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  BEYOND HUMILIATION THE WAY OF THE CROSS
  by Gregory Mantle
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Mantle's exposition of the deeper Christian life through the way of the cross,
arguing that true spiritual power comes only through humiliation, self-denial,
and identification with Christ in His suffering and death.

  Chapters: 23

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS
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    1. 00.2. Biography
    2. 00.3. Preface
    3. 01. Chapter 1 - The All-Methodical God
    4. 02. Chapter 2 - A Mixed Life
    5. 03. Chapter 3 - The Light of the Cross
    6. 04. Chapter 4 - The Idol Self
    7. 05. Chapter 5 - Self and Sin
    8. 06. Chapter 6- The Inward Cross
    9. 07. Chapter 7 - The Victims of the Cross
   10. 08. Chapter 8 - The World and the Cross
   11. 09. Chapter 9 - The Gate of the Cross
   12. 10. Chapter 10 - The Fruit of the Cross
   13. 11. Chapter 11- The Gains of the Cross
   14. 12. Chapter 12 - Beauty for Ashes
   15. 13. Chapter 13- The Dying Life
   16. 14. Chapter 14 - The Risen Life
   17. 15. Chapter 15- Married to Another
   18. 16. Chapter 16- Not I, But Christ
   19. 17. Chapter 17 - Reckoning at the Cross
   20. 18. Chapter 18- The School of Obedience
   21. 19. Chapter 19- The Tests of Obedience
   22. 20. Chapter 20- Step by Step
   23. 21. Chapter 21- The Cross Day by Day

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  CHAPTER 1: 00.2. BIOGRAPHY
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Biography

J. Gregory Mantle (1853 - 1925) served as a pastor in England and America, was a
popular speaker at deeper life gatherings including Keswick, and spent the last
12 years of his life in America where his work included teaching at the
Missionary Institute at Nyack-on-Hudson. He was a friend of A. B. Simpson and
was affiliated with the Christian and Missionary Alliance. Gregory Mantle wrote
a variety of books, including Beyond Humiliation: The Way of the Cross, The
Counterfeit Christian, According to the Pattern, and Better Things from Above.


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  CHAPTER 2: 00.3. PREFACE
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Preface

Beyond Humiliation: The Way of the Cross was first published in 1896. A second
edition was published one year later. It was a very popular and helpful book as
noted in Mantle’s preface to the second edition:

"The cordial reception given to the first edition of this book, and the constant
demand for it now that it is out of print, is sufficient to warrant the issue of
a second edition. I gratefully acknowledge the welcome given to the book by the
reviewers, who have represented nearly every section of the Christian Church.
Dr. Elder Cumming ventures to express the hope “that the ranks may now be closed
of those who teach the same truth, in varying words and forms.” If I were able
to contribute in the smallest degree to the fulfillment of this hope, my
rejoicing would be great indeed. Many testimonies have reached me from far and
near of definite blessing received through pondering these pages. To God alone be
all the glory. This edition has been carefully revised, and is sent forth with
prayer and hope on what I trust may prove a mission of still greater
usefulness."


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  CHAPTER 3: 01. CHAPTER 1 - THE ALL-METHODICAL GOD
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Chapter 1 - The All-Methodical God Is thy heart athirst to know That the King of
heaven and earth Deigns to dwell with man below, Yea, hath stoop’d to mortal
birth?

Search the Word with ceaseless care, Thou shalt find this treasure there. For if
Christ be born within, Soon that likeness shall appear Which the heart had lost
through sin, God’s own image fair and clear; And the soul serene and bright
Mirrors back His heavenly light.

Jesus, let me seek for nought But that Thou shouldst dwell in me;

Let this only fill my thought, How I may grow liker Thee, Through this earthly
care and strife, Through the calm eternal life.

— Laurentius Laurenti

Readers of Professor Adam Smith’s “Isaiah” will remember that on several
occasions in the first volume of his Commentary he calls attention to the word
ambiguously translated “judgment,” and reminds us that the word means method,
order, system, law; so that when we read in chapter 30: 18, that “the Lord is a
God of judgment,” Isaiah means that God has His own way and time for doing
things, and that “having laid down His lines according to righteousness and
established His laws in wisdom, He remains in His dealings with men consistent
with these.”

“It is a great truth,” says he, “that the All-mighty and All-merciful is the
All-methodical too; and no religion is complete in its creed, or healthy in its
influence, which does not insist equally on all these.” A full recognition of the
orderliness of God in His working would save us from much of the disappointment
which we now experience, and greatly increase the healthiness and consequent
power of true religion. This suggestive fragment of history is an illustration
of the importance of the doctrine which this book is intended to enforce, for
God will not allow the Divine Order in the purification and perfecting of
Christian character to be disturbed without penalty. Alarmed by Isaiah’s
predictions of the siege of Jerusalem, the Jewish politicians were startled into
doing something. Instead, however, of returning in penitence to God, and relying
upon Him in the time of their threatened trouble, they sought to accomplish an
expensive and profitless alliance with Egypt. What scorn Isaiah pours upon this
suicidal intrigue!

Then he pictures the caravan which Judah sent with tribute to Egypt. In a few
graphic strokes he gives us to see asses and camels carrying their riches
through the land of trouble and anguish, through lions and vipers and fiery-flying
serpents, to a people who will only deceive and disappoint them, for “Egypt
helpeth in vain, and to no purpose, therefore have I called her Rahab Sit-Still”
(30: 1-8).

It was not alliance they needed, as Dr. Smith says, but reliance; for “Thus
saith the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, In returning and rest shall ye be
saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength; and ye would not. .
. . And therefore will the Lord wait, that He may be gracious unto you; and
therefore will He be exalted, that He may have mercy upon you, for the Lord is a
God of method: blessed are all they that wait for Him.”

We sometimes congratulate ourselves on the cleverness and ingenuity of our
plans, as the princes of Judah did in this instance; but Isaiah reminds them
that “God also is clever, and will bring evil, and will not call back His words”
(31: 2). Until we have learned that no individual, church, or nation can play
tricks with God, that He has His own way and time of doing things, He will wait,
that He may be gracious; and blessed are they who turn away from Egypt, with her
chariots and horsemen, and wait for Him. The great sin of man has always been in
this direction, a preference of his own will to the will of God; a preference of
his own inclinations for God’s obligations. It is the sin of the Church today,
and the explanation of her enfeebled and pitiable position in the eyes of the
world. When we think we have discovered a short and easy road to success, and
have forsaken the Fountain of living waters to hew out to ourselves cisterns, we
shall always find that our hewing has been labor lost, and that our cisterns are
broken and will hold no water. Does the Church of Jesus Christ think she can
accomplish God’s work in the world without a definite experience of heart purity
and the Pentecostal baptism? It is admitted that the early Christians were thus
made usable to the Master; but there is an impression abroad that this
qualification for successful service can be dispensed with in these days. The
result is failure, disheartenment, disappointment; for the Lord is a God of
method. The Holy Spirit waits to show men and women how the Cross of Christ is
the pathway of complete deliverance from the guilt and power of sin; and He will
stand aloof from His people while they cherish those “low views” with which, as
Faber says, it is as easy for the devil to contend against God as with mortal
sins.

These “low views” of sin and of privilege explain the pride, the passion, the
selfishness, the envy, the jealousy, the resentment, the barrenness, the
worldliness, the secret sympathy with sin over which thousands of really
converted people mourn, and from which, they sometimes think there is no
deliverance. And God is raising up, all over the land, witnesses to His power to
effect a “double cure,” not only to save from wrath and to pardon actual
transgressions, but to deal with that moral depravity which lies further back
and deeper down in our nature, and is at the fountain-head of all character and
activity.

What command could be more imperative and explicit than that which the risen
Christ gave to His disciples: “Tarry ye until ye are endued with power from on
high”? They dare not go forth to their work without this power. To have done so
would have been to court defeat and to expose themselves to ridicule. When they
were thus equipped they reached the maximum of their usefulness, men and women
were saved by thousands, and the kingdom of Christ advanced by leaps and bounds.
Then the Church formed an alliance with the world; she laid her head in the lap
of Delilah, and being shorn of her true strength, began making frantic efforts
to do her work without the all-essential credentials. Those credentials are the
possession of power over all the power of the enemy; and we vainly imagine that
abiding work can be done in our pulpits, Sabbath schools, mission halls, or in
any other direction, by activity minus the power of the Holy Spirit. Sooner or
later we shall awake to the fact that the Lord is a God of method, and that
blessed are all they that wait for Him.

Let us ponder, in conclusion, the four words which the prophet here uses to
indicate in what direction their salvation lay, and upon what terms they might
be sure of the Divine interposition and abiding protection. The first is the word
“returning.” Instead of going to Egypt for help, and impoverishing themselves by
an alliance, forbidden, senseless, and unprofitable, they might be assured of
God’s forgiveness and favor by returning in brokenness of spirit to Him. Have we
any reason to expect any large outpouring of the Holy Spirit until we too return
in true and deep penitence to God?, The place of confession is the place of
forgiveness. It is here God is pledged to meet us, and nothing is more striking
throughout the history of this rebellious and wayward people, than God’s
readiness to forgive and restore them to His favor on the first indication of
true repentance. “Remember from whence thou art fallen, and repent and do the
first works, or else. . . .” Immutable is the promise: “Return unto Me, and I
will return unto you.” The God All-methodical is the God All-merciful. He waits
that He may be gracious. The next word is “rest.” The meaning is, of course,
such a resting in God as would prove the genuineness of their return to him.
Vain was their reliance on the multitude of chariots and the strong body of
cavalry to which they would point as a valuable addition to the fighting strength
of Judah; for, as Isaiah reminds them, “The Egyptians are men, and not God; and
their horses flesh, and not spirit “ (31: 3). Yet their perversity was such that
they preferred the horses of Egypt to the steeds of God.

Rest! Thousands of hearts are longing for it! And it cannot be found, as some
vainly dream, by flying away on the wings of a dove from their surroundings. Rest
comes through a true confession and determined forsaking of sin, and through the
cleansing of the nature from its stains. for sin in every form is dis-ease, the
opposite of rest. Material things are in a state of rest while fulfilling the
laws and purposes for which they exist. The least variation of adjustment
results in disquietude instead of repose. So rest comes to man through an
adjustment of his will to the will of God. “Take My yoke (1:e., My will) upon
you . . . and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” The Romans forced their
enemies to put their neck under a yoke as a sign of defeat. Hence we get the
word subjugate — sub, under; jugum, a yoke. Rest comes through the subjugation
of the whole being to Jesus. The perfect emblem of rest is God, and in
proportion as man has his center in God he becomes a partaker of His rest
(Hebrews 4:3). The third word is “quietness.” How the very word rebukes the
haste, excitement, and trepidation with which they had prepared for the siege of
their city. “He that believeth shall not make haste.” What so surely indicates
the feebleness of our grasp of these eternal truths as the fretted, harassed,
feverish lives so many of us live! When all occasion for war has been put away,
and we drink deep draughts of heavenly life, we shall know what has been called
“the high pressure of the Holy Ghost,” which is not contrary to that reposeful
and quiet spirit which characterized the Lord Jesus Christ, and which He means
us also to possess. The fourth word is “confidence.” The word means the assurance
and courage which comes of the settling down of the soul upon one who is known
to be true and trustworthy. “They that know Thy name will put their trust in
Thee” (Psalms 9:10). To know God is to trust Him; to know Him perfectly, is to
have that perfect confidence in Him which alone inspires courage, and is the
secret of all true spiritual strength. “In confidence shall be your strength.”
There are two departments in the school of grace where this confidence is
acquired, and in both of them the pupils must be taught, — one is the word of
God, and the other is the walk with God. What can explain the confidence of
Judson; and many another noble missionary, working steadily on for years without
any sign of visible success, but this settling down of the spirit upon God — an
attitude which had, with them, become a habit of life? As we learn to tread the
way of the Cross we shall enter more fully than ever into the meaning of Paul’s
words: “We are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God, and glory in
Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh” (Php 3:3). And loss of
confidence in ourselves will be followed by a constant glorying in Jesus as the
source of all our life, the secret of all our strength.

Multitudes have yet to learn that the God All. methodical is, to those who
practically recognize Him as such, the God All-mighty; and to be continually
stayed upon Him is restfulness, quietness, confidence, and strength.


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  CHAPTER 4: 02. CHAPTER 2 - A MIXED LIFE
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Chapter 2 - A Mixed Life Oft have I wished a traveler to be:

Mine eyes did even itch the sights to see That I had heard and read of. At last
I said: “Go travel first thyself.

Thy little world can show thee wonders great: The greater may have more, but not
more neat And curious pieces. Search and thou shalt find Enough to talk of. Make
no pretenses Of new discoveries whilst yet thine own And nearest little world is
still unknown.

Away, then, with thy quadrants, compasses, Globes, tables, maps, and minute
glasses!

Lay by thy journals and thy diaries!

Close up thy annals and thy histories!

Study thyself and read what thou hast writ In thine own book — thy conscience!
Is it fit To labor after other knowledge so And thine own nearest, dearest self
not know Travels abroad both dear and dangerous are, Whilst oft the soul pays
for the body’s fare.

Travels at home are cheap and safe. Salvation Comes mounted on the wings of
meditation He that doth live at home, and learns to know God and himself,
needeth no further go.”

— Christopher Harvey In the beginning a threefold separation was accomplished
before the command was given: “Be fruitful, and multiply.” God separated the
light from the darkness, the waters beneath from the waters above the firmament,
the sea from the dry land. To show His jealousy for physical order still
further, He forbid an Israelite to plow with an ox and an ass under the same
yoke (Deuteronomy 22:10). The sowing of a field with mingled seed, and the
wearing of a garment mingled of linen and woolen were also strictly forbidden
(Leviticus 19:19). To this day an orthodox Jew will not mend a woolen garment
with a flaxen thread. One of the preparations made by the Jews for an approaching
Passover was to go over the fields and root up plants that had grown from mingled
seeds. These prohibitions were intended to cultivate in the mind of the people
the sentiment of reverence for the order established in nature by God. Wool and
linen come from separate kingdoms in nature, one from the animal, the other from
the vegetable, and unmixedness of moral character is clearly foreshadowed. To
wear, in the same robe, the wool of selfishness and the linen of spirituality is
contrary to the law of order which prevails in the kingdom of grace as in the
kingdom of nature. God is as jealous — nay, more jealous — of moral order than
of physical order, and in the management of their cattle, in the cultivation of
their fields, in the making and wearing of their clothes, God was whispering in
their ear, “Be pure of heart and life.” “What communion hath light with
darkness?” This thought of unmixedness is still further illustrated in the dress
of the priests: “When the priests minister in the inner court, they shall be
clothed with linen garments; no wool shall come upon them while they minister in
the inner court, and within” (Ezekiel 44:17). To enter “within the veil” and
dwell there in the presence of God, there must be a laying aside of all that
appertains to the dark world — the world of our selfhood — and we must be
clothed with the fine linen, clean and white, which is the righteous acts of the
saints and the robing of the Bride of Christ (Revelation 19:8).

Few will deny that this mixedness in Christian life and work is a great bane,
and seriously interferes with the effectiveness of both. This must be so,
because it is a subversion of God’s order, and, as we have previously intimated,
the creature will not be permitted with impunity to interfere with the laws
established by the Creator. This was Paul’s trouble in the Corinthian Church.
The Christians were possessed of a regenerate babe-life which Paul calls
“carnality.” They lived a kind of suspended life, now dominated by the flesh and
now by the Spirit, and the result was an elementary experience, envying, strife,
and division (1 Corinthians 3:1-23 :). Those who are living this mixed life are
spoken of as double-minded (more exactly double-souled) men (James 1:8; James
3:8). There is only one cure for such a condition. It is the converging of all
the desires and affections in the same center, viz., the love of God’s will and
glory. When this is the case true singleness of heart is experienced. “If thine
eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.”

Before we can live the unmixed life, and belong no longer to the carnal but to
the spiritual Christians, we must be willing to know the extent of the mixedness
in our own character, for what the eye does not see the heart will not grieve
over. Before we invite God to search us, let us pause and ask whether we are
willing that He should make a thorough work of this self-discovery, however
painful and humbling it may be. If not, we had better not begin; for it is
better to be without the light than to possess it and be disobedient. For
obvious reasons no branch of knowledge is so neglected as knowledge of
ourselves. In other sciences knowledge flatters the vanity of the unsanctified
heart; it exalts men in the eyes of others, it increases their influence in the
world. But true self-discovery wounds our pride, and spoils the good opinion we
had formed and cherished of ourselves. We may be skilled in every other science
and ignorant in this. We may be able to calculate the motions of the heavenly
bodies, and know nothing of the movements of our own sinful nature. We may be
able to plant our foot on a mountain summit where no human foot has ever before
trod, and yet be ignorant of the dimensions of the black mountain of evil in our
heart. We may be able by chemical analysis to detect and decompose the material
substances around us, and yet never analyze the motives by which we are
influenced, and which color and stain all our conduct.

“Self-love conspires with trust in our own hearts to make dupes of us as regards
our spiritual account. Proverbially, and in the verdict of all experience, love
is blind; and if love be blind, self-love being the strongest, the most subtle,
the most changeless, the most difficult to eradicate of all loves, is blinder
still. Self-love will not see, as self-trust cannot see, anything against us.”
It is this ignorance that leads to quiescence. The hateful foe assumes such
disguises, and appears so exactly the opposite of what he really is, that we
lose sight of the fact that he is a devil still, and that, as Luther was wont to
say, the white devil is more to be dreaded than the black.

What is necessary then, since self-love will cause us to live in such a fool’s
paradise if we follow its interested opinion, is the search-light of God. This,
and this alone, will disturb our self-complacency and self-deception. “Because
thou sayest, I am rich, and have gotten riches, and have need of nothing; and
knowest not that thou art the wretched one and miserable and poor and blind and
naked: I counsel thee to buy of me gold refined by fire, that thou mayest become
rich; and white garments that thou mayest clothe thyself, and that the shame of
thy nakedness be not made manifest; and eyesalve to anoint thine eyes, that thou
mayest see” (Revelation 3:17-18, R.V.).

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know
it? I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins [the hidden part] even to give
every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings”
(Jeremiah 17:9-10). What are spoken of as the reins, here and elsewhere in the
Bible, are the secret thoughts, desires, and affections of the soul. The heart
is so exceedingly complicated and intricate; it is so near the eye which seeks
to investigate it, that it baffles our research. There are a few things about
the heart which are broad and open, and which we can in some measure, discover.
But there are chambers receding within chambers, which no human investigation
can ever reach. To explore these hidden chambers is the prerogative of God
alone.

We live in an age of shallowness and superficiality, and we possess a marvelous
capacity for self-deception. This capacity the enemy finds to be one of his most
effective weapons for destroying the souls of men. Our love of ease and our
unwillingness to be disturbed, lead us to avoid the prayer: “Search me, O God
and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts and see if there be any way of
pain in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalms 139:23-24 r.5:m.)

Painful and humiliating as the searching and exposure may be, the very beginning
of a life that is all for God hinges upon our being absolutely honest with Him
about our present spiritual condition. The two great pillars upon which true
Scriptural Christianity rests are the greatness of our fall and the greatness of
our redemption. “Until,” says William Law, “you are renewed in the spirit of
your mind, your virtues are only taught practices and grafted upon a corrupt
bottom. Everything that you do will be a mixture of good and bad; your humility
will help you to pride; your charity to others will give nourishment to your own
self-love, and as your prayers increase so will the opinion of your own
sanctity. Because till the heart is purified to the bottom, and has felt the axe
at the root of its evil (which cannot be done by outward instruction),
everything that proceeds from it partakes of its impurity and corruption.”

Nothing is easier than self-deception; few things are so difficult as real
self-disclosure. We may be claiming and even professing the experience of
holiness, and yet know nothing of a total death to the carnal or natural life.
The dress and conversation of the inhabitants of Canaan are imitable; but the
true divine life is as inimitable as life always is. Let us not mistake
phraseology for experience, the maiming of the enemy for his death,
sanctimoniousness for sanctification, unctuousness for unction, or the knowledge
of the truth for the Spirit of truth, for “when truths have once been fully
revealed and been made a part of orthodoxy, the history of them does not
necessarily imply an operation of the Spirit of God.”

There is a striking thought in the literal translation of Hebrews 4:13 :
“Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in His sight: but all things
are naked, and lying open unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.” The
passage might be rendered: “All things are stripped and stunned,” the figure
being that of an athlete in the Coliseum, who has fought his best in the arena,
and has at length fallen at the feet of his adversary, disarmed and broken down
in helplessness. There he lies, unable to strike a blow or lift his arm. He is
stripped and stunned, disarmed and disabled, and there is nothing left for him
but to lie at the feet of his adversary, and throw up his arms for mercy. It
means, as Alford reminds us, not only the stripping off of all coverings and
concealments, but the lying prostrate in exposure before the eye of God, the God
“with whom we have to do.” That is what the Holy Spirit and the searching Word
will do for us if we are willing, and until we are willing, we shall be living a
mixed life, with more or less of self, and more or less of Christ. The
ingratitude and unreasonableness of offering the Lord Jesus Christ a mixed life,
a divided heart, has rarely been better expressed than in the searching and
forceful lines of quaint old Francis Quarles:

Give Me thine heart, but as I gave it thee; Or give it Me at least as I Have
given Mine To purchase thine.

I halved it not when I did die; But wholly gave Myself to set thee free. But
while thine heart’s divided, it is dead;

Dead unto Me, unless it live To Me alone,

It is all one To keep all and a part to give: For what’s a body worth without a
head?

Yet this is worse, that what thou keep’st from Me Thou dost bestow upon My foes:
And those not mine Alone, but thine: The proper cause of all thy woes From whom
I gave My life to set thee free. Have I betrothed thee to Myself, and shall The
devil, and the world, intrude

Upon My right Even in My sight?

Think not thou canst Me so delude:

I will have none, unless I may have all.

I made it all, I gave it all to thee.

I gave all that I had for it:

If I must lose, I’d rather choose Mine interest in it all to quit: Or keep it
whole. Oh, give it whole to me!


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  CHAPTER 5: 03. CHAPTER 3 - THE LIGHT OF THE CROSS
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Chapter 3 - The Light of the Cross My God! my God! and can it be That I should
sin so lightly now, And think no more of evil thoughts Than of the wind that
waves the bough?

I sin, and heaven and earth go round As if no dreadful deed were done; As if Thy
blood had never flowed To hinder sin or to atone. Shall it be always thus, O
Lord?

Wilt Thou not work this hour in me The grace Thy passion merited, Hatred of self
and love of Thee?

O, by the pains of Thy pure love, Grant me the gift of holy fear; And by Thy
woes and bloody sweat, O wash my guilty conscience clear.

Ever when tempted make me see, Beneath the olives’ moon-pierced shade, My God,
alone, outstretched, and bruised, And bleeding on the earth He made. And make me
feel it was my sin, As though no other sins there were, That was to Him who
bears the world A load that He could scarcely bear.

“The school of the Cross,” said John Bunyan when he was dying, “is the school of
light.” It is the mirror in which the selfishness, hideousness, and penalty of
human sin is reflected. There is no search-light like that which flashes from the
hill of Calvary for discovering to us the plague of our own hearts.

Simeon’s words which predict the sorrows that were to pierce Mary’s heart,
predict also the laying open of the hidden dispositions of many other hearts
(Luke 2:34-35). Our deepest self is revealed by our attitude to the Cross of
Jesus. If we stand in its light, we shall find it a touchstone where we are tried
and proved to the very depths of our being. It will be quick and powerful, and
sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul
and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and a discerner of the thoughts and
intents of the heart. Neither is there any creature that will not be manifest in
its sight. The Cross is not only possessed of sin-conquering, but of
sin-discovering power. Before it can be “death to every vice,” it must be light
to reveal its loathsomeness. When Mark Antony wanted to inflame the Roman
populace against the assassins of Julius Caesar, he lifted up the dead Emperor’s
garment and said:

“You all do know this mantle: I remember The first time ever Caesar put it on;

‘Twas on a summer’s evening, in his tent;

Look! in this place, ran Cassius’ dagger through;

See, what a rent the envious Casca made:

Through this, the well-beloved Brutus stabb’d, And, as he pluck’d his cursed
steel away, Mark how the blood of Caesar follow’d it.” To see what your sin
really means bring it into the light of the Cross, and say as you gaze upon that
marred visage and those pierced hands and feet: “It was my pride, my lust, my
unbelief, my selfishness, that pointed the nails and fixed the thorns.” There are
those who can testify that the perceived relation of the death of Christ to
their sin has instantly so discovered to them its true character, and has so
broken its power that the Cross has proved in an utterly unexpected sense their
pathway to freedom. Look upon Him, as upon the true Serpent of brass, till the
fever and the poison of your sin be healed. A Bechuana Christian exclaimed in
the enthusiasm of his newly-found faith: “The Cross of Christ condemns me to
become a saint!” His words contain an all-important truth, for they at once
reveal the real purpose of the Saviour’s death and the true object of the
Christian’s life. That object is not chiefly the forgiveness of sins, not a title
to heaven, not deliverance from the wrath to come, but a saintly walk. God has
called us to be saints. Happiness, pardon, and heaven are subordinate. Holiness
is the element in which salvation and heaven are to be found. Yes, the Cross
condemns me to become a saint.

It is out of the light of the Cross that men who profess to be Christians, and
who have perchance renounced glaring sins, drop into a slothful, selfish, worldly
life. They contrast their present with their past; or they compare their life
with the lives so many are living around them, and they are content. The danger
of this condition is intensified, because in gross sin there is some prospect of
getting the conscience disturbed, but in this unhealthy state they persuade
themselves that this is all that is required of them, and all that Jesus can do
for them, and they cry: “Peace, peace, when there is no peace!”

St. Paul meets the horrible suggestion, “Shall we continue in sin that grace may
abound?” with the words: “God forbid. How shall we, who died to sin, live any
longer therein? Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus
Christ were baptized into His death?” (Romans 6:1-3). That surely means that
Christ’s death implies union as well as substitution. His death and
resurrection-life condemn me to be a saint, and it is unspeakably mean of me to
claim to be one with Him in the freedom from sin’s punishment, which His Cross
secures, and not one with Him in His relation to the hateful sin itself. Dean
Vaughan speaks strongly when he says: “All sinning now is a re-crucifixion — it
is a disregard, it is a despite, it is more — it is a re-binding and re-nailing
and re-torturing and re-agonizing and re-killing of Him whose one death was the
sufficient sin-bearing, and therefore the intended sin-eradication and
sin-extermination for ever.”

Yet this crime of perpetual crucifixion is continually enacted in the
thought-life of the world, and with this awful aggravation: the men of the first
century knew not what they did, they sinned in the dark, but the men of the
nineteenth century sin against the light. The criterion of character is moral
identification. When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated there were men in the North
who applauded the act, but no sooner did the words “Serve him right” fall from
their lips than they were instantly riddled with the bullets of the patriots.
Why? Because the men of the North looked upon soul-identification with treason as
treason, and sympathy with a traitor as making a man a traitor. It is worth
while to question ourselves with regard to our moral identification. Where do we
stand with regard to Christ? If our life belies our lips, if we make an orthodox
profession but live a heterodox life; if we trifle with what we ignorantly call
little sins and allow them to have dominion over us; if we are cowardly and
silent, and given to desertion as the Christ of God stands at the bar of public
opinion; if we not only refuse to confess Him ourselves, but hinder others from
confessing Him, we morally identify ourselves with those who cried: “Away with
Him; not this man, but Barabbas!”

"Behold," says St. John, "he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him,
and they also which pierced him." (Revelation 1:7). He does not only mean Pilate
and Herod, the priests and His crucifiers on Mount Calvary, but the whole
conspiracy of sinful and rebellious wills, by whom He has been betrayed and
bound, buffeted and wounded, from the beginning until His coming again.

It was not the hammer and the nails, as Manning says, which crucified Him; nor
the Roman soldiers who wielded the weapons of His passion; nor the arm and the
hand which smote the sharp iron into the wood — these were but the blind
material instruments of His agony. His true crucifiers were our sins, — and we,
ourselves — the sinners, for whom He died. This was the real power of darkness
which set in motion all the array of death. Willful sins renew, in virtue and by
implication, the wounds that were suffered on Mount Calvary. And this reveals in
us the true depth and measure of our guilt.

We are guilty of deception when we deal witih our sins in a heap. Let us bring
them into the light of the Cross and treat them singly, for each one, taken
alone contains the whole principle of rebellion against God and made Calvary,
with its awful anguish and lonlines, a terrible necessity.

Let us beware of the subtle danger of renouncing the sins of the flesh, the
outward acts of sin, and yet fondly cherishing the inward sins of the spirit.
The soul may consent that the chambers of imagery should still be hung with
pictures of evil things, though evil never be betrayed into acts. Sins of the
spirit may be hidden under a life that is outwardly without blame. Our only
safety lies in having our whole life judged in the light of the Cross,
appropriating continually the cleansing which that Cross has provided from all
defilement both of flesh and spirit (2 Corinthians 7:1) I see the crowd in
Pilate’s hall, I mark their wrathful mien; Their shouts of "Crucify!" appall,
With blasphemy between. And of that shouting multitude I feel that I am one; And
in that din of voices rude I recognize my own.

’Twas I that shed the sacred blood, I nailed Him to the tree, I crucified the
Christ of God, I joined the mockery.

Yet not the less that Blood avails To cleanse away my sin, And not the less that
Cross prevails to give me peace within.


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  CHAPTER 6: 04. CHAPTER 4 - THE IDOL SELF
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Chapter 4 - The Idol Self

“Oh, what pains, and what a death it is to nature, to turn me, myself, my lust,
my ease, my credit, over into “my Lord, my Saviour, my King, and my God, my
Lord’s will, my Lord’s grace!” But alas! that idol, that whorish creature myself
is the master-idol we all bow to. What hurried Eve headlong upon the forbidden
fruit, but that wretched thing herself? What drew that brother-murderer to kill
Abel? That untamed himself. What drove the old world on to corrupt their ways?
Who, but themselves, and their own pleasure? What was the cause of Solomon’s
falling into idolatry and multiplying of strange wives? What but himself, whom
he would rather please than God? What was the hook that took David and snared
him first in adultery, but his self-lust? and then in murder, but his self-credit
and self-honor. What led Peter on to deny his Lord? Was it not a piece of
himself, and self-love to a whole skin? What made Judas sell his master for
thirty pieces of silver, but the idolizing of avaricious self? What made Demas
to go off the way of the Gospel to embrace the present world? Even self-love and
a love of gain for himself.

“Every man blameth the devil for his sins; but the great devil, the house-devil
of every man, the house-devil that eateth and lieth in every man’s bosom, is
that idol that killeth all, himself. Oh! blessed are they who can deny
themselves, and put Christ in the room of themselves! O sweet word: ‘I live no
more, but Christ liveth in me!’ “ — Samuel Rutherford

There is a nervous disease known to the physician as chorea, “the patient
sometimes turns round and continues to spin slowly on one spot.” Egotism is just
an incessant spinning on one spot. Sometimes we spin slowly round about our own
particular talent. An ailment is apt to make us think ourselves interesting to
other people, and we move as the craving absorbents of the world’s sympathy.
Incessant self-regard imprisons a life in the wintriest impoverishment. If I
would attain unto a life that is bright, genial, fruitful and interesting. I
must cease to spin upon a point and move in wider fields. I must be born into my
brother’s world, and stand at his point of view, and contemplate the landscape
of life from his window. — Dr. J. H. Jowett

We are told in the history of India, that Mahmoud — who conquered a great
portion of India hundreds of years ago destroyed all the idols in every town to
which he came. In time he laid siege to the great city of Guzurat. Forcing for
himself an entrance into the costliest shrine of the Brahmins, there rose before
him the figure of a gigantic idol, fifteen feet high. He instantly ordered it to
be destroyed. The Brahmins of the temple prostrated themselves at his feet, and
said: “Great Mahmoud, spare our god, for the fortunes of this city depend upon
him.”

“Ransom vast of gold they offer, pearls of price and jewels rare, Purchase of
their idol’s safety, this their dearest will he spare.

“And there wanted not who counseled, that he should his hand withhold, Should
that single image suffer, and accept the proffered gold.” But Mahmoud, after a
moment’s pause, said he would rather be known as the breaker than the seller of
idols, and struck the image with his battle-axe. His soldiers followed, and in
an instant the idol was broken to pieces. It proved to be hollow, and had been
used as a receptacle for thousands of precious gems, which, as the image was
shattered, fell at the conqueror’s feet. From its shattered side, revealing
pearls and diamonds, showers of gold;

More than all that proffered ransom, more than all a hundred fold.”

Such an idol is self, who pleads and promises that “if we will but let it stand,
it has pleasures, gifts and treasures to enrich us at command.” This hateful
idol will spend years in intriguing to escape from the hand of God. Not in
listening to its pleadings, however, but in delivering the idol over to utter
destruction, shall we find our true wealth and pleasure, for jewels of priceless
worth await those who have learned the secret of losing their life for Christ’s
sake that they may find it.

Utter abandonment to God is, then, the only way of blessing. The alabaster vase
must be broken that the ointment may flow out to fill the house. The grapes must
be crushed that there may be wine to drink. Whole, self-centered, unbruised,
unbroken men are but of little use, they “abide alone,” living lives of isolated
selfish indifference to everyone but themselves. They murmur at God’s
providences, because self is disturbed in its enjoyment; they are easily
offended and difficult to reconcile, because their self-esteem has been wounded:
they thirst for and eagerly drink in the flattery and praise of men because it
indulges self-love; they are proud and egotistical, because they love to worship
at the shrine of self; they are reluctant to give wealth or time to God’s work
in the world, because they want the latter for their own ease and the former for
their own enjoyment. The nemesis of such a life is that, shrinking from the
denial of self they die in self, for there must be a total loss of self, either
in God and for Him, or eternal bondage to self. In using the word “self” in
these chapters, let it be clearly understood that it is degenerated self-love or
selfishness to which we always refer. It is this selfishness alone that leads men
to disregard both the claims of God and of their fellows, and to regard
exclusively their own interests and happiness, instead of God’s interests and
the happiness of others. The way of the Cross means, then, the overthrow of
egoism, for before the divine life can rise in man, self must die. It is the
very ground and root of sin. The assertion of the I is the perpetual tendency of
the flesh. “I live” is the watchword of carnalism, and there is no sin which is
not an assertion of self; as the principle of life. This idol is able to assume
so many disguises, some of which are so subtle; delicate, and refined, that its
presence in the heart can only be discovered by that searchlight of the Holy
Ghost of which we have spoken.

It was at this idolatry of self, under the garb of religion, that Christ hurled
the most terrible denunciations that ever fell from His lips. It was known in
His day as Pharisaism, and wherever the life finds its center in the I, we are in
danger of becoming as offensively egotistical as they. This idol may actually
assume the character of a defender of holiness teaching, and we may be ready to
fight over terminology, and say the .bitterest things of those who dare to think
differently to ourselves. That was why the Pharisees bated Christ, and hounded
Him to the death of the Cross. Our Christian work, our prayers in public and
private, our reading of the Scriptures, our almsgiving, may all become poisoned
with Pharisaism, and utterly devoid of the graciousness, meekness, and
self-forgetfulness of Jesus Christ; and poisoned they inevitably will be, if the
idol self is not given over to that glorious idol-breaker, Jesus Christ, for
destruction.

“Who can tell,” says one, “what harm this ‘I’ does to devotion — how it lessens
it, and narrows it; how it renders piety ridiculous and contemptible, in the
eyes of the world, which is always ready to criticize, spitefully and
pitilessly, the servants of God? Who can tell of how many miseries and
weaknesses and falls it is the cause? How it makes devout people fretful,
uneasy, officious, uncertain, eccentric, jealous, critical, spiteful,
ill-tempered, insupportable to themselves and to others? Who can tell bow often
it frustrates and stops the operations of Divine grace; how it favors the
cunning and snares of the devil; how it makes us weak in temptations, cowardly
in times of trial, reserved and ungenerous in our sacrifices; how many noble
designs it brings to nought; how many good actions it infects with its dangerous
poison; how many faults it disguises and makes appear as virtues?” No wonder
Luther siad: "I am more afraid of my own heart than of the Pope and all his
cardinals. I have within me that great Pope, Self."

Few of us recognize how the uncrucified self stains and spoils our service for
God and man. Listen to one of those great spiritual teachers--one of the
foremost of the Quiet of the Land--Gerhard Tersteegen:

Apart from Thee I am not only naught, but worse than naught, A wretched monster,
horrible of mien! And when I work my works in self’s vain strength, However good
and holy they may seem, These works are hateful--nay, in Thy pure sight Are
criminal and fiendish, since thereby I seek, and please, and magnify myself In
subtle pride of goodness, and ascribe To Self the glory that is Thine alone. So
dark, corrupt, so vile a thing is self.

Seen in the presence of Thy purity It turns my soul to loathing and disgust;

Yea, all the virtues that it boasts to own Are foul and worthless when I look on
thee.

Oh that there might be no more I or mine! That in myself I might no longer own
As mine, my life, my thinking, or my choice, Or any other motnion, but in me
that Thou, my God, my Jesus, might be all, And work the all in all! Let that, O
Lord, Be dumb, forever, die, and cease to be, Which thou dost not Thyself in me
inspire, And speak and work. This idolatry of the human I is, then, to be fought
against, and pursued through all the intricacies of our being, with hitter,
unrelenting hate. Self is the very citadel of Satan in the heart; it is the
great stronghold of the enemy; it is the most subtle, the most stubborn, the
most tenacious foe with which the Holy Spirit has to contend in our nature.
“Self,” says William Law, “is not only the seat and habitation, but the very
life of sin the works of the devil are all wrought in self; it is his peculiar
workshop; and therefore Christ is not come as a Saviour from sin, as a destroyer
of the works of the devil in any of us, but so far as self is beaten down and
overcome in us. Christ’s life is not, cannot be, within us, but so far as the
spirit of the world, self-love, self-esteem, and self-seeking are renounced and
driven out of us.” This is absolutely necessary to re-establish the order of
God. Our disordered self must be seen in God’s light, and His work can only be
accomplished by a dispossession of ourselves. It is this death to self which
constitutes the life of faith. It is so sweet an experience that we may sing of
“the pain and bliss of dying,” because the grace which gives perfect peace,
takes the place of nature which brings constant trouble. It is a state,
moreover, in which God communicates Himself with familiarity. When we forsake it
we grieve the Holy Spirit; and God makes us feel that we are deprived of Him as
soon as we turn from Him to the creature, and that by so doing we have rendered
ourselves unworthy of His intercourse.

What has stripped the seeming beauty From these idols of the earth? Not the
sense of right, or duty, But the sight of nobler worth. Not the crushing of
those idols, With its bitter pain and smart, But the beaming of His beauty, The
unveiling of His heart.

‘Tis the look that melted Peter, ‘Tis the face that Stephen saw, ‘Tis the heart
that wept with Mary Can alone from idols draw.

Draw, and win, and fill completely, Till the cup o’erflow the brim What have we to
do with idols Who have companied with Him?


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 7: 05. CHAPTER 5 - SELF AND SIN
========================================================================

Chapter 5 - Self and Sin Made for Thyself, O God!

Made for Thy love, Thy service, Thy delight;

Made to show forth Thy wisdom, grace, and might;

Made for Thy praise, whom veiled archangels laud;

Oh strange and glorious thought, that we may be A joy to Thee!

Yet the heart turns away From this grand destiny of bliss, and deems ‘Twas made
for its’ poor self, for passing dreams, Chasing illusions melting day by day;

Till for ourselves we read on the world’s best, “This is not rest!” Nor can the
vain toil cease, Till in the shadowy maze of life we meet One who can guide our
aching, wayward feet To find Himself, our Way, our Life, our Peace. In Him the
long unrest is soothed and stilled; Our hearts are filled.

— F. R. Havergal

One of the most striking features of the recent teaching of holiness, is the
prominence which has been given to the absolute necessity of claiming
deliverance from the self-life ere the true life of God can appear in men. We
should be thankful for this, for if the Adversary can succeed in persuading us
that a paste jewel is a diamond of the first water, he will be greatly rejoiced
while we shall be woefully disappointed. The fruit of the Spirit will not be
seen until in the unity of our Lord’s sacrifice we have gone down with Him into
the dark grave, and heard him say: “I am the Resurrection and the Life; he that
believeth on Me though he were dead, yet shall he live.”

Nothing has done so much to discredit the teaching of holiness as the unlovely,
censorious, self-assertive spirit that has, alas been so often displayed by
those who have professed to know the experience. God’s cloth-of-gold has
sometimes become cloth-of-tinsel. The explanation lies very largely in the
failure, on the one hand, to appropriate complete deliverance from every taint
of the plague of self, and on the other to “put on the Lord Jesus” as the
unfading robing of the new life.

More than two hundred and fifty years ago, Francis de Sales found it necessary to
utter a warning word on this subject. “It is a decision,” he says, “to seek a
sort of ready-made perfection which can be assumed like a garment; it is a
delusion; too, to aim at a holiness which costs no trouble, although such
holiness would no doubt be exceedingly agreeable to nature. We think that if we
could discover the secret of sanctity we should become saints quickly and
easily.”

Perhaps it is because we have attempted to make saints too quickly and easily
that we have had in so many cases an experience that has been a disappointment
to the possessor, to the onlookers, and above all to God. The eye of the world
is quick to perceive any indication of selfishness in those who profess to be
wholly given up to God, and while it is sometimes complained that the standard
the world sets up for God’s saints is too high, it is quite possible that ours
may be far too low. If we are truly delivered from the plague of selfishness, we
shall not kick against injustice; we shall not stand upon our rights; we shall
not manifest any self-important being, or cherish any resentful spirit. We shall
not be elated when praised, or disheartened when blamed. We shall not thrust
ourselves in the best seat in the train or tram-car. We shall always be ready to
wash the feet of the saints; we shall not seek to do great things, but gladly do
the least and lowliest service. We shall not be offended if others are preferred
before us; we shall not get feverish about the present or worried about the
future; we shall not seek to get the best of a bargain. We shall never, as the
Welsh preacher said, “put our hand into our Master’s till,” or so speak of
ourselves or our achievements as to attract attention to ourselves rather than
to Jesus Christ. In all these things He has left us an example that we should
follow His steps, and to be truly holy is to be truly Christ-like. To be saved
from the leprosy of sin is, therefore, to be saved from the leprosy of self and
if we are not saved from the latter, we are certainly not from the former.
“Self,” says Law, “is the root, the branches, the tree of all the evil of our
fallen state.”

Every act of sin,” says Westcott, “being in its essence self-regarding and
self-centered, must be a violation of love. Thus lawlessness is, under another
aspect, selfishness; or as it is characterized by St. John, ‘hatred in opposition
to love.’ “ . . . “Sin and lawlessness are convertible terms. Sin is not an
arbitrary conception. It is the assertion of the selfish will against a paramount
authority.” “We shall never be set free from sin,” says Professor Beet, “until
all our powers are devoted to God. For sin arises from the erection of self into
the supreme power within us. And self will reign until a Mightier One occupy the
throne it has usurped.” In order that we may see that this self, which we are
called upon to hate and renounce, is no phantom, we will dwell on one of its
principal manifestations, self-love. The love of ourselves and desire for our
own happiness, when kept within due bounds, is natural and innocent, for it is
not natural for a man to hate his own flesh. It is when this principle passes its
appropriate limits that it becomes selfishness. Selfishness was the sin of the
first angel “who rested in himself,” as Augustine says, instead of referring
himself to God. The soul, in the exercise of its affections, must have a center
of love somewhere. That central object has the heart’s affections, whatever its
character may be. The center of man’s love must be either in himself, in other
creatures, or in God. He may love all, but he cannot love more than one
supremely. If this love centers in self, if the I is the center of the man’s
thinking, feeling, willing and doing, the man is of course a selfish being, and
cannot be a holy being, for holiness is the antithesis of selfishness. Pure love
is not inordinate, that is, it is precisely such a measure of love as the object
is entitled to. When God has circumcised our heart to love Him with all our
heart and with all our soul, that we may live (Deuteronomy 30:6), everything
will fall into the right position; self will be dethroned, we shall love God
supremely, and we shall love ourselves and other beings just as God would have
us.

If love, when centered on self, is allowed to increase, it becomes open
rebellion and disobedience. This is what Augustine calls “the love of self
carried so far as to despise God.” Self-love is then the sworn foe of the love
of God. No one can dispute His claim to be loved absolutely by us in Himself and
for Himself. As it is contrary to His law to allow a creature to prefer self to
God as a center, and as it is contrary to His nature not to hate sin, He must
hate self-love, which is the very soul of sin, and the plague spot from which
all other sins proceed.

Self-love is not only the enemy of God, it is also our own. By turning us away
from our only good we are deprived of that intimate communion with God, without
which we can never be at rest, for God cannot admit us into the Holy of Holies,
the place of intimate communion with Himself, until self-love has been
completely conquered, and He has become all in all.

We must learn to make God what He is in Himself — the end of all things; and so
to do this that at any time we can turn round upon ourselves and say of our
life, at any moment and in any of its outgoings, “God is my end!” Everything
that does not revolve round Him as its center is doomed to destruction, and will
be found to be wood, hay, and stubble in the day when every man’s work shall be
made manifest — when the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is.

Note in Luke 12:15-21 an illustration of a life lived in independence of God. In
the self-congratulatory speech which Jesus puts into the mouth of this supreme
egotist the word “my” occurs five times. It was “my fruits,” “my barns,” “my
corn,” “my goods,” “my soul.” God was in none of his thoughts. Note, also, God’s
estimate of this self-centered life, “Thou fool,” and the Saviour’s application,
“So is everyone that layeth up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

There is a similar illustration in the Old Testament of one whose name means
fool, Nabal (see 1 Samuel 25:1-44 : II). It was “my bread,” “my water,” “my
flesh,” “my shearers.” Nothing may be meant when we talk about “my work,” “my
mission,” “my address,” “my sermon,” “my gift,” but the habit is a dangerous and
insidious one, and unconsciously we may be nourishing the hateful self-life,
instead of refusing to make any provision for it.

“O my God, selfishness is Thy enemy. It is also mine, a mortal enemy bent on my
destruction. Thou hatest selfishness, and I desire also to hate it. Thou hast
commanded its destruction as Thou didst command the destruction of Agag. Grant
me grace not to spare this foe, but to permit Thee to wage war upon it. If it
hungers may I never feed it; if it thirsts may I never give it to drink.
Undertake for me, O my God, and circumcise my heart with Thy two-edged sword,
that I may henceforth be Thine and Thine alone.”


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 8: 06. CHAPTER 6- THE INWARD CROSS
========================================================================

Chapter 6- The Inward Cross

“What is it to be inwardly crucified? It is to have no desire, no purpose, no aim
but such as comes by Divine inspiration, or is attended with the Divine
approbation. To be inwardly crucified, is to cease to love Mammon in order that
we may love God, to have no eye for the world’s possessions, no ear for the
world’s applause, no tongues for the world’s envious or useless conversation, no
terror for the world’s opposition. To be inwardly crucified is to be, among the
things of this world, ‘a pilgrim and a stranger,’ separate from what is evil,
sympathizing with what is good, but never with idolatrous attachment; seeing God
in all things and all things in God. To be inwardly crucified is, in the language
of Tauler, ‘to cease entirely from the life of self, to abandon equally what we
see and what we possess, our power, our knowledge, and our affections; that so
the soul in regard to any action originating in itself is without life, without
action, and without power, and receives its life, its action, and its power from
God alone.’ “ — Professor Upham The French have a most suggestive proverb: “He
is not escaped who drags his chain!”

Gibbon tells of one of the Roman emperors who was brought from prison to the
palace, and who sat for some hours on the throne with his fetters on his limbs.
Thousands of those whom God has brought out of prison are in much the same
condition. They are in the palace, but they carry about with them vestiges of
the prison-life. They have escaped from the tyrant’s custody, but they are not
yet completely free; for as the grim jailor hears the rattle of the links sin
has forged, and sees some of his fetters upon the soul, he still exercises his
power, and indulges the hope that he may one day seize and entirely enslave his
former captives. So long as we fail to perceive and claim deliverance from the
power of indwelling sin through the wondrous Cross, we may give occasional
evidence of our kingship, but we shall give unmistakable proof of our servitude.
Our message was one of complete deliverance. We believe that our regal honors
are not a fiction, as they must have seemed to the king Gibbon tells of, but a
glorious reality; and so we sing of Him who “breaks the power of canceled sin,”
and of a Cross that effects a “double cure.” The soul that dares, on the warrant
of God’s word, to claim identification with Christ in his death, resurrection,
and enthronement, proves what it is to be a king in Christ Jesus; to such even
the devils are subject, and the principalities and powers of darkness are made
to feel the regal power of those who, clad in the armor of God, are more than
conquerors through Him who shows His love to them by indwelling them. Charles
Wesley sang of those who “hugged their chains.” There are some who do this
still; but there are many others, thank God, who hate them, and who long to lose
every link that binds them to the conquered enemy. The Cross of Christ not only
enforces holiness, but makes holiness possible. Conybeare gives a striking
translation of Galatians 2:20 : “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no more
I that live, but Christ is living in me; and my outward life which still
remains, I live in the faith of the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself
for me.” Here we have both the exterior and the interior Cross, or the Cross and
its moral effect. There is a great difference between realizing, “On that Cross
He was crucified for me,” and “On that Cross I am crucified with Him.” The one
aspect brings us deliverance from sin’s condemnation, the other from sin’s
power. We first discover the Cross as coming between God and ourselves. That is
its substitutionary or judicial aspect. In it Christ must ever be alone; into
that circle none can enter; when He trod that winepress there was none with Him.
But there is an aspect of the Cross in the passage quoted which brings us into
moral subjection as crucified with Christ. “I am crucified with Christ; it is no
more I that live, but Christ is living in me. Here we see the Cross coming
between us and our sinful I nature, and these words bring us face to face with a
crucifixion which is experimental in its effects. It is an instantaneous
crucifixion, inwrought by the power of the Holy Ghost, solely on our compliance
with these clearly defined conditions, absolute surrender to God, absolute
dependence on God. It is continuous crucifixion, as the literal translation of
St. Paul’s words shows: "I have been and am crucified with Christ." The death of
Christ was not only an atonement for sin, but a triumph over sin. By faith we
see our sins not only on His head for our pardon, but under His feet for our
deliverance. Multitudes who glory in the outward Cross know nothing of the
blessed inward effect of crucifixion with Christ. They see not that by that
wondrous Cross they are delivered from the power of self and sin, the world, the
flesh, and the devil. This many of God’s children do not know, “that their old
man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away, so that they
should no longer be in bondage to sin” (Romans 6:6).

There must be conformity between Christ and the members of His mystical body.
How incongruous it is for a holy Christ to be leading a company of unholy
Christians; or a cross-bearing Christ, a band of self-indulgent Christians,
whose hearts are often towards Egypt, and who shrink from the least suffering
and self-denial! It is only they who have truly followed Him, knowing
experimentally the power of the Cross to deliver them from the dominion of sin,
who will “have boldness, and not shrink with shame before Him at His coming.”

Why hesitate, therefore, to bear the Cross by which you may gain the crown? In
the Cross is salvation, in the Cross is life, in the Cross is safety from
enemies; in the Cross is that peace which the world cannot give, in the Cross is
courage, in the Cross is joy; in the Cross is the sum of all virtues, in the
Cross the perfection of holiness. There is no salvation for the soul, no hope of
eternal life in anything else. The Cross is the beginning and the end; and all
who would live worthily must first die with Christ; there is no other way to life
and to real inward peace but the way of the Cross. [Imitatio Christi, Chap. 12:]
In times of persecution, those who had an experimental knowledge of this inward
crucifixion were able to suffer the most terrible outward inflictions without
shrinking or fear, while many of those who knew nothing of this interior Calvary
abjured the truth to save their lives. Many instances are on record of such who
afterwards — when they had learned to tread this royal road — came forward of
their own will and gave up their bodies to fire and death.

How much light this neglect of an experimental knowledge throws also on the
doleful, shadowed death-beds of unsanctified Christians! When we have learned the
blessedness of dying with Him, both to the flesh with its affections and lusts,
and to the deceitful world, we shall know nothing in our last hours of the pains
of death which those experience whose carnal hearts cling to carnal things. With
this experimental knowledge of the power of the Cross in its relation to
indwelling sin, we shall face that death which can only touch the outward,
without any fear, and as cheerfully put off the body as we put off our clothes.
We fear the great death so little, because, for Christ’s sake, we have loved
death with Him so well. In physical crucifixion there were three stages. The
criminal was first arraigned, found guilty, sentenced to death, and in many cases
visited with marks of hatred and contempt. Then he was nailed to the cross, and
finally he died. These three stages illustrate the experience of this inward
crucifixion. First the old nature must be arraigned and sentenced, for it is not
likely that death to the old Adam nature will be appropriated, until we have
clearly seen it to be deserving of death. Then this enemy, which is both God’s
and ours, must be given over into the hands of the Holy Spirit. He will not
undertake this work without our consent and co-operation. “If ye through the
spirit do make to die the deeds of the body, ye shall live” (Romans 8:13). The
law of death in our sinful members is only another form of the law of life in
Christ. It is the same Spirit who both killeth and quickeneth.

Though it is said most expressly that “we have crucified the flesh,” it is not
said that the moral effects of this crucifixion are by any act of ours. That is
the sole work of the Divine Spirit. It is His breath which withers the fruits of
evil springing out of our sinful nature; it is his condemning word that blights
the tree of evil in us unto its root. He will watch the enemy within us, ready
to inflict upon it the last stroke that shall finally dispatch it. We must not
doubt that He will finish the work He has begun in us. Crucifixion is not death;
but it is unto death, and death will finally be its result. If we do our part and
spare not our affections and lusts; if by identifying faith we reckon the
sinning Adam as crucified, and watch, and pray, and wait in fervent expectation,
we shall see the end. And we shall see it in this life, for there is no work of
sanctification beyond the grave; and surely there is no necessary connection
between the death of the body of sin and the death of the physical body. The
Holy Ghost will cry over our crucified flesh, with all its affections and lusts,
stilled and extinguished for ever. It is finished. [Dr. W. B. Pope, Sermons and
Addresses, p. 302] The way of the Cross is certainly the way of death with
Christ. The stoning among the Hebrews, the guillotine of the French, the gallows
of the English, and the cross of the old Roman times, as instruments of capital
punishment, all mean death. If at the outset of this deeper experience we listen
to the voices of the tempters, and allow our faith to falter, we cannot expect
to know this complete and glorious deliverance. But if having had a vision of
the loathsomeness of the old Adam nature, and of its power to prevent the
incoming and consequent outflowing of the risen life of Jesus, we refuse for a
moment to listen to its pleadings to be allowed to come down from the Cross and
so save itself, we shall ourselves be saved to the uttermost. The Jews were not
content with blows and buffetings and scourgings; these were but the forerunners
of death, and we may well beware of attempting to “run with the hare and hunt
with the hounds,” or, in other language, to make a pretense of crucifixion with
Christ, while at the same time we are secretly parleying with the enemy. We
shall not parley if we resolutely remember that to do so is to prolong the power
of “the old man,” and so defeat the purpose of Jesus Christ, who was manifested
not to buffet or maim, but to “destroy the works of the devil,” and only by that
destruction can we fully know what real marriage union with Jesus means.

Hence it follows that our shrinking from the way of the Cross, and our fainting
on that way, even when we have begun to tread it, arises from ignorance of the
blessedness to which this pathway leads. The most joyous moment in the life of
the bride ought to be the moment when she loses her own name and self-dependence
at the marriage-altar, taking her husband’s name instead of her own, and merges
her life in his; and the most blissful moment in our life ought to be that in
which we, by taking up our cross, renounce our right to self-ownership, and
begin to reckon ourselves dead to self, to sin, and to the world, through the
Cross of Jesus Christ.

“Oh, sacred union with the Perfect Mind, Transcendent bliss, which Thou alone
canst give;

How blest are they this Pearl of Price who find, And dead to earth, have learnt
in Thee to live.

“Thus in Thine arms of love, O God, I lie, Lost, and forever lost to all but
Thee. My happy soul, since it hath learnt to die, Hath found new life in Thine
Infinity.

“Go then, and learn this lesson of the Cross, And tread the way that saints and
prophets trod:

Who, counting life and self and all things loss, Have found in inward death the
life of God.”


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  CHAPTER 9: 07. CHAPTER 7 - THE VICTIMS OF THE CROSS
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Chapter 7 - The Victims of the Cross O that the fire from heaven might fall, Our
sins its ready victims find, Seize on our sins, and burn up all, Nor leave the
least remains behind!

“The great truth of Christianity, the great truth of Christ, is that sin is
unnatural, and has no business in a human life. The birth of Christ proclaimed
that in one tone: His cross proclaimed it in another! And that which is
unnatural is not by any necessity permanent. The struggle of all nature is
against the unnatural — to dislodge it and cast it out. That struggle pervades
the world. It is going on in every clod of earth, in every tree, in every Star,
and in the soul of man. Intensely sensitive to feel the presence of evil as he
never felt it before, the Christian instantly and intensely knows that evil is a
stranger and an intruder in his life. The wonder is not that it should some day
be cast out: the wonder is that it should ever have come in.” — Phillips Brooks

"A very dear and intimate friend of mine related to me a dream which had been
blesseed by God to the redemption of his own father. The father dreamed that he
was a hare, and a hare he was. So real and so graphic was the consciousness of
the dream, that he felt he could almost smell the dewy turnip-tops of the fields
among which he moved. Suddenly he heard the cry of the hounds. He pricked his
ears, listened, and bolted full pace across the fields. The hounds drew near and
nearer, and came at last so close to him, that he could feel their hot breath.
Then he found that he was leaving the green pastures and was reachng bare and
rugged heights; and just when he had reached those bare rocky heights he became
conscious that his pursuers were not hounds. They were his sins, and he was a
flying soul! Away up, away up, away up toward the summit he saw a cave, and
terrified beyond measure he made fo the cave and then turned round. The entrance
to the cave was flooded with a most unearthly light, and just in the center of
the opening there shone resplendently a Cross standing between him and the awful
things that pursued him. He awoke, and behold, it was a dream. But by the power
of the dream he was redeemed." — Dr. J. H. Jowett

We have already pointed out that the Cross means deliverance through death. It
may mean a suffering, lingering, protracted deliverance through the faltering
and failure of our faith; there may be many convulsive struggles, but, sooner or
later, deliverance will follow continuous persistent faith. We use the words
continuous and persistent advisedly, for they cannot expect a speedy
deliverance, who, at the solicitations of the enemy, withdraw themselves, by
drooping or intermittent faith from the power of the Cross. This playing at the
crucifixion of the flesh, with its passions and lusts, explains the unsatisfactory
experience of multitudes, who by this means frustrate the grace of God.

God designs us to share the life of the risen Christ in all its heavenly beauty.
We can only do this on the conditions so clearly revealed in His Word,
conditions which so completely harmonize with His character and working. What
are they? “We were buried therefore with Him through baptism into death: that
like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we
also might walk in newness. of life. For if we have become united with Him by
the likeness of His death, we shall be also by the likeness of His resurrection;
knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might
be destroyed, that so we should no longer be in bondage to sin; for He that hath
died is justified from sin” (Romans 6:4-7). The principal thing for us to know,
is that “our old man” has been crucified with Christ, that he. is one of the
victims of the Cross. A few expositions of the terms employed in these verses
may be of value here. Dr. David Brown, in his admirable handbook on this
Epistle, says “ ‘our old man’ means ‘our old selves,’ all that we were in our
old unregenerate state before union with Christ. By ‘the body of sin’ the whole
principle of sin in our fallen nature is meant — its most intellectual and
spiritual, equally with its lower and more corporeal, features.” The word
rendered “destroyed,” he reminds us, is a favorite one with Paul, used only once
by any other New Testament writer, but twenty-five times by him. A reference to
some of the passages in which it is so used may be helpful — 1 Corinthians 6:13;
1 Corinthians 15:24; 1 Corinthians 15:26; 2 Corinthians 3:7; 2 Corinthians 3:11;
2 Corinthians 3:13-14; Ephesians 2:15; 2 Thessalonians 2:8. The common-sense
uses of this same Greek word, though variously translated in these passages,
points to one conclusion and to one only.

Marcus Rainsford says: “By our ‘old man’ the apostle means our natural self,
with all its principles and motives, its outgoings, actions, corruptions, and
belongings; not as God made, but as sin and Satan and self have marred it. The
old Adam never changes; no medicine can heal the disease, no ointment can
mollify the corruption; it can only be got rid of by death.”

Dean Alford defines our “old man” as our former self-personality before our new
birth — opposed to the “new man” or “new creature.” He says, moreover, “that as
the death of Christ was by crucifixion, the apostle uses the same expression of
our death to our former sinful self, which is not only put to death by virtue
of, but also in the likeness of Christ’s death — as signal, as entire, as much a
cutting off and putting to shame and pain.” When it is remembered that Christ’s
was no fictitious execution, that He really died; that when the soldier thrust in
his spear there was no lingering life to respond, it will be seen how complete
is the purchased and promised deliverance from the plague of sin, which a great
preacher has called “a foul, slimy protrusion into God’s universe.”

This, then, is the victim, whether it be called “the body of sin,” or “the
flesh,” or “the carnal mind,” or “the sin that dwelleth in me,” or “the old man”;
it may have many names, it has but one cure, and that is death. It is
unmitigated enmity to God, “The carnal mind is enmity against God” (Romans 8:7).
It is hateful to God, He can take no pleasure in any part of that nature which
is under the curse, however pleasing and attractive it may be to man: “They that
are of the flesh cannot please God” (verse 8). It is unimprovable, incorrigible,
incurable. Cultured, educated, and encouraged, or discouraged and threatened,
its nature remains unchangeable. “It is not subject to the law of God, neither
indeed can be” (verse 7). There remains, then, no remedy but that which God has
provided — condemnation, crucifixion, death with Christ. The Scriptures speak of
the seed of the flesh, the will of the flesh, the mind of the flesh, the wisdom of
the flesh, the purposes of the flesh, the confidence of the flesh, the filthiness of
the flesh, the workings of the flesh, the warring of the flesh, glorying of the
flesh.

All man’s powers, reasonings, emotions, and will are naturally under the power
of the flesh. Whatever the fleshly mind may devise or plan — however fair its show
may be, and however much men may glory in it — has no value in the sight of God.
The flesh, with its thinking and willing and effort, is therefore a victim for
the Cross. We see the necessity of deliverance from what are commonly called the
sins of the flesh, but how seldom do we include our powers to reason and think
and plan. Alas! we often have confidence in these, and we are woefully
discouraged because the Spirit does not prosper what the flesh has planned. Is
not our worship of God often in the flesh? Are not plans and devices resorted to
for obtaining money for the empty treasury of the Church, which bear upon their
very surface the marks of the flesh, and which are so displeasing to God, that
the workings of His Spirit are well-nigh quenched? It is little short of
mockery, in many instances, to ask God’s blessing on what our own heart tells us
is the planning and working of the flesh, and which under the most beautiful and
attractive guise can never be anything but offensive to Him.

“Our natural life, and all the faculties with which it is endowed, must be
sacrificed, immolated, renounced. Otherwise, after having flourished for a moment,
with more or less of satisfaction, it perishes and withers for ever. This law
applies to a pure being and to his lawful tastes. All that is not given to God
by an act of voluntary immolation bears within it the germ of death.” —
[Frederic Godet, John, Vol. 3:, p. 70]

There is a subtle temptation, as in the case of Saul, to destroy the worthless
and keep alive the best; in other words, to destroy the gross and spare the
refined manifestations of evil. But when we claim to have fulfilled the
commandment of the Lord, the searching question comes to many of us with the
same terrible power, as it must have come to the disobedient king: “What meaneth
then this bleating of the sheep in mine ears; and the lowing of the oxen, which
I hear?” That which is utterly destroyed can neither low nor bleat. It means
then, nothing less than death to every doomed thing. Death to vanity, pride,
covetousness, unsympathetic coldness, ambition, temper, impatience, fear, and
doubt; anything and everything that appertains to the old man, and which must be
put off ere we can put on the new. Have we consented to the nailing of this
victim to the Cross? If we have, deliverance is certain, for the flesh received
its death-stroke on Calvary. “Sin is smitten with the lightning of His anger.
What was then accomplished in principle when ‘One died for all,’ is realized in
point of fact when faith makes His death ours, and its virtue passes into the
soul. The scene of the Cross does its blessed inward work. The wounds which
pierced the Redeemer’s flesh and spirit now pierce our consciences. It is through
crucifixion with Christ the soul enters into communion with its risen Saviour,
and learns to live His life. Nor is its sanctification complete till it is
‘formed unto the likeness of His death’ (Php 3:10). The ‘old man’ with all. his
train of ‘passions and lusts,’ has been nailed upon the Cross of Calvary for
every believing heart. The flesh has no right to power for a single hour. De jure
it is dead — dead in the reckoning of faith, and die it must in all who are of
Christ Jesus.”

If Christ would live and reign in me,

I must die; With Him I crucified must be;

I must die;

Lord, drive the nails, nor heed the groans, My flesh may writhe and make its
moans, But in this way, and this alone

I must die. When I am dead, then, Lord, to Thee

I shall live; My time, my strength, my all to Thee

I shall give.

O may the Son now make me free!

Here Lord I give my all to Thee; For time and for eternity

I will live.


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  CHAPTER 10: 08. CHAPTER 8 - THE WORLD AND THE CROSS
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Chapter 8 - The World and the Cross

“I think that this world, at its prime and perfection, when it is come to the
top of its excellency and to the bloom, might be bought with a halfpenny; and
that it would scarce weigh the worth of a drink of water. There is nothing
better than to esteem it our crucified idol (that is, dead and slain), as Paul
did. Then let pleasures be crucified, and court and honor be crucified. And since
the apostle saith that the world is crucified to him, we may put this world to
the hanged man’s doom, and to the gallows: and who will give much for a hanged
man? As little should we give for a hanged and crucified world. Yet fools are
pulling it off the gallows and contending for it.” — Samuel Rutherford O Lord,
seek us, O Lord, find us in Thy patient care; Be Thy love before, behind us,
round us, everywhere:

Lest the god of this world blind us, lest he speak us fair.

Lest he forge a chain to bind us, lest he bait a snare.

Turn not from us, call to mind us, find, embrace us, bear; Be Thy love before,
behind us, round us, everywhere.

— Christina Rossetti “Whatever passes as a cloud between The mental eye of faith
and things unseen, Causing that brighter world to disappear, Or seem less
lovely, or its hope less dear, That is our world, our idol, though it bear
Affection’s impress, or devotion’s air.” The Galatian Epistle has been called
the Crucifixion Epistle. In chapter 2: 20, Paul says that his old self was
crucified with Christ; in chapter 5: 24, he says that his “flesh with its passions
and lusts” has been nailed to the Cross; and now in chapter 6: 14, he says that
the world is crucified to him, and he is crucified to the world.

We read of “the spirit of the world” (I Cor. ii 12), of “the fashion of the
world” (1 Corinthians 7:31), of the course of this world (Ephesians 2:2), and of
the prince of this world (John 14:30). There is a wisdom of the world which is
not the wisdom of Christ; a ruler of the world who is Christ’s and man’s
greatest foe; a judgment of the world in which men are in danger of being
involved. We are told that the world is passing away, and that if we love it and
the things that are in it, the love of the Father is not in us (1 John 2:15-17).
Jesus prepared His disciples for its hatred, and told them this would prove they
were not of it, for the world cannot hate itself (John 15:18-19). He further
taught them that if they testify of it, as He ever did, that its works are evil,
the world will hate them as it hated Him (John 7:7). Despite the inveterate
hatred of the world, Christ’s disciples are not to be afraid, for He tells them
that He has overcome it (John 16:33); and His servant John assures those to whom
he wrote, that “greater is He that is in them, than he that is in the world” (1
John 4:4); that whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world; and that this is
the victory that overcometh, even their faith in its conqueror, Jesus the Son of
God (1 John 5:4-5).

What then is this world, which in the estimation of Paul was nothing better than
a crucified felon? For be it remembered when we speak of the Cross, that in the
early days of Christianity, none of those beautiful associations with which we
are familiar had gathered round it. To us it is not only suggestive of a fact,
but it is also a memorial of nearly two thousand years of history. The love and
admiration with which we are familiar were unknown to the apostle. In his day it
was the sign and symbol of ignominy, and far more odious and suggestive than the
word gallows is to us. “There is, indeed,” as one has said, “no word among us
that is significant of the deep and acknowledged and universal detestation that
belonged to the Cross.” The world “consists of those who are attached to
sensible objects, and who place in them their sole happiness; who, have a horror
of poverty, suffering, and humiliation, and who look upon such things as real
evils from which they must flee, and against which they must protect themselves
at any cost; who, on the contrary, have the greatest regard for riches,
pleasures, and honors; who consider these things as real and solid good: who
desire them and pursue them with extreme eagerness, without caring what means
they use to obtain them; who fight with one another over the things of this life;
who envy one another, and try to take from each other what they have not
themselves; who only value another person, or despise him, in proportion as he
possesses or does not possess these perishable things. In one word, who found
upon the acquisition and enjoyment of temporal things all their principles, all
their code of morality, and the entire plan of their conduct.”

It is any form of life or government — political, educational, social, or
religious — which does not place God pre-eminently first. To quote the language
of Dr. Dale: To be worldly is “to permit the higher law to which we owe
allegiance, the glories and terrors of that invisible universe which is revealed
to faith, our transcendent relations to the Father of spirits through Christ
Jesus our Lord, to be overborne by inferior interests, and by the opinion and
practices of those in whom the life of God does not dwell. It is to regulate our
life by public opinion instead of by religious principle; to do as others do
without inquiring why they do it; to follow the crowd without inquiring where
exactly they are going.”

Strongly do we recommend the readers of these pages to ponder Faber’s searching
and powerful description of the world in his “Creator and Creature.” He says:
“The world is not altogether matter, nor yet altogether spirit. It is not man
only, nor Satan only, nor is it exactly sin. It is an infection, an inspiration,
an atmosphere, a life, a coloring matter, a pageantry, a fashion, a taste, a
witchery. None of these names suit it, and all of them suit it. Its power over
the human creation is terrific, its presence ubiquitous, its deceitfulness
incredible. We are living in it, breathing it, acting under its influence, being
cheated by its appearances, and unwarily admitting its principles.” The world
has its own prince, its own court, its own council, its own laws, its own
principles, its own maxims, its own literature. It is the counterfeit of the
Church of God, and the devil’s principal weapon for lowering and poisoning the
heavenly life in the individual and in the Church, and for antagonizing and
destroying the work of the Holy Spirit. It is in our pulpits, choirs, and pews.
It is all the more seductive because it makes an exterior profession of
Christianity, and with infinite cleverness seeks to reconcile its own evil maxims
with the doctrines of Christianity. It is far more to be dreaded than the
undisguised attacks of the devil, for he urges his victims to glaring positive
breaches of the Divine commands. The passions of the flesh in a similar manner
impel to such sins as bulk prominently in the eyes of men, and startle them by
their iniquity; but the spirit of the world fastens itself in diabolical
subtlety upon those who pride themselves upon their spirituality and devotion,
and who consider themselves so free from its hateful presence that they are
offended if for a moment it is suggested that they are under its power. This is
its great triumph, and when we laugh to scorn the suggestion that Madame Bubble
will ever ensnare us in her toils, we are already among her dupes.

St. Paul was once among her victims. He counted the pride of birth and religion,
worldly honor, wealth and pleasure, with the good opinion of men, to be gain;
but in the light of the Cross his eyes had been opened to see the world’s true
character, and what things were once gain, he now counted loss for Christ.
Instead of looking to it for happiness, courting its smiles, and dreading its
frowns, he regarded it as a condemned malefactor nailed to the Cross. Its
wealth, honors, and pleasures could not seduce him, nor could all its forces of
hostility terrify him into a renunciation, or even concealment of one of the
doctrines of the Cross (Galatians 6:12). To him it would be as absurd for a
person to forfeit the favor of a much-loved sovereign, who had every right to
his affections and allegiance, by seeking to secure a favorable glance from the
eye of a worthless felon expiring on a cross. The same kind of horror that filled
the mind of the Jew at the thought of a crucified malefactor, filled Paul’s heart
as he saw the snare into which the Galatian Christians were in danger of falling
— that of making the object of God’s curse the object of their regard and
consideration. The cross had revealed to him such sources of enjoyment, and the
crucified and risen Lord had so taken possession of Paul’s entire being, as to
lead him to say: “Yea, doubtless, I count all things but loss for the excellency
of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for Whom I have suffered the loss of
all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, and be found in
Him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is
through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith; that I
may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His
sufferings, being made conformable unto His death; if by any means I might
attain unto the resurrection of the dead “ (Php 3:8-11).

Just what the world was to St. Paul — an object of malediction with which he
could have no connection, no association, no relationship — he was to the men of
the world. He was to them an object of contempt, aversion, and hatred. He and
his brethren were made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels and to men. “We
are fools,” said he, “for Christ’s sake, but ye are wise in Christ: we are weak,
but ye are strong: ye have glory, but we have dishonor. Even unto this present
hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no
certain dwelling-place; and we toil, working with our own hands: being reviled,
we bless: being persecuted, we endure: being defamed, we intreat: we are made as
the filth of the world, the off-scouring of all things even until now” (1
Corinthians 4:10-13).

What is our relationship to the world, and what is its attitude towards
ourselves? By these questions the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. Some
of us read, years ago, of a mountain of lodestone which drew by its tremendous
power of attraction every piece of iron that was brought within the range of its
influence. Ships at sea, passing near the shore of that land where the mountain
was, felt its force on their anchors and chains and bars. At first their approach
to the mountain was scarcely perceptible. There was a declining from their
course, which excited very little apprehension. But the attraction gradually
became stronger, until, with ever-increasing velocity, the vessel was drawn
closer. Then the very bolts and nails started from the vessel’s beams and
planks, and fastened themselves on the sides of the mountain, the vessel, of
course, falling to pieces and becoming a total wreck. This legend may aptly
illustrate our own peril, as it certainly illustrates the peril of the Church
today; and the time was come when, with no uncertain sound, warning voices
should be lifted up throughout the land, and compromise and concession with the
world be absolutely prohibited in every shape and form.

“All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and
the vainglory of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world
passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth
for ever” (1 John 2:16-17). This is St. John’s resume of all sin. By the first of
these definitions of worldliness — “the lust of the flesh” — we understand the
bodily appetites out of order or in excess. Until we have learned the great
doctrine of the crucifixion of the flesh with its passions and lusts, we shall find
it impossible to bring ourselves within the limits of God’s appointment and law.
Our first aim must be to achieve through faith victory over this inward world;
over every propensity and appetite that sin has rendered inordinate and
rebellious. There are also refined lusts of the flesh — a fondness for luxuries,
and an unwillingness to forego them. Tauler forcefully says “As the old serpent
laid low our first parents through gluttony, so his weapons are easily turned
aside through soberness. We ought to take food in the same way as medicine, with
such moderation and discretion, that it may help us to serve God; and with such
gratitude, that at each single morsel praise may rebound to our Creator.”

Then there is “the lusts of the flesh” in the form of softness and
self-indulgence. The unwillingness to endure hardness as good soldiers of Jesus
Christ. The day’s work is over, and the slippered feet are put to the fire. How
do we take any disturbance of our ease? How do we treat our self-denying Lord,
when, in the guise of some poor widow or homeless wanderer, He comes to our door
and asks for sympathy, or for food or clothing? The “lust of the eyes.” Think
over the grim catalogue of Old Testament saints, and of New Testament saints
too, who have fallen through the lust of the eyes. Let us not gratify this
desire in any measure in even glancing at the poisoned pictures, and the
poisoned literature which are thrust upon us today, and which are utterly
unworthy of admission into Christian homes. It is a thousand times better to
keep the heart pure, to have “nothing between,” even though it means ignorance
of a book over which the world has, for a few brief days, gone mad. The lust of
the eyes also points to the universal sin of insisting on something visible and
tangible, of depending on the creature rather than on the Creator, instead of
having the spirit of Moses who “endured as seeing Him who is invisible.” How
many unlike Abram who, when called of God, went out, “not knowing whither he
went,” are always longing to see their way. We may live where the things that
are unseen shall be the most real to us, and where we shall know that even our
afflictions “work for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while
we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are unseen” (2
Corinthians 4:18).

We may be comparatively free from the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes,
and yet under the power of the world in the third aspect in which St. John
regards it. “The vainglory of life” is the pomp and pride that exults in itself
and does not give the glory to God. It is the heart fastening upon tangible
objects, wealth, respect, and homage from without. There are scores of plans
devised solely to foster these sinful propensities, some coarse and some so
refined that there is about them the outline of beauty, the harmony of color and
sound, the gracefulness of movement, the charm of sympathy: but in them all God
would be such an intrusion, His presence would be so unwelcome, that they are
immediately branded, beautiful though they be, as “not of the Father but of the
world.” This is the true touchstone in our choice of food, dress, reading, and
recreation; in all our buying and selling; in all our planning even for God’s
work. Is this the will of God?

How afraid many are to brave the frown of others, when duties to which they are
called come into conflict with what the world calls etiquette! We must be saved
from the desire to be thought well of by unsanctified Christians, who think far
more of the maxims of society than they do of Christ, then we shall be the true
courtiers, having learned how to deport ourselves in the school of grace. They
only are God’s gentlemen and gentlewomen who have claimed this complete
deliverance from the spirit of the world. When some terrible epidemic is raging,
it is the constitution that is debilitated that takes the contagion. The healthy
man is possessed of a vitality that enables him to walk through the streets
where disease is rioting, and throw off the disease germs by the power of an
abundant physical life. Worldliness only flourishes when the vitality of the
Church is low, and as the Church is composed of units, when the vitality of the
individual is low. The strong, exuberant overflowing life of Christ is our only
safeguard, and the only secret of victory. By appropriating first the victory of
the Cross and then Christ’s mighty resurrection-life, we shall be able to keep
ourselves unspotted from the world. The religion of Jesus Christ knows nothing
of bringing down her standards to suit the spirit of the age. It does not say to
the business man whose surroundings are peculiarly trying: “Your case is one of
unusual difficulty, and I will waive part of my demands.” It says to every man,
though the atmosphere in which he lives is impregnated with this enervating
poison, though he is surrounded with men whose ways are as crooked and tricky as
the adversary can make them, “Be separate!” “Touch not the unclean thing!” “Keep
yourself unspotted from the world!


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  CHAPTER 11: 09. CHAPTER 9 - THE GATE OF THE CROSS
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Chapter 9 - The Gate of the Cross “A pilgrim once, so runs an ancient tale, Old,
worn, and spent, crept down a shadowed vale, On either hands rose mountains
bleak and high;

Chill was the glisty air, and dark the sky The path was rugged, and his feet
were bare; His faded cheek was seamed by pain and care; His heavy eyes upon the
ground were cast, And every step seemed feebler than the last. The valley ended
where a naked rock Rose sheer from earth to heaven, as if to mock The Pilgrim
who had crept that toilsome way; But while his dim and weary eyes essay To find
an outlet in the mountain side, A ponderous sculptured door he spied, And,
tottering toward it with fast failing breath, Above the portal read, “The Gate
of Death.”

He could not stay his feet that led thereto;

It yielded to his touch, and passing through, He came into a world all bright
and fair;

Blue were the heavens, and balmy was the air And lo! the blood of youth was in
his veins, And he was clad in robes that held no stains Of his long pilgrimage.
Amazed, he turned;

Behold! a golden door behind him burned In that fair sunlight, and his wondering
eyes, Now lusterful and clear as those new skies, Free from the mists of age, of
care, of strife, Above the portal read, “The Gate of Life.”

Sir Noel Paton’s beautiful picture, “Death the Gate of Life,” has a significance
other than that which seems to have been in the mind of the artist. The weary
knight, wounded in his conflict with evil, has passed through the Valley of the
Shadow of Death, and kneels in deep humility at the entrance of the world of
light and life. He has put off his helmet with the crest of falcon wings and
peacock’s feathers — emblems of worldly ambition and pride. The belt and sword
which are cast aside, and the armor which is falling off, indicate the
renunciation of his own strength. The overblown hemlock, rank weeds, and
withered branches on this side of the veil speak of sin’s deadly poison and of
disappointed hopes, while the white lilies and wild roses on the other side tell
of the purity and joy which blossom there. The permanence of the life he is
entering is indicated by a clear and steadfast star which shines in the sky,
while the waning moon on the horizon typifies the mutability and evanescence of
the life he is leaving behind.

All this symbolism applies as accurately to the spiritual as to the physical
death. To attempt to conquer our sinful nature by doing battle against it is
weary work, as many of us know. And while men age and even die in the strife
with evil, sin never dies of old age. True, it changes its character, a new
viceroy takes the place of the old one, but the government remains the same. At
the transition-point from one age of human life to another, a certain form of
sin has to declare itself vanquished, but it is a victory over one of the
outposts of sin, rather than over the tyrant in the citadel. Men have greatly
rejoiced, for example, that the habit of intemperance has been conquered in
their life, but that peculiarly abhorrent form of vice has often been succeeded
by another, less abhorrent, perhaps, but none the less deadly. The capture of an
advanced guard of sin has only challenged a new movement on the part of the
enemy, and the slave of intemperance has become, all unconsciously, the slave of
covetousness.

Well is it for us, if, like the knight in the picture, baffled, wounded, and
weary after years of unsuccessful conflict, our pride conquered, and our own
strength renounced, we are found kneeling at the door of that world which can
only be entered through death-union ‘with Jesus Christ. For when we come to a
condition of utter bankruptcy, and deeply conscious of our poverty and
powerlessness, cry out in abject despair, “O wretched man that I am, who. shall
deliver me?” we are at the threshold of deliverance. It will not be long before
we begin to sing the victorious song: “There is therefore now no condemnation to
them that are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus
hath made me free from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:1-2). In giving an
account of the terms proposed by Diabolus for the surrender of Mansoul, made
through his ambassador Mr. Loth-to-Stoop, Bunyan brings home the intense anxiety
of Satan to retain some hold upon Mansoul. “Then Mr. Loth-to-Stoop said again,
‘Sir, behold the condescension of my master! He says he will be content if he
may but have some place assigned to him in Mansoul as a place to live in
privately, and you shall be lord of all the rest! Then said Emmanuel, “All that
the Father giveth Me shall come to Me, and of all that He giveth Me, I will lose
nothing, no, not a hoof or a hair. I will not, therefore, grant him, no, not the
least corner in Mansoul to dwell in. I will have it all to Myself.’ “ And
blessed for ever be His name, for His gracious purpose and promise! But it is
only on the conditions we have sought to explain and enforce in the preceding
chapters that He can have us all to Himself. There can be no revocation of the
decree, “the soul that sinneth it shall die.” We have to choose whether in union
with the first Adam it shall be our own death, with the darkness and awful
separation from God which it involves; or whether by our identification with the
second Adam, we shall be reckoned dead in His death and living in His life:
“Because we thus judge, that One died for all, therefore all died; and He died
for all, that they which live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto
Him who for their sakes died and rose again” (2 Corinthians 5:15).

“Our separation from sin is the result of His death. We may therefore overleap
the ages and say, on that Cross my old life of sin came to an end: the nails
which pierced His sacred hands and feet destroyed my old self. Christ and we
were separated from sin by the same mysterious death; and therefore we are dead
with Christ.” [Beet, Romans, p. 181] . . . “As we look back to Christ’s death
upon the Cross, and remember that in the moment in which He bowed His head He
escaped completely from the enemies to whose assault, for our sakes, He had
exposed Himself, we venture to believe that we are sharers of that deliverance,
that upon His Cross we have ourselves escaped from the dominion of sin; and we
also venture to believe that by faith in Christ we already share the triumph of
our risen Lord over all His enemies and ours. Our faith is realized in actual
experience. Henceforth His Cross stands between us and our sins: and through His
empty grave we enter a life of victory.” [Beet, New Life in Christ, p. 172] The
poetical parable at the commencement of this chapter is no fantasy of the brain.
Fellowship with Jesus in His death and risen life admits the believer, as many
can testify, into a bright world where the heavens are blue and the air balmy. A
world in which the inhabitants have learned the secret of perpetual youth; where
they wear stainless robes; where the luster comes back to the eyes, and the
mists of age and care and strife have for ever passed away. This is the
unchanging law of the’ Christian life, for “the only way out of any world where
we are is by death “ — for the Christian therefore by Christ’s death. It is a
law which meets us at the very beginning of life in Christ, and as we walk in
the light of God we shall have continuous discoveries of wealthy places,
entrance into which is invariably through death, or, in other words, through
ceasing to have fellowship with certain forms of life.

If you examined a dead leaf-stalk, says Lilias Trotter in her lovely parables,
through a microscope, you would find that the old channel is silted up by a
barrier invisible to the naked eye. On last year’s leaf the plant has shut the
door, condemning it to decay, and soon without further effort the stalk loosens,
the winds of God play around it, and it falls away. The Cross of Christ shuts
off the life of sin. “Our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin
might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin: for he that is dead
is freed from sin” (Romans 6:6). Like the silted-up channel, the Cross stands a
blessed invisible barrier between us and sinning as we “reckon” it there: that
is, hold it there by faith and will. The sap — the will — the “ego” withdraws
from the former existence, its aims and desires, and sends them into the new.
And the first hour that the sap begins to withdraw, and the leaf-stalk begins to
silt up, the leaf’s fate is sealed. The plant never goes back, as so m any
Christians do, upon its resolve to dispense with the old foliage. It is this
“steadfast continuance” which is the secret of victory. The sap which is
withdrawn from the old is freely given for the nourishment of the new, and is
only withdrawn for this purpose, for the gate of the Cross is ever the gate of
life.

There is only one place where you can graft a branch upon a tree; it is where
both the graft and the tree have been cut and the life is flowing out. But let
there be close contact between them — for the smallest filament of wrapping round
the graft will prevent the life of the tree from flowing into it — and what is
the result? The little slip becomes a partaker of the strength and beauty of the
stem, and as it bears leaf and fruit it seems to say: “I live, nevertheless not
I, but the tree liveth in me, and the life I now live in foliage and fruit, I
live by faith in the shaft of the tree.” So to both graft and tree the gate of
the cross is the gate of life.


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  CHAPTER 12: 10. CHAPTER 10 - THE FRUIT OF THE CROSS
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Chapter 10 - The Fruit of the Cross For all through life I see a cross, Where
sons of God yield up their breath;

There is no gain except by loss, There is no life except by death;

There is no vision but by faith, No glory but in bearing shame, No justice but
in taking blame; And that Eternal Passion saith Be emptied of glory and right
and name

— Anon. The seed must die if a harvest is to spring from it. That is the law of
all moral and spiritual transformations. No man can be fruit-bearing unless he
sacrifices himself. We shall not "quicken" our fellows unless we "die" either
literally or by the not less real martyrdom of rigid self-crucifixion.
Self-renunciation guards the way to the "tree of life." The world’s war cries
today are two — "Get!" "Enjoy!" Christ’s command is, "Renounce!" and in
renouncing we shall realize both of these other aims, which they who pursue them
("get;" "enjoy") only never attain. The fecundity of plants, or their capacity
for producing seeds, is remarkable. The common cereals often yield from sixty to
a hundred fold. One castor-oil plant will produce 1,500, one sunflower 4,000, and
one thistle 24,000 seeds in a single season. A well-known botanist counted 2,000
grains of maize on a single plant of maize sprung from one seed, and 32,000
seeds on a single poppy plant. Pliny tells us that a Roman Governor in Africa
sent to the Emperor Augustus a single plant of corn with 340 stems, bearing 340
ears. That is to say, at least 60,000 grains of corn had been produced from a
single seed. In eight years, as much corn might spring from one seed as would
supply all mankind with bread for a year and a half.

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and
die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” John 12:24).
That we are here brought face to face with a truth of exceptional importance and
significance is evident from the formula, “Verily, verily,” with which our
Saviour prefaces this statement. The truth which lies beneath the surface of
this beautiful sentence may not be instantly perceived, it may, moreover, be
repugnant to our conception of life and service, but this renders it only the
more necessary that it should be pressed upon our attention.

Augustine reminds us that this “Verily, verily,” is not the language of friend
to friend; it rather indicates that we know so little of Christ’s mind, and have
so little confidence in Him, that His oath and bond are required by us before we
can believe Him. Does not this language also reveal to us a Teacher, who bears
with our slowness and ignorance, who deigns to meet us where we are, and who
uses such words to arrest our attention as are needed by our dull intellect and
unresponsive heart? May He not speak to my heart and thine, dear reader, in
vain.

There is but one path to the blessedness which opens before us here. Abundant
fruitfulness, the life which is life indeed, fellowship with Christ in service,
and fellowship with Christ in glory, are all attained by our identification in
Christ’s death. The key to the wonderful life which is outlined here is: “EXCEPT
IT DIE.” Death is the gate of life; self-oblation is the law of
self-preservation, and self-preservation is the law of self-destruction.

Two conditions of being are possible, either of which must constitute our
character — love or self. Love seeks its life outside itself; self seeks its
life within itself. Love, in order to possess, sacrifices selfishness; while self,
in order to possess, keeps itself and sacrifices love. The law which the great
Teacher here illustrates from the vegetable kingdom, that self-sacrifice is the
condition of all life, is a law universal in its application. It obtains
throughout the physical universe, and “nothing truly lives or fulfills its true
function, save as a part of the great whole, and in so far as it ministers to
the welfare and advance of the whole. All things minister to and help each other
— even sun, moon, and stars. All things give out life, or give up life and
power, to quicken and cherish life in other forms; earth, water, and heat
ministering to the life of the plant, the plant dying that it may minister to
the life of the bird and beast, bird and beast dying that they may minister to
the life of man.”

“Life everywhere replaces death, In earth, and sea, and sky; And that the rose
may breathe its breath, Some living thing must die.” To the Greeks peculiar
difficulties were presented to the reception of the Saviour’s teaching into their
intellect and heart. For five centuries the Greeks had marched at the head of
humanity. The whole world gathered round the torch of Greek genius. Their rich
and flexible language, fashioned into the most perfect vehicle of thought, had
become almost universal. Yet their failure in the regeneration of society was so
conspicuous, that though the highest state of intellectual culture of which
human nature is capable in its sinful state was attained prior to the
Incarnation, their wise men were as though they had never been. Hence St. Paul
asks, “Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this
world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?” (1 Corinthians
1:20). So far as the moral and spiritual regeneration of mankind was concerned,
these philosophers, thinkers, writers, and orators had left no trace of their
existence, and men were halting between a superstition which believed every.
thing, and a skepticism which believed nothing.

How is this failure to be accounted for? Their master-words were self-culture
and self-enjoyment. This was, according to the Greeks, the supreme aim, the
chief good of human life. The gods of Olympus were represented as beings who
lived only to enjoy themselves, and who, when they came to earth, came only for
the sake of pleasant adventure, or selfish amusement, caring nothing for the sins
and sorrows of humanity. And the character of the gods was reflected in their
Grecian votaries. Their highest conception of life was enjoyment of the senses,
the intellect, and the imagination. And this was the life they loved and
cherished.

Christ calls upon them to substitute self-oblation for self-culture, and
self-sacrifice for self-gratification. In other words, He asks them to reverse the
whole bent of their thought and conduct, and to set before themselves a
conception of life diametrically opposed to that which they for centuries had
held. As Godet says: “This saying included the judgment of Hellenism; for what
was Greek civilization but human life cultivated from the view-point of
enjoyment and withdrawn from the law of sacrifice.”

We cannot state too emphatically, in these days when self-sacrifice is so little
understood, that it is the very salt of the Christian character, and that
without self-sacrifice the Christian life is salt without the savor. It is the
test by which, above every other test, a man may know what reality there is in
his Christianity. And we halt over the elements and alphabet of the life divine,
until we have learned to hate the self-life, and, renouncing it, have “laid hold
on the life which is life indeed.”

These are days of marvelous religious activity but think of the disproportion
between activity and achievement! Are there not multitudes of Christian workers
who have grown so accustomed to failure that they have almost ceased to expect
success? Surely, with so much preaching and teaching, with so much Bible
circulation and tract distribution, we ought not only to be holding our ground,
but to be making inroads upon the kingdom of darkness. Yet we are not nearly
keeping pace with the increasing population of the world, and today there are
more millions sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death than ever there
were.

One explanation of the fact that results are so often scanty and meager, or not
real and abiding, lies here, the initial step to fruitful service has not been
taken. Either through ignorance or unwillingness, the vast majority of those who
profess to be fellow-workers with God in the regeneration of the world have
never definitely hated and renounced the self-life, and it is because they are so
much alive to self that they are so little alive to God.

Many, in their eagerness to succeed, are continually crying to God for the gift
of spiritual power. But God cannot fulfill their desire, for He is a jealous God,
and will not give His glory to another; and to trust men and women with
spiritual power who are full of self-assertion would only be to feed their
vanity and promote their self-idolization and love of self-display.

It is narrated of the great sculptor, Michael Angelo, that when at work he wore
over his forehead, fastened on his artist’s cap, a lighted candle, in order that
no shadow of himself might fall on his work! It was a beautiful custom, and
spoke more eloquently than, perchance, the sculptor knew, for the shadows that
fall upon our work, how often do they fall from ourselves! Is it so in your
case, my reader? Are you, Baruch-like, seeking great things for yourself? Are
you sensitive to the approbation or censure of men; elated when praised,
disheartened when blamed? Do you consult your natural tastes and feelings in
your work, missing the footsteps of Him who pleased not Himself? Do you shrink
from the work that is disagreeable, that is unseen of men, and that carries with
it no outward recompense? Verily, verily, I say unto you, you have your reward,
but it is not the reward of gathering fruit unto life eternal.

It is said that properly ripened seeds, if placed in certain conditions, are
capable of retaining their growing-power indefinitely; not merely for a few
years, not merely for a few centuries, but for thousands of years — how long,
indeed, no man can say. The earthy crust of our planet appears to be stocked in
every part with seeds that have been produced in years gone by, scattered upon
the surface, and subsequently covered up with soil. Whenever the ground is
disturbed, either by the plow, or by the spade of the railway excavator, or for
any purpose which causes its depths to be overturned, that portion which was
many feet below being thrown to the surface, and exposed to the air, the
sunbeams, and the moisture of dew and rain, immediately there springs up a crop
of young plants, certainly not originating in seeds only just then brought from
neighboring fields, and as certainly from seeds that have been lying in the soil
for ages. But away there in the depths of the earth, though the seed retains its
vitality, it abides alone. Note, it is only as the seed dies that it attracts to
itself the carbon, the nitrogen, and the various salts that contribute to the
nurture of the grain, and that lie in the earth unused and unproductive until a
power comes into contact with them that brings them forth from their
lurking-places. The latent life-germ needs the penetrating sunbeam and the warm
rain of heaven, then decay and death begin, and out of decay and death spring
life and beauty. What dormant powers, what divine possibilities lie sleeping in
human lives today! What talents and gifts are buried away in those depths! If
men and women would only expose themselves to “the open sunshine of God’s love,”
and throw open their hearts to the fertilizing dew of His Spirit, there would
start into life latent forces, which, under the vitalizing power and guidance of
the Holy Ghost, would fill hundreds of other lives with blessing, and their own
with unspeakable joy.

“Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if
it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” Let us follow in imagination, that corn
of wheat as it falls into the ground. Within its tiny husk is the farina or
flower, and inside that a Divine secret, a life germ, which the microscope cannot
detect. It is full of latent life, and contains the germ of boundless harvests.
But its dormant capabilities are only quickened, and. that secret germ is only
released by a rending asunder, a disintegration, a death. The little seed
surrenders itself to the forces of nature, which seize upon it and speedily
destroy its shapeliness and beauty. Down there, beneath the red mold, God has
His laboratory, and he carries on and completes that process of transmutation
which is the most wonderful that takes place beneath the sun. As the dissolution
takes place, the life-germ begins to feed on the farina till it is all consumed.

It is like a prisoner shut up in his cell with a cruse of water and a crust of
bread, and when the water is consumed to the last drop, and the crust consumed
to the last crumb, then it begins to burst its prison-walls. The germ then
divides into two. One, the plumule, tends upward, the other, the radicle, tends
downwards. The part that shoots downwards seeks from the soil such particles as
are required to build up its future life, and passes them on for the growth of
the plant in the upper air. It lays all nature under contribution for its
sustenance; from earth and sky it borrows materials of growth, and at length
becomes a luxuriant corn laden with its fruitful ear.

“Now mark,” says Rev. C. G. Moore — in a most suggestive article on this subject
— “how much larger is the life which the corn of wheat can lay hold of in its
new body. As to receiving, it at once has fellowship with all the resources of
nature. Air, light, rain, dew, earth, all minister to its upbuilding and
welfare. From all these in its former body it could take nothing. As to giving,
too, what a change! For now it bringeth forth fruit, thirty-fold, sixty-fold, it
may be a hundred-fold.” The spiritual application of this is so apparent, that
every reader will be able to make it for himself.

Before the Son of God stooped to clothe Himself in human form, — in order that
He might become “obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross “ — every
element of power (excepting self-sacrificing love) had been tried and had
ignominiously failed. But the Cross becomes a throne, and the crucified a
conqueror; He who was lifted up from the earth is drawing all men unto Himself,
and the measure of our drawing power is the measure of our self-emptied and
Christ-possessed lives, for “except it die it abideth alone, but if it die it
bringeth forth much fruit.”

“Have you ever heard of the aloe plant, Far away in the sunny clime? By a humble
growth of a number of years It reacheth its blooming time; And then a wondrous
bud at its crown Breaks into a thousand flowers: But the plant to the flower is a
sacrifice, For it blooms but once, and in blooming dies. And each and all of its
thousand flowers, As they drop in the blooming time, Are infant plants that
fasten their roots In the place where they fall on the ground; And fast as they
fall from the dying stem Grow lively and lovely around; So dying, it liveth a
thousand fold In the young that spring from the dead of the old.

“You have heard of Him whom the heavens adore, Before Whom the hosts of them
fall;

How He left the choir and anthems above, For earth, in its wailing and woes; To
suffer the pain, the shame of the Cross, And die for the life of His foes!

He died, but His life in numberless souls, Lives on in the world anew. His seed
prevails and is filling the earth, As the stars fill the sky above;

He teaches to yield up the love of life, For the sake of the life of love: His
death is our life — His life the world’s glory, And we are commanded to spread
the glad story.”


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  CHAPTER 13: 11. CHAPTER 11- THE GAINS OF THE CROSS
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Chapter 11- The Gains of the Cross Life out of death —

Dear Master, is it spoken Of the life here, or in the better land?

Nay, wherefore wait? the vessel marred and broken, Shall now be molded by the
Potter’s hand.

Life out of death —

Oh, wondrous resurrection!

Seed sown in conscious weakness, raised in power;

Thy life lived out in days of toil and friction, “Not I, but Christ “ in me —
from hour to hour.

Life out of death — A pilgrim path and lonely, Trodden by those who glory in the
Cross;

They live in fellowship with “Jesus only,” And for His sake count earthly gain
but loss.

Life out of death —

Blest mission to be ever Bearing the living water, brimming o’er, With Life
abundant from that clear, pure river, Telling that thirsty souls need thirst no
more. — M. C.

He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this
world, shall keep it unto life eternal” (John 12:25). The word “life” here is
expressed by two Greek terms having quite a different meaning. The one, as the
margin of the Revised Bible suggests, might be translated “soul”; it is the
Greek psyche, and stands for our lower, our soulish, or self-life; the second
word refers to the higher, the divine life. If we love the lower life, if we
listen to the philosophy of the world, which is “Spare thyself: the cross be far
from thee,” we lose, of necessity, the higher, the abundant life; for we cannot
have, at one and the same time, what the world calls “life” and what Christ
calls “life.”

Mr. Spurgeon tells of a raw countryman, who brought his gun to the gunsmith for
repairs. The latter is reported to have examined it, and finding it to be almost
too far gone for repairing, said, “Your gun is in a very worn-out, ruinous,
good-for-nothing condition, what sort of repairing do you want for it ?” “Well,”
said the countryman, “I don’t see as I can do with anything short of a new
stock, lock and barrel; that ought to set it up again.” “Why,” said the smith,
“you had better have a new gun altogether.” “Ah,” was the reply, “I never
thought of that: and it strikes me that’s just what I do want, a new stock,
lock, and barrel; why that’s about equal to a new gun altogether, and that’s
what I’ll have.” That is just the sort of repairing that man’s nature requires.
The old nature must be cast aside as a complete wreck, and good for nothing, and
the man made a new creation in Christ Jesus. But willing as we may be to admit
this truth, few lessons are harder to learn.

Christ’s sacrifice utterly condemned me in my natural state. It was as if he
said: “O Righteous Father, I offer up and renounce this man’s impure soul, that
it may die; and that My life may live and grow in him.” Have I yet learned to
hate, renounce, deny, and deliver over to death, in the unity of my Lord’s
sacrifice, my condemned selfhood? Until I have, I shall never know the meaning of
the words “If any man serve Me, let Him follow Me,” for we only follow Him by
sharing in the spirit of His self-sacrifice. That may mean for us a way of
humiliation and seeming defeat; but not in service that arrests widespread
notice, or excites the admiration of the multitude, do we always best serve
Christ. Ours may be a baptism of sorrow and pain, for strait is the gate and
narrow is the way that leadeth to this life, and few there be that find it. The
soulish life longs for ease, for indulgence, for display, for wealth, for
position, for popularity, and it is recorded as one of the marks of the grievous
times that characterize the last days, that “men shall be lovers of self, lovers
of money, boastful, haughty, . . . without self-control, puffed up, lovers of
pleasure rather than lovers of God; holding a form of godliness, but having
denied the power thereof” (2 Timothy 3:2-5, R.V.).

It has been remarked that all things thrive in proportion as they relate
themselves to the world around them; in proportion as they surrender themselves
to their environment. While the branches surrender their independence and lose
themselves in the tree, they grow beautiful with leaf, and flower, and fruit; but
as soon as they detach themselves from the general life, they begin to wither
and rot, and men gather them into bundles and burn them. While the members
surrender their individual life to the one life of the body, the rich blood
courses through them, and they become strong and vigorous, but a severed member
soon becomes a withered and shapeless thing. So the selfish man ethically
destroys himself by selfishness. In proportion as we give we shall receive, and
the power of perfect sacrifice is also the power of perfect life. The exclamation
of Jesus, in John 12:27, reminds us of the pain and anguish which accompanied
the sacrifice of Himself. “Now is my soul troubled, yet what shall I say? Father,
save me from this hour. But for this cause came I unto this hour. Father,
glorify Thy Name.” Here is a picture of the conflict which goes on in many lives
between the higher and the lower natures, when God’s call comes, to account
ourselves dead, and “to be united together with Christ by the likeness of His
death” (Romans 6:5, R.V.).

How many agencies God employs to bring to an end the power of our self-life!
“Think of the seed cast into the earth exposed to wintry winds; trodden under
the feet of those who drive the rake and harrow over it; buried out of sight and
left alone, as if cast out by God and man to endure the slow process of a daily
dissolution, then melted by rains and heats until its form is marred, and it
seems useless to either God or man.” So in a variety of unexpected and unwelcome
ways does God bring to death that which He has condemned. How strikingly this is
illustrated in the case of Job! Yet all the despoiling forces, men and devils,
friends and foes, were held in leash by the strong hand of Love, who, when His
purposes were accomplished, said, “Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther.” To
cry out, “Save me from this hour!” to shrink and murmur, is only to disappoint
God, to aggravate the evil, and to frustrate His purposes of grace. It is
through the valley of the shadow of death, through the fiery way of trial, that
we are brought into the wealthy place. It is God who directs the movements of
the Sabeans and Chaldeans; it is He who permits the whirlwind to devastate and
death to destroy, and our deliverance is not in fleeing from the marauding bands,
but in saying, as Jesus did, “Father, glorify Thy name!” Whatever this means of
severance and suffering, “Father, glorify Thy name!” and like our Master we
shall hear a voice which assures us, “I have both glorified it, and will glorify
it again.”

We shall do well to be on our guard against attempting to conquer self by any
active resistance we can make to it by the powers of nature, for “nature can no
more overcome or suppress itself, than wrath can heal wrath.” Our very efforts
to overcome it, seem to give it new strength; self-love finds something to
admire, even in the very attempts we make to conquer it. It will even take pride
in what we mean to be acts of self-humiliation. There is no deliverance for us
from this dread tyrant but in God. We are not skillful, or brave, or
disinterested enough to wage this war alone. We must set ourselves against this
foe which is His as well as ours, and while we strive in all things to work
together with Him, we must trust Him to work for us and in us, till self shall
die slain by God’s own breath. As living, intelligent beings, we must yield to
the inspiration of the power that kills and makes alive, for God does not work
irresistibly as upon dead matter, but intellectually and spiritually as upon
honest mind. Self being reckoned dead, its gross affections may be put to death;
so that instead of the works of the flesh will appear the fruit of the Spirit
(Galatians 5:19-24). “Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and
instead of the brier the myrtle tree” (Isaiah 55:13). Instead of the repulsive I
life, shall appear the beautiful Christ-life. No longer I, but Christ.”

Let us get these three truths firmly fixed in our mind. First, the death of self
with Christ is the one only way to life in God. This is the one condition of the
promised blessing, and he that is not willing to die to things sinful, yea, and
to things lawful, if they come between the spirit and God, cannot enter that
world of light and joy and peace, provided on this side of heaven’s gates, where
thoughts and wishes, words and works, delivered from the perverting power of
self-revolve round Jesus Christ, as the planets revolve around the central sun.

Secondly, the only cure for self is condemnation unto death with Christ. It is
unreformable in its character, and immutable in its workings. It can no more
change from evil to good than darkness can work itself into light, and therefore
death to self is the one only way to life in God.

Thirdly, the only conqueror of self is Christ. It is the law of the Spirit of
life in. Christ Jesus, that sets us free from the law of sin and of death
(Romans 8:2). The ruling monarch will never dethrone himself, but if we welcome
the Christ of God into the temple where self has been enshrined, the hideous
idol will fall before His word as Dagon fell before the ark. As Andrew Murray
says: “Self can never cast out self, even in the regenerate man. Praise God! the
work has been done. The death of Jesus, once and for ever, is our death to self.
And the gift of the Holy Spirit makes our very own the power of the death-life.”
A word of warning is perhaps necessary, lest, actuated by some selfish aim, our
self-sacrifice only becomes deeper self-seeking. It is not a bartering of a bad
self for a better self, but a foregoing and utter renunciation of self for ever.
“Whosoever will lose his life for My sake,” said Jesus, “shall find it.”

Self-sacrifice for the sake of self-discipline is a delusion indeed; it is
nothing but self-culture; the very life we profess to be seeking to overcome is
actually being fed and strengthened by, what we think to be, blows struck at its
very existence. Our self-sacrifice is utterly valueless unless it bears this
stamp upon it, “For My sake.” As to the recompense of this self-renouncing life.
What words can describe it! For a season everything may seem to be dark and
dreary; there may be a desertion and a loneliness which are hard to the flesh,
but as suffering was the pathway which the Saviour trod in order to enter into
His glory, so through this same experience is every son of man glorified, and God
is glorified in him. As one has beautifully said: “Those who die with Christ are
safe with Him.” For His own life-guard of angels is about them, to watch and
roll away the stone, that the dead may, in due time, rise again.” In all true
sacrifice there is more of joy than sorrow. The whole life of God is just the
outflowing of His love, and the sacrifice of Christ is simply the full revelation
of that wondrous love. It is no pain, surely, to a lover to give himself and all
he has to his beloved. Nay, “It is more blessed to give than to receive,” and
the richest, truest, and most lasting of all blessedness is the blessedness of
self-giving. The stairway of self-oblation leads men ever upwards and onwards,
from the life of Christ to the likeness of Christ, the fellowship of Christ, the
throne of Christ, and the glory of Christ: “For to him that overcometh will I
grant to sit with Me in My throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with
My Father on His throne.”

“Measure thy life by loss instead of gain, Not by the wine drunk but by the wine
poured forth; For love’s strength standeth in life’s sacrifice; And whoso suffers
most hath most to give.”


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  CHAPTER 14: 12. CHAPTER 12 - BEAUTY FOR ASHES
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Chapter 12 - Beauty for Ashes Look not for a true living strength, in the life
of the Me and the I, With nothing to love but its self-hood, and fearing to
suffer and die, As thou seekest the fruit from the seed-planted grain, Seek life
that is living, from life that is slain.

Then hasten to give it its death-blow, by nailing the I to the Cross; And thou
shalt find infinite treasure in what seemed nothing but loss; For where, if the
seed is not laid in the ground, Shall the germ of the new resurrection be found.
The soul is the Lord’s little garden, the I is the seed that is there; And he
watches it while it is dying, and hath joy in the fruits it doth bear, In the
seed that is buried is hidden the power Of the life-birth immortal, of fruit,
and of flower.

‘Tis hidden, and yet it is true; ‘tis mystic, and yet it is plain! A lesson,
which none ever knew, but souls that are inwardly slain; That God, from thy
death, by his Spirit shall call The life ever-living, the life ALL IN ALL. —
Professor T. C. Upham

Some years ago, on engineering a malarious district in South America, so many of
the men were stricken down with sickness, that the engineer resolved to destroy
the luxuriant undergrowth of weeds, flowers, ferns, mosses, and lichens, by fire.
The result was six months of continued burning and smoldering, until, to all
appearance, the life-principle was eradicated from soil and sub-soil. After two
years of desolation and sterility, a little plant appeared, developing in due
time a flower so rich in its loveliness, and so rare in its beauty, as to fill the
beholder with amazement and admiration. It was submitted to floral experts for
classification, but they knew of no class to which it belonged. They had never
seen anything like it, and they were obliged to let it stand alone in its unique
loveliness. This aptly illustrates the spiritual desolation which precedes our
deliverance from the life of nature, and from the subtleties of our selfhood, to
which we must come ere we know the risen life of Jesus in all its fullness and
fruitfulness. To human eyes the life is rich in foliage, here are lovely mosses,
there are wonderful lichens; but human eyes cannot detect the malaria of
selfishness which God sees. It is no longer selfishness in its repulsive forms,
but in its most deceitful and attractive dress. It may be described as
consecrated selfishness, or selfishness for God.

Now it takes the form of impulsive and intense earnestness. Work is undertaken
because it seems to be of God, but the will of God has not been sought, nor has
His strength been put on, hence creaturely energy takes the place of Divine
power. Now it takes the form of jealousy for God’s glory, and a position of
antagonism is taken to some project, which position says in unmistakable
language: “Come and see my zeal for God;” but bitter criticisms are indulged,
and uncharitable thoughts are cherished, which reveal only too clearly the
malaria of a strong and subtle selfhood. Or it takes the form of a craving for
spiritual enjoyment. The finger is ever on the pulse of the emotions, and the
soul is constantly inquiring “how do I feel?” So long as this emotional pulse
beats strongly all is well, but if it grows faint and feeble, the soul is
immediately plunged into the Slough of Despondency. This is particularly
manifest in work for God. The guidance of the Spirit is honestly sought, and the
spirit is cast upon Him for aid. If, however, after the work has been done,
there should be an utter divestiture of emotional experience, the temptation of
going back upon the guidance of the Spirit is indulged, and hours of anguish
follow, because the tempter’s lie is believed, that the wrong course was taken
and the wrong message given. This anguish is greatly aggravated if some prized
human opinion is adverse to what has been said or done; and the victim of these
experiences not infrequently threatens, because self-love has been thus wounded,
to abandon work for God altogether. The purpose of God is to deliver His
children from this life, which is still a mixed life, and full of vicissitudes
and variations, and give in its place a life fixed and permanent, where the
spirit, delivered from selfishness in every form, and in full union with the
Divine will, rests solidly upon the great Center, and upon that alone. Do not
let it be for a moment thought that we are minimizing or deprecating the
experience that has been already attained. The soul has true life, but not full
or perfect life; God is not yet that “all in all” which He longs to be, and He
cannot and will not let us rest in any good which is outside Himself. This
experience of reluctance to abandon self is a very painful one. It is nothing
less than the losing (so that faith being sustained, it will never be found
again) of the life of nature, and the being filled with the life and fullness
which is of God. (Note how, in the following passages, Christ insists on this —
Matthew 16:25-27; Mark 8:35; Luke 9:24; Luke 14:25-35; John 12:25.) In the Life
of Madame Guyon there is a striking description of her passage through this
experience. In the year 1674, she entered into what she terms her state of
privation or desolation, and continued in it, with but slight variations, for
more than six years. Protracted and painful though her experience was, few have
been better able than she to say: “So then death worketh in us, but life in you”
(2 Corinthians 4:12), for while she lived, and all through these two hundred
years since she slept in Jesus, her personal knowledge of spiritual desolation
and death has brought light and life to multitudes.

“I seemed to myself,” she says, “cast down as it were from a throne of
enjoyment, like Nebuchadnezzar to live among beasts, — a very trying and
deplorable state, when regarded independently of its relations, and yet
exceedingly profitable to me in the end, in consequence of the use which Divine
wisdom made of it.” All sensible consolation vanished. God set in motion a train
of circumstances which seemed to add fuel to the fire, until that to which she
had clung with such tenacity, and delighted in with such exceeding delight, was
nothing but a heap of ashes. But, as her biographer says, “God designed to make
her His own, in the highest and fullest sense; He wished her to possess the true
life, the life unmingled with any element which is not true; in other words, a
life which flows directly and unceasingly from the Divine nature. And in order to
do this, it became with Him, if we may so express it, a matter of necessity that
He should take from her every inward support, separate and distinct from that of
unmixed naked faith. She could love God’s will, trying though it often was to
her natural sensibilities, when it was sweetened with consolations; but the
question now proposed to her was, whether she could love God’s will when
developing itself as the agent and minister of Divine providences which were to
be received, endured, and rejoiced in, in all their bitterness, simply because
they were from God?”

Describing this season of aridity and inward deprivation, she says: “Confused,
like a criminal that dares not lift up his eyes, I looked upon the virtue of
others with respect. I could see more or less of goodness in those around me,
but in the obscurity and sorrow of my mind, I could seem to see nothing good,
nothing favorable in myself. When others spoke a word of kindness, and
especially if they happened to praise me, it gave a severe shock to my feelings,
and I said in myself they little know my miseries; they little know the state
from which I have fallen. And, on the contrary, when they spoke in terms of
reproof and condemnation, I agreed to it as right and just.”

Then she tells how nature sought to free herself from this abject condition, but
could not find any way of escape. She was like the slain that lie in the grave;
to all appearance cut off from God’s hand and laid in the lowest pit, in dark
places in the deeps. Shut up, she could not come forth, and she cried in her
anguish: “Wilt thou show wonders to the dead? Shall they that are deceased arise
and praise Thee? Shall Thy loving-kindness be declared in the grave? or Thy
faithfulness in destruction? Shall Thy wonders be known in the dark? and Thy
righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? But unto Thee, O Lord, have I cried”
(Psalms 88:1-18 :, R.V.).

After nearly seven years of inward and outward desolation the darkness passed
away, and the light of eternal glory settled upon her soul. Out of the ashes of
the abandoned selfhood God brought forth a life so novel and beautiful, that the
Christians of the day in which she lived failed to classify it. It was so unlike
anything they had ever experienced, heard, or read of, that they put her in
prison for possessing it.

She learned to look back upon these years as the darkness of the grave that
precedes the resurrection glory; the consuming to ashes that precedes the growth
of never-fading flowers; the night of mourning that comes before the morning of
joy; the spirit of heaviness that is worn before the garment of praise.

“It was on the 22nd of July, 1680, that happy day,” says Madame Guyon, “that my
soul was delivered from all its pains. On this day I was restored, as it were,
to perfect life, and set wholly at liberty. I was no longer depressed, no longer
borne down under the burden of sorrow. I had thought God lost, and lost for
ever; but I found Him again. And He returned to me with unspeakable magnificence
and purity. In a wonderful manner, difficult to explain, all that which had been
taken from me was not only restored, but restored with increase and new
advantages. In Thee, O my God, I found it all, and more than all! The peace
which I now possessed was all holy, heavenly, inexpressible. What I had
possessed some years before, in the period of my spiritual enjoyment, was
consolation, peace — the gift of God rather than the Giver; but now, I was
brought into such harmony with the will of God, whether that will was consoling
or otherwise, that I might now be said to possess not merely consolation, but
the God of consolation; not merely peace, but the God of peace. One day of this
happiness, which consisted in simple rest or harmony with God’s will, whatever
that will might be, was sufficient to counterbalance years of suffering.
Certainly it was not I, myself, who had fastened my soul to the Cross, and under
the operations of a providence, just but inexorable, had drained, if I may so
express it, the blood of the life of nature to the last drop. I did not
understand it then; but I understood it now. It was the Lord that did it. It was
God that destroyed me, that He might give me the true life.”

Two observations will perhaps prevent misconception at this stage. First, the
phrase, “the life of nature,” is used of the natural life without the restoring
and purifying grace of full sanctification. The life of nature is the opposite of
the life of faith. The one is always seeking its own will and acting in
independence of God, while the other seeks the will of God and makes Him the
foundation of every action. The one looks to man’s wisdom and man’s strength,
the other rejects all methods and instrumentalities which are dissociated from
God. Augustine wisely says: “God is never the destroyer of nature, but He
ordereth it and maketh it perfect.”

It will be wise, in the second place, to say that this deep work of the Spirit
need not be protracted over years, as in Madame Guyon’s case. If utterly
abandoned to God — determined to shrink from no discovery, however humbling, and
no purging, however severe — the soul will only “reach forth” to the things that
are before, ever “pressing towards the mark”; God will very speedily show forth
the quickening power of His Spirit.


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  CHAPTER 15: 13. CHAPTER 13- THE DYING LIFE
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Chapter 13- The Dying Life To heaven approached a Sufi saint, From groping in the
darkness late, And tapping timidly and faint, Besought admission at God’s gate.

Said God, “Who seeks to enter here?”

“’Tis I, dear Friend,” the saint replied, And, trembling much with hope and
fear.

“If it be thou, without abide.”

Sadly to earth the poor saint turned, To hear the scourging of life’s rods; But
aye his heart within him yearned To mix and lose its love in God’s.

He roamed alone through weary years, By cruel men still scorned and mocked,
Until from faith’s pure fire and tears Again he rose, and modest knocked.

Asked God, “Who now is at the door?”

“It is Thyself, beloved Lord,”

Answered the saint; in doubt no more Of an exceeding great reward.

— Translated from the Persian

We have sought to show that fullness of life can only follow reality of death
with Christ. If we shrink from laying the life of nature upon the altar of
Christ’s Cross, if the sense of desolation and apparent abandonment by God and
man affright us, we shall never reach the goal towards which the Holy Spirit has
been leading us from the very commencement of the impartation of the life of
God. In one of his wonderful sermons, Tauler gives a powerful description of
what he calls the three stages of the dying life, remarking that “in what
measure a man dies to himself and grows out of himself, in the same measure does
God, who is our life, enter into him.” [This sermon is now so difficult of
access, owing to the rarity and costliness of the volume which contains it, that
we propose to give in this chapter some of its main features, believing they
will prove of great value to those who read these pages.] In the first stage, men
are apt to taste little sweetness in loving God, save when they hope to enjoy
something of His love; as for instance to escape hell and get to heaven. Such
begin to abandon self while they love themselves far too well. They desire that
all men should be as they are, and whatever methods of avoiding sin they have
practiced, and still make use of by reason of their infirmity, they desire, nay
demand, that every one else should’ observe; and if any do not do so, they judge
them, and murmur at them, and say that they pay no regard to religion.

Such men, who are standing on the lowest steps of abandoned self-life, are very
niggardly of their spiritual blessings towards their fellow Christians; for they
devote all their prayers and religious exercises to their own advantage; and if
they pray or do any other kind act for others, they think it a great thing, and
fancy they have done them a great service thereby. Their whole life is full of
care, full of fear, full of toil and ignoble misery; for they see eternal life
on the one side, and fear to lose it; and they see hell on the other, and fear
to fall into it; and all their prayers and religious exercises cannot chase away
their fear of hell, so long as they do not die unto themselves. They make long
stories of what is of no consequence, and talk about their great difficulties and
sufferings, as if they were grievously wronged; and they esteem their works,
though small, to be highly meritorious, and that God owes them great honor and
blessing in return. From this first step many, through unwillingness to go
forward, fall back from the little they have attained, and plunge into folly and
wickedness. In the second stage, Tauler describes the experience we have
referred to in the previous chapter. The soul can endure insult, contempt, and
such like deaths, so long as he is sustained by a gracious sense of the Divine
presence, but directly that is withdrawn, the man falls a prey to mistrust of
God, fancying that God has forgotten him and is not willing to help him towards
perfection. When the Lord shows him some kindness, he feels himself so rich as
if he could never be poor, and thinks to enjoy the presence and favor of God
(though as yet he is quite untried) just as if the Almighty were his own
personal, special friend; and is ready to believe that our Lord is, so to speak,
at his disposal to comfort him in adversity, and enrich him with all virtue.
Seeing that such a man will be very apt to rely upon his imagined powers, and
thus to fall grievously, seeing also that the best and ripest fruit is being
lost, inasmuch as the man has not yet attained to that perfection to which our
Lord desires to lead him, in due time our Lord withdraws from such a one all
that He had revealed to him, because the man was too much occupied with himself,
thinking about his own perfection, wisdom, holiness, and virtues.

Thus brought through poverty to dissatisfaction with himself, he humbly
acknowledges that he has neither wisdom nor worthiness. He was wont to desire
and thirst after the reputation of holiness, like a meadow after the dew of
heaven. He fancied that men’s praise of him had proceeded altogether from real
goodness and by God’s ordination, and had wandered so far from self-knowledge as
not to see that he was in himself unsound from head to foot; he fancied that he
was really as he stood in man’s opinion, and knew nothing to the contrary. In
order that he may learn to know himself, our Lord suffers him to fall into
unspiritual temptations such as he never experienced in those past days in which
he fancied himself very good and spiritually minded. Out of mercy God deprives
him of all understanding, and over-clouds all the light in which he walked
aforetime, and so hedges him in with the thorns of an anguished conscience, that
he thinks nothing else but that he is cast from the light of God’s countenance;
and he moans greatly, and often with many tears exclaims: “O my God, why hast
Thou cast me off, and why go I thus mourning all the days of my pilgrimage!”
When he finds himself thus, from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot,
unlike God and at variance with Him, he is filled with such a sense of his own
unworthiness that he can hardly abide himself; and then he thinks many miserable
things about himself from passages of Holy Scripture, and sheds many tears in
the sense of his sinfulness, till he is weighed down to the earth with the
pressure of God’s hand, and exclaims: “My sins have taken hold upon me that I am
not able to look up!” He asks the heavens why they have become as brass, and the
earth wherefore she is as iron, and beseeches the very stones to have compassion
on his woes. So God leads the soul through these exercises and operations of His
hand as through fire and water by turns, until the workings of self-sufficiency
are driven out from all the secret corners of the spirit, and the man
henceforward is so utterly ashamed of himself, and so casts himself off, that he
can nevermore ascribe any greatness to himself, but thoroughly perceives all his
own weakness in which he now is, and always has been. Whatever he does or
desires to do or whatever good thing may be said of him, he does not take it to
his own credit, for he knows not how to say anything else of himself, but that
he is full of all manner of infirmity. Then he has reached the end of this second
stage; and he who has arrived at this point is not far from the threshold of
great mercies, by which he shall enter into the bride-chamber of Christ. Then,
when the day of his death shall come, he shall be brought in by the Bridegroom
with great rejoicing.

Little trees do not strike their roots deep into the earth, and therefore they
cannot stand long; but the great trees, which are intended to endure long upon
the earth, these strike their roots deep, and spread them out wide into the
soil. So it is with those who are great upon earth; they must needs pass through
many a struggle before all the self-sufficiency of their heart can be broken
down, and they can be surely and firmly rooted for ever in humility. It does,
however, happen sometimes that the Holy Spirit finds easier ways than those of
which we have spoken, whereby He brings such souls to Himself. The third stage
of this abandoned life is reached only by those who, with unflagging diligence
and ceaseless desire, are ever pressing forward to perfection. In this stage,
there is a mingling of sorrow and of joy. An overwhelming sorrow in the sense of
the unspeakable wrong done to God by His creatures, and especially by the
inconsistent disciples of Jesus Christ. An overwhelming gladness in the
assurance that he is now to be filled with all the joys that the human nature of
Christ possessed. To this state a man cannot attain except he unite his will
with God, with an entire renunciation and perfect denial of himself, and all
selfish love of himself, and delights in having his own will overmastered and
quenched by the shedding abroad in his heart of the Holy Spirit in the love of
God, so that it seems as though the Holy Spirit Himself were the man’s will and
love, and he were nothing and willed nothing on his own account. Yea, even the
kingdom of heaven he shall desire for God’s sake and God’s glory, because Christ
hath earned it in order to supply his needs, and chooseth to bestow it on him as
one of His sons.


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  CHAPTER 16: 14. CHAPTER 14 - THE RISEN LIFE
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Chapter 14 - The Risen Life “Dying together” with Jesus, This is the end of
strife “Buried together” with Jesus, This is the gate of life “Quickened
together” with Jesus, By the touch of God’s mighty breath;

“Risen together” with Jesus; Where is thy sting, O Death?

“Living together” with Jesus, Walking this earth with God;

Telling Him all we are doing, Casting on Him every load.

Living His life for others, Seeking alone His will, Resting beneath His shadow,
With a heart ever glad and still.

“Seated together” with Jesus, In the “heavenly place” of love;

Love, unequaled — unending, In the heart of the Father above.

“Seated together” with Jesus, To live out the love of God, And so win this world
unloving, By His love so deep and so broad.

— Bessie Porter The Cross of Christ, as St. Paul preached I it, contains all the
elements of moral regeneration and of spiritual life. He never gloried in the
Cross as a narrow technicality, but as illustrating, and, we might even say
incarnating the length and breadth, and depth and height of the love of God. To
the apostle, the Cross of Christ started from the Incarnation on the one side,
and led up to the Ascension and Enthronement on the other.

“If we have become united with Him by the likeness of His death, we shall be
also by the likeness of His resurrection” (Romans 6:5). According to the
completeness of our union with Him in the one, will be the completeness of our
union with Him in the other. Unbelief repudiates what Christ has done; for, as
Dr. Pfleiderer says: “The objective reconciliation effected in Christ’s death can
after all benefit actually, in their own personal consciousness, only those who
know and acknowledge it, and feel themselves in their solidarity with Christ to
be so much one with Him as to be able to appropriate inwardly His death and
celestial life, and to live over again His life and death; those only, in a
word, who truly believe in Christ.” Paul’s faith fully endorsed all that Christ
had done ‘as His representative. He had joined His Saviour on the Cross, he had
gone down with Him into the grave, and because He had come forth from the tomb
Paul had come forth too, for “in this appropriation of the death and rising of
the Lord Jesus there are three stages, corresponding to the Friday, Saturday,
and Sunday of Eastertide. Christ died for our sins; He was buried; He rose again
the third day:’ so, by consequence, ‘I am crucified with Christ; no longer do I
live; Christ liveth in me.’ “ [Findlay, Galations, p. 159]

Burial is the seal and certificate of death. Christ’s interment in the rock-hewn
sepulcher gave conclusive evidence of the reality of His death. His enemies
said, “That is the end of another deception,” while His friends said, “We
trusted that it had been He who should have redeemed Israel.” The phrase “buried
with Christ” denotes, then, the absoluteness of our death with Him, as a man who
passes away is said to be dead and buried. The relatives and friends of a Hindu
convert to Christianity, in order to show how completely they had cast him off,
actually celebrated his funeral, and treated him, after this open display of his
death, as if he really no longer existed. The reckoning of faith which results
in identification with Christ in His death may be at first a secret and only known
to God and ourselves, but it cannot remain a secret. The average Roman of the
period when this letter was written was accustomed to the amphitheater. He
became, by the law of association, brutalized and ferocious to the last degree.
Coming under the power of Christ, he died to the degradation and cruelty of the
amphitheater, and because the fashions of the age were such that no follower of
Christ could consent to them, he became dead to society, and of necessity the
secret was soon out that he had joined the ranks of the despised Nazarene. He
was as much dead and buried to these things as if his body had been laid in the
grave.

Just as we have all known what it is to turn away at last from the grave-side
where the body of some loved one has been laid to rest; just as we have lingered
to take the last look at the coffin, and have then come away with tear-dimmed
eyes, feeling all was over, so they who are really dead and buried with Christ
think of that old natural self as having been wrapped in its winding-sheet, and
buried in the dark grave with Christ’s burial. The old habits, the old
besetments, the old sins are, by a faith that knows nothing of intermittency,
completely past and gone. So Tersteegen sings:

“Dead and crucified with Thee, passed beyond my doom;

Sin and law for ever silenced in Thy tomb.

“Passed beyond the mighty curse, dead, from sin set free; Not for Thee earth’s
joy and music, not for me.”

“Dead, the sinner past and gone, not the sin alone;

Living, where Thou art in glory on the throne.” And now let us dwell on some of
the features of this risen life. It introduces us into a new world; “it puts an
end to all our former opinions, notions, and tempers; it opens new senses in us,
and makes us see high to be low, and low to be high; wisdom to be foolishness,
and foolishness wisdom; it makes prosperity and adversity, praise and dispraise,
to be equally nothing.” This risen life is marked by perpetuity. There are
animals which hibernate, and for all practical purposes are dead for a season:
for a season they abandon their haunts and habits, but when the warmth of spring
penetrates their burying-place, there is a revival of their old instincts. So
there are those whose death is so unreal, that the. abandonment of sin is only
temporary, and while they think themselves dead, the soul of sin lives on
underneath the lethargic surface, and when the cause of its insensibility has
passed away, returns with strengthened life to all its old habits and ways. Such
was not the death and risen life of Jesus. This may mean, and to unwavering
faith will mean the entrance into an experience where there need be no relapses
into sin. The death that He died, He died unto sin once for all; but the life
that He liveth, He liveth unto God. Even so, reckon ye also yourselves to be
dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Jesus Christ” (Romans 6:10-11). Let us
emphasize that once for all. There should be no relapses into the realm of
death. Sin is the tomb of the soul, and if we have risen, let us be sure we do
not return to it. There must be no periodic visits to the sepulcher; we must die
unto sin once for all, and as Jesus never returned to the sepulcher after He
left it, so let us resolve in the power of the Holy Spirit never to return; so
that it may be said of us with regard to the old associations, habits, and
indulgences, as it was said of our Lord, “He is not here, He is risen.”

Again, this risen life is marked by activity. We are to be, as the risen Jesus
was, “alive for God.” The words point to a life of which God is the only aim. A
life which in every thought, word and act is for God. To be alive for anyone is
to be keenly devoted to the advancement of that one’s interests. The tradesman
does not simply want as assistants those who will keep their hands out of his
till, but those who are so alive for him as to make his interests their own. The
deviation of a ship’s compass from the true magnetic meridian is caused by the
near presence of iron. This disturbing influence must be neutralized or the
compass becomes worthless. The deviation of the soul from its God-ward course is
caused by the presence of sin, and so long as we remain unbelieving concerning
our crucifixion with Christ, we shall be alive to its power and therefore not
truly alive for God. There are disturbing forces at work in the unsanctified soul
which prevent the hearing of God’s voice and the doing of God’s will. When Paul
was charged by the Corinthians with caprice and fickleness (2 Corinthians 1:1-24
:), he denied the charge on the ground that he was a spiritual Christian. “The
things that I purpose, do I purpose according to the flesh that with me there
should be the yea, yea, and the nay, nay?” Paul’s inner being was once like an
undisciplined mob, the voices of self-interest, ambition, and of policy being
all heard in turn, but it was not so now. He claims to be “established in
Christ, and to be “anointed,” which “means freedom from all selfish and personal
wishes, deliverance from those passions whose name is legion, and power to sit
at the feet of Jesus clothed and in our right mind! A man who is free from the
manifold motives of self-will moves like the sun — steady, majestic, with no
variableness, neither shadow of turning. His course can be calculated. Paul
claimed that because he was in Christ he could not be tricky, or maneuver, or do
underhand things.”

Fullness of life will certainly result in activity and intensity. The man who is
really united to Jesus has his own life destroyed out of him and the life of
Christ communicated to him. The life which Christ reproduces in us cannot be
idle, unsympathetic, cold, parsimonious, or seclusive from men’s joys and
sorrows. That life will unfold itself, where there is nothing to hinder it, as
naturally as the vine produces grapes. “I confess,” says Madame Guyon, “I do not
understand the resurrection state of certain Christians who profess to have
attained it, and who yet remain all their lives powerless and destitute: for
here the soul takes up a true life. The actions of a raised man are the actions
of life; and if the soul remains lifeless, I say that it may be dead or buried
but not risen. A risen soul should be able to perform without difficulty all the
actions which it has performed in the past, only they would be done in God.
Those who believe themselves to be risen with Christ, and who are nevertheless
stunted. in their spiritual growth and incapable of devotion — I say, they do
not possess a resurrection life, for there everything is restored to the soul a
hundred-fold.”

There ought to be no room for the objection that this life of perfect union with
‘a risen Saviour leads to an introspective and largely meditative life. It is
difficult to detect anything that is introspective in the lives of George Fox and
John Wesley, for example, after they had entered into resurrection-life. Their
lives were filled with holy, self-forgetful activities. Like their Master they
were anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power, and they went about doing
good, and healing all that were oppressed with the devil, for God was with them
(Acts 10:38). This risen life is not the imitation of a splendid model but the
indwelling of a living Person. The Christlife is only the outward development of
the Christ nature; the life manifesting itself after its kind. Personal and
abiding union with Him makes it as easy for the believer to do Christlike works
as for the branch to bear the luscious fruit when it is in unhindered fellowship
with the vine. “He that abideth in Me, andI in him, the same beareth much fruit:
for apart from Me ye can do nothing” John 15:5). “Verily, verily, I say unto
you, He that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater
works than these shall he do; because I go unto the Father” (John 14:12). This
risen life is characterized by newness. In everything which is really of God
there is a singular freshness and novelty. We are raised with Jesus that we may
walk henceforth in “newness of life,” and “if any man is in Christ, he is a new
creation: old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2
Corinthians 5:17). God is not the God of the dead, but of the living, and this
newness of life is the crowning joy of union with the risen Jesus. We blunder
when we make the mystic grave the goal; for we are the children of the
resurrection, and the goal is life so unspeakably energizing, fresh, free, and
joyous, as that words fail to describe its blessedness. This new life is so
heavenly in its character, that it makes its possessor responsive to everything
with which it has affinity, both in heaven and earth. Who can enjoy the sounds
and sights of this fair world — which are but “the drapery of the robe in which
the Invisible has clothed Himself” — like the man who is living in the perpetual
enjoyment of God’s fresh life? Having been brought into perfect harmony with
God, he appreciates everything in its true and divine relation — all in God, and
God in all. He sings as only a child of the resurrection can sing:—

“Heaven above is softer blue, Earth around is sweeter green, Something lives in
every hue, Christless eyes have never seen Birds with gladder songs o’erflow,
Flowers with deeper beauties shine, Since I know as now I know, I am His, and He
is mine.” The risen life is once more a hidden life. “Ye are dead, and your life
is hid with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). “He that is joined unto the Lord is
one spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:17). “ I am not ashamed to say that I believe there
Is an experience of union with the Lord which is rightly characterized as
pantheistic, in which God has met all the needs of the soul, and has becomes the
indwelling power of the human spirit; that the man who is thus united to God
moves as God moves, and acts as the Lord wills him to act in the body and in the
circumstances in which he is placed. Christ can be all in all in the nineteenth
century as well as in the first, and we do not need to think Him less than He
wishes to be to those who trust in Him.” [J. Rendel Harris, Union With God, p.
142]

It was from this fact that the early disciples derived much of their strength
and courage. Thus Paul wrote: “Knowing that He which raised up the Lord Jesus
shall raise up us also with Jesus, and shall present us with you: for which
cause we faint not: for though our outward man is decaying, yet our inward man
is renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:14; 2 Corinthians 4:16). The calm of
God’s presence had settled down upon the man who wrote these words, and in
nothing was he terrified by his adversaries; living his life “within the veil,”
he knew that in the very perfection of opposition (see Romans 8:35; Romans 8:37)
he would be more than conqueror through Him who loved him. The adversaries might
rage, the storms might beat, the kings of the earth might set them. selves
against the Lord’s anointed ones, but though the circumference was a whirl the
center was at rest, and the secret was a life hidden with Christ, where no sharp
arrow from the enemy’s bow could penetrate, and where there was consequent
“quietness and confidence for ever” (Isaiah 32:17). In one of the Perthshire
valleys there is a tree which sprang up on the rocky side of a little brook,
where there was no kindly soil in which it could spread its roots, or by which
it could be nourished. For a long time it was stunted and unhealthy, but at
length, by what may be called a wonderful vegetable instinct, it sent a fiber out
across a narrow sheep-bridge which was close beside it. Then fixing itself in the
rich loam on the opposite bank of the streamlet, it began to draw sap and
sustenance, and speedily became vigorous. What that tiny bridge was to the tree,
the resurrection of Jesus is to the believer. If the roots of our life are in
our Risen Lord, we shall not be stunted and unhealthy, as they must ever be who
seek to find nourishment for their spiritual life in the unkindly soil of the
world. “Thus saith the Lord, Cursed is the man that trusteth in man, and maketh
flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord: for he shall be like the
heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh; but shall inhabit
parched places in the wilderness, a salt land and not inhabited. Blessed is the
man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose trust the Lord is: for he shall be as a
tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and
shall not fear when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be
careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit”
(Jeremiah 17:5-8).

Tauler beautifully says: “As a lodestone draws the iron after itself, so doth
Christ draw all hearts after Himself which have once been touched by Him; and as
when the iron is impregnated with the energy of the lodestone that has touched
it, it follows the stone uphill although that is contrary to its nature, and
cannot rest in its own proper place, but strives to rise above itself on high;
so all the souls which have been touched by this lodestone, Christ, can neither
be chained down by joy nor grief, but are ever rising up to God, out of
themselves. They forget their own nature, and follow after the touch of God, and
follow it the more easily and directly the more they are touched by God’s
finger.”

True resurrection life is an unchanging life. The Aaronic priesthood was marked,
as the writer to the Hebrews tells us, by intermittency and change. “They indeed
have been made priests many in number, because that by death they are hindered
from continuing: but He, because He abideth for ever, hath His priesthood
unchangeable. Wherefore also He is able to save completely them that draw near
unto God through Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them”
(Hebrews 7:23; Hebrews 7:25). The whole system was marked by change, weakness,
and death. It could not affect anything that was abiding and permanent, much
less that was eternal. And the inner life of the worshipper corresponded to the
system; it was marked by fluctuation and decay. There was excuse for an
intermittent spiritual life then, there is none now, because our Priest “ever
liveth.” The life He lives is one of irresistible strength and energy, and is
indissoluble and indestructible in its character. It is a life that withstands
victoriously the wear of time, the convulsions wrought by the progress of
knowledge, and the severest assaults of hostile criticism. Just as the life in
the power of which He ministers is unchangeable, so the life He ministers to all
who are in perfect union with Him is a life that is unchangeable too. And
because there is never a moment when His priestly action, His watchful care, His
loving sympathy and succor, His working in us the power of an endless life are
not in full operation, we may abide for ever in the life-currents which flow from
the throne of our Risen Lord through the power of the Holy Ghost, who is sent
forth from the Father to be the bearer of this unchanging and abundant life to
every soul that wills to receive it.

There comes to us, if we will but appropriate it, moment by moment, through the
indwelling of Christ’s other Self, heavenly life, heavenly peace, heavenly joy,
heavenly victory:

“All the life of heaven above, All the life of glorious love; for “the kingdom
of God is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.” The intermittency
which may have marked and marred our lives in the past, need therefore be our
experience no more, and will be no more ours while “we walk in the light as He
is in the light,” and practically recognize the truth, “All my fresh springs are
in Thee.”

It follows from all that has been said that this risen life is characterized,
lastly, by complete and constant victory. “Christ being raised from the dead,
dieth no more; death no more hath dominion over Him” (Romans 6:9). The death of
Christ meant the conquest of the world, the flesh, and the devil. “He was
crucified through weakness, yet He liveth through the power of God. For we also
are weak in Him, but we shall live with Him through the power of God toward you”
(2 Corinthians 13:4). Christ’s human body came at last to an end of all its
capacities and resources, and He died of mortal weakness. We see Him bearing the
burden of the world’s sin, despised and rejected, a Man of sorrows and
acquainted with grief, wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our
iniquities; surrounded by taunting foes, scourged, buffeted, spit upon, bound
upon the Cross of shame, then dying of a broken heart. “He was crucified through
weakness, but He liveth through the power of God.” When Paul wants a concrete
illustration of this power, he turns to the tomb of Jesus, and tells us that the
flood-tide of resurrection power which invaded that lifeless form, that
irresistible vital force which swept through that cold clay and renovated it
until it was instinct with resurrection-life and beauty in every part, is the
power which is to usward who believe (Ephesians 1:19-20). And when, like that
worn and exhausted body, our native powers are brought by the withering breath
of the Holy Spirit to utter collapse, we are in the place where we may begin to
live by the power of God; where He Who lifted Jesus out of the grave, out of the
earth, into heaven, and then to the throne of God in heaven, will raise us up
also with Him. The power that effected the one miracle is quite equal to the
accomplishment of the other (Colossians 2:12). The victory of the head carries
with it the victory of the body. By virtue of our union with Christ we are
placed under the influence of an ascending power by which we are drawn higher and
higher. Just as when a man, lying upon the ground, gets up and stands upright,
his upright posture draws up with it all his limbs, so in the mystical body of
Jesus Christ, the risen Head, necessarily draws up all the mystical members. The
subordination also of every force, whether hostile or friendly, carries also
with it present victory and exaltation for every member of the true Church,
“which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all” (Ephesians
1:19-23).


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 17: 15. CHAPTER 15- MARRIED TO ANOTHER
========================================================================

Chapter 15- Married to Another Child of the eternal Father, Bride of the Eternal
Son, Dwelling-place of God the Spirit Thus with Christ made ever one;

Dowered with joy beyond the angels Nearest to His throne, They, the ministers
attending His Beloved One;

Granted all my heart’s desire;

All things made my own;

Feared by all the powers of evil, Fearing God alone;

Walking with the Lord in glory Through the courts Divine, Queen within the royal
palace, Christ for ever mine;

Say, poor worldling, can it be, That my heart should envy thee?

— Gerhardt Tersteegen

“Wherefore, my brethren, ye also were made dead to the law through by the body
of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to Him who was raised from
the dead, that we might bring forth fruit unto God” (Romans 7:4). Such is the
language in which the apostle sets forth the blessedness of the risen life. In
this seventh chapter he shows us what it is to be married to the law, set forth
in the figurative capacity of a husband. The husband is holy and spiritual,
righteous and good (verses 12-14), and demands perfect love to God and perfect
love to man. This love is wanting owing to the wife’s inability, her love being
centered in self, and not in God. The husband is displeased, and threatens death
if she does not obey. While the wife fully recognizes the reasonableness both of
the requisition and the threatening, she finds herself unable — though she
promises obedience again and again — to fulfill the requirements of her husband,
the law.

If she only had the strength, and could render him the loving obedience he
demands, her life might be one of unsullied happiness, for, as it has been said:
“the law may be a very good husband for an unfallen angel, but it is a very
unsatisfactory one for a fallen being, who is ‘without strength,’ and in whom
there ‘dwelleth no good thing.’ Law presupposes strength, and indicates and
rewards its right use: but ‘power into strengthless souls’ it cannot speak.”
When this first husband is once offended he will never again be reconciled.
Should the wife expostulate, “But I wish to do your will”; he replies, “Speak
not of wishes, but do it.” But, says the wife, “I have done it in almost every
particular”; he only answers, “Whoso shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in
one point, is guilty of all.” “May I not be forgiven?” asks the distressed wife;
he answers, “There is no forgiveness in my nature”; “the soul that sinneth shall
die”; “cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things that are written in
My book to do them.”

After vainly endeavoring to render the requisite obedience, and constantly
crying out: “To will is present with me, but to do that which is good is not,”
the wife at last gives up in despair, and the penalty of her disobedience is
about to be exacted when Christ appears. He reveres, honors, and loves the
husband, and entirely approves of his requirements and the course he has taken.
But while He condemns the wife, He pities her, and with deep benevolence loves
her. He can do nothing to lower the sanctions of her husband’s requirements; he
must not only not be dishonored, but he must be magnified and made honorable.
Christ pities the wife so much as to be willing to die for her; so, by the body
of Christ, we become dead to the law. The holy and dishonored law had only one
thing to give the unfaithful wife — its curse; and “Christ has redeemed us from
the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.” The curse of sin is
abandonment by God, and on the Cross that curse, with all its unspeakable
accompaniments, fell on the spotless soul of Jesus. Abhorred of men, forsaken of
God, earth all hate, heaven all blackness, the curse that we had merited claimed
Him as its victim, and by taking our place He has bought us for ever out of its
power.

We have read of certain venomous animals which expire the moment they have
deposited their sting and its mortal poison in the body of their victim. Thus
there ensues a double death — that of the sufferer as well as the assailant.
Under the law’s awful curse, Jesus poured out His soul unto death; but at the
same moment the law expended all its power as a judge and avenger over those who
identify themselves with Christ. The hand-writing of ordinances that was against
us and contrary to us has become powerless since it was nailed to His Cross. It
became from that moment the receipt of a discharged obligation. All the right
and strength of condemnation which belonged to it were put forth on that Cross.
Payment to the uttermost farthing was demanded, and payment to the uttermost far
thing was made. The law has no more power over a dead subject than the husband
has over a dead wife. The death of either- contracting party frees both from
their obligations, and the moment we reckon ourselves to have died in Christ,
that moment we pass from under the curse, and can sing: “There is now therefore
no condemnation to me, for I am in Christ Jesus.”

Freed from her union with the law in the death of her Deliverer, the wife is now
free to marry again. Her Deliverer has risen from the dead, and on proposing
marriage to her for whom He died, her heart is won, her selfishness is conquered,
and with her whole soul she enters into a love relationship. She needs no stern
and terrible legal sanctions to keep her from revolting from her husband’s will;
such is the union between her spirit and His, that love is law, and law is only
love. Her second Husband’s requirements are fuller than the first, for He came
into the world to fulfill the law, and He died and rose again, that married to
Him we might fulfill it too; “that the requirements (see R.V.) of the law might
be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but the Spirit” (Romans 8:4).
The wife was too weak to obey her first husband, and he was too weak to render
her any assistance; but now the Conqueror of sin, death, and hell is the
Bridegroom of her soul. The law has become incarnate in Him who has won her
heart, and “His commandments are not grievous.” Hence the bitter wail of
inability and defeat of the seventh chapter — “To will is present, to do is not!
O wretched one that I am, who shall deliver me?” — gives place to the triumphant
paean of the eighth chapter: “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has
made me free from the law of sin and death!” “I am more than conqueror through
Him that loveth me!” “If He is for me, who can be against me? The seventh
chapter of Romans is largely the complaint of one married to the law, seeking by
struggle and effort to obey his behests. The eighth chapter is the language of
the soul’s triumph when “married to another, even to Him who was raised from the
dead.” In union with Him there is no more condemnation, 5: 1; no more
enslavement, 5: 2; no more unrest, 5: 6; no more death, 5: 10; no more
loneliness, V. 10; no more inability, V. 11; no more fear, vv. 14, 15; no more
doubt, V. 16; no more poverty, 5: 17; no more anxiety, 5: 28; no more defeat, 5:
37; no more separation, 5: 38.

Let us further see what this marriage union with Jesus involves. An earthly
relationship, with which we are familiar, and with the conditions of which we
are well acquainted, is used to shadow this wonderful heavenly relationship.
When writing of it in his letter to the Ephesians, Paul said: “This is a great
mystery” (Ephesians 5:32). This, however, is clear, God has purposes of love
towards us which may well overwhelm us as we contemplate them. No such dignity
is proposed for any other created being, and we are driven to the conclusion
that human character, formed in full union with Jesus Christ, and by the
unhindered operation of the Holy Spirit, may be, even here and now, a grander
thing than can be found elsewhere in the universe. Our present position, as the
betrothed of Jesus, is unique; our destiny as His bride is unique; and it is no
matter for wonderment if the conditions of trial and training to which we are
here subjected, to fit us for a position of such elevation and distinction, are
also unique. By this marriage of the soul to Jesus we become partakers of the
Divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). “We are members of His body; being of His flesh, and
of His bones” (Ephesians 5:30). As the woman owed her natural being to the man,
her source and head, so we owe our entire spiritual being to Christ, our source
and head: and as the woman was one flesh with the man in this natural relation,
so we, in our entire spiritual relation, spirit, soul, and body, are one with
Christ. “For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall be joined
unto his wife and the two shall be one flesh. Christ is here the man in the
apostle’s view, the Church is the woman. The saying applies to that past,
present, and future which constitutes Christ’s union with His bride, the Church.
His leaving the Father’s bosom, which is past; His gradual preparation for the
union, which is present; His full consummation of it, which is future. We are as
truly now one flesh with Him, as we shall be when heaven and earth shall ring
with the joy of the nuptials.” Shall we be surprised if, with such a purpose,
our heavenly Bridegroom should be jealous of the least complication of our
lives, of the least diversion of our affections in any other direction!
“Partakers of the Divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the
world in lust.” This corruption we must escape in union with Jesus in His death;
for it is not in the elements which surround us, but in our own hearts; because
there reign those vicious and wicked affections, whose source and root is
denoted by the word lust. The world in which the corruption is, is in ourselves.
It is in proportion as we escape this, and enter into the wondrous purpose of
God, that we shall see how reasonable it is that He should have us all to
Himself; and how He could not, with such a love, rest satisfied in anything short
of this. This perfect union of nature with our Lord is, as Tauler says, “the
dearest and most desired thing that God will have from man: then man will be
always so disposed that God can work in him at all times without hindering, and
therefore He also saith, ‘My delight is with the children of men.’ “

Someone has called attention to the three stages of love. At first the ruling
thought of the soul is “My Beloved is mine, and I am His” (Song of Solomon
2:16). At this stage we think chiefly of Christ as ours, and so in some way for
our pleasure. Then we come to “I am my Beloved’s and my Beloved is mine” (6: 3).
His ownership and possession take the first place in our thoughts. At last we
come to “I am my Beloved’s, and His desire is towards me” (7: 10), where the
word “mine” is altogether dropped, in the perfect assurance of love that to be
His indeed, involves all. The marriage of the soul to Jesus carries with it the
power to render obedience. The wife of the second husband is just as much under
obligation as she was in her former marriage. Nay, the obligation is far
greater. Take one illustration only: the first husband said, “Thou shalt love the
Lord thy God with all thy heart;” but the second says, “This is my commandment,
that ye love one another, as I have loved you,” thus supplying her with a new
model for her love. What was previously an impossible task, becomes now a
delightful privilege, for the very purpose of this union is contained in the
Saviour’s prayer: “That the love wherewith Thou hast loved me, may be in them,
and I in them.” “He is in His people that He may draw down to them the love of
the Father, which flowed toward Him when He was separately present in this world;
and He is in them, that He may perennially exhibit to His people the love He
bears them. The vocation of every believer is this: to be a revelator of the
love of Christ. The believer is an epistle of Christ — an epistle of His love.”
So that what was impossible by a constraining principle from without, is
delightfully possible by an impelling power from within. The second Husband
therefore supplies a new motive as well as a new model, and to every call, His
beloved may make answer: “The love of Christ constraineth me.” She serves now
not in the oldness of the letter which is Sinai, but in the newness of the
Spirit, which is Pentecost.

Marriage to Jesus means also perpetual fruitfulness. We are “married to Him who
was raised from the dead, that we might bring forth fruit unto God.” In a
familiar chapter in St. John’s Gospel, the fruit of union to Christ is similarly
set forth, only the figure there is a vegetable, as here a conjugal one.

“Fruit unto death,” as verse 5 tells us, is the outcome of living in the flesh;
just as “fruit unto God “ is the outcome of union with Jesus. “Fruit” is the
spontaneous natural manifestation of the life within. The great question is, Are
we in right relations to Jesus? Is our union with Him so complete, that every
pore and artery of our being is open to receive the perpetual inflow of His life?
If so, we need have no anxiety about fruit. If we take care of what we are, what
we do will take care of itself.

Flowers that are bent on perfecting themselves by becoming double, end in
barrenness. This mysterious union of our nature with Jesus, means marvelous
development; but it means also reproduction, for the latter, and not the former,
is the goal of matured beings. Just as a vine that expends its whole energy on
producing wood and leaves misses its purpose, so the soul that surrenders to
God, that receives and develops, but stops short at giving itself away to man in
a life of sacrifice, frustrates the very purpose of the union which God has made
possible to such sour-grape bearers as we must ever be, apart from vital union
with Him who is the Sweet Vine. True union will, by a great spiritual law, be
followed by abundant fruitfulness.

Marriage to Jesus will be followed by likeness. Just as in true wedded life, the
husband and wife become assimilated to each other in affinities, choices, mental
peculiarities, and even in physiognomy, so, by being “a partaker of Christ,” we
become of necessity Christ-like. “When God set forth His only begotten Son as
the only possible way of access to Himself, it meant that He can have delight
in, or have fellowship with, nothing in which the likeness of His Son is not to
be seen. We can have no further entrance into God’s favor or good pleasure than
He can see Christ in us.” “But we all, with unveiled face mirroring the glory of
the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the
Lord the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18). The apostle’s thought seems to be, not
the reflection and radiation of the light and beauty of Christ, but the receiving
and taking into ourselves that which is presented to our vision. Just as the
mirror seems to hold the face that looks into it, so we, opening our nature, to
Jesus, begin to mirror Him therein, for with His likeness He comes in the person
of His transfiguring Spirit to dwell and work in us, until the same likeness as
that which He bears is wrought out and perfected in us; the glory and loveliness
in Him become glory and loveliness in us, and from the center to the very
circumference of our being we are transfigured. In this marriage the wealth of
the Husband is of course placed at the disposal of the wife. Many will remember
the story of the Lord of Burleigh which Tennyson has immortalized. Under the
guise of a landscape painter he won the heart of a simple village maiden.
Imagining they were going to the cottage of which he had spoken, in which they
were to spend their happy wedded life, they pass one beautiful dwelling after
another, until “ … a gateway she discerns With armorial bearings stately, And
beneath the gate she turns;

Sees a mansion more majestic Than all those she saw before:

Many a gallant gay domestic Bows before him at the door. And they speak in
gentle murmur, When they answer to his call, While he treads with footstep
firmer, Leading on from hall to hall. And while now she wonders blindly, Nor the
meaning can divine, Proudly turns he round and kindly, ‘All of this is mine and
thine.’ “ So by this union of hearts and lives, the simple village girl had
become the Lady of Burleigh, and all her husband’s wealth was hers. Who shall
tell of the wealth which they inherit who are truly united to Jesus! St. Paul
speaks in his Ephesian letter of the exceeding riches of His grace (Ephesians
2:7). Then he speaks of the unsearchable riches of Christ (3: 8). The word
translated exceeding” literally means “to shoot beyond the mark”; St. Paul
means, that though we use the utmost wealth of language, we cannot shoot beyond
the mark: the riches of which he is thinking exceed all power of language to
express. In the other passage, the word “unsearchable” literally means riches
that can never be explored. We can not only not calculate them, but we can never
get to the end of our investigation. When we have carried our search to the
limits of possibility, there is still a vast continent of riches lying
unexplored before us. And as our heavenly Bridegroom leads us on, He will ever
be bringing home to us some new discovery of our wealth in him, and at each new
revealing He will say: “All of this is Mine and thine.”

It follows that the protection of the husband is the marriage portion of the
wife. Bride of Jesus, let no danger ever affright thee! “No weapon that is
formed against thee can prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee
in judgment thou shalt condemn” (Isaiah 54:17). Jesus, thy Husband, is invested
with absolute authority over this world. All the forces of nature are in His
hands. All the powers of what we call natural laws are under His control. All
the forces of evil are under His feet. He holds the scepter in His hands, and He
controls, governs, and manages, with absolute power, everything that pertains to
the history of our race, and to the interests of those whom He has redeemed with
His precious blood. He speaks of three gifts in His High-priestly prayer: “As
Thou hast given Him power over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as
many as Thou hast given Him “(John 17:2). By the first He is invested with the
government of the world; by the second, we who trust in Him for salvation are
given to Him; by the third, He communicates to all such eternal life. And it is
in order that the last gift may be communicated that Christ is clothed with
universal power. That He may bring His little flock through unnumbered perils
into the home of many mansions the Father has given Him all power in heaven and
in earth.


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  CHAPTER 18: 16. CHAPTER 16- NOT I, BUT CHRIST
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Chapter 16- Not I, But Christ Not I, but Christ, be honored, loved, exalted, Not
I, but Christ, be seen, be known, be heard, Not I, but Christ, in every look and
action, Not I, but Christ, in every thought and word. Not I, but Christ, to
gently soothe in sorrow, Not I, but Christ, to wipe the falling tear, Not I, but
Christ, to lift the weary burden, Not I, but Christ, to hush away all fear. Not
I, but Christ, no idle word e’er falling, Christ, only Christ, no needless
bustling sound, Christ, only Christ, no self-important bearing, Christ, only
Christ, no trace of “I” be found. Not I, but Christ, my every need supplying,
Not I, but Christ, my strength and health to be;

Christ, only Christ, for body, soul, and spirit, Christ, only Christ, live then
Thy life in me.

Christ, only Christ, ere long will fill my vision;

Glory excelling soon, full soon I’ll see Christ, only Christ, my every wish
fulfilling —

Christ, only Christ, my all in all to be.

— A. B. Simpson

Augustine was one day after his conversion seen in the street by a woman with
whom he had associated in his life of sin, and as he saw her he started to run.
She ran after him, and cried: “Augustine, why do you run, it is I!” And
Augustine replied: “I run because I am not I.” The goal to which the Holy Spirit
leads every new-born soul, is that which is so strikingly expressed by St. Paul
in the familiar words which are at the head of this chapter: “Not I, but
Christ.” The human “I” is not perfected by any such progress as we have sought
to describe, and as some have so strangely concluded; it is delivered over to
death with Christ, and by faith in the operation of the Holy Spirit is ever kept
in the place of death, while Christ takes the place of the I, and reigns
supremely on the throne of the being, the entire government of which is on His
shoulders.

There is no more important question among the many which gather round this
subject, than this: How is it possible so to live that those around us will
always see “Not I, but Christ.” We believe the answer is largely found in what
St. Paul calls the “putting on” of Christ.

Just as among weeds, some that are painted with alluring colors are only weeds
still, so among the fruits of the natural life are some that carry a more
specious appearance than others, but they are nevertheless the growth of the
carnal mind. Augustine spoke strongly, but none too strongly, when he said: “Our
very virtues are but splendid sins.” “The affections, beautiful as they are in
the place they occupy in the mental structure, and important and interesting as
they are in their outward office, have felt, like every other part of our mental
being, the effects of our depraved and fallen condition. They sometimes fall
below their appropriate strength; but more frequently err, either in being
wrongly directed, or in being inordinately strong. It is evident, from a slight
inspection of what human nature everywhere presents to our notice, that they
require a constant regulation; in other words, they need to be sanctified.” When
Ignatius exclaimed: “My love is crucified!” he meant that his natural, earthly
affection — with all the passions appertaining to it — hung on the Cross, and
that he had claimed, and received in its stead, a heavenly and immortal love.
Why is there such a lack of love among Christians? Why is the badge of true
discipleship so seldom seen? Is it not because God’s children have not learned
to put off the old love, that is so limited in its power of expression, and so
easily provoked, and to put on the love of Jesus “which is not provoked, which
thinketh no evil, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things,
endureth all things, which never faileth?

“Whoso dieth to all likeness of nature,” says Tauler, “his flow or efflux is
Divine love, and his influx or ebb is also Divine love. It happens thus that men
not dead to themselves often love by nature, weaning it is by grace, and when
they are blamed for this, they are troubled and wax wroth; by this they should
know that their love is natural. For right Divine love is at all times patient,
and suffereth all things; it letteth itself quite well be hated, but it hateth
no one, and construeth all things for the best; but men not dead to themselves
are always agitated in contradiction, and distracted from their peace.” The
putting off of our sin-tainted and defective human love, and the appropriation
of the love of God in Jesus Christ, will save us from what has been called
inordinate partialities; in other words, those particular attachments to certain
persons which generally exist without adequate reason, and which are apt to be
attended with corresponding dislikes to other persons. When we do make a
difference in our confidence and affection, it will be for reasons and on grounds
which God can approve. The secret of possessing an unfailing love is to claim
the fulfillment, moment by moment, of Christ’s own desire, “That the love
wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them, and I in them” (John 17:26). The
indwelling of Jesus, and the indwelling of Divine Love, are conceived of here as
one and the same thing, and they truly are inseparable The conditions on which
this love may become ours are clearly revealed. They are separation from the
world: “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world” (5:16);
obedience to the Word: “The words which Thou gavest Me I have given unto them,
and they received them” (5:8); and unity with the children of God: “That they
may be one” (5:22).

What has been said about natural and Divine love applies also to human and
Divine patience. How much of perturbation is introduced into a man’s own life,
and into the lives of all those who immediately surround him, if he knows
nothing of the art of appropriating the patience of Jesus. If a meal is a few
minutes late, or a cabman is unavoidably hindered either in keeping or carrying
out an engagement; if a sermon is a little longer than usual, or one whose
salvation is sought is unusually intractable and perverse, the human patience is
very quickly strained to the breaking point. This is ever to the loss and hurt
of not one but many individuals; for, as we have suggested, the impatient spirit
never suffers alone. Is not this manifestation of impatience the revelation of a
spirit that still largely revolves round the human I? Unquestionably it is, and
there is but one remedy, the persistent claiming of death to self, and the daily
putting on of the lamb-like patience of Jesus Christ. Living perpetually in the
center of God’s will, nothing can put our patience to the test but by His
ordering or permission, and when the train is late or the letter miscarries, we
have opportunity to prove whether our patience is creaturely or Divine, whether
it belongs to the old man or the new. “Not without design does God write the
music of our lives. Be it ours to learn the time, and not be discouraged at the
rests. If we say sadly to ourselves, ‘There is no music in a rest,’ let us not
forget there is the making of music in it. The making of music is often a slow
and painful process. in this life. How patiently God works to teach us! How long
He waits for us to learn the lesson.” [John Ruskin]

Human kindliness and generosity is frequently at fault. Good is often attempted
from the mere impulse of nature. Sometimes far too much money, for example, is
given to one object, and sometimes far too little; or nothing whatever is given
to one whose necessities are crying for urgent relief, for no other reason, it
may be, than that our kindness has been imposed upon. Unsanctified generosity
will often thus fail of its object, doing harm rather than good. We may do the
right thing at the right time, if in this matter also we put on the wisdom and
generosity of Jesus Christ. God holds the remedy of the evils which exist in the
world in His own hands. He employs His people as instruments in applying this
remedy. But the application is never made beneficially, either to the subject or
the agent, except when it is made under God’s own superintendence, and in His
own time and manner. This “putting on” process is frequently referred to in both
the Old and New Testaments (see Isaiah 59:16-17; Isaiah 61:10; Psalms 132:16;
Zechariah 3:1-5; Luke 15:22; Romans 13:14; Ephesians 4:22-24; Colossians 3:8-14
: Revelation 19:8). It is evident from a reference to these passages, that
death-fellowship with Christ is equivalent to putting off the old man, and
life-fellowship with Him equivalent to putting on the new man. The word “habit”
which originally meant clothing, now signifies the garniture of the soul. The
conscience, the affections, the will, the thoughts, are the looms in the soul,
and by their incessant activity are weaving out a subtle fabric of moral
qualities which clothes the soul with conduct appropriate to itself.

We cannot put on the new over the old, as some have strangely taught. The old
man waxeth corrupt according to the lusts of deceit, and if we do not put him
off he will wrap his poisonous vesture about us — which, according to its inmost
nature, will wax more and more corrupt — until we have reached that fixity of
character which is described as filthiness (Revelation 22:11). The new man, on
the contrary, is, by a continuous process, “being renewed unto knowledge after
the image of Him that created him” (Colossians 3:9, R.V.). And this
transformation into His wondrous likeness is the end of all our putting off and
putting on.

We cannot be too frequently reminded that it is only by “putting on” Christ that
we “put off” self. Our moral nature abhors the vacuum that would be created by
an old affection taking its departure from the innermost chambers of our being,
without any new affection to succeed it. The old monarch — the imperious I —
will retain his position until the new monarch — Incarnate Love — is invited to
supplant the tyrant, restore tranquillity, and enthrone Himself in our nature.
The ruling monarch will not abdicate at a mandate from the chair of reason;
nothing can displace him but the all-victorious rivalship of Jesus, whose love
is the divinely appointed prescription for the exorcism of self. “He died for
all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto
Him Who died for them and rose again.” “I saw,” said George Fox, “a sea of
light, and a sea of ink; and the sea of light flowed into the sea of ink, and
swept it away for ever.”

“Love took up the Harp of Life, And played on all its chords with might —

Touched the chord of Self, Which passed in music out of sight.”

We cannot close this chapter more appropriately than by quoting the words of
that robust thinker and manly Christian, the lamented Dr. R. W. Dale. “We must
‘put away’ our old self. It is not in a single limb or a single organ that we
are affected; the very springs of life are foul; corruption has already set in.
The whole structure of our former moral character and habits must be demolished
and the ruins cleared away, that the building may be recommenced from its very
foundation. We are to ‘put on’ Christ. We are to make our own every separate
element of His righteousness and holiness. We are to make His humility ours, and
His courage, His gentleness, and His invincible integrity; His abhorrence of
sin, and His mercy for the penitent; His delight in the righteousness of others,
and His patience for their infirmities; the quiet submission with which He
endured His own sufferings, and His compassion for the sufferings of others; His
indifference to ease and wealth and honor, and His passion for the salvation of
men from all their sins and all their sorrows. We are to make His perfect faith
in the Father ours, and His perfect loyalty to the Father’s authority; His
delight in doing the Father’s will; His zeal for the Father’s glory. The
perfection at which we have to aim is not a mere dream of the imagination, but
the perfection which human nature has actually reached in Christ. Christ’s human
perfection was really human, but it was the translation into a human character
and history of the life of God. He is living still. The fountains of my life are
in Him. It is the eternal purpose of the Father, that as the branch receives and
reveals the life which is in the vine, I should receive and reveal the life
which is in Christ. When, therefore, I attempt to ‘put on’ Christ, or to make my
own the perfect humanity which God created in Him, I am not attempting to
imitate a perfection which in spirit and form may be alien from my own moral
temperament and character, and which may be altogether beyond my strength; I am
but developing a life and energy which God has already given to me. If I am in
Christ, the spiritual forces which were illustrated in the righteousness and
holiness of Christ’s life are already active in my own life.

“But these forces are not mere instincts which act blindly and unintelligently;
they require the control and direction of the reason, illuminated by the Spirit
of God. They do not render moral effort unnecessary; they make moral effort in
its most energetic form possible, and they achieve their triumph by sustaining a
vigorous and unceasing endeavor after moral and spiritual perfection. Christ is
the prophecy of our righteousness as well as the Sacrifice for our sins.
[Lectures on Ephesians, p. 319] “Above the chant of priests;

Above the blatant tongues of braying doubt, We hear the still, small voice of
love, Which sends its simple message out; And dearer, sweeter, day by day, Its
mandate echoes from the skies:

‘Go roll the stone of Self away, And let the Christ in you arise.”’


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  CHAPTER 19: 17. CHAPTER 17 - RECKONING AT THE CROSS
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Chapter 17 - Reckoning at the Cross

“In America, when people are uncertain about anything, they say ‘I guess,’ but
when they know a thing to be accurate, they say ‘I reckon.’ It shows there is an
element of intelligence about it. There are some of us who are very bad at
reckoning; but all may reckon thus. One of the simplest things in the world is
this, ‘Twice one are two.’ There is eternal truth underneath this. All the
mathematicians in the world cannot make 2 + 2 = 5. Therefore, there is eternal
unchangeableness and reliable truth at the basis of this simple reckoning. I
make out three things in the process: First, fix your mind upon this figure, this
symbol of a number, 2. Secondly, in its relation to that other figure 2, 2 and 2.
What is the third absolute certainty? Something that once seen, you never can
unseen. 2 and 2 make 4. “Likewise reckon ye yourself to be dead indeed unto sin,
but alive unto God, through our Lord Jesus Christ.” The reckoning has to do with
my need here, and with that great full salvation there. Now, let us see. I put
down this first of all. ‘God has power to cleanse my soul from all, and sin make
me live to Himself.’ Is that a positive thing? That I might put down as number
2. Very well, God has in the redemption of the Lord Jesus Christ made an ample,
adequate provision for the cleansing of my soul. That also is 2. The next thing
is this. God has promised in his Word, in unequivocal English, that He will
cleanse my soul from all sin, and make me thoroughly alive to Him. That is the
third figure. What is the fourth? God who has this power, God who has provided
this salvation, God who has given this promise is faithful, He is ‘God that
cannot lie.’ Now, I come up to these figures and I say, here is my amazing need,
my unutterable depth of need for cleansing and fullness of love. Here is the
power of God through the redemption of Jesus Christ. Here is God’s promise, and
here, covering all, the absolute faithfulness of God. Twice 1 are 2, twice 2 are
4. Lord, I believe.” — Isaac E. Page When the suspension bridge across the
Niagara was to be erected, the question how to get the cable over was solved by
a favoring wind. A kite was elevated, which alighted on the other shore. To its
insignificant strand a cord was attached which was drawn over, then a rope, and
finally a cable, strong enough to sustain the iron cable which supported the
bridge, over which heavily-laden vehicles pass to and fro in perfect safety.
Standing within sight of the Cross, and beginning to comprehend what the
Sin-bearer’s death means to us, we begin a reckoning, which, as Professor Beet
says, “may seem at first akin to madness,” but which is so wonderfully honored on
God’s side, that what at first was like that tiny strand, increases and
strengthens by the law of habit, until it becomes an unshakable medium of
intercourse between ourselves and God.

Let us notice some of the laws which govern the exercise of this vital principle
which we call faith.

We are so constituted, that it is not possible for us to put forth a volition to
do anything which at the same time we believe it impossible to do. Our volition
will be weakened or strengthened, moreover, in proportion as our belief in the
practicability or impracticability of what is proposed is strong or weak. A
strong faith will make a strong will, and a weak faith a weak will. If we
question for a moment the obtainability of such a life as we have been thinking
about, we immediately cut the strands of that bridge across which we may
communicate with God, and be the recipients of His choicest communications to
us. It was because men believed in the practicability of the Niagara bridge that
it was accomplished. The faith that overcame the barriers to its erection was
natural; the faith we are called upon to exercise is religious, because it is
directed to religious objects; and if natural faith is. mighty, faith that
fastens itself upon God is almighty. Religious faith takes hold of the infinite
God, and every element of His nature is pledged in the behalf of the man or
woman who says, “I believe God.” That definition of faith so frequently heard, as
“taking God at His Word,” may mean nothing more than taking the Word as God’s. A
key is only of value as we use it for the lock and door we want to open; and the
Word is the key which introduces us to direct and living contact with God
Himself. It is in this fellowship with God that we hear His voice speaking the
promise, and when we have heard God speak, it is easy to believe His Word.

Unbelief has always a moral cause, and this entrance into God’s presence so as
to hear and believe His voice, is only possible when we have put away from our
lives everything, whether sinful or doubtful, that is out of harmony with His
will. The three great lines of self-surrender are — to be anything the Lord
wants us to be; to do anything He wants us to do; to suffer anything He wants us
to suffer. These embrace the subjective, the active, and the passive forms of
our existence, and every point in each line must be yielded, however severe the
struggle may be. The crucial point with many is the surrender of the will. This
is the backbone of our being, the arbiter of the soul, the grand marshal of the
faculties, and, until fully yielded to God, is strong when it ought to be weak,
and weak when it ought to be strong. But our will must be surrendered, and God’s
will must be accepted, that “good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” It
has been put thus. Here is a circle [Circle Not In This ASCII Text] which
represents His will. I voluntarily place myself in the center of it, and resolve
to be what God wills, to do what God wills, to suffer what God wills. I renounce
my own plans and preferences and programs and accept His. Whatever comes to me,
comes to me through His will, so long as by an obedient walk and an unfaltering
faith I maintain the position I have taken. Should an unkind letter reach me, it
reaches me through His will; should the angel of death darken my home, he visits
me because God wills. I am in my Father’s school. He has many lessons to teach
me, and they are not half as hard to learn when I recognize His loving voice,
and know that in weal and woe, in prosperity and adversity, in sunshine and in
storm, I am safe in the center of His will.

Under these circumstances faith becomes as easy as breathing. As chemical action
immediately ensues when the proper fluids come into contact with the proper
metals in the electrical jar, producing the ethereal fiery current, so the moment
the soul is fully yielded to God, faith springs up, spiritual action ensues, and
light and life possess the heart. When thus perfectly yielded to God on every
point, for time and for eternity, there is nothing to hinder this reckoning of
faith and the laying of our offending nature upon the altar of Christ’s Cross
for entire destruction. From that moment we may begin — in the utter absence of
feeling or emotion — to reckon ourselves “dead unto sin and alive unto God
through Jesus Christ,” for the two key-words of the wonderful message in Romans
6:1-23 : are “reckon” then “yield.” “As soon as men open the door by removing
the strong and indurated bolt of their worldly affections, He comes quicker than
His own lightnings, and claims His seat of dominion in the inner soul. It is
done so quickly that there is no longer an opportunity to look for Him abroad.
There He is, rejoicing in His recovered position; forgetting and forgiving all
the injury and guilt of His exclusion; purifying and beautifying the mansion
which had been stained with the world’s dark sin, and rent with its stormy
sorrow.”

“Having therefore these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all
defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2
Corinthians 7:1). The prompt decisive act is represented by the phrase “let us
cleanse,” which is in the aorist tense which denotes singleness of act, a point
in the expanse of time. The patient, gradual, maturing work is expressed in the
phrase which follows: “carrying holiness to completion in the fear of God.” In
1765 John Wesley answered the question, “What shall we do in order that this
work of God may be wrought in us?” as follows:— “In this, as in all other
instances, by grace are ye saved through faith. Full sanctification is not of
works, lest any man should boast. It is the gift of God, and it is to be
received by plain, simple faith. First, believe that God has promised to save
you from all sin and to fill you with Himself. Until we are thoroughly satisfied
of this, there is no moving one step farther. Secondly, believe that He is able
thus to save completely all who come to Him through Christ. Admitting that with
men this is impossible, this creates no difficulty in the case, seeing with God
all things are possible. Thirdly, believe He is willing to do it now. Is not a
moment to Him the same as a thousand years? He cannot want more time to
accomplish whatever is His will. Fourthly, believe that He does it now. Not at
any distant time, not when you come to die, not tomorrow, but today. He will
then enable you to believe it is done, according to His word.” A great difficulty
with many, is in the maintenance of this reckoning, until the act of faith grows
into a habit, and sinful habits are replaced by those that are of the Spirit of
God. Let us recall the illustration on page 79 [In lieu of the missing page
numbers, search back for the clause: If you examined a dead leaf-stalk — DVM].
The plant has condemned a leaf to decay, and the moment the silting-up process
begins, the leaf is doomed. It may be weeks before it falls off, but it is as
good as dead already. The plant never goes back on its resolve, if we may so put
it, to deny that leaf further nourishment, and throw its sap in another
direction. Let us learn the lesson. Evil habits, which are the growth of years,
are doomed the moment we put the Cross of Christ between ourselves and them, and
if we keep the Cross there, never going back on our first reckoning, the fate of
these sinful habits is irrevocably sealed, even though for weeks they may seek
to regain their former ascendancy. This is a matter which concerns the will, and
when the will trembles obediently on the verge of action, the infinite resources
of God are at its disposal in an instant. When the paralytic willed to stretch
forth his withered hand, God’s enabling power came in between the act of willing
and the act of stretching forth. Reckon on God, and throw the responsibility on
Him. A gentleman was riding with his host. The host wanted to return home by a
certain road, but there was a difficulty. The chestnut mare his guest was riding
refused to pass a certain bridge. She had been tried again and again, but always
in vain. The host suddenly remembered that his guest was what he called “a
praying man,” and he thought he had an opportunity of testing the power of
prayer. Was it worth anything in an exigency of this sort? The man of God was
quite willing to trust his Lord, and away they rode. Hastening across the
bridge, the host turned to see a struggle and perchance a victory over a nervous
horse. But there was victory without struggle. He saw his friend drop the reins
on the mare’s neck as they came to the bridge, and heard him say, as he looked
upwards, “Now, Lord!” and quietly as a lamb the mare crossed the bridge. Let us
reckon thus on God, and when the bridge has to be crossed, let us learn to drop
the reins, and casting the responsibility on Him, say, “Now, Lord! “ and He
cannot fail because He cannot deny Himself.


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  CHAPTER 20: 18. CHAPTER 18- THE SCHOOL OF OBEDIENCE
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Chapter 18- The School of Obedience Are children trained Only that they may
reach some higher class?

Only for some few school-room years that pass Till growth is gained? Is it not
rather for the years beyond To which the father looks with hopes so fair and
fond.

He traineth so That we may shine for Him in this dark world, And bear His
standard dauntlessly unfurled: That we may show His praise, by lives that mirror
back his love, His witnesses on earth, as He is ours above. Not only here The
rich result of all our God doth teach His scholars, slow at best, until we reach
A nobler sphere:

Then, not till then, our training is complete, And the true life begins for
which he made us meet.

Look on to this Through all perplexities of grief and strife, To this, thy true
maturity of life, Thy coming bliss; That such high gifts thy future dower may
be, And for such service high thy God prepareth thee.

— F. R. Havergal

It is a noteworthy fact that whenever the example of Christ is presented to us
in Scripture for our imitation, it is His example in suffering “Let this mind be
in you,” says St. Paul, “which was also in Christ Jesus.” All the features of
the disposition which He thus sets before us for imitation have to do with
self-renunciation. We see suffering carved on every step Jesus took, until He
reached the lowest, and “became obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross
“ (Php 2:5-8). To suffer patiently for well-doing is, St. Peter says,
“acceptable with God. For even hereunto were ye called; because Christ also
suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow His steps” (1
Peter 2:20-21). “Forasmuch then,” says the same writer, “as Christ hath suffered
for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind” (1 Peter 4:1).
“Beloved, think it not strange,” he says yet again, “concerning the fiery trial
which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you: but
rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings” (1 Peter 4:12-13).
The reason for this noteworthy fact is given in Hebrews 5:8-9 : “Though He were
a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered; and being made
perfect, He became the Author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey Him.”
In other words, we can only become possessed of the mind of Jesus by going into
the same school, by putting ourselves into the hands of the same teachers, and
by joyfully submitting ourselves to the same discipline.

There is great danger lest the preciousness and indispensableness of the
experience of suffering should be not sufficiently emphasized. It is pleasant and
easy to learn obedience under some teachers, but before we have graduated in
this school we must pass into the hands of others whose lessons are not pleasant
or easy; we must go out of the sunshine into the darkened room; gladness and joy
must give place to anguish and soul-travail, and through an experience of
suffering from which, perchance, we start, and shrink, we learn obedience.

What does this learning of obedience mean? The principle of obedience is one
thing, and the application of it is another. The disposition of obedience Jesus
possessed before He suffered, but the proof that the disposition existed must be
shown in deed, and the progress from the disposition to the deed was the
practical learning of the virtue of obedience. The first question is, how may the
zone of obedience be reached so that not on nine occasions out of ten we shall
say “yes” to God, but that we shall never say aught but “yes” to Him? The answer
to this question has been given in earlier chapters, and it will suffice here if
we say simply that the usurping monarch Self must be completely vanquished and
deposed, by inviting and trusting Jesus to take the throne of the heart. It is
only when He has come to purify, to possess, and to rule, that we are able to
say: “All that the Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient.” As Isaac
Pennington says: “The holy skill of obeying the truth is hid from all living but
such as are begotten and brought up in the mystery of subjection to the Lord.
‘Thy people shall be willing in the day of Thy power.’ It is the power of God
that works the will in the heart, and the same power works to do also (Php
2:13); and none can learn either to will or to do aright, but as they come to be
acquainted with that power, joined to that power, and feel that power working in
them. In this power holy obedience is as natural as disobedience is to the birth
of the flesh. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Obedience, to be perfect, must be submitted to test. You cannot call a child
obedient if his obedience has never cost him anything; nor do you know that he
will obey when the trial comes unless he has been already put to the test, and
so has had an opportunity of applying the principle which existed in his heart.
In this progress from the principle to the application, from the disposition to
the deed, there is, and must be, suffering. The Divine nature of Jesus could not
be perfected that was perfect already; but human nature is born weak and
undeveloped, and it has to grow. One of its essential laws is its capability of
improvement, and thus it was that Jesus, by passing through a long curriculum of
trial and suffering, learned obedience. He could only learn obedience by
becoming incarnate, by stooping to share our discipline, and bearing the Divine
will as a yoke, instead of wielding it as a scepter. His obedience was perfected
by suffering, and with His obedience His human character. The means produced the
end with Him that it might produce the self-same end with us, and from the
moment of His perfection Jesus consecrated suffering as a minister of the Divine
purpose, so that His followers need no longer shrink from and tremble at it, but
rather glory in and welcome it as a conquered foe that has become their friend.

There are different ways, as a great teacher reminds us, both of knowing and of
learning. “A large part of our knowledge is either intuitive and ideal, residing
in the pure reason; or speculative — that is, gathered by deduction and mental
inference. Another kind is learned by what we call life — by experience,
personal trial, entanglement with events, struggles in doing and suffering; and
what we learn in this way we know with a depth and familiarity far beyond all
other knowledge: it is now part of our living energies and powers, and dwells in
our very being. Not only is its stamp imprinted on us, but it so passes into us
as to blend with our whole inner nature. We are what we have done and suffered.”
To shrink, therefore, from suffering is to shrink from what is a requisite part
of our education both for earth and for heaven. We shall be spiritual babes all
our lives, spelling out nothing but the alphabet of Divine truth, if we refuse
to drink of the cup of which Jesus drank, and to be baptized with the baptism
that He was baptized with, for “it became Him for whom are all things, and by
whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of
their salvation perfect through sufferings.” He could not have become our Leader
and Captain had He not trod the rough road He calls upon us to tread. Exemption
from suffering would have meant exemption from Leadership. He could not have
lifted us into a share of His glory had He not stooped to the companionship of
our griefs; nor can we rightly call ourselves His soldiers unless we are
following in His steps; or expect to be lifted into the companionship of his
glory unless we are among those who know the “fellowship of His sufferings.”

We have spoken of suffering as the school of obedience, and of this experience
as absolutely necessary to the completion of our education both for the earthly
and heavenly service. It is necessary for service on earth. It is because Jesus
“suffered being tempted” that He is “able to succor them that are tempted.” “If
ever I fall into a surgeon’s hands with broken bones,” is a remark which has
become almost proverbial, “give me one whose own bones have been broken.” To
take our degree in the school of obedience means a qualifying for such a
ministry as would be otherwise impossible; and what work is more to be coveted
or necessary than that of feeling with, comforting, and sustaining those whom
God counts worthy of the honor of suffering. Of our ministry in the other life
we know but little, for “it doth not yet appear what we shall be.” This we do
know, however: the lessons we have learned here will not be lost there, and in
the service of heaven we shall be eternally thankful for the schooling of earth.
Nothing will give us greater comfort than to remember this. We have a clearly
defined purpose in expending time, money, and skill upon our children in their
earlier years. And no lesson is without its value, either in the disciplining of
the mind, the acquisition of knowledge, or the formation of character. We may be
certain that God has a clearly defined plan, both for the present and future
life, for every one of His children; that no lesson, however seemingly trivial
or important, pleasant or painful, is purposeless; and that “all things are for
our advantage.”


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  CHAPTER 21: 19. CHAPTER 19- THE TESTS OF OBEDIENCE
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Chapter 19- The Tests of Obedience Sometime, when all life’s lessons have been
learned, And sun and stars for evermore have set, The things which our weak
judgments here have spurned, The things o’er which we grieved with lashes wet,
Will flash before us out of life’s dark night, As stars shine most in deeper
tints of blue, And we shall see how all God’s plans are right, And how what
seemed reproof was love most true. And you shall shortly know that lengthened
breath Is not the sweetest gift God sends His friend; And that, sometimes, the
sable pall of death Conceals the fairest boon His love can send.

If we could push ajar the gates of life, And stand within, and all God’s
workings see, We could interpret all this doubt and strife, And for each mystery
could find a key. But not today. Then be content, poor heart God’s plans like
lilies pure and white, unfold;

We must not tear the close-shut leaves apart, Time will reveal the calyxes of
gold; And if, through patient toil, we reach the land Where tired feet, with
sandals loosed, may rest, Where we shall clearly see and understand I think that
we shall say, “God knew the best.”

— May Riley Smith

God always has a number of His children under examination. Some of them pass
with honors, but a few are turned back to learn their lessons over again. Many
fail in this critical time in their spiritual history because they do not
understand the Divine purpose. They cry out with Job: “He hath fenced up my way
that I cannot pass, He hath set darkness in my paths.” They do not perceive that
the position they have taken over and over again is being put to the test.

Madame Guyon puts it thus: “God will give us opportunities to try our
consecration, whether it be a true one or not. No man can be wholly the Lord’s
unless he is wholly consecrated to the Lord; and no man can know whether he is
thus wholly consecrated except by tribulation. That is the test. To rejoice in
God’s will, when that will imparts nothing but happiness, is easy even for the
natural man. But none but the renovated man, none but the religious man, can
rejoice in the Divine will when it crosses his path, disappoints his
expectations, and overwhelms him with sorrow. Trial therefore, instead of being
shunned, should be welcomed as the test — and the only true test — of a true
state. Beloved souls, there are consolations which pass away, but true and
abiding consolation ye will not find except in entire abandonment, and in that
love which loves the Cross. He who does not welcome the Cross does not welcome
God.”

How many have repeatedly and deliberately said to God: “I put myself wholly into
Thy hands: put me to what Thou wilt; rank me with whom Thou wilt; put me to
doing, put me to suffering; let me be employed for Thee, or laid aside for Thee;
exalted for Thee, or trodden under foot for Thee; let me be full, let me be
empty; let me have all things, let me have nothing; I freely and heartily resign
all to Thy pleasure and disposal.” In due time God takes us at our word. He has
had us in His school for months, or it may be for years, and has given us great
freedom and joy. He has set our feet in a “large place” of blessing, when
suddenly, perhaps, suffering of the severest character takes the place of the
delightful experiences through which we have been passing. The vessel which has
been sailing under fair and sunny skies is struck by a hurricane, and her
staunchness is tested to the uttermost.

Among the many comforting words in such a season, that of the apostle James is
most sustaining. He says: “Count it all joy, my brethren, when ye fall into
manifold trials; knowing that the proof of your faith worketh patience. And let
patience have its perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, lacking in
nothing” (James 1:2-4). Note the condition, surrounded by “manifold trials.” Out
of surroundings which have been conducive to peace, comfort, and outward
prosperity, we suddenly fall into the midst of a marauding band of trials. We
seem, as one says, to be “left to the heartlessness of a thousand petty demons,
who pervade every little circumstance; who seem, like the fabled Lilliputians,
to tie our hands and feet while we sleep; who snap all the threads of our
financial looms; who upset our ordinary plans; who turn anticipated joys into
ashes. There are times when a current of such things seems to set in; times when
everything seems to weave itself into a network of crippling environment, and
any effort to extricate ourselves only bruises us.”

We are tempted to be terrified by our adversaries, to despise the chastening of
the Lord, to grow weary of His correction, and to faint in the day of adversity.
To prevent our yielding to either of these temptations, God has clearly revealed
His purpose, and has distinctly told us what our attitude should be. If ever we
needed to listen for the voice of Infinite Love it is now. Listen, He speaks:
“Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art
Mine. When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the
rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou
shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. For I am the Lord
thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour” (Isaiah 43:13). In giving a
lecture on Flame, a scientist once made a most interesting experiment. He wanted
to show that in the center of each flame is a hollow, a place of entire
stillness, around which its fire is a mere wall. To prove this he introduced into
the midst of the flame a minute and carefully shielded charge of explosive
powder. The protection was then carefully removed, and no explosion followed.
The charge was again shielded and withdrawn. A second time the experiment was
tried, and by a slight agitation of the hand the central security was lost, and
an immediate explosion told the result. Our safety, then, is only in stillness
of soul. If we are affrighted and exchange the principle of faith for that of
fear, or, if we are rebellious and restless we shall be hurt by the flames, and
anguish and disappointment will be the result.

Moreover, God will be disappointed in us if we break down. Testing is a proof of
His love and confidence, and who can tell what pleasure our steadfastness and
stillness give to Him? If He allowed us to go without testing it would be no
compliment to our spiritual experience. Much trial and suffering mean,
therefore, that God has confidence in us; that He believes we are strong enough
to endure; that we shall be true to Him even when He has left us without any
outward evidence of His care, and at the seeming mercies of our adversaries. If
He increase the trials instead of diminishing them, it is an expression of
confidence in us up to the present, and a further proof that He is looking to us
to glorify Him in the yet hotter fires through which He is calling us to pass.
Let us not be afraid. The subtleties of the self-life will be exposed and the
hateful thing destroyed. We shall be delivered from the outward and the
transitory, and drawn into far closer fellowship with God Himself.

Think when you use the sharp blade of your penknife that its keenness has only
been produced by a terribly severe process. The best steel is subjected to the
alternates of extreme heat and extreme cold. That little blade was heated and
hammered, then heated again, and then plunged into the coldest water to give it
its right shape and temper. It would not be in your hand had it broken down
under this tempering process. If, when it was put upon the grindstone, any flaw
had appeared, even though previously it had seemed a perfect blade, it would
have been rejected as useless, and thrown aside. So God, longing for our
equipment for the highest service, tests us in a thousand ways. All things —
there is no exception whatever — are working together for the purification, the
refining, the testing, and the approval of human character. Now we are cast into
the furnace of affliction, heated seven times hotter than it is wont to be
heated; now we are plunged into the cold waters of bereavement; and now we are
ground between the upper and nether stones of adversity and disaster. How shall
we come forth? That depends entirely on the way we endure. If we simply say, “As
God will, and in the hottest fire stand still,” He will give us a place of honor
among His servants, and crown us with immortal glory.

“He knoweth the way that I take, and when He hath tried me I shall come forth as
gold.” The hay and the stubble fear the fire, but the gold challenges the flame to
do its worst. Therefore “Let thy gold be cast in the furnace, Thy red gold,
precious and bright; Do not fear the angry fire With its caverns of burning
light; And thy gold shall return more precious, Free from every spot and stain;
For gold must be tried by the fire, And the heart must be tried by pain.” The
apostle James tells us what the purpose of the testing is, “That we may be
perfect and entire, lacking in nothing” (1: 4). A perfect machine fulfills the
object for which it is made, and a perfect Christian is one of such a character
that he fulfills the object for which he has been made a Christian. “Entire,
lacking in nothing,” conveys the idea of being properly adjusted and arranged,
so that our avenues of temptation are properly guarded. A builder never thinks
of putting a window in the floor, or a door in the ceiling, and God would have
our moral nature so adjusted that we may have every thing in its place, and
consequently be “entire, lacking in nothing.” Shall we shrink from an
experience, however painful, which accomplishes an end like this? That which
makes us mature in Christ Jesus, lacking in nothing that a Christian man should
possess and enjoy, is worth any suffering, however severe or protracted. Though,
therefore, we have “for a little while been put to grief in manifold trials,
that the proof of our faith, being more precious than gold that perisheth though
it is proved by fire,” let us, as James exhorts us, “count it nothing but joy.”
God desires not our comprehension in such times, but our confidence. He is
disciplining us for eternal companionship with Himself, and because “it doth not
yet appear what we shall be,” let us joyfully stand in the midst of the fiery
furnace, knowing that we shall lose nothing in the fire but our bonds, and that
ever in the midst thereof will be One who really is the Son of God.

We shall cease to wonder at the pains God takes to purify and perfect human
character, when we remember that it is the only work of His hands which, so far
as we are concerned, will last for ever. Everything else that we possess and
pursue is fading and perishing already. Moral character, built up under the
guidance and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, partakes of God’s immortality,
because it. is nothing less than the Divine nature incarnate, incorporate and
made manifest in man. So precious is its acquisition to God that He spares no
cost to produce it. He puts us just where His purpose can best be accomplished.
We sometimes complain as to the nature of our environment, but when God put us
where we are He had the choice of t he whole world open to Him, and could His
purpose have been better achieved in other surroundings, He would have placed us
there. Let us work out our salvation in thankful co-operation with Him. The
diamond can offer no resistance to the cutter, nor can the clay offer
intelligent response to the potter. We can both resist and respond. Thankfully
recognizing what Butler calls “the providential disposition of things,” let us
cease from the former and, with our whole heart, give ourselves to the latter.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 22: 20. CHAPTER 20- STEP BY STEP
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Chapter 20- Step by Step “Keep step with Jesus.” Can that be for me?

Oh, may I really walk by faith with Thee?

I who have often wandered far away, And grieved Thee with my coldness day by
day?

How often, Master, I have “lagged behind,” And feared to follow, when Thy voice
so kind Has called me on, bidding me trust in Thee, However dark the pathway
seemed to me. And have I not sometimes stepped out alone, Nor waited for Thy
hand to lead me on, And of the future thought with anxious care, Instead of
taking “the next step” in prayer.

Afresh today I put my hand in Thine, With childlike trust would all to Thee
resign;

Just lead me where Thou wilt and guide me still, Fulfilling in me all Thy blessed
will.

— E. May Grimes

Principal Moule in his valuable work, “Veni Creator,” reminds us that there is a
speciality of phrase in the Greek word rendered “walk” in Galatians 5:25. He
translates the verse, “If we live by the Spirit, let us also take step by step
by the Spirit.” Conybeare’s translation is equally suggestive: “If we live by
the Spirit, let our steps be guided by the Spirit.” It is one thing to “live by
the Spirit,” to know that we have life by His power; it is another thing, in the
minutest details of daily life, to yield to the authority and guidance of our
Life-giver. Andrew Murray thinks these words suggest to us very clearly the
difference between the sickly and the healthy Christian life. “In the former the
Christian is content to ‘live by the Spirit’; he is satisfied with knowing that
he has the new life; but he does not walk by the Spirit. The true believer, on
the contrary, is not content without having his whole walk and conversation in
the power of the Spirit.”

Why is the position so often taken, in those large gatherings of Christian
people, now so common, not more generally maintained? How many, in a supreme
moment, under the mighty power of God, throw open every avenue of their being to
the incoming of the Holy Spirit! And we dare not doubt that He floods the entire
being with His energy when it is thus surrendered to Him. But the experience is
too often transitory, as set forth in the following lines:—

“There have been moments pure, When I have seen thy face and felt Thy power;

Then evil lost its grasp, and passion hushed Owned the Divine enchantment of the
hour.

These were but seasons beautiful and rare.”

Why “seasons beautiful and rare”? Because those who thus surrender themselves,
do not go away to “take step by step by the Spirit.” In an unguarded moment self
has been allowed to regain the supremacy, and some portions of the life have
been given over to its control. Steps have been taken, not by the Spirit, but by
the flesh. For a little moment, perhaps only in what seemed a trifling detail, the
reins, which were unconditionally placed in the hands of the Spirit of God, were
snatched out of His grasp. A grieved Spirit, and a life and work from which the
power has departed, are the result. In many cases this is more the result of
carelessness than anything else. Hence the need of clearer teaching on this
subject. The Christian worker has said, like Samson, “I will go out as at other
times and shake myself. But he wist not that the Lord was departed from him.” He
finds, to his sorrow, that some subtle evil has shorn him of his strength, that
some little rift within the lute has made the music mute, but how or why he
scarcely knows.

John Wesley, knowing how much higher an experience it was to take step by step
by the Spirit than simply to live by the Spirit, refused to recognize the
Christian perfectness of some of his converts, because they were wanting, he
said, in the evidence. “They do not steadily use that kind and degree of food
which they know, or might know, would most conduce to the health, strength, and
vigor of the body; or they are not temperate in sleep; they do not rigorously
adhere to what is best for body and mind; otherwise they would constantly go to
bed and rise early, and at a fixed hour; or they sup late, which is neither good
for body or soul; or they use neither fasting nor abstinence; or they prefer
(which are so many forms of intemperance) that preaching, reading, or
conversation which gives them transient joy and comfort, before that which
brings godly sorrow or instruction in righteousness.”

Many Christians have yet to learn the meaning of that word, “Whether therefore
ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God,” for to take
step by step by the Spirit means that our meat and drink, and everything that
touches the domain of our senses, must ever be placed under a sacred discipline.
This same discipline is equally indispensable for the life of our affections and
thoughts; for our reading, for our recreation, for our literary and artistic
pursuits. To ignore the guidance of the Holy Spirit in any of these departments
of life is to cause Him grief, and to forfeit the spiritual power of which He
would have us to be the unfailing aqueducts to a dying world.

Lest anyone should imagine that a life which is thus lived step by step by the
Holy Spirit is an irksome one, let us say that unfailing obedience always
produces unfailing joy and peace. A joyless Christian is almost invariably a
disobedient Christian. “A life of self-renouncing love is a life of liberty,”
for where the Spirit of the Lord is — where He is recognized and obeyed in the
minutiae of life — “there is liberty.”

“Step by step” is the secret of a life which is never perturbed, never surprised
by sudden assaults of the evil one, never shorn of its spiritual strength. With
returning consciousness there is, in such a life, a resolute determination to
take no step in the untrodden pathway of the day but by the Spirit. His guidance
is sought and His will consulted in the choice of food. Anything that has been
known to dull the spiritual vision, and unfit the body for the sacred uses for
which it is designed, will be avoided. “What effect will this book have upon my
spiritual life? Will it increase or diminish my relish for the Word of God?” are
questions we shall ask when opportunities for reading are afforded us. “I never
spend a penny,” said a poor widow one day to the writer, “without asking that I
may be guided how to spend it.” She was seeking to take step by step by the
Spirit. We need not particularize further. Here is the principle by which our
life is to be governed, and to follow it will fill our life with such joy and
power as we never dreamt of before. The two realms, which men have designated
secular and sacred, will “melt into each other as the roseate streaks of dawn
melt into the splendors of the morning” as we take step by step by the Spirit;
for when the Spirit of Christ breathes through our life the meanest occupation
becomes Divine. Nothing is little or great with regard to the things of God.
Everything that bears the impress of His will is great, however trifling it may
appear. It is this alone which gives value to the duties of our life, and
nothing can be regarded as small or insignificant that is the object of His
desire. A natural tendency to untidiness is easily overcome if, for His sake,
and that we may please Him in everything, we keep the room or the papers in
order. And it is this carefulness to please God, even in the smallest trifles,
that proves the reality and delicacy of our love. “We do not love perfectly when
we neglect small occasions of pleasing the one whom we love, and when we do not
fear to wound Him with trifles. The jealousy of God is infinite; it extends to
everything, and every soul that truly loves will try never to give this Divine
jealousy any cause of offense.” Our life is made up of these little steps. We
fancy we could be heroic on some great occasion. We could die for Christ we
think, if called upon to lay down our life for Him. It is questionable, however,
if we could, unless we have cultivated the martyr spirit hour by hour, for if
our strength and desire to please God has failed in the trifles of our life, how
can we be sure of them in the great testing time? It is far harder to live for
Christ moment by moment than it is to die once for Him; and if we wait for great
occasions in which to display our fidelity, we shall find that our life has
slipped away, and with it the opportunities which each hour has brought of
proving our love to our Lord, by being faithful in that which is least.

It is a startling fact that if the earth were dependent upon the sun alone for
heat it would not keep existence in animal and vegetable life upon its surface.
The stars furnish heat enough in the course of the year to melt a crust of ice
seventy feet thick — almost as much as is supplied by the sun. This seems
strange when we consider how immeasurably small must be the amount of heat
received from any of these distant bodies. But the surprise vanishes when we
remember that the whole firmament is so thickly strewn with stars, that in some
places thousands are crowded together within a space no greater than that
occupied by the full moon. This illustrates the truth we have been seeking to
enforce. It is to the thousands of little acts, which have been made bright
because the Spirit of Christ has come into them all, that the true child of God
owes the light and heat and beauty of His life.

We cannot do better than close with the following striking words of Pastor
Stockmayer; “When sin or our selfness, at any distance whatever, shows itself in
our horizon, when we notice something in the wind so that our moral sky, our
spiritual atmosphere, is not altogether clear, let us know that it is His grace
which signals the danger, His Spirit who awakens our attention. Let us stop at
once; let us hasten to our refuge under the shadow of His wings; let us
renewedly tighten the bonds that unite us to Him, until the light of His
countenance has driven away the last vestige of the cloud, and the atmosphere
has again become luminous. Be not discouraged, if at the first attempt thou
failest to realize this life. Though thy communion with God be a hundred times,
yea, a thousand times interrupted, do not suffer thyself to be paralyzed by
these sad experiences. It is true that the wrong done to thy soul by even one
momentary separation from God, such as one sin can occasion, a sin by thought,
or word, or deed, is far more disastrous than thou canst know. Nevertheless
there may be something worse, something which adds evil to evil, namely,
permitting thyself to be discouraged instead of returning immediately to God, in
order to find in Him pardon and renewing of life.” “If we live by the Spirit, let
us also take step by step by the Spirit.”


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  CHAPTER 23: 21. CHAPTER 21- THE CROSS DAY BY DAY
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Chapter 21- The Cross Day by Day

“Here is one inexhaustible paradox of this great matter; on one side a true and
total self-denial, on the other, a daily need of self-crucifixion. This is a
thing which I am content simply to state, and to leave it as the Lord’s word
upon the believer’s mind and soul.

“But ‘daily’; without intermission, without holiday; now, today, this hour; and
then, tomorrow! And the daily ‘cross’; a something which is to be the instrument
of disgrace and execution to something else! And what will that something be?
Just whatever gives occasion of ever deeper test to the self-surrender of which
we have spoken; just whatever exposes to shame and death the old aims, and
purposes, and plans, the old spirit of self and its life.

“Perhaps it is some small trifle of daily routine: a crossing of personal
preference in very little things; accumulation of duties, unexpected
interruption, unwelcome distraction. Yesterday these things merely fretted you
and, internally at least, ‘upset’ you. Today, on the contrary, you take them up,
and stretch your hands out upon them, and let them be the occasion of new
disgrace and deeper death for that old self-spirit. You take them up in loving,
worshipping acceptance. You carry them to their Calvary in thankful submission.
And tomorrow you will do the same.” — Principal Moule

“If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross
daily and follow Me” (Luke 9:23). We have spoken in the earlier chapters of this
book of a Cross on which, in the power of the Holy Spirit, we have seen nailed
the flesh with its passions and lusts. We will think in this closing chapter of
that cross which has to be taken up day by day, for a Christian, as Luther says,
is a Crucian. The Saviour pictures to His hearers a procession, He Himself
taking the lead with His Cross. He is the chief Crucian. All His true disciples
follow in this procession. Each has his own particular cross, and the direction
of the procession, when one looks far enough, is towards the kingdom of heavenly
glory. The Crusaders used to carry a painted cross on their shoulders, and some
talk of bearing a cross which sits just as lightly. It is to them a mere thing
of ornament; a passport to respectability, for there is a cross which has become
fashionable, and from which all trace of suffering and self-denial has
disappeared. That is not the character of the cross of which Christ spoke to His
disciples. The life to which He calls us, and the path along which He leads, is
characterized by cross-bearing from beginning to end. In outward appearance the
cross varies, but it is always something which crosses self, and frees us from
our own self-will. It is therefore the way to rest, for the only place in the
wide world in which the soul can find true rest is in taking up the yoke or cross
of Christ. In doing our own will there is never rest, but in yielding to the
will of another there is. “The soul abiding under this cross comes into the
true, pure, and perfect liberty, where it hath scope unto holiness, freedom unto
righteousness, and is in strait bonds and holy chains from all liberty to the
flesh, and from all unholiness and unrighteousness of every kind.” [Isaac
Pennington]

Someone has described this cross-bearing life as a spread-out surrender, a
surrender which covers our whole sphere of action, and lasts all our days. It is
often in little things that Christ asks us to deny ourselves, and it would be
far easier for some to take up a great cross and die once upon it than to take
up these little crosses day by day and die a deeper death upon them. So the word
“daily” becomes to some, what Christ’s Cross was to the Jews, a stone of
stumbling and a rock of offense.

Yet, as we have already suggested, it is only in this cross-bearing life, in
ever yielding our will to our Lord, that we find rest and peace. The way of the
Cross is the Royal way, and they who tread it are kings and priests unto God. It
is always to those who tread it the way of glory as it was to Christ, “Who for
the joy that was set before Him, endured the Cross, despising the shame.” It was
because of this that Paul gloried in tribulation, “knowing that tribulation
worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience hope: and hope maketh
not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy
Ghost, which is given unto us” (Romans 5:3-5). “He that hath suffered in the
flesh hath ceased from sin.” On several occasions art has been sanctified to
illustrate this. In one picture, for example, a bit of moorland stretches its
lonely waste away into the distance, and slopes up to the white hills beyond. In
the foreground, a few scattered shrubs have forced their way among the rocks so
sharp for tender feet. Up from the valley, over which dark clouds hover, a young
woman comes with slow, sad step and serious mien. From a rift in the sky above
her, a softened light falls upon a cross at her feet. A cross, before whose rude
weight her delicate shoulders shrink. At her side all unseen, the Saviour, who
has guided her to this lonely spot, stands watching her. Not with bowed form and
marred visage, not as the Man of sorrows, but as her Risen Lord has He come.
Clad in a robe of spotless white, which falls from throat to sandalled feet, He
bends on her a look in which patient love and steadfast purpose, and tender
pity, are most Divinely blended. As He stands there watching, waiting, the figure
starts to life from the canvas, and we hear in melting tones, “Christ hath many
lovers of His kingdom, and but few bearers of His cross!” No longer do the timid
steps falter. Lines of resignation gather about the brave mouth. With her
beautiful hair blown back from her serious face, her sweet eyes, “homes of
silent prayer,” her whole figure expressive of the most touching humility, she
stoops to raise it. But lo! the wondrous change! A moment ago there lay before
her misty eyes only the cross’s rugged form and weary weight. But now, with the
clearer vision granted in her hour of submission, she sees clusters of dewy
roses clinging to it lovingly. They hide the rude outline. They lay their velvet
petals caressingly over the sharp edges. They open their golden hearts, and with
prodigal sweetness throw their perfume all abroad upon the air. They lighten the
ponderous weight. They shield her from the harsh touch. They brighten and
beautify the pathway which promised to be so dark and lonely.

Ah! the artist has done more than simply to symbolize a glowing idea. With his
magic brush he has broken into these brilliant hues the white light of an
immortal truth. They who have borne Christ’s Cross, can testify how rich and
full it has made their life; how blessed beyond all others are they upon whom it
is laid. With that mysterious blending of the will in Christ, peace flows into
the. soul like an unbroken river. To a heart beating ever in accord, through
Him, with nature’s symphonies, the common things of life lose their meanness,
and there comes daily a new “splendor in the grass, and glory in the flower.” Who
could ever read Samuel Rutherford’s letters without noting how this aspect of
the daily cross was ever before him! Listen: “He that looketh unto the white
side of the cross, and taketh it up handsomely, findeth it just such a burden
unto him as wings are to a bird.” . . . “I find that His sweet presence eateth
out the bitterness of sorrow and suffering. I think it is a sweet thing that
Christ saith of my cross, ‘Half Mine!’ and that He divideth these sufferings
with me, and taketh the larger share to Himself; nay, that I and my whole cross
are wholly Christ’s.” . . . “Some have one cross, some seven, some ten, some
half a cross. Yet all the saints have whole and full joy; and seven crosses have
seven joys. I find the very frowns of Christ’s wooing sweet and lovely. I had
rather have Christ’s buffet and love-stroke than another king’s kiss. Speak evil
of Christ who will, I hope to die with love thoughts of Him.

“I have neither tongue nor pen to express the sweetness and excellency of the
love of Christ. My chains are gold. Christ’s Cross is over-gilded and perfumed:
His prison is the garden and orchard of my delights. I would go through burning
quick to my lovely Christ.” . . . “I give under my own handwriting to you a
testimonial of Christ and His Cross, that they are a sweet couple, and that
Christ hath never yet been set in His own due chair of honor amongst us all.” .
. . “I find crosses, Christ’s carved work that He marketh out for us, and that
with crosses He figureth and portrayeth us to His own image, cutting away pieces
of our ill and corruption. Lord cut, Lord carve, Lord wound, Lord do anything
that may perfect my Father’s image in us, and make us meet for glory."

“Oh how sweet a sight it is to see a cross betwixt Christ and us; to hear our
Redeemer say, at every sigh, and every blow, and every loss of a believer, ‘Half
Mine!’ So they are called ‘the sufferings of Christ,’ and ‘the reproach of
Christ.’ As when two are partners and owners of a ship, the half of the gain and
half of the loss belong to each of the two; so Christ in our sufferings is
half-gainer and half-loser with us. Yea, the heaviest end of the black tree of
the cross lieth on your Lord: it first falleth on Him, but it reboundeth off Him
upon you: and if your cross come through Christ’s fingers ere it come to you, it
receiveth a fair luster from Him; it getteth a taste and relish of the King’s
spikenard, and of heaven’s perfume. And half of the gain, when Christ’s shipful
of gold cometh home, shall be yours.” The threefold repetition of the word
“cannot” in Luke xiv is suggestive. Unless we live this cross-bearing life we
cannot be His disciples (verses 26, 27 33). It is not that we “shall not” but
“cannot” be. In other words, this is an unalterable law of discipleship. The
only possible way by which we can do the will of God, and live out the ideal
Christian life, is by the absolute surrender of ourselves to our Divine Lord.
Without this absolute surrender, which, as we have said, is spread out over the
whole of our life, we may come after Christ outwardly, we may be called by His
name, but we “cannot” be His disciples any more than a bird can fly without
wings. On the other hand, as that famous Crucian, Rutherford, says: “If we take
up the cross handsomely, we shall find it just such a burden as wings are to a
bird.” In bearing patiently the little contradictions, the slight
inconveniences, the trifling losses so frequently encountered, the daily cross
will become our daily bread. The nourishment of our life will be to do the will
of God as it comes to us in those things that were once trivial annoyances, but
are now opportunities of saying a continual Amen to the will of God. Herein is
meat which the world knows not of, and in accepting that will the soul finds
perfect rest and complete satisfaction.

Let us beware of self-made crosses. We need never go out of our way to find them,
and those which we make for ourselves are double crosses, because, being outside
the will of God, they bring no strength, consolation, or fruit. Such are all
crosses which arise from uneasy fears about the future. We have no right to
anticipate His dispensations, or attempt to supply the place of His providence
by a providence of our own. “How long shall I have to lie here, doctor?” asked
the patient, at the commencement of a weary illness; and the Christian physician
could not have given a more suitable answer: “Only one day at a time!”

"Charge not thyself with the weight of a year, Child of the Master, faithful and
dear —

Choose not the cross for the coming week; For that is more than He bids thee
seek.

Bend not thine arms for tomorrow’s load; That thou may’st leave to thy gracious
God.

‘Day by day’ ever He saith to thee, Take up thy cross and follow Me.’ “

Let us then welcome the daily cross, and ask as each morning dawns, How may I
deny myself for Christ today; and as the evening shadows gather around us and we
lie down to rest, to be carried on even in our sleep by the gales of the Holy
Ghost, let our question be, “Have I found rest and joy and glory today in
bearing my daily cross?” THE END


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Source: https://sermonindex.net/books/beyond-humiliation-the-way-of-the-cross-by-gregory-mantle/
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