02.A11. Intense Struggles, Conflicts, Fightings
CHAPTER XI.
INTENSE STRUGGLES, CONFLICTS, FIGHTINGS, AND INGLORIOUS DEFEATS.
IF the reader can form the conception of an individual whose fixed and abiding aim and purpose is "so to exercise himself as to have always a conscience void of offence toward God and toward man," and has not lost this purpose -- an individual, however, who has had very deep and abiding joy in God, and does not now know "the joy of the Lord," as "his strength;" if the reader can conceive of such an individual, in the state above described, entering into a resolute conflict with the newly-vitalised and ever-active evil propensities and tempers within him, and that with an inflexible determination to subdue and hold them all in subjection, he will form some conception of the conflicts and defeats which I experienced during six or eight years of my Christian life. With me, then as now, covetousness, evil intent, however secret, and evil desire inwardly entertained and cherished, carefulness about the future, discontent with our lot, evil-speaking, yielding to the promptings of envy or anger, "and such like," are sin.
Yet how to avoid the sin I found not. Evil incentives were all around me, and evil propensities answering to the same, and always kindled into a flame the moment they were touched with the spark of temptation, were within; and temptation always came suddenly, and took the will captive before reflection was possible. How often did I say to myself; "If I could only have time for reflection, when beset with unexpected temptation, I could be the victor in the conflict." Before reflection could come to my relief, however, the evil was done, and I was in captivity. I then read my experience in the seventh chapter of Romans, and a bitter experience it was.
Under such circumstances, two courses, supposing a more excellent way than either is not open to us -- two courses remain for the believer. He may give the conflict over as a hopeless endeavour, and, in a kind of gloomy content, let his evil passions and temper have dominion over him. Or he may, notwithstanding the odds against him, maintain the conflict, and, by repentance and faith in Christ, recover from his lapses when they do occur. The latter course I adopted, and maintained unerringly. The former many seem to adopt, and do it at the infinite peril of their immortal interests. No individual can allow sin to lie upon his conscience unrepented of and unforgiven without throwing himself into the arms of the second death.
Since then, I have learned "the more excellent way" referred to. Christ, when this way has been learned, takes away our sins by destroying and taking away the power of those evil principles and propensities within us -- principles and propensities which induce us to sin -- and putting within us His own "love of righteousness and hatred of iniquity," and thus rendering holiness as natural to us in our new, as sin was in our old life. I tried, to my deep and abiding sorrow, the common and old way for years, before I inquired and searched diligently "for the new and living way," "by which I now draw nigh unto God," and "full grace to help in time of need." The Causes which led to such Results When any important event occurs, we naturally inquire for the reason or cause of such occurrence. If we should form our judgment of the duration of the primal joy of the new life from a consideration of the new relations into which the mind is then introduced, its relations to God, and to its own mortal and immortal interests, and also from the positive representations of Scripture upon the subject, we should conclude that this joy will not only steadily increase, but will be eternally enduring. In the pardon of sin, and in our adoption as the sons of God, the good received, and the grace and love manifested in the same, is each infinite. In being "turned from darkness unto light, and from the power of Satan unto God," no change in character and relations like this can occur in the experience of rational minds. Surely the blessedness resulting from such experiences might be expected to be eternally enduring. That it should be thus enduring, accords with the express revelations of the Bible. "Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." "He that believeth in me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall how rivers of living water." "These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full." "Ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full." "In whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable, and full of glory." "Thy people shall all be taught of the Lord, and great shall be the peace of thy people." "For the Lord shall be their everlasting light, and the days of their mourning shall be ended." "Everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away." "We joy in tribulation also." "In all these things we are more than conquerors, through Him that hath loved us." Such is the revealed blessedness -- blessedness in this life -- of those who walk in "the highway of holiness." We often hear it said that religion does not consist in feeling, whether joyful or sad. This is true. Yet "the fruit of righteousness is peace, and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance for ever." "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace," &c. An experience in which we are not "kept in perfect peace," in which "the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, does not keep our hearts and minds by Christ Jesus," in which we do not "rejoice evermore," and "our joy is not full," is not normal but abnormal Christian experience. Nor will any believer ever become "rooted and grounded in love" unless "the joy of the Lord is his strength." We cannot "know and believe the love that God hath unto us," and our love not "be made perfect;" and we cannot be "made perfect in love," and "all fear not be cast out," and our "joy not become full," because "our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ." The time, I venture without fear to predict, is not distant when, with the Christians of that generation, the great mystery in the history of the Church will be the fact that, for long periods, believers in Jesus sighed, and cried, and searched after "the blessedness they knew when first they saw the Lord," "the soul-refreshing views of Jesus and His Word" which they then enjoyed. and talked and sang to one another about the "aching void" which that blessedness and those views had left in their hearts. No believer who will be advised by me will rest, or "give God any rest," until Christ is in him as the Father is in Christ, and he has "Christ’s joy fulfilled" in his heart. But how does this joy in God pass away? Most commonly, I answer, through sin for which the "heart condemns" the subject, and the sin is left upon the conscience unrepented of and unforgiven. In my own case, this was not the cause after which we are seeking. There has never been a period in my Christian life when I did not cherish a sacred respect for every form of the known will of God, or when "my heart condemned me" and I did not seek prompt forgiveness; yet there were years in which I "feared the Lord and trembled at His word," and still "walked in darkness and had no light." How did I lose that primal blessedness? In the first place, I answer, I expected to lose it. That I should lose it was a fixed article of the creed in which I had been taught from the beginning. In the heart of every believer whom I knew, and of whom I had heard or read, that blessedness had faded out. In my experience this joy passed away so gradually and imperceptibly that very little alarm was excited. As the light faded, I read my experience and in-yard life very distinctly in the seventh chapter of Romans, which, as I honestly supposed, reveals that experience and in the best form to be expected this side heaven or the hour of death. The wretchedness that I experienced, and the abortive efforts I made to recover my former standing and overcome my evil tendencies and besetments, revealed to me, as I supposed, the fact that I was then in the identical moral and spiritual state in which Paul was when he wrote this and his other epistles. Thus, by my own faith and views of the express teaching of inspiration, was I frozen in, and that in "a land of darkness as darkness itself; where the light is as darkness." Nor had I, at that time, any views of Christ, of the provisions of His grace, or of the power of the Spirit -- views which had the remotest efficacy to relieve my difficulties, or reveal the path which would have conducted me out of that "darkness into God’s marvellous light." I knew Christ almost exclusively in the single sphere of our justification. Hardly "by the hearing of the ear" had I any knowledge of Him as our sanctification. Of "the promise of the Spirit" I was in total darkness. I consequently had no idea of what is meant by all that is revealed of Christ as a manifested, personal presence, "formed within us, the hope of glory," and, with the Father, "making His abode with us." All the promises and revealed provisions of grace were limited and eclipsed by what was supposed to be revealed of Christian experience and privileges in the chapter referred to, and other falsely interpreted passages.
Yes, reader, I was in that dim twilight of a semi-faith, because, while I was studying diligently -- and this is not wrong -- what was called the great doctrines, my imperious need, as I afterward found, was "some one to teach me what are the first principles of the oracles of God." Had some one thus taught me, how long would I have remained in that dark and dreary waste? No longer than I did remain after the highway of holiness was opened upon my vision. If you, reader, are now dwelling in these low grounds, heed the voice which comes to us from God out of heaven, calling upon the sacramental host to go forward, and ascend those "delectable mountains" whose cloudless summits are ever warmed and illumined by the life-giving beams of the Sun of Righteousness.