The Christian's Secret to a Happy Life

THE CHRISTIAN SECRET OF A HAPPY LIFE by HANNAH WHITEOWL SMITH CHAPTER II GOD'S SIDE AND MAN'S SIDE Much misunderstanding arises, in reference to this subject of the life and walk of faith, from the fact that its two sides are not clearly seen. People are apt to think that there is only one side to it, and, dwelling exclusively upon the one they happen to see the most clearly without even a thought of any other, it is no wonder that distorted views of the whole matter are the legitimate consequence. Now, there are two very decided and distinct sides to this subject, and, like all other subjects, it cannot be fully understood unless both of these sides are kept constantly in view. I refer, of course, to God's side and man's side, or, in other words, to God's part in the work of sanctification and man's part. These are very distinct and even contrasting, but although to a cursory observer they may sometimes so appear, they are not really contradictory. At one time this was very strikingly illustrated to me. There were two teachers of this interior life holding meetings in the same place at alternate hours. One spoke only of God's part in the work, and the other dwelt exclusively upon man's part. They were both in perfect sympathy with each other, and realized fully that they were each teaching different sides of the same great truth, and this also was understood by a large proportion of their hearers. But with some of the hearers it was different, and one lady said to me in the greatest perplexity, I cannot understand it at all. Here are two preachers undertaking to teach just the same truth, and yet to me they seem flatly to contradict each other. And I felt at the time that she expressed a puzzle that, very often, causes great difficulty in the minds of many honest inquirers after this truth. Suppose two friends go to see some celebrated building and return home to describe it. One has seen only the north side, and the other only the south. The first says, The building was built in such a manner, and has such and such stories and ornaments. Oh, no, says the other, interrupting him. You are altogether mistaken. I saw the building, and it was built in quite a different manner, and its ornaments and stories were so-and-so. A likely dispute might follow upon the truth of the respective descriptions, until the two friends should discover that they had been describing different sides of the building, and then all would be reconciled at once. I would like to state, as clearly as I can, what I judge to be the two distinct sides in this matter, and to show how looking at one without seeing the other will be sure to create wrong impressions and views of the truth. To state it in brief, I would say that man's part is to trust, and God's part is to work, and it can be seen at a glance how these two parts contrast with each other, and yet are not necessarily contradictory. I mean this. There is a certain work to be accomplished. We are to be delivered from the power of sin, and are to be made perfect in every good work to do the will of God. Beholding, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, we are to be actually changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. We are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds that we may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. A real work is to be wrought in us and upon us. Besetting sins are to be conquered. Evil habits are to be overcome. Wrong dispositions and feelings are to be rooted out, and holy tempers and emotions are to be begotten. A positive transformation is to take place. So, at least, the Bible teaches. Now, somebody must do this. Either we must do it for ourselves, or another must do it for us. We have, most of us, tried to do it for ourselves at first, and have grievously failed. Then we discover, from the Scriptures and from our own experience, that it is something we are unable to do, but that the Lord Jesus Christ has come on purpose to do it, and that He will do it for all who put themselves wholly into His hands and trust Him without reserve. Now under these circumstances, what is the part of the believer, and what is the part of the Lord? Plainly, the believer can do nothing but trust, while the Lord in whom he trusts actually does the work entrusted to him. Trusting and doing are certainly contrasted things, often indeed contradictory, but are they contradictory in this case? Manifestly not, because it is two different parties that are concerned. If we should say of one party in a transaction that he trusted his case to another, and yet attended to it himself, we should state a contradiction and an impossibility. But when we say of two parties in a transaction that one trusts the other to do something, and that the other goes to work and does it, we are stating something that is perfectly simple and harmonious. When we say, therefore, that in this higher life man's part is to trust, and God's part is to do the thing entrusted to him, we do not surely present any very difficult or puzzling problem. The preacher who is speaking on man's part in the matter cannot speak of anything but surrender and trust because this is positively all the man can do. We all agree about this. And yet such preachers are constantly criticized as though in saying this they had meant to imply there was no other part, and that therefore nothing but trusting is to be done. And the cry goes out that this doctrine of faith does away with all realities, that souls are just told to trust and there is the end of it, and that they sit down thenceforward in a sort of religious easy chair, dreaming away a life fruitless of any actual result. All this misapprehension arises, of course, from the fact that either the preacher has neglected to state, or the hearer has failed to hear, the other side of the matter, which is that when we trust, the Lord works, and that a great deal is done not by us, but by Him. Actual results are reached by our trusting because our Lord undertakes the thing entrusted to Him and accomplishes it. We do not do anything, but He does it, and it is all the more effectually done because of this. As soon as this is clearly seen, the difficulty as to the preaching of faith disappears entirely. On the other hand, the preacher who dwells on God's part in the matter is criticized on a totally different ground. He does not speak of trust, for the Lord's part is not to trust, but to work. The Lord's part is to do the thing entrusted to Him. He disciplines and trains by inward exercises and outward providences. He brings to bear upon us all the refining and purifying resources of His wisdom and His love. He makes everything in our lives and circumstances subservient to the one great purpose of causing us to grow in grace and of conforming us, day by day and hour by hour, to the image of Christ. He carries us through a process of transformation, longer or shorter as our peculiar case may require, making actual and experimental the result for which we have trusted. We have dared, for instance, according to the command in Romans 6.11, by faith to reckon ourselves dead unto sin. The Lord makes this a reality and puts us to death by a thousand little mortifications and crosses to the natural man. Our reckoning is available only because God thus makes it real. And yet the preacher who dwells upon this practical side of the matter and tells of God's processes for making faiths, reckonings, experimental realities, may be accused of contradicting the preaching of faith altogether, and of declaring only a process of gradual sanctification by works and of setting before the soul an impossible and hopeless task. Now, sanctification is both a step of faith and a process of works. It is a step of surrender and trust on our part, and it is a process of development on God's part. By a step of faith we get into Christ. By a process we are made to grow up into Him in all things. By a step of faith we put ourselves into the hands of the divine potter. By a gradual process He makes us into a vessel unto His own honor, meet for His use, and prepared to every good work. To illustrate this, suppose I were to describe to a person who is entirely ignorant of the subject the way in which a lump of clay is made into a beautiful vessel. I tell him first the part of the clay in the matter, and all I can say about this is that the clay is put into the potter's hand, and then lies passive there, submitting itself to all the turnings and overturnings of the potter's hands upon it. There is really nothing else to be said about the clay's part, but could my hearer argue from this that nothing else is done because I say that this is all the clay can do? If he is an intelligent hearer, he will not dream of doing so, but will say, I understand, this is what the clay must do, but what must the potter do? Ah, I answer, now we come to the important part. The potter takes the clay, thus abandoned to his working, and begins to mold and fashion it according to his own will. He kneads and works it, he tears it apart and presses it together again, he wets it and then suffers it to dry. Sometimes he works at it for hours together, sometimes he lays it aside for days and does not touch it, and then, when by all these processes he has made it perfectly pliable in his hands, he proceeds to make it up into the vessel he has proposed. He turns it upon the wheel, planes it and smooths it, and dries it in the sun, bakes it in the oven, and finally turns it out of his workshop, a vessel to his honor and fit for his use. Will my reader be likely now to say that I am contradicting myself that a little while ago I had said the clay had nothing to do but lie passive in the potter's hands, and that I am now putting upon it a great work which it is not able to perform, and that to make itself into such a vessel is an impossible and hopeless undertaking? Surely not, for he will see that while before I was speaking of the clay's part in the matter, I am now speaking of the potter's part, and that these two are necessarily contrasted, but not in the least contradictory, and that the clay is not expected to do the potter's work, but only to yield itself up to his working. Nothing, it seems to me, could be clearer than the perfect harmony between these two apparently contradictory sorts of teaching. What can be said about man's part in this great work, but that he must continually surrender himself and continually trust? But when we come to God's side of the question, what is there that may not be said as to the manifold and wonderful ways in which he accomplishes the work entrusted to him? It is here that the growing comes in. The lump of clay could never grow into a beautiful vessel if it stayed in the clay pit for thousands of years, but when it is put into the hands of a skillful potter, it grows rapidly, under his fashioning, into the vessel he intends it to be, and in the same way the soul abandoned to the working of the heavenly potter is made into a vessel unto honor, sanctified, and meet for the master's use. Having, therefore, taken the step of faith by which you have put yourself wholly and absolutely into his hands, you must now expect him to begin to work. His way of accomplishing that which you have entrusted to him may be different from your way, but he knows, and you must be satisfied. I knew a lady who had entered into this life of faith with a great outpouring of the Spirit and a wonderful flood of light and joy. She supposed, of course, this was a preparation for some great service, and expected to be put forth immediately into the Lord's harvest field. Instead of this, almost at once her husband lost all his money, and she was shut up in her own house to attend to all sorts of domestic duties, with no time or strength left for any gospel work at all. She accepted the discipline, and yielded herself up as heartily to sweep and dust and bake and sew as she would have done to preach or pray or write for the Lord, and the result was that, through this very training, he made her into a vessel meet for the master's use and prepared unto every good work. Another lady who had entered this life of faith under similar circumstances of wondrous blessing, and who also expected to be sent out to do some great work, was shut up with two peevish invalid children to nurse and humor and amuse all day long. Unlike the first one, this lady did not accept the training, but chafed and fretted, and finally rebelled, lost all her blessing, and went back into a state of sad coldness and misery. She had understood her part of trusting to begin with, but, not understanding the divine process of accomplishing that for which she had trusted, she took herself out of the hands of the heavenly potter, and the vessel was marred on the wheel. I believe many a vessel has been similarly marred by a want of understanding these things. The maturity of a Christian experience cannot be reached in a moment, but is the result of the work of God's Holy Spirit, who, by His energizing and transforming power, causes us to grow up into Christ in all things. And we cannot hope to reach this maturity in any other way than by yielding ourselves up, utterly and willingly, to His mighty working. But the sanctification the Scriptures urge as a present experience upon all believers does not consist in maturity of growth, but in purity of heart, and this may be as complete in the early as in our later experiences. The lump of clay from the moment it comes under the transforming hand of the potter is, during each day and each hour of the process, just what the potter wants it to be at that hour or on that day, and therefore pleases him. But it is very far from being matured into the vessel he intends in the future to make it. The little babe may be all that a babe could be, or ought to be, and may therefore perfectly please its mother, and yet it is very far from being what that mother would wish it to be when the years of maturity shall come. The apple in June is a perfect apple for June. It is the best apple that June can produce, but it is a very different apple from the apple in October, which is a perfected apple. God's works are perfect in every stage of their growth. Man's works are never perfect until they are in every respect complete. All that we claim, then, in this life of sanctification is, that by an act of faith we put ourselves into the hands of the Lord for Him to work in us all the good pleasure of His will, and then by a continuous exercise of faith keep ourselves there. This is our part in the matter, and when we do it, and while we do it, we are, in the Scripture sense, truly pleasing to God, although it may require years of training and discipline to mature us into a vessel that shall be in all respects to His honor and fitted to every good work. Our part is the trusting. It is His to accomplish the results, and when we do our part, He never fails to do His, for no one ever trusted in the Lord and was confounded. Do not be afraid, then, that if you trust or tell others to trust, the matter will end there. Trust is the beginning and the continuing foundation, but when we trust, the Lord works, and His work is the important part of the whole matter. And this explains that apparent paradox which puzzles so many. They say, in one breath you tell us to do nothing but trust, and in the next you tell us to do impossible things. How can you reconcile such contradictory statements? They are to be reconciled just as we reconcile the statements concerning a saw in a carpenter's shop when we say at one moment that the saw has sawn asunder a log, and the next moment declare that the carpenter has done it. The saw is the instrument used, the power that uses it is the carpenter's. And so we, yielding ourselves unto God, and our members as instruments of righteousness unto Him, find that He works in us to will and to do His good pleasure, and we can say with Paul, I labored, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. In the divine order, God's working depends upon our cooperation. Of our Lord it was declared that at a certain place He could do their no mighty work because of their unbelief. It was not that He would not, but He could not. I believe we often think of God that He will not, when the real truth is that He cannot. Just as the potter, however skillful, cannot make a beautiful vessel out of a lump of clay that is never put into his hands, so neither can God make out of me a vessel unto His honor unless I put myself into His hands. My part is the essential correlation of God's part in the matter of my salvation, and as God is sure to do His part all right, the vital thing for me is to find out what my part is and then do it. In this book, therefore, I shall of course dwell mostly on man's side as I am writing for human beings, and in the hope of making it plain how we are to fulfill our part of this great work. But I wish it to be distinctly understood all through that unless I believed with all my heart in God's effectual working on His side, not one word of this book would ever have been written.