01.12. Addresses on Holiness

CHAPTER XII.

ADDRESSES ON HOLINESS, IN EXETER HALL.

FIRST ADDRESS.

I think it must be self-evident to everyone present that it is the most important question that can possibly occupy the mind of man--how much like God we can be--how near to God we can come on earth preparatory to our being perfectly like Him, and living, as it were, in His very heart for ever and ever in Heaven. Anyone who has any measure of the Spirit of God, must perceive that this is the most important question on which we can concentrate our thoughts; and the mystery of mysteries to me is, how anyone, with any measure of the Spirit of God, can help looking at this blessing of holiness, and saying, "Well, even if it does seem too great for attainment on earth, it is very beautiful and very blessed. I wish I could attain it." That, it seems to me, must be the attitude of every person who has the Spirit of God--that he should hunger and thirst after it, and feel that he shall never be satisfied till he wakes up in the lovely likeness of his Saviour. And yet, alas! we do not find it so. In a great many instances, the very first thing professing Christians do, is to resist and reject this doctrine of holiness as if it were the most foul thing on earth.

I heard a gentleman saying, a few days ago--a leader in one circle of religion--that for anybody to talk about being holy, showed that they knew nothing of themselves, and nothing of Jesus Christ. I said, "Oh, my God! it has come to something if holiness and Jesus Christ are at the antipodes of each other. I thought He was the centre and fountain of holiness. I thought it was in Him only we could get any holiness, and through Him that holiness could be wrought in us." But this poor man thought this idea to be absurd. May God speak for Himself! Ever since I heard that sentiment I have been crying from the depths of my soul, "Lord, speak for Thyself; powerfully work on the hearts of Thy people and awake them. Take the veil from their eyes, and show them what Thy purpose in Christ Jesus concerning them is. Do not let them be bewildered and miss the mark; do not leave them, but Lord, reveal it in their hearts." There is no other way by which it can be revealed, and, if you will let Him, He will reveal it in your heart.

It occurred to me that I might say a word or two on what my husband said about infirmities, because I am so continually meeting people who will make infirmities sins. They insist upon it that the requirements of the Adamic law have never been abated; that we are not under the evangelical law of love, or the law of Christ, as the Apostle puts it, but that we are still under the Adamic law, and that these imperfections and infirmities, to which my husband has referred, are sins. I wonder that such people do not think of a certain passage, which must forever explode such a theory, where the Apostle says, "Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me." If these infirmities had been sins, we should have the outrageous anomaly of an apostle of Jesus Christ glorying in his sins! You see, his infirmities were only those defects of mind and body which were capable of being overcome and overruled by grace, to the glory of Christ and to the furtherance of His kingdom.

I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me --that, in consequence of these very infirmities, the power of Christ shall so rest upon me as to lift me above them, make me independent of them, master of them, so that, through these very infirmities, I shall more glorify His strength and grace than if I were a perfect man, in mind and body. In another place he says, "And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan, to buffet me." Some people think this was sin; but surely, the words, "messenger of Satan," show that this thorn was no act or disposition of Paul’s, but some external temptation or affliction, inflicted by Satan. Besides, the Divine assurance, "My grace is sufficient for thee," ought to forbid the idea of sin. Paul sought the Lord thrice to have this thorn removed; surely if it had been sin, the Lord would, have been as anxious to have it removed as His servant was! This thorn was, doubtless, some physical trial--as the words, "in the flesh," indicate--some tribulation or sorrow, through the patient endurance of which the strength of Christ could be magnified in Paul’s weakness--one of those things which he could bear "through Christ who strengthened him." But mark, this was a Divinely-permitted discipline to prevent Paul from falling into sin; quite a different thing to sin itself. "God tempteth no man with evil." The Lord sent this to Paul for the purpose not of making him humble, for he was humbled before, but of keeping him humble. And does He not send something to us all? Do we not need trials and tribulations in the flesh in order to keep us humble? But is this evidence that, because we require these things to keep us humble, therefore pride is dwelling in us and reigning over us? It is an evidence just to the contrary.

Oh, that people, in their enquiries about this blessing of holiness, would keep this one thing before their minds, that it is being saved from sin!--sin in act, in purpose, in thought!

I have a beautiful letter, received a short time ago from a young lady, who wrote me soon after my former services in the West End. She told me that she had been the bondslave, I think, for four or five years, of a certain besetting sin, and her first letter was the very utterance of despair. She had struggled and wrestled and prayed, and tried to overcome the sin that had been reigning over her. Now and then she would get the victory, and then down she went again, and she said, "It is such a subtle thing, connected with my thoughts and imagination, so that I do not think I ever can be saved." I answered the letter, and tried to encourage her faith and hope in Jesus Christ. I showed her how dishonoring this unbelief was, and that, if she would only trust Him to come in and reign in her heart, He could purify and cleanse the very thoughts and imagination. She made a little advance, and wrote me another letter. I wrote her again, and encouraged her to trust further. She said she could not come so far as to think that He could purify her thoughts. She had got as far as to believe that He could save her from putting them into practice, but she could not believe that He could purify them. I wrote her back once more, and tried, the Lord helping me, to show her how Jesus, by the inspiration of His Holy Spirit, could purify the very thoughts of our hearts, and, thank God, she did go another step. I have had two letters from her since. She said in the first of them, "I rejoice with trembling, for fear it should be only temporary, but I have trusted Him to purify the source, and I must say HE HAS DONE IT, and, instead of thinking these thoughts, I have holy thoughts, and if Satan presents anything to my mind, it is so repulsive to me that I cannot tell you the grief and horror with which it fills me." I wrote her again, encouraging her, and I got another letter, in which she said, "It is a fact that He has cleansed the thoughts of my heart, and now I am conscious that my thoughts are pleasing to Him, that He has saved me from this sin which has been the trouble and torment of my life for all these years gone by."

Now, what I want to say to you, is, that what He can do for one, He can do for another. If I am wrong here, I give up the whole question. I am perfectly mistaken in the purpose and aim and command of the Gospel dispensation, if God does not want His people to be pure. Not to count themselves pure when they are not. Oh, no! We are told, over and over again, that God wants His people to be pure, and THAT PURITY IN THEIR HEARTS IS THE VERY CENTRAL IDEA AND END AND PURPOSE OF THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST; if it is not so, I give up the whole question--I am utterly deceived. In justification of this, I have selected two or three texts which seem to put it all in one; summing-up texts, so to speak. I will take first, as a specimen, what my husband has been trying to enforce--"The will of God is your sanctification." There is, however, a sense, and an important sense, in which sanctification must be the will of man. It must be my will, too, and if it is not my will, the Divine will can never be accomplished in me. I must will to be sanctified, as God is willing that I should be sanctified. There are as many, and more, exhortations in the Bible to sanctify yourselves than there are promises of God to sanctify you. The next text is James 4:8 : "Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts ye double-minded." This was to backsliders, to people who had been professing to believe, but who had gone back under the dominion of their fleshly appetites and passions. There are two or three other texts where we seem to get the whole matter summed up, as, for instance, "He gave Himself for us (that is, for us Christians, the whole Church of God) that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works."--That is, purify us. And then 1 Timothy 1:5 shows God’s purpose and aim in the whole method of redemption. "Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned"--cleansed and kept clean, for if it had been cleaned and become dirty again, it would not be a good but a bad conscience. And again, in 1 John 3:1 : "And every man that hath this hope in Him, purifieth himself, even as He is pure." Now, I say, these are summing-up texts, and there are numbers of others to the same effect, to show that the whole end and purpose of redemption is this--that He will restore us to purity; that He will bring us back to righteousness; that He will purge your consciences from dead works to serve the living God--not only purge you from the past, but keep you purged to serve the LIVING GOD; that it shall be done by the application of the blood to the conscience, and then it shall be maintained by the power of the Holy Ghost keeping us in a state of purity and obedience to righteousness.

Now, I say, if this be not the central idea of Christianity, I do not understand it. If God cannot do this for me--if Jesus Christ cannot do this for me, what is my advantage at all by His coming?

There is a great deal more in these epistles directed to the individual Christian to be this, that, and the other, and to do this, that, and the other, than there is about what God will do for him after all! This is not an objective Christianity--this is not sitting down and sentimentalizing and thinking of Christ in the Heavens, in these epistles; it brings Him down, to all intents and purposes, INTO OUR HEARTS AND LIVES HERE, and it is one of the continual exhortations, be ye this, and do ye this and the other.

These epistles represent a real, practical transformation to be accomplished IN US, and this is the only thing that will do to die with. If it is not accomplished in you, I tell you, you will not be able to die in peace. You will want to be cleansed, as my dear husband told you, before you can venture into the presence of the King of kings. You will want a sense of beautiful, moral rectitude and righteousness spreading over your whole nature, which will enable you to look up into the face of God and say, "Yes, I love Thee, I know Thee, and Thou knowest me, and lovest me, and we are one. I love the things Thou lovest, and desire the things Thou desirest. We are of one spirit, ’joined in one spirit unto the Lord.’" You will want that, and nothing less will do to die with. And why not have it? Will you have it? Why not let God work it in us? Will you try it? People are constantly saying, "They long for it, and they wish they could get it." Will you let God do it? Will you put away the depths of unbelief which are at the bottom of all your difficulty? People really do not believe that God can do it for them, and that is at the bottom of their difficulties. But He can do it, and He promises to do it. Will you go down, and say, "Be it unto me according to Thy word"?

"BORN--A SAVIOUR." Luke 2:11.

Jesus a Saviour born, Without: Without the inn, refused with scorn. Cast out: Cast out for me, my Saviour, King, Cast out to bring this lost one in.

Jesus a Saviour born, A man: A man of sorrows, smitten, torn by stripes: By stripes, O Lord, my soul is healed, By stripes, Thy stripes, my pardon sealed.

Jesus a Saviour born, The Lamb: The Lamb of God hath bled and borne My sins: My sins the Sacrifice did slay, My sins the Lamb doth take away.

Jesus a Saviour born To save: To save at night, at noon, at morn. To keep: To keep from sin, from doubt, from fear; To keep, for lo! the Keeper’s here.

Jesus a Saviour born, A King: A King! exalt His glorious horn, And sing: O sing, ye heavens! He burst His grave, And sing, O earth! He lives to save!

SECOND ADDRESS.

I beseech yon therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God.-- Romans 12:1-2.

I have been thinking about the word in the text, "that"--"that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable, and perfect will of God." This advance in the Divine life, as well as every other, right to the end, till we advance into glory, has its conditions. The condition of the advance from an absolutely unawakened worldly condition, to that of a convinced sinner, is the reception of the light. God awakens and enlightens tens of thousands, and thousands reject the light--instantly put it away--shut their eyes --will not have the light. These go back into greater darkness, and sin with more alacrity than ever they did before;--those who receive the light advance into the condition of awakened, enlightened souls. The next condition of advance from the state of a struggling sinner, willing to part with his sins and to follow Christ, is faith, to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, that he may receive the forgiveness of sins. And at every advance onwards, if the believer is ever to get beyond the first principles, if he is ever to grow a single inch, so to speak, there is a condition involved in that advance! For instance, if, after conversion, the Holy Spirit reveals to him something which is inconsistent--which he did not before see-- the condition of his advance another step is the renunciation of that thing!--the reception of the light, and obedience to it; and, if he shrinks from and does not receive and obey the light, he will never advance any more until he does. There are thousands of Christians, who, instead of advancing, have gone back since their conversion, because they would not comply with the condition, "THAT" they might prove the good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God.

There was a condition. They would have proved the will of God if there had been no condition; but there was a condition they would not comply with; so there they stick, just where they were--or, rather, they have gone backward.

Well, now, then, here is a condition to this grand and glorious advance from the state of justification, where, while the believer is given power over sin, so that it does not rule over him, yet he sometimes, through its inward workings, falls under its power--the advance from this comparatively sinning and repenting condition on to that platform where the believer so abides in Christ that he sins not, that he loves God with all his heart, and soul, and mind, and strength--so united to Christ that, walking in the power of the Holy Ghost, he fulfils the law of love under which he is placed--the advance, I say, from that up and down, in and out, falling and rising state, to this higher platform, also has its conditions.

You would go up to it to-day if it were not for the conditions; most of you would go up in a body, as the Israelites would have gone into Canaan, if there had been no condition. I never knew anyone so foolish as not to want to be in the good land; they want to be in, of course, and they would go in and get the honey and the milk, but there are the conditions! Now then, here you have it plain, and you have it in numbers of other passages equally plain.

There is nothing upon which the Holy Ghost has been more particular than in laying down the conditions. And what are they? "I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice"--the living man--you, all of you; not it--not something in you. The latter term is never used by the Holy Ghost when speaking to Christians, but always you, ye, your bodies, your souls, your mind, the whole man--YOU, "a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service." And is it not? Is it too much? Is it more than He bargained for when He bought you? Is it more than He paid for? It is "your reasonable service." And now, then, comes the conditions: "And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove."

Oh! if you could be transformed to Him and conformed to this world at the same time, all the difficulty would be over. I know plenty of people who would be transformed directly; but, to be not conformed to this world--how they stand and wince at that! They cannot have it at that price. As dear Finney once said, "My brother, if you want to find God, you will not find Him up there, amongst all the starch and flattery of hell; you will have to come down for Him." That is it--"Be not conformed to this world."

Nothing wounds me more, after being at meetings for dealing with souls, where I have tried to speak in a most pointed and thorough way to make everybody know what I meant, when I go to the dinner or supper-table, people have not known a bit, or, if they have, they won’t accept it. Oh! this is the secret--they will not come down from their pride and high-mightiness. But God will not be revealed to such souls, though they cry and pray themselves to skeletons, and go mourning all their days. They will not fulfil the condition--"Be not conformed to this world;" they will not forego their conformity even to the extent of a dinner party. A great many that I know will not forego their conformity to the shape of their head-dress. They won’t forego their conformity to the extent of giving up visiting and receiving visits from ungodly, worldly, hollow, and superficial people. They will not forego their conformity to the tune of having their domestic arrangements upset--no, not if the salvation of their children, and servants, and friends depends upon it. The sine qua non is their own comfort, and then take what you can get, on God’s side. "We must have this, and we must have the other; and then, if the Lord Jesus Christ will come in at the tail end and sanctify it all, we shall be very much obliged to Him; but we cannot forego these things."

Oh! friends, I tell you, this will never do. God helping me, I will, I must tell you, because it is driven in upon my soul by what I am seeing and hearing every day. People come to these meetings, and they groan and cry and come to us for help, and we exhaust our poor brains and bodies in talking to them and giving them advice, telling them what to do, and, when it comes to the point, we find, "Oh! no; don’t you be mistaken: we are not going to sacrifice these things. We cannot have the Lord if He will not come into our temples and take them as He finds them. We could not forego these things."

You remember the text that was read at the opening of the meeting-- "And the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world." It means something! and there are a hundred other texts teaching the same truth. Now, what does it mean? The Lord help us to see it! Does it not mean that we are not to be like the rest of the world?--that we are not to be guided by the same maxims, or act upon the same principles as the world?--that we are not to attach the same importance to mere earthly and worldly things that worldly people do? Have you ever thought of those awful words in the parable of the sower?--"And the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things, entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful,"--not abominable things, not immoral things, not shameful things, but the desire of other things. And, in another text: "Who mind earthly things." They attach more importance to worldly things and other things than they do to the things of His kingdom. They practically make these things first, though they sing about His kingdom and profess to make Him first: they make the earthly things first, and, therefore, they will not have their earthly things upset for His things; and do you suppose He is cheated? Do you suppose He is deceived? Do you think it likely that the great God of Heaven, who has millions of angels and archangels to worship and serve Him, is going to pour His glory on such people, and reveal Himself to them, and use them? Not likely! "I will be first in your love," He says.

You women here, if you knew that you were not the first and only one in the affections of your husband, what would you say? And you husbands, would you dwell with a wife if you knew you were not the only one in her affections, but that they were divided between you and someone else? "Not likely!" you would say; "I am not going to lavish my affections, and my society, and my gifts, and everything I possess, on one whose heart is divided with another. If she will have her heart divided, then she must go to that other."

Now you know God is a jealous God, and He knows who do mock Him, and He knows who will not sacrifice this conformity to the world that they may walk with Him in white. He knows, also, who do not care what anybody thinks of them, or what people say of them; who are willing to be counted fools and fanatics that they may walk with Him and promote the interests of His kingdom, and who only regard their bodies as His instruments and their homes as His temples; who are willing that their breakfast hours, or dinner hours, or luncheon hours, or any other hours may be upset, and, in fact, everything made subservient to the interests of His kingdom. We must place everything at His service--our children, business, homes, and everything. If I understand it, this is nonconformity to the world.

Before I close, let me say a word to help those who are desiring to attain this blessing. There is no other way. It is of no use beating about. BE NOT CONFORMED, BUT BE YE TRANSFORMED. These two are in juxtaposition. If you will be conformed, then you cannot be transformed; if you will not be transformed, then you must be conformed. Now, will you give up conformity to the world? If so, you may, everyone of you, be transformed this morning--go up into the land. You may all be saved to-day, and make your abiding-place in Christ, and have all the power and glory which comes to those who possess Him; you may advance from the miserable condition of a poor up-and-down, in-and-out, wretched man, on to the glorious vantage ground of a saved man--a saved woman--a triumphant saint of God!

FAITH. My faith looks up to Thee-- My faith, so small, so slow; It lifts its drooping eyes to see And claim the blessing now. Thy wondrous gift It sees afar; Thy perfect love It claims to share, And doth not, cannot fear. My faith takes hold on Thee-- My faith, so weak, so faint; It lifts its trembling hands to be, Trembling, but violent. The kingdom now It takes by force, And waits till Thou, Its last resource, Shall seal and sanctify. My faith holds fast on Thee, My faith, still small, but sure, Its anchor holds alone to Thee, Whose presence keeps me pure. And Thou alway, To see and hear, By night, by day, Art very near-- Art very near to me.

THIRD ADDRESS.

What a deal there is of going to meetings and getting blessed, and then going away and living just the same, until sometimes we, who are constantly engaged in trying to bring people nearer to God, go away so discouraged that our hearts are almost broken.

We feel that people go back again from the place where we have led them, instead of stepping up to the place to which God is calling them. They come and come, and we are, as the Prophet says, unto them a very pleasant instrument, or a very unpleasant one, as the case may be; and so they go away, and do not get anything. They do not make any definite advance. We have not communicated unto them any spiritual gift. They merely have their feelings stirred, and, consequently, they live the next week exactly as they lived the last, and go down under the temptation just as they did before. Would you dream for a moment from reading the New Testament that this was the kind of thing God intended in His provisions of grace and salvation? Is there not a definite end in every promise, exhortation, and command? God is most definite in His requirements and promises, and in the provision which He has made; and yet many of the Lord’s people are perpetually and persistently indefinite. They go to and fro, like a door on its hinges, and never get anything from the Lord. We want you absolutely to get something from the Lord, and we are quite sure you may and will, if you comply with the condition. The Lord is ready to give you that particular measure of grace, strength, and salvation which you need. Now that you have come up to the threshhold of the goodly land, there is only one thing which can keep you out, provided you have made the needed consecration. Of course, if you are holding anything back, then you can never come in until you give that up. If yon are cleaving to some doubtful thing, and don’t give God the benefit of the doubt, you can never come in; but, if you see this, and make the necessary consecration, if you really desire this blessing, there is only one thing which can possibly keep you out of its enjoyment, and that is--unbelief.

It will be said of you, in years to come, as it was said of some in olden times, "They entered not in because of unbelief." You have come right up to the threshhold, and some of you have been there many a time. Oh! what gracious influences you have been the subject of. You have seen through the veil! You have felt His hand! You have had your feet on the threshhold! You have been almost in, and then you have drawn back through unbelief. Shall it be so again to-night? God forbid! Will yon step over? Will you venture? Will you trust? Will yon leap on to His faithfulness? Will you spring into the arms of Omnipotent Love, and trust Him with consequences? Never mind if you do die, or something happens to you that never happened to anyone else in the world’s history; God will take care of you. Never mind if the devil does come round and "consider" you, as he did Job, and afflict you with boils, and put you upon the dunghill--you will be happier there with Jesus than in a palace without Him. Oh! this caring for consequences! The devil knows the grand possibilities open to many of you; he knows not only what you might receive and enjoy in yourselves, but what you might accomplish for God if you would only come in and possess this blessing; and so he frightens you with consequences. He knows what you might do, and whom you might be instrumental in saving! Who knows how many of these precious ones that cluster round you, you may be instrumental in leading on to this higher platform--this glorious vantage ground of Christian experience? and, through them, how many more? and how, in this way, the glorious blessing would spread? Remember, also, that every time you come near and go back, there is less probability that you will ever come in at all; and the nearer you come and go back, the less probability there is that you will ever come as near again.

You are grieving the Spirit. There are some people who have been coming near for years, and now they have gone back altogether, and I am afraid they will never come up again. What will you do? The law of the kingdom, from beginning to end, is, "According to your faith be it unto you," and, "What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them." Eternal truth has uttered it--"ye shall have them." Now then, will you? Have you let go all? Are your skirts free? Are you leaving all behind you? Are you resolved from to-night to cut from the past, and no more make any provision for the flesh to fulfil its lusts, but that you will bid the things that are behind a final adieu, close your eyes on them, and fix your eyes on the mark of the prize of your high calling, and press on every succeeding hour of your life until you reach it? Will you? If you will, God will give you this blessing. He waits to do it; He is here. The Holy Ghost is here: He is leading many of you up; He is beseeching you; He is seconding what I am saying, in your hearts; He is saying, "Come, beloved; come into the banqueting house;" He wants to bless you and fill you with His Spirit. Now then, will you come? Oh! the Lord help you not to draw back, but to press on, press on, press on, never minding the consequences.

FOURTH ADDRESS.

I think, dear friends, that I have only a very few words to say to you now. I am, as it were, holding on to God for power by which to say them, so that they shall sink into your hearts and produce some immediate and permanent results in your lives. I believe the Lord is not only grieved and disappointed, but I believe He is angry, when His people meet, and talk, and sing, and pray, and then go away without any definite result having been reached--without ever having given anything to Him, or received anything from Him. I believe He feels with respect to us, just as He felt with respect to His people of old, when He said, "Why come ye and cover my altar with tears?" As though He said, "You know what I want you to do; come and do it; and, when you do it, I will open the windows of Heaven and pour out a blessing." My heart ached at what a lady told me this morning, before I came into this hall. She said, "A friend of mine remarked, ’You don’t mean to say that you are going to call four thousand people together to cry for the Holy Ghost?’ She said, ’Yes, I do.’ ’Well, it makes me frightened. What if anything should happen; if something should be done?’" Would to God something would happen; would to God something might be done that should frighten somebody. But oh! what did that reveal? Depths of infidelity and unbelief; and yet people wonder that infidelity is increasing. Is it any wonder that infidels are laughing us to scorn? Is it any wonder that at Christian Evidence Societies men get up and say that the Christian system has become effete? No wonder, when that is the state of heart of the Lord’s people.

People meet together, and pray, and talk, and sing "Whiter than snow," and they don’t believe it any more than do the heathen. They pray for the Holy Ghost, and do not so much as believe there is a Holy Ghost. They ask God to do something, when they never knew Him to do anything, and don’t expect He ever will. The world is dying because of this unreality, and being damned by it.

Josephine Butler says, about France, "France is waiting for a reality:" and so is England, and so is the world waiting for a reality. God help us to make some real people. You believe, some of you, that nothing is going to happen. You don’t believe that God is going to do anything--so He won’t in your experience. If you had lived at Nazareth, do you think Jesus Christ would have done anything for you? If you had been deaf and dumb, you would have remained so, for He could not have done any mighty works in you, because of your unbelief! He is the same now; and if you don’t expect Him to do anything, brother, He will not. But some of us do expect Him to do something. Some of us believe He is going to do something, and that by this little stone, cut out of a mountain, without hands, He intends to raise a great kingdom. Jesus Christ is not going to be disappointed, and allow the devil to chuckle in His face forever, and say, "I have cheated You out of Your inheritance." We will do something, or die in attempting it.

After all, what does God want with us? He wants us just to be and to do. He wants us to be like His Son, and then to do as His Son did; and when we come to that, He will shake the world through us. People say, "You can’t be like His Son." Very well, then, you will never get any more than you believe for. If I did not think Jesus Christ strong enough to destroy the works of the devil, and to bring us back to God’s original pattern, I would throw the whole thing up for ever. What! He has given, us a religion we cannot practice? I say, No, He has not come to mock us. What? He has given us a Saviour who cannot save? Then I decline to have anything to do with Him. What! does He profess to do for me what He cannot? No, no. He "is not a man, that He should lie: neither the Son of man, that He should repent:" and I tell you that His scheme of salvation is two-sided--it is God-ward and man-ward. It contemplates me as well as it contemplates the great God. It is not a scheme of salvation, merely--it is a scheme of restoration. If He cannot restore me, He must damn me. If He cannot heal me, and make me over again, and restore me to the pattern He intended me to be, He has left Himself no choice.

I challenge anybody to disprove by the Bible that He proposes to restore me--brain, heart, soul, spirit, body, every fibre of my nature--to restore me perfectly, to conform me wholly to the image of His Son. If He could have saved me without restoring me, then He could have saved me without a Saviour at all. How do you read your Bibles? How do you read the history of the miracles--the stories of His opening the eyes, unstopping the ears, cleansing the leper, and raising the dead? He will heal you if you will let Him. These are the sort of words the world wants--the living words, living embodiments of Christianity, walking embodiments of the Spirit, and life and power of Jesus Christ. You may scatter Bibles, as you have done, all over the world. You may preach, and sing, and talk, and do what you will; but, if you don’t exhibit to the people living epistles, show them the transformation of character and life in yourself which is brought about by the power and grace of God--if you don’t go to them and do the works of Jesus Christ, you may go on preaching, and the world will get worse and worse, and the church, too. We want a living embodiment of Christianity. We want JESUS TO COME IN THE FLESH AGAIN. Did you ever notice the tense in that passage--"He that believeth that Jesus is come in the flesh"--not that He did come, or was come, but that He is come now. Oh! how people hate Jesus Christ in the flesh. You may be ever so devout, ever so Pharisaic, till you come to Jesus in the flesh, and then they will gnash on you with their teeth as they gnashed on Christ. They can’t resist such people. This is what the world wants--holy people; and nothing else will do. We have tried everything else. You Christian people from other divisions of the Lord’s forces, you have tried Bibles, and preaching, and singing, and services, and Sunday-schools. I have been lately to a part of the country where they told me that nearly every member of the population had passed through their Sunday-schools, and yet there are men there who will drag a young girl down a flight of stone stairs and kick her till she is black and blue. The great mass of the people who took part in the Lancashire Riots have passed through your Sunday-schools.

Now, I say, God is speaking to you in these things, if only you will hear Him, and He is saying that the letter killeth, that circumcision, and baptism, and forms, and ceremonies, and going to chapel, and Bible reading, is all nothing, when there is no Holy Ghost in it. You want a real, living embodiment of Christianity over again, and if the Salvation Army is not going to be that, may God put it out! I would be willing to pronounce the funeral oration of the Army if I did not believe it was going to be that. The world is dying for this.

I was so touched, yesterday, by hearing a story from Paris, told by a young woman who has just returned, and was telling me about my precious child. The story was this: A woman came, one morning, and asked for the lady. They tried to put her off, and asked, "Will not someone else do?" "No," said the woman; "I do want to see the lady herself." They said, "You can’t see her to-day--she is too ill!" "Then," she said, "When can I see her?" They appointed a time the next afternoon, and then this poor woman came, and she told this story: "I did hear, six years ago, that there was somebody could take the devil out. Now, see, I have got a devil in, and he do make me wicked and miserable, and I do want him taken out, and I have been running about these six years to find somebody who could pull him out. I’ve been to lots of priests, but they could not pull him out because they had a devil in them; and, you see when there’s a devil in me and a devil in them, we got to fighting, and they could not pull him out." What a comment on "Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are ye?" Of course, nobody can put a devil out who has a devil in them. The poor old woman’s sense told her this.

"And," she continued, "a gentleman told me that this lady who has come here is able to pull him out, and I have come to her to do it, for I want him pulled out." Oh, yes! I thought, that is what poor humanity wants all the world over. THEY WANT PEOPLE WHO CAN CAST THE DEVIL OUT--people who have in them Holy Ghost power to do it. Oh! will you be such an one?

"Where is God?" someone said to me the other day, in agony--"Where is God?" Where, indeed! "Why does He not show Himself? Why does He not do something?" That lady was afraid something would happen when 4,000 met together to beseech the Holy Ghost! Why not? You say He has not changed. Your creed says so. You say He is the same yesterday, to-day and forever. You say the needs of the world are as great. You say His great, benevolent heart beats for His fallen, sinful, erring human family. You say He loves us. You are always telling about His love. What is the reason He does not do something for us, and come down in the same plentitude of spiritual power as He did at Pentecost? Why? Only because you are not as given up to Him and as willing to do it as the people were in former times. You have not accounted all things dung and dross. You have not thrown everything into the scale, and, therefore, He will not thus baptize you with the Holy Ghost. These are the people that the world wants--people of one idea--Christ, and Him crucified. For Christ’s sake, give up quibbling.

I said to a lady who had got this blessing when somebody got at her and began with this verse and that verse, and this translation and that translation--"Mind you don’t begin to reason; you will lose your blessing"--and she did lose it. You can’t know it by understanding. Oh! if the world could have known it by understanding, what a deal they would have known. But He despises all your philosophy. It is not by understanding, but by faith! If ever you know God it will be by faith, becoming as a little child--opening your mouth, and saying, "Lord, pour in;" and then your quibbles and difficulties will be gone, and you will see holiness, sanctification, purity, perfect love, burning out on every page of God’s Word. I weep before God, I feel almost more than I can bear, over this awful knack that some people seem to have of plucking the bread out of the children’s mouths when they are just getting an appetite for it. The Lord have mercy upon them! If you don’t come in yourselves, for Christ’s sake don’t keep other people out. A minister--a devoted, good man--was trying to show me that this sanctification was too big to be got and kept. I said, "My dear sir, how do you know? If another man has faith to march up to Jesus Christ and say, ’Here, I see this in your Book; You have promised this to me; now then, Lord, I have faith to take it:’ mind you don’t measure His privilege by your faith. Do you think the church has come up to His standard of privilege and obligation? I don’t. It has many marches to make yet. Mind you don’t hinder anybody." The law of the kingdom all the way through will be--"According to your faith." If you want this blessing, put down your quibbles, put your feet on your arguments, march up to the throne and ask for it, and kill, and crucify, and cast from you, the accursed thing which hinders it, and then you shall have it, and the Lord will fill you with His power and glory now, and something will happen. The Lord grant it.