever that He brought us
inside the walls of this building, long after it has mouldered into dust.
There shall be children and grandchildren, and great grandchildren from you
spiritually, if you will only be faithful.
SALVATIONIST PUBLISHING AND SUPPLIES, LTD., 117, 119, and 121 Judd
Street, King's Cross, London, W.C.1.
Page 107
Oh, this confounding of things! how it does ruin and befog poor souls:
How can it ever be less the duty of the creature to love and serve the
Creator, than it was when he first came pure and spotless from His hand?
How can it ever be less my duty to love my neighbour as myself, than it was
at the beginning, or how can I satisfy my conscience with less than loving
all men with a pure, benevolent love such as God bears to them, in my
measure and according to my capacity? The same standard remains, and the
difference between God's scheme of Salvation and the scheme of
Salvation so widely preached now, is that man's scheme proposes to get
me into Heaven without fulfilling this Law, while God's scheme
proposes to give me power to FULFIL IT. Alas! I am afraid many
will not find out which is the right one, man's or God's, till
they get to the Judgment Seat and find it out too late!
Now, I say, that there is not a word, rightly understood and interpreted
by correlative Scriptures, in the whole New Testament that disparages or
ignores or sets aside the Law of God--not a word! Do you think the
Apostle was as unphilosophical as many nowadays? Did he not know what he
wrote? Is he not as clear as a bell? And now he comes to the
Page 108
Page 109
Then, I say, the Apostle evidently considered this fulfilment of the Law
of Righteousness in us as the highest end of our existence and of
redemption; for, he says, God sent His Son that the righteousness of the
Law may be fulfilled in us. Mark, not that its claims shall be
abated: Oh! not one jot or tittle shall ever be abated. They cannot. God
could not abate them. Not that the righteousness of the Law shall cease to
have a claim upon you. Oh! if He could have saved us like
that, Christ need not have come at all. He could have saved us without a
Mediator. No, no! but that the righteousness of the Law may be
FULFILLED in us as it was in Him. That we should be brought to
the full stature of men and women in Christ Jesus, that we should have this
spirit of our heavenly Bridegroom, by which we fulfil the Law, and the
servant, in his measure, shall be as his Lord.
How? As I explained, last Sunday, first: We shall be delivered
from the reigning, condemning power of the Law by virtue of an infinite,
vicarious sacrifice punished in our stead, and then, married to Him, we
shall serve in the newness of the spirit, and not in the
oldness of the letter.
I want to be eminently and intensely practical, for the sake of the
hungering and thirsting souls who are asking me in their letters,
'Tell me how? Help me?'
Just let us look at this result (in fourth verse).
Page 110
This fruit is brought forth in THE AFFECTIONS!
Those people who are thus united to Christ fulfil the Law in their
affections. You know it is commonly said that if you get hold of the
affections of a man or a woman you get hold of him or her. So you do. This
is the touchstone, and there is nothing in which I have been so grieved and
disappointed as in the manifest want of quickness, livingness in the
affections of God's people for Him. Oh! how I have seen this come out.
The coldness, the unsympathetic character of a great many people's
religion, and yet people whom one would not like to unchristianize. I
cannot explain it by any better term than want of quickness. I
have often been struck with the difference when you touch individuals on
some point that affects them personally, and on those which relate to the
Kingdom of God, and have been tempted to
Page 111
Page 112
I shall never forget reading, when only fourteen years of age, a
sentiment of a precious and valiant soldier of the Lord Jesus, who is now
in Glory. Speaking of putting a test, he said that people might easily find
out whether they loved God or themselves best: 'Suppose you were in
business in a little village, and were doing pretty well, and everything
was going smoothly with you; but there was nothing for you to do there for
the Kingdom of God, no particular way in which you could serve or glorify
God; and, suppose there was another little village hard by, where there was
nothing whatever doing for the Kingdom, and you felt it laid upon your soul
to go there in order that you might preach to unconverted people and raise
a church, and do something for souls. Ah! but you have got a nice business
and you don't know whether you would prosper or not in the other
village. Now you may know whether you are serving God or yourself first, by
this test. If you are serving God, you will be ready to go to that strange
village and trust Him with the consequences; but, if you are serving
yourself, you will stop where you are. The Lord has helped me to apply that
many a time to many things besides business, and to keep the Kingdom of God
FIRST, as I
Page 113
As I said to a lady, a little time ago, 'The Lord can
take your husband, if you refuse to give him to
Him'; and I am afraid God's people often compel Him to take
their darlings, because they make them idols; whereas, if they had laid
them on His altar, they might have had them back, as Abraham received back
Isaac. I said to a gentleman, 'Mind that God does not burn down your
barns, wreck your ships, and take away your riches. God loves
Page 114
Fruit in your affections. Oh, if Christ had your affections, how it
would operate in everything! The wife would not be always grumbling because
the husband had to go out three or four evenings a week on the Lord's
errands--only let them be the Lord's errands. The husband would
not grudge to give his wife up to go to help to win souls, because it
deprived him of her society or a few comforts that she might provide for
him if she were near. The parents would not grudge to restrain their
children, as Eli did. He did not restrain them from that which they liked,
and you know the fruit it brought. Parents who love God best will not allow
their children to learn anything which could not be pressed into the
service of God. They will not allow them to run with the giddy multitude,
to dance, or do anything the Devil might inspire them to desire.
'No!' they will say, 'my children belong to God, and I am
going to train them for God and God only.' Bless the Lord, He helped
me to make up my mind to do that before I
Page 115
I loved Him better than I loved them, and, much as I loved them (and
those who know me know I do love them), I would see them all
in a row laid in their coffins before I would sacrifice His interests and
lose their souls. Do you love Him best? Test yourself. Do you love Him more
than all else? Are you holding everything in subordination to Him?
Further, this fruit will come out in our members--our bodies; and
oh! there is a deep spiritual meaning which, I trust, many of you know, in
those words of the Apostle, 'The body is dead because of sin';
but 'He shall quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit, that dwelleth
in you.' It is killed to the Devil, as well as to sin, and all the
uses of Satan; but it is quickened by the Spirit for the use of God, so
that you can render not only the calves of your lips, but your hands, and
eyes, and brain, and heart,
Page 116
This fruit will also appear in our family relations. We shall fulfil the
Law to our neighbours. You see, God wants only what we have to give Him. He
is not a hard master reaping where He has not sown, and the Great Teacher
said, 'This is the first and great commandment,' embracing all
the rest, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and
mind, and soul, and strength,' and the second is like unto it,
'And thy neighbour as thyself'; and
Page 117
Page 118
This fruit will also appear in your church relations. It will bring
forth fruit. As the Apostle says, 'Exhorting one another
daily,' not suffering sin in your neighbour; reproving each other,
and 'confessing your faults one to the other.' Where is any of
it done? I should like very much to attend such a meeting, if you invite
me, where Christians really and honestly confess their faults one to the
other, and pray for one another, beseeching the Lord to heal them in those
particular points where they have failed, telling one another of the deep
things of God and talking lovingly and freely to one another as they used
to do. It is part of the communion of saints--'exhort one
another daily.' The devil is at work daily. The world is plying for
us daily. The flesh is pleading daily. Everything evil goes on daily. Why
should not this exhorting one another, confessing your faults to one
another, and praying for one another go on daily too?
Is it a fact that we are each other's keepers? Is it a fact that
God will require for our influence over other souls, I believe it.
Then in our relations to the world--. But I forestalled this in my
address on 'Aggressive Effort.' And now let us go down on our
knees before God and ask Him to work this love in us, and give us this
spirit, that we may thus FULFIL THIS LAW in all its
relations.
Page 119WITNESSING FOR CHRIST
Page 121WITNESSING FOR CHRIST
ACTS i. 8 (latter clause).
--'Ye shall
be witnesses unto Me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judæa, and in
Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth.'
ACTS v. 32.
--'And ye are His witnesses
of these things.'
AGAIN and again the same vocation and commission is bestowed
upon the apostles and disciples. To the ends of the earth and to the end of
time this commission comes down to every one of the Lord's own, for He
says: 'Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every
creature; and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the
world.' That embraces us. And to every disciple who has preceded, or
is to follow us, is promised His Divine Presence in this glorious work of
testifying for Him.
God needs witnesses in this world.
Why? Because the whole world is in revolt against Him. The world has
gone away from God. The world ignores God, denies and contradicts His
testimony, misunderstands His character, government, and purposes, and is
gone off into utter and universal revolt and rebellion. Now if God is to
keep any hold upon man at all, and have any influence with him, He must be
represented down here. There was no other way of doing it. If a province of
this realm were in anarchy and rebellion, unless there be some persons in
the province whose duty it is to represent the King and his Government, it
will
Page 122
But Jesus Christ the Son--the well-beloved of the Father--He
was the great witness. He came especially to manifest, to
testify of, and to reveal the Father to men. This was His great work. He
came not to testify of Himself, but of His Father; not to speak His own
words, but the words His Father gave Him to speak. He came to reveal God to
men. He was the 'Faithful and True Witness.' And
when He had to leave the world and go back to His Father, then He
commissioned His disciples to take His place, and to be God's
witnesses on earth. And Oh! friends, God's real people
are His only witnesses. He will not allow angels--we do
not know why--to witness for Him here. He has called man to witness
for Him--His people--'Ye shall be witnesses unto
Me.'
Jesus 'witnessed a good confession,' did He not? He
witnessed nobly, consistently, bravely of His Father, and sealed His
testimony with His blood. The world treated Him as it has treated
Page 123
The Lord commissioned, then, His disciples to be His witnesses, and He
said--oh! beautiful words, and yet, how much they involve which few
understand--'As Thou hast sent Me into the world, even so send I
them into the world.' Even so: as Thou hast sent Me to
be Thy representative in the world, to spend and be spent for Thee, and
shed My blood for Thee; if necessary, so send I them; and so He did send
them, and they had just the same fare as their Master, and many of them
just the same end. But they were faithful witnesses, and they went forward
and testified everywhere, to the Jews and to the Gentiles, in the Temple
and in the Market Place, by the wayside and in the highways and
hedges--they went and testified of this Saviour, and charged the
wicked Jews with His crucifixion, and God accompanied their testimony by
the Spirit, and thousands upon thousands were converted--turned from
their rebellion to God.
Now, the fact that witnessing is necessary shows that there is
controversy going on in the world as
Page 124
Now, Christ calls His people to go and be witnesses to these facts.
Witnesses, you know, must deal with facts, not theories--not what they
merely think, or suppose, or have heard, but what they know.
Now God wants His people to witness to facts--to something that has
been done, and is being done--something that is and continues to
be--fact.
And He wants us to be GOOD witnesses, too. Oh! how much
depends upon the character of a witness even in an earthly court. If you
can cast a reflection upon the character or the veracity of a witness, you
shake his testimony, and take away its value. Oh! how important that
Christ's witnesses should be good witnesses-that is, that they should
fairly and truly represent Him and His truth--for, if they
misrepresent Him, somebody is sure to be damned through their
inconsistency--and, how awful to have the blood of souls upon our
skirts! To misrepresent a man, or woman, or child, is bad enough, but to
misrepresent God!--to show a caricature of the religion of Jesus
Christ!--to live a wrong life and still profess to be a Christian,
saying to people,
Page 125
FAITHFUL witnesses! He wants us to be faithful
witnesses.
I want to note one or two qualifications of a
Page 126
The first qualification, then, of a faithful witness, is A
personal knowledge of the facts to which he witnesses. If a witness
in a court of justice begins to talk of what he thinks, feels, and
believes, 'Oh! hush, hush,' says the judge, 'we
can't have that; we want to know what you KNOW--what
you have seen, heard, and felt of this case'; and these are the sort
of witnesses Jesus Christ wants, who can get up and say, 'I
KNOW!' The sort of witness that St. Paul was, who could look
his judge in the face and say, 'I would that thou wert altogether
such as I am, save these bonds.' What an impudent man he must have
been, if he was not a sanctified man. What a supreme egotist! Those are the
sort of witnesses. How Agrippa must have felt, just then. How the tables
were turned. 'Oh, I am turned into the dock, and here is the prisoner
taking his seat upon the bench.' That is the sort of witnessing we
want. 'I would that thou wert altogether such as I am,
except these bonds.' Could you stand up in the dock and say that?
Could you stand up in your own house and say it? Could you stand up
anywhere and say it? That is what the Lord Jesus Christ
wants--people who know, who experience, who realize, who live the
things they witness to. This is what the world is dying for--people
who can get up and say, 'I KNOW.' The Lord wants
people to tell the world they are saved. Can you? They will begin to listen
to you then. You will begin to have some effect on them. They will begin to
open their eyes and ears, and wonder whether
Page 127
No! not what is got from books; not a dry, fine-spun theory, from mere
hearsay. When a witness begins with what he heard some one say, 'Oh,
hush!' says the judge, 'we don't want that! we want to
know what you have seen. Keep to the facts.' Jesus Christ wants you
to keep to the facts. Tell them, as John says, what you have seen, and
heard, and handled, and realized of the truth of God. Personal
knowledge! It is wonderful how simple Salvation language is, when
you have learnt it by experience and are prepared to speak plainly to the
people.
Then, a faithful witness must tell the truth, and the whole
truth. He must not hold back anything on account of personal
inconvenience, suffering, loss, or gain, but must tell the whole truth! Oh!
I tremble to think what will be the fate of some who set themselves up as
teachers, and who have 'kept back part' of the truth because,
to their apprehension, it was not palatable or profitable to mankind.
Page 128
Page 129
The faithful witness must give the whole truth; and he must give it
personally, too. A faithful witness must give it himself. He can't
witness by proxy. He may pay one hundred and fifty evangelists to go and
witness in his place: that is all right. It is no more than he ought to
do--two hundred and fifty, if he has money enough--because the
Master claims all that he has, little or much, every farthing of it,
however many preachers he may send and maintain.
Therefore, he can never do any more than he ought, but that will not
exonerate him from the personal obligation. God will say to him: If I have
put My candle in you, it is that it may shine for somebody else's
benefit. If I have given you the bread of life, it is for you to go and
break it to the famishing multitudes round about you. YE are
My witnesses. You may pay the minister and the missionary, but you must do
it yourself, too, for how can one witness make up for
two? True, God wants the minister to witness, and it is no more than
his duty if he witnesses all day long as long as he lives. But that will
never make up for your lack of service. YOU must witness; and
there are some souls with whom you have more influence than any other
living being--some souls that you can better get at than any
other person--some souls that, if you do not save, will, probably,
never be saved at all. Ye are My witnesses, and, if ye have the grace and
love and light of God, it is at the peril of your soul if you hide it.
Page 130
Then, in the next place, faithful witnesses must speak out, not
mince the mnatter--not 'mumble,' as they say in
court. The judge makes the witness speak up so that everybody may hear him.
He must be heard. 'Speak out.' And why should not
the Lord's witnesses speak out? I wonder when we shall be done with
this sneaking, hole-and-corner, shame-faced religion. I wonder when
Christian England will cease to be ashamed of its God! The only nation
under Heaven ashamed of its religion and its God is the one that has got
the true God to worship and to love. What an anomaly; Speak out!
David knew nothing about this mincing, half-and-half, milk-and-water
sort of religion. David rejoiced to tell of his righteousness before the
great congregation. He was always telling about His goodness, and His Law,
and singing about it all the day long, dancing before the ark sometimes,
and doing all manner of demonstrative things to glorify his God. And that
was not enough, for when he had called upon all human kind to praise Him,
he called on the hills and the trees to clap their hands and to dance for
joy. We want some of that sort of religion nowadays. Talk of
the new dispensation, I wish we could get a bit of the old one back.
The interests of truth demand this outspokenness. How is error to be met
but by the bold proclamation of the truth? How are the emissaries of Satan
palming upon mankind his lies--always at it, night and day--how
are they to be silenced but by witnesses faithfully crying in their ears,
'This is a lie, and that is a lie. This is the truth and this is the
Page 131
I was thinking, as I was passing the Royal Exchange and saw on the top,
'The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof,' how
many believed it who walked beneath its shadow. I wonder what any one would
be thought of, were he practically to recognize the fact. 'Oh!'
they would say, 'he's not fit for his post--you'll
have to take him away; he's a little affected in his head.' Oh!
you know it is so; but God is not mocked, though men think He is. God sits
in the circle of Heaven, and though the people do rage, and the heathen
imagine a vain
Page 132
We say the world is dying; what for? Sermons? No. Periodicals? No.
Religious stories? Oh! dear no. There is no chance of a want of them for
many a long year to come. Dying for disquisitions? No. For fine-spun
theories? No. For creeds and faiths? Oh! you might have them by the dozen.
What is it dying for?--downright, straightforward, honest, loving,
earnest testimony about what God can DO FOR SOULS.
That is what it wants. That is what those poor men in the
shops, those walking up and down Oxford Street, in the theatres, in the
dancing saloons, in the concert rooms, everywhere, that is what men want:
somebody to come and take them lovingly by the collar, and tell them that
GOD IS GOD, and that He can save them. 'He has saved me,
my brother, and He can save you!' That is what the world
wants. One word like that is better than a sermon, and it will do more for
God and the Salvation of the world. Oh, yes, men are saying, in fact all
over this land--thousands, 'Here I am; I am a poor slave of sin.
I know it.' They say it in their consciences, though they do not say
it to you. They say it often to us when they are pushed into a corner by
the sword of the Spirit. 'I know I am wrong, sinful, wicked.'
As that dear John Allen, whose life I have been telling about, said once
when sitting swearing, surrounded by his companions, and somebody said to
him, 'Jock, if you were to die, what would become of you?'
'I should go to Hell, straight!' He was
Page 133
I said to a gentleman, 'Mr. So-and-so, what about your
soul?' He said, 'It's in a devilish state.' Poor
man! He knew where he was going, and there are thousands like him. Do you
think they don't feel their bondage? Have they not got a mind and a
conscience? Have they not a better side, as you call it, to their nature?
Has not God flashed the light of His Holy Spirit upon their dark souls, and
have they not struggled and striven? Yes, but they say, 'There is no
health in us; there is no help for us. We have done making resolutions and
trying to be better; we cannot. There is no hope in us.' And there
they are waiting for somebody to come and tell them there is HELP IN
GOD. They say, 'I see precious little difference in you
religious folks. I have never known anybody that religion has seemed to do
much for.' And, when they are told to believe, they laugh at you, and
I don't wonder at it. The poor human conscience is better instructed
than many of its teachers. It wants to be put RIGHT, and it
says, 'Is there any hope? Can God save such as I am? Has He saved
anybody like me from this thraldom, from this slavery, from this misery,
from this constantly going down in the mud? Did He ever save
anybody LIKE ME?' And sometimes he goes to chapel or
church, and hopes the minister will tell him, when lo, he begins a
dissertation about the resurrection, or the divinity of Christ, or
something the man has believed all his life, and so he is disappointed
again, and he says, 'This is of no use to me.' Oh! friends, I
speak the things I know
Page 134
Has He saved any of you? Are you testifying to your poor, famishing,
sinking fellow-men? Do you ever look at them and think where they are
going? Do you pity them, love them, long after them in the bowels of Jesus
Christ? Do you know anything of that longing? If so, how can you forbear
testifying? 'Ye are My witnesses of these things,' everywhere,
at all times, amongst all people!
It is in the nature of the case that a witness must witness before
other people, before living hearers. That is the place to witness,
and before enemies, and when he does not know which way the wind will blow,
or how the words of God will be received. He
Page 135
This was the kind of witnessing the martyrs did. I often wonder whether
there would be any martyrs now. Sometimes I think that the greatest boon to
the Church of Christ would be a time of persecution. I believe it would. I
believe it would drive us up to God and each other. We should find out,
then, whether we were willing to forsake all to follow Him. You know that
if the martyrs had taken the standard of religious life that exists now,
they would never have been martyrs. They would have looked after their own
skins, and left the Lord to look after the Gospel. If they might have been
allowed a little latitude, and gone halfway, there would not have been any
martyrs, because they could nearly all have got off with that; but they
felt it necessary to be faithful right through, and to stand by the whole
truth to the very last jot and tittle, and when they could have got off by
saying three words on a paper, they refused to do it, and vent to the
stake, and let the flames lick up their blood. Those are the witnesses the
Lord wants--outside, everywhere, always at it. Always witnessing.
'Always?' you say. Yes; always. Why? Because men are
always dying and being damned! If the Bible is
true--everywhere--your friends and your neighbours around you.
You get a letter: 'Oh! Mr. So-and-so is dead--only ill three
days--thirty-six hours--twenty-four hours--gone!' Ah!
and the echo in many a soul afterwards is, 'What would I give for a
chance to go and have one talk with him.' But he's
gone--somewhere! Where is he gone? If he were
Page 136
I have promised some friends here to-night to give this illustration
from my own experience, or else I rarely refer to it. I had long had a
controversy on this question in my soul. In fact, from the time I was
converted, the Spirit of God had constantly been urging me into paths of
usefulness and labour, which seemed to me impossible. Perhaps some of you
would hardly credit that I was one of the most timid and bashful disciples
the Lord Jesus ever saved. For ten years of my Christian life my life was
one daily battle with the cross--not because I wilfully rejected, as
many do, for that I never dared to do. Oh, no! I used to make up my mind I
would, and resolve and intend, and then, when the hour came, I used to fail
for want of courage. I need not have failed. I now see how foolish I was,
and how wrong; but, for some four or five months before I commenced
speaking, the controversy had been signally roused in my soul which God had
awakened years before, but which, through mistaken notions, fear, and
timidity, I had allowed almost to die out. I was brought to very severe
heart-searchings at this time. I had not been realizing so much of the
Divine presence. I had lost a great deal of the power and happiness I once
enjoyed. During a season of sickness, one day it seemed as if the Lord
revealed it all
Page 137
Page 138
Page 139
But oh! how little I saw then what it involved. I never imagined the
life of publicity it was going to lead me into, and of trial also; for I
was never allowed to have another quiet Sabbath, when I could speak or
stand up. All I took there was the present step. I did not see in advance,
but the Lord, as He always does, when His people are honest with Him, and
obedient, opened the windows of Heaven, and poured out such a blessing,
that there was not room to contain it.
Page 140
There was more weeping, they said, in the chapel that day, than ever
there had been before. Many dated a renewal in righteousness from that very
moment, and began a life of devotion and consecration to God.
Now, I might have 'talked good' to them till now, and that
would never have happened That honest confession,
coming out and testifying the truth, did what twenty years' talk would
never have done.
The work went on. Whenever I spoke, the chapel used to be crowded to its
utmost capacity, and numbers were converted. Not to me but to God be all
the glory. Shame to me that I did not begin sooner. It was not I that did
this, but the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit of God.
The Lord dealt with me in a very wonderful way. Three months after this,
my dear husband fell sick for the first time, and he was obliged to go away
into the country. A deputation waited on me, to ask me to take his town
appointments. I said I could not think of such a thing. What could I do
with that great congregation? They must not ask me--and away they
went. They came back again to know if I would take the nights, they
implored and importuned me until I promised. So you see, God forced me to
begin to think and work. I was obliged, and I did it with four little
children, the eldest then four years and three months old. It looked an
inopportune time, did it not, to begin to preach? It looked as though the
Lord must have made a mistake. However, He gave me grace and strength, and
enabled me to do it; and while I was nursing my baby, many a time I was
thinking of
Page 141
Page 142
Will you be encouraged, my sister? Never mind trembling. I trembled.
Never mind your heart beating. Mine beat nearly through. Never mind how
weak you are. I have gone many a time from the bed to the pulpit, and back
from the pulpit to bed. It is not by human power, wisdom, might, or
strength--it is by My Spirit, saith the Lord. He loves to use the weak
things, that the excellency may be seen to be of God. If your neighbours
were sick of some devastating plague, and you could go and help them, would
not you do it? Would you say, 'I am only a woman, and I
cannot'? 'Oh,' you would say, 'let me go, like Miss
Nightingale did to the sick and wounded soldiers. Let me go.' And
these are not the bodies, but the souls. They are dying. They
are going to an eternal death. Will you not rise up? Oh! suppose all the
Christians in this hall to-night were to begin, from this hour, to be
faithful, and consistently testifying everywhere for Jesus, what a
commotion there would be! How many, think you, would be converted in a
month's time? How would they begin flocking like doves to the windows?
How would the ministers, some of them, begin to wake up? The people would
go and beseech them morning, noon, and night. God wants you to witness
right out everywhere, in the darkest courts and alleys and in Oxford Street
alike. Begin, and the Spirit of God will fall upon you, and however they
may try to get rid of the Holy Ghost, they will not be able to do it when
God has got hold of them. We catch thousands of people in this way who
never intended to be converted. Every day I live, the more I am convinced
that if God's people
Page 143
Page 145FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT
Page 147FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT
ACTS i. 4.
--'And being assembled
together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from
Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father.'
EPHESIANSANS v. 18.
--'Be filled with
the Spirit.'
I THOUGHT, perhaps, it would meet a difficulty of some who are
present this afternoon, to state, with respect to last Sabbath's
address, that this exhortation to be filled with the Spirit is given
broadly to all believers. If my remarks, at that time, conveyed the idea to
any one that there were merely a privileged few who are called to be thus
filled with the Spirit--to be, as it were, the leaders of the rest,
and others were to abide, and must abide, on a lower platform of Christian
experience, I certainly did not intend them to do so. God forbid that I
should insinuate anything of the kind, because I do not believe it. I
believe that this injunction is given broadly to all believers everywhere,
and in all times, and it is as much the privilege of the youngest and
weakest believer here to be filled with the Spirit, as it is of the most
advanced, if the believer will comply with the conditions, and conform to
the injunctions of the Saviour, on which He has promised this gift. I do
not find two standards of Christian experience here at all. I do not
believe God ever intended there should be a lower life and
Page 148
If I cannot keep my father and mother and be faithful to God, then I
must forsake my father and mother. If I cannot keep my husband or wife, and
be faithful to Him, then I must forsake husband or wife. If I cannot keep
my children and be faithful to Him, then, Jesus Christ says, forsake them.
And if I cannot keep my houses and lands and be faithful to Him, then I
must forsake them. If I cannot keep my business and be faithful to Him,
then I must sacrifice my business, and if I cannot keep my health and be
faithful to him, then I must sacrifice it; and, last of all, if I cannot
keep my life and be faithful to Him, then I must be prepared to lose it,
and lay my neck on the block, if need be. That is my religion, and I do not
know any other. I do not believe any other will stand on the right hand of
the throne; and, if that be so, why, all other sorts must stand on the
left. If this be not true, I am utterly and thoroughly mistaken in the
first principles of Christianity, and I will come and sit down at
anybody's feet who can convince me that I am wrong. So, pray, do not
attach that idea to me that I think that any person can sit down, providing
he has light, or with opportunities of getting light, without embracing
this higher-life religion, and then get into Heaven in this shame-faced,
sneaking
Page 149
This Pentecost is offered to all believers. It comes, or it would come,
in the experience of every believer, if he would have it. God wants you to
have it. God calls you to it. Jesus Christ has bought it for you, and you
may have it and live in its power as much as these apostles did, if you
will--every one of you. My dear friends, you may have it, be filled
with it, and no one but God knows what He would do with you, and what He
would make of you if you were thus filled, for the experience of Peter
shows you how utterly different a man is before he gets a
Pentecostal baptism and after he gets it. The man who could
not stand the questionings of a servant-maid before he got this power,
dared to be crucified after he got it. I may just say, that here is the
great cause of the decline of so many who begin well. Oh! there is no more
common lament on the lips of really spiritual teachers, everywhere, than
this, that so many begin well. 'Ye did run well,' we might
truly say of thousands in this land to-day, 'Ye did run well.'
They begin in the Spirit, and then, as the Apostle says, 'They go on
to be made perfect by the flesh.' How is this? Because, you see, the
Spirit puts before every soul this walk of full consecration and
whole-hearted devotedness to God, and, instead of being obedient to the
heavenly vision, the soul shrinks back and says, 'That is too
much--that is too close--that is too great a sacrifice,'
and they decline, and, instead of giving up a profession and
Page 150
I want you to note, first, how these people waited. 'Tarry at
Jerusalem till ye be endued with POWER.' Mark, that is
not truth merely. They had got truth before. There is something besides
truth needed. Paul says his Gospel and his preaching were not merely in
word, but in power, and in the demonstration of the Spirit.
What would be the first thing that would strike you that these disciples
would be thinking of, as they wended their way back from Olivet, having
taken leave of their now glorified Master? Back again to the upper room at
Jeru-
Page 151
Methinks the first feeling would be that of deep
self-abasement. As they thought of the past; now that the full
glory of His Divinity, and the Divinity of His mission, had burst upon
them, and, as they thought of their three years' sojourn with Him, and
of all their darkness and blindness of heart, and all they had
lost--all that they might have known--all He would have revealed
to them, if they would have received it--as the thought of it all
burst upon them--just as, next day, when you find out who a person
was, or some particular circumstance respecting a person that you did not
fully understand at the time, and, when the person is gone, and it all
breaks upon you, you say, 'What a fool I was,' and so methinks
these Apostles would say. Indeed, as He said, 'O fools, and slow of
heart to believe!' They were cured--Peter certainly was--of
self-sufficiency, of pride, and all of them would go back again in deep
self-abasement.
Can you not think you see them, as they assembled in the upper room? I
should not be surprised at all if Peter, with his impulsive
nature--and it is a glorious thing to have an impulsive nature when it
is impulsive for good--to be zealously affected always in a good
cause--threw himself on his face before his risen Master in deepest
humiliation and broken-heartedness for his base ingratitude in having
denied Him. And how do you think Thomas and all of them would feel as they
remembered the scene in the Garden, and how they all, in the hour of His
agony, forsook Him and fled? How would
Page 152
And now, friends, this is the very first and indispensable condition of
receiving the Holy Ghost. You must first realize your past impurity,
unholiness, disobedience, and ingratitude. You must not be afraid to know
the worst of yourselves. You must look back at the time when your hand has
been with Him on the table, and yet you have virtually betrayed Him. You
must look at your unfaithfulness and disobedience, at your shrinking from
the cross, at your cleaving to the world, and if you want to be filled with
the Spirit, you must be willing to know the worst of yourself, and tell the
Lord the worst of yourself. You must say, 'Now, Lord, am I low
enough? Now, Lord, am I down far enough in the dust for Thee to come and
lift me up? I abhor myself. I loathe myself in dust and ashes, and I want
Thee to come and fill me with Thy Spirit.' You will have to be
emptied of self. When people are self-sufficient, God always leaves them
alone to prove their self-sufficiency. When people think they can do for
themselves, He lets them fall down and see their weakness. We must realize
our utter helplessness and weakness--we must be utterly lost in our
own sight. Some of you, I think, have come to that, and others are not
quite low enough. You must get down lower, my brother. God's way to
exaltation is through the Valley of Humiliation. You must get
lower--lower. You can never get too low in your own estimation in
order to be filled with the Spirit of God. They waited, secondly, in
earnest
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Page 155
They were not willing to go all the way--to pay all the
price--to suffer all the consequences--but, if you want this
blessing, I know no other way. I had to come to this before I got it. The
last idol of my soul had to be renounced, and it was hard work, as it
always is, because we love idols. Idols would not be idols if
they were not beloved. But we have to lay our real Isaac, our beloved and
only Isaac, upon the altar. It is hard work, but it has to be done, because
He is a jealous God, and will have no rivals. Do you so appreciate this
blessing that you are willing to give up your Isaac? If so, you may have it
this afternoon. He will fill you with His Spirit.
Third, and lastly, they waited in obedient faith. How do we
know? Because they did as He bid them--that is the
evidence. He said, 'Go, tarry in the city of Jerusalem.' Peter
might have said, when he had seen his Lord off to Heaven, 'Well, what
am I going to do now? I have been a long time running after the Lord in
Palestine, I must betake myself to the fishing. I can wait as well on the
sea beach as in Jerusalem. I wonder why the Lord told me to go to
Jerusalem? I think it was rather unreasonable. He might have thought of my
old father and mother at home. I think I shall go back to my
fishing-nets.' No, no, they had been cured of their unbelief by the
last few days' experience. They had learned better than to dictate to
their Master, and they knew He had a good purpose in sending them to
Jerusalem, and so they went there and did as He bade them--straight.
Back to that upper room they went.
Page 156
Obedient faith that waits on Thee,
Thou never wilt reprove.
No, it is the disobedient faith that is sent empty away. Oh! people are
crying out about their faith, but it is their disobedient faith. If the
Lord has told you to wait in any particular place, or way, or company, or
time, and you disobey Him, you will never get it, and you will have to come
to those conditions at last, even if it is on your dying bed! Obedient
faith! While there is a spark of insubordination, or rebellion, or
dictation, you will never get it. Truly submissive and obedient souls only
enter this kingdom. Anywhere He tells you to go, anything He
tells you to sacrifice, or fly from, you will have to do. This is one of
His choice gifts that He has reserved for His choice servants, those who
serve Him with all their hearts.--Obedient faith!
But you say, 'How do you know it was faith?' Oh, because we
know they did as He bade them. Now faith inserable from expectation. Where
there is real faith there is always expectation, and when I hear people
praying, as I often do, from
Page 157
Those people waited. How long? What a hue and cry there is now about us
Salvation Army people spending whole nights in prayer.
People--Christians, grey-headed Christians, up and down the
country--say to me, 'I don't know how you get the time
over. It must be such an immensely long time. Do you really mean to say
that you spend all night in prayer?' I say, 'Yes, with just an
interval for putting the truth and showing the people how to apply it to
their own consciences.' Then they say, 'It must seem an awfully
long time.' I suppose it does, to them, to spend one whole night in
prayer; but here, we are told, they waited ten days, till the Day of
Pentecost was fully come. I have no doubt they went as far into the night
as they could keep their natural powers awake. They waited. They did not
set the Lord a time. They were wiser. They did not say, 'Now we will
go and have a couple of days of it. That will be a long time. We will just
shut out all else and wait on the Lord for a couple of days, and if He does
not come by that time, it will be outrageous to wait beyond it. Whoever
heard of a prayer meeting two days and two nights long?' They did not
set the Lord a time! They went and waited till it came.
You say, 'No; I have not got it.' No; because
Page 158
Suppose they had given up on the fifth day and said, 'There must
be some mistake. He knows we are here, all ready, and the world is
perishing for our message. There must be some mistake. We had better
begin.' But no, they waited on, and on, and on, until it came. Can
you imagine what sort of prayers went up from the upper room? Do you think
they were the lazy, lackadaisical prayers that we hear every now and then
for the Holy Spirit?
Oh! how would Peter agonize and wrestle: how would Thomas plead; how
would Mary weep, beseech, and entreat, and how were they all of one heart
and of one accord. They wanted the one thing, and they were there to get
it. They cared for nothing else but that. They cried for it as hungry
children cry for bread. They wanted it. Did the Lord ever
disappoint anybody who waited like that? Can anybody say so here? Did you
ever hear of such a case? Never. HE CAME.
Oh! but there are some people, nowadays, who set God times in
everything. They think a good deal more about their dinners than about Him.
They think a great deal more about intercourse with their friends and doing
the polite to them, than they do about the precious waiting Holy Spirit of
God. They think a great deal more about their businesses. 'Oh!'
they say, 'it is business, and business must be attended to.'
But what about the Holy Ghost and the Kingdom? Must not the Kingdom of God
be attended to? Must not your soul be saved, and must
Page 159
People have a wonderful habit of losing sight of the little words of the
Bible--the people who make a great to-do about the Word in other ways,
often say 'I never saw that till you directed my attention to
it.' Suppose I were to say that this afternoon something happened to
each person, would you imagine I meant the men, and not the women? Of
course you would say, I meant every one. And it filled them all--the
women as well as the men, and they began to speak with other tongues, as
the Spirit gave them utterance. He came.
And, my friends, He comes yet. My bodily senses have been quite
cognizant of His coming sometimes. We only know that we feel something that
so influences our bodies that we cannot describe it.
In the North, when I was there, we had an all-night of prayer, at which
one thousand people, admitted by ticket, waited all night on God. The
meeting began at ten, and went on until six in the morning, and there were
strong men, men in middle life, and old men, lying on their faces on the
floor. There were doctors there, who examined them and tried to account for
it from physical causes, but they
Page 160
Page 161
Oh! I have the most awful realization that you will be eternally better
or worse for these services, and so I want you to come up higher, I
don't want you to go back, and get cold and indifferent to these
things, because here is the hope of the world, if there is any hope for it,
in people getting filled with the Spirit, people getting so woke up to God
and His glory, and the interests of His kingdom, that they should be just
as anxious for souls as other people are for sovereigns. Filled with the
Spirit, having eyes to see spiritual sights which others do not see, ears
to hear the crying of the famishing multitudes who are dying for lack of
knowledge; hearts to feel so that they could go and weep over them. Hands
to break the bread of life; and, if need be, a zeal that will lead them to
die for them. This is what we want, and it only comes with the fullness of
the Spirit.
Are you willing, my brother? are you willing, my sister? If so, stop
with us this afternoon. Never mind the dinner; never mind the tea. You have
taken care of the outer man long enough, now look after the inner man.
Never mind the children, mother, just now, the Lord will take care of them.
Never mind anything, you who are athirst, but getting this blessed Holy
Spirit of God, this full baptism of it on your souls. The Lord help you.
Amen!
Page 163THE WORLD'S NEED
Page 165THE WORLD'S NEED
MATTHEW xxi. 28.
--'Son, go work to-day
in My vineyard.'
LUKE xiv. 23.
--'And the lord said unto
the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come
in, that My house may be filled.'
WE might have enumerated other texts, teaching the same truths.
There are plenty of them, but the general tenor and bearing of the Word of
God, especially of the New Testament, is more significant than even direct
and isolated texts. It seems to me that no one can disinterestedly and
dispassionately study the New Testament without arriving at the conclusion
that it is a fundamental principle, underlying the whole, that His light
and grace is expansive; that is, God has in no case given His light, His
truth, and His grace to any individual soul, without holding that soul
responsible for communicating that light and grace to others. Real
Christianity is, in its very nature and essence, aggressive. We get this
principle fully exhibited and illustrated in the Parables of Jesus Christ.
If you will study them, you will find that He has not given us anything to
be used merely for ourselves, but that we hold and possess every talent
which He has committed to us for the good of others, and for the Salvation
of man. If I understand it, I say this is a fundamenal principle of the New
Testament.
How wonderfully this principle was exhibited in
Page 166
It becomes a greater puzzle every day to me, coming in contact with
individual souls, how people read their Bibles! They do not seem to
understand what they read. Well might a Philip or an angel come to them and
say, 'Understandest thou what
Page 167
I want to glance, FIRST, at our call to work for
God; and, SECONDLY, at two or three indispensable
qualifications for successful labour.
And, first, as I have just said, we are called by the Word not
only in these direct passages, but by the underlying principle
running through it all, and laying upon us the obligation to save
men. In fact, the world is cast upon us: we are the only
people who CAN save the unconverted.
Oh! I wish I could get this thought thoroughly into your minds. It has
been, perhaps, one of the most potent, with respect to any little service I
have rendered in the vineyard--the thought, that Jesus Christ has
nobody else to represent Him here but us Christians--His real people:
nobody else to work for Him. These poor people of the world, who are in
darkness and ignorance, have nobody else to show them the way of mercy. If
we do not go to them with loving earnestness and determination to rescue
them from the grasp of the great enemy; if we do not, by the power of the
Holy Ghost, bind the strong man and take his goods, who is to do it? God
has devolved it upon us. I say this is an alarming and awful
consideration.
Secondly, we are called by the Spirit. The very first
aspiration, as I said the other night, of a newly-born soul is after some
other soul. The very first
Page 168
Page 169
A gentleman, in advanced life, said: 'When I was a young man, and
in my first love, the zeal of the Lord's house so consumed me that I
used to neglect my daily business, and could scarcely sleep at night; but,
alas! that was many years ago.' 'Was it not better with you
then than now?' I asked; and the tears came
welling up into his eyes. Oh, yes! the Lord says of him, 'I remember
thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou
wentest after Me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown; Israel was
holiness unto the Lord, and the first-fruits of His increase.' And,
alas! there are many such to-day. They have it all to do over again; they
have to repent and do their first works; they have to come back and get
forgiven, and washed, and saved, if they are to go into the kingdom on
high, all for want of systematically and resolutely obeying the urgings of
the Holy Spirit towards their fellow-men.
Now, you have, some of you, been hearing, the last few Sundays, about
grieving the Spirit, and about
Page 170
Such are the urgings of the Spirit; and if people would only be obedient
to them, they would never lose these urgings. Why, what an anomaly it is!
Does it look reasonable, or like God's dealings, that people should
begin so strong, like the old man felt when he was young, and, instead of
waving stronger, and having this holy zeal and desire
increased, get weaker and weaker, and less and less? Does it
look like God's way of doing things? Oh, no! This
Page 171
Now, my friend, you are called by the Spirit to this work. Obey the
call--DO IT. Never mind if it chokes you--do it.
Say, 'I had better die in obedience than live in disobedience.'
Oh! these everlasting likes and dislikes. 'I don't like to speak
to that person,' 'I so dislike writing that letter.'
'Oh! you don't know what might be the consequences.' Never
mind the consequences--do it. God will stand between you and
consequences; and, if He lets you suffer, never mind--then suffer; but
obey the voice of the Spirit. There would have been thousands of souls
saved if all those who have had these urgings had obeyed them. Pray, where
do these urgings come from? Do they come from your own evil hearts? Then
you are better than the Apostle. Separated from the Spirit that dwells in
you, and disunited from Christ, your living Head, you are selfish,
devilish. Then where do these urgings come from? Do they come
from the Devil? Satan, then, would indeed be divided against himself. Where
do they come from? It is the Spirit of the living God that is urging you to
come out and seek to save the lost. Will you obey these urgings? Will you
give up your reasonings? Will you give up your likes and dislikes, and
OBEY? If you will, then He will come to you more and more,
till, like David, you will feel the interests of His kingdom to be more to
you than meat or drink, than silver or gold. Nay, you will become like him
who said, 'The zeal of Thine house hath eaten me up.'
But, further, we are called to this work by what
Page 172
What has He done for us? Oh! if we had a tithe of the love to sinners
that He had for us, of His forbearing patience, of His persevering effort,
when He followed us day and night, reasoned and reasoned with us, wooed and
allured us, what could we not do?
I remember reading, somewhere, the story of a nobleman who was (I think)
a backslider. He was stopping at some country inn, and he went up into a
room in which, over the mantelpiece, there was a very good picture of the
Crucifixion by a good old master, and under it was written, 'I
suffered this for thee--what hast thou done for Me?' This
question went home. It struck deep. He thought--Yes, what indeed? He
went out into the stables to his horses, to try to get rid of the
uncomfortable impression, but he could not forget it. A soft, pathetic
voice seemed to follow him--'I suffered this for thee--what
hast thou done for Me!' At last it broke him down, and he went to his
knees. He said: 'True, Lord, I have never done anything for Thee, but
now I give myself and my all to Thee, to be used up in Thy
service.'
And have you never heard that voice in your soul,
Page 173
Now, there have been, at the least, something like three hundred and
fifty people, who have come forward, so far, in these services, professing
to give themselves afresh and fully to Jesus. I am sure, in the main, they
have been sincere. They have come for the witness of the Spirit to their
adoption, and for power for service. Now, friends, I want to know what this
is to come to--what is to be the end of it?
And sister, too. Is it going to die out in sentiment? Is it going to
evaporate in sighs and wishings, and end in 'I
CANNOT'? God forbid! What are you GOING TO
DO? What HAVE you been doing for Him the last week? Ask
yourselves. You say--'Well, I have read my Bible more.'
Very good, so far as it goes. What have you read it for?
'Well,' you say, 'to get to know the Lord's will,
and to get instruction and comfort.' Aye, exactly, but that is all
for yourself, you see. 'I have prayed a great
deal.' Very good. I wish everybody would pray. The Apostles say all
men everywhere ought to pray. What for? 'I have been asking the Lord
for great things.' Very good, praise the Lord; but those are for
yourself, mainly. If you have been led out in agonizing supplication for
souls, thank God for it, and go on, as the Apostle says, 'watching
thereunto, with all perseverance,' 'praying in the Holy
Ghost'; but if it has been merely praying to get all you can
What are you going to do, brother?
What are you going to do?
Page 174
Now, friends, what have you been doing for HIM--for
the promotion of His blessed, glorious, saving purposes in the
world? What have you been denying yourself for the sake of His kingdom?
What labour have you gone through of mind, or brain, or heart? How many
letters have you written? How many people have you spoken to? How many
visits have you made? What self-denying labour have you been doing for Him
who has done (as you say) so much for you? What have you been suffering for
Him? Have you been trying in some measure to fill up behind the measure of
His sufferings 'for His body's sake, the church?' Have you
been carrying the sins and sorrows of a guilty world on your heart before
God, and pleading with Him for His own name's sake, to pour out His
Spirit upon the ungodly multitudes outside, and to quicken half-asleep
professors inside? Have you been subjecting yourself to reproach and
contempt--not only from
Page 175
Come, now, friends, I want a practical result. He suffered that for you.
He is up yonder, interceding for you. Five bleeding wounds He always bears
in the presence of His Father for you. If He were to forget you for a
single moment, or cease His intercession, what would happen? What are you
doing for Him? He has left you an example that you should follow His steps.
What were they? They were blood-tracked; they were humiliated steps. They
were steps scorned by the world. He was ignored, and traduced, and rejected
of men. He had not where to lay His head. He carried in His body and in His
soul the sorrows and sufferings of all our race. He was a man of
sorrows--not His own. He had no reason to be sorrowful. He was the
Father's own beloved, and He knew it, but He was a man of sorrows, and
acquainted with grief. The griefs of this poor, lost, half-damned world He
bore, and they were sometimes so intolerable that they squeezed the blood
out of His veins. Have you been following in His footsteps, in any measure?
He lived not for Himself. He came not to be ministered unto, but to
minister, and took upon Him the form of a servant. What are you doing? Oh!
my friends, up, up, and be doing. Begin, if you have not begun--begin
to-day. Ask Him to baptize you with His Spirit, and let you begin at once
to follow Him in the regeneration of the Spirit. You are called by what He
did for you!
Page 176
Then, you are called by the wants of the world. I have said so much
about this at other times that I will not say more now, only methinks it is
a theme that is never exhausted, and never will be while there are any more
sinners to save. Oh! the wants of the world! To me it is an overwhelming, a
prodigious thought, that He shed His Blood for every soul of man, and that,
as He hung there, He saw, under all the vileness, and sin, and ruin of the
Fall--the human soul created originally in His own image, and capable
of infinite and eternal development and progress. The soul to be rescued,
washed, redeemed, saved, sanctified, and glorified--He saw this
glorious jewel, and He gave HIMSELF for it. Look at these
souls. There is not one of them so mean, or vile, or base, but can be
rescued by the power of His Spirit, and by His living, glorious Gospel
brought to bear upon them. The Saviour, quoting from the Prophets, says,
'Ye are gods' (and adds), 'the Scriptures cannot be
broken.' He had no such little, mean, insignificant estimate of the
worth of human souls, as some people have nowadays, who consign whole
generations to Hell without any bowels of mercy or compassion. Oh! the Lord
fill us with the pity of Jesus Christ, who, when He saw the multitudes,
wept over them.
O friends, think of one such soul! What is your gold, or houses, or
lands--what your respectability, what your reputation, what all the
prizes of this world? We talk about it, but who realizes
it--who, WHO?--the value of one precious, immortal
soul saved, redeemed, sanctified? Oh, the wants of the world! They are
dying, THEY ARE DYING! When
Page 177
If your homes were being decimated by the cholera, you would not be very
particular about the means you used to stay it, and if anybody came with
objections to the roughness of your measures, you would say, 'the
people are dying, they are dying,' and that would be the end of all
argument. I say, they are dying, and they ARE to be saved.
Satan is getting them: I want God to have them. Jesus Christ has bought
them. He was the propitiation for the sins of the whole world. They belong
to Him, and He shall have every one I can reach, and every one I can
inspire others to reach also.
The world is dying. Do you believe it? You are called by the wants of
the world. Begin nearest home if you like, by all means, I have little
faith in those people's ministrations who go abroad after others,
while their own are perishing at their firesides. Begin at home, but do not
end there. 'Oh! yes,' people say, 'begin at home,'
but they end there; you never hear of them anywhere else, and it comes to
very little what they do at home, after all. God has ordained that the two
shall go together. Get them saved by all means, but get somebody else saved
as well. Set yourself to work for God. Go to Him to ask Him how to do it.
Go to Him for the equipment of power and then begin. Never mind how you
tremble. I dare say your trembling will do more good than if you were ever
so brave. Never mind the tears. I wish Christians would weep
the Gospel into people; it would often go deeper than it
Page 178
A lady said to my daughter, 'I have begun talking to people about
their souls in quite a different way to what I used. I begin asking them if
they do not know they are sinners and if ready to die, and it produces
quite a different effect.' For one reason she has her own heart full
of the Love and Spirit of God, and that burns her words in. Begin in that
way and see what God will do through you, for, of course, I only recognize
you as the instrumentality which He has chosen, and those who reflect upon
the instrumentality reflect upon His wisdom. You go and
Page 179
The Lord help you to go home thinking about the wants of the world, and
next Sabbath we will consider the qualifications for labour.
Page 181THE HOLY GHOST
Page 183THE HOLY GHOST
LUKE xxiv. 49.
--'And, behold, I send
the promise of My Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem,
until ye be endued with power from on high.'
ACTS i. 8.
--'But ye shall receive
power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.'
FRIENDS who were present at former services will remember our
line of thought, without my stopping to recapitulate. My chief reason for
taking up this subject again, after having preached four sermons on it, is
to meet the difficulties of some whom I believe to be anxious and honest
inquirers. Taking those who have written and spoken to me as
representatives of a class, it occurred to me that there might be many
others in a similar state of mind, and it is a great joy to me if the Lord
uses me to meet real difficulties, and to help those who are exercised by
them into a higher state of grace, and a more thorough and complete
devotion to the Lord. This is my end--God is my witness--in every
service.
Now, I do not want to make any reflections, and will not do so any
further than I can help; but in dealing with such a subject we cannot avoid
this, to a certain extent, as I have said before; if the truth reveals
error, and if trying to get into a better track necessarily in some measure
reflects on the old track--we cannot help it, and we must not eschew
the former for the latter. It must be manifest, I think,
Page 184
People say to me, on every hand, we have meetings without number,
services, societies, conventions, conferences, but what comes of them all,
comparatively? And I may just say here that numbers of
ministers and clergymen, in private conversation, admit the same thing. In
fact, none are more ready to admit this comparative lack of results than
many dear spiritual ministers. They say, when talking with us behind the
scenes--'Yes, it is a sad fact. I think I preach the truth. I
pray about it. I am
Page 185
Now note, secondly, this want is not the truth. Oh! what a great deal of
talk we have about the truth, and not any too much. I would not yield to
any man or woman in this audience in my love for this Bible. I love this
Word and regard it as the standard of all faith and practice, and our guide
to live by; but it is not enough of itself. The great want is
not the truth, for you see facts would contradict this theory. If it were
the truth, then there would be no lack at this day, compared with other
times, because we never had so much of the truth. There never was so much
preaching of the truth, or such a wide dissemination of the Word of God,
yet, comparatively, where are the results?
Page 186
Further, not only as to quantity, but as to
quality am I discouraged. Not only are there comparatively few
conversions, but a great many of these are of a questionable kind. We
should not only ask--are people converted, but what are they converted
to? What SORT OF SAINTS ARE THEY? Because, I contend, you had
far better let a man alone in sin than give him a sham conversion, and make
him believe he is a Christian when he is nothing of the kind. So you see we
must look after the quality as well as the quantity, and I fear, we have an
awful amount of spurious production, and it behoves us--and I will,
for one, if I were to be crucified for it to-morrow--be true to what
the Spirit of God has taught me on this point, I will never pander to
things as they are for fear of the persecution which follows trying to put
them right. God forbid!
Then, I say, the lack is not truth. There will be thousands
of sermons preached to-day--the truth and nothing but the truth.
Nobody will pretend to say they were not in perfect keeping with the Word
of God; and yet they will be perfect failures, and nobody will know it
better than they who preach them! These are facts.
I was talking, on this point, a while ago, with a good man, who said,
'Ah! yes, I have not seen a conversion in my church for these two
years.' Now, what was the reason? There was a reason,
and I am afraid many might say the same. Yet there are the unconverted.
They come to be operated upon. Take a church where there is a congregation
of, say, eight hundred or one thousand, suppose with a membership of two
hundred or three hundred.
Page 187
Now, I say, and I most unhesitatingly assert, that the great want is
POWER--this power of which we have been reading.
And I want to remark, thirdly, that this power is as distinct, and
deftnite, and separate, a gift of God, as was this Book, as was the Son, or
any other gift which He has given us.
It is distinctly recognized, not only in our texts, but, as we read to
you again and again, as a distinct and definite gift accompanying the
efforts of those who live on the conditions on which God can give it to
them. We cannot explain this gift, but it is the power of the Holy Spirit
of God in the soul of the speaker accompanying His word, making it cut and
Page 188
Now, I find people who go to work, which is all right, because the power
comes to us in obedient faith; but they go trusting in their own efforts.
They are without this endowment of power, and they see no result. The work
is a comparative failure. Oh! what numbers of people have come to me who
have been at work in different directions, in churches, as ministers,
elders, deacons, leaders, Sabbath-school teachers, tract distributors, and
the like, confessing that they had been working for more or less lengthened
periods, and had seen comparatively little result. They say, 'Do you
think this is right? Do you think I ought to go on?' Go on,
assuredly, but not in the same track. Go on, most decidedly, but seek a
fresh inspiration. There is something wrong, or you would have seen some
fruit of your labour--not all the fruit. God does not give to any of
us to see it all; but we do see enough to assure us that the Holy Ghost is
accompanying our testimony. God's people have always done that when
they have worked in conformity with the conditions on which the power can
be given.
Now, this is how I account for the want of results
Page 189
You say--'How do you account for it?' I account for it
because we poor, wretched, tiny, helpless creatures, although we cannot get
anything good in the creature, yet put some TRUST in it. But
when God teaches us that we have nothing to trust in,
Page 190
I believe you do perceive; but, if you do not, take the
Book and examine it yourself. Be at the trouble. You will not get at the
mind of the Lord without a great deal of trouble on these matters of power,
spiritual union, and the like. Take the Bible with you on your knees before
the Lord; show Him the words, and say, 'Now, Lord, show me the
meaning of this.' Wait, and there will come a voice from the
excellent glory. There will come light as from the Shekinah, which will
reveal it in your spiritual consciousness, and you will thus know that
thing for ever. You will be wiser than your teachers with respect to that
particular point.
Further, you say, 'Can we have this power equally with the early
disciples?' I say, reasoning by analogy, assuming that what God has
done in the past He will continue to do in the future, is it not likely
that He will give it to us, because we
Page 191
You remember what Jesus said to Mary--'Go and tell My
disciples AND PETER.' Mary, perhaps, would have left
Peter out after his shameful denial of the Lord; for fear of this, Jesus
said, 'Go and tell My disciples AND PETER.'
Ah! there are some here saying, 'But Peter was not so bad as I
am.' Well, we don't know anything about that, but, whether you
are worse or not, the Holy Ghost is equal to the emergency. He can cure
you. He can baptize you with His power. You may have denied Him, if not as
Peter did, yet practically as badly. It makes no difference to God whether
you have been a little bad or very bad; whether you have denied Him once or
thrice, or whether you have denied Him with oaths and curses. If you will
only
Page 192
Now, this baptism will transform you as it did them; it will make you
all prophets and prophetesses, according to your measure.
Will you come and let Him baptize you? Will you learn, once and for
ever, that it is not a question of human merit, strength, or
deserving at all, but simply a question of submission,
obedience, faith?
Then we need it because not only are the agents the same, but our
work is essentially the same.
Page 193
It may differ in its outward manifestations because we live in an age of
greater toleration, but it is just the same in essence, and I do not know,
as to the manifestation, when you come to do it in Apostolic fashion, with
the Apostolic spirit, whether you do not get very much the same Apostolic
treatment. They gnash upon you with their teeth, and do as much as the law
will let them, and sometimes a little more, in the way of stoning and
persecuting you.
The great thing to be done by this power of God is to subdue the
naturally evil, wicked, and rebellious heart of man. Now God alone is able
to do that. That is a superhuman work. You may enlighten a man's
intellect, civilize his manners, reform his habits, make him a respectable,
honest, industrious member of society, without the power of God, but you
cannot transform HIS SOUL. That is too much for any human
reformer. That is the prerogative of the Holy Ghost, and I have not a
shadow of a doubt that the eternal day will reveal every other kind of work
to be wood, hay, stubble. All the sham conversions, all the people whose
lives and opinions have been changed by anything short of this power will
be wood, hay, stubble. It is the prerogative of the Spirit of God.
Therefore, God never pretends to do it by any other means; and all the way
through the Bible this power is ascribed to the Spirit of God. Therefore,
we want this Spirit to do this work. What! you set yourself to enlighten a
darkened human soul, to convince a hardened, rebellious sinner, to convert
a rebel in arms against God, with an inveterate hatred in the very core of
Page 194
And what is our work? To go and subjugate the world to Jesus; everybody
we can reach, everybody we can influence, and bring them to the feet of
Jesus, and make them realize that He is their lawful King and lawgiver;
that the Devil is a usurper, and that they are to come and serve Christ all
the days of their lives. Dare any of us think of it without this equipment
of power? Talk about 'Can we have it?'--we are of no use
without it. What can we do without it? This is the reason of the effeteness
of so much professed Christianity; there is no Holy Ghost in it. It is all
rotten. It is like a very pretty corpse--you cannot say there is this
wanting or the other wanting; it is a perfect form, but dead.
It is like a good galvanic battery. It is all right--perfect in all
its parts--but when you touch it there is no effect--there is no
fire or shock. What is the matter? It only wants the fire--the
power.
O friends, we want the power that we may be able to go and stretch
ourselves upon the dead in trespasses and sins, and breathe into him the
breath of spiritual life. We want to be able to go and touch his eyes that
he may see, and speak to the dead and deaf with the voice of God and make
them hear. This is what we want--POWER.
If we equally need it, is it likely that God will
Page 195
Then, in conclusion, let me remind you--and it makes my own soul
almost reel when I think of it--that God holds us responsible. He
holds you responsible for all the good you might do if you had it. Do not
deceive yourself. He will have the five talents with their
increase. He will not have an excuse for one, and you will not
dare to go up to the throne, and say, 'Thou wast a hard Master,
reaping where Thou hast not sown, and gathering where Thou hadst not
strewn. Thou badest me to save souls when Thou knewest I had not the
power.' What will He say to you? 'Wicked and slothful servant,
out of thine own mouth will I judge thee.
Page 196
Page 197
We had a letter only on Friday, about a gentleman who had been
reconverted in the services of The Salvation Army, telling us that he has
relinquished an income of £800 a year, in order to keep a conscience
void of offence--this is the result of the power of the Holy Ghost. I
heard of another gentleman who was invited to a party. After dinner, the
card-table was got out, as usual, and when the cards were all spread and
everybody was ready to begin, this gentleman jumped up, and pushed it away,
and said, 'I have done with this for ever.' The lady who told
me said, 'He was down on his knees before we had time to turn round,
and was praying for us and for all the house.' 'Oh!' she
added, 'you should have seen them.' Yes, of course, every man
felt like the people round the Saviour. Every man's own conscience
condemned him. 'They went off home, without any more card-playing, or
dancing, or wine-drinking that night.' Come out from
Page 198
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