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  WORKS OF A. B. SIMPSON
  by A.B. Simpson
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Collected works of Albert Benjamin Simpson, founder of the Christian and
Missionary Alliance. Includes his solemn covenant of personal dedication to God
and other writings reflecting his passion for deeper spiritual life and world
missions.

  Chapters: 12

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS
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    1. A Solemn Covenant
    2. Baptism
    3. Bio- A man of vision & faith
    4. Divine Healing and Medical Science
    5. Divine Healing in the Atonment
    6. How to Abide
    7. My Own Story
    8. Personal Testimony
    9. Practical Influence of the Blessed Hope
   10. Standing in Providence
   11. The Lord's Coming and Missions
   12. The Sanctifying Work of Christ

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  CHAPTER 1: A SOLEMN COVENANT
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A Solemn Covenant* The Dedication Of Myself To God

A.B. Simpson

O Thou everlasting and almighty God, Ruler of the universe, Thou who madest this
world and me, Thy creature upon it, Thou who art in every place beholding the
evil and the good, Thou seest me at this time and knowest my thoughts. I know
and feel that my innermost thoughts are all familiar to Thee, and Thou knowest
what motives have induced me to come to Thee at this time. I appeal to Thee, O
Thou Searcher of hearts, so far as I know my heart, it is not a worldly motive
that has brought me before Thee now. But my "heart is deceitful above all things
and desperately wicked," and I do not pretend to trust it; but Thou knowest that
I have a desire to dedicate myself to Thee for time and eternity. I would come
before Thee as a sinner, lost and ruined by the fall, and by my actual
transgressions, yea, as the vilest of all Thy creatures. When I look back on my
past life, I am filled with shame and confusion. I am rude and ignorant, and in
Thy sight a beast. Thou, O Lord, didst make Adam holy and happy, and gavest him
ability to maintain his state. The penalty of his disobedience was death, but he
disobeyed Thy holy law and incurred that penalty and I, as a descendant from
him, incurred that penalty. I acknowledge the justness of Thy sentence, O Lord,
and would bow in submission before Thee.

How canst Thou, O Lord, condescend to look on me, a vile creature? For it is
infinite condescension to notice me. But truly, Thy loving kindness is infinite
and from everlasting. Thou, O Lord, didst send Thy Son in our image, with a body
such as mine and a reasonable soul. In Him were united all the perfections of
the Godhead with the humility of our sinful nature. He is the Mediator of the
New Covenant, and through Him we all have access unto Thee, by the same Spirit.
Through Jesus, the only Mediator I would come to Thee, O Lord, and trusting in
His merits and mediation, I would boldly approach Thy throne of grace. I feel my
own insignificance, O Lord, but do Thou strengthen me by Thy Spirit. I would now
approach Thee in order to covenant with thee for life everlasting. Thou in Thy
Word hast told us that it is Thy Will that all who believe in Thy Son might have
everlasting life and Thou wilt raise him up at the last day. Thou hast given us
a New Covenant and hast sealed that covenant in Thy blood, O Jesus, on the
cross.

I now declare before Thee and before my conscience, and bear witness, O ye
heavens, and all the inhabitants thereof, and thou earth, which God has made,
that I accept the conditions of this convenant and close with its terms. These
are that I believe on Jesus and accept of salvation through Him, my Prophet,
Priest, and King, as made unto me of God wisdom and righteousness and
sanctification and redemption and complete salvation. Thou, O Lord, hast made me
willing to come to Thee. Thou hast subdued my rebellious heart by Thy love. So
now take it and use it for Thy glory. Whatever rebellious thoughts may arise
therein, do Thou overcome them and bring into subjection everything that
opposeth itself to Thy authority. I yield myself unto Thee as one alive from the
dead, for time and eternity. Take me and use me entirely for Thy glory.

Ratify now in Heaven, O my Father, this Covenant. Remember it, O Lord, when Thou
bringest me to the Jordan. Remember it, O Lord, in that day when Thou comest
with all the angels and saints to judge the world, and may I be at Thy right
hand then and in heaven with Thee forever. Write down in heaven that I have
become Thine, Thine only, and Thine forever. Remember me, O Lord, in the hour of
temptation, and let me never depart from this covenant. I feel, O Lord, my own
weakness and do not make this in my own strength, else I must fail. But in Thy
strength, O Captain of my salvation, I shall be strong and more than conqueror
through Him who loved me.

I have now, O Lord, as Thou hast said in Thy Word, covenanted with Thee, not for
worldly honors or fame but for everlasting life, and I know that Thou art true
and shalt never break Thy holy Word. Give to me now all the blessings of the New
Covenant and especially the Holy Spirit in great abundance, which is the earnest
of my inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession. May a double
portion of Thy Spirit rest upon me, and then I shall go and proclaim to
transgressors Thy ways and Thy laws to the people. Sanctify me wholly and make
me fit for heaven. Give me all spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ
Jesus.

Place me in what circumstances Thou mayest desire; but if it be Thy holy will, I
desire that Thou "give me neither poverty or riches; feed me with food
convenient, lest I be poor and steal, or lest I be rich and say, "Who is the
Lord?'" But Thy will be done. Now give me Thy Spirit and Thy protection in my
heart at all times, and then I shall drink of the rivers of salvation, lie down
by still waters, infinitely happy in the favour of my God.

-Saturday, January 19, 1861.

September 1, 1863. Backslidden. Restored. Yet too cold, Lord. I still wish to
continue this. Pardon the past and strengthen me for the future for Jesus' sake.
Amen.

Louisville, KY., April 18, 1878. Renew this convenant and dedication amid much
temptation and believe that my Father accepts me anew and gives me more than I
have dared to ask or think, for Jesus' sake. He has kept His part. My one desire
now is power, light, love, souls, Christ's indwelling, and my church's
salvation.

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  CHAPTER 2: BAPTISM
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Baptism and the Baptism of the Holy Spirit*

A.B. Simpson

One's opinions are often strangely contradicted by his convictions. We inherit
our opinions and we are very apt to contend sturdily for the doctrines we have
received by this inheritance; but we receive our convictions from the Holy
Ghost, and they often revolutionize our long-cherished opinions. It sounds like
the irony of fate to confess that the first prize the writer of this paper ever
received as a theological student was the sum of $Matthew00, won by him in a
contest during his first year at the seminary, on the subject of baptism, in
which he wrote a prize paper proving to his own satisfaction and that of his
examiners that the Baptists were all wrong.

Later in life it pleased the Holy Ghost to show him in his own deepest spirit
that he might have waited to get the Master's voice before so boldly exploiting
his theological ideas. It was in the autumn of 1881, while cherishing no thought
of any change in his theological views, but very earnestly looking out upon the
fields, and asking, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?" He was giving a course
of lectures to his congregation in the City of New York, and he had come to that
passage describing the crossing of the Red Sea by the Israelites under Moses.
Earnestly inquiring of the Spirit of God what the deeper meaning of the Red Sea
was in our spiritual life, he saw with great plainness that it represented our
death to the old life of Egypt and the world. Along with this there was suddenly
flashed into his mind that striking passage in 1 Corinthians 10:2 : "And they
were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea," and like a vision
there rose before him the picture of Israel's host passing through the flood,
while at the same time the cloud, representing the Holy Spirit, fell upon them
and covered them with its heavenly baptism. Thus there was a double baptism.
They were baptized in the flood; they were baptized in the cloud. The water and
the Spirit were both present. Somehow there came with it such a vision of
Christian baptism in its deeper and spiritual import, leading us down into the
flood of death and burial, and at the same moment bringing to us the open
heavens and the descending Holy Ghost, that it fairly startled him.

Then simultaneously arose another vision that seemed to unfold as a panorama. It
was that of Christ entering the valley of Jordan in baptism, and as He passed
through that sacred rite and came forth like Israel crossing the Sea, in like
manner the Spirit descended also upon Him and abode, and He received the double
baptism of the water and the Spirit at the same moment, and from that hour went
forth, no longer the Man of Nazareth, but the Son of God, clothed with the power
of the Holy Ghost. Then a third vision seemed to arise. It was the multitude of
Pentecost, heart-stricken and convicted by the power of God, and crying out
under Peter's sermon, "Men and brethren, what must we do?" And then came the
answer of our text: "Repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of
Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the
Holy Ghost." There again the water and the Spirit were inseparably linked. The
outward baptism was but a stepping stone to the higher baptism of the Holy
Ghost, and they were all expected to enter into both, as though neither was
complete without the other. As these visions flashed across his mind there came
to him such a restful and unalterable conviction that baptism was much more than
he had dreamed, much more than the rite of initiation into the Christian Church,
much more than the sign and seal of a hereditary conviction on the part of
parents to their children; that it was the symbol of personal, intelligent,
voluntary and profoundly earnest surrender of our life to God in
self-crucifixion, and the act of dying with Christ, that we really pass out of
our old life as truly as Israel crossed the Sea, and have such entering into a
new world of life through the resurrection of Jesus Christ as came to them when
they found themselves on the other side, and that this was to be sealed by the
actual descent and infilling of the Holy Ghost coming to us as really as the
cloud fell upon them, or as the Holy Ghost descended on the banks of the Jordan
and abode upon the Person of Jesus Christ. The baptism of the Holy Spirit from
that time had a new significance. And indeed there was but one baptism, for the
water and the spirit were each but part of a greater whole and both were linked
with divine appointment, the one as the sign and the other as the divine reality
of a great crisis act by which we passed through death into resurrection life
and became united through the Holy Ghost henceforth to the living God as the
Source and Power of our new and heavenly life. This passage led on to other and
deeper teachings in the New Testament Epistles, where the spiritual significance
of baptism as the type of our death and resurrection with Christ is so vividly
unfolded. It is needless to say that the convictions thus supernaturally
revealed through the Word of God became henceforth settled principles of faith
and conduct, and that at the earliest possible moment the writer followed in
obedience the steps of the Master and entered by baptism into a deeper death and
life with the Lord. Some years before he had received the Holy Spirit, but God
was pleased to use the symbol to deepen that experience and most profoundly
reveal Himself in connection with it. All the circumstances attending it were
strangely fitted to impress upon his mind and heart the new significance which
baptism had assumed. It was, indeed, a death to all his past religious history
and work. The very circumstances of his baptism were singularly humbling and
trying. Not in some distinguished public temple did he follow his Lord through
the gates of death, but in a humble little frame schoolhouse in the poorest
district of New York, where a baptistry had been erected by a little company of
believers who held occasional services there and loaned it for this occasion. It
was a bitter autumn day when even the water was as cold as ice and the little
schoolroom was as cheerless as winter, with no audience present but the wife of
the humble evangelist that baptized him, no sympathy from a single human friend
with his obedience to the dictates of his conscience, but a consciousness of
being utterly alone, misunderstood, and condemned even by his dearest friends
for an act of eccentric fanaticism that must surely separate him from all the
associations of his Christian life and work. All this seemed to make only more
real the fact that it was, indeed, a death to all the past, and that God did not
want to spare him a single pang of its bitterness, that he might be even nearer
to his Master in every stage of that journey to the cross. But after it was
over, as he stood alone in that cheerless dressing room, shivering from that
cold plunge in the icy fountain, the very evangelist that baptized him having
hurried on and left him, and as hastily robing himself he threw himself upon his
knees and thanked his Lord for the unspeakable privilege of following Him in
full obedience into death, no language can ever express, and no subsequent
experience can ever obliterate the unutterable joy that came sweeping into every
sense of his soul and spirit, making even his body thrill with strange warmth
and ecstatic delight as the Master seemed to say, "You have gone with Me into
the death, now you shall come with Me into the resurrection." These are
experiences into whose sacredness others cannot enter, except in so far as they
have been repeated in their lives, and which we only dare to refer to in
explaining the fact that this precious ordinance became spiritually so real that
it has ever since seemed a pain to make it a mere matter of religious form or
doctrinal controversy.

After this step of personal obedience it might be supposed that the next step
would be uniting with the Baptist congregation, but this did not follow, and
probably never will. The conviction came with great clearness that this was a
matter of personal obedience to God, but not sufficient ground to justify one in
separating himself in the communion of the Church of God from brethren who did
not see it in the same light. To take the position of a close [sic] communion
church, which made the ordinance of baptism by immersion a term of membership,
and excluded from that communion table godly brethren who did not see it in this
light, was a step the writer could not take. And while it has been his privilege
to belong to the beloved Baptist body in a very sweet and spiritual sense, it
has been his equal privilege to feel that he belongs likewise in every other
evangelical denomination of Christians that hold the living Head, and love the
Lord Jesus in sincerity, and that he can sit down with any of them at the
communion table with the blessed sense of equal fellowship and Christian
brotherhood.

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  CHAPTER 3: BIO- A MAN OF VISION & FAITH
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A. B. Simpson A man of vision and faith

"Born to parents of Scottish descent. He grew to be one of the most respected
Christian figures in American evangelicalism. A much sought after speaker and
pastor." A. B. Simpson Albert Benjamin Simpson was born on December 15, 1843, to
parents of Scottish descent. He grew to be one of the most respected Christian
figures in American evangelicalism. A much sought after speaker and pastor,
Simpson founded a major evangelical denomination, published over seventy books,
edited a weekly magazine for nearly forty years, and wrote many gospel songs and
poems. However, the first few years of his life were spent in relative
simplicity on Prince Edward Island, Canada, where his father, an elder in the
Presbyterian church, worked as a shipbuilder and eventually became involved in
the export/import industry. To avoid an approaching business depression, the
family moved to Ontario where the younger Simpson accepted Christ as his Savior
at age fifteen and was subsequently "called by God to preach" the Gospel of
Christ. After graduating from Knox College in Toronto in 1865, Simpson accepted
his first pastorate at Knox Church in Hamilton, one of Canada's largest and most
influential congregations. After eight years at the church, God led Simpson to
Chestnut Street Presbyterian Church in Louisville, Kentucky. "God was answering
his heart's yearning for ‘better things,’" writes A. W. Tozer in Wingspread, a
book that chronicles Simpson's life. He was also providing Simpson, whose health
was suffering, with a break from the harsh Canadian climate. Simpson realized
that God was using his weakness to move him into a closer and deeper love for
Jesus Christ. His dependence on God became natural as did his communion with the
Savior. William MacArthur, a friend and co-worker, said Simpson once told him:
"I am no good unless I can get alone with God." MacArthur added: "His practice
was to hush his spirit, and literally cease to think, then in the silence of his
soul, he listened for the ‘still small voice’ [of God]." Simpson discovered he
was also developing a deep compassion for the lost. A desire to evangelize began
to consume him. In his biographical article on Simpson, Daniel Evearitt wrote:
"I discovered that those who knew [Simpson] paint a picture of a dynamic but
humble worker for God who inspired others to total commitment to God's service
and Kingdom. They portray him as a loving, caring, patient man." Paul Rader,
former pastor of the Moody Church in Chicago and Simpson's long time associate,
said: "He was the greatest heart preacher I ever listened to. He preached out of
his own rich dealings with God." In Louisville, God gave Simpson a vision for a
city-wide revival. The result was astounding. "The city was moved to its depths
and hundreds were converted. At the close of the campaign, large numbers were
received in to the churches," writes Tozer. "[Simpson] had become, though he did
not yet realize it full, an evangelist to the masses... From here on he belongs
no more to one church, but to all who need him, not to his parish only, but to
all the lost world." A time came when "in the privacy of his own room," Simpson
yielded himself to God in total surrender. "Not knowing," he said, "but it would
be death in the most literal sense." He later referred to this time as a death
to self-the old man and the self-asserting ego. From that point on, Simpson said
he began to live "a consecrated, crucified, and Christ-devoted life." God's call
to the unevangelized was now a full-blown part of his life. Simpson went on to
pastor the New York 13th Street Presbyterian Church. However in 1881, he
resigned and began to hold independent evangelistic meetings in New York City. A
year later, the Gospel Tabernacle was built, and Simpson began to turn his
vision toward establishing an organization for missions. Simpson helped to form
and head up two evangelization societies-The Christian Alliance and The
Evangelical Missionary Alliance. As thousands joined these two groups, Simpson
sensed a need for the two to become one. In 1897, they became The Christian and
Missionary Alliance. Serving as pastor until 1918, Simpson continued to seek
ways to reach the hurting and unsaved. Tozer writes: "For thirty years he
continued to lead the society which he had formed, and never for the least
division of a moment did he forget or permit the society to forget the purpose
for which it was brought into being... ‘It is to hold up Jesus in His fullness,
the same yesterday, and today, and forever!’ "...He sought to provide a
fellowship only, and looked with suspicion upon anything like rigid
organization. He wanted the Alliance to be a spiritual association of believers
who hungered to know the fullness of the blessing of the Gospel of Christ,
working concertedly for the speedy evangelization of the world." On October 28,
1919, Simpson slipped into a coma from which he never recovered. Family members
recall that his final words were spoken to God in prayer for all the
missionaries he had helped to send throughout the world. To the end, Simpson
remained devoted first to his beloved Savior and then to all who would dare to
take the gospel message to a lost and dying world. A. B. Simpson, a man of
vision and faith.


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  CHAPTER 4: DIVINE HEALING AND MEDICAL SCIENCE
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Divine Healing and Medical Science+

A.B. Simpson

Every good and perfect gift is from above and cometh down from the Father of
lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. (James 1:17).

There is a place for natural and scientific healing. In the economy of nature in
almost every form of life and organism there is a certain recuperative power.
The abrasion of a branch heals itself and frequently is stronger in the place
affected than before. The severed bones of a dislocation knit by a natural
process, and it is said they seldom break again in the same place, which has
been not only healed but reinforced by nature's recuperative power. The chief
reliance of the intelligent physician is upon this innate force in the human
frame which the doctors call vis medicatrix naturae. This natural principle has
been turned to account by the skill and experience of centuries in connection
with the medical art. While there have been in every age quacks, pretenders, and
charlatans, yet, upon the whole, the science of medicine and surgery has made
much progress and accomplished undoubted results for the relief of suffering and
the benefit of humanity, especially in the past century. While its skill is
limited and its work marked by much human imperfection, yet he would be a very
narrow-minded critic who should refuse to class it among the good gifts of God's
creation and providence. It is not a perfect gift by any means, but there is
much in it that is unquestionably good. And there are multitudes of people who
know no better way. They do not know the Lord either as a Saviour or Healer, and
to deny them the only help they are able to avail themselves of would be
short-sighted, cruel, and fanatical. But God has a better way for His children.
Divine Healing is the heritage and privilege of the family of God, while like
Joseph's boughs that ran over the wall, its blessings reach beyond the people of
God and often bring help and deliverance to those who are strangers to His love,
yet it is primarily intended for Christians. "Is any among you sick, let him
call for the elders of the church, and the prayer of faith shall heal the sick
and the Lord shall raise him up." This is the "perfect gift" which recognizes no
limitation of functional or organic disease as human remedies do, but claims the
boundless promise of the infinite God for all our needs. Divine Healing
Supernatural. And Divine Healing is wholly different in its principle and
processes from natural healing. It is distinctly supernatural although not
always miraculous. It means the direct touch of God, a divine addition to the
innate forces of human nature. It is not the mere improvement of old organs,
functions, and conditions, but it is the beginning of a new kind of life, even
the resurrection life of the Lord Jesus Himself imparted to us through our union
with His person. It is the beginning, the germ, the earnest of our own future
resurrection.

Therefore, it is as impossible to combine it with natural healing as it would be
to combine a journey to Albany by a stage coach and an express train, or the
ascension of the latest skyscraper with one foot on the elevator and the other
on the winding stair. The truth is medical methods are mechanical while Divine
Healing is not by external applications but by an internal and subtle vital
force which medicine cannot supply or imitate. If a combination is attempted, it
will probably result in a conflict instead of a union of forces and do more harm
than good. It is all right to ask God to bless the use of means, but this is
wholly different from the direct operation of Divine Healing which needs no help
from man and where the attempt to help may only hinder. Divine Healing a Gift.

Divine Healing, being part of the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus Christ,
comes to us on the principle of free grace and by simple faith without works. We
cannot work it out any more than we can work out the salvation of our soul. We
can only receive it by simple trust as the gift of God through Jesus Christ our
Lord.

Indeed, the double action of the mind in "looking this way and that way" as
between the doctor and the Lord is very apt to weaken faith. We know that the
faintest prop is often sufficient to tempt us to lean our weight upon it and
lessen our supreme confidence in God alone. We all remember the story of the man
who in his dream heard a voice calling to him, "Let go that twig;" and as he let
go, he fell into the arms of mercy which were waiting to receive him. A very
little twig is often sufficient to keep us swinging with part of our weight at
least withheld from the entire committal which is essential to effectual faith.
In order, therefore, to receive divine life for our body, it is necessary that
we should turn from all other hopes and reliances, realize our entire dependence
upon the Lord, and commit our case definitely to Him, believing that He
undertakes it and refusing to doubt or question even though there may be some
testing and delay. It is the prayer of faith that heals the sick, and Christ has
defined faith in this explicit way, "When ye pray, believe that ye receive the
things ye ask for and ye shall have them." Divine Healing an Imparted Life. As
Divine Healing is the direct imparted life of the Lord Jesus Christ to our body,
it is essential that we shall know Him and know how to touch Him to appropriate
His strength and live by His life. It is as true today as it ever was, that as
many as touch Him are "made perfectly whole." But to touch Him is much more than
to mingle in the jostling crowd and to run after other people who appear to us
to have some gift of healing or power of faith that we do not possess. Therefore
in this work we teach people first to come to the Lord for salvation and to
become personally acquainted with Him, and then as they learn to live upon Him
for other things, it will be perfectly natural for them to take Him also for
their bodily needs and find experimentally true such precious words as these,
"In Him we live and move and have our being." "The life, also, of Jesus is made
manifest in our mortal flesh." "Because I live ye shall live also." "The Lord is
for the body and the body is for the Lord." "He that eateth me even he shall
live by me." No Retreat.

After we have known the Lord as our Healer it is a very serious thing to go back
to the "beggarly elements of this world." Faith can go forward forever, but
there is no divine provision for retreat without great peril and loss. The
pathway of life is strewn with mournful examples of the children of God who have
turned aside and fallen by the way. Medical treatment does not appear to have
the same effect upon those who have learned the better way and given up the good
for the perfect gift. Even drugs have a doubly deleterious influence upon a body
that has been cleansed and purified by the life of the Lord Jesus. Let us be
very careful about even looking back after we have taken advance ground. "If
they had been mindful of that country from which they went out, they might have
had opportunity to have returned, but now they desire a better country, that is,
an heavenly. Wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God." Let us not
make our God ashamed of us. Cautions As law abiding citizens, however, let us be
very careful about ignoring or violating the laws of the State. While you may
not think, and I do not think, that vaccination makes a material difference for
one who is really trusting God, yet it would be a very arrogant and discourteous
attitude to refuse to conform to the requirements of the public schools and the
medical authorities with regard to this matter, as well as the whole system of
sanitary legislation, which is a matter affecting the interests of the community
quite as much as your own.

Finally, let us be very careful about assuming the responsibility for the
healing of others, and thus making ourselves liable as criminals in many cases
through the death of persons who were in no condition to trust the Lord for
themselves. We have no right to assume the responsibility for others beyond
their own faith in God. It is well to remember that far-reaching direction which
the apostle has given us respecting our social attitudes, "He that in these
things serveth Christ is acceptable to God and approved unto men."

+A.B. Simpson, Earnests of the Coming Age, New York: Christian Alliance Pub.
Colossians, 1921, pp. 98-103.

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  CHAPTER 5: DIVINE HEALING IN THE ATONMENT
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Divine Healing in the Atonement*

A.B. Simpson Does the Atonement of our Lord Jesus Christ cover the healing of
these mortal bodies? Let us see.

1. If sickness has come into the world through sin, which is conceded, it must
be got out of the world through God's great remedy for sin, the cross of Jesus
Christ. If sickness is only a natural condition it may be met by natural means,
but if it be abnormal, and but a stage of death, which has passed upon all
because all have sinned, then its divinely appointed remedy is the atonement of
Jesus Christ, which God has set over against all the effects of the fall. It is
probably included in the comprehensive language of the apostle in his superb
antithesis in Rom. 5: "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and
death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned, For if
by one man's sin, death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance
of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus
Christ." This "abundance of life" is no doubt the life of the body as well as
the soul.

2. The types of the Old Testament contain very remarkable foreshadowings of the
healing of our bodies through the atonement of Jesus. Look at the cleansing of
the leper for example, in Lev. 14. It was through the sacrifice of two birds,
one of which represented the death, the other the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Look again at the deliverance of the people from the fearful plague that had
fallen upon them because of their murmuring and lusting. How was it
accomplished? By Aaron the high priest taking his censer full of burning coals
off the altar of sacrifice and then filling it with sweet incense and standing
between the living and the dead and making atonement (Numbers 16:46-50). Look
again at the story of the brazen serpent. It was a clear case of physical
suffering through the sting of the serpent, representing the power of Satan in
our bodies as well as our souls. The healing was accomplished by the uplifting
of the brazen serpent, a direct type of Jesus in His Atonement. It is idle to
spiritualize this. True Christ applies it to the salvation of the soul, the
receiving of eternal life, but eternal life is life in all its fullness, and
Christ constantly uses the term "life" in reference to the body as well as the
soul. "Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word which proceedeth out
of the mouth of God," has exclusive reference to the body. "That the life of
Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh has also exclusive reference to
the body. What right has any man to take a narrative, whose primary reference is
to a case of physical healing through a look of faith to that which symbolized a
crucified Redeemer, apply it exclusively to the spiritual aspect of salvation,
and, although it belongs to the broader dispensation of the Gospel, actually
narrow it down and make it mean less than in the days of Moses? Undoubtedly it
includes the greater salvation of the soul, but certainly it does not exclude
the salvation of the body and its deliverance from the venomed stroke of Satan
through a look of faith at the crucified Redeemer.

3. Other Old Testament references to Divine Healing through the Atonement. The
thirty-third chapter of Job is the most profound discussion of God's government
and God's chastenings, of any part of the Old Testament Scriptures. There Elihu,
speaking as the voice of God, expounds the gracious and paternal purposes for
which He sends us our afflictions. The philosophy of disease and healing is
perfectly given. It is very simple. Sickness is God's second voice to the man
who will not hear His first. It is His loud and solemn call to the soul to draw
back from some forbidden path or to step forth in some line of neglected duty.
Its remedy is therefore, first, instruction. "If there be a messenger with him,
an interpreter, one among a thousand, to show unto man His unrightness." Its
next prescription is the atonement of Christ and confidence in the merciful
deliverance of God on account of the great ransom. "Then He is gracious unto
him, and saith, 'Deliver him from going down to the pit: I have found a
ransom,'" or rather, as it is in the margin, "an atonement." Surely this is all
plain enough to a candid mind. But we find it all still further emphasized by
the strong language of David in the one-hundred-and-third psalm. "Bless the Lord
O my soul, and forget not all His benefits: who forgiveth all thine iniquities;
who healeth all thy diseases; who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who
crowneth thee with loving kindness and tender mercies; who satisfieth thy mouth
with good things so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle's." Why does he use
the word "redeem?" Simply because he is thinking the same thought that Elihu
expressed. The healing of his diseases is through the redemption which his
prophetical faith had already anticipated through the coming of the Messiah.
True, he may not have taken it in all the depths of its meaning, but the Holy
Spirit knew the meaning of the word which He was afterwards to explain, and
doubtless he used it in its full significance through the mouth of the Psalmist.

4. Allusions to the atonement in the later prophetic Scriptures. Of course the
highest and boldest of these is Isaiah, and the central chapter of his sublime
book and the entire Old Testament, is the fifty-third chapter. There we behold
the atonement for sin and wickedness in the most vivid light, prefixed by God's
great "Amen," "Surely," or "Amen, He hath borne our sicknesses and carried our
pains." We need not now stop to prove, as no one can deny, that the word,
"borne" means, as a substitute, to bear in the sense of atoning. It is simply
enough to say it is the very same word used in the book of Leviticus to describe
the atonement which the scape-goat made for the sins of the people, when he bore
them away to a forgotten land, and it is the same word in this chapter when it
is said that He bore the sins of men. But if anything more is needed it is
supplied in the next verse where the great catalogue of the blessings of the
redemption of Christ is crowned by the last clause, "By His stripes we are
healed." The only retreat left for those who question this simple teaching is to
apply the healing here mentioned in a spiritual sense. This would make the verse
a weak and unworthy tautology. The spiritual healing has already been described
in three clauses, covering the whole field in detail. Our transgressions are
first specified, that is, our acts of sin; our iniquities, that is our more
inward sin; our peace, that is, our positive spiritual blessings. What more is
left except our bodies, and what more natural than to add another literal
reference to them, "by His stripes we are healed." If it mean anything else it
is simply a weak repetition of the same idea already expressed in the previous
clauses without any necessity or reason. To strain a passage from its literal or
natural meaning simply to prove a passage or a doctrine is unworthy of true
exegesis, and will soon smother the possibility of faith in anything on the part
of the man or woman who does it. The Lord give us all a simple-hearted readiness
to take Him at His word and to take His word to mean what it says.

5. New Testament references. It is an easy step from Isaiah to Matthew 8:17, for
this is but a translation of the Old Testament verse. Happily it is a
translation by the mouth of the Holy Ghost, and leaves no doubt of the meaning
of Isaiah. The meaning of sickness and infirmities, especially when taken in
connection with the context and the healing of human bodies in which He was at
the time engaged, which this verse was quoted to explain, is beyond the
possibility of a question; and the verbs employed--"took" and "carried"--are
even stronger than those used in the Old Testament. But, some may say, this
passage may refer, not to Christ's death, but rather to His earthly ministry and
benevolent works of healing, that thus He took our infirmities and bore our
sicknesses by healing, with His touch and power, and that it has no reference
whatever to His cross, which had not yet been erected and endured. We are glad,
therefore, to have another passage with which to sum up this series of biblical
foundations, and which admits of no shadow of a question. It is the clear,
strong statement of Paul in Galatians 3:13 : "Christ had redeemed us from the
curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, "Cursed is every
one that hangeth on a tree.'" Here it is absolutely certain that it is the death
of Christ on the accursed tree that is the ground and price of redemption.
Whatever the curse is, it is removed by the death of the cross, the atonement of
Jesus, direct substitution of His life for ours.

Now what is the curse that is removed? It is the curse of the law. All that is
necessary, therefore, is to find from the Old Testament what the curse of the
law was. Of course we know that it was a far-reaching and eternal curse, but it
was also a temporal curse, a physical curse, a curse involving sickness,
suffering, infirmity, disease, pain. If this can be explicitly shown, it is as
certain as the truth of inspiration that the death of Christ has removed all
cause for such sickness, disease, infirmity, pain, in so far as it comes on
account of sin. Now "to the law and to the testimony." How was the curse of the
Old Testament actually specified? It is simply wonderful how exact the
correspondence is to the very terms we have been using. Read Deuteronomy
28:15-22. Therefore it is perfectly scriptural to say Christ has redeemed us
from consumption, fever, inflammation, having been made curse for us.

Beloved, what solid ground we are getting beneath our feet. It is in this
connection that Isaiah uses the literal words respecting Christ's suffering on
the cross, "Thou hast made Him sick in smiting Him." Our dear Lord actually
bore, in His dying agonies, our sicknesses, and physicians tell us that He, who
was never sick in His life-time, really died of a ruptured heart through the
awful pressure of His woe. Have we not then in these Scripture passages a sure
foundation for the simple, glorious statement on which faith may stand, nay, may
lie down in everlasting rest, that the atonement of Jesus Christ covers our
sicknesses, and furnishes solid ground for claiming, in His name, divine healing
through simple faith, and when we are walking in holy obedience, which, of
course, is the indispensable element within which we can continue to receive any
of the blessings of the Gospel?

Let us remember in conclusion a few simple inferences that will necessarily
follow this great truth.

1. If our healing is provided for by Jesus Christ, then it is a redemption right
which we may humbly yet boldly claim while walking obediently with the Lord. 2.
That it is a gift of grace, as all that Christ's blood has purchased will ever
be, and therefore cannot be mixed up with our own works or the use of human
means, but must be received wholly in His name, and in such a manner that He
shall have all the glory. 3. That it must be by faith, through which alone all
the blessings of the Gospel can be claimed. 4. That it is not the exceptional
privilege of a few favored ones, the occasional special and sovereign gift of
God where He is pleased to manifest His healing power for some exceptional cause
or special end, but that it is the heritage of all the children of faith and
holy obedience. 5. If our healing be the purchase of Christ's blood, and cost us
His stripes and agonizing death, how sacred a thing it is! How costly a gift!
How lovingly and entirely it should be returned to the Giver in living
sacrifice, and how devotedly His gift of healing should be consecrated to His
service and glory alone! So may the Lord help us to receive and to use this
precious birthright of faith and purchase of Christ's redeeming blood.

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  CHAPTER 6: HOW TO ABIDE
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How To Abide*

A.B. Simpson

"And now, little children, abide in him; that, when he shall appear, we may have
confidence, and not be ashamed before him at his coming." (1 John 2:28)

It would seem as though John meant that only little children could abide in Him;
that only when we get to be little can we know the Lord in His fullness; only
when we cease from our manly and womanly strength and become dependent can we
know His strength and independence as our support and stay. John counted himself
among the little children, because he says, "we" when he addresses us. He was
indeed a little child in spirit from the time Boanerges died, and John laid his
head on Jesus' breast to be strong no more in himself, and to be seen no more
apart from the enfolding arms of Jesus.

We have seen Christ in His personal glory; we have seen what it is to be in Him
and to have Him in us, and now we want to have these impressions stereotyped.
John says, "Little children, abide in him, that when he shall appear we may have
confidence."

Let us speak very particularly and plainly about how we may maintain this
abiding. You have surrendered; you have given up your strength as well as your
will; you have consented that henceforth He shall support your life. Like a true
bride, you have given up your very person, your name, your independence, so that
now He is to be your Lord. Your very life is merged in Him, and He becomes your
Head and your All in All. Now, beloved, how is this to be maintained? He says we
are to abide, and He will abide in some sense according to our abiding. "Abide
in me, and I in you." Live By The Moment

First, it must be a momentary life, not a current that flows on through its own
momentum; but a succession of little acts and habits. You have Him for the
moment, and you have Him perfectly; you are perfectly saved this moment; you are
victorious this moment, and that which fills this moment is large enough to fill
the next, so that if you shall renew this fellowship every moment, you shall
always abide in Him. Have you learned this? The failures in your life mostly
come through lost moments, broken stitches, little interstices, cleavages in the
rock where the drops of water trickle down and become a torrent. But if you lost
no steps and no victories, you shall abide in constant triumph.

First, then, learn this secret, that you are not sanctified for all time so that
there will be no more need for grace and victory; but you have grace for this
moment, and the next moment, and by the time life is spent, you shall have had a
whole ocean of His grace. It may be a very little trickling stream at first; but
let it flow through every moment, and it shall become a boundless ocean before
its course is done. Definite Acts of Will

Next, this abiding must be established by a succession of definite acts of will,
and of real, fixed, steadfast trust in Christ. It does not come as a spontaneous
and irresistible impulse that carries you whether you will or not, but you have
to begin by an act of trust, and you must repeat it until it becomes a habit. It
is very important to realize this. A great many think, when they get a blessing,
that it ought to sweep them on without further effort. It is not so. An act of
will, an act of choice is the real helm of spiritual life. You were saved from
sin by actually choosing Jesus as your Saviour; you were consecrated by
definitely giving yourself and taking Him for everything. So beloved, you must
keep the helm fixed, and press on, moment by moment, still choosing to trust
Christ and live by Him until at last it comes to be as natural as your
breathing. It is like a man rescued from drowning; when they take him from the
water, respiration seems to be stopped. And when it returns, it is not
spontaneous, but a succession of labored pumpings; they breathe the air in and
they breathe the air out, perhaps for half an hour; then an involuntary action
is noticed, and nature comes and makes the act spontaneous; and soon the man is
breathing without effort. But it came by a definite effort at first, and by and
by it became spontaneous. So with Christ: if you would have this abiding in Him
become spontaneous, you must make it a spiritual habit. The prophet speaks of
the mind "stayed on God," and David says, "My heart is fixed, trusting in the
Lord." We begin by determining, and we obey Him no matter what it costs; and by
and by the habit is established. The Law of Habit

Then comes the third principle: habit. Every habit grows out of a succession of
little acts. No habit comes full-grown into your life; it grows like the roots
of a tree, like the fibres of the flesh, as the morsels of food you swallow are
absorbed into your life. You see a man going steadily along in a course of life,
but that course of life was established by the habit of years. The stenographer
at my side sits and takes down my words as fast as I can speak them. At first it
was clumsy and slow work; but at length it became a habit, and now he does not
have to stop and think how to make the characters; they come to him as naturally
as the words come to my lips. So it is with writing: we remember how painfully
at first we had to hold the pen, but we now dash off our signature, and it is
always the same; our friends know it, our banker knows it; and it can be
identified as ours. How did it come about? Because for years we have made the
same marks. This is the reason, beloved, that it pays to plod; the habit becomes
at length a necessity, and is easier as it grows.

It is so with evil; it is easier for a man to go down the longer he goes down,
and it is easier for him to go up the longer he goes up. And so it is with
looking to Jesus; it is like the movement of the eye--the lid moves
instinctively and the Bible uses it as a figure of God's care. "Keep me as the
apple of thine eye." Before the dust can hurt the eye, the little curtain falls
over the tender ball. So we find ourselves in life instinctively holding our
tongues when we would have felt like talking. So we can discern the very scent
of evil before it comes and inarticulately breathe a prayer to heaven before the
danger reaches us. Thus also will the habit of obedience be formed; it comes by
doing steadily, persistently, and faithfully what the Lord would have you to do.
He is putting you to school in these little trials, until He gets the habit
confirmed, and obedience becomes easy and natural. Self-Repression

Again, if we would abide in Christ we must continually study to have no
confidence in self. Self-repression must be ever the prime necessity of divine
fullness and efficiency. Now you know how quickly you spring to the front when
any emergency arises. You know how easy it was for Peter to step forth with his
sword drawn before he knew whether he was able to meet the foe or not. When
something in which you are interested comes up, you say that you think under
some sudden impulse, and then, perhaps, you have weeks of taking back your
thought, and taking the Lord's instead. It is only as we get out of the way of
the Lord that He can use us. And so, beloved, let us practice the repression of
self and the suspending of our will about everything until we have looked to Him
and said, "Lord, what is Thy will? What is Thy thought about it?" When you have
that, you and He are not at cross-purposes; and there is blessed harmony. Those
who thus abide in Christ have the habit of reserve and quiet; they are not
reckless talkers; they will not always have an opinion about everything, and
they will not always know what they are going to do. They will be found holding
back rash judgments, and walking softly with God. It is our headlong, impulsive
spirit that keeps us so constantly from hearing and following the Lord.
Dependence

If we would abide in Christ we must remember that Christ has undertaken not only
the emergencies of life, but everything; and so we must cultivate the habit of
constant dependence on Him; falling back on Him and finding Him everywhere;
recognizing that He has undertaken the business of your life, and there is not a
difficulty that comes up, but He will carry you through if you let Him have His
way and hold the reins, and you just trust and follow. Recognizing His Presence

Again, if you would abide in Christ you must cultivate the habit of always
recognizing Him as near, in your heart of hearts, so that you need not try to
find Him, reaching out to the distant heavens and wondering where He has gone.
He is right here; His throne is in your heart; His resources are at hand. There
may be no sense of God's presence, but just accept the fact that the Spirit is
in your heart, and act accordingly. Bring everything to Him, and soon the
consciousness will become real and delightful. We do not begin with feeling--we
begin with acting as though He were here. So, if you would abide in Christ,
treat Him as if He were in you, and you in Him; and He will respond to your
trust, and honor your confidence. God In Everything

Further, if you would abide in Christ, you must recognize that Christ is in
everything that comes in your life; and that everything that occurs in the
course of Providence is in some sense connected with the will of God. That
trying circumstance was not chance, something with which Christ had nothing to
do, and which you can only protest against and wonder how God can sit on the
throne and let such things be. You must believe that God led in it, and though
the floods have lifted up their heads on high, yet God sits on the throne, and
is mightier than the great sea billows and the noise of many waters. You must
believe that He will "cause the wrath of man to praise him, and the remainder
thereof will he restrain." You must say: "God is our refuge and strength, a very
present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be
removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; though
the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the
swelling thereof."

We need not regard everything as the very best thing that we would choose, or
the very best thing that God ultimately has for you; but it is allowed, either
that God may show you His power to overcome it, or else that it may teach you
some lesson of holiness, trust, tranquillity, or courage. It is something that,
under the circumstances, fits into God's purposes; and, therefore, you are not
to look for different circumstances, but to conquer in these already around you.
You are not to run away and say, "I will abide in Christ when I get to where I
want to be," but you must abide in Christ in the ship and the storm, as well as
in the harbor of blessing. Recognize that everything is permitted by God, and
that He is able to make all things work together; and not only so, but to make
you know they are all for your good, and they are working out His purposes.
Watch the Outward Senses

Again, if we would abide in Christ, we must be very watchful of our senses.
There is nothing that so easily sets us wandering, and leads us out into
dangerous fields and by-path meadows as the senses of the body. How often our
eyes will take us away! Walking down the street you will find a thousand things
to call you from a state of recollection. Some people's eyes are like a
spider's--they see behind and before and on every side. You know Solomon says,
"Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee."
It is this letting the world in, no matter by what door it comes, that separates
us from the presence of our Lord. So with our ears. If you listen to
one-hundredth part of the conversation even of Christians you will be thoroughly
defiled; and so you have to hold your ears, and your eyes, and live in a little
circle. You have not to manage half so many things as you undertake to
sometimes, and about which you have so much anxiety.

There is a little creature called the water spider, and it lives in the water,
away down in the mud lake of the marsh. It just goes down a few inches and lives
there all the time. You ask how it can breathe and live in the water? Oh, it has
a strange apparatus by which it is able to gather around itself a bubble of air
a few times larger than its body. It goes to the surface and fills it with air
and goes down, and this little air bubble forms an atmosphere for it, and there
it builds its nest and rears its young; and you know where air is the water
cannot get in. So it is as safe in its little home with the dark water all
around it, as if it lived above in the clear air of heaven. So we can get into
our element and stay there with Him, and although there is sin around us, and
hell beneath us, and men are struggling and tempted and sinning, we shall be as
safe as the saints above, in the heavenlies, in Christ Jesus. Internal Prayer

Once more, if we would abide in Him, we must cultivate the habit of internal
prayer, communing with God in the heart. We must know the meaning of such words
as "God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in
truth." "In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God concerning you."
This habit of silent prayer, not in word, but in thought, is one of the secrets
of abiding. There is an old word the mystics used--"recollection." We would call
it a recollected spirit. Vigilance

There is another word in connection with abiding: it is vigilance--being wide
awake. It is the opposite of drifting. It is the spirit of holding, and being
ever on guard, and yet sweetly held by the Lord. Now this does not mean that you
have to do all the holding and watching; you are to have your hand on the helm,
and Christ will do the steering. It is like the brakes on the train--the
brakeman only touches the lever and sets the current in motion; the engineer
does not have to make the train go, he has only to turn the throttle. You and I
do not need to fight our battles. We have only to give the watchword, and the
powers of heaven follow it up if it is in the name of Jesus. So we may ever
abide in fellowship and victory moment by moment, until at last He becomes the
element of our very life. Let God Lead

If we would abide in Christ, we must stop trying to have God help us, and fall
into God's way and let Him lead. We must get the idea out of our spirit that we
have chosen to serve Christ and we have got to have Christ help us. We must see,
rather, that we have come into His way and He is carrying us because He cannot
go any other way. If you get on the bosom of the river, you have to go down the
river; if you are in the bosom of God, you have to go with Him. Only surrender
yourself to God, and your life will be as strong as omnipotence and as sweet as
heaven. Surprises

We should, perhaps, speak of the surprises that come. Sometimes the Lord let
sudden temptations sweep over you to put you on your guard; and if such things
come into your life, take them as from Him, sent to put you on the watch and
give you some hint, like the falling of the eyelash to let you know that the eye
is threatened. But if you keep very close to Christ, I do not believe that these
things will come as quickly as you think. They spring often from some
heedlessness of your own. You are getting out of the way, and were not where the
Lord expected you to be, and, perhaps, the surprise came to let you know that
you had been in the enemy's country. If we abide in Him, all evil will have to
strike us through Him. Perhaps you were a little out of your center and Christ
let the enemy come to frighten you back to Him, just as the shepherd's dogs are
sent to drive the lambs into the fold. Better that you should get a little fall
than ultimately to meet with disaster. Failures But if, notwithstanding all your
care, you make a mistake, if you have a disaster or a discouragement, don't say,
"I have lost my blessing." "I have found this life impracticable"; but remember
that "if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins,
and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." How to Make God Real A friend asked
the question the other day, "How can I make God real?" God is not real to many
people. He does not seem so real to that man as his difficult task; He does not
seem so real to that woman as her work and her trials; He does not seem so real
to that sufferer as his sickness. How shall we make Him real? The best way I
know is to take Him into the things that are real. That headache is real. Take
Him into it, and He will be as real as the headache, and a good deal more, for
He will be there when the headache is gone. That trial is real; it has burned
itself into your life; God will be more so. That washing and ironing are real;
take God into your home, and He will be as real. That is what makes Him real--to
link Him with your life. So the banyan tree grows. First its trunk and branches
shoot up to heaven, and then the branches grow down into the ground and become
rooted in the earth, and by and by there are a hundred branches interwoven and
interlaced from the ground so that the storm and the winds cannot disturb it,
and even the simoon of the Indian Ocean cannot tear it up. It is rooted and
bound together by hundreds of interlacing roots and branches. And so when God
saves a soul He plants one branch; but when He comes to fill and sanctify and
help in your difficulties, each is another branch; and thus your life becomes
rooted and bound to God by a hundred fibres, and all the power of hell cannot
break that fellowship or separate you from His love.

"Lord Jesus, make Thyself to me A living, bright reality, More present to
faith's vision keen Than any outward object seen, More dear, more intimately
nigh, Than e'en the sweetest earthly tie.

"Nearer and nearer still to me Thou living, loving Saviour be. Brighter the
vision of Thy face, More glorious still Thy words of grace; Till life shall be
transformed to love, A heaven below, a heaven above."

E-sword module built by Manoau2002


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  CHAPTER 7: MY OWN STORY
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My Own Story*

A.B. Simpson

I have been asked by some of my Christian friends to put in permanent form the
story of the things which the Lord has done for me. There is perhaps a sense in
which each of us is a "living epistle, known and read of all men," but the most
sacred story of every life is the hidden record which lies back of our words and
actions. If there is anything in this story which can be used to help the
children of God, I am willing to overcome the natural reticence which has made
it always a pain even to publish my photograph, and let God use the testimony in
any way in which it may please and glorify Him. The first recollection of my
childhood is the picture of my mother, as I often heard her in the dark and
lonely night, weeping and wailing in her room, in her loneliness and sorrow, and
I still remember how I used to get up and kneel beside my little bed even before
I knew God for myself, and pray to Him to comfort her. The cause of her grief I
afterwards better understood. She was a sensitive and high-spirited woman, who
had come of a good family in the little island where I was born, and where her
father was one of the public men of the island a honored member of the
legislature, and she had a great number of friends. In their earlier married
life my father had been engaged in the shipbuilding business, but had suffered a
financial blow in one of the terrible panics that had struck the island, and had
been obliged to close his business, saving but a few hundred dollars out of it,
and had determined to seek his fortune in what was then the far west, that is,
the most western portion of the province of Ontario, Canada. With little
knowledge of the country, he had purchased a farm in one of the dreariest
regions that could be imagined, and had taken his sensitive wife and his little
family of four children into this wilderness. Before reaching our home the
youngest child had been torn from its mother's arms by sickness and death,
largely the result of the trying journey of that day when there were no
railroads or steamboats, and our journey of fifteen hundred miles had been
slowly and painfully made on canal boats and stages. Burying her precious babe
in a little town some distance from our home destination, my brokenhearted
mother at length reached the dreary log cabin which was to be her future home.
Our nearest neighbor was a godly Scotch Highlander, who used to come and see us
and pray with us in Gaelic, but could not speak one word of English. There was
not another Christian friend within a circuit of miles. In that lonely cabin and
that desolate wilderness, separated for the rest of her life from all the
friends she held so dear, and from the social conditions to which she had been
accustomed, was it a wonder, with her intense and passionate nature, which had
not yet learned to know God in all His fulness as her all-sufficient portion,
that she should often spend her nights in weeping and wailing, and perhaps in
passionate upbraidings, because of her cruel lot, and that her little boy should
find his first religious experience come to him in trying to grope his way to
the heart of Him, who alone could help her. My next reminiscence has also a
tinge of religion about it. I had lost a boy's chief treasure, an old
jack-knife, with which I was playing, and I still remember an impulse came to me
to kneel down and pray about it. Soon afterwards I was delighted to find it. The
incident made a profound impression upon my young heart and gave me a lifelong
conviction, which has since borne fruit innumerable times, that it is our
privilege to take everything to God in prayer. I do not mean to convey the idea
that I was at this time truly converted. No one had ever spoken to me about my
soul and I only knew God in a groping, far away sense, but I can now see that
God was discounting my future and treating me in advance as if I were already
His child, because He knew I would be His child later. This explains why God
does so many things even in answer to prayer for persons who do not yet fully
know Him. He is treating them on the principle of faith and calling "the things
that are not as though they were." The truth is, the influences around my
childhood were not as favourable to early conversion as they are today in many
Christian homes. My father was a good Presbyterian of the old school and the
belief in the Shorter Catechism and the doctrine of foreordination, and all the
conventional rules of a well ordered Puritan household. He was himself a devout
Christian and most respected for his intelligent mind, his consistent life, and
his strong practical sense. I can still remember his rising long before daylight
and with his lighted candle sitting down in the cheerless sitting room to read
his Bible and tarry long at his morning devotions, and the picture filled my
soul with a kind of sacred awe. On the Sabbath days we were brought up according
to the strictest Puritan formula. When we did not go in the family wagon to
church, which was in a town miles distant, we were all assembled in the family
circle and sat for hours while father, mother, or one of the children read in
turn from some good old book, that was beyond our understanding. It gives me a
chill to this day to see a cover of these old books, such as Boston's Fourfold
State, Baxter's Saints' Rest, Doddridge's Rise and Progress of Religion in the
Soul, for it was with these that my youthful soul was disciplined. The only
seasons of relief came when it happened to be our turn to read. Then we felt
immense and prided the young orator so as to forget the weariness of the volume.
Then in the afternoon we had all to stand in a row and answer the questions of
the Shorter Catechism. There were about one hundred and fifty in all, and our
rule was to take half each Sunday and finish the next Sunday, and then start
over again, and so year after year as the younger children grew up and joined
the circle.

One of the few whippings which I got in my childhood was because one sunny
Sabbath I ventured to slip out of the house and was seen by my father scampering
around the yard in the joy of my ungodly liberty. I was speedily brought back
and with great solemnity told that I would get my whipping next morning before
breakfast, for it was not considered quite the thing to break the Sabbath by
even a whipping. I believe I got the whipping that was coming to me the next
morning, but I still remember how my older brother, who had a much wider
experience and wiser head than I took me aside that day and told me that if ever
I was again condemned to a whipping he knew a way of getting out of it. And then
he told me with great secrecy to get up the next morning before daylight, about
the time my father was accustomed to rise, to light the candle and go and sit
down in a corner of the sitting room with the Bible before me and show proper
spirit of penitence and seriousness, and he was quite sure my father would take
the hint and let me off. I am sorry to say that I was enough of a hypocrite to
practice this trick, and sure enough, one morning, when a whipping was coming to
me, I stole out of my bed, and sitting down with a very demure and solemn face
to practice my pretended devotions, I can still see in my imagination my quiet
and silent father casting side glances at me from under his spectacles, as
though to make quite sure that I was in earnest, and after finishing his
devotions he quietly slipped away to his work and nothing more was said about
the chastisement.

Looking back on these early influences I cannot say that I regret the somewhat
stern mode in which my early life was shaped. It taught me a spirit of reverence
and discipline for which I often have had cause to thank God since. It threw
over my youthful spirit a natural horror for evil things which often afterwards
safeguarded me when thrown amid the temptations of the world. And the religious
knowledge, which was crammed into my mind even without understanding it,
furnished me with forms of doctrine and statements of truth which afterwards
became illuminated by the Holy Spirit, and proved to be precious vessels for
holding the treasures of divine knowledge. In our later family history these
severe restraints were withdrawn from the younger members, as a more liberal age
threw its influence over our home, but I cannot say that the change was a
beneficial one. I believe that the true principle of family training is a
blending of thorough discipline with much loving, true Christian liberty. My
first definite religious crisis came at about the age of fourteen. Prior to this
I had for a good while earnestly desired to study for the ministry. I think that
this was rather a conviction of duty than a spiritual impulse. I knew that my
parents had dedicated my elder brother, four years my senior, to the ministry.
Indeed, they had done this before he was born, and he was always looked upon as
the chosen one for this high honor. I may have occasion later to show the sorrow
which this brought into his life. The desire and resolve grew up in my heart
without the kindly cheerings of my parents. I still remember how my carnal heart
rebelled against the ministry because of the restraints it would put upon me.
Naturally I wanted to get many things which I felt a preacher ought not to have.
One thing particularly I had a great fascination for, that was to shoot and hunt
game, but then, I reasoned, if I were a minister it would not be the thing for
me to be going hunting, and for a time my little soul waged a big battle over
this. During the conflict I remember I had saved up a little money, from funds
that I had earned by special work, and one day I stole off to the town and
invested the whole of it in a shooting gun, and for a few days I had the time of
my life. I used to steal out to the woods, concealing as best I could this
forbidden idol and then smuggling it back to hide it in the garret. One day,
however, my mother found it and there was a scene. Her own brother had lost his
life through the accidental discharge of his gun, and I knew and should have
remembered, that guns were things proscribed in our family. It was the day of
judgment for me when that wicked weapon was brought down from its hiding place,
my mother standing at a safe distance, wringing her hands and pouring out the
vials of her wrath while I sat confounded and crushed. The next day my sentence
was to march back to the town and take that gun to the place from whence it
came, and with deep humiliation return it to the man from whom I had wickedly
bought it, and see, not only the gun, but the good money that I had paid for it
go too. That tragedy settled the question of the ministry. Soon after I quite
decided to give up these side issues and prepare myself, if I could only find an
open way, to be a minister of the Gospel. But as yet, the matter had not been
mooted in the family. One day, however, my father in his quiet, grave way, with
my mother sitting by, called my elder brother and myself into his presence, and
began to explain how my elder brother had long been destined to the ministry,
and the time had now come when he should begin his studies and go in special
training. My father added that he had a little money, rescued from the wrecked
business of many years before, which was now slowly coming in, and which would
be sufficient to give an education to one of his boys, but not to both, and
therefore, he quietly concluded, that it would be my duty to give place to my
brother, while I would stay at home and help them on the farm, and he would go
to college. I can still feel the lump that rose in my throat as I stammered out
my consent to my brother's being educated at the family expense, for I could
clearly see that he had been foreordained to be a minister, at least by my
father and mother, if not by the Lord; but I ventured to plead that they would
consent to my getting my own education if I could. I asked no money, no help,
but only my father's blessing and consent, and I still remember the quiet,
trembling tones with which he at last yielded and said, "God bless you my boy,
even if I cannot help you." So the struggle began and I shall never cease to
thank God that it was a hard one. Someone has said, "Many people succeed because
success is thrust upon them, but the most successful lives are those that began
without a penny." Nothing under God was ever a greater blessing to me than the
hard places which began with me nearly half a century ago, and have never yet
ceased. For the first few months we took lessons in Greek, Latin and Higher
Mathematics from our kind pastor who was a good scholar and anxious to help us
in our purpose. I had already had a good, common school education. Then I
secured a certificate by dint of hard work as a common school teacher, and at
the early age of fifteen I found myself teaching a school of about forty boys
and girls, one quarter of whom were grown men and women, while I looked even
younger than my years. How much I would have given in those days for a few stray
whiskers, or anything that would have made me look older. I often wonder how I
ever was able to hold in control those rough country fellows, any one of whom
could have thrashed me with his little finger, but I can now see that it was the
hand of the Lord, and that He was pleased to give me a power and control that
did not consist in brawn or bone. Of course, my object in teaching school was to
earn money for my first session at college, and along with my duties as a
teacher I was studying between times every spare moment to prepare myself for
the opening examination of my college course. But the strain of all this
terrific work upon a young and yet undeveloped brain and body was impossible to
sustain long, and one night there came a fearful crash, in which it seemed to me
the very heavens were falling. After retiring to my bed I suddenly seemed to see
a strange light blazing before my eyes and then my nerves gave way and I sprang
from my bed, trembling and almost fainting, and immediately fell into a
congestive chill of great violence that almost took my life. To add to the
horror of that night there was a man in the house where I was boarding,
suffering from delirium tremens and his horrible agonies, shrieks and curses
seemed to add to my own distress the very horrors of hell itself. Next morning I
was forced to ask for a leave of absence, and returned to my father's house a
physical wreck. The physician told me I must not look at a book for a year, that
my whole system had collapsed and that I was in the greatest danger. Then began
a period of mental and physical agony which no language can describe. I seemed
possessed with the idea that at three o'clock on some day I was to die and every
day as that hour drew near I became prostrated with a dreadful nervousness,
watching in agonized suspense till it was passed, wondering that I was still
alive. One day as the hour came near there fell upon me that awful sense of
approaching death which could not be gainsaid. Fainting and terrified I called
my father to my bed side, telling him I was dying. Worst of all I had no hope
and no Christ. My whole religious training had left me without any Gospel. I had
a God of great severity and a theology which provided in some mysterious way for
that great change called regeneration or the new birth. O how I was waiting for
that change to come to me and it had not yet come. O how my father prayed for me
that day, and I fondly cried in utter despair for God to spare me just long
enough to be saved. After a sense of sinking into bottomless depth constantly,
rest came and the crisis was over for another day. I looked up at the clock and
it was past three. It seemed to me then that God was just going to spare me for
one day, and that I must strive and pray that day for salvation as a doomed man,
who never would have another chance. O how I prayed and besought others to pray
and almost feared to go to sleep that night lest I should lose a moment from
this intense and tremendous search for God and eternal life. But the day passed
and still I was not saved. It now seems strange that there was no voice there to
tell me the simple way of faith, but I suppose it was the result of the old
stern theology that looked upon salvation as the work of God's sovereign work
with which we have but little to do. Day after day passed. My life hanging on a
thread, but I seemed encouraged with the idea that God would spare me long
enough to find salvation if I only continued to seek it with all my heart. But
how often since then has it been my delight to tell poor sinners that they do
not need as the old lines say, To knock and weep, and watch and wait, for God is
waiting and wondering we do not open the gate and enter in. Since then God has
given to me these lines,

We do not need at Mercy's gate To "knock and weep, and watch and wait," For
Mercy's gifts are offered free, And she has waited long for thee. At length, one
day I stumbled, in the library of my minister, upon an old Scotch book, called
Marshall's Gospel Mystery of Salvation, and as I turned over the leaves I came
to a sentence which opened my eyes, and at the same time opened for me the gates
of life eternal. In substance it was this, "The first good work you will ever
perform is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Until you do this all your
works, prayers, tears and resolves are vain. This very moment it is your
privilege and your duty, and the very first duty above all others, to kneel down
and take the Lord Jesus as your Saviour, and tell Him you believe according to
His word, that He then saves you here and now. Believe this in spite of your
doubts and fears and you will immediately pass into eternal life, will be
justified from all your sins and receive a new heart and all the gracious
operations of the Holy Spirit." Light, why this was supernal light to me, and I
threw myself on my knees and at once, looking up in the face of the Lord in
spite of all my doubts and fears I said, "Lord Jesus, Thou has said, that him
that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out. Thou knowest how long and how
earnestly I have wanted to come, but I did not know how. Now I come the best I
can and I believe because Thou hast commanded me to believe that Thou dost
receive me, that Thou dost save me, and from this moment I am Thy child,
forgiven and saved, simply because I have taken Thee at Thy word, and I now dare
to look up in the face of God and say, Abba, Father, Thou art mine." In that
moment there came to my heart the assurance that always comes to the believing
soul, "he that believeth hath the witness in himself." I had been seeking the
witness without believing, but from the moment I dared to believe, the Spirit
answered to the word and told me I was born of God. The months that followed my
conversion were very full of spiritual blessing. The promises of God burst upon
my soul with a new and marvelous light, and words that had been empty sounds
became divine revelations to my soul, and every one seemed especially for me.
There was, perhaps, in my temperament a vein of imagination and it clothed the
glowing promises of Isaiah and Jeremiah with a strange and glorious radiance and
I can still remember the ecstasy with which I used to read, "I have sworn that I
will never be wroth with thee nor rebuke thee. For the mountains shall depart,
and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither
shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on
thee." When I heard through Christian's talking of their failures and fears, I
wondered if a time should ever come when I should lose this supreme joy of a
"soul in its earliest love," and I remember how I used to pray that rather than
let me go back into the old life the Lord would take me at once to heaven. I
remember one day especially, of which I still have the record, when I was about
fifteen years of age, a day which I had wholly devoted to fasting and prayer,
with a view to entering into a personal covenant with God in a very solemn and
formal way. [The convenant is dated January 19, 1861, see Reading 2.1. Simpson
was 17 at the time.] I had been reading Doddridge's Rise and Progress of
Religion in the Soul and had determined to follow his suggestions to young
Christians to enter into such a covenant, and I wrote out at considerable length
a detailed transcription, in which I gave myself wholly to God and to Him for
every promised blessing, and especially for the grace and power to use my life
for His service and glory. I remember a certain special blessing, which I
included in my requests and specifications, and I have often wondered since how
literally God has fulfilled them in me in His gracious providence through my
life. Before the close of the day I signed and sealed this covenant just as
literally as I would have done a human agreement and laid it away.

Two incidents of my Grammar school career are very vivid in my recollection. One
was a providential escape from drowning. I had gone with one of my school mates
to gather wild grapes on the banks of the river. After a while I was tempted by
my companion to go in swimming, an art which I had never attempted and which the
slightest reflection would have made me avoid. In a few moments the water had
got beyond my depth, and with a sense of agony, which I never shall forget I
found myself choking painfully under the surface. In that moment, I still
recollect, how the whole of my life came before me in a vision and I can well
understand the story told by drowning persons whose past histories seem
photographed in an instant before their minds in the act of losing
consciousness. I remember even seeing, as clearly as if I had read it from the
printed page, the notice in the local paper, telling of my accidental drowning.
But God mercifully saved me. My companion was not able to rescue me, but his
shouts were heard by some men in a little boat a hundred yards away, and they
pulled me out and lay me on the river bank when black in the face and about to
sink for the last time. As I came back to consciousness afterwards, it seemed to
me that a million years had passed since I was last on earth. I am sure that
experience greatly deepened my spiritual earnestness. The other incident was
less grave. I was usually very ambitious to win all the prizes possible, and it
was my good fortune to secure a very large and handsomely bound book, a sort of
cyclopedia. My chum, who had been defeated in the examination, had set his heart
on getting that book from me, and finally succeeded by arousing my cupidity to
get possession of an old violin belonging to him, and on which he used to
practice his wiles on my too responsive heart, until, at last, I consented to
exchange my splendid prize for his old fiddle. I took it home afterwards and
made night hideous during the following summer, and myself a general nuisance,
without ever succeeding in playing anything worth listening to. But there was a
latent vein of music somewhere in my nature, which the strange sounds that I was
able to extort from the catgut seemed to satisfy if they did not edify anybody
else. My childhood and youth were strangely sheltered and guarded by divine
providence. I recall with a sacred awe and thankfulness the many times in which
my life was preserved. I have already referred to my narrow escape from death by
drowning. On another occasion, while climbing up on the scaffolding of a
building in the course of erection, I stepped upon a loose board and slipped and
fell. Instinctively throwing out my hands I caught hold of timber and held
desperately for some time, calling for assistance. When just about to let go
through exhaustion, my father, who was some distance away, rushed to my aid and
caught me just before I fell. The fall would have either maimed or killed me.
Another time I was thrown headlong over my horse's head, as he stumbled and
falling under me, and when I came to consciousness I found him bending over me,
with his nose close to my face, as though he would have spoken and encouraged
me. Many times was I delivered from danger, and I believe God was keeping my
life for Himself in some gracious way. Especially do I praise Him for the
longsuffering kindness in which He bore the backslidings of my youth, and the
spirit of selfish ambition which to so great an extent controlled my life. At
length the time came for me to leave home and commence my college course in Knox
College and the University of Toronto. A special course had been arranged for
students for the ministry, by which they took certain classes in Knox College
and certain lectures in the University. It would be of little interest to recite
the ordinary experiences of a college student, and it is only necessary to
sketch a few of the special pictures that come back to memory from these early
years. My deep religious impressions still continued and they kept me from the
temptations of city life. There was a sort of horror associated with the saloon,
or a house of infamy, which put an effectual barrier across my sensitive heart,
and such things never appealed to me. But I was thrown with a roommate in the
first year of my college course, whose influence over my heart was most
disastrous. He was a much older man and although a theological student and a
very bright and attractive fellow was a man of convivial tastes and habits. It
was his favourite custom once or twice a week to have what he called an oyster
supper in our room, and to invite one or two of his friends, who happened to be
medical students, and whose habits were worse than his. On these occasions both
beer and whiskey would be brought in, and the orgie would go on until very late
at night with laugh and song and story, and many a jest that was neither pure
nor reverent. I had not firmness nor experience sufficient to suppress these
entertainments, and I was compelled to be a witness and in some measure a
partaker, although, the coarse amusement was always distasteful to all my
spiritual life. My roommate was cynical and utterly unspiritual. At the same
time he had a fine literary taste and was fond of poetry, which he was always
reading or repeating. There was a certain attraction about him, and altogether
his influence over me was bad. I did not cease to pray, or to walk in some
measure with God, but the sweetness and preciousness of my early piety was
already withered. I am sorry to say that I did not recover my lost blessing
until I had been the minister of the Gospel for more than ten years. I do not
mean to imply that I went into open sin or turned away from God, but my
religious life was chiefly that of duty, with little joy or fellowship, and my
motives were intensely ambitious and worldly. In a word my heart was
unsanctified and I had not yet learned the secret of the indwelling Christ and
the baptism of the Holy Ghost. At the same time there must have been a strong
current of faith, and a real habit of prayer in my college life, for God did
many things for me, which were directly supernatural and to me at the time very
wonderful. My careful savings had only been sufficient to take me through the
first year of college, and for the following years my way was unprovided. But
there was a system of scholarships or bursaries consisting of considerable
amounts of money, which were given to the successful student in a competitive
examination. I set my heart on winning some of these scholarships, not merely
for the honor, but for the pecuniary value, which would be almost sufficient to
meet what was lacking in my living expenses.

One of them required the writing of an essay on the subject of baptism, and
after much hard study, and I am glad to say very much prayer, I wrote an essay
proving to my own satisfaction that children ought to be baptized, and that
baptism should be by sprinkling and not by immersion. Through God's great
goodness I won the prize, but in later years I had to take back all the
arguments and doctrinal opinions, which I so stoutly maintained in my youthful
wisdom. My next venture was for a much larger prize, amounting to $120 and for
which an essay was to be written on the difficult historical and philosophical
subject, "The Preparation of the World for the First Coming of Christ and the
Setting up of His Kingdom." While I studied hard and long for the materials of
this paper, I deferred the final composition until the very last moment. I am
afraid that my mind has always had a habit of working in this way, namely, of
leaving its supreme efforts until the cumulative force of constant thought and
recollection has crystallized the subject into its most intense form. And so I
found myself within two days of the final moment for giving in the papers and
the entire article yet to be written out in its final form from the crude first
copy, which had been prepared. The task proved to be a longer and harder one
than I dreamed, and when the last day had ended and the paper had to be given in
by the following morning at nine o'clock, there was still seven or eight hours
work to be done. Of course, the night that followed was a sleepless one. Toiling
at my desk and literally tearing along like a race horse for the goal, I wrote
and wrote and wrote, until my hand grew almost paralyzed, and I had to get
another to write for me while I dictated. But soon my brain began to fail me and
I found myself literally falling asleep in my chair. Then I did something for
the first and last time in my life, which I can understand professional men
doing until they fall under the power of the most dangerous opiates. I sent out
to a drug store for something that would keep me awake for six or seven hours at
any cost, and as I sipped it through the night my brain was held to its
tremendous task; and as the light broke on the winter morning that followed the
last sentences were finished and the paper folded and sealed and sent by a
special messenger to my professor, while I threw myself on my bed and slept as
if I would never wake. Some weeks passed during which I prayed much for my
strenuously prepared paper. I found there were about a dozen competitors, many
of them students in advanced years of the course. Naturally there seemed little
hope of my success, but something told me that God was going to see me through.
At length the morning came when it was announced that the name of the successful
candidate should be declared. But I could not stay in the class room, I was too
much excited to stand the strain, and I slipped away into the college yard to a
lonely place where I threw myself on my knees and had the matter out with God,
and before I rose from my knees, I dared to believe somehow that God had heard
my prayer and given me my prize, which was so essential to the continuance of my
study. Then I spilled back into the class room and sat down in my place. I
instantly noticed that every eye was turned on me with a strange expression
which I could not understand. Nothing was said about the prize during the
lecture hour. It had all been said just before I came in. But at the close my
professor called me to his room and congratulated me on my success, and I
learned for the first time that, while I was out praying in the yard, he had
told the class that the prize had come to me. This explained their strange
glances at me as I went in. I mention this instance especially to show how God
all through my life has taught me, at least has been trying to make me
understand, that before any great blessing could come to me I must first believe
for it in blind and naked faith. I am quite sure that the blessing of believing
for that prize was more to me than its great pecuniary value, which enabled me
to continue my study for the next two years.

During the summer vacation, after my second year, as I was a theological
student, I was sent out to preach in mission churches and stations. In this way
I also earned a little money, besides gaining a much more valuable experience in
practical work. But I remember well the look of surprise with which the grave
men of the congregations, where I preached, would gaze at me as I entered the
pulpit. I was extremely young and looked so much younger than I really was, that
I do not wonder now that they looked aghast at the child that was presuming to
preach to them from the high pulpit, where he stood in fear and trembling.

0The greatest trials of all these days was my preaching for the first time in
the church in which I had been brought up, and in the presence of my father and
my mother. In some way the Lord helped me to get through, but I never once dared
to meet their eyes. In those days preaching was an awful business, for we knew
nothing of trusting the Lord for utterance. The manuscript was written in full
and the preacher committed it to memory and recited it verbatim. On this
occasion I walked the woods for days beforehand, repeating to the trees and
squirrels the periods and paragraphs which I had so carefully composed. The
misfortune sometimes was that the forgetting of a word would blot out from the
frightened brain of the poor preacher all the matter that followed. One of the
most pathetic stories of Professor Wilson Tales, is that of the student
minister, a poor wight, who like me had presumed to preach before his minister
and parents, and then I am happy to say, unlike me, had stuck in the middle of
his discourse and after trying vainly to recall his sentences and murmuring over
and over again, "My brethren, my brethren," finally stuck his fingers in his
hair and tearing, like one half mad, fled from the pulpit in the church and was
never seen in those parts again. My social and religious surroundings were not
of the helpful kind. The church and college life with which I was associated,
was not deeply spiritual, but cold and conventional. There was no teaching about
the deeper work of the Holy Spirit and the life of consecration, and I rose no
higher than the level about me. When I entered later upon my regular ministry, I
knew but little of the Holy Ghost and the life of faith and holiness, and while
conscientious and orthodox in my pastoral work and preaching, and really earnest
in my spirit, yet I fear, I was seeking to build up a successful church, very
much in the same spirit as my people were trying to build up a successful
business.

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  CHAPTER 8: PERSONAL TESTIMONY
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Personal Testimony - Sanctification*

A.B. Simpson The following testimony was given in substance by Rev A.B. Simpson
on Sunday night September 12th [1915], in connection with the fiftieth
anniversary of his ordination. An occasion so unique as this may justify a
personal testimony, and the opening up of the holiest and most sacred
confidences of one's Christian life. Fifty years ago the one who addresses you
this evening was ordained in this sacred place. He was a young, ambitious
minister of twenty-one, and had not yet learned the humbling lessons which God
in His faithful love is pleased to teach us as fast as we are willing to learn.
God was pleased to give him a loyal and united congregation and what would
ordinarily be called a successful ministry. He was sincere and earnest up to the
light he had received and had not learned any other gospel than the old story of
the cross. God had graciously given to him a very true conversion, and,
notwithstanding the temptations of college life and the ambitions of his intense
nature, he was according to the ordinary standards an earnest, sincere, and
successful minister, and the measure of blessing that God was pleased to bestow
upon him in this dear old church was far in excess of anything he had a right to
expect. But even after nine years of his active ministry in Hamilton he had not
yet learned the deeper lessons of spiritual life and power which God was pleased
to open to him after taking him from this place. There is a remarkable passage
in Isaiah telling us that when the Spirit is poured out from on high, the
wilderness shall become a fruitful field, and the fruitful field shall be
counted for a forest. When that experience came to him, the field of his former
ministry, which had seemed so fruitful, suddenly appeared barren and withered,
and he felt as if his true ministry had scarcely yet begun. It may not be out of
good taste to testify to the things which God has been pleased to show to him in
the more than forty years that have passed since his last official relations
with this Church. In the first place, He took care to show him very thoroughly,
very patiently, very inexorably his own nothingness. In a crisis hour of his
spiritual experience, while asking counsel from an old, experienced friend, he
was shocked to receive this answer, "All you need in order to bring you into the
blessing you are seeking, and to make your life a power for God, is to be
annihilated." The fact is, the shock of that message almost annihilated him for
the time, and before God's faithful discipline was through, he had learned in
some adequate measure, as he has been learning ever since, the great truth which
our text expresses, "I am not sufficient to think anything of myself."

Second, the next great lesson the patient Master was pleased to begin to teach
him was the all-sufficiency of Christ. Never shall he forget the morning that he
spent in his church study reading an old musty book he had discovered in his
library on the subject "The Higher Christian Life." He had struggled long and
vainly with his own intense nature, his strong self-will, his peculiar
temptations, and his spiritual life had been a constant humiliation. He had
talked to his people about the deeper things of the Spirit, but there was a
hollow ring, and his heart was breaking to know the Lord Jesus as a living
bright reality. As he pored over this little volume, he saw new light. The Lord
Jesus revealed Himself as a living all-sufficient presence, and he learned for
the first time that Christ had not saved us from future peril and left us to
fight the battle of life as best we could, but He who had justified us was
waiting to sanctify us, to enter into our spirit and substitute His strength,
His holiness, His joy, His love, His faith, His power, for all our
worthlessness, helplessness, and nothingness, and make it an actual and living
fact, "I live, yet not I but Christ liveth in me." This was indeed a new
revelation. Throwing himself at the feet of that glorious Master he claimed the
mighty promise, "I will dwell in you and you in me." Across the threshold of his
spirit there passed a Being as real as the Christ who came to John on Patmos,
and from that moment a new secret has been the charm, and glory, and strength of
his life and testimony. And he shall never forget how he longed to come back to
the land of his birth and the friends of former years, and tell them that magic,
marvelous secret, hid from ages and generations, but now made manifest in the
saints, which is Christ in you, the Hope of glory. Henceforth it was not his
struggles, his character, his ethical culture, his moral goodness, but his
constant dependence upon the living One who has said, "Because I live, ye shall
live also." And whatever has been accomplished these forty years in personal
victory or public service, he counts it a great privilege to stand here today
and say, "Not I but Christ." "I have learned the secret, I can do all things
through Christ which strengtheneth me." This is not only the secret of spirit
victory, but of mental efficiency and physical strength. It is such an
identification with the incarnate Christ that His intellectual force passes into
our limited capacity, and we can say, "We have the mind of Christ"; and His
physical vitality quickens our failing strength, lifts us above disease and
infirmity, and enables us to say, "The life of Jesus is made manifest in our
mortal flesh."

Yes, "we are not sufficient even to think anything as of ourselves, but our
sufficiency is of God." And although we are daily delivered unto death for
Jesus' sake, yet the life also of Jesus is made manifest in our mortal flesh."

Furthermore, this divine sufficiency extends to all our service for Christ and
makes us efficient in the Master's work. It is a great thing to learn that we do
not have to go on our resources or fight on our charges. Our good works are
prepared for us that we should walk in them, and "God is able to make all grace
abound toward us, so that we, always having all-sufficiency in all things, may
abound unto every good work." Christian usefulness is not the exploiting of
Christian talent, but witnessing in the power of the Holy Ghost and doing the
works of Jesus because He works in us. The Holy Spirit is our power for service.
He quickens the mind in the apprehension of the truth. He stirs the heart with
love for souls. He inspires the preacher with faith, authority, and divine
efficiency. He convicts the world of sin, righteousness and judgment, and not
only works in the preacher but in the hearer, giving efficacy for the word of
His grace and using often the humblest instruments to accomplish the greatest
good. The following lines sum up the testimony of the speaker and many others
who have learned the secret of a living and indwelling Christ.

Once it was my working, His it hence shall be

Perhaps the most wonderful experience of this deeper revelation of Christ is in
the realm of answered prayer. This great secret opens heaven and puts in our
hand a checkbook which only needs the endorsement of faith to give us fellowship
with all the wealth of God's providence and grace. How wonderful the answers to
prayer which gild the memories of difficulty with celestial and eternal light.

Third, the third great light which God has permitted to fall upon these forty
years is the glorious light of prophetic truth and millennial hope. Once the
vision stretched away into a human horizon, the golden age to which one was
looking forward was to be brought about by evolution, human progress, modern
civilization, the spread of Christianity, man's best endeavors. But a generation
ago there came a new revelation and a new hope, not of a slow and uncertain
evolution of human progress, but a glorious revelation of prophetic fulfillment,
a kingdom coming not from the earth but from the skies, the New Jerusalem coming
down from God out of heaven, the promise of the Coming One, who some glad day
will supersede the poor counterfeit kings of earth and will fulfill His glorious
promise, "This same Jesus shall so come again." It is glorious indeed to be
working for a cause that cannot fail, not struggling to convert the world, but
gathering out of it a little flock to meet the King and welcome Him back to end
the tragedy of human failure, And make this blighted world of ours His own fair
world again

Oh, how it dries our parting tears when our loved ones cross the threshold, etc.
Oh, how real it makes our redemption, not some far-off mysterious heaven, but
this old green earth restored, and these mortal frames clothed in immortality
and glory. And finally, has come the vision of the world and its evangelization,
the sacred trust which widens our horizon, makes every man our neighbor, and
gives us a bishopric as wide as the human race. That is the glorious renaissance
of modern church history, the new missionary movement, the splendid watchword,
the evangelization of the world in the present generation.

Let us thank God together, dear friends, for the wonderful new revelation which
God has given us in the opening years of the twentieth century. He is
short-sighted indeed who allows himself to miss this holy calling and fails to
have a part in these stupendous days upon which the end of the age has come and
which look out already into the eternal morning.
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  CHAPTER 9: PRACTICAL INFLUENCE OF THE BLESSED HOPE
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The Practical Influence of the Blessed Hope*

A.B. Simpson "And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even
as He is pure" (1 John 3:3).

What is the practical value of the blessed Hope? Is it a speculation in
theology, or is it a living and blessed hope and inspiration, linked in the
Scriptures with almost every aspect of the Christian life? An Incentive to the
Unsaved The apostles used it as an appeal to the careless and indifferent to
urge them to decision for Christ. "Repent, and be converted, that your sins my
be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the
Lord, and He shall send the Lord Jesus which before was preached unto you, whom
the heavens must receive until the times of restitution of all things." And
again Paul speaks of the Thessalonians as having "turned from idols to serve the
living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven, even Jesus, which
saved us from the wrath to come."

It must therefore have been presented to them as a practical incentive and
message of warning. It is a message of awakening and conviction which we should
use more freely and effectually than we do. It was the message of God's coming
judgment which led to Nineveh's repentance, and the proclamation of Christ's
coming to the heathen has brought many to bow at the feet of Jesus. A Motive to
Personal Holiness So the apostle teaches in his letter to Titus, "The grace of
God which bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men; teaching us that denying
ungodliness and worldly lusts we should live soberly, righteously and godly in
this present evil world, looking for that blessed Hope, and the glorious
appearing of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us
that He might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto Himself a peculiar
people, zealous of good works." So again in writing to the Thessalonians he
presents the coming of the Lord as the great goal of holy aspiration. "The very
God of peace sanctify you through and through, and I pray God your whole spirit
and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus
Christ." The beloved John likewise links this hope with the practice of
holiness. "When He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He
is; and every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself even as He is
pure." Because we are going to be like Him then we wear His image now. We
anticipate our coming glory, and like the Lord Himself, who began to wear the
garments of His Incarnation long before He came to earth, so we try on even here
the robes of our approaching coronation. The glory of the Holiest: shone through
the curtains, and so the glory of our future state should cover us even here.
This is our peculiar preparation for his coming, and such a preparation on the
part of His Church is the most marked sign of His Advent. When you see the bride
arrayed in her wedding robes, you know the Bridegroom must be near. And could we
see the Church of Christ robed in the beauty of holiness and putting on her
wedding garments, we would know that day was near, and that the angel voices
were about to proclaim, "The marriage of the Lamb has come and His wife hath
made herself ready." An Incentive to Heavenly Mindedness

Mrs. Stowe has pictured in her wonderful little tract, "He is coming to-morrow,"
the consternation of a millionaire, and the consolation of a poor suffering
child of God at the announcement that had just been made to the waiting ones,
"He is coming to-morrow." This was what Paul meant when he said to the
Philippians (Php_4:20), "Our conversation (our citizenship) is in heaven, from
whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change the
body of our humiliation that it may be fashioned like unto the body of His
glory."

There is nothing except the love of Jesus that can so separate us from the world
as the hope of Christ's coming. Dr. Chalmers describes the inhabitants of a
pestilential marsh, who had again and again been urged to emigrate, but they
could not be induced to leave a certain for an uncertain good. At last one day
they saw approaching and slowly passing by a beauteous isle clothed with a
verdure and loveliness they had never seen before, and breathing the balmy air
of its glad and eternal spring over all their unhealthy plains. Then they began
to eagerly enquire if they might enter its blessed harbor. They sent out their
boats across the sea, they entreated permission to land upon its shores, and
they gladly let go their old cabins and treasures, and hastened to the happy
shores of this bright and holy Paradise. So is the vision of His coming. It
falls like a withering spell on earthly ambition and avarice, and makes us cry:
My hopes are passing upward, onward, And with my hopes my heart is gone; My eyes
are turning skyward, sunward, Where glory brightens round yon throne."

It Keeps Us Close To Him

"And now, little children, abide in Him, that when He shall appear we may have
confidence and not be ashamed before Him at His coming."When Elisha knew that
Elijah's translation was near, he kept very close to his side. To every
suggestion that he should leave his side, he answered, ''As the Lord thy God
liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee." So, if we are waiting
and watching for His coming, we will not let a moment separate us from Him. It
was but one evening that Thomas was absent, but that very evening Jesus came. An
Incentive to Brotherly Love

"The Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward
all men, even as we do toward you, to the end He may establish your hearts
unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord
Jesus Christ with all His saints."

How embarrassing it would be for you and your brother to meet tomorrow at His
right hand, and, looking in His face, to say, "Lord, I do not speak to him."
There is a day coming when we shall all clasp hands and look into each other's
eyes, and say, "Well, we did not understand each other, but it is all right at
last.'' Why not assume that we may be mistaken, and love even His erring
children for His sake? A Call to Vigilance "Watch ye therefore, for ye know
neither the day nor the hour when the Son of man cometh."

"Let your loins be girded about and your lights burning, and ye yourselves like
unto men who watch for their Lord when He will return from the wedding, that
when He cometh and knocketh, they may open to Him immediately. Blessed are those
servants whom the Lord when He cometh shall find watching. Of a truth I say unto
you that He shall gird Himself, and make them sit down to meat, and will come
forth and serve them. And if He shall come in the second watch or come in the
third watch, and find them so, blessed are those servants.

"And this know, that if the good man of the house had known what hour the thief
would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be
broken through. Be ye therefore ready also, for the Son of man cometh at an hour
when ye think not."

Here are two ways of receiving the Master. One is to "open to Him immediately."
The other is to "leave his house to be broken through." Which will we have?
Purposely the time is unknown, that we may be ever ready, but we know enough to
know that it is near. The late Dr. A. J. Gordon once sent word to his family in
the country that he was coming to them some day the following week. Every
evening his little children, washed, and dressed, went down to the one suburban
train that came to the village to meet him. He did not come till Saturday, but
his wife told him that the hope of his coming had kept them in garments clean
the whole week. So may this blessed hope purify us "even as He is pure."
Patience in View Of His Coming

"Be patient, therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold the
husbandman waiteth for the precious fruits of the earth till he receive the
early and the latter rain. Be ye also patient, stablish your hearts, for the
coming of the Lord draweth nigh."

"Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand. Be careful for
nothing." He whose hopes are above the world is not greatly tried by its passing
clouds. Oh, how easy it will make our little worries, frets and conflicts to
truly realize A few more struggles here, A few more partings o'er, A few more
toils, a few more tears, And we shalt weep no more. An Encouragement to
Steadfastness

"Be ye therefore steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord,
for as much, as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord." "Cast not
away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward, for yet a
little while and He that shall come will come and will not tarry." Hold on, the
end is near, the reward is great. Too much has been already suffered to lose the
victory now. "Hold fast that thou hast, that no man take thy crown." Standing on
yonder battlements He holds the crown in view. You can almost hear the plaudits
and the shouts. Shall you falter now? An Inspiration in Our Work

"Behold I come quickly, and My reward is with Me, even to give every man
according as his work shall be." And so to the humble reaper, to the faithful
pastor, to the soul winning evangelist the New Testament holds out evermore this
great Hope as his inspiration and recompense. How ashamed some of us would feel
if we received a crown! We would almost walk through the palaces of glory as if
we had stolen it! Not so Paul. He will know the name of every jewel in his
diadem. There is Lydia. There is Timothy. There is the jailer. There is
Sosthenes, who attacked him at Corinth and was saved in glorious revenge. There
is the soldier that was chained to his side. Are you forging your crown and
gathering its jewels, or shall you be "ashamed before Him at His coming"? A
Consolation in Sorrow

"I would not have you ignorant concerning them that are asleep, that ye sorrow
not, even as others that have no hope. For the Lord Himself shall descend from
heaven with a shout, and with the voice of the archangel and the trump of God,
and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain unto
the coming of the Lord shall be caught up together with them in clouds to meet
the Lord in the air: and so shall we be forever with the Lord. Wherefore comfort
one another with these words." This doctrine is the balm of sorrow and the
consolation of bereavement. It gives us back our lost in immortal beauty and
everlasting love, and it wipes every tear away. "Therefore, be ye steadfast,
unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, for as much as ye know that
your labor is not in vain in the Lord."

There shall be no more crying, There shall be no more pain, There shall be no
more dying, There shall be no more stain.

Hearts that by death were riven Meet in eternal love; Lives on the altar given
Rise to their crowns above.

Jesus is coming surely, Jesus is coming soon; Oh, let us walk so purely, Oh, let
us keep our crown! http://online.cbccts.ca/alliancestudies/ E-sword module built
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  CHAPTER 10: STANDING IN PROVIDENCE
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A Story of Providence*

A.B. Simpson A Paper read at the Quarter Centennial of the Gospel Tabernacle
Church, New York, Feb. 11, 1907. The history of the Gospel Tabernacle Church for
the past quarter of a century divides itself into seven sections. I. The Causes
That Led Up To This Work

These involve a brief reference to the personal history of the senior pastor.
Thirty-one years ago he received a profound spiritual blessing in the midst of
an ambitious and half consecrated ministry. The baptism of the Holy Spirit that
followed, awakened in this heart an intense longing for the salvation of souls
and simpler methods of reaching the masses with the Gospel. After attempting for
several years to accomplish this purpose in a fashionable Presbyterian church in
a western city, during which something was accomplished, but much was hindered
by the social exclusiveness and the conventional religious methods about him, he
accepted a call to the city of New York in 1880, with the explicit understanding
on the part of his new church officers that they should unite with him in a
popular religious movement to reach the unchurched masses. After an experience
of two years in this city church pastorate, marked by unbroken harmony between
himself and his church, and much spiritual blessing every way, he became
convinced of the impossibility of reaching the masses by the old conventional
church methods, and determined, after much prayerful consideration, to retire
from his pastorate and begin an evangelistic campaign along undenominational
lines and by simple methods of church work and life, on the principle of a free
church without pew rents, where all classes and denominations would be equally
welcome.

Two incidents occurred which hastened his decision at that time. One was his own
experience of divine healing, after years of physical weakness and suffering.
Another was his being led to accept for himself the doctrine of baptism by
immersion, which, while not demanding his ecclesiastical separation from his
brethren, by joining a close communion Baptist church, yet made it embarrassing
for him to continue to act as a Presbyterian pastor. In consequence of this
decision he quietly announced to his congregation his purpose, and at the same
time requested them not to follow him or leave upon him the odium of having
broken up the church to which he had ministered. The parting was most friendly
and the Church has continued to prosper along the old lines until this day. The
following Monday morning he announced his resignation to the New York Presbytery
and was realeased by a kindly resolution, on motion of Dr. Howard Crosby,
seconded by Dr. John Hall, who both expressed much affection, and the hope of
his early return to the church of his fathers. It is pleasant to look back to a
crisis of so much importance, passed without any strain whatever. As he left the
Presbytery that morning a beloved brother expressed to him his sympathy and best
wishes, but added, "you will never succeed without keeping work under the
auspices of the Presbyterian church." He felt, however, much freer and much
stronger in simple dependence upon God alone. It was a cutting of of every
earthly cable of dependence, and one of the olderst friends of his life, a
distinguished minster, who twenty years later came back to his fellowship and
help, wrote to him in those early days, that had made the mistake of his life.
That morning the elders of his church called at his home to express to his wife
their profound sympathy, and they remarked, as the condoled with her, that "they
felt as though they were attending his funeral," and it is possible she may also
have felt that he might as well be dead. II. The Transition Days The new work
was immediately started by a Sabbath afternoon meeting in a cheap hall in the
vicinity, at which he announced through the press an address on the spiritual
needs of the city and the masses, and invited all in sympathy with an aggressive
spiritual movement to come. There was an encouraging attendance, and the first
step was taken by calling a meeting for conference and prayer during the week on
the part of all who were willing to help. It might be added, that the secular
press gave a wide advertisement to the new movement and the reporters wanted to
know how he expected the work to be supported. His answer was, "that just as in
business, anything that was worth succeeding always found people enough to
sustain it, so in the work of God if anything was worth doing God would see that
it was supported." In this spirit he announced at the meeting, above referred
to, that trusting in God alone to supply the means and the workers, he would not
personally ask any man to join the movement, or to give a dollar to it. During
these years God has graciously supplied both the workers and the means and
honored the simple trust with which it was begun. On the appointed day the
meeting for Conference and Prayer was held in that cold and cheerless dance
hall, and as we huddled around a little stove, there were just seven of us and
as we opened God's word for His message it was this, "This is the work of the
Lord unto Zerubabel, Not my might, nor my power, but by My Spirit, saith the
Lord of hosts. For who hath despised the day of small things." So the work
started and only two of those seven are here today, but they are here to bear
witness that the word of the Lord has not failed. The next Sabbath evening,
evangelistic services were begun in the old hall, and the first convert was
saved and is still a member of this church. The week evening services were held
in the pastor's house, and were attended by the workers and converts, their
chief purpose being the teaching and training of the little flock. At first
there had been no thought of forming a church, but simply the carrying on of an
evangelistic work, leaving the converts free to join various churches. But a
conversation with Dr. Judson at this time first suggested the idea of an
independent church. He asked the pastor what he intended to do with his
converts, and being told, "I expect to send them to you and other ministers to
look after them," the good Dr. replied, " I have enough children of my own to
nurse and don't want any of yours. The mother is always the best nurse of her
own children." The matter was taken to God in prayer and soon the little flock
was clamoring for a church home. Some wanted to be baptised, all wanted the
Lord's Supper and none wanted to be sent away, so it came to pass that a little
church of less than twenty members was organized, with not enough men to go
round and fill the various offices, so that some of our first trustees had to be
"elect ladies." III. The Work at Eighth Avenue and Twenty-Third St. The
evangelistic meetings had been removed in the meanwhile to a larger place, and
under circumstances for which this brief summary allows no time to give details,
the first large popular service was held in the Academy of Music. At the opening
meeting we received valuable assistance from Dr. George F. Pentecost and Mr.
Stebbins. Later the meetings were removed to Steinway Hall, and still later to
Abbey's Park Theatre, where large crowds continually came, and the saving power
of the Gospel and the Holy Spirit were continually manifested. It should be
added that Rev E.W. Oakes had at the very beginning volunteered his services and
for a considerable time rendered efficient help in the evangelistic and other
services. The rental of these large buildings was expensive, and for the first
few months the pastor stood alone in trusting God for the supply of these needs.
But after the organization of the little church, the members asked the privilege
of taking hold with liberal hands and self-sacrificing love, and a system of
weekly offerings was begun, which up to the present has supplied the financial
resources of the work. So bold was the faith of the little company that within
two months after the organization of the church, they dared to undertake the
lease of the Grand Opera Hall, Eighth Avenue and Twenty-third Street, at a
rental of $2,000 a year, and they nobly met it from the beginning. For a
considerable time this commodious hall became the headquarters of our work, and
a regular Sunday morning and evening service, with meetings every night in the
week, except Saturday, was started. The hall was filled from the beginning on
Sunday evenings, and the work of salvation went steadily on. This hall was
pastor's office, auditorium, printing house, Sunday School room, and almost
everything that the needs of the work required. The Friday meeting, for special
testimony and teaching in connection with divine healing was also organized
here, and has never ceased for the past twenty-four years to be a centre of deep
and even world-wide blessing. During the ensuing summer a splendid evangelistic
work was carried on in a large Gospel tent on Twenty-third Street, on the site
now occupied by the Chelsea apartment house. During this year more than three
hundred souls were led to Christ in the tent and most of them united with the
church. These were days of great blessing. Services were held every night in the
week and our young people had no trouble about settling the question of
amusement, for they wanted no better recreation than a Gospel meeting. They were
accustomed to go out on Saturdays in little bands and scatter invitations to the
services so that the following Sunday the meetings were crowded with multitudes
of souls, who were unconnected with any church. One cannot look back on those
days of blessing without tears of grateful memory and loving appreciation of the
noble workers who gave themselves wholly to this work. It is a great joy that
this fruitful field has not been allowed to pass into neglect, but is still
occupied so faithfully and successfully by the Eighth Avenue Gospel Mission,
under the direction of our dear sister, Miss Wray. IV. Our First Tabernacle The
time had now come when we began to feel the need of a permanent home, and to
watch and pray for the Lord's leading regarding a tabernacle building. Our first
idea was an extremely cheap edifice of corrugated iron, costing from $1,000 to
$2,000, and holding a large audience on one floor. For this purpose four lots
were secured on Thirty-second Street, on the site now occupied by the new
Pennsylvania Railroad station, with connecting lot, entering from Eighth Avenue.
A payment was made on this property, but the property was afterwards lost,
chiefly through the dishonesty of a wicked attorney, who had been entrusted with
a considerable sum of money for the purpose of making a payment on the property
and absconded. Soon after our attention was directed to a better location on
Twenty-third Street, near Sixth Avenue, an old Armory building, but at that time
unoccupied. This, we found could be leased for a moderate sum, and while rude
and plain, would accommodate a large crowd and was in the very best location in
the heart of the city. After much prayer, we felt led to enter into an
arrangement with the proprietor, but before the lease was signed he sent us word
that a theatrical company had appeared at the last moment and offered him a
lease for the property, the amount we had agreed to give, and a promise to
expend nearly a hundred thousand dollars in improving the property, for the
purpose of the exhibiting a religious drama, known as Passion Play, a
representation of the crucifixion of Christ. His partners insisted upon his
accepting this larger offer, and as the papers were not signed, we were
helpless. The morning after this a good woman, a member of the church, called
upon the pastor and asked "if he had heard the good news." He was at a loss to
understand how this could be good news, but she proceeded to explain to him that
the Lord had sent these people to fix up this old ruined building for us, as we
were poor and without means, and that just as soon as it was all ready, she
added, "see if He does not give it to us." This was a little staggering at
first, but this is exactly what came to pass. After waiting a few months, while
this company expended $75,000 in making a little gem of the old Armory, and all
in ecclesiastical style for a religious play, with seven golden candle sticks
for lamps and decorations to match, the city authorities refused to allow them
to perform this sacrilegious play, and as the building was unsuited for a
worldly performance they could not use it for ordinary theatrical purposes. The
result was the company broke down, the president committed suicide, his partner
was burned out the same week, and the owner let us have the building at the same
rental that he had offered it several months before, with all the improvements
thrown in. It is needless to say that we entered this little sanctuary on
Twenty-third Street with awed and thankful hearts and that we felt that nothing
was too hard to claim from our Almighty Master. For three years He permitted us
to work and worship in that place, the old Twenty-third Street Tabernacle. It
was there that the Christian Alliance was organized and our first conventions
held, and all the things which have since been vouchsafed to us in our home and
foreign work inaugurated. This became a great evangelistic centre. The doors
were always open every night in the week, and the one business of the church was
to seek and save the lost. V. The Beginning of Our Institutional Work

Before this time the work of divine healing had taken quiet, but powerful hold
of the hearts of many of our people, and the pastor was led in the very first
year of the work to announce the opening of a home on Thirty-fourth Street, near
where the Manhattan Opera House now stands. A few days after this purpose was
formed, a gentleman contributed $2,000, quite unsolicited, and this enabled us
to begin the work of Berachah. Many delightful parlor meetings were held in that
home and many Christian men and women from other churches were attracted to the
work by this deeper spiritual teaching and intense life and power. A year later
a generous friend, who is still with us, contributed a larger sum toward the
purchase of a permanent home on Twenty-third Street, for the Berachah work,
where again God was pleased to manifest His presence for many years in healing
and blessing. A little later one of the workers in Berachah invested a few
thousand dollars in building lots up town for the Lord. Within a year the value
of these lots had multiplied so rapidly that they were sold at a large profit,
which, with the amount already contributed, enabled us to purchase our next
Berachah Home, Sixty-first Street and Park Avenue. Still later, when the present
Tabernacle was building, this property was disposed of and the larger building,
250 West Forty-fourth Street, was erected for the work of Berachah.

Shortly after the work was begun a number of the young men converted in the
meetings offered themselves for missionary work, and requested some regular
means of Bible teaching and training for their work. The result of this was the
beginning of the Missionary Training School, which has since grown so rapidly
and of which another paper has given us the fuller and deeply interested
details. The spirit of rescue work was always predominant among our people. One
result of this was the forming of various missions. One of the earliest was
Twenty-seventh Street Midnight Mission, and later Berachah, West Twenty-second
Street, both under the direction of Mrs. Henry Naylor, now Mrs. Henck. From the
very beginning the work of publication had a prominent place. Our first
periodical was "The Word, Work and World," a monthly, followed later by the
"Christian Alliance," which afterwards became "The Christian and Missionary
Alliance," and has been published as a weekly journal, with a large circulation,
for about eighteen years. Various publications were added from time to time, and
the printing press has been as widely used in the Alliance work as any other
agency. The consecration of many young lives to the missionary field led very
soon to a call for some foreign missionary agency. As long ago as 1884 several
independent missionaries went out from the Tabernacle to the Soudan, but the
unsatisfactory results of that movement showed the necessity of a thoroughly
organized society, and in 1887, just twenty years ago, the first definite steps
were taken for the organization of our present missionary work, first under the
name of International Missionary Alliance, and now the Christian and Missionary
Alliance. The results of this movement and its world-wide extent have been fully
described in one of the special papers of this series. From an early date many
Christian friends were attracted from all parts of the country to visit the work
in the Tabernacle, and became deeply interested and much blessed, and they
expressed an earnest desire that the same truths might be proclaimed and the
same blessing communicated to other parts of the land. The result was many
invitations to hold conventions and conferences in various cities and summer
resorts. One of the earliest of these was the Old Orchard Convention. Others
followed in many places. The pastor became increasingly embarrassed by the
strong personal aspect, which these meetings necessarily had, and feeling that
if the work was to be recognized as his work in any special or exclusive sense,
it could never have God's fullest blessing, or the most lasting influence, he
earnestly advised the forming of some society which would take away this
personal character from the meetings and conventions, and make all the workers
equal partners in this new spiritual movement. It was this that led to the
founding of the Christian Alliance in the year 1887 at Old Orchard, Maine, for
the purpose of uniting Christians of various denominations in a common testimony
for the fullness of Jesus as our Saviour, Sanctifier, Healer and Coming King.
This society was afterwards united with the missionary branch of the work and
now they together form the Christian and Missionary Alliance, which God has been
pleased to use for a much wider work than any single church could ever have
accomplished, but which the Gospel Tabernacle Church should never cease to
regard as one of her many spiritual children. VI. The Second Tabernacle

After three years of blessed work in the old Twenty-third Street Tabernacle, an
opportunity offered to purchase a large and valuable church property, known as
the Hepworth Tabernacle on Madison Avenue and Forty-fifth Street, at an
extremely low price, and on very easy terms. A cash payment of only a few
thousand dollars was required and the interest on the mortgage was no greater
than we were paying out for rent, and the building was large, commodious and
central. Besides, it brought us into a new neighborhood, and added to us a new
constituency. Here we continued to work four years longer, but we gradually
found that the neighborhood was entirely too fashionable for the simple Gospel
work to which God had called us, and it was somewhat difficult to draw the
masses to our meetings. To offset this we spent our summers in Gospel tent work
occupying for two seasons the vacant lot still used for tent work on Fifty-sixth
Street and Broadway. The conviction gradually fastened itself upon us that God
would have us settle permanently on a more popular thoroughfare and within reach
of the masses, especially on the West side, where our work had begun. In 1888
the Madison Avenue Tabernacle was sold at a considerable advance on the price
paid for it, and the present site was purchased along with the adjoining site on
Forty-fourth Street for Berachah Home. A joint arrangement was made for adding
the rear portion of the Berachah lot to the Tabernacle property, while Berachah
built and used the upper floors and the Tabernacle the ground floor of this rear
lot. This gave to us sufficient capacity for our present commodious building,
and steps were immediately taken for the erection of the present Tabernacle. The
congregation meanwhile worshipped in Wendell Hall, Forty-fifth Street, near
Ninth Avenue. VII. Our Present and Third Tabernacle

We had now compassed the city, having really moved entirely round in a circle
from Caledonian Hall to the Academy of Music, thence to Twenty-third Street
Tabernacle, thence to Forty-fifth Street and Madison Avenue, and finally back to
Eighth Avenue. It was with great rejoicing that the corner stone was laid in the
fall of 1889 and the work committed to the ownership and blessing of our God.
The entire building was a triumph of architectural skill, in bringing the
largest possible accommodations out of the smallest space, including an
auditorium holding over a thousand persons, with three chapels affording room
for several hundred more, a store on the street from our publication work, a
Training Institute on Eighth Avenue with accommodations for forty persons, and
the home of Forty-fourth Street, with accommodations for nearly one hundred. At
length, in May, 1889, the buildings were dedicated to God in connection with a
large convention, gathered from various parts of the United States and Canada.
The financing of these buildings was a task whose difficulty can only be
understood by one or two, who were permitted to stand in the place of
responsibility during those trying months. Their experience, if it could be
told, would be a story of divine providence and simple trust, that could not
fail to fill all hearts with wonder and praise. If the rules that control this
commemoration service permitted, it would be a pleasure to mention, at least,
one honored name in this connection, but to God alone be all the praise. The
early years of our work in the new Tabernacle will never be forgotten by the few
who still survive. The principal services were our evangelistic meetings, which
for a long time were held every night in the week and constantly gathered in the
sinful and the sad, and brought new testimonies continually of salvation and
blessing. We were greatly aided in this evangelistic movement by a beloved
brother, who, with his dear wife, has gone to be with Christ some years ago. We
refer to Mr. Burke, our Gospel singer, whose efficient leadership of our chorus
choir and earnest devoted work for the salvation of souls and the service of
praise can never be forgotten. The Tabernacle was crowded on Sunday evenings
from year to year, and well filled most of the week nights, while the Sunday
morning service was at first much smaller and was slowly built up to its present
importance.

Meanwhile the growth of the Alliance movement in all parts of the country and
the world demanded more and more of the senior pastor's time, both in official
work and the visitation of our numerous conventions throughout the country. In
those days we had no field workers as now, and the burden of convention work
fell chiefly upon him. It was his privilege in this connection to visit from
year to year the principal cities of the United States and Canada, holding
conventions and organizing the work where it was practicable. This necessitated
additional help in the Tabernacle work and led to the calling of our beloved
brother, Dr. Wilson as associate pastor, along with Mr. Funk, who acted in this
capacity from the beginning, but whose duties largely confined him to the
Missionary Training Institute, and left him only a little time for church work.
Dr. Wilson will give in his own words the story of his precious and fruitful
ministry amongst us, nor are we permitted, by the restraint properly imposed
upon us at this meeting, to give adequate expression to the appreciation and
love which his character and labors have called forth from us all. For the same
reason we are constrained to be silent also regarding the quiet, but ever
faithful and efficient ministries of Pastor Funk. It is not out of place,
however, to mention another quiet ministry, which, during the past ten years,
has grown more and more helpful in connection with the Tabernacle, namely, the
little four o'clock meeting and its beloved and venerable leader, who is one of
the little company of not more than a dozen now living who have been with us
from the beginning.

During these years the Tabernacle became the scene of many wonderful gatherings,
especially our Alliance conventions. Here also have been heard the voices of
many of God's honored servants, including such names as Henry Varley, Pastor
Stockmeyer, Hudson Taylor, Dr. Guinness, F.B. Meyer, Andrew Murray, Dr.
Scofield, Mrs. Baxter, Mrs. Brodie, Frances Willard, and many more. The
increasing needs of the Alliance work had been making such inroads upon Dr.
Wilson's time that the need was deeply felt for a pastor who could give his
whole time exclusively to the Tabernacle work. For this purpose Rev. Milton M.
Bales was called as associate pastor in the year 1901, and for three years
faithfully ministered in this place and was honored by the Master, leading many
souls to Christ and many others into the fullness of the Spirit. At length
promotion came to him also, and he too was added to the increasing list of the
Field Superintendents of the Alliance, and once more the church was called to
pray for an under-shepherd. This need was finally met by the call of the
Tabernacle to Rev. F. E. Marsh of Sunderland, England, our present Acting
Pastor, whose work amongst us began in November, 1905, and is still being
continued in manifold labors and increasing blessing. The recent history of the
Tabernacle is too near to form good material for the historian's task. It will
suffice to say that the year recently closed has been, spiritually and
financially, one of the most prosperous and successful in the history of the
church, and the time seems again at hand, when, with a great increase in the
value of our property and the need for a building more fully adapted to the
various departments of our Sunday School, church and convention work, we may be
called once more to move forward and change our local habitation.

It will be sufficient, therefore, to sum up in a few general remarks the leading
lessons which God has been emphasizing in the story of the Gospel Tabernacle.

1. The work has always been pre-eminently evangelistic, the salvation of souls
has ever been, and we trust will ever be, its supreme business. It was born in
this atmosphere and without it, it will languish and decay.

2. It has always been a free church and its financial and social methods have
aimed to conform to the principles of God's Word and the Apostolic Church. The
system of pew rents has been abjured, and all classes have been equally welcome
and all seats free. Religious entertainments have been studiously avoided,
whether with or without admission fees, and our people taught to give
voluntarily for the support of God's work on principle only. Before commencing
this work, the pastor was often told by his former officers that a free church
never could be sustained in New York City. The success of the Tabernacle is a
sufficient answer and this church is a monument of God's blessing on Scriptural
methods of church finance.

3. The Tabernacle has always stood for the deepest spirituality and the highest
standard of Christian faith and life. While not demanding a deep experience as a
condition of membership for God's little ones, it has aimed to lead them on into
all the fullness of Christ, and we thank God, above almost every blessing, for
the sweet and holy lives which He has linked with us in this blessed fellowship.
Many of them have gone to be with Christ, many of them are with us still, but we
believe that after all the most potent force of our work has been the godliness
of its little flock.

4. The Tabernacle has aimed to combine in the work of a Christian congregation
all the gifts and ministries of the Apostolic Church. Not only have we the work
of the evangelist, but the deeper teaching of God's Word, the training of
Christian workers, the ministry of healing, the work of the pastor, and the
great work of foreign missions, besides all those loving ministrations to the
poor, the sick and the destitute, which constitute the sweet credentials of a
Christ-like ministry. We have given a place for the ministry of women, we have
had no more beautiful department in all our work than the training of the King's
children, and there is scarcely any line of Christian activity in which our
people have not some part. We believe today that more of our members are engaged
in the various charities and rescue missions of New York City than ever in the
work of the Tabernacle church, and there is scarcely a religious movement in the
community in which some of them have not a part.

5. Perhaps the supreme glory of the Tabernacle work has been that which has
already been fully referred to, its relation to the evangelization of the world.
Hundreds of its members have become foreign missionaries, and perhaps there is
no church on earth that has so large a proportion and so large an aggregation of
its actual communicants on the mission field, while the gifts of its people to
foreign missions are much greater than their contributions to their own church
work.

6. The spirit of sacrifice, especially in giving to God, has been from the
beginning a striking feature of our work. In the very beginning of the work a
beloved sister brought her bank book, with the accumulated savings of her life,
amounting to more than a thousand dollars and insisted on giving them for the
needs of the work in the days of its poverty and trial. Another dear woman
brought $500 which she had saved for her funeral and laid it at the Master's
feet. Again and again has the story been repeated of the poor woman in the
Gospels that gave her all. Humble house workers, with moderate wages, have
actually undertaken the support of a foreign missionary, and for years it was
true of a single Bible class in our Sunday school, consisting of working girls,
that it contributed more for foreign missions than many of the wealthiest
churches in the land, actually supporting five missionaries at one time on the
foreign field.

7. Perhaps the most significant feature of the Tabernacle work is the one that
would be the most difficult to describe, namely, its silent, indirect influence
in stimulating faith in God and earnest, aggressive work for our fellowmen among
other Christian organizations as well as individuals. Like the salt and like the
light, its pervading power has been stealing silently through human hearts and
only the final day will measure the value and fruition of that "sweet savor of
Christ" which has gone forth through its humble and consecrated people to the
uttermost parts of the earth.

8. Above all else the aim and call of the Gospel Tabernacle has been to exalt
and glorify the Lord Jesus Christ, and to write high above all human names, on
the hearts of men and the pages of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century, the
name which has always been its motto and its glory--Jesus only.

9. And finally, it has been its constant aim to witness to His personal coming
and God grant that some glorious day it may be its high honor to welcome back
our King. And to Him of whom and for whom and by whom are all things, be the
glory, both now and forever. Amen.

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  CHAPTER 11: THE LORD'S COMING AND MISSIONS
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The Lord's Coming and Missions

A.B. Simpson This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a
witness to all nations: and then shall the end come (Matthew 24:14). And I saw
another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to
preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and
tongue, and people, saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him:
for the hour of his judgment is come (Revelation 14:6-7).

These two passages present to us the evangelization of the world in the light of
the Lord's coming. Surely the double message which the Holy Spirit has been
echoing and re-echoing all through these days is, "Behold, I come quickly." "Go
ye."

I. The coming of Christ is the great end of creation and redemption. This is the
day for which all other days were made, the one event to which all other things
are tending.

Even nature itself foreshadows the New Creation. This fallen world with its
minor key of sadness echoes in every tone the cry for something better than
nature knows. "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth together in pain,
waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body." Every radiant
morn, every returning spring, every bursting bud and breathing blossom, and
every humming insect emerging from its wintry tomb and opening chrysalis is but
the prophecy of the resurrection and the Palingenesis, when He that sitteth upon
the throne shall say, "Behold I make all things new."

Man's highest philanthropy aims to develop and improve the conditions of this
old earth of ours so that some day it shall fulfill the dreams of that golden
age of which poets have sung. But it were a poor reflection upon God if this old
world at its best were the best that His power and goodness have for the human
race. When we think of the ravages of sickness, sin and sorrow, when we realize
the malign elements of the earthquake, the tempest and the devouring sea, and
when we look at the mouldering dust and the hopelessness and agony of death and
remember that after all the fairest scenes of the earth are but cemeteries and
the spots that tell of broken hearts and blighted hopes, well may we say, Were
this poor world our only rest, Living or dying, none were blessed. Or as the
Apostle has expressed it, "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are
of all men most miserable."

No, God's wisdom and love have something better for our race than civilization,
reformation, social reform and scientific progress; something better even than a
spiritual millennium and the world-wide triumph of the Gospel and the grace of
God.

Just as for the individual God's highest thought is not self-improvement, nor
reformation, not the best possible result out of natural character and human
culture, but a new creation, a regeneration so complete that old things pass
away and all things are made new; so for the world itself God's plan is the
same. The mark of the cross must pass upon the earth itself and through death
and resurrection it must come forth a new earth to take its place with God's new
heavens in the coming age. The City of God does not spring up from the earth,
but, as the new Jerusalem, it comes down from heaven. Jesus Christ is the
"Nobleman who went into a far country to receive for Himself a kingdom" and
return. Ages have passed since he went away and He has been from generation to
generation gathering the stones for that glorious city which in a little while
will burst from the heavens upon an astonished world and take the place of all
our puny structures and all our petty plans. This was the vision of the ancient
prophets, this was the promise of the departing Lord, and this is the great
perspective that climaxes the vision of faith and hope throughout the whole New
Testament. The first chapter of Acts gives us a magnificent example of this
perspective.

First we have the "Passion" or death of our precious Lord which stands in the
foreground of the future. Next we have His resurrection in the nearer distance.
Then just beyond is the promise of the Holy Ghost and the commission to be
witnesses unto the uttermost part of the earth which fills up the Christian age.

Too long the church of God has closed the vision with this scene, and we have
been working as though the establishment of the church and the conversion of the
world was the real end for which the Spirit was working in this age. But if we
look at the inspired record we find there is yet another scene in the picture
that lifts our thoughts to a higher plane and a more distant horizon. It begins
in the tenth verse, where two men stood by them in white apparel saying, "Ye men
of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus which is taken
up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go
into heaven."

Ah, this was needed to complete the perspective. Away beyond the church, the
mission field, the present age, stretches the vista of millennial years with the
glorious light of the Lord's return as the real goal toward which redemption is
ever moving forward and the Holy Ghost is ever leading on. Until we get this
fully in view we have not grasped the whole conception of God's great plan, we
have not got our eye upon the true goal and our course will be unsteady and our
work unbalanced.

It was for this the Apostolic church was ever watching, praying, working and
waiting. This was the message which the Apostle preached to the Thessalonians
and which made them "turn from idols to serve the living and true God and to
wait for His Son from heaven." This was the comfort He held out to the bereaved
and sorrowing saints as they bade farewell to the martyred forms of their
beloved ones, that Christ was coming soon and they should be "caught up together
with them to meet the Lord in the air." This was the joy and crown of his own
intense ministry that he might present his people to the heavenly Bridegroom in
the day of His coming as his "crown of rejoicing in the presence of Christ at
His coming." And this was his own inspiring hope as he was about to lay down his
ministry and meet his Lord, "Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of
righteousness which the Lord, that righteous judge, will give me in that day."

Thus it was the supreme end which they ever kept in view. And to make it more
impressive and emphatic, the Lord Jesus Himself came back to John at Patmos for
one last revelation, and gave him the vision of the Apocalypse and the picture
of His coming and His kingdom as "things that must shortly come to pass" and
left him with this as the burden of the church's latest prayer and the Master's
latest promise, "Surely I come quickly. Even so, come, Lord Jesus." When the
apostles were starting out to the great task of the world's evangelization a
great council was held in Jerusalem to settle certain principles for the
guidance of the church of the present age. And to that council the Holy Ghost
revealed through its leader, the Apostle James, as he quoted from the ancient
prophet Amos, the divine order of events in the program of the Lord. The first
of these steps was stated thus, "At the first God did visit the Gentiles to take
out of them a people for His name." The second stage was as definitely stated in
the next sentence, "After this I will return and build again the tabernacle of
David that is fallen down." Here we find the Lord's coming presented as the
sequel of their immediate ministry, the great event for which they were
gathering out a people from the Gentile nations. If the church had ever kept
this in view she would have saved herself the waste of much vain effort and
bitter disappointment in her attempts to build up a permanent earthly
institution and create on earth a kingdom without the King. For the church
itself has been as much at fault in her objects and ambitions as the word in its
mere human policy. Men have tried to found their kingdoms and cities as if they
should reign forever and make this earth a paradise of pleasure without the
Lord. And sin has cursed all their ambitions and policies, and turned the vision
of earthly pride and power into that fearful menagerie of wild beasts which
Daniel saw when he looked at the governments of the earth as they appeared in
the light of heaven. But just as foolish and short-sighted is the policy of the
Christian worker who aims to establish even through the church the Gospel and
the religion of Jesus Christ an earthy millennium. Earth offers no foundation
stable enough for the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. Our
business is to gather stones, timbers and jewels for that glorious edifice and
pass them on to the great Architect that is building over yonder "The city that
hath foundations" and the "kingdom that cannot be moved." We are just like
Hiram's carpenters and Solomon's stone cutters, working in the mountains of
Lebanon and the quarries of Judah and passing the cedar and the granite to its
future site. One by one we are gathering the souls which He is fitting into the
living temple and in a little while the vision of its glory will burst upon our
view and admiring angels will say, "Come hither, I will shew thee the bride, the
Lamb's wife." And we shall behold "that great city, the holy Jerusalem,
descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God: like a jasper stone,
clear as crystal; . . . And the twelve gates were twelve pearls; . . . and the
street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass. And the city had
no need of the sun, nor of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did
lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. And the nations of them which
were saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring
their glory and honor into it."

Beloved, this is God's glorious goal. This is the future toward which the cross
of Calvary and the Holy Ghost are leading the generations on. This is the true
end for which it is worth our while to work and pray. This is the transcendent
outlook of faith and hope and love. This is the kingdom that Daniel saw,
superseding the pride and power of Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome, when "the
kingdom and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven shall be given
to the people of the saints of the most high, whose kingdom is an everlasting
kingdom and whose dominion shall never pass away." This is the glorious
consummation which the voices of heaven celebrate in the eleventh chapter of
Revelation when they cry, "The kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our
Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever. We give thee
thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art, and wast, . . . because thou hast taken
to thee thy great power, and hast reigned." This is what the Master meant when
He said, "When these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and bend
yourselves back, for the hour of your redemption draweth nigh." And this is the
glorious thought of Peter when he admonishes us to be "looking for and hasting
on the coming of the day of God." That glorious day is to bring our full
redemption. It is to give us transfigured bodies and glorified spirits,
conformed to His beauty and glory and immortality. It is to restore to our arms
the long divided friends of time and wipe away earth's latest tear of sorrow. It
is to end earth's story of sickness and sin and death, to sheath the cruel sword
of war, to silence the battle drum and to make real over all the earth the
Bethlehem song, "Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, good will to men."
And that day is to bring our glorious and long rejected Christ, His kingdom and
His throne. Best of all, it is to bring us to be with Him and to be like Him as
the partners of His throne and the bride of His love. Oh, do not our hearts
exalt to think, to know as we see the signs of His appearing in earth and
heavens today that it is near and answer back, Morn of morns, O haste Thy glad
appearing, Day of days, speed on, speed on.

II. The work of missions is the great means of hastening that end. The work of
the Holy Ghost through the church was chiefly intended to gather out from all
nations a people for His name, a bride for the Lamb. It was not God's purpose at
the present time by any stronger compulsion than the persuasion of the Gospel
and the influence of the Holy Spirit to bring men to acceptance of Christ as
their Saviour and King. In the next age every knee shall bow and every tongue
confess that He is Lord, but at the present time the Gospel is preached to men
as a witness, the opportunity is given to every one and then it is left to their
voluntary choice. "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, and he that
believeth not shall be damned." The purpose of the present dispensation is to
give this universal Probation for a brief time to all the races of mankind, and
after the opportunity has been given and all that are willing to come to Him
have accepted the gracious invitation to close the day of grace and bring the
nations before Him in judgment and then establish a visible kingdom on earth
which shall compel the subjection of all mankind and bring earth's millions
without exception to bow to His scepter. This is clearly intimated in the
passage already quoted in part in connection with the council at Jerusalem. "God
at the first did visit the Gentiles to take out of them a people for His name,"
that is the present mission of the church and the object of foreign missions.
When this is accomplished the second stage will come, "After this will I return,
saith the Lord." Then comes the final stage after His coming, "That the residue
of men may seek after the Lord and all the Gentiles upon whom my name is
called." Then the whole race shall be brought under the Gospel and the reign of
Christ and earth's generations for a thousand years in millions and billions
shall own His sway and crown Him Lord of all. But today it is the few that He is
calling, not the subjects, but the rulers of the coming age. Just as David
called out the heroes that followed him in the days of his exile and afterwards
made them the princes of his kingdom, so the Lord Jesus today is training the
men and women who will share with Him the government of the age to come. This is
our high honor and privilege to be kings and priests unto God and to reign with
Him upon the earth.

Until the whole number of His elect shall have thus been called and gathered
home, He cannot come. This elect company is universal in its scope, while
limited in its numbers. It embraces the people of every language, tribe and
tongue. Therefore, today the work of missions must be world-wide. It is not
enough for us to be zealous in gathering a great number of converts among the
favored people in Christian lands; God wants us to bring representatives of
every earthly tongue, and when this shall have been done, then, He tells us, the
end shall come. The bride of the Lamb, like the Son of man, must represent
humanity as a whole. The Lord Jesus is not a Jew, an Anglo-Saxon or a Greek, but
He is the Son of Man, the representative of every race, the universal man. So
His bride must be the daughter of humanity, the composite photograph, embracing
every feature, every color and every kindred of the human family.

III. The practical bearing of all this on the work of missons.

Many persons who do not believe in the literal return of Jesus Christ try to
prejudice this truth by saying that its tendency is to paralyze missions and to
discredit the Holy Spirit and His work in the present age.

It is not discredit to the Holy Spirit for us to teach that the world will not
be converted under His agencies, because Christ never said it would be. The Holy
Ghost came simply to carry out Christ's plan and His plan in the present age is
to gather out of the world His own people. When He appeared to Paul in Corinth,
He did not tell him that all Corinth would be converted, but He said, "I have
much people in this place." There will be an age during which "the knowledge of
the Lord shall cover the earth, as the waters cover the sea." But that is not
the dispensation of the Holy Ghost. Of this age we have been told that "iniquity
shall abound and the love of many shall wax cold." Again it is said that "in the
last days perilous times shall come," that "evil men and seducers shall wax
worse and worse" and that "when the Son of man cometh shall he find faith on the
earth?" It is, therefore, no dishonor to the Spirit for us to express the very
conditions that Christ Himself predicted. In regard to the other objections,
that the Lord's coming paralyzes missionary effort, it would seem to be enough
to say that the men and women who are today most prominent, earnest and
successful in prosecuting the evangelization of the world, are in the majority
of instances ardent believers in the personal and pre-millennial coming of
Christ.

Consider some reasons why the hope of Christ's coming should rather encourage
and inspire missionary efforts.

1. It gives us a definite and practicable plan of work. It does not send us out
in some vague way to sweep in wholesale all earth's multitudes. But it teaches
us that God's plan in the present age is "to visit the Gentiles to take out of
them a people for His name." He is only visiting the Gentiles; they are having
their turn as the Jews had, and the day of opportunity is limited. The visit
will end in due time. And He is not doing this with the expectation of gathering
them all into His kingdom, but rather of gathering out of them "a people for His
name." It is a taking out, rather than a taking in. It is an election and
selection, only each one has the casting vote for himself. It is not arbitrary,
but voluntary. Knowing this to be God's present plan, our work is very clear and
specific. We know that He has some people in every nation whom His Providence
and Spirit are preparing to accept the Gospel, and our business is to find them
and bring them to Him. We cast our nets into the great sea, but we do not gather
all the fish that are in the sea, and when we shall have gathered all who are
willing to accept the Gospel message, this commission is ended.

Now this is an extremely encouraging and practicable plan. If we were sent to
convert whole nations we might well be discouraged. The Master did not do this;
the early Church did not do this; the modern Church has not done this, even in
Christian lands, during the past century. We are told that the number of heathen
and Mohammedans has increased two hundred millions, so that numerically we are
not making any headway in converting the whole world. Our hearts might well sink
in despair, if this were our aim. But if, on the contrary, we are seeking "the
other sheep whom He must bring," there is no failure; there is no
discouragement. We are gathering first fruits; He Himself will gather the full
harvest. We are "sampling" the race. We are seeking and finding the "little
flock," the chosen bride, the hidden ones who are to unite from every land and
tribe and tongue to sing the millennial chorus that is to welcome the coming
King.

2. Not only does this give us a practicable plan, but it also gives us a
powerful motive and incentive. We know that our missionary work is not in vain,
but, in addition to the blessing it is to bring to the souls we lead to Christ,
best of all it is to bring Christ Himself back again. It puts in our hands the
key to the bridal chamber and the lever that will hasten His return. What a
glorious privilege. What a mighty incentive. Do we long to see Him in His glory
and to meet our loved ones once more? Then we shall work with re-doubled energy
to spread the Gospel, to tell the story, to evangelize the world and to "prepare
the way of the Lord."

3. The hope of the Lord's coming gives us also a message to the heathen. It was
Jonah's message of the God that reigned in heaven and earth, and that was coming
in judgment to Ninevah, that awakened that wicked city; and it is the message of
the coming judge that is most fitted to awaken a careless world. Paul says of
the Thessalonian Christians that, "they turned from idols to wait for His Son
from Heaven." Paul had told them He was coming and thus aroused them to prepare
to meet Him. Our missionaries sometimes tell us how the native chiefs of Africa
listen with awe as they proclaim to these savage men that the Great Chief is
coming soon to call them to account and to reward them if they are found true to
Him. In the fourteenth chapter of Revelation we have the vision of an angel
flying in the midst of heaven, having "the everlasting Gospel" to preach to all
the tribes of earth, and we are told his message was, "Fear God and keep His
commandments, for the hour of His judgment has come." Does this mean that in the
last days the voice of missionaries is to be raised in solemn and authoritative
announcement of the immediate coming of the Lord, and that this message is to
bring conviction to the heathen and to be followed and vindicated by the
glorious coming of the Lord Himself?

O let us then His coming haste! O let us end this awful waste Of souls that
never die! A thousand millions still are lost, A Saviour' blood has paid the
cost O hear their dying cry! The Master's coming draweth near, The Son of man
will soon appear, His Kingdom is at hand. But ere that glorious day can be, This
Gospel of the Kingdom we Must preach in every land.

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  CHAPTER 12: THE SANCTIFYING WORK OF CHRIST
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The Sanctifying Work of Christ * A.B. Simpson Chapter 6 The Blessings That Flow
From Justification

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God
through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have gained access by faith into
this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of
God. (Romans 5:1-2) This chapter is an inventory of the treasure in the house of
faith and the blessings that flow from justification by faith. In the preceding
chapters the apostle had unfolded the principles of God's righteousness and the
conditions through which it is received; and now, before he closes this second
chapter on the divine salvation, he proceeds to enumerate and sum up the special
blessings of this great salvation. In so doing he anticipates a little the
subject of sanctification, which is to come in the next chapter; and so we find
some things in this enumeration which properly belong to the sanctified life. We
must not think this strange or illogical, because while in the nature of things
justification and sanctification are distinct and are very distinctly treated in
this epistle, yet in the mind of God they are associated very closely, and in
the experiences of the believer they ought not to be as widely separated as they
usually are.

Indeed, it seems to be the thought of God that they should immediately succeed
each other. When God's people left Egypt, He meant them to go immediately into
the Land of Canaan, and if they allowed an interval of 40 years to intervene, it
was not because God wanted it. And so, in the Pentecostal experience of the
Apostolic church, it would seem as if all who accepted Jesus were at once taken
into His fullness and received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the same as the
apostles--passing at once into the sanctified life, living in entire
consecration--so that it would be said, "No one claimed that any of his
possessions was his own...and much grace was upon them all" (Acts 4:342 b, 33b).

Through the lowering of the Christian standard, there has come about a kind of
Christianity which has no spiritual warrant; a condition in which people are
justified and yet do not expect to live a holy life--and do not live it, until
through truer teaching and the preparation of God's Spirit they are awakened to
realize the true life of holiness to which God has called them, and after years
of wandering they at length come into the experience of sanctification which
they should have known from the first.

While the summary of blessings which the apostle unfolds in this chapter has
reference chiefly to the fruits of justification, yet it reaches out into all
the fullness of the believer's sanctified life and takes in, by anticipation,
some of the things which are to be more explicitly unfolded in the chapters that
follow... The Assurance of God's Love

God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has
given us...Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we
be saved from God's wrath through him! For if, when we were God's enemies, we
were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been
reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! (Romans 5:5 b, 9-10)

There is a revelation of the love of God in the moment of conversion through the
grace of Jesus Christ and the promise of salvation. But there is a deeper
experience of the divine love which comes to the soul after it has been proved
and tried and brought into the intimacy of His fellowship. This comes from the
Holy Spirit pouring out the love of God into the heart.

There are atmospheres in Christian life that greatly differ. Some of God's
children live in a cellar all their days, where the light is dim and the air
damp; others live in shaded rooms and dim light, where the sun seldom shines;
but others dwell in the very sunlight of God's perfect love. The element of
their being is not duty, conscience, doctrine, intellectual conviction or even
Christian work, but divine love--the sweet, mellow, warm air of the Father's
house and the Father's heart, the love of God poured out into the heart like the
warm sunshine by the Holy Spirit abiding in the heart, and dwelling ever on
God's glorious gift and everlasting pledge of His perfect love, His own beloved
Son.

Others talk about their love, "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this:
While we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (5:8). The Life of Christ in Us

"How much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him!" (5:9b). The
grace of Christ is the starting point of Christian life and the ground of our
justification, but the life of Christ, our risen Lord, is the source of our
spiritual life. His intercession for us at God's right hand and His indwelling
life in our hearts bring to us the strength and grace that keep us day by day
and carry us victoriously through all our pressures and trials.

Faith in a crucified Savior alone may give earnestness and depth to our
Christian life, but it is only the revelation of a living Christ that can
elevate us to the heights of grace and inspire us with the strength we need for
victorious living.

We are saved by His faith in a very real and precious sense, but in a yet more
glorious manner we are saved by His life. Joy in God

Then the climax of all these blessings is reached in the 11th verse when he
said, "But we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we
have now received reconciliation [atonement, KJV]." This is a different joy from
that meant in the third verse. There the joy is based upon a thing, here it is
drawn from a person. There it is the joy that springs from the hope of our
coming glory, here it is joy in God Himself, through our reconciliation to Him
and our fellowship with Him. This word atonement means literally "at-one-ment."
It denotes not only our reconciliation to God but, we believe, denotes also our
being brought into perfect harmony with God in all His will and introduced to
such perfect fellowship that we have His very own joy in our heart and life.
This is the joy that is not subject to vicissitudes, nor influenced by
circumstances. It springs from the very heart of God Himself, and is as eternal
as His own blessedness.

Now these are the blessings of the justified, and with such a catalog of
glorious things the apostle finally sums up the chapter by a magnificent
contrast between Adam and Christ, and the fall of man through the former, and
his redemption through the second Adam, the Lord Jesus.

He gives us the points in which they agree. In both cases the consequences came
through a single individual. Our ruin comes from Adam, our redemption comes
through Christ.

Again, in both cases, the consequences spring from a single act. By one act of
disobedience Adam ruined his posterity, by one act of atonement Christ redeemed
His.

Again, in both cases, the acts of the individual descend to his posterity. Adam
wrecked his whole race by disobedience, Christ saved his spiritual seed by His
atonement, and so the verse is true, "For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all
will be made alive" (1 Corinthians 15:22).

There are two generations in the world, the Adam race and the Christ race, and
we all belong either to one or the other. We have received our natural life from
Adam; but if we are born from above, we are the seed of Christ, and are
partakers of His obedience and His life.

Then he contrasts these two heads of humanity:

A. One has brought a heritage of sin, the other has brought a divine
righteousness. "For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many
were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be
made righteous" (Romans 5:19).

B. One has brought us condemnation, the other has brought us justification.
"Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men,
so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings
life for all men" (5:18).

C. One has brought us death, the other, life. So we read that, "For if by the
trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will
those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of
righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ" (5:17).

D. The consequences of Christ's redemption are greater than the consequences of
Adam's sin and fall, for "where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so
that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through
righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" (5:20b-21).
This is true in the fact that the redemption of Christ elevated humanity to a
much higher place than Adam could ever have inherited for most of his posterity.

Christ has not come to restore the saved to Adamic purity or an Eden paradise.
The holiness that Jesus gives is far higher than the holiness that Adam knew. It
is that we should be partakers of the divine nature, and the glory to which He
raises us is transcendently greater than paradise restored. A single redeemed
man in the glory of the ages to come will be higher than the whole human race
could have been in the Adamic life, and the number of the redeemed will be
vaster, no doubt, than all that ever have been or ever shall be lost. The day is
doubtless coming when the myriads of planets that sweep across the immensities
of space shall be colonized--yes, ruled by ransomed man--and all the universe
shall be a monument to the grandeur of Christ's redemption. In a more individual
sense it is also true that grace superabounds over sin in every life that fully
yields itself to Christ. God loves to take the most lost of men and make them
the most magnificent memorials of His redeeming love and power. He loves to take
the victims of Satan's hate, and the lives that have been the most fearful
examples of his power to destroy and use them to illustrate and illuminate the
possibilities of divine mercy and the new creations of the Holy Spirit.

He loves to take the things in our own lives that have been the worst, the
hardest and the most hostile to God, and transform them so that we shall be the
opposites of our former selves. The sweetest spirits are made out of the most
stormy and self-willed; the mightiest faith is created out of a wilderness of
doubts and fears; and the most divine love is transformed out of some heart of
hate and selfishness.

Boanerges becomes John, Jacob becomes Israel, Simon the son of Jonas becomes the
lowly and glorious apostle, crucified with downward head. The grace of God is
equal to the most uncongenial temperaments, to the most unfavorable
circumstances; and its glory is to transform a curse into a blessing and show to
men and angels of ages yet to come that "where sin increased, grace increased
all the more" (5:20b)... Chapter 7 Sanctification Through Death and Resurrection
In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil
desires. (Romans 6:11-13) In this chapter, the apostle begins the third section
of his epistle. In the first section he gave us the picture of sin; in the
second, of salvation through the righteousness of God and the atonement of
Christ, received by faith, and brings us into a state of justification. In the
third section, he deals with sanctification.

He begins by asking: "Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?"
(Romans 6:1). And he answers the question at the very outset by a tremendous "By
no means!" (6:2).

We will notice that from this time he uses the singular number in speaking about
sin. In the earlier picture he spoke of our sins--our acts of sin. "For all have
sinned and come short of the glory of God" (3:23). But now he speaks of sin, the
state and character of evil from which all our acts spring, as the miasma
exhales from a fetid marsh, as the water flows from an unclean fountain.

Justification deals with our sins, but sanctification deals with our sin. God
can forgive sins, but sin He can never forgive nor tolerate. It must be
destroyed and removed, and the very idea of continuing in sin is met at the
threshold by the solemn "By no means!" (6:2), which requires from every follower
of Christ that "holiness [without which] no one will see the Lord" (Hebrews
12:14). But how is this deliverance from sin to be brought about? The answer
involves three points, which the apostle unfolds in these three chapters.

1. We are sanctified, not by the improvement of the old nature, but by its death
and the resurrection life of the Lord Jesus Christ, instead.

2. We are sanctified, not by our old master, the law, or by any efforts or
struggles of our own, but by the free gift and the grace of the Lord Jesus
Christ, and through union with Christ alone.

3. We are sanctified by the indwelling life and power of the Holy Spirit in us
and filling our spirit, soul and body with the life of Jesus Christ.

It is on the first of these points that we shall dwell at present, as it is
unfolded in the first portion of the sixth chapter of Romans. In developing this
thought, the apostle presents a number of points with great logical force and
clearness. Baptism

1. The principle of death and resurrection is set forth in the symbol of
Christian baptism. "Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into
Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?" (6:3).

This, then, is the true meaning of baptism. It is the appropriate symbol of
death and resurrection, and not only of death, but of a death so definite and
final that it is followed by burial, so that the old life is out of sight
forever, and we are detached from it as thoroughly as the soul is separated from
the body that lies in the grave. Nature

2. The same principle is again set forth in the symbol of planting. "If we have
been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united
with him in his resurrection" (6:5). This is Christ's own chosen figure to
represent His own resurrection. "Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground
and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds"
(John 12:24).

Nature is full of this principle of death and resurrection. Every springtime
reiterates it, every harvest springs from it, every flower and tree proclaims
it. The little seed must disappear, corrupt and die, and out of its bosom come
the germs of life and fruitfulness. That is God's parable of true spiritual
life. The Cross

3. The death of Jesus Christ on the cross laid the foundation of our death and
resurrection. When He was offered up on Calvary, it was not only for our sins,
but for our sinfulness. In Him we were recognized by God as hanging on that
cross with Him, and dying when He died, so that His death represents our death,
and when we recognize it, appropriate it and identify ourselves with it, it
becomes the same as if we had been crucified and our old life had gone out with
His. "For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of
sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin--because
anyone who has died has been freed from sin" (Romans 6:6-7). Appropriating Faith

4. There must be, on our part, a definite appropriation of Christ's death for
our sanctification, and a committal of ourselves to Him in death and
resurrection.

While the death of Christ is available for all who will claim it, it is
effectual only to those who do claim it. It is necessary, therefore, that we
make this an actual fact in our experience and yield ourselves unto death with
Christ; then it becomes a fact in our life and the Holy Spirit makes that which
we have reckoned, real in our own experience.

There must be a definite planting of the seed in the ground. There must be an
actual yielding of the life to be crucified with Christ. There is a moment when
we consent to die and pronounce sentence of death upon ourselves, and then God
executes it and reckons it to us when we have claimed it for ourselves. Now it
is assumed by the apostle that we do this in our baptism. This is the real
meaning of baptism in its deepest significance, and it is taken for granted that
all who are baptized enter into this experience. The fact is, however, that many
do not take in baptism all that it really means and it becomes to them only an
acknowledgment of salvation and a confession of Christ for the forgiveness of
sins. In the divine plan, sanctification is closely connected with justification
and assumed as immediately following it. The fact is that in the Christian life
of many persons it comes at a later period. But this is not God's intention and,
therefore, the New Testament assumes that sanctification is to accompany or
immediately follow the first action of faith. This is what really did occur with
the first disciples on the day of Pentecost. As soon as they had received Jesus,
they also received the Holy Spirit, and this should be the experience of all
Christians. But with many persons this is not their experience. They are
baptized into Christ for the forgiveness of their sins and at a later period
they come to receive the Holy Spirit as their Deliverer from indwelling sin. In
this chapter, however, it is spoken of as something immediately connected with
their baptism and to which that act committed them. In any case, it is a
definite act and must have a clearly marked point of time in the experience of
every sanctified soul.

Beloved, have we thus passed sentence of death upon ourselves? Have we committed
ourselves to death with Christ? Have we made that definite and complete
surrender which brings to us the power of His death and separates us from our
former self? Dead to Sin

5. Through this definite act of committal and the effect of Christ's death,
which it appropriates, we become dead to sin.

Now let us understand exactly this Scriptural expression. It is not said that
sin is dead--by no means. Sin is very far from dead. It surrounds us on every
side like the dark and murky atmosphere, like an overflowing flood. But we are
dead to sin.

What is dead? Is it a part of us? Is it one of our natures that is dead? Is it
some principle in us that is dead? Is it the evil in us that is dead? No, you
are dead, the whole of you. The old man as an individual--the person--is as if
he were not the same person any more, but had passed out of existence and
another person had been born from above and dropped right out of heaven to earth
instead. "I have been crucified with Christ" (Galatians 2:20 a)--not my sin or
my sinful nature, but "I," the old man, the former individual. Both good and bad
have died alike, my strength and my weakness, my sin and my self-sufficiency, my
good qualities and my bad; and "I no longer live, but Christ lives in me"
(2:20b). Reckoning

6. The act of self-surrender must be followed by the attitude of reckoning.
Having taken this position, we must adjust ourselves to it and henceforth abide
in it. We must not be everlastingly getting crucified over again and going
through a continual reconsecration and recrucifixion, but we must count it once
for all done and finished, and we must steadily reckon that it is so, in spite
of how it might seem.

Here is the very crucial point and secret of its power. It is in the reckoning
that the secret of our strength will always be found. And so we read: For we
know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no
longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but
the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to
sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Romans 6:9-11)

Here it is very plain that the apostle recognized our crucifixion as being as
definite and complete as Christ's, and accepted once for all; that we are not to
be always getting crucified, that there is a fatal power in the doubting to
bring back the old man to life.

Now we are touching here an important and extraordinary principle, both in
nature and in grace. We become what we count ourselves. Let even a child begin
to consider itself base and wicked and it will soon grow reckless and bad.

There is a strange story in modern fiction of a man who lived two lives, one
mean and horrible and the other noble and lofty. At certain times a spell was
thrown over him and he considered himself another man, and while that
consciousness was upon him he acted like this man in every way, and was just as
base, sordid and vile as his ideal. He feared this awful influence, and when it
came upon him he was filled with horror and dismay and tried in vain to resist
it. At other times he counted himself the other man, then he was noble, just the
opposite of his former self.

"For as [a man] thinketh in his heart so is he" (Proverbs 23:7, KJV). The
consciousness of guilt degrades a man. The fear of evil paralyzes the soul. The
sense of innocency elevates the purpose.

Let that woman feel that she is a true wife, and all her womanhood is exalted.
But let the thought come into her mind that she is degraded and in a wrong
relationship; let her find that she is not a wife, and immediately the
consciousness of wrong defiles her and fills her with shame and every temptation
of sin.

Therefore God has fortified us in our new life by the spirit of faith against
the power of evil. He allows us to take a stand in Christ, and then the Holy
Spirit makes it an actual experience, and gives us faith to hold fast to it, and
abide in the consciousness of it, that it may cleanse and elevate our whole
being.

"But," you say, "how can I reckon myself dead, when I find myself continually
filled with the old thoughts, suggestions and incitements to sin?" Ah, beloved,
it is just here the power of reckoning comes in. When the old self seems to
return, refuse to recognize it as yourself, and that attitude will destroy it.
When the corpse insists on rising from the grave and thrusting itself upon your
consciousness, let the wand of faith wave over it and bid it back to its grave,
and it will return to its place in the cemetery of the soul.

We know that in modern spiritualism the faces of the dead sometimes seem to
return and speak to their friends in living tones, and thousands of the dupes of
spiritualism believe that these faces are really alive and represent the
fathers, mothers and friends who have died. But we know this is not true. The
man who died a year ago is still in his grave, and were you to go out to yonder
cemetery you would find his dust. This is a delusion painted by the devil on the
mind. Treat it as an illusion and it will vanish; but talk to it, believe it,
and it will stay and have the same influence upon you as if the dead man were
really before you. So when your old self comes back, if you listen to it, fear
it and believe it, it will have the same influence upon you as if it were not
dead; it will control you and destroy you. But if you will ignore it and say,
"You are not I, but Satan trying to make me believe that the old self is not
dead. I refuse you, I treat you as a demon power outside of me, I detach myself
from you!" If you treat it as a wife would her divorced husband, saying: "You
are nothing to me; you have no power over me. I have renounced you; in the name
of Jesus I bid you hence"--lo! the evil things will disappear, the shadow will
vanish, the wand of faith will lay the troubled spirit and send it back to the
abyss, and you will find that Christ is there instead, with His risen life to
back up your confidence and seal your victory.

Satan can stand anything better than neglect. If you ignore him he gets
disgusted and disappears. Jesus used to turn His back upon him and say, "Get
behind me, Satan!" (Matthew 16:23). So let us refuse him, and we shall find that
he will be compelled to act according to our faith. In the early annals of the
Church, Mr. Jamieson tells us, there was a beautiful Christian girl in Antioch
whom a wicked man sought to seduce. For this purpose he employed a magician and
sent him to practice upon her mind his devilish arts and throw over her the
spell of unholy thoughts and passions. This wicked man himself became enamored
of the fair Christian maiden and, proving false to his employer, tried to win
her for himself; and by some diabolical dealing he succeeded in injecting into
her mind thoughts, feelings and imaginations to which she was an utter stranger.

She found, to her horror, that she was entertaining thoughts and feelings from
which her pure inner spirit recoiled but was utterly unable to cast out.
Gradually she became discouraged and wondered if her own heart was growing
impure under this hideous influence which almost mastered her and made her
reckless. At last she went in her distress to her pastor, the good Bishop of
Antioch, and told her story. Then he told her this was not her sin at all and
explained to her that it was simply a temptation of the evil one; that these
feelings were not her own but entirely foreign to her, and that if she so
treated them they would have no power over her. He instructed her to refuse them
and treat them as the thoughts of Satan or of some other mind, and stand against
them in the consciousness of her own purity and innocence. As she did so she
found the visions vanished; the Holy Spirit filled her and she rose to a
strength she had not know before.

Soon the man who had been exercising his vile arts upon her was quite broken
down and came to her and confessed his sin and told her that from the moment
when she took her new stand that he felt that his power was broken and that a
mightier power was crushing him.

Beloved, "this is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith" (1
John 5:4 b). Let us abide in our reckoning and God will make it real. The Life
Side

7. But we must not be always dealing with death. Sanctification is not merely
the death of the old but the resurrection life of the new. And so we read also,
"If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also
be united with him in his resurrection" (Romans 6:5). "Just as Christ was raised
from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life"
(6:4). "In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ
Jesus" (6:11). The death is for a moment, but the life is forevermore. The death
is one act, the life is a perpetual succession of acts and experiences.

Some people are always living in the atmosphere of the cemetery, and carrying
about with them the smell of mold. God would have us get through with the death,
as Jesus did, and dwell in the life forevermore, "For we know that since Christ
was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over
him" (6:9).

Just as we have to yield ourselves to the death by a definite act and follow it
up by a constant attitude of reckoning, so we must take Christ as our life by a
definite appropriation and must retain Him by continual recognition.

It is not that we feel ourselves living, because the life is not in our
feelings. "For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God"
(Colossians 3:3). We do not always feel it or say it. We just have it laid up in
Him and transferred to us, and we are continually counting upon it and claiming
it, going forth in dependence upon it, reckoning upon it as we would draw upon
our bank and expect the draft to be honored; and as we do so, we find that the
life is supplied to us through Him, and we are enabled to overcome in all the
situations of our life. Yield

8. There is yet one more step in this beautiful progression, and that is the
habitual yielding of ourselves to God in the new attitude of dependence and
obedience. "Offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death
to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments [or, weapons] of
righteousness" (Romans 6:13 b).

Now the yielding spoken of here is not at all the act of surrender by which we
consecrate ourselves to God to be sanctified. That is all presupposed as over
and past. We have now come into the attitude of death and resurrection. The
yielding is subsequent to this and its true consequence. We have become united
to Christ in His death and resurrection, and we should now simply act
accordingly in all the details of life as they come to us from day to day. As a
wife who has been married to her husband now takes a new attitude and yields
herself to him in obedience and affection, so we, now standing to Christ in a
new relation, habitually, constantly, moment by moment, yield ourselves to Him
for each member in detail to be used for His will, service and glory.

Now this is not yielding ourselves that we may be crucified, that we may be
purified, that we may be chastened, that we may accept the sword which cuts deep
into our being; but it is yielding ourselves as those that are already dead--and
now alive from the dead--for self-forgetting service and holy obedience.

It is a very different thing to yield yourself that you may die, and to yield
yourself as one that is alive from the dead. The one is yielding yourself to the
surgeon's knife for the operation, the other is volunteering as a soldier for
service and duty.

God wants us in the attitude of service, and out of the attitude of
self-consciousness. There is nothing more distressing than to be continually
watching your sanctification and nursing your spiritual state, or superintending
your growth and living in the hospital of an invalid experience. And there is
nothing so wholesome as leaving yourself with Christ, pressing on in
self-forgetting service to glorify God and save others. The very expression used
here, "weapons," implies the opposite of a subjective state. Our attitude is an
aggressive one. We have taken the sword of God into our own believing and
consecrated hands, and yielded ourselves unto Him to possess us, fill us and
make the best of us. We are going forth at His command, in His will, for His
glory, and the very unselfishness of the whole situation has in it the most
sanctifying and elevating power.

Beloved, so let us die, so let us live, so let us reckon, so let us yield, so
let us prove all the fullness of this wonderful divine method of sanctification
through death and resurrection by Jesus Christ our Lord.... Chapter 9
Sanctification Through the Spirit

Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. You, however, are
controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God
lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not
belong to Christ. (Romans 8:8-9)

We now come to the third section of the Apostle's treatise on sanctification, in
which he shows that sanctification is not through the flesh, but through the
Spirit. These verses which we have just quoted contrast the two lives--the flesh
and the Spirit--and declare their irreconcilable and eternal antagonism. The
Flesh

It is very important at the outset that we understand exactly what is meant by
the terms flesh and Spirit. The flesh just means our whole natural life. It is
not our body, nor even our carnal nature, but the whole old man, including all
that was born of Adam, spirit, soul and body. "Flesh gives birth to flesh, but
the Spirit gives birth to spirit" (John 3:6). Everything born of the flesh is
flesh.

Some teachers seem to leave the impression that only the material part and the
soulish part of our nature are essentially wrong, and that the spiritual part is
somehow higher and better; and so men have been trying to get rid of matter and
soul, and get into spirit. But this is all a mistake. The natural spirit of man
is just as evil as his soul, and needs just as much to be crucified and
superseded by the Spirit of God. The whole of our Adam life is fleshly and must
be laid down, and brought, through the death of Christ, into the resurrection
life--not only the evil things in us, but those which we have accounted good.
"The grass withers and the flowers fall;/ because the breath of the LORD blows
on them" (Isaiah 40:7 thew:7 hew:7). Not only must the corrupt flesh of Noah's
time be destroyed by flood, but even the natural affection of Abraham for his
Isaac must be crucified, and then come forth, after the scene on Mount Moriah,
as a resurrection love, by a new affection that had passed through the fire, and
henceforth loved its object not for its own sake, or even for the sake of the
object, but in and for God alone. The Spirit

What is meant by the Spirit? It means not our human spirit, but the Holy Spirit.
It should be spelled with a capital "S" all through. The meaning is made very
plain by the words, "You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature [the
flesh, KJV] but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you" (Romans 8:9).
A spiritual man, then, is a man who has the Holy Spirit. There is a great
difference between this and our own converted spirit. There must come a distinct
epoch in every sanctified life when the converted spirit becomes the abode of
the divine Spirit, and the Holy Spirit comes to reside and abide as the source
of all our life and strength.

There are two sides to this abiding. In one sense the Spirit is in us, in
another we are in the Spirit. It is like a great ocean into which we plunge
until it is all around us and becomes the very element in which we live, but as
we come into the ocean, the ocean comes into us, and fills us and overflows
until it encompasses us on every side, and becomes the very element of our
being.

Now, we note in this passage a very remarkable variety in the terms in which the
Holy Spirit is spoken of. First, He is spoken of as the Spirit of God, then as
the Spirit of Christ, and then as Christ. This is all most suggestive. The
Spirit of God represents His true deity as He was revealed in the Old Testament.
The Spirit of Christ represents the New Testament revelation of the Holy Spirit,
as we see Him in the person of Jesus, and His deity is softened, humanized and
brought nearer to us by His residence in Jesus Christ. The Spirit of Christ

He is the Spirit who lived in Him and by whom all His works were done. Jesus did
not go forth to His ministry until He received the Holy Spirit, nor are we
better able to go forth to any service for God without His enduring wisdom,
power and love. It is delightful to know that when we receive Him, we receive
the One who inspired the whole ministry of our blessed Lord, and He comes to us
with a tenderness and almost a humanness which the Old Testament revelation
could never bring. But more than this: He is not only the Spirit of Christ, but
He is called Christ Himself. He comes to reveal Christ and to bring His personal
presence into our heart and life.

Like a divine painter He stands in the background and draws on the canvas the
face of another, even the face of Christ, and we do not see the hand that draws
the picture, but only the face that He reveals.

Like a perfect telescope, he brings to us the revelation of the heavenly worlds,
and as we look through the reflector, or the tube, we do not see the instrument,
but only the object which it brings to us.

Therefore the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in us is practically the indwelling
of Christ, and the most direct consciousness of the heart in which the Spirit
dwells is of the person of Jesus rather than of the person of the Holy Spirit,
although both are known to us, and it is right to commune with either or with
both. It is a life in the Spirit, and it is at the same time a life in Christ.
It is abiding in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, and yet Christ speaks of it
as abiding in Him.

Now these two lives are very vividly contrasted in this chapter: SECTION 1--The
Life of the Flesh 1. Weak

It is weak: "For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the
sinful nature" (8:3a). Our natural life is weak in all spiritual and natural
directions. It has many high aspirations, but it is unable to accomplish them.
The poetry, philosophy and even the fine art of past ages are full of high
ideals, but men have never been able to realize them. Seneca, Cicero and Marcus
Aurelius could tell us of deep longings for "the true, the beautiful and the
good"; Plato and Zeno could unfold many of the principles of higher ethics, but
they could not reach these patterns themselves. The marble statue, the painted
canvas, the poetic dream, could idealize virtue, but the marble statues were
better than the men who molded them, their poems were higher than their authors,
their philosophy was purer than their lives; and they fell back from the
momentary dream into the slimy depths of corruption and shame. The worst of men
often have better thoughts and resolve to break their chains, but like the
Laocoon in ancient story, they sink at last, crushed in the folds of the hideous
serpent that they resist in vain. "The flesh is weak" (Matthew 26:41, KJV). 2.
Wicked But is is not only weak, it is wicked. "The sinful mind is hostile
[enmity, KJV] to God" (Romans 8:7 a). It is not merely an enemy of God, but it
is embodied, intense, unmitigated enmity. Everything in it and about it is
hostile to God. It hates His law, His will, His ways, and even His plan of
salvation and mercy through Jesus Christ. "It is evil, and only evil," and there
is nothing really good about it.

It may have much benevolence and apparent virtue, but when it comes to direct
relations with God, it always shows its malignity and its utter depravity. 3.
Hateful The flesh is not at enmity with God, but it is hateful to God. "Those
controlled by the sinful nature [the flesh, KJV] cannot please God" (8:8). God
takes no pleasure in any part of the natural man. The whole Adam race, as well
as the Adamic earth, is under a curse. Cain may bring his brightest offerings,
the fairest flowers and the richest fruits, to the altar of Jehovah, but they
will be rejected with the worshiper. They are fleshly things, born of the
sin-cursed earth, and with Cain they must be rejected. The flesh may be as
beautiful as the daughter of Jairus, as she lay in her loveliness a moment after
death, or as hideous as the body of Lazarus, corrupting in the grave. It matters
not whether it presents itself in robes of fashion in the heated ballroom or in
the ecclesiastical millinery of the ritualistic altar. It matters not whether it
comes to the march of the music of the carnival of revelry and the lewd songs of
the drunkard and debauched, or in the splendid choruses of the opera, oratorio
or religious quartet. It is equally displeasing to God. Its beautiful music, its
eloquent sermons, its elaborate good works, its costly benevolence, as well as
its filthy excesses and brutal lusts, are alike offensive and accursed in the
holy eyes of Him who has sworn, "I am going to put an end to all people"
(Genesis 6:13). 4. Incurably Bad The flesh is incurably bad. "It does not submit
to God's law, nor can it do so" (Romans 8:7 b). It never can be any better. It
is no use trying to improve the flesh. You may educate it all you please. You
may train it by the most approved methods, you may set before it the brightest
examples, you may pipe to it or mourn to it, treat it with encouragement or
severity; its nature will always be incorrigibly the same.

Like the wild hawk which the little child captures in its infancy and tries to
train in the habits of the dove, before you are aware, it will fasten its cruel
beak upon the gentle fingers that would caress it, and show the old wild spirit
of fear and ferocity. It is a hawk by nature, and it can never be made a dove.
"The sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it
do so" (8:7). The only remedy for human nature is to destroy it, and receive
instead the divine nature. God does not improve man. He crucifies the natural
life with Christ, and then He imparts the resurrection life of Christ and
educates the new man into all the maturity of the life divine. The strongest
argument I know for eternal punishment is--eternal sin. When a lost soul gets
out into the liberty of eternal sin, it will reach possibilities of wickedness
that we can scarcely conceive today, and will sin enough in a single hour to
condemn it for a million years.

No, if the hallowed influences of Christianity and the Holy Spirit do not bring
men to God, the atmosphere of perdition will certainly accomplish less. The
wretched soul will grow more miserable and more malignant through the
everlasting ages, and "evil men and impostors will go from bad to worse,
deceiving and being deceived" (2 Timothy 3:13). SECTION II--The Life of the
Spirit In contrast with the flesh, this chapter unfolds the fruits of the
indwelling Spirit in the believer's life. 1. No Condemnation

There is no condemnation: "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who
are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1). This is essential to progress in holiness. We
must keep in the light of God's love and the full assurance of His acceptance if
we would grow in grace; but it is not until we receive the Holy Spirit and come
into this deeper union with Christ, expressed by the phrase "unto Christ," that
we pass out of condemnation and begin to live in the perpetual light of His
countenance. The unsanctified soul is always getting into condemnation; it is
ever sinning and repenting and trying to come out from under the shadow of God's
displeasure. But when we receive the indwelling Spirit, the first effect is to
lift us into a life of perpetual peace and the unbroken consciousness of God's
acceptance, approval and love. Henceforth it is true of us, "The sun will no
more be your light by day,/ nor will the brightness of the moon shine on you,/
for the LORD will be your everlasting light,/ and your God will be your glory"
(Isaiah 60:19). "So now I have sworn not to be angry with you,/ never to rebuke
you again" (54:9). 2. Deliverance

There is deliverance from the power of indwelling sin: "Because through Christ
Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death"
(Romans 8:2).

Two laws are mentioned here. The first is the law of sin and death. It is that
principle in our fallen nature which operates with the power and uniformity of a
law and leads us to sin and death. We are unable to resist this law through the
mere force of our human will. But we put the natural law under its opposite,
viz.: the spiritual life in Christ Jesus. That is the life of Jesus Christ
brought into our heart by the Holy Spirit and operating there as a new law of
divine strength and vitality, and counteracting, overcoming and lifting us above
the old law of sin and death.

Let me illustrate these two laws by a simple comparison. Sitting at my desk by
the law of gravitation my hand naturally falls upon the desk, attracted downward
by the natural law which makes heavy bodies fall to the earth. But there is a
stronger law than the law of gravitation--my own life and will. So through the
operation of this higher law--the law of my vitality--I defy the law of
gravitation, and lift my hand and hold it above its former resting place and
move it at my will. The law of vitality has made me free from the law of
gravitation.

Precisely so the indwelling life of Christ Jesus, operating with the power of
the law, lifts me above and counteracts the power of sin in my fallen nature.
This is the secret of sanctification. It is not so much the expulsion of sin, as
the incoming of the Holy Spirit, which has broken the control which sin formerly
exercised, lifting me into an entirely new sphere of holy life and victory. 3.
Practical Righteousness

There is practical righteousness: "in order that the righteous requirements of
the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature
but according to the Spirit" (8:4). Sanctification is not a mere sentiment or
interior experience, but it leads to practical righteousness, or fulfillment of
the law in our heart and life, so that we walk according to the Spirit and
fulfill the righteousness of the law. The difference between this and the Old
Testament morality is that the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in us
first, and then by us in practical obedience. 4. Habitual Obedience

There is habitual obedience: "Those who live in accordance with the Spirit have
their minds set on [do mind, KJV] what the Spirit desires" (8:5b). We can all
remember the time when our mother used to say to us, "Now, mind what I say. Mind
your work, mind my words and orders." That meant, of course, that we were to set
our mind upon it, to give diligent heed to it, and carefully to obey her wishes
in everything. So in our spiritual life we are to mind the Holy Spirit, our true
mother--and to hearken and obey in all things. 5. Life and Peace This indwelling
life of the Spirit brings us life and peace: "The mind of sinful man is death,
but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace" (8:6). This literally
means, "the minding of the Spirit is life and peace." This life in the Holy
Spirit brings us divine peace and an overflowing life, full of the deep
consciousness of God's approval, presence and blessing. It is, indeed, a sweet
and happy life, where we "come in and go out, and find pasture" (John 10:9), and
our Shepherd makes us lie down in green pastures and leads us beside the waters
of rest, anointing our head with oil and making our cup overflow (Psalms 23:2;
Psalms 23:5). 6. Physical Healing

It brings us physical healing and quickening: "And if the Spirit of him who
raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead
will also give life to [quicken, KJV] your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who
lives in you" (Romans 8:11).

There is no doubt that this passage refers to the life of the Spirit in our
body. It is the mortal body that is here spoken of and it means the present
body, liable to death, and cannot mean the dead body at the time of the
resurrection. It is the Spirit who now dwells in us that quickens us while He
dwells, and the quickening here described is not the raising from the dead of
the lifeless corpse; the word literally means the exhilarating and reviving of
the life that is not extinct, but exhausted and waning. It is applied to Abraham
in the fourth chapter, referring to the quickening of his exhausted energy, in
order that Isaac might be begotten when he himself was past age.

Now, this divine quickening of our mortal frame is one of the privileges of our
life in the Spirit. It is only for those in whom the Spirit dwells, not as an
occasional visitor, but as an abiding Guest.

There may be many a poor home that you often visit, but when you come to live in
a house and make it your home, you are very likely to repair what needs
repairing to make it clean and comfortable, renewing the broken windows and
leaking roof, and regarding it as your healthful and happy home.

Now while the Holy Spirit only visits you at times, He will not undertake to
alter the dwelling, but if you give Him the keys and make it His home, He will
make it a home worthy of Himself and of you. He will make it a blessed home, and
bring His retinue of heavenly beings to make it a little picture of heaven. 7.
Mortification

It brings the mortifying of our members: "If by the Spirit you put to death the
misdeeds of the body, you will live" (8:13b). The Holy Spirit is the only One
who can kill us and keep us dead. Many Christians try to do this disagreeable
work themselves, and are going through a continual crucifixion, but they can
never accomplish the work permanently. This is the work of the Holy Spirit, and
when you really yield yourself to the death, it is delightful to find how
sweetly He can slay you.

Some modern legislatures have adopted electricity as the mode of capital
punishment, and by the touch of the dynamic spark, they tell us, life is
extinguished almost without a quiver of pain. But however this may be in natural
things, we know the Holy Spirit can touch with celestial fire the surrendered
thing and slay it in a moment, after it is really yielded up to the sentence of
death. That is our business, and it is God's business to execute that sentence
and to keep it constantly operative.

Let us not live in the ways of perpetual and ineffectual suicide, but reckoning
ourselves dead indeed, let us leave ourselves in the hands of the blessed Holy
Spirit, and He will slay whatever rises in opposition to His will, and keep us
true to our heavenly reckoning and filled with His resurrection life. 8. Divine
Guidance

Divine guidance is the next privilege of our life in the Spirit: "Because those
who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God" (8:14). He guides us, counsels
us, points out our way and sweetly leads us in it. 9. Sonship

Another privilege is the witness of our sonship. "For you did not receive a
spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of
sonship. And by him we cry, 'Abba, Father'" (8:15). The Holy Spirit brings us
into a more intimate and childlike consciousness of our sonship. The word "Abba,
Father" is the same as our "Papa," and expresses a very tender filial affection.
The indwelling life of the Holy Spirit brings us out of the distance and the
dread of our old life into the very bosom of the Father, and enables us to cry
instinctively, with the simplicity of a child, "Abba, Father!"

Many Christians are living as servants, rather than as sons, and in the Old
Testament, rather than the New; but it is the mission of the Holy Spirit so to
unite us to Jesus and bring Him into our hearts that we become identical with
Him in His sonship and look up to the Father with the same love and trust that
He feels--His Father and our Father, His God and our God. 10. Spirit of Hope The
next effect of the Holy Spirit is, to awaken in us the Spirit of hope:

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory
that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the
sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not
by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the
creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the
glorious freedom of the children of God.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth
right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the
firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as
sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope
that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we
hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. (8:18-25) This
splendid passage unfolds the attitude which we, along with the "whole creation,"
sustain toward the coming of our Lord. We "wait in eager expectation" and a
mighty hope, and with groanings and travailings of Spirit, for the redemption of
our body and of the whole creation from the bondage of corruption, into the
glorious liberty of the children of God. And this mighty hope enables us not
only to endure "our present sufferings" but to triumph over them, and regard
them as "not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us."

Such a hope must be born of the Holy Spirit, and when He comes in His fullness
into the consecrated heart, this is one of His most blessed operations.

Then it becomes not a theory, not a doctrine of the Lord's coming, but a
personal hope of unspeakable sweetness and power, influencing and controlling
all our life, and lifting us above our trials and our fears. 11. Firstfruits The
Holy Spirit prepares us for the coming of the Lord and to be among "the
firstfruits" at His appearing. There is a remarkable expression here which has a
deeper meaning than appears on the surface: "We ourselves, who have the
firstfruits of the Spirit" (8:23).

It means that the Holy Spirit is preparing a first company of holy and
consecrated hearts for the coming of the Lord and the gathering of His saints,
and that these will be followed later by the larger company of all the saved.

There is a first resurrection, in which the blessed and holy shall have part,
and for this He is preparing all who are willing to receive Him in His fullness.
This is the happy privilege of those who receive the fullness of the Holy
Spirit, that they are called and qualified for the marriage of the Lamb, and
trained to form part of His Bride. Transcendent honor! Unspeakable privilege!
May God enable us to have a part in this blessed hope! 12. Ministry of Prayer
The Holy Spirit helps us in the ministry of prayer: "In the same way, the Spirit
helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the
Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he
who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit
intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will" (8:26-27). The Holy
Spirit becomes to the consecrated heart the Spirit of intercession. We have two
advocates. We have an Advocate with the Father, who prays for us at God's right
hand; but the Holy Spirit is the Advocate within, who prays in us, inspiring our
petitions and presenting them, through Christ, to God.

We need this Advocate. We know not what to pray for, and we know not how to pray
as we ought, but He breathes in the holy heart the desires that we may not
always understand and the groanings which we could not ourselves utter nor
comprehend. But God understands, and He, with a loving Father's heart, is always
searching our hearts to find the Spirit's prayer, and to answer it in blessing.
He does not wait until the prayer is formally presented, but He searches the
heart and finds many a prayer there that we have not discovered, and answers
many a cry that we never understood. And when we reach our home and read the
records of life, we shall better know and appreciate the infinite love of that
divine Friend, who has watched within as the Spirit of prayer, and breathed out
our every need to the heart of God, and of that Heavenly Father who, waiting to
be gracious, has so often fulfilled His own great promise, "Before they call I
will answer;/ while they are still speaking I will hear" (Isaiah 65:24).

Such are some of the steps in the life we may live in the Holy Spirit. It is
indeed a glorious life, and it is the privilege of all who will cease from
themselves and receive the Holy Spirit and the blessed Christ He brings to abide
in them and live out His own blessed life in their mortal bodies.

Let us receive the Holy Spirit. Let us mind Him. Let us obey Him. Let us be led
by Him, and let us follow on in all His perfect will until we reach the fullness
of our spiritual maturity and are prepared for the coming dispensation, with its
larger developments and grander prospects and possibilities.

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