02.A14. Conscious Deficiencies Of Christian

CHAPTER XIV.

CONSCIOUS DEFICIENCIES OF CHRISTIAN AND MINISTERIAL QUALIFICATION. WHEN the Spirit of God is about to open upon the mind some new and fundamentally important aspect of divine truth, or to impart some new, and fresh, and vitalising aspect of what we really knew before, and this as a means of lifting us to new and far higher forms of "the hidden life" than we were formerly possessed of, He commonly, first of all, renders us distinctly conscious of some, specific inward spiritual want -- a want which what we now know of the gospel is not adapted to meet -- a want, however, to meet which fully and perfectly the new manifestation is absolutely adapted.

We are thus led to inquire and search diligently after this manifestation which God has prepared for us, and which the Spirit, through these "unutterable groanings," is preparing us to receive; and when we have been induced to "search for God" in these new and living manifestations, and to "search for Him with all our hearts, and with all our souls," we "find Him," and find Him as "our everlasting light, and the days of our mourning are ended." The brightest of all "the signs of promise," in regard to the near future of Zion, is the fact that the conviction is everywhere obtaining among evangelical Christians that they are living far below their revealed privileges -- that everywhere they are being pressed with a common, and conscious, and specific want and desire for something higher and better than they have hitherto enjoyed -- and that with the conviction that there are in Christ provisions fully adequate to meet these necessities.

These wants will never be met by looking back to "the blessedness we knew when first we saw the Lord," or to "the soul-refreshing view of Jesus and His Word" which was once enjoyed. As far as the mount of justification is concerned, the joys of pardoned sin, and the "soul-refreshing view of Jesus and His Word" there enjoyed, God is saying to His people, "Ye have compassed this mountain long enough." Inquire now for "the rest that remains for the people of God," for "the rising of the Sun of Righteousness with healings in His wings," for "the promise of the Spirit," for the open-faced "beholdings of the glory of the Lord," for the divine fellowships, and for the coming of Christ and the Father to "make their abode with you," so that you may know in experience what your Redeemer meant when He said, "I in them, and Thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that Thou hast sent me, and hast loved them as Thou lovest me." Nothing but these eternal verities will meet and satisfy the great want that is now pressing upon believers. In my own case, "the aching void" which the passing away of my primal religious joys had left in my heart, together with the conscious fact that nothing in my then views of the gospel seemed to have power to bring back that blessedness, and with constant failures of my best resolutions, rendered me continuously conscious of the fact that I had somewhere missed my way, and needed some one to teach me the secret of the inner life, as that life is portrayed in the Scriptures. However clear and distinct my views of the system of Christian doctrine one fact I knew, and was distinctly conscious of, that my inner life did but very partially accord with that which Christ has promised to believers. My thirst was not quenched, nor were the waters which Christ had given me "within me as a well of water springing up into everlasting life;" nor was "my joy full;" nor did I have an experience of what our Saviour meant when He said, "He that believeth in me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water." Hence the continued inward cry, "Oh, that I knew where I might find Him!" and where is the key that will unlock the mystery of my inner life, and show me "the living water?"

I had not been over six or seven years in the ministry before far more than as many hundred converts were added to my own and other churches around me, and that through my direct instrumentality. As soon as these converts multiplied before me, the command came distinctly home to my mind, "Feed my lambs." I looked over the churches to which I ministered, and perceived that the membership of the same were, almost without exception, in a sickly and feeble spiritual state, none of them having "princely power with God and with men," none of them "kept in perfect peace," or "rejoicing with joy unspeakable and full of glory." In the visible presence of such facts, another precept came home with similar distinctness to my mind, "Feed my sheep." The two precepts under consideration, as I clearly understood them, required that those young converts and feeble believers should be so instructed that "they might grow up into Christ in all things," "attain to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ," be "thoroughly furnished into every good work," "rejoice ever more," and be "filled with all the fulness of God." This was the unmistakable pattern of the New Testament saint, as distinctly drawn by the pen of inspiration. I was myself consciously not such a saint, and was darkly ignorant of "the way, the truth, and the life" by which I could attain to a personal realisation of the revealed divine ideal before me.

How could I lead "the flock of God" in a way unknown to myself? He that would, as required, feed the flock, must in his own experience, as I clearly saw, lead the flock. What he has himself "seen and heard," that he must "testify" to believers. What is expressly required of the religious teacher -- and all believers should, in their diverse spheres and measure, be teachers -- what is required of the religious teacher, I say, is that he shall, in his inner and outward life, be a living exemplification of the life-imparting power of the truth which he teaches -- "an epistle of Christ," "known and read of all men" as such. This deep consciousness, thus induced, of most essential personal and ministerial deficiency, developed in the depths of my inner being a sense of a specific and overshadowing want, together with an irrepressible desire to discover the divine secret or manifestation by which that want would be fully met, I will relate a single fact as illustrative of the mental state to which I refer. At the close of a protracted meeting of about one week’s continuance -- I was President of Oberlin College then -- upwards of two hundred and fifty individuals separated themselves from the congregation, and seated themselves in front of the preacher’s stand as converts and inquirers, all but a few of them being of the former class. As I looked over that mass, I said to myself, "If any one was present who could direct me into ’the new and living way’ after which I am inquiring, I should take my place among these converts and inquirers." Such was the sentiment that was omnipresent in my mind during the years of my Christian and ministerial life of which I am now speaking.