======================================================================== WRITINGS OF GEORGE KULP by George Kulp ======================================================================== A collection of theological writings, sermons, and essays by George Kulp, compiled for study and devotional reading. Chapters: 109 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TABLE OF CONTENTS ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. 00A.00. BATTLEFIELDS OF THE CHURCH 2. 00A.00c. Contents 3. 00A.01. The Word of God 4. 00A.02. The Holy Spirit the Author 5. 00A.03. The Old Testament and the New 6. 00A.04. Verbal Inspiration 7. 00A.05. Thus Saith the Lord 8. 00A.06. Testimony of the Fathers 9. 00A.07. Witnesses to the Truth 10. 01.00. Nuggets of Gold 11. 01.000. Introduction 12. 01.01. Chapter 1: God's Care - THE FATHER'S HOUSEKEEPER 13. 01.02. Chapter 2: Prayer - NO SIZE IN PRAYER 14. 01.03. Chapter 3: Witnesses for God - BEING TRUE TO GOD WON 15. 01.04. Chapter 4: Victory - THE SECRET OF SUCCESS 16. 01.05. Chapter 5: Consecration - TO PREVENT BIAS 17. 01.06. Chapter 6: Salvation - IS GOD HERE? 18. 01.07. Chapter 7: Missions - SELF-SACRIFICE 19. 01.08. Chapter 8: Jesus - THE LIVING FOUNTAIN 20. 01.09. Chapter 9: Promises of God - THE CLASS-LEADER'S METHOD 21. 01.10. Chapter 10: The Gospel - DON'T BE A DUCK 22. 01.11. Chapter 11: Church Amusements - AMUSEMENTS A FAILURE 23. 01.12. Chapter 12: Folly of Infidelity - HE PROVED IT 24. 01.13. Chapter 13: Soul Saving - MODERN PREACHING 25. 01.14. Chapter 14: Experience - TO SAVE HIS MOTHER 26. 01.15. Chapter 15: Conscience - "Good-bye," 27. 02.00.0. The Callused Knees 28. 02.00.1. Contents 29. 02.00.2. Foreward 30. 02.01. Chapter 1. A Man Sent From God, Whose Name was John 31. 02.02. Chapter 2. Behold He Prayeth 32. 02.03. Chapter 3. Preparation for Life Work 33. 02.04. Chapter 4. Call to the Ministry 34. 02.05. Chapter 5. Abundant in Labors 35. 02.06. Chapter 6. Conquering and to Conquer 36. 02.07. Chapter 7. A Student of the Word 37. 02.08. Chapter 8. Travailing in Soul 38. 02.09. Chapter 9. Victories in the Pastorate 39. 02.10. Chapter 10. As a Personal Worker and Preacher 40. 02.11. Chapter 11. Give Me Souls, or I Die 41. 02.12. Chapter 12. Obtaining More of God 42. 02.13. Chapter 13. A Steward of the Mysteries of God 43. 02.14. Chapter 14. The Manliness of the Man 44. 02.15. Chapter 15. As God's Revivalist 45. 02.16. Chapter 16. A Partial Cessation From Labor 46. 02.17. Chapter 17. Saving Souls From Death 47. 02.18. Chapter 18. Cry Out, and Shout, Thou Inhabitant of Zion 48. 02.19. Chapter 19. Light in the Valley of the Shadow 49. 02.20. Chapter 20. Conqueror in Death 50. 03.00. The Making of a Preacher 51. 03.01. Chapter 01. The Preacher's Call 52. 03.02. Chapter 02. The Preacher's Education 53. 03.03. Chapter 03. Personal Piety 54. 03.04. Chapter 04. The Earnest Preacher 55. 03.05. Chapter 05. The Revival Preacher 56. 03.06. Chapter 06. The Man in the Pulpit 57. 03.07. Chapter 07. The Growing of Sermons 58. 03.08. Chapter 08. The Preacher as a Pastor 59. 03.09. Chapter 09. The Preacher's Difficulties 60. 03.10. Chapter 10. The Preacher's Reward 61. 04.00. TRUTHS THAT TRANSFIGURE 62. 04.000. Forward 63. 04.01. Chapter 01. CITIZENSHIP IN HEAVEN 64. 04.02. Chapter 02. THE DISCIPLINE OF SUFFERING 65. 04.03. Chapter 03. THE PROGRAM OF JESUS 66. 04.04. Chapter 04. HAVE YOU THE VISION? 67. 04.05. Chapter 05. THE SAINTS' ATTENDANTS 68. 04.06. Chapter 06. IT IS WRITTEN 69. 04.07. Chapter 07. THERE IS CORN IN EGYPT 70. 04.08. Chapter 08. THE LIFE ABUNDANT 71. 04.09. Chapter 09. THE TRIUMPHAL PROCESSION 72. 04.10. Chapter 10. THE ONLY REMEDY FOR SIN 73. 04.11. Chapter 11. HOW READEST THOU? 74. 04.12. Chapter 12. APOSTOLIC PRACTICES 75. 04.13. Chapter 13. THE CROSS OF CHRIST 76. 04.14. Chapter 14. THE OPTIMISM OF FAITH 77. 04.15. Chapter 15. SONS OF GOD 78. S. A Voice From Eternity 79. S. According to Works 80. S. After This 81. S. Be Ye Ready 82. S. Conscience, The Umpire Of God 83. S. Consecration -- All or None 84. S. Counting The Cost 85. S. Doing For Jesus 86. S. Dwell Deep 87. S. Eternity 88. S. Gather Not My Soul with Sinners 89. S. God's Plan 90. S. Having No Hope 91. S. Hell a Place and a State 92. S. Hindered Prayers 93. S. Hopeless To Fight Against God 94. S. Lying to God 95. S. Masters of Circumstances 96. S. Practical Regeneration 97. S. Provision For Rough Roads 98. S. Purity and Power 99. S. Spiritual Gymnastics 100. S. The Awful Void 101. S. The Damnation Army 102. S. The Day Of Judgment 103. S. The Departed Lord 104. S. The Price Of Victory 105. S. The Second Death 106. S. The Spirit Withdrawn 107. S. Three Wonderful Days 108. S. Thus Saith the Lord 109. S. Wrath Revealed ======================================================================== CHAPTER 1: 00A.00. BATTLEFIELDS OF THE CHURCH ======================================================================== BATTLEFIELDS OF THE CHURCH Lectures to Students at God’s Bible School By George Brubaker Kulp Author of Callused Knees A Voice from Eternity Nuggets of Gold Etc. God’s Revivalist Press Cincinnati, Ohio ======================================================================== CHAPTER 2: 00A.00C. CONTENTS ======================================================================== Contents 1: The Word of God 2: The Holy Spirit the Author 3: The Old Testament and the New 4: Verbal Inspiration 5: Thus Saith the Lord 6: Testimony of the Fathers 7: Witnesses to the Truth ======================================================================== CHAPTER 3: 00A.01. THE WORD OF GOD ======================================================================== 1: The Word of God One day a mixed company of men, of different creeds and opinions, were met together -Protestants and Romanists, philosophers and materialists were there, when this question was started: Supposing a man doomed to imprisonment for life were allowed to choose one book only as the companion of his solitude, what book should he choose? All agreed that his choice should be the Bible. The story is told by a French rationalist. What a testimony to the charm of the Bible and to its power to inspire confidence in men, as a companion whose friendship would never weary! It is a truth that the Bible does supply a great variety of mental and moral nutriment. In its compass one can move through scenes which display all sides of life. It reaches our various moods. As Coleridge said, "It finds us at the greatest depths of our being." Its maxims on the conduct of life, no less than its outbursts as from the depths of a human spirit; its devotional, no less than its intellectual, spirit, meets the wants of our nature. The Word of God is a commentary on His government, and reveals to us, by many examples, how to interpret those lessons which the varying events of life, its joys and sorrows, its temptations and trials, are calculated to teach us. There is hardly an event, hardly a character, that has not its parallel in that immense picture gallery of historic and biographic sketches which the Scriptures open up to us. The whole of life seems mirrored there; the examples range through all the ranks of social life, embrace all varieties of character, and illustrate by similar cases almost every conceivable combination of circumstances in which man can be placed. It is hardly possible to imagine ourselves in any situation in which we will not find the Word has warning, consolation or guidance. Milton said of the Bible: "There are no songs comparable to the songs of Zion, no orations equal to those of the prophets, and no politics like those which the Scriptures teach." We want to, and will, insist, all through these lectures, that the Word is emphatically the WORD OF GOD. We propose to bring before this class the very BEST THOUGHT of the BEST MEN of all the past, who have blessed the world and stood for the defense of the truth. "Day unto day uttereth speech," and wherever in all the days of the past men have walked with God, and studied His Word, they have had the experimental evidence, the best in all the world, that the Book of books is indeed the Word of God. It proves itself. The Old Testament foreshadows the New, and the New is a fulfillment of the Old. We say it is the Word and yet it is both human and divine. Here is no contradiction. "The mystery of the inspiration of the written Word is parallel to that of the incarnation of the Word in the person of Christ. In both there is the meeting of the human and the Divine; in both there is the shining out of the Divine through the human; in both there is such an outward display of the human as that men may deny, if they will, the presence of the Divine." But the Bible is God’s Word. "Holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." As truly and as certainly as in Jesus Christ dwelt the fulness of the Godhead bodily, so truly and certainly in the hearts of those who gave us the Book, dwelt the Divine Spirit of God. The Bible is, in a sense in which it is true of no other Book, God’s Book and God’s Word. God the Holy Ghost, when He inspired men to give us these books, did not speak through their lips as the oracles of old are said to have spoken through the lips of the subjects of their inspiration, as through hollow-sounding masks, but spoke just in the souls of those whom He stirred to give us these inspired words. The hearts of men were first filled with the Spirit, before they spake out these messages from God. Live coals from off the altar touched their lips before they could respond as messengers for God. Yet God, in using the human and speaking through their minds, was shining through man. God was manifested in the flesh. HE SPAKE through Moses, when his mind was tinctured with the learning of the Egyptians, but still it was, "Thus saith the Lord." The rough speech of the herdsman’s son and the gatherer of sycamore fruit was clearly and unmistakably the Word of the Lord. The prophet loses sight of himself in the message, "Thus saith the Lord." Israel trembled and repented, not before the rough herdsman’s son, but because they knew God was talking through lips of clay, to the whole house of Israel. We appreciate the words and argument of Bishop Wordsworth: "Holy Scripture is God’s Word written. The things written are from God. ALL Scripture is given by inspiration of God. The fresh and living waters of all heavenly truth issue from one source, and that source is DIVINE. But the water flows in various streams. Sometimes the Divine element of inspired truth rushes vehemently in torrents and cataracts in the impetuous fervor of Paul; some times it diffuses itself, and sleeps in deep, calm lakes. in the love and gentleness of John. The element is one and the same, and DIVINE; the channels are different and human; the power of one destroys not the liberty of the other. The Divine Spirit and the human intellect and will concur and act together in perfect, loving harmony and joy." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 4: 00A.02. THE HOLY SPIRIT THE AUTHOR ======================================================================== 2: The Holy Spirit the Author "An intimate acquaintance with the Holy Scriptures is a secure haven, an impregnable bulwark, an immovable tower, an imperishable glory, an impenetrable armor, an unfading joy, a perpetual delight, and whatever other excellence can be uttered." So says the quaint, old, delightful theologian of Methodism. Whatever tends to undermine faith in the Word of God delights the denizens of the lowest Hell, whether it springs from the rationalism of German schools or their imitators in Boston. Some time ago a young man who was up in the northern peninsula of Michigan, speaking of the immense tracts of forests where one can so easily lose his way, said, "When you get lost, believe your compass, do not believe yourself." So I think of the Word of God; it is our guide, our compass: trust in it, and you are safe. If it is not the WORD OF GOD, it is not the "HOLY BIBLE," and is not a safe guide. We would confirm and encourage every humble believer in its truths, they testify of Jesus, and in Him only do we have life. The entrance of His Word giveth light. Let us first settle in our minds that the Word came from God -- from beginning to end. The Holy Spirit is the Author. IT IS INSPIRED. This brings us to the question that will arise in the mind of the intelligent inquirer: "What do yon mean by inspiration?" and we reply, The conveying of certain extraordinary and supernatural notices or thoughts into the soul; or it denotes any spiritual influences of God upon the mind of a rational creature, whereby he is formed to a degree of intellectual improvement, to which he could not have attained in his present circumstances in a natural way. In the first and highest sense, the prophets, evangelists and apostles are said to have spoken and written by divine inspiration. This inspiration of the Old Testament Scriptures is so expressly ATTESTED BY OUR LORD AND HIS APOSTLES, that among those who receive them as a divine revelation the only question relates to the inspiration of the New Testament. Before we take up the question as to the Gospels, etc., let us devote a portion of our time to the Scriptures as Jesus knew them, and to which He gave His approval, for we deny most emphatically that He would, or could, lend Himself to what He knew was a fraud; that to Him a collection of myths and legends, even though accepted by the Jews, never could be "the Scriptures" and quoted as "THUS SAITH THE LORD." The inspiration of the Scriptures includes the whole Book from Genesis to Revelation -history, prophecy and poetry; Pentateuch to the end. The Word says, "ALL SCRIPTURE IS GIVEN BY INSPIRATION OF GOD." The historical books of the Bible are necessary to a complete Bible, and in the very first one, that gives us an account of the "beginnings," we have the bases of the doctrines that are found in the Word. In Genesis we have the principles of atonement, sacrifice, pardon of sin, covenants, coming of the Redeemer. If Genesis is needed, it needs to be inspired of God. "The doctrine of sin needs for its starting-point the record of the fall," and the record of the fall is "history." Dr. Grey says: "Could we so satisfactorily understand justification did we not have the story of God’s dealings with Abraham? And what of the priesthood of Christ? Dismiss Leviticus and what use could be made of Hebrews?" The historical books are, in many cases, prophetical as well as historical, and the Apostle, referring to Old Testament history, says, "THESE THINGS were written for our learning, that through patience and comfort of THE SCRIPTURES we might have hope." And again he says, it was not written for his sake alone, but for us also. When Jesus met the arch-enemy in the conflict in the wilderness, in the very beginning of His ministry, He used Deuteronomy, to the discomfiture and defeat of the devil, for though some Doctors of Divinity today say it is a part of the collection of myths, yet the old devil knew better, knew it was the Word of God; knew "IT IS WRITTEN." He had too much devilish sense ever to be scared by a "myth," and knew it was the INSPIRED WORD OF GOD. The whole life and ministry of Jesus Christ were a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, from His birth until He cried on the cross: "It is finished!’ He, while on earth, was a witness to the divine authority and infallible truth of the sacred records in which prophecies that met their fulfillment in Him are recorded. In my old Bible I have written on the first page: "The phrase, ’Thus saith the Lord,’ occurs 2,600 times in the Old Testament." The very first chapter in the very first Gospel says, "All this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord THROUGH THE PROPHETS." In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus was careful to proclaim He "came not to destroy, but to fulfill THE LAW AND THE PROPHETS," and again He declared, "The SCRIPTURES cannot be broken." The Epistle to the Hebrews states that "GOD at sundry times and in divers manners SPAKE IN TIMES PAST unto the fathers BY THE PROPHETS." And we are believing with all the heart that Jesus and apostles knew more of the Word than the present-day higher critics, who, drawing there inspiration from German universities, are sadly undermining the faith of those who wait on their ministry. Turning now to the inspiration of the New Testament, we find first the apostles were the historians of Jesus, and for them inspiration was necessary that they might fulfill the purpose of their mission. They left in four Gospels a record of what He did and taught. Two of the four were written by Matthew and John. Mark and Luke were probably of the seventy that Jesus sent out in His lifetime, and the earliest Christian historians tell us the Gospel of Mark was revised by Peter and that of Luke by Paul, and that both were afterward approved by John, so that all four Gospels were handed down to the Church with the sanction of apostolic authority. The apostles were not only the historians of Jesus, their writings contain PREDICTIONS OF THINGS TO COME, and prophecy requires the highest degree of inspiration, hence it will occur to any unprejudiced mind they must have been inspired, first, in order to be accurate historians of the life of Jesus, twenty years after He ascended, and true expounders of His doctrine; and second, prophets of events yet to come. OUR LORD PROMISED INSPIRATION TO HIS APOSTLES, and His character gives us a security that He possessed all that He promised. We read in the Gospels that Jesus ordained twelve and sent them forth to preach, and His last commission was to preach THE GOSPEL. His constant, familiar association with them qualified them for the execution of His commission. When He sent them during Ills lifetime, He said: "It is not ye that speak, but THE SPIRIT OF YOUR FATHER which SPEAKETH in you." (Matthew 10:19-20.) And He repeated this promise when He said, "For I will give you a mouth and wisdom which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist." (Luke 21:15.) And the fulfillment of these promises was a pledge that the measure of inspiration necessary for the carrying out of the great commission would not be lacking. When Jesus took a long farewell of His disciples after eating the Passover, He said, "The Comforter which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father shall send in my name, HE SHALL TEACH YOU ALL THINGS, and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have SAID unto you. I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit, when He the Spirit of truth is come, He will guide you into all truth, for He shall not speak of Himself, but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak, and lie will show you things to come." (John 14:16-17; John 14:26; John 16:12-13.) Here all the degrees of inspiration that are necessary are promised; the Spirit was to bring to their remembrance what they HAD heard, to guide them into the truth they were not then able to bear, and to show them things to come. THIS IS JUST WHAT THE SPIRIT DID FOR OLD TESTAMENT PROPHETS. They searched as to "what or what manner of times the SPIRIT OF CHRIST which was in them, did signify, when it testified BEFOREHAND the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that SHOULD FOLLOW." And then the Apostle proceeds to say: "Unto us they did minister the things WHICH ARE NOW REPORTED UNTO YOU BY THEM THAT HAVE PREACHED THE GOSPEL UNTO YOU with the Holy Ghost sent down from Heaven." (1 Peter 1:11-12.) ======================================================================== CHAPTER 5: 00A.03. THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE NEW ======================================================================== 3: The Old Testament and the New It seems to us very plain that the promise of Jesus implies that the apostles, in executing their commission, were to be assisted by the illumination and direction of the Spirit, and He places their teaching upon the same plane as His own, making no distinction. "He that heareth you, heareth me, and he that despiseth you despiseth me, and he that despiseth me, despiseth Him that sent me." (Luke 10:16.) Paul, who was called of God to preach the Gospel, received it not from man, neither was he taught it, but it came by direct revelation of Jesus Christ from Heaven, and in the Epistle to the Corinthians he says, "Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God; that we might know the things which are freely given us of God, which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, BUT WHICH THE HOLY GHOST TEACHETH." (1 Corinthians 2:10; 1 Corinthians 2:12-13.) "If any man thinketh himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord." And again he says in the Epistle to the Thessalonians: "The word of God, which ye heard from us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as in truth, THE WORD OF GOD." And Peter, speaking of the Epistles of Paul, says, "Even as our beloved brother Paul also, ACCORDING TO THE WISDOM GIVEN UNTO HIM, hath written unto you." And the beloved disciple John claims inspiration for the other apostles as well as himself, saying, "We are of God; he that knoweth God, heareth us; he that is not of God, heareth not us." The apostles placed their own writings upon equal footing with the books of the Old Testament. Paul, speaking of the Holy Scriptures in which Timothy had been instructed (the Old Testament), says, "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God." Peter says of the ancient prophets, "The Spirit of Christ was in them." "Prophecy came not in old time by the will of men, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." (2 Peter 1:21.) The quotations of our Lord and His apostles from the books of the Old Testament are often introduced with an expression in which their inspiration is directly asserted: "Well spake the Holy Ghost by Esaias;" "By the mouth of thy servant David thou hast said." (Acts 1:16; Acts 4:25; Acts 28:25.) Paul declared the Christians were built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, thus placing the writings of the apostles co-equal with those of Old Testament writings -- a very wrong thing to do if the former were not inspired as well as the latter. And Peter unites in his view, when he writes to the Christians charging them to be "mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandments of us the apostles." And as to the Book of Revelation, the writer asserts directly his personal inspiration, saying that "Jesus sent and signified by His angel to His servant John the things that were to come to pass," and the Divine Person who appeared unto Him when he was in the Spirit commanded him to "write in a book what he saw." The early Church received the writings of the apostles as of equal authority with the Old Testament. It is seen from an expression of Peter that already, at the time of his writing, the Epistles of Paul were classed with "THE OTHER SCRIPTURES." (2 Peter 3:16.) Justin Martyr says that "before the middle of the second century, the memoirs of the apostles and the compositions of the prophets" were read together in the Christian assemblies, and the writings of the apostles were regarded as the infallible standard of faith and practice. Let us now define what we mean by inspiration, and that is, that the sacred writers composed their works under so plenary and immediate influence of the Holy Spirit that God may be said to speak by those writers, to man, and not merely that they spoke to man in the name of God, and by His authority, and there is considerable difference in these propositions. Each supposes an authentic revelation from God, but the former view secures the Scriptures from all error, both as to the subjects spoken, and file manner of expressing them. This is the doctrine taught in the Scriptures themselves, which declare not only that the apostles and prophets spoke in the name of God, but that God spoke by them as His instruments. "The Holy Ghost by the MOUTH OF DAVID SPOKE;" "Well spake the Holy Ghost by Esaias the prophet." Jesus said to the disciples, "When they bring you into the synagogues, and unto magistrates and powers, take no thought how or what thing ye shall say, for the Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same hour what ye ought to say; for it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you." And Paul, in writing to the Corinthians, states very plainly, "Which things we also speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but WHICH THE HOLY GHOST TEACHETH." Some one will now object to this view on the ground of the difference of style and manner so natural to each, and so distinct in all. "How about those reasonings, recollections of memory and other indications of the work of the mind of each writer on its own character and temperament?" Let us answer here that an inspiration of words took place either by suggesting those most fit to express the thoughts, or by overruling the selection of such words from the common as if they had been exclusively of divine suggestion, and yet this does not measure up to the force of the passages quoted, which attribute to a divine agency, the store acquired by, and laid up in, the mind of each .writer, which is quite compatible with the fact that a peculiarity and appropriateness of manner might still be left to them separately. Watson (upon whom we have drawn largely in this part of the discussion) says: "To suppose that an inspiration of terms as well as thoughts could not take place without producing one uniform style and manner, is to suppose that the minds of the writers would thus become entirely passive under the influence of the Holy Spirit, whereas it is easily conceivable that the verbiage, style and manner of each were not so much displaced, as ELEVATED, ENRICHED and CONTROLLED by the Holy Spirit, and that there was a previous fitness in all these respects, in all the sacred penmen, for which they were chosen to be instruments under the aid and direction of the Holy Spirit, of writing such portions of the general revelation as the wisdom of God assigned unto each of them. On the other hand, while it is so conceivable that the words and manner of each might be appropriated to his own design by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, it by no means follows that both were not greatly altered as well as controlled, although they still retained a general similarity to the uninfluenced style and manner of each, and still presented a characteristic variety. As none of their writings on ordinary occasions, and when uninspired, have come down to us, we cannot judge of this degree of difference, and therefore no one can, with any just reason, affirm that their writings are ’the word of God as to the doctrine, but the word of man as to the channel of conveyance." Certain it is that a vast difference may be remarked between the writings of the apostles and those of the most eminent Fathers of the times nearest to them, and that not only as to the precision and strength of thought, but also as to the language. This circumstance is at least strongly presumptive, that, although the style of inspired men was not stripped of the characteristic peculiarity of the writers, it was greatly exalted and influenced. It is not likely that the same force of inspiration, so to speak, was exerted upon each of the sacred writers, or upon the same writer throughout his writings, whatever might be his subject. There is no necessity that we should so state the ease, in order to maintain what is essential to our faith -- the plenary inspiration of the sacred writers. In miracles there was no needless application of divine power. Traditional history and written chronicles, facts of known occurrence, and opinions which were received by all, are often inserted or referred to by the sacred writers. There needed no miraculous operation upon the memory to recall what the memory was furnished with, or to recall a fact which the writers perfectly and personally knew. But their plenary inspiration consisted in this, that they were kept from all lapses of memory, or inadequate conceptions, even on these subjects, and on all others the degree of communication and influence, both as to doctrine, facts, and the terms in which they were to be recorded for the edification of the Church, was proportioned to the necessity of the case, but so that the whole was authenticated by the Holy Spirit with so full an influence that it became truth without any admixture of error, expressed in such terms as He Himself suggested or ruled. This, then, seems the true notion of plenary inspiration, that for the revelation, insertion, and adequate enunciation of truth, it was full and complete. Dr. Woods, in speaking of this subject, says very forcibly, "One argument which has been urged against the supposition that divine inspiration had a respect to language, is that the language used by the inspired writers exhibits no marks of a divine interference, but is perfectly conformed to the genius and taste of the writers. The fact here alleged is admitted, but how does it support those who allege it? Is it not evident that God may exercise a perfect superintendency over inspired writers as to the language they shall use, and yet that each of them shall write in his own style, and in all respects according to his own taste? May not God give such aid to His servants, that, while using their own style, they will be certainly secured against all mistakes, and exhibit the truth with perfect propriety? Is it unquestionable, that Isaiah and St. Paul and St. John might be under the entire direction of the Spirit even as to language, and at the same time each one of them write in his own manner, and that the peculiar manner of each might be adapted to answer an important end, and that the variety of style thus introduced into the sacred volume might be suited to excite a livelier interest in the minds of men, and to secure to them a far greater amount of good than could ever have been derived from any ONE mode of writing? The great variety existing among men as to their natural talents, and their peculiar manner of thinking and writing, may in this way, be turned to account in the work of revelation, as well as in the concerns of common life. Is it not clearly a matter of fact that God has made use of this variety, and given the Holy Spirit to men, differing widely from each other in regard to natural endowments, and knowledge and style, and employed them with all their various gifts, as agents in writing the Holy Scriptures? And what color of reason can we have to suppose, that the language which they used was less under the divine direction on account of this variety, than if it had been perfectly uniform throughout? "To prove that divine inspiration bad no respect to language of the sacred writers, it is alleged by some that even the same doctrine is taught, and the same events described, in a different manner by different writers. This we also admit. But how does it prove that inspiration had no respect to language? Is not the variety alleged a manifest advantage as to the impression to be made upon the minds of men? Is not testimony which is substantially the same always considered as entitled to higher credit when it is given by different witnesses in different language and in a different order? Is it not reasonable to suppose that in making a revelation God would have respect unto the common principles of human nature and human society, and would exert His influence over inspired men in such a manner that, by exhibiting the same facts and doctrines in different ways, they should make a more salutary impression, and should more effectually compass the ends of a great revelation? Give thought and attention to these two positions: "1. The variety of manner apparent among different writers, even when treating of the same subjects, is far better suited to promote the object of divine revelation than a perfect uniformity. "2. It is agreeable to our worthiest conception of God and His administration, that he should make use of the best means for the accomplishment of His designs, and, of course, that He should impart the gift of inspiration to men of different tastes and habits as to language, and should lead them, while writing the Scriptures, to exhibit all the variety of manner naturally arising from the diversified character of their minds. "The one point we think it specially important to maintain is this -- the sacred writers had such direction of the Holy Spirit that they were secured against ALL liability to error, and enabled to write just what God pleased, so that what they wrote is in truth the Word of God, and can never be subject to any charge of mistake either as to matter or form. "Whether this perfect correctness and propriety as to language resulted from the Divine guidance directly or indirectly, is a question of no particular importance. If the Spirit of God directs the minds of inspired men, and gives them just conceptions relative to the subjects on which they are to write, and if He constitutes and maintains a connection, true and invariable, between their conceptions and the language they employ to express them, the language must in this way be as infallible and as worthy of God, as though it were dictated directly by the Holy Spirit. But to assert that the sacred writers used such language as they chose, or such as was natural to them, without any special divine superintendence, and that in respect to style, they are to be regarded in the same light, and equally liable to mistake as other writers, is plainly contrary to the representations which they themselves make, and is suited to diminish our confidence in the Word of God. For how could we have entire confidence in the representations of Scripture, if after God had instructed the minds of the sacred writers in the truth to be communicated, He gave them up to all the inadvertencies and errors to which human nature in general is exposed, and took no effectual care that their manner of writing should be according to His will." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 6: 00A.04. VERBAL INSPIRATION ======================================================================== 4: Verbal Inspiration We will now briefly examine the subject as it is presented in the Holy Scriptures, and see whether we find sufficient reason to affirm that inspiration had no relation whatever to language. 1. The apostles were the subject of such a divine inspiration as enabled them to speak with "OTHER TONGUES." Here INSPIRATION REFERRED DIRECTLY TO LANGUAGE. 2. It is the opinion of some thinkers that in some instances, inspired men had not in their own minds a clear understanding of the things of which they spake or wrote. An instance of this is the case of Daniel, who heard and repeated what the angel said, though he did not understand it. (Daniel 12:7-9.) This is thought to be in some measure the case with the prophets referred to in 1 Peter 1:10-12. Is there not also reason to think this may have been the case with many of the prophetic representations contained in the Psalms, and many of the symbolical rites of the Mosaic institute? Various matters are found in the Old Testament which were not intended so much for their benefit of the writers or their contemporaries as for the benefit of future ages. And this might have been a sufficient reason why they should be left without a clear understanding of the things which they wrote. In such cases, if the opinion above stated is correct, inspired men were led to make use of expressions the meaning of which they did not fully understand. And according to this view, it would seem that the teaching of the Spirit, which they enjoyed, must have related TO THE WORDS rather than to the sense. 3. Those who deny that the divine influence afforded to the sacred writers had any respect to language, can find no support in the texts which most directly relate to the subject of inspiration, and it is surely in such texts, if anywhere, that we should suppose that they would find support. The passage 2 Peter 1:21 is a remarkable one. It asserts that "holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." There is surely nothing here which limits the divine influence to the conception of their minds. They were moved by the Holy Ghost to speak or write. "All Scripture is divinely inspired." (2 Timothy 3:16.) Does this text afford any proof that the divine influence granted to the inspired penmen was confined to their inward conceptions, and had no respect whatever to the manner in which they expressed their conceptions? What is Scripture? Is it divine truth conceived in the mind, OR DIVINE TRUTH WRITTEN? In Hebrews 1:1 it is said that GOD SPAKE TO THE FATHERS BY THE PROPHETS. Does this afford any proof that the divine guidance which the prophets enjoyed related exclusively to the conceptions of their own mind, and had no respect unto the manner in which they communicated those conceptions? Must we not rather think the meaning to be, that God influenced the prophets to utter or make known important truths? And how could they do this except by the use of proper words? Again, when Jesus said to the apostles (Matthew 10:19-20), "When they shall deliver you up, take no thought HOW or what ye shall speak, for it shall be given you in the same hour what ye shall speak, For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you." This promise implies that divine assistance should extend not only to what they should say, but to the manner in which they should say it. It is not, however, to be understood as implying that the apostles were not rational and voluntary agents in the discharge of their office, but it implies that in consequence of the influence of the Spirit to be exercised over them, they should say what God would have them say -- without any liability to mistake, either as to matter or manner. From the above-cited promise, taken in connection with the instances of its accomplishment which are recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, it becomes evident that God may exert His highest influence upon His servants so as completely to guide them in thought and utterance in regard to subjects which lie chiefly in the province of their natural faculties. For in those speeches of the apostles which are left on record, we find that most of the things which they declared, were things which, for aught that appears, they might have known and might have expressed to others in the natural exercise of their own faculties. This principle being kept in view will relieve of many difficulties in regard to the doctrine of inspiration. The passage 1 Corinthians 2:12-13 is proof of the inspiration of the apostles and is far from favoring the opinion that inspiration had nothing to do with language, or that it related exclusively to their thoughts. "WHICH THINGS WE SPEAK not IN THE WORDS which man’s wisdom teacheth, but WHICH THE HOLY GHOST TEACHETH." The Apostle avoided the style and the manner of teaching which prevailed among the wise men of Greece, and made use of a style which corresponded to the nature of his subject and the end he had in view. And this he tells us he did under the GUIDANCE OF THE SPIRIT. His language, or manner of teaching, was the thing to which the divine influence imparted to him particularly, referred. Several noted writers give this interpretation of this text. Paul, they say, asserts that the doctrines of Christianity were revealed to him by the almighty agency of God Himself, and finally that the inspiration of the divine Spirit extended even to his words and to all his exhibitions of revealed truths. They add, that Paul clearly distinguishes between the doctrine itself and the manner in which it WAS COMMUNICATED. Let me here quote Dr. Whitby, an author to whom Adam Clarke refers frequently. "It was necessary an apostle should have seen the Lord, as a witness of his resurrection from the dead -- hence he says, ’Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen the Lord?’ (1 Corinthians 9:1), and for an apostle ’not of man, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ’ (Galatians 1:1) and to receive his message FROM THE LORD JESUS IMMEDIATELY. (Acts 26:16.) ’I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister, and a witness, both of those things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee.’ Which words contain a promise of immediate instruction from Christ, in his apostolic function." The Apostle declares, confirming his declaration with an oath, "The Gospel which was preached by me was not after man, for I neither received it of man, neither was I taught (by man) BUT BY THE REVELATION OF JESUS CHRIST." (Galatians 1:11-12.) He therefore had his message from Christ, as Moses had from God, Christ speaking to him, mouth to mouth. (See Numbers 12:7-8.) And he further admits, "The promise made by our Lord that the Holy Spirit should bring ALL THINGS to their remembrance, all things which He had said unto them (John 14:20), does fairly plead for this exactness in what they have delivered of our Savior’s sermons, it being scarcely imaginable that their memory, without Divine assistance, should exactly give us all that was spoken in such long discourses." The Doctor admits that Paul declares he "spake the things WHICH WERE GIVEN OF GOD, IN THE WORDS WHICH THE HOLY GHOST TEACHETH." (1 Corinthians 2:13.) Let me now call your attention to the thought of Dr. Grey of the Moody Institute on this very important subject. He writes very pertinently: "No human genius of whom we ever heard introduced his writings with the formula, ’THUS SAITH THE LORD,’ or words to that effect, and yet such is the common utterance of the Bible authors." And again: "When we speak of the Holy Spirit coming upon the men in order to the composition of the books, it should be further understood that the object is not the inspiration of the men, BUT THE BOOKS; not the writers, BUT THE WRITINGS. To illustrate: Moses, David, Paul, and John were not always and everywhere inspired, for then always and everywhere they would have been infallible and inerrant, which was not the case. They sometimes made mistakes in thought and erred in conduct. But however fallible and errant they may have been, as men compassed with infirmity like ourselves, such fallibility or errancy was never under any circumstance communicated to their sacred writings." Ecclesiastes is a case in point, which, on the supposition of its Solomonic authorship, is giving a history of his search for happiness under the sun. Some statements in that book are only partially true, while others are altogether false, therefore it cannot mean that Solomon was inspired as he tried this or that experiment to find what no man has been able to find outside of God. But it means that his language is inspired as he records the various feelings and opinions which possessed him in the pursuit. Dr. Grey very pertinently asks this question, "In the last analysis, it is the Bible itself, of course, which must settle the question of its inspiration and the extent of it, but we may be allowed to ask a final question: CAN EVEN GOD HIMSELF GIVE A THOUGHT TO A MAN WITHOUT THE WORDS THAT CLOTHE IT? Are not the two inseparable, as much so as a sum and its figures, or a tune and its notes?" In other words, as Dr. A. J. Gordon expresses it, "To deny that the Holy Spirit speaks in Scripture is an intelligible proposition, but to admit that He speaks, it is impossible TO KNOW WHAT HE SAYS, EXCEPT AS WE HAVE HIS WORDS." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 7: 00A.05. THUS SAITH THE LORD ======================================================================== 5: Thus Saith the Lord Let me here give another proof-text for the inspiration of the New Testament -- the opening verses of the first and second chapters of Hebrews: "GOD, who at sundry times and in divers MANNERS SPAKE in times past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son ... Wherefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard." We have said that it is the Bible itself that must settle the question of its inspiration, and we hold the Bible teaches that inspiration extends to the very words. If you take the case of Balaam (Numbers 22:38; Numbers 23:12-16), it is quite clear he desired to speak differently from what he did, but was obliged to speak the words God put in his mouth. When Moses would excuse himself from service because he was not eloquent, He who made man’s mouth said, "Now therefore go and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say." (Exodus 4:10-12.) Dr. Brooks says, "God did not say, I will be with thy mind and teach thee what thou shalt think, but, I will be with thy mouth and teach thee what thou shalt say." David says, "The Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and His word was in my tongue." (2 Samuel 23:1-2.) In Jeremiah 1:6-9 we read: "Then the Lord put forth His hand and touched my mouth, And the Lord said unto me, Behold, I have put my word in thy mouth," all of which substantiates the declaration of Peter which we have quoted repeatedly. "No prophecy ever came by the will of man, but man spake from God, being moved by the Holy Ghost." It does seem to an unprejudiced mind that if the WILL of man had NOTHING to do with prophecy, he could not have been at liberty in the selection of words. Again, does not the Apostle claim verbal accuracy in 1 Corinthians 2:12-13, where he distinguishes between the "things" or thoughts which God gave him and the words in which he expressed them, while insisting on the divinity of both? "Which THINGS also we speak, not IN THE WORDS which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth." Again we quote: "The most unique argument for the inspiration of the words of Scripture is the relation which Jesus Christ bears to them. In the first place, He Himself was inspired as to HIS WORDS. Deuteronomy 18:18 is the earliest reference to His prophetic office. Here Jehovah says, ’I will put MY WORDS in His mouth, and He shall speak all that I shall command Him.’ A limitation on His utterance which Jesus everywhere recognizes. ’As my Father hath taught me, I speak these things.’ ’The Father which sent me, He gave me a commandment what I should say, and what I should speak.’ ’Whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father hath said unto me, I speak.’ ’I have given unto them THE WORDS which THOU gavest. me.’ ’The words I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life.’ (John 6:63; John 8:26; John 8:28; John 8:40; John 12:49-50.) "The thought is still more impressive as we read of the relation of the Holy Spirit to the God-man. ’The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because He hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.’ ’He, through the Holy Ghost, had given commandments unto the apostles.’ ’The Revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave unto Him.’ ’These things saith He that holdeth the seven stars in His right hand.’ ’He that hath an ear let him hear what the SPIRIT saith unto the churches.’ (Luke 4:18; Acts 1:2; Revelation 1:1; Revelation 2:1; Revelation 2:11.) "If the incarnate Word needed the unction of the Holy Ghost to give to men the Revelation He received from the Father, in whose bosom He dwells; and if the agency of the same Spirit extended to the words that He spoke in preaching the Gospel to the meek, or in dictating an Epistle, how much more must these things be so in the case of ordinary men engaged in the same service? With what show of reason can one contend that any Old or New Testament writer stood, so far as his words were concerned, in need of no such agency?" Again, Christ teaches the Scriptures are inspired as to their words. In the Sermon on the Mount He said, "Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For VERILY I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled." Here is testimony confirmed by an oath, for "verily" on the lips of the Son of man carries such force. He affirms the indestructibility of the law, not its substance merely, BUT ITS FORM; not the thought, but the word. "One jot or tittle shall in no wise pass from the law." The "jot" means the yod, the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet, while the "tittle" means the horn, a short projection in certain letters extending the base line beyond the upright one which rests upon it. And Christ guarantees that neither the tittle nor the yod of the law shall perish without fulfillment. In maintaining this view of the inspiration of the Scriptures, we are on the same ground where the Church stood in days when its purity and power made it the delight of Heaven, the terror of Hell, and enabled it to win souls for God; when the Church was fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and as terrible as an army with banners, aggressive for God to such an extent that there were saints in Caesar’s household, and legions of Rome were known for the number of Christians that were in their ranks -- a fact to which Justin Martyr calls the attention of the emperor when proving the advance that the religion of Jesus had made in his dominions. The fact that the Church in its purity held this view in the first three centuries after Jesus ascended should weigh largely in its favor. We enjoy the lines of Frederic W. Faber as he sings: "Faith of our fathers! living still, In spite of dungeons, fire and sword! Oh, how our hearts beat high with joy Whene’er we hear that glorious word! Faith of our fathers! holy faith! We will be true to thee till death. "Our fathers, chained in prisons dark, Were still in heart and conscience free! How sweet would be their children’s fate. If they, like them, could die for Thee! Faith of our fathers! holy faith! We will be true to thee till death. "Faith of our fathers! we will love Both friend and foe in all our strife! And preach Thee, too, as love knows bow, By kindly words and virtuous life; Faith of our fathers! holy faith! We will be true to thee till death." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 8: 00A.06. TESTIMONY OF THE FATHERS ======================================================================== 6: Testimony of the Fathers Let us listen for awhile to the utterances of the Fathers. Justin, speaking of the words of Scripture, says, "We must not suppose that the language proceeds from the men that are inspired, but from the Divine Word Himself who moves them. Their work is to announce that which the Holy Spirit proposes to teach, through them, to those who wish to learn the true religion. The history Moses wrote was by Divine inspiration." Irenaeas: "The writers spoke as acted upon by the Spirit. All who foretold the coming of Christ, received their inspiration from the Son, for how else could Scripture ’TESTIFY’ of Him alone? Matthew might have written, ’The generation of Jesus was on this wise,’ but the Holy Spirit, foreseeing the corruption of the truth, and fortifying us against deception, says through Matthew, ’The generation of JESUS THE MESSIAH was on this wise.’ ’The writers were beyond all falsehood,’ that is, they were inerrant." Clement of Alexandria: "The foundations of our faith rest on no insecure basis. We have received them through God Himself, through the Scriptures, not one jot or one tittle of which shall pass away till all is accomplished, FOR THE MOUTH OF THE LORD, the Holy Spirit, spoke it. He ceases to be a man who spurns the tradition of the Church and turns aside to human opinions, for the Scriptures are truly holy, since they make us holy, God-like. Of these Holy Writings, or WORDS, the Bible is composed. Paul calls them ’God-breathed.’ (2 Timothy 3:15-16.) The Sacred Writings consist of these holy letters, or syllables, since they are ’God-breathed.’" Again, "The Jews and Christians agree as to the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, but differ in interpretation. By our faith we believe that every Scripture, since it is God-breathed, is profitable. If the words of the Lord are pure words, refined silver, tried seven times, and the Holy Spirit has; with all care, dictated them accurately, it was on this account the Savior said that not one jot or tittle of them should pass away." Origen: "It is the doctrine acknowledged by all Christians, and evidently preached in the churches, that the Holy Spirit inspired the saints, prophets and apostles, and was present in those of old times, as in those He inspired at the coming of Christ, for Christ the Word of God was in Moses when he wrote, and in the prophets, and by His Spirit He DID SPEAK to them all things. The records of the Gospels are the oracles of the Lord, pure oracles, purified as silver seven times tried. They are without error, since they were written by the co-operation of the Spirit. It is good to adhere to the words of Paul and the apostles, as to God, and our Lord Jesus Christ. There are many writings, but only one Book; four Evangelists, but only one Gospel. ALL THE SACRED WRITINGS BREATHE THE SAME FULLNESS. There is nothing in the Law, the Prophets, the Gospels, the Apostles, that did not come from the fulness of God. Whoever has received these Scriptures as inspired by the Creator of the world must expect to find in them all the difficulties which meet those who investigate the system of the universe. But God’s hand is not destroyed by our ignorance on particular points. The divinity of the Scriptures is undisturbed by our weakness. It is a part in the teaching of the Church, that the Scriptures were written by the Spirit of God, and on this the opinion of the whole Church is one. ALL THINGS THAT ARE WRITTEN ARE TRUE. He who is a student of God’s Oracles must place himself under the teaching of God." Origen was mighty in the Church as a Father of Biblical Criticism. Augustine. This man was the theologian of the early Church, gloriously converted in answer to the prayers of Monica, his godly mother, blessedly kept, and his whole life devoted to the Master’s cause, and the upbuilding of the kingdom. The view of the Holy Scriptures held by him was the same as that of Tertullian, Cyprian, and all the Fathers of the North African Church. No view of verbal inspiration could be more rigid. "The Scriptures are the letters of God, the voice of God, and the writings of God. Christ spoke by Moses, for He was the Spirit of the Creator, and all the prophecies are the voice of the Lord. From the Spirit came the gift of tongues. The Scriptures, whether in History, Prophecy, Psalms or Law, are of God. THEY CAN NOT STAND IN PART, AND FALL IN PART. They are from God who spoke them all." "As it was not the apostles who spoke, but the Spirit of the Father in them, so it is the Spirit that speaks in the Scriptures." "It avails nothing what I say, what he says, but what saith the Lord." It is eminently true the Jewish and Christian Churches believed the doctrine of verbal inspiration, because of their conception of the Holy Scriptures as "GOD-BREATHED" even as matter itself; the soul of man, and the world, were created by the same breath of the Almighty; the very conception Paul had when he said, "Every Scripture is God-breathed." God was the Author, the book a divinely oracular book, a book of God’s own testimony. The manner in which the Old Testament is quoted in the New is a demonstration of its VERBAL inspiration. "The Scripture saith;" "He saith;" "Thus spake the Lord by Esaias, saying," all prove our contention. Right here let the Word speak for itself. Take Exodus 4:10-12 : "And Moses said unto the Lord, O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken to thy servant: but I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue. And the Lord said unto him, Who hath made man’s mouth? Now therefore go, and I WILL BE THY MOUTH, and teach thee what thou shalt say." Take Exodus 34:27 : "And the Lord said unto Moses, WRITE thou these WORDS: for after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel." "And He said, Hear now my words: If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream. With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches; and the similitude of the Lord shall he behold." (Numbers 12:6; Numbers 12:8.) "Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish from it." (Deuteronomy 4:2.) "But the prophet, which shall speak a word presumptuously in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, that prophet shall die." (Deuteronomy 18:20.) Read and note carefully Mark 12:36. Jesus said, "David himself said by the Holy Spirit." Now turn to 2 Samuel 23:2 and find what David said: "The Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and His word was in my tongue." Scan carefully Jeremiah 1:6-9 and hear the prophet as he pleads: "Ah, Lord God! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child. But the Lord said unto me, Say not, I am a child: for thou shalt go to all that I send thee, and WHATSOEVER I command thee thou shalt speak. Be not afraid of their faces: for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the Lord. Then the Lord put forth His hand and touched my mouth. And the Lord said unto me, Behold I have put my words in thy mouth." Search the Pentateuch carefully, the historical books of the Bible, and the Psalms, and find repeated hundreds of times such words as these: "Thus saith the Lord," "The Lord said," "The Lord spake," "The Lord hath spoken," "The saying of the Lord," and "The word of the Lord." The writers declare they spake as God gave them UTTERANCE. Isaiah 1:10 says, "Hear the words of the Lord," and as many as twenty times he declares emphatically that his writings are "the words of the Lord." Almost one hundred times Jeremiah declares definitely, "The word of the Lord came unto me," "The words of the Lord," and the "words of the living God." Sixty times Ezekiel says that his writings are "the words of God." Take this, for example: "Son of man, ALL MY WORDS that I speak unto thee receive in thine heart, and hear with thine ears. And go, get thee to them of the captivity, unto the children of thy people, and speak unto them, and tell them, THUS SAITH THE LORD GOD." (Ezekiel 3:10-11.) Daniel is very definite: "And when I heard the voice of HIS WORDS." (Daniel 10:9.) Hosea says: "The word of the Lord that came to Hosea," and again, "The beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea." (Hosea 1:1-3.) "And the Lord said to Hosea." Again, let me quote the rest without burdening you with the references, Amos said, "Hear the word of the Lord." "The word of the Lord that came to Joel." Obadiah, "Thus saith the Lord God." "The word of the Lord came unto Jonah." "The word of the Lord that came to Micah." Nahum says, "Thus saith the Lord." Habakkuk wrote, "The Lord answered me AND SAID." "The word of the Lord that came to Zephaniah." "Came the word of the Lord by Haggai the prophet." "Came the word of the Lord unto Zechariah." "The word of the Lord unto Israel by Malachi," and in this last of the Old Testament’s books it is twenty-four times said, "Thus saith the Lord." Will the opponents of this proposition accept of the words of Jesus as to His inspiration? Listen to Him: "I have not spoken from myself, but the Father who sent me gave me commandment what I should say, and what I should speak. I speak therefore even as the Father said to me, even so I speak." (John 12:49-50.) Again, "I have given unto them THE WORDS thou gavest me, and they have received them." (John 17:8.) If Jesus, and Moses, and Isaiah received the words of God to give to the people to whom they were sent, is it not also a certainty to be depended upon that the New Testament writers spake "NOT IN THE WORDS WHICH MAN’S WISDOM TEACHETH, BUT WHICH THE HOLY GHOST TEACHETH"? (1 Corinthians 2:13.) Jesus, knowing the future tests to which the disciples would be called, said to them, "When they lead you to the judgment, and deliver you up, be not anxious beforehand what ye shall speak, but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye: for it is not ye that speak, BUT THE HOLY GHOST." On the day of Pentecost they spake with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance, and in 1 Thessalonians 2:13 Paul says, "And for this cause we thank God without ceasing, that when ye received from us THE WORD OF THE MESSAGE, EVEN THE WORD OF GOD, ye accepted it, not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, THE WORD OF GOD." Read the Epistles carefully and note the Scriptures are called "The oracles of God" (Romans 3:2); "The Word of God," "The Word of the Lord" (Acts 13:48; "The Word of Life" (Php 2:16); "The Word of Christ" (Colossians 3:16); "The Word of truth" (Ephesians 1:13); "The Word of faith" (Romans 10:8). More than two thousand times the Word declares the Bible is the WORD OF GOD -- THE WORDS ARE GOD-BREATHED. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 9: 00A.07. WITNESSES TO THE TRUTH ======================================================================== 7: Witnesses to the Truth It has been said that the best men and scholars do not accept of this view of inspiration. Allow me to quote some whose ability and piety are beyond question. Athanasius, who knew how to read Greek better than the drift of scholarly opinion in this day, said: "Oh, my child, not only the ancient, but the new, Scriptures are God-breathed; as Paul saith, ’EVERY Scripture is God-breathed.’" Bishop Ryle wrote, "Give me the plenary verbal theory, with all its difficulties, rather than the doubt. I accept the difficulties, and humbly wait for their solution, BUT WHILE I WAIT, I AM STANDING ON THE ROCK." Professor Warfield, of Princeton Theological Seminary, said, "Doubtless enough has been said to show that the Westminster Confession teaches precisely the doctrine which is taught in the private writings of the framers, which was also the general Protestant doctrine of the time, and not of that time only, or of the Protestants only, for despite the contrary assertion that has recently become tolerably current, essentially this doctrine of inspiration, verbal, has been the doctrine of the Church of all ages and of all names." [The following is not an endorsement of "Schofield’s" or "Scofield’s" erroneous teaching on Eternal Security, nor of any error taught by those who are quoted. -- DVM] Dr. Schofield, in a note on 1 Corinthians 2:13, says, "The writers of Scripture invariably affirm, where the subject is mentioned by them at all, that the WORDS of their writings are divinely taught. The unseen things of God are undiscoverable by natural man, these unseen things God has revealed to chosen men, and the revealed things are communicated in Spirit-taught words. The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, by unanimous vote in 1893, adopted the following, ’The Bible, as we now have it in its various translations and revisions, when freed from all errors and mistakes of translators, copyists and printers, IS THE VERY WORD OF GOD, and consequently wholly without error." Dr. Hodge says, "The line can never be rationally drawn between the thoughts and words of Scripture. That we have an inspired Bible, and a VERBALLY INSPIRED one, we have the witness of GOD Himself." Professor Gaussen says, "The theory of a Divine revelation in which you would have the inspiration of thoughts, without the inspiration of language, is so inevitably irrational that it can not be sincere; and proves false even to those who propose it." Canon Wescott says, "The slightest consideration will show that the words are as essential to intellectual processes as they are to mutual intercourse. Thoughts are wedded to words au necessarily as soul to body. Without it the mysteries unveiled before the eyes of the seer would be confused shadows. With it they are made clear lessons for human life." Dean Burgon, a man of vast learning, says, "You can not dissect inspiration into substance and form. As for thoughts being inspired apart from words which give them expression, you might as well talk of a tune without notes, or a sum without figures. No such theory of inspiration is even intelligible. It is as illogical as it is worthless, and can not be too sternly put down." Dr. George S. Bishop says very forcibly, "Verbal and direct inspiration is the Thermopylae of the Bible and Scriptural faith. No breath, no syllable; no syllable, no word; no word, no Book; no Book, no religion." He further declares, "The Bible is the Word of God, and not simply contains it. This is clear, because the Bible styles itself the Word of God. ’THE WORD OF THE LORD is right,’ says the Psalmist. ’THY WORD is a lamp unto my feet.’ ’The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, BUT THE WORD OF OUR GOD shall stand forever.’ ’Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the WORD OF GOD.’ It is GOD’S REVELATION that faith hears, and it is on God’s Word revealed that faith rests." Haldane says very pertinently, "INSPIRATION is as much an assertion as justification. Both stand equally on the authority OF’ SCRIPTURE which is as much an ultimate authority upon this point as upon any other. When God speaks, and when He says, ’I speak,’ that is the end of it. God in old times SPAKE by the prophets. God now SPEAKS by His Son." The Epistle to the Hebrews furnishes conclusive proof of the position we assume, furnishing a splendid illustration as it sets forth the whole economy of the Mosaic rites; the author adds, "THE HOLY GHOST this signifying." Quoting further on from Jeremiah, he enforces it with the remark, "The Holy Ghost is witness to us also," and the argument on the ninety-fifth Psalm he clinches with the application, "Wherefore, AS THE HOLY GHOST SAITH, Today if ye will hear HIS voice." Throughout the entire Epistle, whoever may have been the writer quoted from, the words of the quotation are referred to God. I was very much impressed by one remark of Dr. Harman in his "Introduction to the Holy Scriptures," when he says, "The theory of verbal inspiration in every part of the sacred Scriptures would give them more sanctity and authority." And again, "Lax views of inspiration may strip the Bible of a great deal of its authority as a Divine revelation, and resolve much of it into a mere human opinion." He also admits, "The Jews had come to believe in the VERBAL INSPIRATION of their sacred Scriptures, before the canon of the New Testament was completed." Scott, the well-known commentator, says, "It would be a waste of time to attempt to prove the authenticity or the genuineness of the Sacred Writings, unless in entire subserviency to the demonstration that they are divinely inspired. The works and words of men are fallible; an INFALLIBLE STANDARD is wanted to which all other books and instructions may be referred, with which they may be compared, and by which they may be judged. Now if the Sacred Writings are indeed the WORD OF GOD, if all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, we have the desideratum and have nothing further to expect or desire. But if the books called by the apostles ’the oracles of God’ are merely the authentic writings of Moses, David, Isaiah and others, and are not the infallible WORD OF GOD, we are as far from the desideratum as ever. Moses, Samuel, David -- all were moved by the Holy Ghost; THEY WERE THE VOICE, He was the Speaker, and every sentence they gave was ’the sure testimony of God,’ which things also we speak, not in the WORDS which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 10: 01.00. NUGGETS OF GOLD ======================================================================== Nuggets of Gold By George Kulp Table of Contents Introduction Chapter 1: God’s Care - THE FATHER’S HOUSEKEEPER Chapter 2: Prayer - NO SIZE IN PRAYER Chapter 3: Witnesses for God - BEING TRUE TO GOD WON Chapter 4: Victory - THE SECRET OF SUCCESS Chapter 5: Consecration - TO PREVENT BIAS Chapter 6: Salvation - IS GOD HERE? Chapter 7: Missions - SELF-SACRIFICE Chapter 8: Jesus - THE LIVING FOUNTAIN Chapter 9: Promises of God - THE CLASS-LEADER’S METHOD Chapter 10: The Gospel - DON’T BE A DUCK Chapter 11: Church Amusements - AMUSEMENTS A FAILURE Chapter 12: Folly of Infidelity - HE PROVED IT Chapter 13: Soul Saving - MODERN PREACHING Chapter 14: Experience - TO SAVE HIS MOTHER Chapter 15: Conscience - "Good-bye," ======================================================================== CHAPTER 11: 01.000. INTRODUCTION ======================================================================== Introduction For the Use of Preachers, Teachers, and All Workers Gathered Here and There Through Over Thirty Years of Active Ministry By George Brubaker Kulp Pastor of Immanuel Holiness Church Battle Creek, Michigan With an Introduction By M. G. Standley of "God’s Revivalist" God’s Revivalist Office "Mount of Blessings" Cincinnati, Ohio Printed Book Copyright 1908 By God’s Revivalist Office INTRODUCTION A physician having been called to wait upon a member of our family, he went to much trouble in arranging details which, to us, seemed utterly unnecessary. Asked the reason, he replied, "I owe much of my success as a physician and surgeon to hard work and attention to details. I always prepare for any emergency that may arise. I cannot afford to imperil the life of any of my patients by neglect." Why did Jesus say, "The children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light"? The reason is obvious. Take for example the scientists, bankers, lawyers, physicians, merchants, and even the farmers. They realize that, in order to successfully meet and overcome opposing forces, they must equip themselves. The author of this book, after years of toiling and gleaning in many fields, has put into our hands that which will enable us, not only as ministers and laymen, but as children of God and co-workers with Him, to become more efficient in soul winning. Those who have heard Brother Kulp preach, realize that, like the Savior, he makes use of many incidents from life to illustrate and fasten the truth he is preaching on the hearts of his hearers. Through years of successful soul winning, the Holy Spirit has wonderfully used these illustrations to help awaken and persuade the impenitent to seek God, the believer to know what the will of the Lord is, and be "filled with the Holy Spirit," and the saint to realize his privilege and enlarge the place of his habitation. "He that winneth souls is wise." "They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars for ever and ever." Therefore, we send this book on its mission for His glory, that, as followers of the lowly Nazarene, we may become more effective soul winners. M. G. Standley ======================================================================== CHAPTER 12: 01.01. CHAPTER 1: GOD'S CARE - THE FATHER'S HOUSEKEEPER ======================================================================== Chapter 1: God’s Care - THE FATHER’S HOUSEKEEPER I know one of God’s children who has been shut in for ten long years or more, and in these years has learned such lessons of perfect trust that Heaven is very near all the time. Some time ago she needed a housekeeper, and finding some difficulty in securing one, she appealed to the ministers she knew, to her many friends, and finally, remembering her husband when living had been a Free Mason, she wrote to the lodge, requesting the members to interest themselves in the case of one who needed their help very much. But ministers, friends, and Masons had failed to secure the housekeeper needed. While lying all alone one evening, the thought came, "Why don’t you ask your Father?" and then she remembered her thoughtlessness in appealing to so many others and forgetting Him who had said, "casting all your care upon Him, for He careth for you." Lifting her heart to God, while tears of penitence rented upon her cheeks, she prayed, "Father, forgive me for my thoughtlessness, and send me a housekeeper, just such an one as I ought to have; and when she comes, if I don’t think she is just the one I ought to have, make me take her, Father, for I want your housekeeper." And then she rested, leaving it all with the Father. As the angel was commanded to "fly swiftly" and answer Daniel’s prayer, so I think the Father at once began to answer. The next morning a little boy, son of the woman who did the washing for our sister, brought home the clothes, and this "shut-in" said to him, "Tell your mamma I want to see her." In a few hours she made her appearance, anxious to know why she had been sent for. Upon being informed it was to receive some clothing, etc., which our sister, being an almoner of mercy, had received for distribution, she replied, "Oh, I don’t need them, thank you. We get along nicely, my boy and I. Just as much obliged, but there are others who are needy; let them have them." Conversation on various subjects then began, and finally drifted to "housekeepers," and our sister told of her dilemma, when the good woman said, "Why can’t I keep house for you?" You see the Father was all ready with a housekeeper, and had sent her one, but she didn’t see just then that this was the Father’s answer, and she said, "But you have a boy." And then, what was worse for an invalid who needed and must have perfect quiet, she found upon inquiry, "the boy had a dog," and she didn’t want a dog. But she had prayed, "Father, send me a housekeeper," and, "If I think she is not the right one when she comes, Father, make me take her." Remembering this, she did not dare to interfere with the Father’s answer, but finally said, "Leave it for this evening and come round in the morning." Then saying to herself, "If this is the Father’s answer, it must be all right," she went to sleep. Bright and early the next morning the washerwoman made her appearance and said, "I can come, and at once." And she moved in, and the boy moved in, and the dog moved in, and that woman has proved every day since that she is the "Father’s housekeeper." She prepares the daintiest dishes and her attentions are proffered in the most delicate manner to our invalid, who regards her as sent in answer to prayer, and selected by the Father Himself. Moreover, "that boy" is a perfect little gentleman. He treads so noiselessly. He bangs no doors. He whistles in an undertone. And the dog? Well, our invalid wrote a letter to a friend a few weeks ago, and describing her happiness in her surroundings, she said, "Our dog is a treasure." The Father heard her prayer indeed, sent the housekeeper she needed, made her take her, as she requested, and then gave double measure of blessing by adding a "boy who is a gentleman," and a "dog that is a treasure." Friends, ministers, Masons, all failed her, but the Father who said, "In all things let your requests be made known unto God in supplication and in prayer," secured a housekeeper just as soon as He was asked for one. The Father knows all our needs, praise His name. He is more willing to give good things to them that ask Him than we are to give to our children. -- Geo. B. Kulp, Battle Creek, Michigan, March 15, 1893 HOW TO LOOK AT THINGS I once went to see a lady who was in deep trouble and darkness on account of the great afflictions of the Lord. When I went in she was working on a bit of embroidery, and as I talked with her she dropped the wrong side of it, and there it lay, a mass of crude work, tangled, everything seemed to be out of order. "Well," said I "what is this you are engaged at?" "O," she replied, "it is a pillow for a lounge. I’m making it for a Christmas gift." "I should not think you would waste your time on that," I said. "It looks tangled, without design and meaning;" and I went on abusing the whole bit of handiwork, and belittling the combination of colors, and so on. "Why, Mr. Pentecost," she said, surprised at the sudden and abrupt change of the subject on which we had before been talking, and at the persistency with which I opposed her work. "Why, Mr. Pentecost, you are looking at the wrong side. Turn it over." Then I said: "That’s just what you are doing; you are looking at the wrong side of God’s workings with you. Down here we are looking at the tangled side of God’s providence; but He has a plan -- here a stitch, there a movement of the shuttle; and in the end a beautiful work. Be not afraid; only be believing. Believe Him in the darkness, believe Him in the mysteries. Let him that walketh in the darkness and seeth not the light, yet trust in the Lord God." -- Dr. Pentecost GOD KNOWS ME, ANYHOW Frank had beautiful, long hair, hanging over his shoulders and his parents were very fond of his appearance. One day he got his mother’s scissors, went to a looking-glass, and cut off all his fair locks. His father and mother were much displeased with him for so doing, and resolved to punish him in this way: When they were seated at the dinner table his father, pointing to him, said to his mother: "What little boy is that?" "I’m your little Franky, papa," he at once said, not giving his mother time to reply. "Nonsense," was the father’s answer, "my little Franky has beautiful, long hair; I would not give my Franky for a dozen boys such as you." Franky now turned to his mother, and said: "Ain’t I your little Franky?" But mamma only shook her head. Matters were now looking serious, and Franky, becoming alarmed, could not make any progress with his dinner. He now appealed to his brother, and asked if he was not little Franky; but his brother only shook his head. He was becoming very unhappy at the thought that father, mother and brother no longer recognized him, and at last he burst into tears, saying as he did so: "Well, it don’t matter much, for God knows me, anyhow." Tears were now in other eyes as well as Franky’s. THE MUSIC OF THE SOUL [Report of John B. Gough’s Lecture] Mr. Clough then passed to another form of blunder. He was once in a church in a strange city, and the sexton showed into the same pew another person, whose looks impressed Mr. Gough unfavorably. The stranger had a face like mottled soap, which twitched as if a sheet of lightning had run over it, and ever now and then his lips would twist and give utterance to a strange, spasmodic sound. "I got as far away from him as I could. Presently the hymn was given out, and the congregation rose to sing ’Just as I am, without one plea But that Thy blood was shed for me.’ I saw that the man knew the hymn, and said to myself, ’He can’t be so disagreeable after all.’ I got nearer. He would sing. It was awful, positively awful. I never heard anything like it, and occasionally he would make that strange noise with his lips. Then he’d commence again, and sing faster to catch up with the other singers, and perhaps he’d run ahead. They came to the next verse. He’d forgotten the first line, and while the organist was performing the interlude he leaned toward me and whispered, ’Would you be kind enough to give me the first line of the next verse?’ I did so: "’Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind.’ "’That’s me,’ said he; ’I am blind -- God help me’ -- and the tears came running down his face, and the eyelids quivered, ’and I am wretched -- and I am paralytic.’ And then he tried to sing, "’Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind.’ At that moment it seemed to me that I never heard a Beethoven symphony in my life with as much music in it as in that hymn, sung by that poor man, whom Christianity had made happy in his lot." GOD KNOWS "Through all my little daily cares there is One thought that comfort brings whene’er it comes. ’Tis this: ’God’ knows.’ He knows indeed full well Each struggle that my hard heart makes to bring My will to His. Often, when night-time comes, My heart is full of tears, because the good That seems at morn so easy to be done Has proved so hard; but, then, remembering That a kind Father is my Judge, I say, ’He knows,’ and so I lay me down, with trust That His good hand will give me needed strength To better do His work in coming days." ONLY ONE DAY AT A TIME A certain lady had met with a serious accident, which necessitated a very painful surgical operation, and many months confinement to her bed. When the physician had finished his work and was about taking leave, the patient asked, "Doctor, how long shall I have to lie here helpless?" "Oh, only one day at a time," was the cheery answer, and the poor sufferer was not only comforted for the moment, but many times during the succeeding weary weeks did the thought, "Only one day at a time," come back with its quiet influence. I think it was Sidney Smith who recommended taking "short views" as a good safeguard against needless worry, and One, far wiser than he, said, "Take, therefore, no thought for the morrow. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." -- Trust HIS CARE The following beautiful poem, part of which appeared in the Christian Advocate of June 9th, has been widely published and erroneously credited. The Rev. John Parker, of the New York East Conference, wrote it several years ago to comfort a friend in trouble: God holds the key of the unknown, And I am glad; If other hands should hold the key, Or if He trusted it to me, I might be sad. What if tomorrow’s cares were here Without its rest? I had rather He unlock the day, And as the hours swing open say, "My will is best" The very dimness of my sight Makes me secure, For groping in my misty way, I feel His hand -- I hear Him say, "My help is sure." I cannot read His future plan, But this I know: I have the smiling of His face, And all the refuge of His grace, While here below. Enough; this covers all my want, And so I rest; For what I cannot He can see, And in His care I sure shall be Forever blest. GOD WILL KNOW YOU One evening last Christmas time, a gentleman was strolling along a street in Toronto, with apparently no object in view but to pass the time. His attention was attracted by the remark of a little girl to a companion in front of a fruit stand: "I wish I had an orange for ma." The gentleman saw that the children, though poorly dressed, were clean and neat, and calling them into the store he loaded them with fruit and candies. "What’s your name?" asked one of the girls. "Why do you want to know?" queried the gentleman. "I want to pray for you," was the reply. The gentleman turned to leave, scarcely daring to speak, when the little one added, "Well, it don’t matter, I suppose God will know you, anyhow." * * * Insects inhabiting islands have either very short wings of very little use in flying, or no wings at all. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 13: 01.02. CHAPTER 2: PRAYER - NO SIZE IN PRAYER ======================================================================== Chapter 2: Prayer - NO SIZE IN PRAYER I remember hearing it said of a godly man, "Mr. So and-so is a gracious man, but he is very strange; for the other day he prayed to God about a key he had lost." The person who told it to me regarded with astonishment the idea of praying to God about a lost key; and he seemed altogether surprised when I assured him that I prayed in like manner. What! pray about a key? Yes. Please tell me how big a thing must be before you can pray about it? If a certain size is appointed, we should like to have it marked down in the Bible, that we might learn the mathematics of prayer. Would you have it recorded that, if a thing is so many inches long, we may pray about it; but if it happens to be a quarter of an inch too short, we must let it alone? If we might not pray about little things, it would be a fearful calamity; for little things cause us great worry, and they are harder to deal with than great things. If we might not pray about minor matters, it would be a terrible loss of comfort. -Rev. C. H. Spurgeon. PRAYER ANSWERED IN A LUMP The Rev. Dr. Kidd, of Aberdeen, had a hearer -- a good and converted man, as everybody but himself judged -- though troubled with doubt as to his own salvation. The Doctor said to him one day: "Well, Thomas, how long have you been praying?" "For forty years." "And what have you got?" "I canna say I ha’e gotten ony thing." "I wonder you are not tired, then, and don’t give up that kind of hopeless work." "Nay, sir, we mauna dee that." Well, when Thomas lay dying -- was very near his end -- Dr. Kidd called, and asked, as he always did when he was going to pray: "What shall I pray for?" "Give thanks," said Thomas, "give thanks, for my forty years’ prayer answered in a lump." TELEGRAPH TO JESUS Several years ago I was traveling on a train in the West. Among the passengers in our car was a young mother traveling alone with her first baby. There was also a fashionably dressed lady with two children, the elder a boy of about twelve years, and the younger a rollicking little chap of four. The latter was so cute and merry and restless, that he attracted universal attention. At noon our train stopped at a station for dinner, and all the passengers left the car except those of us who had lunch with us. A few minutes later the conductor came through and ordered us to move to the car forward, as the train was to be broken into sections. After some switching about, our train was made up, and the bell began to ring as a signal to the absent passengers. All at once we were startled by a loud scream, and turned to see the young mother rushing frantically through the car, followed by the conductor and brakeman. She had left her sleeping baby and her luggage in the car we had formerly occupied, and had foolishly gone away to dinner without asking anyone to watch over the child. Consequently, in the hurried change of cars, it had been unnoticed, and now the car and baby had gone. Our train was held while the trainmen and passengers hurried about searching for the lost child. Several trains had pulled out of the station, and the chances were that the missing car had been attached to one of them. All of us were much excited -- none more so than the little four-year-old boy, who had danced about and asked innumerable questions of everyone. He was standing up in one of the foremost seats of the car, his cheeks flushed, his eyes shining with excitement. In an interval of silence his clear baby voice floated down the car: "Why don’t they telegraph to Jesus? That’s what I’d do if that was my baby." Tears started from my eyes at these words of childish wisdom. His face had turned to the sure Source of help and deliverance; and I do not doubt that many "telegrams’ went up at once from that crowded car. In a few minutes the baby was found and delivered to its mother, the trainmen returned to their posts, and our journey was resumed. But the "seed sown by the wayside" by a baby’s hand, had surely "sprung up and brought forth fruit" in more than one heart. -- Mary McCrae Culter IS GOD DEAD? In Mariposa, Cal., there lived a large-eyed, beautiful little prattler -- Mary Cannon. One evening, when all was silent, she looked up anxiously into the face of her backslidden father, who had ceased to pray in his family, and said: "Pa, is God dead?" "No, my child. Why do you ask such a foolish question as that?" "Why, pa, you never talk to Him as you used to do." These words haunted him till he was reclaimed. POWER FOR THE PULPIT Mr. Galloway, in speaking of the power of prayer, said: "We are told that Livingstone, before he preached the great sermon at Shotts, when five hundred sinners were converted to Christ, spent the whole previous night in prayer. William Burns, who was perhaps one of the most successful ministers Scotland has ever seen, never entered the pulpit without wrestling for an hour on his knees with the Lord. The saintly Robert Murray McCheyne’s experience was the same; he waited at the Throne of Grace before he ascended the pulpit, and there was shed upon him the invincible power of God." LUTHER’S PRAYER AT THE DIET OF WORMS "Almighty, eternal God! what a strange thing is this world! How doth it open wide the mouths of the people! How small and poor is the confidence of men toward God! How is the flesh so tender and weak, and the devil so mighty and so busy through his apostles and the wise of this world! How soon do they withdraw the hand and whirl away and run the common path and the broad way to Hell, where the godless belong. They look only upon that which is splendid and powerful, great and mighty, and which hath consideration. If I turn my eyes thither also, it is all over with me; the spell is cast and judgment is pronounced. Ah God! Ah God! O Thou my God! Thou my God, stand Thou by me against the reason and wisdom of all the world. Do Thou so! Thou must do it. Thou alone. Behold, it is not my cause but Thine. For my own person I have nothing to do here before these great lords of the world. Gladly would I, too have good, quiet days and be unperplexed. But Thine is the cause, my Lord; it is just and eternal. Stand Thou by me, Thou true, eternal God! I confide in no man. It is to no purpose and in vain. Everything halteth that is fleshy, or that savoreth of flesh. O God! O God! Hearest Thou not, my God? Art Thou dead? No, Thou canst not die. Thou only hidest Thyself. Hast Thou chosen me for this end? I ask Thee? But I know for a surety that Thou hast chosen me. Ha! then may God direct it. For never did I think, in all my life, to be opposed to such great lords; neither have I intended it. Ha! God then stand by me in the name of Jesus Christ, who shall be my shelter and my shield, yea, my firm tower, through the might and strengthening of Thy Holy Spirit. Lord! where stayest Thou? Thou my God! where art Thou? Come, come! I am ready, even to lay down my life for this cause, patient as a little lamb. For just is the cause and Thine. So will I not separate myself from Thee forever. Be it determined in Thy name. The world shall not be able to face me against my conscience though it were full of devils. And though my body, originally the work and creature of Thy hands, though it be shattered in pieces -- Thy word and Thy Spirit are good to me still! It concerneth only the body. The soul is Thine, and belongs to Thee, and shall also remain with Thee forever. Amen. God help me. Amen. -- Hodge’s "Prose Writers of Germany." THE FOOL’S PRAYER The royal feast was done; the king Sought some new sport to banish care, And to his jester cried, "Sir Fool Kneel now and make for us a prayer!" The jester doffed his cap and bells, And stood the mocking court before; They could not see the bitter smile Beneath the patient grin he wore. He bowed his head and bent his knee Upon the monarch’s silken stool; His pleading voice arose, "O Lord, Be merciful to me, a fool! "No pity, Lord, could change the heart From red with wrong to white as wool The rod must heal the sin; but, Lord, Be merciful me, a fool! "’Tis not by guilt the onward sweep Of truth and right, O Lord, we stay; ’Tis by our follies that so long We hold the earth from Heaven away. "These clumsy feet still in the mire Go crushing blossoms without end; These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust Among the heart-strings of a friend. "The ill-timed truth we might have kept Who knows how sharp it pierced and stung? The word we had not sense to say Who knows how grandly it had rung "Our faults no tenderness should ask, The chastening rod must cleanse them all; But for our blunders -- oh! in shame Before the eyes of Heaven we fall. "Earth bears no balsam for mistakes; Men crown the knave and scourge the tool That did his will; but Thou, O Lord Be merciful to me, a fool!" The room was hushed; in silence rose The king and sought his garden cool, And walked apart, and murmured low, "Be merciful to me, a fool!" MOTHER’S LAST LESSON A mother lay dying. Her little son, not knowing of sorrow coming to him, went, as was his custom, to her chamber door, saying: "Please to teach me my verse, mamma, and then kiss me and bid me good-night! I am very sleepy, but no one has heard me say my prayers." "Hush!" said a lady who was watching beside her, your dear mother is too ill to hear your prayers tonight," and coming forward, she sought gently to lead him from the room. Roger began to sob as if his heart would break. "I cannot go to bed without saying my prayers -- indeed I cannot." The ear of the dying mother caught the sound. Although she had been insensible to everything around her, the sob of her darling aroused her from her stupor, and turning to her friend, she desired her to bring her little son to her. Her request was granted, and the child’s golden hair and rosy cheeks nestled beside the cold face of his dying mother. "My son," she whispered, "repeat this verse after me, and never forget it: ’When my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up.’" The child repeated it two or three times, and said his little prayer. Then he kissed the cold face, and went quietly to his bed. In the morning he came as usual to his mother, but found her still and cold. This was her last lesson. He has never forgotten it, and probably never will as long as he lives. -- The Christian Woman. COMMUNICATING WITH HEAVEN How A Little Girl Utilized A Telephone A mother living not very far from the Post Office in this city, tired with watching over a sick baby, came downstairs for a short while the other day for a few moments’ rest. She heard the voice of her four-year-old girl in the hall by herself, and, curious to know to whom she was talking, stopped a moment at the half open door. She saw that the little thing had pulled a chair up in front of the telephone and stood upon it, with the piece pressed against the side of her head. The earnestness of the child showed that she was in no playful mood, and this was the conversation the mother heard while the tears stood thick in her eyes, the little one carrying on both sides as if she were repeating the answers: "Hello!" "Well, who’s there?" "Is God there?" "Yes." "Is Jesus there?" "Yes." "Tell Jesus I want to speak to Him." "Well?" "Is that you, Jesus?" "Yes. What is it?" "Our baby is sick and we want you to let it get well. Won’t you, now?" No answer, and statement and question again repeated, finally answered by a "Yes." The little one put the ear-piece back on its hook, clambered down from her chair, and with a radiant face went for mother, who caught her in her arms. The baby, whose life had been despaired of, began to mend that day and got well. * * * A quaint writer tells of a very good prayer which was once offered. "A brother was praying with much noise for faith -- soul-saving faith, sin-killing faith, devil-driving faith. There was a quiet friend near him, to whom the noisy brother owed a large bill. ’Amen,’ said the quiet friend; ’Amen, and give us debt-paying faith, too.’ My friends, we need that faith now-a-days. People do not believe in religion that does not do that. And they might well not believe in it, for he that does not do his duty to his brother, whom he has seen, how will he do his duty to his God, whom he has not seen ?" -- Zion’s Watchman. STRIKER STOWE’S WAY For years Striker Stowe, a tall, powerful Scotchman, held the position of "boss striker" at the steel works. Nearly all of the men in his department were hard drinkers, and he was no exception to the rule. But one day it was announced among the workmen that he had become religious, and sure enough, when pressed to take a drink with them, he said: "I shall never drink mair, lads. Na drunkard can inherit the kingdom o’ God." The knowing ones smiled and said, "Wait a bit; wait until hot weather -- until July. When he gets as dry as a gravel-pit. He can’t help it then." But right through the hottest months he toiled, the sweat pouring off in streams; yet he seemed never to be tempted to drink. Finally, as I was taking the men’s time one evening, I stopped and spoke to him. "Stowe," I said, "you used to take considerable liquor. Don’t you miss it?" "Yes," said he emphatically. "How do you manage to keep away from it?" "Weel, just this way. It is now tan o’clock, isn’t it?" "Yes." "Well, today is the twentieth o’ the month. From seven till eight I asked that the Lord would help me. He did so, and I put down a dot on the calendar, right near the twenty. "From eight till nine He kep’ me, and I put down another dot. From nine till tan He kep’ me, and noo I gie Him the glory as I put down the third ditto. "Just as I mark these, I pray, ’O Lord, halp me -- halp me to fight it off for another hour.’" "How long shall you keep this up?" I inquired. "All o’ my life," was the earnest reply. "It keeps me sac full o’ peace and happiness that I wouldn’t gie it up for anything. It was just as if He took me by the hand and said, ’Wark awa, Striker Stowe, I’m Wi’ ye. Dinna be fearful. You teck care of yeer regular wark, and they hall na troble ye.’ " -- H. C. Peason, in the Contributor. A MOMENTOUS SUNDAY EVENING WALK At a recent meeting in the East End of London, the Earl of Shaftesbury related the following incident, illustrating the value of Sunday Schools and the influence of little children. "A gentleman visited a man whom he had known as a very godless, bad fellow, but who had recently displayed a blessed change of mind, and had with his wife, also notorious as a reckless, wicked character, appeared at religious services. He asked how this had happened, and the man replied, ’I will tell you; my wife and I were out walking one Sunday evening, and were passing by Mr. Spurgeon’s Tabernacle.’ They turned in out of curiosity, and Mr. Spurgeon, who was preaching, spoke forcibly of the consequences of a careless, sinful life, and entreated the unconverted to pray to God for pardon. The man and his wife went home very much affected. He said to his wife, ’Sukie, did you like what the preacher said?’ ’No, Jack,’ she replied, ’I didn’t like it at all.’ ’Do you remember what he told us to do?’ ’Yes, he told us to pray, but I hardly know what it is. I have never prayed, have you?’ ’Never at all,’ said the man, ’but I’ll tell you what we’ll do; there’s our little Mary upstairs, she knows.’ They awakened the little girl, a scholar in a Sunday School only nine years old, and she prayed with much fervor, and the father says, ’From that time I was a new man.’" AN EVENING HYMN OF THE FIFTH CENTURY "The day is past and over: All thanks, O Lord, to Thee! I pray Thee now that sinless The hours of dark may be. O Jesus! keep me in Thy sight, And save me through the coming night. "The joys of day are over: I lift my heart to Thee, And ask Thee that offenseless The hours of dark may be. O Jesus! make their darkness light And save us through the coming night. "The toils of day are over: I raise this hymn to Thee; And ask that free from peril The hours of dark may be O Jesus! keep me in Thy sight, And guard me through the coming night. * * * "Be Thou my soul’s preserver, O God! for Thou dost know How many are the perils Through which I have to go. Lover of men! O hear my call, And guard and save me from them all." -- Anatollus - REASONABLENESS OF PRAYER A renowned man of scientific attainments thus writes: A naturalist should be the last man in the world to object to the efficacy of prayer, since prayer itself is one of the most potent of natural forces. The cry of the young raven brings its food from afar without any exertion on its part, for that cry has power to move the emotion and the muscles of the parent bird, and to overcome her own selfish appetite. The bleat of the lamb not only brings its dam to its side, but causes the secretion of milk in the udder. The cry of distress nerves men to all exertions, and to brave all dangers, and to struggle against all or any of the laws of nature that may be causing suffering or death. Nor, in the case of prayer, are the objects attained at all mechanically commensurate with the activities set in motion. We have seen how the prayer of a few captives, wrongfully held in durance by some barbarous potentate, may move mighty nations, and cause them to pour out millions of their treasure to send men and material of war over land and sea, to sacrifice hundreds of lives, in order that a just and proper demand may be answered. In such a case we see how a higher law overrides the lower, and may cause even frightful suffering and loss of life, in order that a moral or spiritual end may be gained. Are we to suppose, then, that the only Being in the universe who cannot answer prayer, is that One who alone has all power at His command? The weak theology which professes to believe that prayer has merely a subjective benefit, is infinitely less scientific than the action of a child who confidently appeals to its Father in Heaven. A CHILD’S’ TESTIMON A little child’s prayer furnished decisive evidence in a suit in a court at Fresno, Cal., on June 7th. A man had deserted his wife and two children, and had been found in Fresno. His wife and her brother had an interview with him and endeavored to induce him to return. He refused and when the law was invoked he defended his conduct in court. He testified that his wife was a wicked woman, with whom he could not live, and that by word and example she corrupted her children. "Don’t believe him, judge," said the wife; "I have done my best with my home and my children, and I have reared them as they should be." The man still persisted, and between so much cross swearing the judge was puzzled. At last he asked if the children were in court. A little girl three years old came forward, and the judge questioned her. One or two questions were answered intelligently, and then the judge said, "Could you say your prayers?" Without a moment’s hesitation the little girl knelt in the court room, closed her eyes, clasped her hands, and in a reverential voice began, "Our Father, who art in Heaven." Before she reached the end of the prayer, tears stood in the eyes of the judge, and the deep silence of the courtroom was broken by sobs from more than one rough fellow to whom the words recalled childhood’s memories. There was no doubt in the minds of anyone as to the justice in the case, when the girl added to the Lord’s prayer an earnest petition for her father, which she had evidently been in the habit of putting up night and morning during his shameful absence from his family. The judge would hear no more evidence, and in a voice broken with emotion, he gave his decision against the father. The mother could have had no idea, when she so trained her child, that the result would be so valuable to her in the crisis of her life, but she did her duty, and her child enabled her "to answer him that reproached her." (Proverbs 27:2) -- The Christian Herald and Signs of Our Times. PRAYING IN HALF A ROOM In a large and respectable school near Boston, two boys -- from different states, and strangers to each other -- were compelled by circumstances to room together. It was the beginning of the term, and the two students spent the first day in arranging their room, and getting acquainted. When night came, the younger of the boys asked the other if he did not think it would be a good idea to close the day with a short reading from the Bible and a prayer. The request was modestly made, without whining or cant of any kind. The other boy, however, bluntly refused to listen to the proposal. Then you will have no objection if I pray by myself, I suppose?" said the younger. "It has been my custom, and I wish to keep it up." "I don’t want any praying in this room, and won’t have it!" retorted his companion. The younger boy rose slowly, walked to the middle of the room, and standing upon a seam in the carpet which divided the room nearly equally, said quietly: "Half of this room is mine. I pay for it. You may choose which half you will have. I will take the other, and I will pray in that half or get another room. But pray I must and will, whether you consent or refuse." The older boy was instantly conquered. To this day he admires the sturdy independence which claimed as a right what he had boorishly denied as a privilege. A Christian might as well ask leave to breathe as to ask permission to pray. There is a false sentiment connected with Christian actions which interferes with their free exercise. If there is anything to be admired, it is the manliness that knows the right and dares to do it without asking any one’s permission. -Youth’s Companion. A DEACON’S PRAYER A deacon living in a Berkshire town was requested to give his prayers in behalf of a poor man with a large family who had broken his leg. "I can’t stop now to pray," said the deacon (who was picking apples for the city market), "but you can go down into my cellar and get some corned beef, salt pork, potatoes and butter -- that’s the best I can do." PRAYING TO THE POINT A new church in the West was recently dedicated. After the beautiful temple had been formally set apart, the pastor supplemented the service with a consecration meeting -- a meeting for the promotion of holiness. At this meeting a good sister presented herself at the altar, and being called on to pray, supplicated as follows: "O Lord, we have been taught in this meeting that we must ask for just what we really need. Now, Lord, Thou knowest if I should ask for just such things as I want, the congregation would be astonished. O Lord, I want Thee to help Brother C____ to quit selling tobacco. Thou knowest that it is a filthy weed, that it is polluting the house of God in a most insulting manner. I do want Thee to give him grace to abandon the traffic. O Lord, my husband uses tobacco. Thou knowest that I love him and respect him above all other men, but I hate this filthy habit. Thou knowest that if he had saved the money he has wasted on tobacco in the past year, he could have paid twenty-five dollars more in this new church. O Lord, help him to quit the use of tobacco. There is another thing, Lord, which I desire greatly -- some of our church members attend circus shows. Now, Lord, Thou knowest that it is wrong for a Christian to go to circuses. Thou knowest that I never attended but one of these miserable places in my life, and then I came near fainting. And Thou knowest it was not altogether from the heat; my conscience oppressed me more than the heat. Lord, help these church members to keep away from these shows. Now, O Lord, I want Thee to bless and save my boys. I have prayed and wept over them in secret for years, and still they resist the Spirit. O Lord, if there is mercy for them, save them speedily. And now, O Lord, remember me. I am not as good as I want to be. I feel there is some filthiness still remaining. Lord, if Thou canst do anything more for me than Thou hast done, I pray Thee do it. Thou knowest that I want to be all that Thou wouldst have me to be. Now, Lord, I have told Thee just what I want; grant me all for Jesus’ sake. Amen." SOMETHING GIVES WAY A Christian woman in a town in New York desired to obtain a school house for the purpose of starting a Sabbath School, but was refused by a skeptical trustee. Still she persevered, and asked him again and again. "I tell you, Aunt Polly, it is of no use. Once for all I say you cannot have this school house for any such purpose. "I think I am going to get it," said Aunt Polly. "I should like to know how, if I do not give you the key." "I think that the Lord is going to unlock it" "Maybe He will," said the infidel; "but I can tell you this, He will not get the key from me." "Well, I am going to pray over it, and I have found out from experience that when I keep on praying something always gives way." And the next time she came the hard heart of the infidel gave way, and she received the key. More than this, when others opposed the school he sustained it, and great good was done for perishing souls. "Something gives way." Sometimes it is a man’s will, and sometimes it is the man himself. Sometimes there is a revolution, and sometimes there is a funeral. When God’s Spirit inspires a prayer in a believing Christian’s heart, Omnipotence stands read to answer it. "Something gives way." FATHER’S KNEELING-PLACE The children were playing "Hide the handkerchief." I sat and watched them a long while, and heard no unkind word, and saw scarcely a rough movement; but after a little while Jack, whose turn it was to hide the handkerchief, went to the opposite end of the room, and tried to secrete it under a big chair. Freddie immediately walked over to him, and said in a low, gentle voice, "Please, Jack, don’t hide the handkerchief there; that is father’s kneeling-place." "Father’s kneeling-place!" It seemed like sacred ground to me, as it did to little Freddie; and, by and by, as the years roll on, and this place shall see the father no more forever, will not the memory of this hallowed spot leave an impression upon the young hearts that time and change can never efface, and remain as one of the most precious memories of the old home? Oh, if there were only a "father’s kneeling-place" in every family! The mother kneels in her chamber, and teaches the little ones the morning and evening prayer, but the father’s presence is often wanting. Business and the cares of life engross all his time, and though the mother longs for his assistance and co-operation in the religions education of the children, he thinks it is a woman’s work and leaves it all to her. -- Sydney Advocate. ANSWER TO PRAYER Here is a case of prompt answer to prayer. Two little boys were arrested in Holyoke, Mass., recently for stripping the leaves from the trees in the park. Soon after they had been locked up an officer heard their voices and peeped into the cell. Both of the children were down on their knees, with their hands clasped and tears running down their cheeks. "O Lord, please let us out of this place, and we’ll never do it again, never, never," prayed one sobbing culprit, while the other was repeating the Lord’s prayer. "Pray harder," said one of them, "and speak your words plain, or God won’t understand you.’ ’I try to, Jimmy, but I’m crying so I can’t," said the other, and then both redoubled their prayers. The officer slipped away, got the keys, and compounded their felony. THE FATHER’S LOVE It is fairly pathetic what a stranger God is in His own world. He comes to His own, and they who are His own kinsfolk keep Him standing outside the door while they peer suspiciously at Him through the crack at the hinges. To know God really, truly, is the beginning of a normal life. One of the best pictures of God that I ever saw came to me in a simple story. It was of a man, a minister, who lived in a New England town, who had a son, about fourteen years of age, going to school. One afternoon the boy’s teacher called at the home and asked for the father, and said: "Is your boy sick?" "No. Why?" "He was not at school today." "Is that so?" "Nor yesterday." "You don’t mean it!" "Nor the day before." "Well!" "And I supposed he was sick." "No, he’s not been sick." "Well, I thought I should tell you." And the father said, "Thank you," and the teacher left. And the father sat thinking. By and by he heard a click at the gate, and he knew the boy was coming, so he went to open the door. And the boy knew as he looked up that his father knew about those three days. And the father said: "Come into the library, Phil." And Phil went, and the door was shut. And the father said: "Phil, your teacher was here this afternoon. He tells me you were not at school day, -- nor yesterday, -- nor the day before. And we supposed you were. I have always trusted you. I have always said, ’I can trust my boy Phil.’ And you have been a living lie for three whole days. And I can’t tell you how badly I feel about it." Well, that was hard on Phil to be talked to quietly like that. If his father had spoken to him roughly, or had asked him out to the woodshed for a confidential interview, it would not have been nearly so hard. Then, after a moment’s pause, the father said: "Phil, we’ll get down and pray." And this thing was getting harder for Phil all the time. He didn’t want to pray just then. And they got down. And the father poured out his heart in prayer. And the boy knew as he listened how badly his father felt over his conduct. Somehow he saw himself in the mirror on his knees as he had not before. It’s queer about the mirror of the knee-joints. It does show up so many things. Many folks don’t like it. And they got up. And the father’s eyes were wet. And Phil’s eyes were not dry. Then the father said: "My boy, there’s a law of life that where there is sin, there is suffering. You can’t detach these two things. Where there is suffering there has been sin somewhere. And where there is sin there will be suffering. You can’t get these two things apart. Now," he went on, "you have done wrong. And I am in this home like God in the world. So we will do this. You go up to the attic. I’ll make a pallet for you there. We’ll take your meals up to you at the regular times, and you stay there as long as you have been a living lie -- three days and three nights." And Phil didn’t say a word. They went upstairs, the pallet was made, and the father kissed his son and left him alone with his thoughts. Supper time came, and the father and mother sat down to eat. But they couldn’t; eat for thinking about the boy. The longer they chewed the food, the bigger and drier it got in their mouths. And swallowing it was clear out of the question. Then they went into the sitting-room for the evening. He picked up the evening paper to read, and she sat down to sew. Well, his eyes weren’t very good. He wore glasses. And this evening he couldn’t seem to see distinctly -- the glasses seemed blurred. It must have been the glasses of course. So he took them off and cleaned them very deliberately and found that he had been holding the paper upside down. And she tried to sew. But the thread broke, and she couldn’t seem to get the needle threaded again. How we do reveal ourselves in the details. By and by the clock struck nine, and then ten, their usual hour for retiring. She said, "Aren’t you going to bed?" And he said, "I think I’ll not go yet a bit; you go. "No, I guess I’ll wait a bit, too." And the clock struck eleven and the hands worked around toward twelve. Then they arose, and looked up, and went to bed, but -- not to sleep, and each one knew the other was not asleep. By and by she said, (women are always the keener), "Why don’t you sleep?" And he said gently, "Well, I just can’t for thinking of the boy up in the attic." "That’s the bother with me," she replied. And the clock in the hall struck twelve, and one, and two. Still no sleep came. At last he said: "Mother, I can’t stand this any longer; I am going upstairs with Phil." And he took his pillow and went softly out of the room and up the attic stairs and pressed the latch-key softly, so as not to wake the boy if he were asleep, and tiptoed across the attic floor to the corner by the window, and looked. There Phil lay awake, with something glistening in his eyes, and what looked like stains on his cheeks. And the father got down in between the sheets with his boy, and they got their arms around each other’s necks, for they had always been the best of friends, father and boy, and their tears got mixed up on each other’s cheeks. Then they slept. And the next night when bedtime came the father said, "Goodnight, mother. I’m going upstairs with Phil." And the third night again he said, "Mother, goodnight. I’m going up with the boy again." And the third night he slept in the place of punishment with his son. You are not surprised to know that today that boy, a man grown, is telling the story of Jesus with tongue and life of flame in the heart of China. Do you know, I think that father is the best picture of God I ever saw. God could not take away sin. It’s here. He could not take away suffering out of kindness to man. For suffering is sin’s index-finger, saying, "There’s something wrong here." So He came down in the person of His Son, and laid Jesus alongside of man for three days and three nights. That’s God -- our God. And beyond that He comes and puts His life alongside of yours, and mine, and makes us hate the bad, and long to be pure. To be on intimate terms with Him, to live in the atmosphere of His presence, to spend the day with Him -- that is the true, normal life. -- Selected. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 14: 01.03. CHAPTER 3: WITNESSES FOR GOD - BEING TRUE TO GOD WON ======================================================================== Chapter 3: Witnesses for God - BEING TRUE TO GOD WON An eminent preacher relates the following: "There was once a young man who had begun to pray, and his father knew it. He said to him, ’John, you know I am an enemy to religion, and prayer is a thing that never shall be offered in my house.’ Still the young man continued in earnest supplication. ’Well,’ said the father one day, in a hot passion, ’you must give up either God or me. I solemnly swear that you shall never darken the threshold of my door again unless you decide that you will give up praying. I give you till tomorrow morning to choose.’ The night was spent in prayer by the young disciple. He arose in the morning, sad to be cast away by his friends, but resolved in spirit that, come what might, he would serve his God. The father abruptly accosted him: ’Well, what is the answer?’ ’Father,’ he said, ’I cannot violate my conscience, I cannot forsake my God.’ ’Leave immediately!’ said he. And the mother stood there; the father’s hard spirit had made her’s hard, too, and though she might have wept, she concealed her tears. ’Leave immediately,’ said he. Stepping outside the threshold, the young man said, ’I wish you would grant me one request before I go; and if you grant me that I will never trouble you again.’ ’Well,’ said the father, ’you shall have anything you like, but mark me, you go after you have done that; you shall never have anything again.’ ’It is,’ said the son, ’that you and mother would kneel down and let me pray for you before I go.’ Well, they could hardly object to it; the young man was on his knees in a moment, and began to pray with such unction and power, with such evident love for their souls, with such true and saving earnestness, that they both fell flat on the ground, and when the sun rose, there they were, and the father, filled with mercy from on high, said, ’You need not go: come and stop, come and stop,’ and it was not long before not only he, but the whole of them, began to pray, and they were united to a Christian church." -- Sel. * * * The "Christian Index" utters this wise saying: "A wise man when he is doing his duty never knows how much he is doing. And when a man is doing wrong he never knows how much he is doing." This truth is illustrated by the experience of every thoughtful Christian and every sobered sinner. Apparent failures are often monumental successes. Livingstone, dying in a negro’s hut; Bunyan, lying in Bedford jail; Elijah, fainting under the juniper tree; Christ stretched on the cross of Calvary -- were efficiently carrying out the work of God and glorifying Him in the very "hour and power of darkness" when God seemed to have forsaken them. I AM A CHRISTIAN The following poem on the death of Mrs. C. C. Van Deusen, who was burned to death in a recent railroad wreck, was written for the Chicago Inter-Ocean, by Elisa Allison Park. It was read by Rev. Geo. B. Kulp in his memorial sermon yesterday morning, and we republish the same at the request of many who wish to peruse it: "I am a Christian" -- words more strong, of deeper, grander weight, Ne’er were uttered, since the world was made, in face of stubborn fate. Sublimest sort of comfort, gathered in the midst of woe -Let human need take heart of faith and speak them low -" I am a Christian." Unfaltering faith, unwavering trust stood guard in that dread hour, Gave strength and courage -- filled her soul with Heaven’s majestic power; Men stood appalled, and wept that they could not avert her doom; She spoke, as if to comfort them, from out her very tomb -" I am a Christian." Man’s inhumanity, borne in on man, doth direst forfeit take -- Doth mar, alas! God’s noble plan, and keenest suffering make; God’s angels hovering round about to give comfort and relief -Give faith, strength. courage to the soul to utter its belief -" I am a Christian." On wings of prayer borne upward till circling the Great White Throne, God’s listening ear, in kindness bent to catch earth’s faintest tone, Hears echoing spheres take up the cry and waft it on through space -Immortal song on mortal lips, proclaiming all God’s grace -" I am a Christian." Divine assurance, calm and firm, a loving message sweet -Brave testimony uttered when Red Death stood there to greet; Ye saints and martyrs in whose wake this sainted spirit trod, Make way and list’ her martyr-song ascending up to God -" I am a Christian." * * * Suddenly a shout was borne across the waters. The "Trenton" was cheering the "Vandalia." The sound of 450 voices broke upon the air, and was heard above the roar of the tempest. "Three cheers for the ’Vandalia,’ was the cry that warmed the hearts of the dying men in the rigging. The shout died away upon the storm, and there arose from the quivering masts of the sunken ship a response so feeble that it was scarcely heard upon the shore. The men, who felt they were looking death in the face, aroused themselves to an effort and united in a faint cheer for the flagship. Those who were standing on the shore listened in silence, for that feeble cry was the saddest they had ever heard. Every heart was melted to pity. "God help them," was passed from one man to another. The sound of music came across the water. The "Trenton" band was playing the "Star Spangled Banner." The thousand men on sea and shore had never before heard the strains of music at such a time as this. An indescribable feeling came over the hundred Americans on the beach who listened to the notes of the national anthem mingled with the howl of the storm. CONFESSING CHRIST For a Christian to confess his relation to Christ before men boldly is safer, as well as more becoming, than to attempt to conceal it. Dr. George F. Pentecost says that the next morning after he gave his heart to God he went to the office where he was engaged in the study of law. In the hurry and confusion of getting certain papers ready for the Court, an ink-bottle was overturned on the open pages of a Court book. His old temptation to use profane language arose, but remembering what he had done the night before he found grace to overcome. He got the papers ready, sat down and cut the ink-stained pages out of the book and rewrote them. Others in the office looked on with surprise, and one of them said, "Well, you do take that cool," while the head clerk drew his spectacles down over his nose and offered to wager that Pentecost had attended the revival meeting the night before. Then came the crisis, and the young man answered: "Yes, gentlemen, I was there, and you who know me best know what need I had to go." The old clerk, an ex-judge, said: "Young man, that is right; I wish I had had the strength to do as you have done when I was young." Such a crisis comes to everyone who becomes a Christian. The temptation to deny Christ before men will arise. He who yields in the slightest degree will sustain an incalculable loss. Happy the man who is not ashamed of Christ. Sinners will respect, even though they may oppose him, and he will secure an immense advantage for the spiritual contests yet to come. DOING GOOD TO ENEMIES The horse of a pious man living in Massachusetts happening to stray to the road, a neighbor of the man who owned the horse put him into the pound. Meeting the owner soon after, he told him what he had done; "and if I catch him in the road again," said he, "I’ll do it again." "Neighbor," replied the other, "not long since I looked out of my window in the night, and saw your cattle in my meadow, and I drove them out and shut them in your yard; and if I again find them there I’ll do it again." Struck with the reply, the man liberated the horse from the pound and paid the charges himself. "A soft answer turneth away wrath." IF MEAT MAKE MY BROTHER TO OFFEND Several legal gentlemen, passing from place to place to attend court, amused themselves by playing cards on the train. Absorbed in the game, they did not notice that they were closely watched by a woman sitting near. She seemed to struggle for some time to suppress her emotions; but at last, as if unable to do so longer, she rose and approached them. Recognizing them as judge and attorneys in the court of the town they had just left, she introduced herself as the mother of the young man who had the day previous been sentenced to the State Prison for burglary. With show of deep emotion, she admitted the guilt of her son and the justice of the sentence. "But, O Judge," said she, "knowing that his ruin and my sorrow all came about through playing these"-- pointing to the cards -- "it does seem too bad for you to be playing with them here." Then she proceeded to tell of her son’s downward course; from the time when he first learned to play, till he began to stay out at night and be seen in disreputable company. Then, with the excuse that he needed a little money, selling some item from the farm; finally persuading her to dispose of the farm and move to the village; then rapidly gambling away the proceeds till he brought destitution to her, and involved himself in the crime for which he was imprisoned. -- Dr. DeMotte. CHRISTIAN EXAMPLE An incident in the life of Dr. Wilbur Fisk, related to me by his widow this morning, is a fine illustration of the power of a good man’s example, as well as of the Doctor’s wonderful influence on all minds in the circles where he moved. He was elected Chaplain of the Middletown Artillery Company, and served some time in that capacity. On his retirement a dinner was tendered him by the Company. According to the custom of the times, there was a bottle of brandy on every plate, but not a cork was drawn during the dinner. As they arose from the table, Dr. Fisk said to the Captain, "Sir, your guns are well loaded, but not a shot has been fired." "Yes, Doctor," said the Captain, "and it is all out of respect to yourself. It is a pleasure on such an occasion to defer to your sentiments." When Dr. Fisk died, the Company begged the privilege of being pall-bearers and escort in citizen’s dress at his funeral. DRAWING AN AUDIENCE Awhile ago we read a fragment from the history of General Lee, the brilliant general of the Confederate Army, which affords a suggestive lesson. He was stopping at a certain watering-place over Sunday. During the day it was announced that a Methodist preacher was in the place, and would hold a preaching service at three o’clock in the dancing hall. Before the hour for service, the General, himself a devout member of the Protestant Episcopal church, passed around among the cottages and talked up a congregation. Whenever he could spy a person, he went up to him, and said: "We are going to have divine service in the hall at three; will not you be kind enough to join us?" In most cases the simple invitation was accepted, and scores were led to hear the Gospel who would never have thought of such a thing but for the General’s call. THE GREAT FOUNTAIN An aged gentleman was on a visit to one of the noted American watering-places. Whilst taking a draught of water one morning at the spring, a lady came up to take her usual glass at the same time. The gentleman, turning towards her in a pleasant yet thoughtful manner, asked: "Have you ever drunk at that Great Fountain?" The lady colored and looked surprised, but turned away without a word of reply. In the following winter the gentleman was in Rochester, when he was invited to attend a meeting for religious conference and prayer. At the close of the meeting he was asked to visit a lady who was dying. As he entered the sickroom, the lady fixed her eyes very intently upon the gentleman, and said with a smile: "Do you know me?" "No; are we not strangers to each other?" was the reply. "Do you not recollect asking a woman at the Springs last year: ’Have you ever drunk at that Great Fountain?’" "Yes," said the gentleman, "I do remember." "Well, sir, I am that person. I thought at the time you were very rude; but your words kept ringing in my ears. They followed me to my chamber, to my pillow. I was without peace or rest till I found Christ. I now expect shortly to die, and you, under God, were instrumentally the means of my salvation. Be as faithful to others as you have been to me. Never be afraid to talk to strangers on the subject of religion." What a blessing was granted on this short but faithful word! Little do Christians know how God may own His Truth. Let us faithfully scatter the precious seed, and He will give the increase. CONCEALED HIS IDENTITY "You’ll have a hard time of it up there, John, after those lumber men find out you are a Christian. They’re a hard set, and they’ll make it very trying for you. You will need a good deal of grace while you’re up there." After he got home again, his friend said: "Well. how was it, John? Didn’t you find it just like I told you? What did those fellows do after they found out about your being a Christian?" "Found out?" said John. "Found out that I was a. Christian? Why, they never mistrusted that I was!" Brethren, there is too much of that. Too much of that. Let your light shine wherever you go. HOW FAITHFULNESS WON A SOUL T___ was an only child, and had been reared in a Christian home. He had early accepted Christ, and had entered the Church. When he was about sixteen or seventeen, he went away from home to enter college. At the boarding-house where he was to stay, there were several other young men, most of whom were older than himself. Only two of these were Christians. As the company gathered about the tea-table, on the first day of the term, the landlady said: "Mr. T___, will you return thanks?" T___ blushed. He was a timid boy, and he was conscious that every eye was upon him. But he bent his head, and tremblingly returned thanks to God. That night he could not sleep. "I’m in for it!" he said to himself. "I’ll be called on every meal this term, and blush and stammer as I did tonight. I’m almost sure that brainy H___ was disgusted. And yet, it surely would not be the manly thing to refuse. A Christian who won’t stand by his colors isn’t half a Christian. No, if she keeps on asking me, I’ll do it every time." The landlady did "keep on asking," and at length T___ overcame his embarrassment and performed the service with no thought of these who sat by. About the middle of the term, to his utter surprise, H___, who had been regarded as either careless or skeptical, confessed Christ and was baptized. "Do you want to know what set me thinking seriously upon the subject of religion?" asked H___ of T___. "I’ll tell you. The first night you were here, you were called on to give thanks. I could see that it was an awfully hard thing for you to do, and that it cost you a struggle. I said to myself that the religion that would give a shy little fellow like you pluck enough for a thing of that kind, was worth having. I’ve been watching you ever since, T___, and even when you didn’t know it at all, you have been influencing me. Under God, I owe my conversion to you." This little incident is a true one, and its sequel is well worth telling. H___ is now all earnest preacher of the Gospel. T___ is a wealthy business man, who gives his thousands to the cause of Christ. And those who have heard this story of his boyhood can understand why he is so careful, in every seemingly unimportant act of his life, to honor his divine Master. * * * We have been reading about a Sunday School teacher who called on a scholar to read the third verse of the sixth chapter of Daniel, from which the lesson was taken. The verse reads: "Then this Daniel was preferred before the presidents and princes, because an excellent spirit was in him. And the king sought to set him over the whole realm." The scholar, not being the best reader in the school, gave a slightly revised version of the text as follows: "Then this Daniel was preferred before the presidents and princes, because an excellent spine was in him." An excellent spine was an extra good thing in the olden days, and its usefulness has by no means passed away. LET YOUR LIGHT SO SHINE A captain of a vessel, who was a professor of religion, once received a rebuke from a black man, which will bear repeating. The black man had long been acquainted with him, generally helping him to load his vessel. In the course of conversation one day, the captain accidentally remarked that he was a Christian! "You a Christian," said the darky in astonishment. "Laws a mighty, massa, I’d never found it out in the world if you hadn’t told me!" It is to be feared that this is not a solitary case. A GENERAL WITH TRUE COURAGE General Howard is an active and fearless Christian, as well as a brave and valiant soldier. During his residence in San Francisco he might be found in the church on the Sabbath and at the prayer-meetings with exemplary regularity. The writer of this heard him deliver an admirable address to a crowded congregation in Howard Street Methodist Episcopal Church, San Francisco, on the evening of Children’s Day, two years ago. At the close of the address a gentleman in the audience asked permission to speak. Ascending the pulpit, he said: "The magic influence of the name of the last speaker has induced me to ask the privilege of saying a word. Twenty-four years ago the battle of Fredericksburg was fought, and twelve thousand brave boys went down. I lay on the field that night supposed to be mortally wounded. During a lucid interval I recognized one coming and kneeling down beside me and offering prayer. He then spoke words of religious counsel and instruction, and said: ’Cheer up, my boy; I hope you will get well,’ and throwing back the cape of his overcoat he tapped his empty sleeve and said: ’I have given this right arm for the old flag, and, if need be, I am ready to give my life also.’ Having prayed and thus spoken, he went on to perform like Christian ministries for others who were in a similar case. I had been a wild young man; but on that awful night, when I had no hope that I should ever see the face of my mother, or hear the familiar voices of kindred again, I was conscious of a longing to have some one pray with me and counsel me. That prayer and those words of Christian counsel led me to Christ and into the Christian ministry; and since that night I have not seen the face of General Howard until this hour. Do you wonder that I say, ’God bless the general who had courage to pray’?" The speaker proved to be the Rev. T. C. Warner, a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church, who the day before had been elected Chaplain of the Grand Army of the Republic. MY MOTHER’S GOD At a fashionable party a young physician present spoke of one of his patients whose case he considered a very critical one. He said he was "very sorry to lose him, for he was a noble young man, but very unnecessarily concerned about his soul, and the Christians increased his agitations by talking with him and praying with him. He wished Christians would let his patients alone. Death was but an endless sleep, the religion of Christ a delusion, and its followers were not persons of the highest culture and intelligence." A young lady sitting near, and one of the gayest of the company, said, "Pardon me, doctor, but I cannot hear you talk thus and remain silent. I am not a professor of religion; I never knew anything about it experimentally; but my mother was a Christian. Times without number she has taken me to her room, and with her hand upon my head she has prayed that God would give her grace to train me for the skies. Two years ago my precious mother died, and the religion she so loved during life sustained her in her dying hour. She called us to the bedside, and with her face shining with glory, asked us to meet her in Heaven, and I promised to do so. And now," said the young lady, displaying deep emotion, "can I believe that this is all a delusion? that my mother sleeps an eternal sleep? that she will never waken again in the morning of the resurrection, and that I shall see her no more? No, I cannot, I will not believe it." Her brother tried to quiet her, for by this time she had the attention of all present. "No," said she, "brother, let me alone; I must defend my mother’s God, my mother’s religion." The physician made no reply, and soon left the room. He was found shortly afterwards pacing the floor of an adjoining room in great agitation and distress of spirit. "What is the matter?" a friend inquired. "Oh," said he, "that young lady is right. Her words have pierced my soul." And the result of the conviction thus awakened was that both the young lady and the physician were converted to Christ, and are useful and influential members of the Church of God. Young friends, stand up for Jesus at all times and in all places wherever you hear His name reviled, or His counsel set at nought. Rather let the language of your heart be, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" EFFECT OF A RELIGIOUS SONG A bridal party traveling on a railroad train annoyed their fellow-passengers by card-playing and boisterous mirthfulness. The train stopping at a station for some time, and the card-playing continuing, an elderly gentleman who had been walking to-and-fro through the car, took a small book from his pocket and commenced singing, "Nearer my God to Thee." After the singing of the hymn had progressed some time, a number of the passengers joined in the singing. It was soon noticed that the card party was becoming quite uneasy and was losing interest in the game. Soon the bride, shoving the cards aside, exclaimed, "I can’t play any more -- that reminds me of home," and the cards disappeared from view. How true is it that the nearer we approach to God, the less we relish such sinful amusements. * * * We admire the spirit of the young lady, a member of a Baptist Church in New Jersey, who refused the offer of $1,500 to sing in a Unitarian Church, because she would not lend assistance in that way to those who not only deny the divinity of the Lord, but are teaching others to deny it. -Western Advocate. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 15: 01.04. CHAPTER 4: VICTORY - THE SECRET OF SUCCESS ======================================================================== Chapter 4: Victory - THE SECRET OF SUCCESS Complaints are often made, and surprise expressed by individuals who have never found a blessing rest upon anything they have attempted to do in the service of God. "I have been a Sunday School teacher for years," says one, "and I have never seen any of my boys or girls converted." No, and the reason most likely is, you have never been really anxious about it. You have never made up your mind that, in dependence on the power of God’s Spirit, converted they should be; and that nothing should be left undone until they were. You have never been led by the Spirit to such a degree of earnestness that you have said, "I cannot live unless God blesses me. I cannot rest until I see some of those dear children saved." Had it been so, you would not have be disappointed. I give you an illustration: A pious young lady was requested to take a class of girls in a Sunday School. She was seen to be earnest, faithful and affectionate with her youthful charge. In a little while one scholar after another became thoughtful, serious and anxious, until every member of her class converted. She was then requested to take another class, and had not been long in it before similar effects were produced, and ultimately every member of this class also believed in Jesus. She was finally induced to give up this class, and take another one of children, in which again she had not labored long, when the same results followed as before, every pupil having been brought into the Shepherd’s fold. Her work was now done. She fell asleep in Jesus. After her death her friends, on examining her journal, found the following resolution: Resolved, "That I will pray once each day for each member of my class by name." On looking further into this faithful teacher’s journal, they found the same resolution rewritten and readopted with a slight addition, as follows: Resolved, "That I will pray once each day for each member of my class by name, and agonize in prayer. On looking still further into the journal, the same resolution is found rewritten and readopted with another slight addition, as follows: Resolved, "That I will pray once each day for each member of my class by name and agonize in prayer, and expect a blessing." -- New York evangelist. ALWAYS ONWARD In the war between France and England previous to the Revolution, an English drummer, not more than fifteen years of age, having wandered from camp too near the French line’s, was seized and brought before the French commander. On being asked who he was, he answered, "A drummer in the English service." This not gaining credit, a drum was sent for and he was asked to beat a couple of marches, which he accordingly did. The Frenchman’s suspicions, however, not yet quite removed, he asked the boy to beat a retreat. "A retreat, sir?" said the boy, "I don’t know what that is." And, long ago the word retreat was banished from the vocabulary of the Christian. It is a feature of military tactics about which he knows nothing. With him it is always "Onward!" It is victory through the blood of the Lamb. COULD PRAY NO MORE A pastor relates this: When I was a young pastor in Brooklyn, just thirty years ago, I had in my congregation for several years a dear old saint of God, the widow of Nicholas Snethen, of blessed memory. O what a saint she was! And every week, twice almost always, on given days, I went to her upper room on Fulton Avenue, and talked with her about the kingdom just coming to her immortal vision, and the young pastor was greatly helped and confirmed in the faith every time he went. One Thursday afternoon one of her daughters in my class-meeting, said to me: "Mother is in trouble, and would like to have you call." I had not time to ask her what was the matter, so many were coming up to shake hands. But I said I would be there in a few minutes, and in twenty minutes I was by her bedside. And as I walked up the avenue I asked myself what last hold the old enemy could have got on that mature and triumphant saint. I could not make it out. I came to her room, stepped to her bedside, and concluded at once that it was a curious sort of trouble, for her face shone as though a passing angel had dropped a smile upon it. I took her by the hand and said, "Mother Snethen, your daughter said you were in trouble. What is it?" "Well," said she, "I would have been glad if the Lord would have permitted me to spend my remaining days on earth praying for the Church and my friends, but I cannot pray any more." She had the same experience with that sainted man of God -- the Rev. Charles J. Clark, D. D., of the Maine Conference -- that dear brother of this General Conference, who went to his reward two weeks ago today. When his faithful wife knelt and said: "Shall I pray for you?" he sweetly answered, "Prayer for me is done." "I cannot pray anymore," said that old saint in Brooklyn thirty years ago. Then said I, "Let me pray for you." I had just begun, but there was no more praying to be done there. I had scarcely said the first word when she said, "Hallelujah," and I said, "Hallelujah," and her daughter said, "Hallelujah," and Heaven seemed to answer back "Hallelujah." And so it lasted four days, and there was no more praying to be done there. I said, "If God pleases, Mother Snethen, to let you begin the employments of Heaven now, never mind; it is all right." During those four days she would say, "Now, don’t you hear anything in particular in this room?" "No, do you?" "Yes." "What do you hear?" "The angels of God singing my welcome home." And then she would say, "Don’t you see anything there, right there?" "No, do you?" "Yes." "What do you see?" "I see the angels of God waiting to carry me home." All imagination, some blear-eyed doubter may say! A Sanhedrin of philosophers cannot prove that it was not the dawn of the eternal vision. -- Sel. A DAY OF THE LORD It was not a day of feasting, Nor a day of the brimming cup; There were bitter drops in the fountain Of life as it bubbled up, And over the toilsome hours Were sorrow and weakness poured, Yet I said "Amen," when night came; It had been a day of the Lord. A day of His sweetest whispers, In the hush of the tempest’s whirl; A day when the Master’s blessing Was pure in my hand as a pearl. A day when, under orders, I was fettered, yet was free; A day of strife and triumph, A day of the Lord to me. And my head as it touched the pillow, When the shadows gathered deep, Was soothed at the thought of taking The gift of child-like sleep; For what were burdens carried, And what was the foeman’s sword, To one who had fought and conquered In the fearless day of the Lord -- Margaret E. Sangster * * * "Exchanged his poverty for eternal riches, and his rags for a crown which fadeth not away -- at Winchester poor-house, Nov. 6, 1864, Jas. C. Smith, aged 67. The pall-bearers were few on this side, -- not so many perhaps as they that waited on the ’shining shore’ and went up with the old man to his ’Father’s house.’" THE CONDUCTOR’S STORY It was the summer of 1873. I was running extras on the railroad. A circus, traveling about the country, came into the town on our line. An order was issued for an extra train on Sunday morning. I received notice early on Tuesday. I read the order carefully. It gave the time of arrival in our city as 9 A. M. I looked again to see if it was not 9 P. M. I was a teacher in the Sabbath School. I had a bright class of boys about sixteen years of age, just the right age to be interested in circuses, and to be wide awake when one arrived in town. My heart sank. I, a professing Christian, and withal, a Sabbath School teacher, detailed to run a circus train on the Sabbath, and to arrive, too, in my own city, where everybody knew me, just as Christians were ready for church. What should I do? I had worked hard nearly nine years as a brakeman, and had been promoted to conductor. Could I afford to lose all by refusal to do as ordered? Then I thought of my family dependent upon me, and I said, I cannot throw away all these years of hard toil to satisfy conscience. For I expected to be discharged if I refused to do as ordered. Then I thought of the boys in the Sabbath School. What if some of them happened to be at the depot to see the train, or if they were just on their way to church as we arrived, and should see me, as they doubtless would? I thought of the church and the prayer-meeting. What should I do? I thought of my own influence as lost for good, and there was a desperate struggle between the evil and the good. I had yet four days in which to decide. How strange it was! Notice did not usually reach us until the day previous. What long, dreary days they seemed! And the boys heard of the order, and were guessing what I would do. They knew what I had said in prayer-meeting about desecrating the Sabbath, for some of them were there. Would he go, or would he quit?" "No, he would not quit, for he would not dare to refuse to go," they said. Saturday morning came. I must notify the office what I would do. Sleepless nights and weary days had passed, and I had thought and prayed, but I was decided. Duty seemed clear, very clear, and it was that a Christian man should not run excursion trains on the Sabbath. My father was a deacon in the orthodox church, and, just before going to my work, I went to him and told him the story, reserving my decision to myself, and asking his advice what to do. I knew well what he would say. What a look went over his face as he spoke! "But," I said, "father life to this business, and now I must turn to something else." "Trust in God, my boy," he answered, promptly, "and I will help you, too." I returned to the office, and walked up to the manager as he sat, and said in a respectful tone: "I have been detailed to run the circus train Sunday morning, and I cannot do it on the Sabbath." Imagine my astonishment as he looked me in the face and said: ’You! been detailed to run Sunday trains! I am surprised! You go right home, and don’t you worry about Sunday trains." I have never been detailed for Sunday work since. But the men who offered to do work for extra pay upon the Sabbath have long since been discharged. -- Cogregationalist. RELIGIOUS TRIUMPHS IN SUDDEN DEATH If any one should ask, "Does the religion of Jesus meet every need of man?" I want to answer, yes, and stands every test of human experience. Never was I more impressed with this blessed truth than when I stood by the side of Mr. C. C. Van Dusen, of Sprout Brook, N. Y., who was so terribly injured in the dire disaster on the Grand Trunk in this city on the morning of the 20th. I was at the scene very shortly after the collision. It was dark and raining, the light from the burning wreck, the moans from the wounded and mangled ones here and there in buildings and in cars making a scene we can never forget. I entered a caboose, and, as there were a great many wounded in it, some one accosted me saying, "Are you a surgeon?" to which I replied, "I am a Methodist minister." Instantly one wounded unto death said, "I want to see you, come here." At once I was by his side. He said: "My name is C. C. Van Dusen, of Sprout Brook, N. Y. I’m a Christian and I’m nearing home. My wife has gone, and I’ll soon be with her. (His wife thirty minute’s before had gone up in a chariot of fire.) She was a good woman and a teacher of the infant class in the Sabbath school." As I inquired of him as to his personal salvation he replied: "I am in the hands of my Savior and I’ll ’n be with Him." A physician entering the car, I called him at once to this brother’s side. After examination he calmly looked the doctors in the face and said: "How soon will I be with Jesus?" He very deliberately talked of his affairs, the disposition to be made of his property, saying, "I would like to live for my children, but I must go. In my Father’s house are many mansions." When he was told that the remains of the precious Christian wife and mother were in the hands of the undertaker, he said: send us ’back together." Knowing he was among strangers, he said: "Dominie, don’t leave me," and I promised he should not be left alone. We conveyed him to the Nicholas Memorial Home, a hospital of which Battle Creek may well feel proud, an arranged him as comfortably as possible under the circumstances. Soon the chill and darkness of death approached. Said he, "Dominie, is the sun shining?" "No, my brother, it is cloudy and raining." "I thought it was growing dark and I don’t breathe as easily as I did." It was death. A little longer, and husband and wife were united, while back in the home in New York there were two children bereaved of both father and mother at once I never saw such calmness and peaceful triumph in the presence of death in all my ministry of nearly twenty years. Frank Smith, of Fort Plains, N.Y., was also one of the party, a splendid Christian young man. Being removed to the hospital, a limb was amputated, but he sank rapidly and "was not, for God took him." A lovely father, mother and sister Nellie left behind, all injured, but each with the blessed hope, "Frank is at rest and we will all meet again in Heaven." It was my privilege to bow with this father at the casket of his son and commend him to the God of all comfort. The remains of Frank were sent back to Fort Plains with friends, but the parents and sister were compelled by injuries to remain. They are comforted by the Divine presence. Ah, thank God, for a religion that stands any test of human experience. Thank God for a Savior who is always with us. That caboose, on the morning of October 20, was a precious place, for He was there. -- Geo. B. Kulp. I AM GOING TO HEAVEN TONIGHT Such were the words with which Arthur Dawe, of Deerfield, greeted the friends who called to see him on the day before he died. His joyful anticipation of Heaven, together with his last words, were remarkable in a boy of his age. Five weeks ago Arthur was taken with a severe cold, which was followed by measles. This was again followed by capillary bronchitis, which brought to a close his bright little life. The skill of three physicians could not restore him to health, and to his weeping parents. He had been called by the Lord, and for several days before he passed away, he knew it was the Lord’s voice calling him home. Dr. Jones wished him good on Wednesday morning, and about one hour later Dr. Bliss said: "Good bye, Arthur. You have been a patient boy, and made a brave fight." His little face lighted up as he replied: "Good-bye, doctor. I am going to Jesus." Then the doors were opened to any one who wished to see him, and from this time on his bedside was lined with the many who came in to say farewell. He heard the schoolbell, and he said, "That bell will never call me again, for I am going to school in Heaven." He asked his father to read and pray with him once more. He followed his father word for word in the prayer, and at its close added "Not my will, but Thine be done." Then He said: "Papa, would you like to hear the prayer I prayed to Jesus last night? ’O Lord Jesus, if you want me very badly, please take me at once; but my mamma wants me very badly, and if you do not need me as badly as she does, please let me stay for her sake.’" While the Scriptures were being read to him his mother leaned over and said: "That last verse is on your grandma’s tombstone." He replied: "I have chosen my text and I want it on my tombstone; ’Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest’" And he turned to his father and said: "I am heavy laden, and I want rest." His father said "Arthur, what will you do when you first reach Heaven?" He replied: "I shall go right up to Jesus first." The father said: "But won’t you be afraid to talk to Jesus? You know that you would not like to go up and speak to a strange gentleman, unless he first spoke to you." He replied: "But this is different, papa; Jesus is not a stranger to me -- He is my Savior." When the professor of the high school came in, Arthur wished him farewell, and said: "I am going to Heaven tonight." One by one he called his school companions to him and kissed them and urged them to be good boys and come to him in Heaven. He called for some of his treasures and distributed them among his most intimate companions. Every now and then he would say: "Don’t cry, mamma." His mother replied: "But it will be so long before I shall see you again." He replied: "It will not be long to me, for a thousand years are as one day in God’s sight." He then wanted to know what message he should take to his grandma and grandpa (his mother’s parents) in Heaven. He asked his father to get him pen, ink and paper that he might write to his grandma and grandpa, and aunt in England. When he was assured that he had not strength to write, he sent his love to them, and told his father to telegraph to them to take the first steamer and come over, saying that if he kept his body a little longer they would be able to come to the funeral. During the night one of the ladies said, as she listened to his heavy breathing: "Poor little fellow." He roused up and replied, "I am not poor; I am richer than anyone in this room, for I shall be the first to reach Heaven." He did not die that night as he expected; but next morning, Thursday, March 29, at ten minutes to ten he entered into rest. -- Sel. TWO WAYS OF RESISTING TEMPTATION A classical illustration of the two ways of resisting temptation is found among the beautiful myths that cloud the dawn of Grecian history. In the wanderings of Ulysses after the taking of Troy, the wind drove his ship near to the island of the Sirens, somewhere near the west coast of Italy. These enchantresses were fabled to have the power of charming by their songs anyone who heard them, so that he died in an ecstasy of delight. When the ship of Ulysses approached these deadly charmers, who were sitting on the lovely beach endeavoring to lure him and his crew to destruction, he filled the ears of his companions with wax, and with a rope tied himself to the mast, until he was so far off that he could no longer hear their song. By this painful process they escaped. But when the Argonauts, in pursuit of the golden fleece, passed by the Sirens singing with sweetness, Jason, instead of binding himself to the mast and stuffing the ears of his men with wax, commanded Orpheus, who was on board the ship, to strike his lyre. His song so surpassed in sweetness that of the charmers, that their music seemed harsh discord. The Sirens, seeing them sail by unmoved, threw themselves into the sea and were metamorphosed into rocks. They had been conquered with their own weapons. Melody had surpassed melody. Here is set forth the secret of Christian triumph. Joy must conquer joy. The joy of the Holy Ghost in the heart must surpass all the pleasures of sense. When all Heaven is warbling in the believer’s ear, the whispers of the tempter grate upon the purified sensibilities as saw-filing rasps the nerves. "The joy of the Lord is your strength," to resist sin as well as to endure toil. Fullness of joy is the Christian’s shield. Christ has such a shield for every believer. -- Mile-Stone Papers * * * A German soldier, during the Franco-German War, was ridiculed by a French soldier, who said: "What a clumsy set of soldiers you Germans are; just look at your shoes; why, you can’t run in those shoes." He answered. "Those shoes are not made to run, but to stand. We propose to stand and make you do the running." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 16: 01.05. CHAPTER 5: CONSECRATION - TO PREVENT BIAS ======================================================================== Chapter 5: Consecration - TO PREVENT BIAS Bismarck said something in a speech which has a very wide application: "There have been times when I thought it possible to hold foreign stock. But afterward I found that the possession of such stock was calculated to some extent to mislead me in my judgment of the policy of the government whose securities I held, and so I think it is now about fourteen years since I got rid, on principle, of all such bonds. I now only wish to interest myself in my own country and not in foreign securities." God sanctifies you. He does not make something else of you, and then sanctify that. Your "peculiarity" when sanctified will be your arm of strength. If you were of a stormy, impetuous nature in sin; in holiness you will be an exhorter or be fervent in prayer. If you are naturally winning, you will be effective in persuading sinners to Christ. If you have an ardent temperament, as John had, when sanctified you will be a loving Christian. The things you unlawfully loved, you will now hate, and the things you improperly hated you will love, but your natural bent or bias when sanctified will still be a bent or bias; this is why experiences are so unlike. It is the same Spirit, but a different individual. Satan knows this and tries to lead you to seek the identical experience of some you admire, -- voice, gesture, manner and all. To be sure, God could dissolve and recast your physical and intellectual being in the same mold with that one, but it would be superfluous. He can sanctify you just as well, and so increase the variety, and add to His glory. Be natural. Be yourself. Whole armies of excellent Joneses, Smiths and Robinsons have been totally wrecked in trying to be a Wesley, an Inskip or a Taylor. Nature is made up of separate faculties. The perversion of these is sin: their right use holiness. When sinfully used it is "hid." Let it be occupied by the Holy Ghost and it will soon be heard from with "usury." In Moses, Abraham and Paul there were special adaptabilities to certain ends. So there are in your own make-up. Therefore get filled with the Spirit and turn it, or them, to account in the kingdom of our Master. -The Highway FREIGHT OR EXPRESS John B. Gough has gone to his reward, but I shall never forget my indebtedness to him for an illustration I heard him use the last time I listened to him. I don’t even remember what he was illustrating; I do remember the use the Holy Spirit made of the illustration to my own soul. Mr. Gough said he sat once by the side of an engineer on a lightning express train, and, as the engine flew around a curve, he said to the engineer, "Do you never fear while going at this speed?" The engineer turned to him and said: "Mr. Cough, it doesn’t do for an engineer to be afraid. Sometimes they do become timid, and when it is found out that they are, they give them a freight train." In a moment I saw the danger of being afraid when God fires up the soul with a new truth and means it to go with speed. Alas, for those who have not been true to the truth given them, and, as Emerson says, have "struck souls to a fear," and another soul has been given the truth they were afraid to utter, and that other has taken their crown, and they have been given a "freight train" instead of a lightning express. If God made you for a freight train, take good care of your train, "here all the honor lies;" but if He fitted you up for an express train, it is humbug to find yourself on a freight train. I well remember in the long ago sitting beside Phoebe Palmer in a morning prayer-meeting, held during the sessions of our annual conference of ministers of our Methodist church. It was the morning General Lee surrendered to General Grant. I was full of the thought of a complete surrender to Jesus Christ; she turned to me and said quietly, "The King’s business requires haste." I sprang to my feet, and in an express sort of way gave the burning thought the Holy Ghost had given me, and in that hour a leading business man of New York surrendered to Christ Oh, what victories are lost by fear! -- fear of what people will think of you, when the probability is that up to this time you have never done anything to make them think of you in any way. We want souls these days who know no fear but the fear of God. Souls that are ready to take God’s dispatches at quickest notice, and in quickest time. "Be ready for every good word and work." Anything short of this is not entire consecration. May many more souls be fired up by the Holy Ghost, to be like express trains for God to take truths He wishes to send. -- Margaret Bottome. CONSECRATION "For the blessed Savior’s sake, Do all the good you can, To all the souls you can, In all the places you can, At all the times you can, In all the ways you can, And just as long as you can." CONSECRATED UMBRELLA I hope you own one, my reader. It is not every Christian who does. I know a great many umbrellas that go constantly to office and store, to places of amusement and the homes of friends, which are never seen at church on Sunday or at prayer-meeting. When we ask the Lord to take and use "all that we are, and all that we have," we do not always mean our rainy-Sunday selves and our umbrellas. Now I am sure that there is no one who believes more heartily than I in that religion which makes one "diligent in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord." I cannot think very highly of that piety which is only for church use. But, on the other hand, the fervor of spirit which never carries us through disagreeable weather to the house of the Lord does not bear the name. If our Sunday umbrellas bear the inscription, "Holiness to the Lord," they will be taken out in Sunday sprinkles as well as in Monday showers. If the Lord has given us umbrellas, waterproof cloaks, and overshoes (and what have we that we have not received?) then it is neither right nor grateful on our part to use these things for our own running to and fro. What would you think of your pastor if his umbrella were not at the service of the Lord? What has your pastor a right to think of you? You need not be afraid of rain -- the light which shines from under a consecrated umbrella cannot be quenched by raindrops. Indeed, we sometimes get the richest and most abundant oil in our lamps on rainy Sundays, and our lights burn the brighter through all the coming week. I am sure that Satan must know that consecrated umbrellas in consecrated hands are weapons hard to be withstood, so He makes us think (if we think of it at all) that our umbrellas are not worthy the oil of consecration. We know better. In future let us have the courage of our convictions. A boy, much moved by the appeal at a religious service for contributions and for personal dedication to God’s work, met a collector with a plate, at the close of the service. "Put the plate lower-lower yet-lower still," said the lad; till the collector, amused, put the plate on the floor. Then the lad sat down in the plate and said: "I have no money to give to God and to this good work, and so I give myself." If that offering were made with right motives, we doubt not it was most acceptable to God. Many are willing to give money, or other things they can easily spare, to good objects; too few are ready to consecrate themselves, and to make personal sacrifices, in God’s service. WHAT MUST I GIVE UP? "But where," is asked, "does this common ground end, and the realm of the world begin?" We may be helped to an answer if we look first at the opposite boundary, and ask where the common ground ends and the domain of the Church begins. What is the gate through which everyone passes who enters the Church? Is it not the confession of subjection to Christ? Within that inclosure Christ is recognized as supreme. His word is law. His authority is paramount. His sovereignty is undisputed. The man who enters there pledges himself to honor Christ everywhere; and so long as he is where he can be recognized and understood as being loyal to Christ, everything is well. Now with that thought in mind, pass to the other side, and where now do you find the world begins? It commences at the point where another than Christ is recognized and acknowledged as ruler. Call it fashion. or pleasure, or whatever else. The moment you pass into a place where, not Jesus, but another is recognized and reputed as the sovereign, you are guilty of conforming to the world. Wherever the world is acknowledged as ruler, there, even though in the abstract he might think the place indifferent, the Christian should not enter. Gesler’s cap in the abstract was nothing at all -- a mere thing of cloth and feathers; and, in the abstract, it was a small matter to bow to it; but bowing to that cap meant acknowledging allegiance to Austria, and William Tell showed his patriotism by refusing so to honor it. The question, therefore, is not whether in other circumstances the things done in the world’s inclosure might not be done by the Christian without sin, but whether he should do them there, where his doing of them is recognized as homage to the world. Whose flag is over a place of amusement? Whose image and superscription are on a custom or practice? HE GAVE TEN CENTS ON EVERY DOLLAR All of you have heard of Colgate’s soap; many of you use it. Here is a story about its manufacturer, William Colgate. Many years ago a lad of sixteen years left home to seek his fortune. All his worldly possessions were tied up in a bundle, which he carried in his hand. As he trudged along, he met au old neighbor, the captain of a canal boat, and the following conversation took place, which changed the whole current of the boy’s life: "Well, William, where are you going?" "I don’t know," he answered. "Father is too poor to keep me any longer, and says I must now make a living for myself." "There’s no trouble about that," said the captain. "Be sure you start right and you’ll get along finely." William told his friend that the only trade he knew anything about was soap and candle making, at which he had helped his father while at home. "Well," said the old man, "let me pray with you once more, and give you a little advice, and then I will let you go. They both kneeled down upon the tow-path (the path along which the horses which drew the canal boat walked); the dear old man prayed earnestly for William, and then gave this advice: "Some one will be the leading soap-maker in New York. It may be you as well as anybody else. I hope it may be. Be a good man; give your heart to Christ; give the Lord all that belongs to Him of every dollar you earn; make an honest soap; give a full pound, and I am certain you will yet be a prosperous and rich man." When the boy arrived in the city he found it hard to get work. Lonesome and far away from home, he remembered his mother’s last words, and the last words of the canal-boat captain. He was then led to "seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness," and united with the Church. He remembered his promise to the old captain, and the first dollar he earned brought up the question of the Lord’s part. In the Bible he found that the Jews were commanded to give one-tenth; so he said, "If the Lord will take one-tenth, I will give that." And so he did, and ten cents of every dollar were sacred to the Lord. Having regular employment, he soon became a partner; and after a few years his partner died, and William became sole owner of the business. He now resolved to keep his promise to the old captain. He made an honest soap, gave a full pound, and instructed his bookkeeper to open an account with the Lord, and carry one-tenth of all his income to that account. He prospered; his business grew; his family was blessed; his soap sold, and he grew rich faster than he had ever hoped. He then gave the Lord two-tenths, and prospered more than ever; then he gave three-tenths, then four-tenths, then five-tenths. He educated his family, settled his plans for life, and gave all his income to the Lord. He prospered more than ever. --Selected. CONSECRATION It is reported of Charles XII. of Sweden that, when he ascended the throne, he wrote on a map of Sweden, "God has given me this kingdom, and the devil shall not take it away from me." The Christian should say of his body, "God has given me this body, and (in God’s name) the devil shall not rule over it." "We are to take care of the casket for the sake of the jewel." The body is to be well used for the sake of the soul it contains. Both body and soul should be given to the Lord, and in a solemn act of consecration we should write in our uttermost soul, "Holiness to the Lord" ======================================================================== CHAPTER 17: 01.06. CHAPTER 6: SALVATION - IS GOD HERE? ======================================================================== Chapter 6: Salvation - IS GOD HERE? A young man had been extremely profane and thought little of the matter. After his marriage to a high-minded, lovely wife, the habit appeared to him in a different light, and he made spasmodic efforts to conquer it. But not until a few months ago did he become victor, when the glowing evil was set before him, by a little incident, in its real and shocking sinfulness. One morning, while standing before the mirror shaving, the razor slipped, inflicting a slight wound. True to his fixed habit he ejaculated the single word "God!" and was not a little amazed and chagrined to see reflected in the mirror the pretty face of his three-year old daughter, as, laying her doily hastily down, she sprang from her seat on the floor, exclaiming, she looked eagerly and expectantly about the room, "Is God here?" Pale and ashamed and at a loss for a better answer, he simply said, "Why?" "’Cause I thought He was when I heard you speak to Him." Then noticing the sober look on his face, and the tears of shame in his eyes as he gazed down into the innocent, radiant face, she patted him lovingly on the hand, exclaiming assuredly, "Call Him again, papa, and I dess He’ll surely come." Oh, how every syllable of the child’s trusting words cut to his heart! The still, small voice was heard at last. Catching the wondering child up in his arms, he knelt down, and for the first time in his life implored of God forgiveness for past offenses and guidance for all his future life, thanking Him in fervent spirit that He had not "surely come" before in answer to some of his awful blasphemies. Surely "a child shall lead them." -- Pacific. JESUS, TAKE ME I am going to tell you a story, not about a child, but about a great strong man I saw in a meeting where many were asking what they should do to be saved. At first he did not know what to make of it. He thought the people were all crazy. But he had not been there long before something that was said from the platform touched his heart. God taught him that he was a lost, guilty sinner, and that if he did not forsake his sins, and believe in Jesus as his Savior, he would have to be shut up forever in God’s prison-house, which in the Bible is called HELL. Then he thought of all his sins and they were like a heavy burden. He thought he could never be forgiven. He did not understand that Jesus had been punished for his sins, and that God was more willing to save him than he was to be saved. And so for several days his sins grew heavier and heavier. He could not sleep at night; he feared he might awake in Hell. He felt that God might justly shut him up there forever. He was one of the officers to execute the laws in the country in which he lived. Sometimes it was by his command that prisoners were dragged away to the dark prison and shut up for years. And for a long time he could not see how God could justly forgive him. He had heard about Jesus, but he felt that he was such a wicked sinner that Jesus could not receive him. Christ, he knew, had suffered on the cross, but he didn’t think He had bled for him. One day he went to his office, but he could not attend to his business. He could only think of the great judgment day when the Lord will say to the wicked, "Depart!" In great distress he went away to his house. As he walked in, his son, a little fellow about three years of age, was building a play house of blocks of wood. In turning round to see who was coming in, he struck the blocks, and down fell the whole house, and some of the blocks fell on his toes and hurt him. Tears filled his eyes and he began to cry, but in a moment he turned and ran to his father, and with sobs said: "Papa, take me! Papa, take me!" The tall man stooped down, lifted up the little one in his arms, and at once the little fellow dried his tears and was happy again. The father said to himself, "That is just what I will do. I will go to Jesus in the same way; He will take me." And so he put his child down and went away to his own room. And with the tears running down his cheeks, he cried, "Jesus, take me." And Jesus did take him, for His words to all who come to Him are, "Him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out." The father’s tears were dried. God opened his eyes and showed him how Jesus had satisfied all God’s demands. And he was then quite sure that he would never be shut up in God’s prison. From that hour he was quite happy; the burden was all gone. I have often seen him since. He has been doing all he can to get others to come and trust Jesus. ADOPTED JIM "Get out of the way there, you Jim!" A dozen boys were shouting it at once. They were newsboys waiting for their armfuls of evening papers, and Jim was taking up the whole sidewalk with his antics just as a lady wished to get by. This Jim, an orphan, was the raggedest, dirtiest boy of them all. He had no home or lodgings. He slept in doorways, in boxes and carts. When only five years old he was turned into the street, and had been a "street arab" ever since. He was now eleven; but the boys called him "Baby," scant food and exposure having stunted his growth. Jim got out of the lady’s way nimbly enough; but he was not a little surprised when she stopped and beckoned to him. In spite of rags and dirt the boy attracted her. She had noticed him more than once before. Having inquired about him, her mind was already made up. "Jim," said she, "I want you to go home with me. We have no child: you shall be my boy. You shall have my name. I will adopt you. Will you go with me?" Jim hesitated. He partly knew what the invitation included -- combing, scrubbing, school, church, all the clean ways of a Christian home. He had often passed the beautiful house of Mrs. Williams, and many a dark night stopped on the pavement to look in at the cheerful fire which seemed so far from his cold, bare feet. He was sure that her home would be no place for a dirty body or a dirty mind. Soon, however, a better light came into his eyes. He looked up at his new friend, saying, "Yes, mum, I’ll go." At her side off he started, but stopped to shout, "Bye, bye, boys!" and to throw them the rag that had once been a cap. On the way home the lady and the boy -- whose name was hereafter to be not "Baby Jim," but James Williams, talked about the future. It was understood that James was to put off his bad ways and try to please and honor the kind friend who was now his mother. Once within the house the new life began -- scissors for the tangled hair, a bath, clean linen, a fresh suit. There was a great change in the boy, inside as well as outside. When he had said, "Yes, mum, I’ll go," his heart had spoken. It was the turning away from a dark, bad life. For awhile all went well. The people liked "James Williams." He was certainly learning good things. He was like Mrs. Williams’ son. But one day he passed the old corner and there were the old boys. They surrounded him, and with all the wit and cruelty they could command, made "game" of him. For a time he bore their taunts smilingly; but patience was at last exhausted, and a battle followed, in which James became "Jim" again, scratched and bruised, soiled and torn. "It’s all over," he said to himself; "I’m only Jim after all. I’ll not go home. She’ll not want to see me." Quickly, however, the good lady, missing her boy, and suspecting what might have happened, searched for him and found him. He was sorry and penitent, but fully discouraged. "I’m only Jim," he wailed. Then it was the mother’s turn to speak. "Why, James, I adopted you," she said. "I have taken you into my family. I have given you my name. You are my heir. I love you. Did you suppose that I could so easily let you go? You may sometimes do wrong, but you are my boy still. You are sorry. You love me. I am glad to forgive you, and shall try always to help you. Come right back home; and I am sure that you will be more than ever careful to please me." There was new light in the boy’s heart. "So I am Williams anyhow," he thought, "just because she adopted me! I’ll try harder than ever to do as she tells me." In this story we have a faint idea of the sinner’s standing before God, when Christ has been accepted, and His work fully appropriated. Without Christ, we are "wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked;" but through faith in the only begotten Son of God we are BORN into the family of God, and we become "heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ." * * * I once heard an Andersonville prisoner say that next to the greatest joy he ever had in his life, was to get a whole biscuit when he was starving to death. "But what was the greatest joy?" inquired some one. "Seeing poor old Bob, my bunk-mate, eat the biggest half of it," was the reply. Brethren, it is that kind of religion that Christ wants us all to have, and it is to receive it that He says to each one of us, as soon as the word has been spoken that gives us life in Him -" Come forth." SAVED BY SONG A party of northern tourists formed part of a large company gathered on the deck of an excursion steamer that was moving slowly down the historic Potomac one beautiful evening in the summer of 1881. A gentleman who has since gained a national reputation as an evangelist of song, had been delighting the party with his happy rendering of many familiar hymns, the last being the sweet petition so dear to every Christian heart, "Jesus, Lover of My Soul." The singer gave the first two verses with much feeling, and a peculiar emphasis upon the concluding lines that thrilled every heart. A hush had fallen upon the listeners that was not broken for some seconds after the musical notes had died away. Then a gentleman made his way from the outskirts of the crowd to the side of the singer and accosted him with, "Beg your pardon, stranger, but were you actively engaged in the late war?" "Yes, sir," the man of song answered, courteously; "I fought under General Grant." "Well," the first speaker continued, with something like a sigh, "I did my fighting on the other side, and think, indeed am quite sure, I was very near you one bright night eighteen years ago this very month. It was much such a night as this. If I am not mistaken you were on guard duty. We of the South had sharp business on hand, and you were one of the enemy. I crept near your post of duty, my murderous weapon in my hand; the shadows hid me. As you paced back and forth you were humming the tune of the hymn you have just sung. I raised my gun and aimed at your heart, as I had been selected by our commander for the work because I was a sure shot. Then out upon the night rang the words: Cover my defenseless head With the shadow of Thy wing. "Your prayer was answered. I couldn’t fire after that, and there was no attack made upon your camp that night. I felt sure when I heard you sing this evening that you were the man whose life I was spared from taking." The singer grasped the hand of the Southerner, and said with emotion: "I remember the night very well, and distinctly the feeling of depression and loneliness with which I went forth to my duty. I knew my post was one of great danger, and I was more dejected than I remember to have been at any other time during the service. I paced my lonely beat, thinking of home, and friends, and all that life holds dear. Then the thought of God’s care for all that He had created came to me with peculiar force. If He so cares for the sparrow, how much more for man created in His own image; and I sang the prayer of my heart, and ceased to feel alone. How the prayer was answered I never knew until this evening. My heavenly Father thought best to keep the knowledge from me for eighteen years. How much of His goodness to us we shall be ignorant of until it is revealed by the light of eternity! ’Jesus, lover of my soul,’ has been a favorite hymn; now it will be inexpressibly dear." The incident related in the above sketch is a true one, and was related to the writer by a lady who was one of the party on the steamer. -- London Freeman. THY GARMENT’S HEM I’m tired, Lord, an’ sick an’ sore, This vale o’ tears a wanderin’ o’er, Th’ flinty stuns hev cut my feet, I’ve a’most dropped from noonday heat, Yet travelin’ up the streets o’ pain, I’ve just a longin’ hope tu gain, An’ tech Thy garment’s hem. I’m sore beset with grief an’ fears, My eyes is full o’ streamin’ tears, As strugglin’ on my lonely way, I’ve only strength tu hope an’ pray, That sometime, somehow, I shall stand A reachin’ out my tremblin’ hand, Tu tech Thy garment’s hem. I’ve allus sort o’ felt, dear Lord, Thet all o’ life is in Thy Word: Thet praisin’ Thee don’t do no good, Ef actin’ Thee haint understood, So bent an’ broke, despised by man I’m tryin’ tu reach’s fur’s I can, Tu tech Thy garment’s hem. -- Sel. WORTH HER WEIGHT IN GOLD A few years ago a steamer was coming from California. The cry of "Five! fire!" suddenly thrilled every heart. Every effort was made to stay the flames, but in vain. It soon became evident that the ship must be lost. The burning mass was headed for shore, which was not far off. A passenger was seen buckling his belt of gold around his waist, ready to plunge into the waves. Just then a pleading voice accosted him, "Please, sir, can you swim?" A child’s blue eyes were piercing into his deepest soul, as he looked down upon her. "Yes, child, I can swim?" "Well, sir, won’t you please to save me?" "I cannot do both," he thought. "I must save the child and lose the gold. But a moment ago, I was anxious for this whole ship’s company; now, I am doubting whether I shall exchange human life for paltry gold." Unbuckling the belt, he cast it from him, and said, "Yes, little girl, I will try to save you." Stooping down, he bade her clasp her hands around his neck. "Thus, child, not so tight as to choke me. There, hang on now, and I will try to make land." The child bowed herself on his broad shoulders, and clung to her deliverer. With a heart thrice strengthened, and an arm thrice nerved, he struck out to the shore Wave after wave washed over them. Still the brave man held out, and the dear child on, until a mighty mountain billow swept the sweet treasure from his embrace, and cast him senseless on the bleak rocks. Kind bands ministered to him. Recovering his consciousness, the form of the dear child met his earnest gaze, bending over him with more than angel ministrations, and blessing him with mute, but eloquent, attention. -- Anon. * * * Though a man is not saved by works, there is no objection to his showing by his works that he is saved. TO THE POINT "When John P. Durbin was a young pastor in Cincinnati he was once summoned at midnight to visit a dying man. The message was short and urgent, and moved him swiftly through mean streets and narrow all and up through several stairways to a wretched garret, where he found a middle-aged man almost dead. He talked to him of Jesus, and begged him to cast himself on God’s infinite mercy. With hungry eyes and tense voice the dying man cried out, ’How do you know that Jesus died for me?’ Mr. Durbin answered, ’You’re made of flesh and blood, are you not?’ ’Yes,’ said he, holding up his purple hands, ’but what has that to do with it?’ ’Why,’ said the preacher, ’if you are made of flesh and blood, then Jesus died for you, for I read thus in God’s sure Word, ’"Forasmuch as the children art partakers of flesh and blood, He also himself likewise took part in the same, that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver them who through fear of death, were all their life time subject to bondage."’ The seeking soul seized that lifebuoy and passed away in the peace and rapture of a trembling, repentant and believing sinner." * * * A testimony, touching in its naturalness and modesty, comes to us from the mission field. An English missionary in Singapore was surprised to find the church freshly whitewashed, inside and out. Going in he found a Chinaman (a converted prisoner, a painter by trade), who had done this work at his own expense. His natural explanation was, "I did it to thank God." BROWNLOW NORTH’S LIFE AND DEATH As Brownlow North lay on his death-bed he enjoyed, according to his own confession, "perfect peace." To a bystander he said: "You are young, in good health, and with the prospect of rising in the army; I am dying; but if the Bible is true, and I know it is, I would not change places with you for the world." Mr. North wrote the practical counsels which follow: 1. Never neglect daily private prayer; and when you pray, remember that God is present, and that He hears your prayers. Hebrews 11:6. 2. Never neglect daily private Bible reading; and when you read, remember that God is speaking to you, and that you are to speak and act upon what He says. I believe that all backsliding begins with the neglect of these two rules. John 5:39. 3. Never let a day pass without trying to do something for Jesus. Every night reflect on what Jesus has done for you, and then ask yourself, What am I doing for Him? Matthew 5:13-16. 4. If ever you are in doubt as to a thing being right or wrong, go to your room and kneel down and ask God’s blessing upon it. Colossians 3:17. If you cannot do this, it is wrong. Romans 14:23. 5. Never take your Christianity from Christians, or argue that, because such people do so and so, therefore you may. 2 Corinthians 10:12. You are to ask yourself, How would Christ act in my place? and strive to follow Him. John 10:27. 6. Never believe what you feel, if it contradicts God’s Word. Ask yourself, Can what I feel be true, if God’s Word is true? and if both cannot be true, believe God, and make your own heart the liar. Romans 3:4; 1 John 5:10-11. "Were a star quenched on high, For ages would its light, Still traveling downward from the sky, Shine on our mortal sight "So when a great man dies, For years beyond our ken The light he leaves behind him lies Upon the path of men." BETTER BE SURE THAN SORRY "I do not think there is need of covering the flowerbeds tonight. I do not believe there will be frost enough to do harm." "Better be sure than sorry," the gardener replied; "if the frost should nip them, it would be too late, you know." To the cavils of the skeptic and the sneer of the scorner, who do not believe because they do not understand, or think there is no danger because they would have it so, this same answer would be wise: "Better be sure than sorry." If there should be an eternity, then the question, "Where shall I spend eternity?" puts all other questions in the shade. The frost may nip all the springing hopes of the soul. "Better be sure than sorry." Thousands of souls are hesitating about giving heed to their immortal interests. "We do not think there will be frost night," they say. "Better be sure than sorry." If the frost of death should blight the soul, it would then be too late forever. -W. J. L., in the "Mid-Continent’." OVERCOMING SIN Communion with the sinless One is the only sure method of excommunicating sin. Gazing into the face of Christ, and beholding the light of the knowledge of the glory of God which shines there, will surely disenchant our hearts from worldly objects. "Ephraim shall say, What have I to do any more with idols? I have heard Him and observed Him." Dannecker, the German sculptor, spent eight years in producing a face of Christ, and at last wrought out one in which the emotions of love and sorrow were so perfectly blended that beholders wept as they looked upon it. Subsequently being solicited to employ his great talent on a statue of Venus, he replied, "After gazing so long into the face of Christ, think you that I can now turn my attention to a heathen goddess?" Here is the true secret of weanedness from worldly idols, "the expulsive power of a new affection." "I have heard the voice of Jesus Tell me not of aught beside; I have seen the face of Jesus, All my soul is satisfied." "You may lay it down as an eternal truth," said Archbishop Farrar in his sermon on a recent Sunday morning in St. Margaret’s, "that what the Divine Majesty requires is innocence alone. You will be saved neither by opinions nor by observances, but solely by your character and life. A man is not holy merely because he observes the Rubric. He must do right" REAL MASTERY OF SIN It is not enough when you have been guilty of a sin "merely to wet it with a tear and breathe upon it with a sigh," and then go and do the same again. Unless a man has, at least, so far conquered sin that sin has ceased to have dominion over him; until his reason and his conscience, not his pride or his lusts, have the upper hand in the governance of his life -- he cannot be saved. A man who is wholly mastered by, who is entirely helpless against the perpetual recurrence of a besetting sin, is in a state of sin; and, "be not deceived," a state of sin is not and cannot be the same thing as a state of grace. -- Archdeacon Farrar. NEITHER "Well, I cannot understand why a man who has tried to lead a good, moral life, should not stand a better chance of Heaven than a wicked one," said a lady a few days ago, in a conversation with others about the matter of salvation. "Simply for this cause," answered one. "Suppose you and I wanted to go into a place of interest where the admission fee was one dollar. You have fifty cents and I have nothing. Which would stand the better chance of admission?" "Neither," was the reply. "Just so; and therefore the moral man stands no better chance than the outbreaking sinner. But, now, suppose a kind and rich person who saw our perplexity, presented a ticket of admission to each of us at his own expense! What then?" "Well, then, we could both go in alike; that is very clear." "Thus, when the Savior saw our perplexity, He came He died, and thus ’obtained eternal redemption for us’ (Hebrews 9:12), and now He offers you and me a free ticket. Only take good care that your fifty cents does not make you proud enough to refuse the free ticket, and so be refused admittance at last." Reader, there is a solemn moment coming! Have you a ticket of admission? ======================================================================== CHAPTER 18: 01.07. CHAPTER 7: MISSIONS - SELF-SACRIFICE ======================================================================== Chapter 7: Missions - SELF-SACRIFICE A brilliant Oxford student was giving himself to the Wesleyan Missionary Society for African service. His tutor remonstrated. "You are going out to die in a year or two. It is madness." The young man -- who died after being on the field only a year -- answered: "I think it is with African missions as with the building of a great bridge. You know how many stones have to be buried in the earth, all unseen, to be a foundation. If Christ wants me to be one of the unseen stones, lying in an African grave, I am content, certain as I am that the final result will be a Christian Africa." A CHANGE OF MIND Christian England laughed when Sydney Smith sneered at William Carey as a "consecrated cobbler," going out on a fool’s errand to convert the heathen. Carey died, aged seventy-three. He was visited on his deathbed by the Bishop of India, the head of the Church of England in that land, who bowed his head and invoked the blessing of the dying missionary. The British authorities had denied to Carey a landing place on his first arrival in Bengal; but when he died, the government dropped all its flags to half-mast, in honor of a man who had done more for India than all of their generals. The universities of England, Germany and America paid tribute to his learning, and today Protestant Christianity honors him as one of its noblest pioneers. ACKNOWLEDGE THE DEBT A venerable clergyman of Virginia said lately: "Men of my profession see much of the tragic side of life. Beside a death-bed the secret passions, the hidden evil as well as the good in human nature, are very often dragged to light. I have seen men die in battle, children, and young wives in their husbands’ arms, but no death ever seemed so pathetic to me as that of an old woman, a member of my church. "I knew her first as a young girl, beautiful, gay, full of spirit and vigor. She married and had four children; her husband died and left her penniless. She taught school, she painted, she sewed; she gave herself scarcely any time to eat or sleep. Every thought was for her children, to educate them, to give them the same chance which their father would have done. "She succeeded; sent the boys to college, and the girls to school. When they came home, pretty, refined girls and strong young men, abreast with all the new ideas and tastes of their time, she was a worn-out, commonplace old woman. They had their own pursuits and companions. She lingered among them for two or three years and died of some sudden failure in the brain. The shock awoke them to a consciousness of the truth. They hung over her as she lay unconscious, in an agony of grief. The oldest son, as he held her in his arms, cried: "’Yea have been a good mother to us!’ "Her face colored again, her eyes kindled into a smile, and she whispered, ’You never said so before, John.’ Then the light died out and she was gone." How many men and women sacrifice their own hopes and ambitions, their strength, their life itself, for their children, who receive it as a matter of course, and begrudge a caress, a word of gratitude, in payment for all that has been given them. A REAL HERO In the southern part of our State, during the past summer, a long, well-filled passenger train had pulled out from the station, and was rapidly moving away on its homeward bound track. Several miles had slipped under the fast turning wheels, when the conductor stepped in the car and called out the next stopping-place. Those of the passengers who were familiar with the road were surprised when the train flew on by it without stopping Then the speed of the great locomotive seemed suddenly to increase with each moment. On, on the long train flew until the wheels seemed hardly touching the track. Still no one was alarmed; possibly a little lost time being made up, nothing worse, they thought. Then there came a long, screaming whistle, shrieking out with almost human tones of anguish, and then the train gradually slowed up and stopped. By that time the passengers were sufficiently frightened for a number of them to jump off the cars and run up to the engine, where already a little group of men was gathered. That which they saw there has been burned in their memory with such horror that they will never be able to forget it. Two men were supporting, one on each side of him, the engineer, a great, broad-shouldered fellow. His face was piteously crushed. One eye was gone, and the blood was pouring from his wounds so that his head, face, and even his shoulders, were horrible to see. The awful story was quickly passed from one to another. Somehow an iron rod belonging to the engine had become loose, and revolving with frightful rapidity had caught and thrown him with terrible force against the side of the cab. Blind, and suffering so that he was barely conscious, but with the great thought of duty yet undone urging him on, he had groped along, dragging himself on his hands and knees, until he could reach up and, with his poor, bruised hands, grasp the throttle, and with one heroic effort stop the train. His comrades were tenderly lifting him to a shady bank to lay him down till medical help could come. He was still standing supported on each side by the others, but his head was hanging on his breast, and with his eyes closed and face so ghastly, he looked more dead than alive. Suddenly he stopped and straightened himself, threw up his head, then blindly thrusting out his hand with a quick gesture, as if to push away the something which was clouding his brain, he whispered in tense, agonized tones: "Wait -- wait -- I -- must-- go-- back-- my-- engine -- will -burst!" Something thrilled the little group with a strange awe. Instantly, almost unconsciously to themselves, every head was bared, and strong, rough men found strange tears were in their eyes. What a life of duty, done at any cost, must have preceded this day, that the poor, pain-beclouded brain could so clearly hear and answer the clarion call of duty now. Other hands were ready to do the work he had felt was his, and he was gently laid on the ground. A doctor was quickly brought, and gave some hope that his life might yet be spared. A good-sized pocketbook was filled and left for him by the passengers, and after a little longer delay the train moved off, but with all hearts softened, and more than one felt that it was no slight thing in this hard, selfish world to have come in touch with a real hero. PLUS GOD And so it has been many and many and many a time; and so it will be many a time again, with individual men and with nations. And blessed is the man, blessed is the nation, of whom it can be said in some life-or-death conflict, "It is that man, that nation, plus God." It makes all the difference in the world to John Smith, or a nation of John Smiths, whether it is John Smith plus God, or John Smith minus God. The work of Foreign Missions, so hopeless to the eye of reason, so hopeful to the eye of faith, is sure to succeed, because it is a few men and women with the Gospel, plus God, against hundreds of millions of heathen. A NOBLE FORM OF LEGACY I have recently seen a most touching incident entitled "A little girl’s legacy." This little girl, the pet of the house, was on her death-bed. The father bent over his little darling in bitter agony, unable to stay the departing. "Papa, how much do I cost you every year?" the dying child asked, with her parting breath. "Hush, dear." "But, please, papa, how much do I cost you?" To calm the little one, he said, with choking voice: "Well, darling, perhaps two or three hundred dollars." "Papa, I thought maybe you would lay it out this year in Bibles for poor children, to remember me by." With bursting heart, the father replied: "I will, my precious child! I will do it every year as long as I live." And the Bibles during the passing years continued to bless many souls, while the dear child was an angel in the skies. How many might thus make blessed the memory of the dear dead ones. THE CHORUS OF CHRISTIANITY I remember hearing a story in connection with our battlefields. One weary, dreary night, while our army was on the eve of a great and important battle, a soldier paced up and down before the tent of his General. Wearied with his monotonous work, he began to sing, half to himself: "When I can read my title clear," After a little his voice grew louder, and he sang the hymn as though it were a song of victory. His tones rang out on the still night air. After a little, another soldier, off yonder, hearing the music, and fascinated by it, joined in. ’There was a duet. A little longer, and another voice, farther off, joined, and there was a chorus; and it was not long before the whole army, as far as the ear could reach on either side, was joining in that wondrous chorus, and singing in the presence of the enemy, "When I can read my title clear, To mansions in the sky." When I heard this story, it seemed to me that I could see in the far-off distance that wondrous carpenter’s Son of Nazareth standing alone and singing, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and good will to men." After a little twelve disciples took up the refrain, and joined in the chorus. After a little longer -- in the next century -- a still larger company gathered, and sang it with all their hearts. In the next century a still larger number added their voices, and now, after eighteen hundred years have gone by, the music of that wondrous song which began with Him who stood in His father’s workshop, is sung and echoed and re-echoed the whole wide world over. It is our revelation from God; and it is the impulse that lifts us all up to God. -- Sel. UNCLE BALIS IS IN DEBT The congregation had been convened to consider how the church was to be relieved of its indebtedness. One wealthy member spoke of the hard times, financially, and gave it as his opinion that the only course left was to go into bankruptcy. Another, who is also a prominent business man in the community, counting his profits by the thousands each year, said he thought that was the only way out of the difficulty. Still another spoke of his own debts, and said it was impossible for him to give anything. The prospect looked gloomy indeed for the liquidation of the church debt, when so many other financial considerations and private debts were taking precedence. At this point Uncle Balis arose from his seat in an humble corner, and, looking around over the discouraged assemblage, said: "Brudderin! Uncle Balis is in debt, too. He don’t owe de grocery keeper anything foh de provisions his family eats, dey’s all paid fob. H doa’t owe de hardware man anything foh iron he makes hoss shoes out of, dat’,s paid, too. But Bali’s is in debt! He doesn’t owe anything foh de close de children wears, dem’s paid fob. But I tells you, Balis is in debt! Just as long as this church owes a dollar on de buildin’ or dere’s a brick dat’s not laid on de walls, Balis is in debt to de Lord! An I’s gwine to pay every dollar ob it. Balis ne’er went into bankruptcy wif anybody yet, and I’s not gwine to go back on de Lord in dat way; no, sah, I’s not gwine to treat Him wus den anybody else. Balis is in debt to de Lord, an’ Balis is gwine to pay his debts." * * * There is a world of pathos in the item of news from Berlin the other day, that a deaf mute living in Silesia has written to Dr. Mackenzie offering to sacrifice his larynx if it be possible to transfer it to the emperor’s throat. Dr. Mackenzie replies to the man that the loss of his life would neither help the emperor nor benefit science. But this makes the offer none the less a touching proof of devotion and self-sacrifice -- faint illustration of the greater sacrifice of the One who, though Lord of Heaven and earth, gave His life by the cruel death of the cross, a ransom for sinful men. ORDER OF THE IRON CROSS (Is there not a suggestion to many of us in this story of the "IRON Cross"? May not some superfluous expenditures be changed, by the grace of God, into stars for our crowns?) More than seventy years ago the King of Prussia, Frederick William III., found himself in great trouble. He was carrying on expensive wars, he was trying to strengthen his country and make a great nation of the Prussian people, and he had not money enough to accomplish his plans. What would he do? If he stopped where he was, the country would be overrun by the enemy, and that would mean terrible distress for everybody. Now the king knew that his people loved and trusted him, and he believed that they would be glad to help him. He therefore asked the women of Prussia, as many of them as wanted to help their king, to bring their jewelry of gold and silver, to be melted down into money for the use of their country. Many women brought all the jewelry they had, and for each ornament of gold or silver they received in exchange an ornament of bronze or iron, precisely like the gold or silver ones, as a token of the king’s gratitude. These iron and bronze ornaments all bore the inscription: "I gave gold for iron, 1813." No one will be surprised to learn that these ornaments became more highly prized than the gold and silver ones had been, for they were a proof that the woman had given up something for her king. It became very unfashionable to wear any jewelry, for any other would have been a token that the wearer was not loyal to her king and country. So the order of the Iron Cross grew up, whose members wear no ornaments except a cross of iron on the breasts, and give all their surplus money to the service of their fellowmen. If all the girls and women who own and love the Lord Jesus as their King, and want to help Him in the war against sin and ignorance and suffering which He is carrying on, if all these Christian girls and women were to give up their jewelry for His cause, how full the Lord’s treasure would be. -- Forward. THE SACRIFICE OF A PILOT Beyond all question the ship was on fire, and the cheeks of the sailors became blanched at the news. They could face the wildest hurricane that ever threatened to rend a vessel asunder, but a ship on fire was something too terrible even for their strong nerves. In a moment the cry went shrieking to the sky, "Fire! fire! fire!" Then, quicker than it takes to tell it, all hands were called up, and the promptest measures taken to subdue the flames which every moment burst out in fresh places. The fire was raging in all directions, and seemed in its fury to laugh to scorn the buckets of water which were dashed upon the flames. No energy, however undaunted, could save the doomed vessel! To add to the fury of the flames, there were large quantities of resin and tar on board, and when these took fire, the passengers saw that, unless they could reach land soon, their fate was sealed. All this time brave John Maynard never left his post at the wheel, but might be seen through the flames grasping its spokes as with sinews of iron. "John Maynard," cried the passengers, "how far are we from land?" "Seven miles," was the brief answer. "How long shall we he ere we reach it, John Maynard?" was the next agonized inquiry. "Three quarters of an hour at our present rate of speed." "Is there any danger, John Maynard?" "Well," said the pilot, "there is danger enough here; do you not see the smoke bursting out? If you would save your lives, go forward!" In an instant, passengers and crew, men, women and children, crowded to the fore part of the ship, but John Maynard stood at his post. Then the flames burst forth in a sheet of fire, and clouds of smoke arose. At last, bellowing through his speaking trumpet, came the voice of the captain. "John Maynard!" "Ay, ay, sir," cried the brave helmsman "How does she head?" "Southeast by east, sir." "Head her southeast, and run her on the shore." Nearer, yet nearer, she approaches the shore. Once more the voice of the captain was heard crying -- "John Maynard!" "Ay, ay, sir," was the answer which, though intended to be reassuring, was so faint that it could scarce be heard. "Can you hold on five minutes longer, John?" "Ay, ay, sir," was the answer, "by God’s help I will." The pilot’s hair was scorched from the scalp, one hand was disabled, and his teeth were set, yet there he stood firm as a rock. At last he brought the ship ashore. Every man, woman and child was saved. Only one was lost, and that one was brave, God-fearing John Maynard. Lost! did we say? He lost to win; he died to live; for a simpler or more believing spirit never took its flight than that of this Christian pilot. He sacrificed his own life that he might save the lives of others, and the story of his heroic courage shall never be forgotten. HOW TO MOVE THE WHEELS I heard Dr. John Scudder use a good missionary illustration lately, which I wish to relate to the children. On his return from India he made a short stay in London. While there, one day he went to visit the Crystal Palace. That was the building where the first world’s fair was held; and it has been kept up as a kind of perpetual fair ever since. Among the curious things which pleased the children very much was a great collection of toys. One set consisted of an old woman with a wash-tub, a windmill with its sails all set for work, a mason with his trowel, a big rooster with his wings just ready to flap and his throat to crow, and several other similar pieces. "Wouldn’t it be fun," said one of the missionary’s little folks, "to see all these things move?" Now, the children might have stood there forever, wishing, hoping and even praying for that end, but it would have done no good. But just drop a penny into a little slip left for it, and behold! the mason begins to work, the wind-mill to turn, the old woman to rub her clothes and the rooster to crow. The money started the whole machinery. So, Mr. Scudder said, it is with the mission work. The Church has been praying for a great while for the Lord to "open a way" for His Gospel. He has opened it so wide than His laborers do not know what to do. They can not occupy a tenth of the ground. The Church now needs to drop in the money if they would see the works move. * * * Several years ago there lived a poor black woman who had been ill for nearly twenty years. In the same town was a rich and kind old man who frequently visited her. One day he said to her, on entering her home, "Ah, Betty, are you still alive?" "Yes, thank God," was the answer. "Why, do you suppose," he then said, "does God keep you so long in this world, poor, ill and blind, while you might go to Heaven, and there enjoy so much happiness?" She promptly replied: "Ah, sir, you don’t understand. There are two great things for the Church to do; one is to pray, the other is to work. Now, God keeps me alive that I may pray for the Church; and He keeps you alive that you may work for the Church. Your large gifts do not help much without the prayers of poor Betty." Labor, with prayer, is God’s method for spreading His Gospel among the nations. One is not sufficient. -- Foreign Missionary. * * * A Presiding Elder in New Jersey testifies that on his district of 11,000 members he has 2,000 men who use tobacco. At the average of ten cents each per day these 2,000 Christians consume $73,000 worth of tobacco in a year -- more money than is given for missions by all New Jersey Methodism with her 79,713 members. God says, "Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread?" ======================================================================== CHAPTER 19: 01.08. CHAPTER 8: JESUS - THE LIVING FOUNTAIN ======================================================================== Chapter 8: Jesus - THE LIVING FOUNTAIN In a village on the Welsh coast, the people fetch all their water from a well. "Is this spring ever dry?" I inquired. "Dry? Yes, ma’am; very often in hot weather." "And where do you go then for water?" "To the freshet a little way out of town." "And if the freshet dries up?" "Why, then we go to the rock-well, higher up, and the best water of all." "But if the rock-well fails?" "Why, ma’am, the rock-well never dries up, never. It is always the same -- winter and summer." This precious well, which "never dries up," reminded me of the waters of life and salvation, flowing from the heart of the "Rock of Ages," and freely bestowed upon all men who believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Every other brook may go dry in the days of drought and adversity; but this heavenly spring never ceases to flow. Without waiting till earth’s wayside brooks shall fail, let us all hasten at once, with hearts athirst, to the heavenly well "which never dries up." -- Exchange. CHRIST UNVEILED A Spanish artist was once employed to paint "The Last Supper." It was his object to throw all the sublimity of his art into the figure and countenance of the Lord Jesus; but he put on the table, in the foreground, some chased cups, the workmanship of which was exceedingly beautiful. When his friends came to see the picture on the easel, each one said, "What beautiful cups." "Ah:’, said he, "I have made a mistake; these cups divert the eyes of the spectator from the Lord, to whom I wished direct attention." And he forthwith took up his brush and blotted them from the canvas, that the strength and vigor of the chief object might be prominently seen and observed. Thus all Christians should feel their great study to be Christ’s exaltation; and whatever is calculated to hinder men from beholding Him in all the glory of His person and work should be removed out of the way. FAITH IN ACTION A poor little street-girl was taken sick one Christmas, carried to a hospital. While there she heard the story of Jesus coming in the world to save us. It was all new to her, but very precious. She could appreciate such a wonderful Savior, and the knowledge made her very happy as she lay upon her little cot. One day the nurse came around at the usual hour, and "Little Broomstick" (that was her street name) held her by the hand, and whispered: "I’m having real good times here -- ever such good times! S’pose I shall have to go ’way from here just as soon as I gets well; but I’ll take the good time along -- some of it, anyhow. Did you know ’bout Jesus bein’ born?" "Yes," replied the nurse, "I know. Sh-sh-sh Don’t talk any more." "You did? I thought you looked as if you didn’t, and I was goin’ to tell you." "Why, how did I look?" asked the nurse, forgetting her own orders in her curiosity. "O, just like most o’ folks -- kind o’ glum. I shouldn’t think you’d ever look glum if you know’d ’bout Jesus bein’ born." Dear reader, do you know "’bout Jesus bein’ born?" -- Faithful Witness. A BEAUTIFUL INCIDENT A man blind from his birth, a man of much intellectual vigor and with many engaging social qualities, found a woman who, appreciating his worth, was willing to cast in her lot with him and become his wife. Several bright, beautiful children became theirs, who tenderly and equally loved both their parents. An eminent French surgeon while in this country called upon them, and examining the blind man with much interest and care, said to him: "Your blindness is wholly artificial; your eyes are naturally good, and if I could have operated on them twenty years ago, I think I could have given you sight. It is barely possible that I could do it now, though it will cause you much pain." "I can bear that," was the reply, "so you but enable me to see." The surgeon operated upon him, and was gradually successful. First there were faint glimmerings of light; then more distinct vision. The blind father was handed a rose; he had smelt one before, but had never seen one. Then he looked upon the face of his wife, who had been so true and faithful to him; and then his children were brought, whom he had so often fondled and whose charming prattle had so frequently fallen upon his ears. He then exclaimed: "Oh, why have I seen all of these before inquiring for the man by whose skill I have been enabled to behold them! Show me the doctor." And when he was pointed out to him he embraced him with tears of gratitude and joy. So when we reach Heaven, and with unclouded eyes look upon its glories, we shall not be content with a view of these. No; we shall say, "Where is Christ -- He to whom I am indebted for what Heaven is? Show me Him, that with all my soul I may adore and praise Him through endless ages." CHRIST THAT BLESSED LITTLE CHILDREN By a Teacher "Little Willie" is a name which brings before me visions of blue eyes and golden hair, and ruby lips that often used to say, "Tecer, are I a dood boy tday?" But best of all were the gentle words and winning smiles that made him such a sunbeam in our school. His heart seemed overflowing with love and sympathy for ryone. One afternoon I told the class of which he was a member how Christ took little children in His arms and blessed them, and I taught them the verse, "Suffer little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of Heaven." That afternoon, after school was dismissed, as I was locking my desk, Willie stole softly back. Climbing upon the desk, he put his arms around my neck and kissed me, saying, "I love you, teacher." "What is love, Willie?" I asked. He thought a moment, then replied earnestly, "It’s what makes us good to folks." After a little pause, he added, "Teacher, who is Christ that blessed little children?" Before I could reply, there came a knock at the door. I opened it, and a little girl handed me a note which contained an urgent invitation for me to spend the afternoon with a friend of mine. I knew that Willie was the child of irreligious parents, and that I ought to encourage this, his first seeking after divine truth, but the tempter whispered, "tomorrow will do as well," and I yielded to the voice. But the next day Willie’s place was vacant. I missed the bright face and ringing laugh of my little pet. On the first opportunity, some days after, I directed my steps toward his father’s house. On the way I met his sister. Taking my hand, she said hurriedly, "Oh, teacher, won’t you come right down to our house? Willie is so sick and he don’t know any of us." In a few moments I stood by the bedside of the little sufferer. He was tossing to and fro in restless pain, and they told me that scarlet fever was drying up the fountains of that young life. As I entered the room he said softly, "Who is Christ that blessed little children?" Sitting beside him, I told him the sweet story of the Cross. But reason seemed clouded; and yet when I ceased speaking, he said with pleading earnestness, "Please tell me who is Christ that blessed little children." "Will you pray for us?" asked the father. It was all he could say, for his heart was full. Kneeling there, I prayed that God would spare our darling, if it was His will, and if not, that He would comfort the hearts of his parents in their great sorrow, and make me more faithful to the little ones committed to my charge. When we arose, a convulsion came over Willie, and the little form writhed in agony. It was but for a moment; then he lay still, with closed eyes and clasped hands. Silently we watched beside him. An hour passed on, and then there was another convulsion. It was longer and harder than the last. At its close he lay pale and exhausted. Suddenly he opened his eyes and his lips unclosed. There was a strange, agonizing earnestness in his voice as he pleaded, "Please tell me who is Christ that blessed little children! Oh, please tell me who is Christ that blessed little children!" "Pray for him -- for him!" sobbed the father; and I prayed then, as I had never done before that Christ would reveal Himself to that dying child. God heard the prayer; for as we watched him, an exultant look glanced across Willie’s face. He lifted his head, and stretched forth his little white hands toward Heaven. I shall never forget his last words -- "There is Christ that blessed little children! I coming, I coming!" And the little head was buried in the pillows. The beating heart was hushed forever. A BOY’S LAST HYMN IN A GARRET A friend of mine, seeking for objects of charity, got into the upper room of a tenement-house. It was vacant. He saw a ladder pushed through the ceiling. Thinking that perhaps some poor creature had crept up there, he climbed the ladder, drew himself through the hole, and found himself under the rafters. There was no light but that which came through a bull’s eye in place of a tile. Soon he saw a heap of chips and shavings, and on them a boy about ten years old. "Boy, what are you doing here?" "Hush! don’t tell anybody, please, sir." "What are you doing here?" "Hush! please don’t tell anybody, sir; I’m hiding." "What are you hiding from?" "Don’t tell anybody, please, sir." "Where’s your mother?" "Please, sir, mother’s dead." "Where’s your father?" "Hush! don’t tell him, don’t tell him! but look here." He turned himself on his face, and through the rags of his jacket and shirt my friend saw that the boy’s flesh was bruised and the skin was broken. "Why, my boy, who beat you like that?" "Father did, sir!" "What did he beat you like that for?" "Father got drunk, sir, and beat me ’cos I wouldn’t steal !" "Did you ever steal?" "Yes, sir, I was a street thief once!" "And why don’t you steal any more "Please, sir, I went to the mission school, and they told me there of God, and of Heaven, and of Jesus, and they taught me ’Thou shalt not steal,’ and I’ll never steal again if my father kills me for it. But please, sir, don’t tell him." "My boy, you must not stay here; you will die. Now you wait patiently here for a time; and I’m going away to see a lady. We will get a better place for you than this." "Thank you, sir; but please, sir, would you like to hear me sing a little hymn?" Bruised, battered, forlorn, friendless, motherless, hiding away from an infuriated father, he had a little hymn to sing. "Yes, I will hear you sing your little hymn." He raised himself on his elbow and then sang "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild Look upon a little child; Pity my simplicity, Suffer me to come to Thee." "Fain I would to Thee be brought, Gracious Lord, forbid it not, In the kingdom of Thy grace Give a little child a place." "That’s the little hymn, sir; good-bye." The gentleman went away, came back again in less than two hours, and climbed the ladder, There were the chips, an there were the shaving, and there was the boy, with one hand by his side, and the other tucked in his bosom underneath the little ragged shirt -- dead. -- London Christian. JESUS, TOO GOOD TO GIVE UP The following touching incident of child martyrdom is given by Eileen Douglas in "All the World." We give it in an abridged form. Mattie was the child of drunken parents. She lived in the slums of a large city. By chance one night she strayed into a meeting. Christ was presented so lovingly and clearly that her hungry heart was anxious to receive Him. When the invitation was given she wanted to go, but fearing that it did not mean her she shyly slipped up to the leader and asked: "Does it mean me?" When she was assured that it did, and was told just what to do, she dropped upon her knees and with closed eyes and folded hands said: "O Jesus, I’ve come." She tripped lightly home in her new-found joy. Arriving there, she poured out her story, imagining in her innocence that her drunken parents had never heard of Jesus who would do so much for them, and only needed to be told so that they would come, too. Instead of that she was cursed and whipped, and forbidden ever attending the meeting again. The peace of God kept her through it all, saying quietly to herself: "He’s too good to give up." She went again, and this time was punished more severely than before. But nothing could quench the love in Mattie’s heart -- neither persecution, nor starvation, nor cold. For one hour with Jesus she would brave anything, so next night saw her in her accustomed place. Returning home she rushed to her father: "I could not help it; I had to go! Jesus is far too good to give up!" Giving her a furious kick in the side, from which she soon died, and muttering, "I told ye I’d kill ye," the murderer left her bleeding on the floor. During her dying hours she suffered much, and yet in the midst of it all, she said that she was "so happy." She pleaded earnestly for her mother’s soul, and when at last the conflict was ended, and years of sin and shame had been swept away by the blood current, Mattie’s power of speech failed her, and she could only lie and look with unutterable affection into her mother’s face. A little while before she passed away, she called for her mother to bring her dress and the scissors. Then she asked for the patch that was stained with her life-blood to be cut out. She looked at it, smiled, and then handing it back, said: "Give -- give -- it -- to him." Then she gasped and seemed to sink away. Then gathering up all of her remaining strength, she added . "And say it was because -- I -- I -- loved -- Him --so. He -- was -- too -- good -- to -- give -- up." Then her head fell back and her soul took its flight, to be forever with the triumphant martyrs, who "have come up out of great tribulation." HOLD UP THE LIGHT The famous Eddystone lighthouse off the coast of Cornwall, England, was first built in a fanciful way, of wood, by the learned and eccentric Winstanley. On its sides he put various boastful inscriptions. He was very proud of his structure, and from its lofty balcony used boldly to defy the storm, crying, "Blow, O winds! Rise, O ocean! Break forth, ye elements, and try my work!" But one night, the sea swallowed up the tower and is builder. It was built a second time of wood and stone, by Rudgard. The form was good, but the wood gave hold for the elements, and the builder and his structure perished in the flames. Next the great Smeaton was called. Ht raised a cone from the solid rock upon which it was built, and riveted it to the rock as the oak is riveted to the earth by its roots. From the rock of the foundation he took the rock of the superstructure. He carved upon it no boastful inscriptions like those of Winstanley, but on its lowest course he put, "Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it;" and on its key-stone, above, the simple tribute, "Laudus Deo!" and the structure still stands, holding up its beacon-light to the storm-tossed mariner. Fellow-workers for the salvation of men, Christ the Light must be held up before men or they will perish. Let us then place Him on no superstructure of our own device. Let us rear no tower of wood, or wood and stone, but taking the Word of God for our foundation, let us build our structure upon its massive, solid truth, and on every part put Smeaton’s humble, trustful inscription, and then we may be sure that the light-house will stand. AT THE LAST An old clergyman said: "When I come to die I shall have my greatest grief and my greatest joy: my greatest grief that I have done so little for the Lord Jesus, and my greatest joy that the Lord Jesus has done so much for me. QUITE TRUE When Chrysostom was brought up before the emperor, the potentate thought to frighten him into obedience to him, and said, "I’ll banish you." "No, you can’t," said Chrysostom, "for you can’t banish me from Christ." "Then I’ll take your life," cried the irate monarch. "You can’t," was the reply, "for in Christ I live and have my being." "Then I will confiscate your wealth." "You can’t," was still the response, "for in Christ I have all riches." At last the tyrant said, "I shall cause you to lose all your friends, and you will be virtually an outcast." "But you cannot," Chrysostom exultantly replied, "for I have a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother." Is it not sweet when to our own souls, as He was to His servant Chrysostom, Christ is "all in all"? THEY KNEW WHERE TO GO An old gentleman relates the following incident which occurred when he was a boy. The entire family aroused from sleep one night by a strange, confused noise outside the house. The cause was soon discovered, and the household gathered to witness the curious scene the yard presented. Almost at the very door were two huge oxen, and behind them an irregular procession of cows, calves, and sheep. They had apparently broken out of their pasture, two or three miles away, and come at the top of their speed to the house. What was it that so frightened them? was the question. It was answered the next morning when the torn bodies of twenty or thirty sheep were found scattered over the pasture and the tracks of two wolves discovered leading away toward the mountains. It seemed as if the terrified creatures had sought the protection of their owners. THREE LOST CHILDREN In northern New Jersey some winters ago three little children wandered off from home in a snowstorm. Night came on. Father and mother said: "Where are the children?" They could not be found. They started out in haste, and the news ran to the neighbors, and before morning it was said that there were hundreds of men hunting the mountains for these three children, but they found them not. After awhile a man imagined there was a place that had not been looked at and he went and saw the three children. He examined their bodies. He found that the elder boy had taken off his coat and wrapped it around the other one, the baby, and then taken off his vest and put it around the younger one. And then they all died, he probably the first, for he had no coat or vest. Oh, it was a touching scene when that was brought to light. I was afterward on the ground and it brought the whole scene to my mind; and I thought myself of a more melting scene than that -- it was that. Jesus, our Elder Brother, took off the robe of His royalty, and laid aside the last garment of earthly comfort, that He might wrap our poor souls from the blast. Some ministers say the worst can be saved, because Richard Baxter was saved and John Newton was saved, any man can be saved. I do not want to put it in that way. You can be saved. I am certain of it; because I have been saved. Oh, the height and the depth and the length and the breadth of the love of God! I ONLY WANT YOU Nearly four years ago I was going to spend the day in a large city. Before starting I said my dear invalid sister who is now in glory, satisfied with the fullness of her Father’s house: "Can I buy anything for you, dear? I do want so much to bring you something from town." She interrupted my question, saying with such a sweet, yearning look: "Nothing, dear. Don’t bring any thing. I only want you. Come home as soon as you can." Her tender words rang in my ears all day: "I only want you;" and oh, how often, since her bright entrance within the pearly gates, have her touching words and loving look returned to memory! Well, dear reader, is not this, too, what a dear Savior says to you? Do you want sometimes to offer prayers, tears, almsgiving, deeds of kindness, sacrifices, earnest service, and patient endeavor? But He, too, turns from all, and says: "I only want you." "My son, my daughter, give me thine heart." No amount of service can satisfy the love which claims only the heart. "Lovest thou me?" was His thrice repeated question to His erring disciple. "He that loveth me shall be loved of my Father." (John 14:21) Devotion of life, earnestness of service, fervent prayers, are only acceptable to Him as fruits of love. They are valueless without the heart. He says to each of us, as my sainted sister said to me: "I only want you." HIS NAME SHALL ENDURE FOREVER When Ptolemy built Pharos, the great lighthouse in the bay of Alexandria, he would have his name upon it, but Sostratus, the architect, did not think that the king, who only paid the money, should get all the credit, while he had none. So he put the king’s name on the front in plaster, but underneath, in the eternal granite, he cut deeply enough, "Sostratus." The sea dashed against the plaster and chipped it off bit by bit. I dare say it lasted out the time of Ptolemy; but, by and by, the plaster was all chipped off, and there stood the name of "Sostratus." I am not sure that there are not waves that will chip off all human traces from the Church of Christ; but I am quite sure that the one name of Christ will last forever. -- S. Coley. JESUS IS ALL I WANT The following incident shows in a very striking manner the all-sufficiency of Christ as a satisfying portion. Walking over the field of battle shortly after a severe fight, a chaplain stepped up to a wounded soldier lying on the ground apparently in severe pain, and said: "Can I do anything for you?" "Oh, no," replied the soldier; "I want nothing. I have Jesus here with me, and He is all I want." "But," said the chaplain, "you can’t live but a few minutes longer." "I know it; but I am in perfect peace. I have no fear of death. Please put my blanket over me and cover my face and let me shut out all but Jesus; and so let me die." Oh, what wonderful words! "I want nothing." WHY THE YOKE IS EASY Mark Guy Pearse tells us of an incident which occurred in connection with a sermon of his on Christ’s invitation to the weary and heavy laden. I had finished my sermon, when a good man came to me and said: "I wish I had known what you were going to preach about. I could have told you something." "Well, my friend," I said, "it is very good of you. May I not have it still?" "Do you know why His yoke is light, sir? If not, I think I can tell you. "Well, because the good Lord helps us to carry it, I suppose." "No, sir," he explained, shaking his head; "I think I know better than that. You see, when I was a boy at home, I used to drive the oxen in my father’s yoke. And the yoke was never made to balance, sir, as you said." (I had referred to the Greek word. But how much better it was to know the real thing.) He went on triumphantly "Father’s yokes were always made heavier on one side that the other. Then, you see, we would put a weak bullock in along side of a strong bullock, and the lighter end would come on the weak bullock, because the stronger one had the heavy part of it on his shoulder." Then his face lit up as he said: "That is why the yoke is easy and the burden is light; because the Lord’s yoke is made after the same pattern, and the heavy end is upon His shoulder." So shall ye find rest to your soul. A BOY’S WISH Some little boys in front of my house, a few days since sat down on the steps, and began to tell the largest wish they had. One wanted a pony to ride in Central Park one wanted all schools and masters in the bottom of the sea; one wanted ice to come by Thanksgiving Day. One dear boy said, "My wish is so large, so sweet, I hardly dare tell it, and it swallows up all my other wishes." "O what is it I What is it?" "Well, don’t laugh, boys; I wish you only knew my Jesus." -- Ralph Wells. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 20: 01.09. CHAPTER 9: PROMISES OF GOD - THE CLASS-LEADER'S METHOD ======================================================================== Chapter 9: Promises of God - THE CLASS-LEADER’S METHOD Carvosso had seen all his children converted but one. Borne down with anxiety for her, he sought counsel of his class-leader, Sunday night, returning from class. "Why don’t you claim a promise of the Lord?" asked the leader. "I don’t understand you." "Well, the Book is full of promises, some bearing right on your case. Seize one of these, and throw all your weight on it until God feels your confidence in Heaven." "I’ll do it," said the dear old man. They parted. In a moment the promise swept down like a cable before him: "Thou shalt not leave one hoof behind thee." He recognized it in all its breadth and meaning. He seized it, and swung clean loose from earth and earthly doubts. God signaled that it would be all right. For ten days he saw no change. On the tenth day he was plowing near his house, when a runner came from his wife: "Do come at once; it seems daughter will die." But he understood it. "What’s the matter, daughter?" as he reached her room. "O father, pray for me. I do believe I’m lost." In a little while she was converted. "Now, daughter, tell me all about it." "I don’t know anything about it, save that Sunday night ten days ago, just before you came from classmeeting, something got hold of my heart that I could not shake off, or read off, or sleep off. I have been miserable ever since." "I know all about it. That very night I claimed with all my heart the promise made to Israel -- that is what has moved you." When Carvosso quit doubting, God began working. A PROMISE PUNCTUALLY KEPT There are few men who have tested the Lord’s promises in worldly matters more frequently, and to so large an extent, as the Rev. D. M. Heydrick, of Brooklyn, N. Y. One of his experiences is related by the Rev. H. J. Latham in his "God’s Business." It appears that Mr. Heydrick opened a mission relying on certain payments being made by a Christian associate. A number of reversible seats costing $300 were ordered, and before they were paid for his associate withdrew from the mission, and neglected to pay for the seats. Mr. Heydrick could not pay, and the manufacturer, growing impatient, told him he must sue the man who ordered them. Mr. Heydrick said, "Let us see what the Word says about this matter." He opened to these words, "There is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law with another. Why do ye not rather take wrong? Why ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded?" The surprise of the merchant at the aptness of the passage was complete. Mr. Heydrick said, "Give me a month, and I will pay for those seats myself." The merchant agreed to this. One month later Mr. Heydrick called upon this man. He said: "I promised to pay you $300 today. I haven’t got the money. I am very sorry. I wish you would give me a little more time." "Certainly," was the reply. "But I thought the Lord helped you to keep your promises." There was no answer. "How is this?" "I cannot understand it. God has never disappointed me before. I am sorry to be obliged to ask you for an extension of time. I will have it for you in a month. Good-bye." "Good-bye," said the manufacturer. "Oh, say! I saw a person in the street today who was inquiring about you. I answered that you would be at my office today. I was asked to give you this letter. I had almost forgotten it." Mr. Heydrick opened the letter. On a sheet of paper were these words: "Use this in the Lord’s cause." Enclosed in the letter were six fifty-dollar bills. Mr. Heydrick handed the money to the merchant with the words: "There’s your $300. Give me a receipt. God has not disappointed me. Blessed be His holy name forever." -- The Christian Herald. ONLY A TRACT In a room on the top floor of a tenement house, a woman sat by the window sewing. Her thoughts were keeping time with her needle when a feeble voice from the cot in the corner said, "Mamma, is it almost morning? I am so hungry." A true mother only can know how she felt as she crossed the cold, bare floor to the bedside. The cupboard had been bare for several meals. Promises and imaginations could ease the pangs of hunger no longer. Tears filled the eyes of the patient little sufferer as she asked, "Will we never have anything to eat any more?" "Yes, dear, I hope you will have all you want some day. Don’t cry any more. I’ll see if I can’t get something for you. Oh, my," she said, as she paused a moment at the door, "has the thing which I dreaded so much come at last? Must I go out into the streets and beg." Just then she noticed a slip of paper being pushed under the door. "An old advertisement, I suppose. That doesn’t feed a hungry mouth. But it looks so peculiar. I’ll see what it is." She picked it up and read, "My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus." "I wonder who put that there so early in the morning." She opened the door and listened, but there was not a sound. She looked at the little tract again. "It seems so strange that anyone should bother climbing the stairs for such a thing as that. I often read that in the Bible long ago. It doesn’t look around here as if there was much truth in it. I wonder why it is in the Bible anyway?" She turned it over and read: "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee." "That seems as untrue as the other. I was never more forsaken by God or man than now." A voice whispered to her, "My child, these many years I cared for thee, but thou didst turn thy back upon me. Thou forsakest me, not I thee. That is why the way is hard and dark. Thou didst not ask me to supply thy need. Call upon me and I will answer and shew thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not." She knew it was the voice of God and needed no further rebuke. Simple as a child she told Him all her need and He proved Himself true to His promises. Every need was supplied. That room, once so dark and dismal, became a cheerful home. The child was taught to trust in God and the mother’s faith in Him could no more be moved. Only a tract, prayerfully placed, did the work whereunto it was sent. PRAY FROM GOD’S SIDE OF THE FENCE "When a boy I was much helped by Bishop Hamline, who visited at a house where I was. Taking me aside, the Bishop said: ’When in trouble, my boy, kneel down a ask God’s help, but never climb over the fence into the devil’s ground and then kneel down and ask help. Pray from God’s side of the fence.’ Of that," said he, "I have thought every day of my life since." Continuing, he remarked: "Sanford Cobb, the missionary to Persia, helped me in another way. Said he ’Do you ever feel thankful when God blesses you?’ ’Always.’ ’Did you ever tell Him so?’ ’Well, I don’t know that I have.’ ’Well, try it, my young friend; try it, try it. Tell Him so; tell Him aloud; tell Him so that you are sure you will hear it yourself.’ That was a new revelation. I found that I had been only glad, not grateful. I have since been telling Him with grateful feelings ever since to my soul’s help and comfort." NO SEPARATION General Clinton B. Fisk, in a lay sermon at Ocean Grove one Sunday, began with his text, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" "How do you suppose I came to have that for my text?" he asked. "Well, very early this morning I mounted my horse and went to see a friend who was poor, aged, sick. I found him in his little cabin, and said, ’Tom, you are sick.’ ’Yes, I am sick.’ ’You won’t be able to work any more?’ ’Can’t work any more.’ ’You are going to die.’ ’Yes, I am going to die.’ ’Have you any meat or bread in the house?’ ’No, general, I have no meat or bread; but the Lord will take care of me. He sent you here, I know He did; and although I am poor, hungry, and dying, I am perfectly happy through my love for Jesus Christ.’ Nothing could separate him from that." A TRUE STORY FOR CHILDREN It was in Logansport, Indiana. The merry children were on their way from the school house on the hill. In less time than this can be written or read, a bright boy, about eight, sprang out of the crowd, and with a look of mingled joy, sorrow, hope and fear that only the strange face could describe, offering his little hand, said, ’Please, mister, won’t you take me by the hand?" Said he, "Do not be angry at me, I couldn’t help it. My father’s dead; my mother lives over there in that little house. My father once took me by the hand just so, as I went from school, just here, as he came from work. You look so much like him. But he is dead, and mother is poor and so sad, and I wanted some to take me by the hand again. Good-bye; can’t you call?" Off like a flash, lost in the crowd. We inquired, but could not find him again. But as we walked on, what a sermon we said. "Take my hand, please take my hand. I have no father to take my hand now." Then the promise’ "I will hold thee by the right hand, I will guide thee with my counsel, and afterward receive thee to glory." O dear, fatherless child, you have a Father who is in Heaven. Yes, One that is present. One that is so near; always near; ever ready to help you; to comfort and guide you with His counsel, and afterward to receive you to glory. Put your little hand in His. He will take it. He will hold, He will never let go; He will "take your hand." THE WORD OF HELP Let me show you what I mean: My friend sat in her darkened room, under the shadow of bitter bereavement; to her came, and not in vain, kind letters of sympathy, each one reminding her of one or another of the comforts wherewith the Lord comforteth His people. There came also a poor, ignorant woman, fain to offer comfort; but, having none to offer, she could only sit and weep in sympathy. "Listen, Margaret," said my friend, and taking up a open letter, she read: "Do you not remember, dear friend, that your little one’s suffering drew you nearer to him than ever before? So your suffering, as your heart aches for his loss, draws your Heavenly Father nearer to you. And to be near your heavenly Father is safety and peace. The poor woman drank in the simple words; a new light came to her eyes. "Sure," she said, "if misery makes the good Lord think more of us, it’s not so bad, after all.’ And who can doubt that she took this sweet thought home to lighten her own frequent ’’miseries." The next visit of the death angel to that neighborhood took away a sweet child from a poor mother who had lost three before. Straightway my friend rose up, and, taking another precious letter with her, said to the woman: "My dear old aunt, who long ago lost two little ones, writes to me that she thanked God all her life that her home has been a nursery for angels." The weeping mother smiled suddenly upon her bare little room. "Oh, what nice words!" she said. "I never forgets," said an old colored woman, as she rested after her hard day’s labor, "what old master usen to say to us at night prayers: ’We’ve pitched our movin’ tent,’ says ole master, ’a day’s march nearer home.’ ’ Of silver and gold we may have none, but such precious things as these are ours to bestow day after day. DEM SUPPOSES Those who are so anxious about the future as to be unhappy in the present, may learn a lesson from a poor colored woman. Her name was Nancy, and she earned a moderate living by washing. She was, however, always happy. One day one of those anxious Christians who are constantly "taking thought" about the morrow, said to her: "Ah, Nancy, it is well enough to be happy now, but I should think your thoughts of the future would sober you. Suppose, for instance, that you should be sick and unable to work: or suppose your present employers should move away, and no one else should give you anything to do: or suppose -- " "Stop!" cried Nancy, "I neber supposes. De Lord is my Shepherd, and I know’s I shall not want. And, honey," she added to her gloomy friend, "it’s all dein supposes as is making you so mis’ble. You orter give them all up an’ jest trus’ in the Lord." OUR KING GIVES I have read somewhere the story of a poor woman who looked longingly at the flowers in the king’s garden, wishing to buy some for her sick daughter. She was angrily repelled by the king’s gardener, who rudely told her, "The king’s flowers are not for sale!" But the king, chancing to pass, picked a bouquet and gave it to the wistful woman, saying, "The king does not sell his flowers; he gives them away." Our King does not sell eternal life; He gives it. -- Rev. J. L. Russell. ANYWHERE, MY LORD! The story is told of a young minister who went to Bishop Simpson and said, "Bishop, I cannot go to that appointment. The salary is too small, and it is too far away from the city." The Bishop tenderly remonstrated with him, and told him not to decide too hastily, and urged him to pray over it. On Sunday the noble bishop occupied the pulpit and preached his famous sermon from the text: "None of these things move me, neither court I my life dear unto myself, so that I may finish my course with joy and the ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus." As the Bishop was vividly describing St. Paul crying after every peril and agony, "None of these things move me, a great commotion was observed in the rear of the congregation, and the voice of young man was heard by the startled audience, crying: anywhere, anywhere, my Lord." Nobody understood that outcry except the young preacher who uttered it and the Bishop in the pulpit. This is the motive, and that the influence, which will evangelize the world. -- Presbyterian. * * * A story is told of an old lady in Scotland whose son was in this country, and who prospered in business so nicely that he wrote his mother he would always send her money for the rent, and she need not worry about it any more. In the letter he sent a money order for more than enough to pay the rent, but the old lady thought it was an advertisement, so did not even read it. She waited and waited for the money, which of course did not come, and at last she would have been turned out of the house had not a friend happened in who discovered the money order and explained it to the now happy old lady, going with her to the office to get it cashed. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 21: 01.10. CHAPTER 10: THE GOSPEL - DON'T BE A DUCK ======================================================================== Chapter 10: The Gospel - DON’T BE A DUCK In a famous ecclesiastical trial in Virginia, a number of years ago, it was said by someone that the preaching of the party on trial "had no more effect than pouring water on a duck’s back." Quick as a flash the reply came, "Is that the fault of the water, or the duck?" There is food for thought in that home thrust; and so let us all go to church, next Sunday, praying for the preacher, asking God to "open our hearts," as He did the heart of Lydia, that we may attend unto the things that are spoken. -- Central Presbyterian. EFFECTS OF THE GOSPEL God never repairs. Christ never patches. The Gospel is not here to mend people. Regeneration is not a scheme of moral tinkering and ethical cobbling. What God does, He does new-- new heavens, new earth, new body, new heart -- Behold, I make all things new." In the Gospel, thus we move into a new world and under a new scheme. The creative days are back again. We step out of a regime of jails and hospitals and reform shops. We get live effects direct from God. That is the Gospel. The Gospel is a permanent miracle. God at first hand -- that is miracle. The Gospel thus does not classify with other schemes of amelioration. They are good, but this is not simply better, but different, distinct, and better because distinct; it works in a new way, and works another work. Compare the wrought chains riveted on the demoniac, and the divine word working a new creation in the demoniac. It is all there. It is like the difference between the impotent Persian lashing the turbulent sea with chains, and the gracious Lord saying to the troubled sea, "Peace, be still!" RESULT OF ONE SERMON Dr. Antliff was preaching special sermons in the chapel at Wolstanton, a pleasant village in the Tunstall Circuit. In one of his discourses, touching upon the tendency of preachers to underestimate the possible results of services at which there was only a small congregation, he gave an illustration from his own experience. Some years ago he went to preach in a small Derbyshire village, and found he had to preach in a farmhouse kitchen. The congregation was composed mainly of a number of boys and other young people. He accordingly addressed himself to children, and then prayed with and for the boys then present, and thought that several of them appeared impressed and interested. On returning home at night his wife said, "Well, Samuel, what sort of a day have you had?" "Only a poor day," he replied, "hardly anybody present but a few boys." "But," said the doctor, "God has graciously blessed that service. One of the boys, who dates his conversion from that afternoon, is now a Wesleyan minister, Rev. (giving a well known name); two more of those boys (giving their name) are now Primitive Methodist ministers." As he mentioned these names a young minister in the congregation became deeply moved, and rising and interrupting the preacher, said, with tears rolling down his face, "Forgive my intruding on your sermon, Dr. Antliff, but I am another of those boys who were led to Christ at that service in the farmhouse kitchen." The young man who thus testified is now doing noble ministerial service at one of the stations within a mile or two of Wolstanton. TURN TO THE LIGHT A weary and discouraged woman, after struggling all day with contrary winds and tides, came to her home and, flinging herself down into a chair, said: "Everything looks dark, dark." "Why don’t you turn your face to the light, aunty dear?" said a little niece who was standing near. The words were a message from on high, and the weary eyes were turned toward Him who is the light and the life of men, and in whose light alone we see light. "Turn your face to the light," oh, weary watcher! You have looked, and longed, and struggled in the darkness without avail; now turn your glance the other way; "God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give unto us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ," and if we will look toward the light, we shall find blessing and peace all along the way, and even amid darkness and shadows shall rejoice in hope of the glory of God, the light of an unsetting day. -- The Christian HOW TO DESTROY THE BIBLE First, get rid of all the copies in all the languages -- there are 160,000,000 copies, say, of the Old and New Testaments in one book and in portions of the book -- you must have all these piled together into a pyramidal mass and reduced to ashes before you can say you have destroyed the Bible. Then go to the libraries of the world, and when you have selected every book that contains a reference to the Old and New Testaments, you must eliminate from every book all such passages; and until you have so treated every book of poetry and prose, excising all ideas of grandeur and purity and tenderness and beauty for the knowledge and power of which the poets and prose writers were indebted to the Bible -- until you have taken all these from between the bindings and turned them to ashes, leaving the asculated fragments behind -- not until then have you destroyed the Bible. Have you done it, then? Once more. Go to all the courts of law, and, having sought out the pandects and codes, you must master every principle of law, and study what it may have derived from the Old and New Testaments, and have all such passages removed from the codes of jurisprudence. You must then go to the galleries of art throughout the world, and you must slash and daub over and obliterate the achievements that the genius of the artist has produced -- not until then have you destroyed the Bible. Have you done it then? What next? You must visit every conservatory of music, and not until the world shall stand voiceless as to its masters, not until then have you destroyed the Bible. Then you must visit the baptistries of the churches, and from the baptismal rolls you must erase all Christian names -- the names of John and Mary -- for they suggest the Scriptures, and the register is stamped with the Bible. Have you done it then? No. There is one thing more you must perform. There is one copy of the Bible still living. It is the cemetery of the Christian. The cemeteries, while they exist, are Bibles, and to suppress the book, to let not a trace of it be discovered, you must pass from grave-stone to grave-stone, and with mallet and chisel out out every name that is biblical, and every inspiring passage of Scripture graven thereon. To destroy the Bible you must also blot from the memory of every Christian its promises and comforts. Not till you have done all this can you destroy the Bible. THE LONGEST DAY It is quite important, when speaking of the longest day in the year, to say what part of the world we are talking about, as will be seen by reading the following list, which tells the length of the longest day in several places. How unfortunate are the children in Tornea, Finland, where Christmas Day is less than three hours in length! At Stockholm, Sweden, the longest day is eighteen and one-half hours in length. At Spitzbergen the longest day is three and one-half month. At London, England, and Bremen, Prussia, the longest day has sixteen and one-half hours. At Hamburg, Germany, and Dantzig, Prussia, the longest day has seventeen hours. At Wardbury, Norway, the longest day lasts from May 21 to July 22, without interruption. At St. Petersburg, Russia, and Tobolsk, Siberia, the longest day is nineteen hours, and the shortest five hours. At Tornea, Finland, June 21 brings a day nearly twenty-two hours long, and Christmas one less than three hours in length. At New York the longest day is about fifteen hours, and at Montreal, Canada, it is sixteen But the longest day of all will be in the New Jerusalem; for "there shall be no night there." -- The Evangel. THE KEY TO HIS HEART I had at one time a class of promising boys, with one exception. One of the nine was considered the worst boy in the school. As rough, untutored specimen of a boy as ever was. I made the same appeals to John that I did to the others, and there is just where I erred. I pointed out his rough, careless ways, and urged him to give himself to God; but I never studied him; I never searched for his heart, to know what was in it; I never tried to find the link between his soul and Heaven. John was a great trouble in the school. He spoiled the other boys, and annoyed the superintendent by keeping up a general disquiet. Time and again, the superintendent used to come to me, saying, "Can you do nothing with John? Can you make no appeal to his heart?" "Heart!" I answered. "John is without a heart, so far as I can judge." There was one thing about the boy that I had noticed, without making any inquiry concerning it; and that was, that he always brought his own old Bible -- a worn, ragged copy; and when he could be persuaded to read, never read from any other. Occasionally, I urged him to use a newer copy, but he steadily refused, and always slipped his ragged Bible into his pocket at the close of the session. One Sabbath I missed John from his usual place. "Now, boys," I said, "we may expect a quiet, profitable time, since our tormentor is not with us." In a moment, I felt in my heart that I was rebuked, and I would have given much to have seen my troublesome scholar’s shaggy head restlessly moving about before my eyes. Was this the spirit of my Master? Was I a fit keeper for that soul? What had I succeeded in doing for him all along? A sense of my utter unworthiness and uselessness took possession of me. In vain I took up the lesson and attempted to teach. The scholars were dull and indifferent, and I had no power to interest them. The lesson was a failure, and I was relieved when it was finished. Two weeks passed. Each Sabbath I expected to see John, but he never came again. One evening of the third week of his absence, a woman, carelessly dressed, weeping bitterly, came to my house. "Are you John Wesley’s Sabbath School teacher, sir?" she asked. "I am," I replied. "Oh, then, sir, our John’s a-dyin’! He didn’t like to send for you, because he said he’d been a bad boy. But he longed and longed, and watched the door, sir, hopin’ you’d come in. I couldn’t stand his looks; so tonight, I just slipped off without sayin’ a word to him. Oh! won’t you come with me to see him?" I made no answer, but snatching my hat, blindly hurried out beside her, and spoke not a word till I stood at the bedside of the worse boy in school. How changed he was! His old, restless air was quite gone. "My boy!" I exclaimed through choking tears. He turned his filmy eyes upon me, and made an effort to speak, but failed. I knelt and prayed aloud in bitter agony of soul; prayed most for myself; for had I not sinned more than this boy? Then I held tight the hand of John, and yearned over him with unutterable sorrow. "He was wild, poor boy!" said the mother sobbing: "but I missed training him right. But he had his soft ways, too. You see that little, old Bible by his pillow?" I looked and saw the same old copy which he had read in school. "Well," continued his mother, "that used to belong to his sister. She had read it over and over again, and sometimes read bits of it to Johnny. She died very happy, and Johnny kept her Bible. But he got more reckless, after she we gone. When he was very bad at times, I used to remind him of little Mary’s Bible, and it softened him. Since he’s been sick, he would have the book by him all the time." And there was poor John’s history -- all bound up in that little volume! At last I had discovered his heart. All that long time the key to it had been carried about with him. One word about Mary’s Bible might have suddenly given me the secret workings of his soul. But that word I had never uttered. John died, his hand held in mine. Friends, I believe my scholar is in Heaven. I know that the Holy Spirit came in just where I failed, and performed the work in John’s heart at last. But I still carry with me a wholesome regret; and I write this that you may be warned in time, that every scholar has a heart, and that it is discoverable. THE LAST REQUEST It was at the close of a hard fought day when death from the cannon ball, death from the rifle bullet, and death from the bayonet thrust had laid low many a brave man, that a stalwart soldier, rifle in hand, knelt on one knee, beside a dying comrade. Hand clasped in hand the two men held their last interview. It was very brief and the crack of the rifle and the boom of the distant gun mingled with the solemn word that passed. "George," said the dying man, "you will see the folks at home, though I shall not. Will you take them a message for me?" "I will faithfully, Fred," said his friend. "I feel my time is short," said Fred, as he pressed his arm on a wound from which the life blood was slowly but surely flowing; "but I should like to send some consolation to the home where they will weep for me." "You may trust me, Fred," said the kneeling soldier, who, strong and manly as he was, could scarcely repress his tears. "If I live to see the dear old village again, I will surely take your message." "Thank you, old boy. I am sure you will. You know what I was when I left home, a wild, careless boy without a serious thought in my head. Well, my mother gave me a Bible when I came away and I promised to read it. You know we had to go to church and Sunday School when we were boys, but afterward I did not go when I could avoid it. Mother grieved, I know; and she was afraid that when I was away I should come to harm. But I read the Book every day, George tell her that -- I was among a wild lot and I was careless, but I always found a chance to keep my promise. And the dreadful scenes we have seen have sobered me. I always thought I should get knocked over in some of our fights, as I have, and the thought, though it did not unman me, made me serious. At times I have heard the hymns we used to sing at school, ’Around the throne of God in Heaven,’ and ’I think when I read’ -- you remember them, George? Well, I fancied I could hear them above the music of the drum and fife. Odd scraps of sermons, too, have come in my mind at times, and though I did not care for them when I heard them, they have had a new light with the boys dying around us. "Well, George, I prayed, too, and I have had some talk with the chaplain and -- my dear, old boy, I am dying fast, I cannot see your face now, it is growing dark all around - don’t loose my hand, George, I cannot say all I wanted to, but go to my mother and tell her I am a Christian. Tell her I died trusting in Jesus and sure that He will receive me on the shining shore we used to sing about. Tell her I could see --" But George never told Fred’s mother what her boy could see as he lay dying. He told her all beside, but when he had told her that, he had to tell her that a bright flash of joy shot across his face, and he fell back speechless in the arms of death. The old Christian lady shed many tears over her son’s death, but the message his friend carried to her was the best consolation she could have had, and it was with a happy face that she said, as the sorrowing king said in the hour of his bereavement: "I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me." THE DAY THAT BABY DIED A poor, little, faded woman had been brought into court as a witness in a very disagreeable case, involving very serious issues. The entire case depended on the fact that a paper had been signed on a certain day, and this the forlorn little woman was prepared to prove. "You saw the paper signed?" asked the opposing counsel in cross-examination. "Yes, sir. "You take your oath that it was the 30th of August?" "I know it was, sir." The lawyer, who thought another date could be proved, assumed an exasperating smile, and repeated her words: "You know it was! And now be so good as to tell me just how you know it." The poor, little woman looked from one to another with wide, sorrowful eyes, as if she sought understanding and sympathy. Then her gaze rested on the face of the kindly judge. "I know," she said, as if speaking to him alone, "because that was the day that baby died." THE BACKWOODSMAN’S THRILLING STORY Special services were being conducted in the East of London recently, and at one of the meeting an old man desired that the well-known children’s hymn, commencing - "I want to be an angel," might be sung. In compliance with the request the hymn was sung, and the impression made was of a most encouraging character. Many present were touched with the simplicity and tenderness of the words, and most felt that they would like to enter into "the rest that remaineth for the people of God." Among those who remained for prayer was the old man himself, and he was completely broken down. Christian friends present inquired how it was that he was so affected by the hymn, as he had been on the Lord’s side for a number of years, and knew that when death came he would "enter in through the gates into the City." He replied: "Many years ago I was living in the backwoods of America, and, although far away from companions, my life was a very happy one. A loving wife and little daughter were the sunshine of my home, and made even bush life far from monotonous. I was not, however, a Christian, and felt quite unconcerned about my soul’s salvation. Death, however, came into my home, and took away my wife. I then began to think seriously about the importance of decision for Christ, and reconciliation to God. But, alas! I did not yield to the strivings of the Spirit, and, in order to deaden my impressions, and to silence my conscience, I gave way to drink and day after day I became worse. "Thus I was going headlong towards perdition. My little daughter was neglected, and, furthermore, forbidden even to read her Bible or attend the Sunday School, some three miles distant, and which was presided over by a Christian missionary. In my drunken fits I treated her most cruelly, and threatened that I would shoot her if she crossed the threshold of the Sunday School any more. With a cry of sorrow she would say, ’Father, I do love Jesus! I do love my teacher! and I do so want to go to Heaven when I die! I hope you will let me go to school.’ My heart was not in the least affected by her pleadings, but rather hardened, and I resolved that if she would insist upon going I would punish her severely. The following Sunday, however, on my return home, I found that she was absent, and being almost mad with drink, I took down my gun and made for the direction from which she would come. "On meeting my child I at once leveled the gun, but was stopped from firing by her entreaties. On perceiving that I fully intended to commit this diabolical act, she cried, ’Stop a minute, father; I want to pray;’ and after a few words of simple prayer, she sang the following verse - "I want to be an angel, And with the angels stand, A crown upon my forehead, A harp within my hand. There with the blood-bought children, So glorious and so bright, I’ll make the sweetest music And praise Him day and night." "Then, oh, how can I repeat it! I shot her -- my child. The act sobered me, and realizing what I had done, I lost consciousness. On my recovery I seemed to hear the voice of God, saying, ’The fearful, and unbelieving and the abominable, and murderers and all liar, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone.’ For many days and nights I was in a most distressed state of mind lest God’s judgment should come upon me, and that I should have my part in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone. But I cried unto the Lord for mercy, and He heard my cry and saved my soul, and now I want all present to thank God for His goodness." * * * One day last week a man on his way to the station to take a train, passing a fine old mission, saw smoke issuing from the roof. He rang the bell and told the servants that the house was on fire. They laughed at him. Having done his duty, he went on to the train. Thirty minutes afterward the flames burst out and the edifice was destroyed. How oft the friendly voice that warns the reckless boy is laughed at. It was always so. When Lot warned his friends to flee out of Sodom, we are told that "he seemed as one that mocked unto his sons-in-law." But the end came then, and ever will, to a life of sin, sooner and far more terribly than any warning voice can depict. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 22: 01.11. CHAPTER 11: CHURCH AMUSEMENTS - AMUSEMENTS A FAILURE ======================================================================== Chapter 11: Church Amusements - AMUSEMENTS A FAILURE The mission of amusement utterly fails to effect the desired end among the unsaved, but it works havoc among the young converts. Were it a success, it would be none the less wrong. Success belongs to God; faithfulness to His instructions to me. But it is not. Test it even by this, and it is a contemptible failure. Let that be the method which is answered by fire, and the verdict will be, "The preaching of the Word, that is the power." Let us see the converts that have been won by amusements. Let the harlots and the drunkards, to whom a dramatic entertainment has been God’s first link in the chain of their conversion, stand forth. Let the careless and the scoffers, who have cause to thank God that the Church has relaxed her spirit of separation and met them half way in their worldliness, speak and testify. Let the husbands, wives and children that rejoice in a new and holy home through "Sunday evening lectures on social questions," tell out their joy. Let the weary, heavy-laden souls that have found peace through a concert, no longer keep silent. Let the men and women who have found Christ through the reversal of apostolic methods, declare the same, and show the greatness of Paul’s blunder when he said, "I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified." There is neither voice nor any answer. The failure is on a par with the folly, and as huge as the sin. Out of thousands with whom I have personally conversed, the mission of amusement has claimed no convert. Now let the appeal be made to those who, repudiating every other method, have staked everything on the Book and the Holy Ghost. Let them be challenged to produce results. There is no need. Blazing sacrifices on every hand attest the answer by fire. Ten thousand times ten thousand voices are ready to declare that the plain preaching of the Word was first and last the cause of their salvation. But how about the other side of this matter? -- what are the baneful effects? Are they also nil? I will here solemnly, as before the Lord, give my personal testimony. Though I have never seen a sinner saved, I have seen a number of backsliders manufactured by this new departure. Over and over again have young Christians, and sometimes Christians who are not young, come to me in tears, and asked what they were to do, as they had lost all their peace and fallen into evil. Over and over again has the confession been made, "I began to go wrong by attending worldly amusements that Christians patronized." "Come out," is the call for today. Sanctify yourselves. Put away the evil from among you. Cast down the world’s altars and cut down her groves. Spurn her offered assistance. Decline her help, as your Master did the testimony of devils, "for He suffered them not to speak, for they knew Him." Renounce all the policy of the age. Trample upon Saul’s armor. Grasp the Book of God. Trust the Spirit who wrote its pages. Fight with this weapon only, and always. Cease to amuse, and seek to arouse. Shun the clap of a delighted audience, and listen to the sobs of a convicted one. Give up trying to please men who have only the thickness of their ribs between their souls and Hell, and warn, and plead, and entreat, as those who feel the waters of eternity creeping upon them. Let the Church again confront the world; testify against it; meet it only behind the cross; and, like her Lord, she shall overcome, and with Him share the victory. AN AMUSEMENT BUREAU The Church is not bound to provide amusement for her young people. The Bible sanctions no such theory. The apostles had no time for such business. The Church of Jesus Christ was organized for holy, spiritual, and saving purposes. It is a school, and not a playground. It is a work-shop; not a pleasure resort. It is the birthplace of souls; not the sporting ground of adolescence. There is an urgent need in many quarters for a return to this Scriptural conception. The young ought to be educated to the idea that the soul is of the first importance, and that all else must be subordinate to its conversion and sanctification. -- The Presbyterian. WHOOP EASY Thirty years ago there was a band of Indians going about the country giving exhibitions of their peculiar customs, manners, and dress (or undress), from the "barking-up" of the baby to the national dance and war whoop. I cannot be sure at this distance of time whether they were bona-fide Indians or make-believes, like the so-called negro minstrels; but that is quite aside from my story. Upon reaching a certain town inhabited by a quiet, thrifty, and pious folk, they found that there was no public hall of any description in the place. There were no less than four churches, but to have such a performance in a church building was entirely out of the question. There was, however, a lecture room belonging to one of the churches, a commodious and comfortable building used for Sunday School and prayer-meeting, and some times for concerts and fairs. The Indian troupe applied for this lecture room, and grave was the debate of the perplexed deacons, torn by their contending desires; they would be faithful to their trust, but they wished to see the Indian show. A comical compromise was at last agreed upon: the Indians were to have the lecture-room upon condition that in their painted war dance they would "whoop easy." We have been laughing at those absurd old churchwardens all these thirty years, but verily we sit upon the same bench with them -- some of us. How often do we weakly indulge ourselves in what is inconsistent with our Christian profession, secretly promising ourselves the while that we will whoop easy! Leaving out of consideration such worldly amusements as may (or may not) be innocent within moderate bounds, consider, for example, the matter of uncharitable gossip. In its rude extreme we all dislike such gossip, calling it slander. But day after day we allow in ourselves and encourage in others that small, unnecessary criticism, spiced with ridicule, which we call social chat; we make room for the savages, provided they will "whoop easy." And so with many another evil practice; we stand back with uplifted hands from the side on which it runs into vice, while dallying carelessly within its bounds. Yet it is a fact of solemn significance that one of the few contemptuous expressions in God’s Word is directed against these middle-course people: "Because thou art neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth." And dare we excuse what the Lamb in the midst of the throne, the tenderness that is in the midst of Almightiness, could find no patience for? A QUEER STEER In the slang parlance of some of our great cities a bunco steerer is a man whose occupation consists in luring unsuspecting countrymen into games of chance and defrauding them of their money. Billy Bunco, however, is not a man, but a Texas steer, and is probably the greatest arch-traitor in the land. For six years he has been employed in such a wholesale betrayal of his comrades that the burden of his sins, as expressed numerically, is simply astounding. Billy is owned by Armour & Co., the great Chicago beef house, and his vocation consists in leading cattle to slaughter. The cattle on arriving at the stock yards are much alarmed at the smell of blood, and it is exceedingly difficult to drive them, as they seem to have a premonition of their impending doom, but where one of their number leads they follow blindly. So when the pens are opened Billy is at hand to lead his trusting companions to their death. An employee opens the gate of a pen and calls out, "All right, Billy," and Billy without delay places himself at the head of the frightened herd, and unhesitatingly marches to the door of the slaughter house, where he quickly steps aside, while his deluded followers are driven to meet their fate. He then makes his way back to the yard, and waits for the next pen to be opened, and at the signal, "All right, Billy," he conducts fresh victims to the house of death. It is impossible to have very much respect for this wholesale and professional betrayer, Billy; but perhaps he is not so much to be blamed, as he probably knows that, if he should fail to perform the unpleasant duties connected with his office, he would forfeit his head, and disappear in the house whither he has seen so many of his kind enter, never to reappear, except in the form of steaks, roasts, and canned beef. It is probable that he purchases his life at the expense of his happiness, for this betrayal of nearly a million lives a year is telling on him, and he wears a sad and shame-faced expression; so possibly some day he will mix with the herd as they go to their death, and sacrifice his life to atone for his misdeeds. -- Harman’s Young People. SOME CHURCH PROBLEMS IN APHORISM The world’s deepest misery, like its sublimest faith, is without speech. Only small needs have vital force enough to utter the wild wail of despair. The Protestant world builds its churches as if it expected only our most worthy selves and well-behaved and highly respected neighbors, and advantageous commercial friends, to worship in them. The anarchist is a person who believes that his worst enemy is the man who owns a house; that dynamite is the only true gospel; and that the only future is none at all. American infidelity is only the cast-off rags from the infidel wardrobes of Germany. Prescription for making an anarchist: Between the upper millstone of our neglect to meet the immigrant on his arrival, with the Gospel in his own tongue, and the nether millstone of a criminal neglect of his children, we grind out the anarchist. The wine glass is an opaque thing, and God cannot be seen through it. America is the only country on earth where the city church possesses the monstrosity of a frequent flitting day These are the days and America is the paradise of doing all things, or pretending to do them by the omnipotent committee. The crown and glory of all true union is for each unit to be at its best. The links, and not the impersonal chain, hold the anchor. That is the most efficient organization which compels the most effective use of the individual force. The only way to melt the wall of ice which rises between the masses and the Church, is for every individual Christian to kindle a fire at its base. Let the Church observe as much system in its evangelistic methods to reach the one house and the one person as the politician does to reach the one voter. Christ alway fed the hungry multitude by individual servitors. Protestantism has yet to learn from Romanism the whole lesson of woman’s worth and force in the Church. The Church of Christ, in its most exalted hours, has never been afraid to be in the most unpopular minority. Nothing strong in truth or magnificent in possession has ever come to the Church by falling, as ripe fruit, in its open hand. The treasures of the Church have been won, like pearls, from the ocean depths, or pure gold from the white heated furnace. The birthplace of the Church was at the foot of the cross. God is always on the side of His kingdom and the men who love it. The American Church is getting into the firm conviction that the whole heathen world will be won to Christ. But when shall we be convinced that the whole Christian world will be won to Christ? We have half won our victory when we see the place where defeat is possible. The glory of the weak is that before them God has placed His greatest promises. The Chinaman ought to be as free to land anywhere on our shores as the American missionary is to step ashore on every foot of the twenty-five hundred miles of the Chinese coast. The day is sure to come -- we see the twilight now -- when the saloon will be so deep that no pick and spade of even a Schliemann shall be able to exhume it. The saloon, that venerable structure of the alcoholic style of architecture, is already taking on the look of a useless antique of the palaeolithic age. LOYAL TO GOOD TRAINING A young man was recently graduated from a scientific school. His home had been a religious one. He was a member of a Christian church, had pious parents, brother, and sisters; his family was one in Christ. On graduating he determined upon a Western life among the mines. Full of courage and hope, he started out on his long journey to strike out for himself in a new world. The home prayers followed him. As he went, he fell into company with older men. They liked him for his frank manners and manly independence. As they journeyed together they stopped for a Sabbath in a border town. On the morning of the Sabbath, one of his fellow travelers said to him, "Come, let us be off for a drive and the sights." "No," said the young ma, "I am going to church." His road acquaintance looked at him for a moment and thou, slapping him on the shoulder, said, "Right, my boy. I began in that way. I wish I had kept on. Young man, you will do. Stick to your bringing up, and your mother’s words, and you will win." His companions had their drive, but the boy gained their confidence and won their respect by his manly avowal of sacred obligations. Already success is smiling upon the young man. There is no lack of places for him. -- Christian Weekly. BROTHERS IN DISTRESS Little Roland, an orphan who had been accustomed during the life of his parents to generous nurture, and even to indulgence, went, after their death, to an uncle, who believed in severe treatment of children. The boy was put at once upon a plain diet of oatmeal, bread and butter, a little meat and a carefully regulated allowance of fruit. This the poor boy regarded as next door to starvation, and he ate so little that it was remarked in his presence that he was growing thin. One day his uncle took him out to walk in the suburb where he lived. While they were walking they met a friend of the uncle, accompanied by a large greyhound. The boy had never seen a dog of this sort before, and was greatly astonished by its extraordinary thinness. He looked very sympathetically at the animal. "Ah," said the owner to Roland, "you think he’s pretty thin, don’t you?" "Y-yes," said the boy. "Does he live with his uncle?" Roland’s allowance of meat was considerably increased after this incident, and now and then he was even allowed a bit of pastry. -- Youth’s Companion. * * * A boy astonished his Christian mother by asking for a dollar to buy a share in a raffle for a silver watch that was to be raffled off in a beer saloon. His mother was horrified, and rebuked him. "But," said he, "mother, did you not bake a cake with a ring in it, to be raffled off in the Sunday School fair?" "But my son," said she, "that was for the Church." "But if it was wrong," said the boy, "would doing it for the Church make it right? Would it be right for me to steal money to put it in the collection? And if it is right for the Church, is it not right for me to get this watch if I can?" The good woman was speechless, and no person can answer the boy’s argument. The practices are both wrong or they are right. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 23: 01.12. CHAPTER 12: FOLLY OF INFIDELITY - HE PROVED IT ======================================================================== Chapter 12: Folly of Infidelity - HE PROVED IT Recently the evangelist, E. L. Hyde, was conducting a revival meeting at B___, in New Jersey, and in the course of his remarks said "he could prove to the satisfaction of any infidel within ten minutes, that he was a fool." little thinking that he would have occasion or opportunity of doing so. The next morning while walking, a gentleman accosted him very abruptly by saying, "Aren’t you the evangelist preaching up here at the church?" "Yes, sir." "Well, I supposed you were a gentleman." "I claim to be one." "Well, I don’t think you are one. Didn’t you say last night that you could prove to the satisfaction of anyone within ten minutes that all infidels are fools? If you don’t prove it to my satisfaction I will publish you in all the city papers as the most consummate liar that ever struck the city." Seeing there was no possibility of reasoning with the man, Mr. Hyde said: "Where is your infidel?" "I claim to be one," was the reply, "and I want you to know I am no fool, either." "You don’t mean to say there is no reality in Christianity?" "I do, sir. I have studied all phases of the subject and have traveled and delivered lectures against Christianity for more than twelve years, and I am prepared to say there is nothing in it." "You are certain there is nothing in it?" "Yes, sir, there is nothing in it." "Will you please tell me," said Mr. Hyde, "if a man who will lecture twelve years against nothing is not a fool, what, in your judgment, would constitute a fool?" He turned away in a rage. Mr. Hyde, drawing out his watch, insisted he still had six minutes; but the infidel would not hear him, nor was Mr. Hyde published in the city papers. NO COUNTERFEIT INFIDELS "Did you ever see a counterfeit ten-dollar bill?" "Yes." "Why was it counterfeited?" "Because the genuine bill was worth counterfeiting." "Did you ever see a scrap of brown paper counterfeited?" "No." "Why not?" "Because it was not worth counterfeiting." "Did you ever see a counterfeit Christian?" "Yes." "Why was he counterfeited?" "Because he was worth counterfeiting." "Was he to blame for the counterfeit?" "Of course not." "Did you ever see a counterfeit infidel?" "Why, no." "Why not?" "Ahem." We pass the above catechism along. -- Sel. WHY GOD DID IT A man one time got down on his knees with his wife that he had just married and they said, "O God, we will give Thee a portion of all our income; we will be only Thy stewards." This went along for years and they kept their vows. But finally they began to get rich, and in time he became the richest man in the richest county in the state. He had the finest home, the nicest farm, the best cattle; he devoted himself to the raising of sheep, and of these there were none so fine in all the state. Then he began to withhold from God; he kept back that which he vowed to give; he would not give of his money to missions; he forgot, or refused entirely to do as he had promised in his early days. He had a beautiful little daughter and death came and took that daughter away. Instead of softening that man’s heart, it made him worse. He got harder hearted; he would not go to church, he would not hear a preacher preach, he would not go within the sound of the Gospel, and when people would go to him to talk to him about giving himself to God, he would curse God and say, "I do not want anything to do with Him. He took away my daughter. I hate Him. I hate Him. I won’t serve such a God. I would not have anything to do with such a God." After awhile there came a revival meeting, and the wife was converted, converted through and through, and sanctified wholly; but she did not dare to invite the evangelist to come to her house. She said to him, "You pray to God, and I will ask my husband if I may invite you." He prayed, and then the wife asked the husband, and he replied that he might come, but he must not talk about his God or he would put him out of the house. The day came, and the wife told the evangelist that he might come, but he was not to say anything about God. He said to the lady, "Pray that God will give me wisdom to do and say just the right thing." He visited the home, and the lady received him very kindly. By and by the wife said to her husband who was in another room, "The pastor and evangelist are in the parlor." "I don’t want to see them." After awhile it came time for dinner, and they were invited to sit down to the table. The farmer spoke up and said, "I suppose you want to say a little prayer before we eat; you may go ahead and do that, but that is all you are going to pray in this house." The evangelist thanked God for the food, for the privilege of being there, and for the privilege that that opportunity afforded. Then the man began to talk politics, and soon it was seen that the preacher knew more about politics than the farmer. After that they talked about the weather; then about the neighborhood and community, and then the farmer said, "I have got ’to go out and see my sheep." Instantly the reply came from the preacher that he was interested in sheep, and if he was willing he would be pleased to go and see his sheep. By this time the farmer had begin to think that he was a wonderful preacher -- he knew politics, all about the community, knew the good points of the cattle and sheep and horses. Then he said to the preacher, "I have another flock over here of very fine sheep; they are the finest I have, and there are only thirty-five of them. They are quite a way off, on another farm." The preacher said he would like to go, and so together they went to where that other flock was in pasture. After viewing them, the farmer said, "This pasture is too far away; I will have to take them up nearer home; but unless I can get them across that stream I will have to take them around the road, which us a mile and a half." The preacher in his heart said, "Lord, give me words to say." Then the farmer said, "If I just put this lamb on the other side of the stream, its bleating will attract the attention of the flock, and every other sheep will go over to it." Then the preacher talked on about the sheep, and by and by he said to the Lord, "What do you want me to say? Tell me now." Then the preacher turned to the farmer and said, "You have been very kind to me; you have treated me with the greatest courtesy; we have had a most pleasant conversation together all this afternoon; I have enjoyed seeing your fine stock; but I do not want to go away without saying a word about y our salvation. God has provided salvation -- " "Stop!" said the farmer, "don’t you say a word to me about your God; He took away my little girl. Tell me why He did it." And he began to curse. The preacher said, "O God, what shall I do?" Then the preacher went and picked up a little lamb and started right down toward the water, waded through the stream and placed the lamb on the other bank, and then said, "O God, help." The little lamb began to bleat to the mother sheep over on the other side, and as fast as it could come, it came to the water’s edge. Only an instant it lingered, and into the stream it plunged and was soon with its little one. Then every last one of the sheep followed and were soon over on the other side of the stream. The farmer said, "Say, friend, what made you do that?" "Shall I tell you?" said the preacher. "God took away your little girl. You did not care for God. You promised to serve Him; you promised to be His steward; you promised to give your life to Him, and you forgot all these vows in your care for this world, and God came and took your little lamb and put it there on the other side, and on the other side it is calling for you, calling for you, calling for you." Say, that farmer threw his arms around that preacher’s neck, and said, "Why, preacher, I never saw it in that way before. I will go to it." A TESTED REMEDY It is related that Bishop Kavanaugh was one day walking when he met a prominent physician, who offered him a seat in his carriage. The physician was an infidel, and the conversation turned upon religion. "I am surprised," said the doctor, "that such an intelligent man as you should believe such a fable as that." The bishop said, "Doctor, suppose years ago someone had recommended to you a prescription for pulmonary consumption, and you had procured the prescription and taken it according to order, and had been cured of that terrible disease, what would you say of the man who would not try your prescription?" "I should say he was a fool. "Twenty-five years ago," said Kavanaugh, "I tried the power of God’s grace. It made a different man of me. All these years I have preached salvation, and wherever accepted have never known it to fail." What could the doctor say to such a testimony as that? And such testimonies are what men need to turn them from the error of their ways, to the personal experience of the saving power of the Lord Jesus Christ. "How would you prove the divinity of Christ?" said some ministers to a young backwoods preacher whom they were examining. "What?" said he, puzzled by their question. "How would you prove the divinity of Christ?" "Why, He saved my soul," was the triumphant reply. But to give this answer one must be saved, and know it in his heart, and show it in his life, and he then becomes a living epistle known and read of all men. HUGO TOOK GOD The Index publishes the following incident from a late Life of Victor Hugo, contributed by Theodore Stanton. One day, when he was up for election, a delegate from one of the revolutionary societies of Paris called, and in the name of his fellow-members complained rather rudely of Victor Hugo’s theistical ideas. "I would like to know," said the delegate, "whether you stand by us or the priests." "I stand by my conscience," answered the poet. "Is that your final answer?" began again the exasperated visitor. "If so it is very probable that you will not be elected." ’That will not be my fault said the candidate, calmly. "Come now," continued his self-appointed catechizer, "there is no muddle course must choose between us and God." Well was the response, "I’ll take God!" KNOCKING INFIDELITY OUT An English paper says that, after concluding a lecture, Mr. Bradlaugh called upon any one present to reply to his arguments. A collier arose, and spoke somewhat as follows: "Maister Bradlaugh, me and my mate Jim were both Methodist till one day one of these infidel chaps came this way. Jim turned infidel, and used to badger me about attending prayermeetings; but one day in the pit a large cob of coal came down upon Jim’s head. Jim thought he was killed, and, ah! mon, but he did holler and cry to God." Then turning to Mr. Bradlaugh with a knowing look, he said, "Young man, there’s now’t like cobs of coal for knocking infidelity out of a man." It need scarcely be said that the collier carried the audience with him. THEIR SINS SENT THEM THERE Milton Williams was a personal friend of mine down in Arkansas. There were five young men in Fort Smith. They were there to be hung. The youngest of them was fifteen years of age; the oldest, twenty-two. The judge of the United States Court said to Milton Williams, "I have five young men in Fort Smith to be hung a week from next Wednesday. I want you to go and pray with them." Milton Williams said, "Judge, I will do it. I want you to give one a letter so that I can get in there and talk to them." Milton Williams and his wife went together. They went into the room; they heard the clanking of the chains; five young men came in with handcuffs on their wrists and chains on their feet. Clank, clank, clank as they came into the room where Mr. Williams and his wife were. Mr. Williams said to them, "I have come here to talk to you about your souls. You are within eight or nine days of eternity. It is time you were giving yourselves to God." They replied, "Oh, we don’t believe it. Our lawyer has applied for a stay of execution, and he says that it is going to be granted by the court, and we are going to be set free. We do not believe what you say." They sneered in his face and cheered one another. Then he said, "Look here, I would like to pray with you." They said, "You can pray if you want to." Mr. Williams got down on his knees and prayed for them, and while he was doing so, Mrs. Williams was talking with them. Then Mrs. Williams prayed awhile, and Milton Williams talked with them; but they sneered and laughed, and said, "It is not so. We are not going to be hung. Our attorney says we are not. We are in no more danger of the gallows than you are, sir, and in two weeks more we will be out of this and we will be free." Mr. Williams said, "Boys, let me tell you something. I have just come from the judge, and the judge says the stay of execution has been denied. He said you will be taken a week from next Wednesday. and you will be hung by the neck until you are dead." They sneered at him, scorned him. "Our attorney says we will be free within two weeks, and there is no danger." Time went on. The fateful Wednesday came. Milton Williams and a Catholic priest went down there, went into the jail, and directly five young men came out. They were handcuffed. They went straight to the scaffold. The scaffold was one long plank, and that one long plank had a bolt through one end of it, and those men were placed right on that plank. Then the marshal behind them caught them by the elbows, pulled the elbows back and tied them behind the back, and as they stood there, Milton William’s talked to them. He said, "Men, pray! I told you there was no hope for you. In a few minutes you will be in eternity. Pray!" But they still sneered; and, beloved, they put over their faces a black cap and pulled it down over their eyes. But before it was pulled down over their eyes, tears began to run down the face of the one that was twenty-two years of age. When they pulled the cap down over their eyes, it shut out the light and the tears were hid. Then Mr. Williams prayed, then the Catholic priest prayed, then they stood a few moments more. The United States jailer stooped down and caught hold of the bolt. The marshal stood there with a handkerchief, and the dropping of that handkerchief was the signal for the pulling of the bolt. He pulled the bolt and they went down like lead, and there they were hanging by the neck. They did not believe the hanging would take place; they had been told by their attorney that there was to be a stay of execution. But there they were -- their bodies swinging to and fro. In the case of the young man twenty-two years of age, the rope slipped from his ear around under his chin, so his neck was not broken, but he was strangling; and they saw why his hands were tied together -- to prevent him from getting his hands to his neck. There was a man there that tried to put his hand on that boy, tried to tear the noose away from his neck. Mr. Williams said, "Mr. Marshal, for God’s sake why don’t you take that man away?" And he said, "I can not do it. He is the father of two of the boys, and uncle of the third." Listen, you say that the law of the land sent them there. THEIR SINS SENT THEM THERE! the law never sends a man to the scaffold -- it is his sins that send him there. THE DYING DAUGHTER Dr. Elliott, who was well acquainted with the celebrated Colonel Ethan Allan, visited him at a time when his daughter was sick and near to death. He was introduced to the library, when the Colonel read to him some of his writings, with much complacency, and asked, "Is not that well done?" While they were thus employed, a messenger entered and informed Colonel Allen that his daughter was dying, and desired to speak with him. He immediately went to her chamber, accompanied by Dr. Elliott, who was desirous of witnessing the interview. The wife of Colonel Allen was a pious woman, and had instructed her daughter in the principles of Christianity. As soon as her father appeared at her bedside she said to him, "I am about to die; shall I believe in the principle, you have taught me, or shall I believe in what my mother has taught me?’ He became extremely agitated: his chin quivered, his whole frame shook; and after waiting a few moments, he replied, "Believe what your mother has taught you." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 24: 01.13. CHAPTER 13: SOUL SAVING - MODERN PREACHING ======================================================================== Chapter 13: Soul Saving - MODERN PREACHING The law of God and His wrath against sin, the sanctions of the law, the eternal punishment of the finally impenitent, are not so plainly, boldly and earnestly preached as formerly. The law is still the school master, or child-leader to bring men to Christ. Where the law is not preached, through deference to long-pursed, impenitent pew owners, there are no conversions and the preacher has to send for some evangelist to come and preach the very unpalatable truths the pastor has kept back; and the sinners hear, and pricked in their hearts, and cry for pardoning mercy till they find salvation. There was no place for evangelists in Methodism fifty years ago, because every preacher preached the whole Gospel, thundering the terrors of the Lord into the ears of slumbering sinners. How rarely do we now hear a sermon on the second coming of Christ and the day of judgment! "Day or judgment, day of wonders; Hark! the trumpet’s awful sound, Louder than ten thousand thunders, Shakes the vast creation round; How the summons Will the sinner’s heart confound!" This style of preaching is out of fashion in our pulpits, just as though the everlasting Gospel of the changeless Christ were subject to the caprices of fashion, fickle as the winds. Jesus addressed sinners’ fears, uncapping the pit of woe, bidding them gaze upon the undying worm, the unquenchable fire, and the smoke of the torment ascending up forever and ever. Sin and the penalty have not changed. Human nature and the motives which influence it are the same in all ages. Which, then, has changed? Modem Christians are not, through the fullness of the Holy Spirit abiding in them, brought into such sympathy with Jesus that we realize these great truths as He did when He warned them to flee from the wrath to come. The penalty of the broken law is not preached in liberalistic pulpits, and as a natural consequence, there being no school master to lead Christward, nobody is converted. Ought we not to expect the same barrenness to attend similar soft, sentimental and velvety preaching in so-called evangelical pulpits? The modern treatment of sin is alarmingly superficial. It is treated as if consisting wholly in the act; the state of heart behind the act is ignored. The doctrine of original sin, a poison eradicated from humanity by the radical purgation of the believer’s soul, body and spirit through the Holy Ghost in entire sanctification, after the new birth, has quite generally dropped out of our pulpits. How few preach about sin in believers, repentance in believers, and bring our church members under conviction for clean hearts, attainable now by faith, and faith only, in the blood of sprinkling which sanctifieth the unclean! In how few pulpits do famishing Christians hear of the great salvation, Christian perfection, or the perfect holiness of believers, insisted on "clearly, emphatically and explicitly," a work described by Richard Watson as distinctly marked, and "as graciously promised in the Holy Scriptures as justification, adoption, regeneration and the witness of the Spirit." Why has the doctrine styled by John Wesley, "the grand depositum committed to the people called Methodists," ceased to be heard in a majority of our churches, clearly unfolded, bravely defended and faithfully urged upon all believers with its unanswerable array of Scriptural proof? Is it not because the general tone of spirituality has sunk to so low a point that there are few believers in the pulpit and in die pews, thirsting after full salvation? This silence on a vital doctrine has almost wrested it from the church providentially raised up for its promulgation. And this silence, in turn, is the result of the lack of the general diffusion of the Holy Spirit through our ministry and membership. Doctrinal errors must follow. The advance guard of the coming host of heresies is already visible, the denial of the resurrection of the body, of original sin, of the personality of Satan, of entire sanctification after justification, and of this life as the whole of probation. what the main army will be we know not, except that it will be marshaled by Anti-Christ. -- Dr. Daniel Steele. SINS REMEMBERED NO MORE "According to the multitude of Thy tender blot out my transgressions." Psalms 51:1. A little boy was once much puzzled about sins being blotted out and said, "I cannot think what becomes of all the sins God forgives, mother." "Why, Charlie, can you tell me where are all the figures you wrote upon your slate yesterday?" "I washed them all out, mother." "And where are they, then?" "Why, they are nowhere; they are all gone," said Charlie. "Just so it is with the believer’s sins; they are gone -- blotted out -- "remembered no more." "As far as the east is from the west, so far hath He removed our transgressions from us." ACQUAINTED WITH THE AUTHOR The Free Methodist tells of an agnostic who, being present in a refined circle, was surprised when told that a certain noted lady believed firmly in sacred Scriptures. He ventured to ask her, "Do you believe the Bible?" "Most certainly I do," was her reply. "Why do you believe in it?" he queried again. "Because I am acquainted with the Author," she answered confidently. Poor souls, that know not God in Christ as their Savior, think, like Spencer, that He is "unknowable," and so reject His Word. But true believers have a blessed acquaintance with both, and their faith in the Word has a sure foundation in their acquaintance with its Author. TAKING THINGS FOR GRANTED A young lady friend who was earnestly seeking her soul’s salvation, came to me in great distress one day, and said: "You tell me I must have faith in God, I must believe in Christ in order to be saved; now, how can I believe, how can I have faith? I have tried and tried, and I cannot; I am groping in the dark. Now you seem to take things for granted, and rest on that. I cannot do so I must know how I am saved in order to believe it; tell me once more what it is to have faith in God." And I replied, "You have just given a better explanation of faith than any I can think of. You must take things for granted. When you came to me this afternoon, you took it for granted I would listen, and help you if I could; just so when you go to God, take it for granted He hears, and when you confess your sins and ask forgiveness, remember His promise, ’Ask and ye shall receive,’ and take it for granted that He forgives you." "Is that all?" she inquired; "and is that faith?" "That is all," I replied; and just then some friends called her, and she went away with a promise to try again, and the next time I met her these were her first words - "I am taking things for granted and am very happy." Is there not some soul seeking God today, who finds the question of faith a perplexing one? To such an one I would say, Put aside all your questioning -- stop trying to understand what perplexes you, come to God confessing your sin, pledging your life to His service, and take it for granted. THE HERO OF THE LADY ELGIN WRECK In my college life at Evanston I had as my room-mate my only brother, who was a theological student preparing for the ministry. Though slender in person he was a wonderful swimmer. Born on the banks of the Mississippi he had acquired wonderful skill in swimming and diving. When he came to Evanston one of the first accomplishments was not in Greek and Latin, but in swimming in the lake in time of storm. He could dive through the breakers when they ran at their highest, or toss upon their tops, or play with them as a giant might play with a tiny fountain. One day the village was startled by the news that a great steamer, the Lady Elgin, had been struck by another steamer in the night time, ten miles out in the lake in a storm, and her four hundred passengers were coming to the shore on pieces of wreck and must be saved or find a watery grave. A few were picked up by a tug from Chicago far out on the lake. My brother heard a bugle call in his soul that morning. He seemed to hear voices saying, "Who knoweth but thou art come into the kingdom for such a time as this? His training, his childhood, all his life rose before him as a picture. Frail as he was he resolved to do his duty as a man. A rope was tied about him that his body might be recovered if he should be killed by the pieces of wreck floating in the breakers. Thus prepared he spent six hours battling with the waves and storm. Two hundred others took part in this struggle. One of them is the Rev. Dr. Chadwick, a pastor of Brooklyn. Another is now the Rev. Bishop Fowler, of Minneapolis. It was reserved for a single swimmer, however, to play an exceedingly important part in that day’s adventure. Into that single day my brother put the strength of a lifetime. His nervous system was shattered so that for many months he was unable to think, or read, consecutively for a quarter of an hour without dizziness and almost blindness. The physical strength for threescore years and ten was drawn upon by that single day’s exertion. Backward forward he went to save human life, and when the day was through, of the thirty that came through alive my brother had saved seventeen. Everybody praised him. The illustrated papers of New York and London had his picture. The merchants of Chicago gave him a valuable present as a memento. Everybody praised him. How could they help it? And yet, when we were in the room alone, it was pitiful to see him. He could scarcely close his eyes, night or day, without the awful picture of the storm and the drowning coming before him. Sleeping or waking he seemed to hear the roar of the waves with the cry of those going down for the last time. When we were alone he would change color and become ashy pale in his great emotion. His hungry eyes would look at me as though they could not be satisfied, as he said to me, "Will, everybody praises me, but tell me the truth, did I do my best?" He did not ask, "Did I do as well as somebody else?" He did better than that. He did not ask, "Did I do an well as the two hundred others?" He did better than that. He did not ask, ’Did I do as well as any man in the world could have done?" I think he might have answered that question in the affirmative. His supreme question, that, like a poisoned arrow ran him through and through, as he remembered those that had perished in sight, and many of them within hearing of land, the supreme question to him was, "Did I do my best?" As a result of this shock he was compelled to give up his studies as a student, compelled to give up the Christian ministry for which he was preparing. He is now in Southern California on a fruit ranch, thirty-four miles from a railway, the wreck of what he might have been but for that one supreme day. He paid the price of the redemption of many precious lives. No truer man lives than Edward W. Spencer, of Manzana, California. God grant to you and me, when we stand on the shores of eternity and see Time’s wrecked millions standing with us before the Judge of the "quick and dead" -- God grant to each one of us to hear from the lips of the Elder Brother, "Well done, good and faithful servant, you did your best." -- Rev. W. A. Spencer, D. D. HOW AN ANGEL LOOKS Robin, holding his mother’s hand says "Good night" to the big folks all, Throws some kisses from rosy lips, Laughs with glee through the lighted hall Then in his own crib, warm and deep, Rob is tucked for a long night’s sleep. Gentle mother with fond caress Slips her hand through his soft, brown hair. Thinks of his fortune all unknown, Speaks aloud in an earnest prayer: "Holy angels, keep watch and ward, God’s good angels, my baby guard." "Mamma, what is an angel like?" Asked the boy in a wondering tone; "How will they look if they come here, Watching me while I’m all alone?" Half with shrinking and fear spoke he; Answered the mother tenderly: "Prettiest faces ever were known, Kindest voices and sweetest eyes:" Robin, waiting for nothing more, Cried with a voice of pleased surprise, Love and trust in his eyes of blue, "I know, mamma, they’re just like you!" -- Household HAVE YE KEPT THE FAITH? A dear brother of the writer, living in New York, was recently on a train which was just leaving the station. By the side of it, on the next track, was another train, which was about to start in the opposite direction. A man near my brother suddenly jumped to his feet, opened the window, and hurriedly called, "John!" A man at an open window in the other train instantly recognized his friend, and quickly responded, "William!" A hearty grasp of hands, and the short, solemn inquiry came ringing from William. "John, have ye kept the faith?" "Aye, by the help of God, I have." The cars moved away, a smile of pleasure on the face of each, and they saw each other no more. Was it strange that a thrill of Christian sympathy took possession of my brother’s heart, as he at once took a seat by the side of William, who had hitherto been a stranger, but now was a Christian brother. Not, "Have you made money?" "Have you made a great name for yourself?" but "Have you kept the faith?" What stronger evidence of conversion could have been given in the question and answer which came from these two travelers to eternity? Happy the man who can give a right answer to this important question, and who, at the end of life and in the day of judgment, can say, with Paul, "I have kept the faith." -- The Christian. HOW TO SECURE A REVIVAL (Extract from a Sermon by Rev. W. R. Bates, D. D.) In the town of W___., Conn., one hundred and ten years ago, there was not a single Christian society. The inhabitants numbered four hundred scattered over a farming territory. Somehow three women found out that they professed to be Christians. A woman advanced in years lived in the center of the town; a woman in middle life lived three miles away; and another, a young woman, lived three miles the other way. They had moved into the town at different times, and had found out that they were orthodox Christians, members of the Church. The old lady said to herself, "I have not long to live; have I done my duty? My husband and family know that I have been faithful, but have I done my duty to the rest?" She invited the others to come to her house, and they came and prayed about it, and talked about it, and finally decided to meet the next Thursday afternoon at one o’clock at a school house and have a meeting. The old lady said to the young woman, "You can sing; will you sing?" "I will." She said to the middle-aged woman, "You can read; will you read a few chapters from the Bible?" "I will." The old lady said, "I will pray." So they came, one three miles from the east, another three miles from the west. The young lady sang, and the middle-aged lady read, and the old lady prayed. A man going by with a load of wood, seeing the door open, thought to close it. He went up to the door and heard the old lady praying. It was a new revelation to him. He listened till she said "Amen." Then she asked, "Shall we come again?" "Yes, let us come next Thursday at one o’clock." He got on his load and told everybody he saw. The next Thursday at one o’clock the three women arrived there and found the house full. They found three chairs provided for them. They went in. The young woman said, "I am too diffident to sing before all these people." The old lady said, "You must sing." The other woman said, "I cannot read before all this company." The old woman said, "You must read." So the young woman sang, and the other woman read, and the old woman prayed; and there was sobbing all over the house. In a few days they sent for a minister. There stands today where that school house stood a little church. I have preached in it -- the result of the revival prayed for by those three women. They not only prayed in their hearts at home, but they came together and prayed: "Lord, wilt Thou revive us again, that the people may rejoice in Thy work?" HOW TO PREPARE FOR SERVICE 1. Prepare for divine service in your closet, not in your toilet. 2. Be early at church, and occupy the moments before service with meditation and prayer. 3. Consider the sermon, no matter who may be the preacher, as a message from God, not as an effort from man. 4. Pray before, during, and after the service for the minister and your fellow-worshippers. 5. In God’s house all should be kindly affectioned one to another, with brotherly love, in honor preferring, one another. Greet cordially those around you; welcome strangers into your pews; but let all be done reverently, and for the glory of God. 6. Give according to your means. If you spend money for dress and luxuries, do not stint your offerings for God’s house. Always begin to economize with self first, and with God last. 7. Carry your religion into your daily life MY FATHER’S FORGIVENESS I was sitting alone in silence, For my heart was hushed and sad, As I thought that my conscience pointed To the records my Father had. Then it seemed that He softly whispered I have blotted the records, child, And the page of the book is open Stainless and undefiled." But I feared, for the tempter told me Some sins had so deep a dye That a trace of the righteous record Still stood in the court on high. So again my Father whispered "I have blotted the records, all: Not a lingering stain remaineth Where my holy glances fall." Then I thought that the dead were rising I thought the last day had come: I thought that I stood and trembled, Fearful, and cowed, and dumb. And the awful book was opened But the Judge in silence read, "I have blotted out thy transgressions." In a moment my terror fled. Oh! since He has kindly whispered, I surely may trust His word, And rest in the blessed message My listening ears have heard. So I will not think of the record, For the record has passed and gone, ’Tis blotted out now and forever, And the page from the volume torn. -- William Luff A GOOD EXAMPLE FOR PREACHERS There is a lawyer in Boston who is in the habit at times of addressing individual jurymen when inattentive or restless, and sometimes his argumemetum ad hominem is effective. Sometime ago he was trying a case against a street railway company, and there was an old sailor on the jury who seemed to give no heed to what either counsel said. The lawyer made his most eloquent appeals, but all in vain. Finally, he stopped in front of the sailor and said: "Mr. Juryman, I will tell you just how it happened. The plaintiff was in command of the outward-bound open car, and stood in her starboard channels. Along came the inward-bound close car, and just as their bows met she jumped the track, sheered to port, and knocked the plaintiff off and ran over him." The sailor was all attention after this version of the affair, and joined in a $5,000 verdict for the injured man. Let ministers imitate this example and speak in the language of the people to the hearts of the people. KIND WORDS ARE NEVER LOST A gentleman who one morning stopped to buy a newspaper from a wizened, shrieking newsboy at the railroad station, found the boy following him every day after, with a wistful face, brushing the spots from his clothes, calling a cab for him, etc. "Do you know me?" he asked at last. The wretched little Arab laughed. "No. But you called me ’my child’ one day. I’d like to do something for you, sir. I thought before I was nobody’s child." -- Selected. AN INFIDEL REBUKED There was an infidel blacksmith who was always carping at professors of religion, especially when he could get a Christian to talk to, or knew there was one near enough to overhear him. Some choice morsel of scandal was sure to be served up about an erring minister, or a sinful deacon, or a Sabbath School superintendent who had fallen from grace. One day he was dilating with uncommon relish on his favorite theme to a venerable elder, who stopped to have his horse shod. The old man bore it quietly for awhile, and then he said: Did you ever hear the story of the rich man and Lazarus?" "Yes, of course I have." "Remember about the dogs -- at the gate there -- how they licked Lazarus’ sores?" "Yes; why?" "Well, you remind me of those dogs -- always licking the sores. All you notice in Christians is their faults." A TOUCHING INCIDENT Among the crowd, says the Rochester Democrat that surged towards the gates as the St. Louis express rumbled into the Central Depot last evening, was a little old woman dressed in black with a little white face beneath a rusty old bonnet, and above a great comforter wound high around the neck. Jostled this way and that by the hurrying crowd, she was about to pass through the gate, when the gateman stopped her by a motion of the hand, and a demand for her ticket. "I am not going away," she replied. "I didn’t buy a ticket." "Then you can’t go through here; against orders, you know." "But, sir, my son is coming, and" -- "Can’t help it," was the reply. "Stay here and he will come to you." "O sir, if he only would," and the tremble in the little woman’s voice arrested the impatient murmur of those behind. "O sir, if he only would; but he died in Cleveland last week, and now they are bringing him home in a coffin. He was the only one I had -- oh, thank you, sir." The gate was thrown wide open, and an unknown friendly hand assisted her on, and in a moment the sad face of the little old woman in black was lost in the crowd. THANKFUL FOR THE HINT At my time of life I ought not to be stunned by anything, but after service a good woman of my flock did manage to take my breath away. I was preaching about the Father’s tender wisdom in caring for us all. I illustrated by saying that the Father knows which of us grows best in sunlight, and which of us must have shade. "You know you plant roses in the sunshine," I said, "and heliotrope and geraniums, but if you want your fuchsias to grow they must be kept in a shady nook." After the sermon, which I hoped would be a comforting one, a woman came up to me, her face glowing with pleasure that was evidently deep and true. "Oh, Doctor -- , I am so grateful for that sermon," she said, clasping my hand and shaking it warmly. My heart glowed for a moment, while I wondered what tender place in her heart and life I had touched, only for a moment, though. "Yes," she went on fervently, "I never knew before what was the matter with my fuchsias." -Chicago Interior. WHAT A FAULT-FINDER IS GOOD FOR In the village of ___ lived a man who was a bold leader of all opposition to religion, and always ready to publish abroad the inconsistencies or shortcomings of any who were professors of religion. After a time he concluded to remove to a distant part of the country, and meeting the leading minister of the village one day, after the usual salutations, he said: "Well, I suppose you know that I am going to leave town soon, and you will probably be very glad of it." "Glad of it? Why, no," said the minister, "you are one of our most useful men, and I shall hardly know how to spare you." Taken back by such an unexpected reply, the other immediately asked: "How is that? What do you mean by saying I am useful, or that you will miss me when I am gone?" "Because," said the minister, "not one of our sheep can get a foot out of the fold but you bark from one end of the town to the other, and so show yourself one of the most useful watch-dogs that I ever knew. I don’t know where we shall find any one that can supply your place." The rebuke struck home, and the fault-finder, with a crestfallen look, went on his way. -- Illustrated Christian Weekly. A SLIGHT MISTAKE "But that is not so bad as to think one is in church when one is at the play. My wife is the daughter of a minister, and had never been in a theater until she came to Boston with me, and I was to meet her and her hostess at the Park Theater one night. By some mischance I was late, and flurried and disappointed. The two ladies were ushered down what seemed to the country woman an interminable aisle, to the third row of stalls from the front. My wife, as she sank into her seat, dropped her head devoutly upon the rail in front. At this moment her companion gasped, Sara, what are you going to do?’ ’Take off my rubbers,’ said the quick-witted woman, abandoning her prayers to clutch at a foot that was guiltless of overshoe. -- From the Portfolio of the American Magazine. FAULT , WHERE LOCATED Doubtless often the reason why some one is not religious is vitally connected with some unfaithfulness on the part of Christians; but in the majority of cases this is not true. Mr. McCresson relates: One evening in Lake Crystal, Minn., I related the following incident: Mr. Moody was approached by a lady who said, "Won’t you pray for my husband?" He said, "How long have you been married?" "Twenty-two years." "Have you been a Christian all the time?" "Yes, sir." "Then let us kneel down and I will pray for you. If you have been living with your husband twenty-two years and he is not saved yet, you have been living a very poor Christian life." The lady admitted the truth of the statement, and fully gave herself up to God. In three days her husband was saved. As I finished the incident a gentleman in the audience rose and said: "I am not saved, but it is not the fault of my wife. Her lift is the strongest evidence I have that Jesus Christ can save sinners. I want her Savior to be mine. Pray for me." CONTENTMENT "As having nothing, and yet possessing all things." A crazy door, low moaning in the wind, The beat and patter of the driving rain, Thin drifts of melting snow upon the floor, Forced through the patch upon the broken pane. One chair, a little four-legged stool, a box Spread with a clean white cloth, and frugal fare, This is the home the widow and her lad, Two hens, and his gray cat and kittens, share. "Ben, it’s full time thee was in bed," she says, Drawing her furrowed hand across his locks, "Thee’s warmed th’ toes enough, the fire won’t last Pull to th’ coat -- I’ll put away the box. "Then say th’ prayers -- that’s right, don’t pass ’em by, The time’s ill saved that’s saved from God above, And don’t forgit th’ hymn -- thee never has, And choose a one th’ father used to love. "Now, lay ’ee down -- here, give the straw a toss, Don’t git beneath the winder -- mind the snow I like that side -- I’ll cover ’ee just now, The boards are by the fire -- they’re warm, I know." No blanket wraps the lithe half-naked limbs, But love, that teaches birds to rob their breast To warm their younglings -- love devises means To shield this youngling from the bitter east. The warm boards laid about the weary child, He turns a smiling face her face toward "Mother," he says, soft pity in his tone, "What do the poor boys do that have no boards?" -- Sel, OVERCOMING "He that overcometh shall inherit all things." Revelation 21:7. What is it to overcome? I began by telling you, and I close by telling you: it is to know that the one great power that is in this universe is our power. We talk about power, and men may grow conceited as they lift themselves up and say: "I will be strong and conquer the world." Ah! it is not to be done so. There is one real and true strength in this universe, and that is God’s strength, and no man ever did any strong thing yet that God did not do that strong thing in him. A man makes himself full of strength only as the trumpet makes itself full, by letting it be held at the lips of the trumpeter, so only man lets himself be made strong as he lets himself be held in the hand of God. As the chisel is powerless -- if it tries to carve a statue by itself it goes tumbling and stumbling over the precious surface of the stones the chisel becomes itself filled and inspired with genius when it is put into the hand of the artist, so man, putting himself into the hand of God, loses his awkwardness as well as his feebleness, and becomes full of the graciousness and the strength of the perfect nature. And to put myself into the hands of God, what does that mean? To know that God is my Father; to know that my life is a true issuing in this world of His life; to know that I become myself only as I know myself His child. So the soul puts itself into the soul of God, and lets God do its work through Him, so that that great mysterious consciousness enters into the life which was in Paul’s life, Do you remember, "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me"? So the soul which has given itself to God in filial consecration says: "I live, yet not I, but God liveth in me." As the child in the household does not know whether the things that he does from hour to hour are his things or his father’s, so does his father’s will and law fill the whole household with its inspiration. Know God your Father; recognize what your baptism means, that it was the claiming of your soul for the Father-soul of God; give yourself to Him in absolute, loving obedience. Do not think about it as an unnatural thing, as a strange thing for a man to do, to give himself to God. The strange thing is that any man or woman should be living in the world without being given to or filled with God. Give yourself to Him as the child gives himself to the father as the most natural and true thing in all your life; and then, His power glowing through your power, the world shall become yours as it is His, and in overcoming you shall inherit all things, NOT PUZZLED A skeptic, who was trying to confuse a Christian man by the contradictory passages in the Bible, asked how it could be that we were in the Spirit and the Spirit in us, and received the reply: "Oh, there is no puzzle about that. It’s like that poker. I put it in the fire till it gets red-hot. Now, the poker is in the fire, and the fire is in the poker." A profound Theologian could not have made a better answer. FOR AMBITIOUS BOYS A boy is something like a piece of iron. When in its rough state it isn’t worth much, nor is it of very much use; but the more processes it is put through the more valuable it becomes. A bar of iron that is only worth $5 in its natural state, is worth $12 when it is made into horseshoes; and after it goes through the different processes by which it is made into needles, its value is increased to $340. Made into penknife blades, it would be worth $3,000, and into balance springs for watches, $25,000. Just think of that, boys, a piece of iron that is comparatively worthless can be developed into such valuable material! But the iron has to go through a great deal of hammering and beating and rolling and pounding and polishing; and so, if you are to become useful and educated men, you must go through a long course of study and training. The more time you spend in hard study, the better material you will make. The iron doesn’t have to go through half as much to be made into horseshoes as it does to be converted into delicate watchsprings. But think how much less valuable it is. Which would you rather be, horseshoes or watchsprings? It depends on yourselves. You can become whatever you will. This is your time for preparing for manhood. Don’t think that I would have you settle down to hard study all the time, without any intervals of fun. Not a bit of it. I like to see boys have a good time, and I would be very sorry to have you grow old before your tine, but you have ample opportunity for study and play, too, and I don’t want you to neglect the former for the sake of the latter. -- Anon. THE GREAT ADMINISTRATOR The Holy Ghost is the great administrator of Christ’s estate. The estate is very rich and very large, but will avail us nothing if not administered. The will must not only be probated, but executed. Christ said of the Holy Ghost, "He shall take of mine and show them unto you." Never was the Church so well supplied with secondary agents. All she needs to press her with haste to her final conquest, is the Spirit in full measure. To have this there must be the sense of imperative need -- our utter inability to do anything without His power -- and that need must be urged by prayer. Faith in the Holy Ghost has been weakened by the ample supply of other aids. All our operations need the baptism of fire. Our hearts need His fully renovating, sanctifying power. Our sense of pardon is dim; our communion with God is not warm, intimate. Our singing needs His flame, the melody of His music. Our prayer needs His inspiration and intercession. Our preachers need to have the Spirit of the Lord God on them. Our Christian doing needs more of His quickening. Our Christian character needs to have more of His Spirit inwrought in our souls. We need Him, this great working power, this singing power, this praying power, this power of holy living, of glowing, heavenly experience and joy. -- St. Louis Christian Advocate. * * * There are some Sunday Schools that remind one of the boy’s answer to the question, "Is your father living?" "Yes, but he isn’t very living. He has rheumatism all over his legs and back." THE MODERN DANCE The modern round dance is to me especially abhorrent; for one, I will not put myself where I am compelled even to look upon it. I am too well acquainted with both its origin and its history to countenance it; and, after watching for twenty-five years its effects upon modern society, I have set my face forever against it as an iniquity and a snare. True, it did not have its roots in pagan idolatry, but it did have its origin in a worse than pagan laxity of morals; and the fact that pure-minded persons may possibly engage in it with entire innocence of wrong feeling or intent proves nothing as to its influence on society generally. Now, let me ask you, if you had a family of children, how long would you tolerate in your house a man who, perhaps immediately upon introduction to your daughter, should lay hands upon her person with the familiarity and freedom of the modern waltz? I am simply astonished that there can be any doubt upon this point with soundminded, sensible, reflecting persons. The modern dance simply licenses or makes lawful what outside of the customs of the dance, is regarded improper, immoral, insulting. Society wisely regulates the ordinary social gatherings of men and women in the parlor, even when they are well acquainted, by certain wholesome barriers of restraint. A man who, especially at first acquaintance, should violate these restrictions, as he may do in the waltz with impunity, would be kicked out of doors as a scoundrel. But the devil has invented in the round dances a polite and popular method of making such gross familiarities allowable, under the unction of fashionable custom. Hence their attraction to the people of the world; hence their ensnaring influence to his disciple; and the better the class of men and women who countenance the devil’s device, the more conspicuous his triumph. -- Rev. Dr. A. T. Pierson. WEIGHED AND FOUND WANTING A purely secular paper, the New York Journal of Education says: "A great deal can be said about dancing; for instance, the chief of police of New York city says that three-fourths of the abandoned girls in this city were ruined by dancing. Young ladies allow gentlemen privileges in dancing, which, taken under any other circumstances, would be considered as improper. It requires neither brains nor good morals to be a good dancer. As the love of the one increases, the love of the other decreases. How many of the best men and women are skillful dancers? Alcohol is the spirit of beverages. So sex is the spirit of dance; take it away and let the sexes dance separately, and dancing would go out of fashion very soon. Parlor dancing is dangerous. Tippling leads to drunkenness, and parlor dancing leads to ungodly balls. Tippling and parlor dancing sow to the wind and both reap to the whirlwind. Put dancing in the crucible, apply the acids, weigh it, and the verdict of reason, morality and religion is, ’Weighed in the balances and found wanting.’ A Scottish minister made the following announcement from the pulpit: "Weel, friends, the kirk is urgently in need of siller, and as we have failed to get money honestly we will have to see what a bazaar can do for us." O, BAIRNES, CUDDLE DOON Story of a Scotch Section-Hand Who Wrote These Beautiful Lines. Fifteen years ago or more a Scotch section-hand of the North British railroad in Scotland dropped into poetry. His first attempt at verse was successful so successful that it came to the notice of friends who recognized the merit that was in his song. How far it has gained recognition cannot be determined. but the beautiful bit of dialect is worthy of Robert Burns himself. It reads: "CUDDLE DOON." The bairnies cuddle doon at nicht Wl muckle faucht an’ din’ O, try an’ sleep, ye waukrife rogues, You faither’s comm’ in, They never heed a word I speak, I try to gi’e a frown; But aye I hap them up an’ say, "O bairnies, cuddle doon!" Wee Jamie wi’ the curly held, He aye sleeps next the wa’, Bangs up an’ cries, "I want a piece"; The rascal starts them a’. I rin’ and fetch them pieces, drinks, They stop a wee the soun’ Then draw the blankets up an’ cry, "Noo, weanies, cuddle doon:" But ere five minutes gang. wee Rab Cries out, frae neath the claes, "Mither, mak’ Tam gl’e oere at ance, He’s kittln’ wi’ his taes." The mischief’s in that Tam for tricks, He’cl bother half the toon But aye I hap them up an’ say, "O bairnies, cuddle doon!" At length they hear their faither’s fit, An’ as he steeks the door, They tarn their faces to the wa’, While Tam pretends to snore. Hae a’ the weans been gude?" he asks As he pits aff his shoon. "The bairnies, John, are in their bed, And long since cuddled doon." And juist before we bed oersel’s, We look at oor wee lambs; Tam has his airm roun’ wee Rab’s neck, An’ Rab his airm roun’ Tam’s. I lift wee Jamie up the bed, An’ as I straik each croon, I whisper till my heart fills up, "O bairnies, cuddle doon!" The bairnies cuddle doon at nicht Wi’ mirth that’s dear to me; But soon the big warl’s cark and care Will quaten doon their glee. Yet come what may to ilka ane, May He wha rules aboon, Aye whisper, though their pews be bauld, ’’O bairnies, cuddle doon !" * * * "Take ye away the stone." God will not do your work. After the limit of human ability has been reached He will work, and resurrected Lazarus will come forth. A SHARP THRUST Some men who pass for very respectable citizens, and who really are not without good qualities, have a habit not only of finding fault with their wives at every least provocation, but of doing it in terms such as no gentleman would ever think of applying to any lady except his own wife, or possibly his own sister. There is a story that such a man came home from the shop one night, and found his wife much excited over the outrageous behavior of a tramp. He had begged for something to eat and not liking what the woman gave him, had abused her in the roundest terms. "Johnny," said the man, thoroughly indignant, "when you heard that cowardly rascal abusing your mother, why didn’t you run at once to the store and let me know? I would have made short work of him. Didn’t you hear?" "Yes, pa, I heard. I was out in the barn and heard what he said about the victuals; but -- " "But what?" "Why, pa, I thought it was you scolding mother. He used the very same words you do when the dinner doesn’t suit you. I didn’t think anybody else would dare to talk to mother in that way." * * * At the close of a long, rambling, and pointless speech by a delegate in the last General Assembly, the moderator, who grew to manhood in Washington County, the great sheep country of Pennsylvania, remarked, sotto voce, that the speaker reminded him of an old ram he once saw, which backed so far that he was out of breath before he got ready to butt. KEEP STILL Keep still. When trouble is brewing, keep still. When slander is getting on its legs, keep still. When your feelings are hurt, keep still, till you recover from your excitement, at any rate. Things look differently through an unagitated eye. In a commotion once I wrote a letter, and sent it, and wished I had not. In my later years I had another commotion, and wrote a long letter; but life had rubbed a little sense into me, and I kept that letter in my pocket against the day when I could look it over without agitation and without tears. I was glad I did. Less and less it seemed necessary to send it. I was not sure it would do any harm, but in my doubtfulness I leaned to reticence, and eventually it was destroyed. Time works wonders. Wait till you can speak calmly, and then you will not need to speak, may be. Silence is the most massive thing conceivable sometimes. It is strength in its very grandeur. It is like a regiment ordered to stand still in the mad fury of battle. To plunge in were twice as easy. The tongue has unsettled more ministers than small salaries ever did, or lack of ability. PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT SOUL WINNERS The husband who blows up his wife before the children because she happens to get too much saleratus in the biscuit. The preacher who attends theaters and base ball matches. The tobacco chewing father who thrashes his boy for swearing. The mother who can talk by the hour about the dresses and bonnets of her neighbors, but can’t say a word to her little ones about the love of Christ. This Sunday School teacher who does not know enough about the lesson to ask questions without reading them from the lesson paper. The woman who talks about Heaven in church, and about her neighbors on the street. The preacher who never says anything to sinners outside of the pulpit. The Sunday School superintendent who never attends prayermeeting. The young lady who hands wine to callers on New Year’s Day. The sectarian who never has a good word for any other denomination. The man who rings a bell every time he puts a dime in the contribution box. The man who never goes near the church on lodge night. The man who blows a tin horn and shouts himself hoarse during a campaign, but is down on anything like excitement in religion. The woman who knows in her heart that she is wrong. but is too proud to own up to it. * * * "To think, when heaven and earth are fled And time and seasons o’er, When all that can die shall be dead, That I must die no more! Oh, where will then my portion be? Where shall I spend Eternity?’ SATAN’S WANT AD Johnson, the drunkard, is dying today; With traces of sin on his face; He’ll be missed at the club, at the bar, at the play; Wanted: A boy for his place. Simmons, the gambler, was killed in a fight He died without pardon or grace, Some one must train for his burden and blight; Wanted: A boy for his place. The scoffer, the idler, the convict, the thief, Are lost; and without any noise Make it known, that there come to my instant relief Some thousand or more of the boys. Boys from the fireside, boys from the farm, Boys from the home and the school, Come, leave your misgivings, there can be no harm Where "drink and be merry’s" the rule. Wanted for every lost servant of mine, Some one to live without grace, Some one to die without pardon Divine -Will you be the boy for the place? -- Selected. * * * A company of people were putting up a tent at a camp meeting. It was necessary to drive a nail about nine feet from the ground. The tallest man could not reach it, and there was no ladder. Several attempts had failed, when a stout farmer lifted a boy upon his shoulders, hammer in hand, and in one minute the nail was driven. The farmer could not reach the nail, but he could hold the boy. The boy could not hold the farmer, but he could drive the nail. DOING NO HARM The story has been told of a soldier who was missed amid the bustle of battle, and no one knew what had become of him; but they knew that he was not in the ranks. As soon as opportunity offered the officer went in search of him, and to his surprise found that the man during the battle had been amusing himself in a flower-garden. When it was demanded what he did there, he excused himself by saying, "Sir, I am doing no harm." But he was tried, convicted and shot. What a sad but true picture this is of many who waste their time and neglect their duty, and who could give their God, if demanded, no better answer than, "Lord, I am doing no harm!" * * * All this reminds me of a stiff Presbyterian clergyman who took every occasion to quote from Paul, that women should keep "silent in the churches," and he was uncompromising in his opposition to the heretical practice of permitting women to speak. There came a gracious revival into his church. At one of the meetings, the purest and best woman in the church was so filled with the Spirit that she got up and spoke so earnestly, sweetly and beautifully, that everybody was melted, and the pastor himself was weeping, and then he got up and said: "Brothers and sisters, when Paul said that the women should keep silent in the churches, he didn’t mean anything like that. Paul meant -- what Paul meant was -- well, Paul only meant -- Paul meant -- brothers and sisters -I don’t know what Paul meant!" (Laughter and applause.) CHEER HIM A fireman was scaling a ladder standing against a burning building, to reach a room in an upper story, where a child was sleeping, which had been forgotten by the inmates in their flight from the building. He was checked in his progress by the flames and smoke, when a voice in the crowd cried out: "Cheer him!" Up went a shout from the multitude, and on went the fireman, through smoke and flames, until he reached the room, and soon returned with the object of his adventure, triumphantly presenting the child to the horror-stricken mother. I HAD TO LOOK THAT WAY The following story is told of old "Father Taylor." He once went from a certain town noted for its apathy in religious matters to a conference meeting, where his brethren in the ministry were comparing notes as to the condition of church work in each one’s locality. Presently some one asked Father Taylor how the religious interest in was. "Oh," replied that gentleman, "religion is looking up in _____. This occasioned much surprise, as such a declaration seemed directly contrary to the common report. "How’s that?" he was asked. "Is there any general awakening of the churches?" "Any special interest on the part of those outside of the churches?" "No." "Well, then, how do you explain your remark that religion is looking up in ?" "Why," said Father Taylor, dryly, "religion is flat on its back in ____, and has to look up, if it looks anywhere." MEN -- OR HATS ON POLES? There is a deal of unreality in the life that surrounds us, -- a vast amount of pretension, show, and sham, covering a very limited proportion of real, genuine piety, grace, and goodness. W. F. Bainbridge, speaking of his travels in China, says: "Nearly six hundred miles up the Yang-tse-Kiang a Chinese officer heard that a high mandarin was coming along on our beat, and he prepared to display a military force equal to the rations he was drawing. Through my field-glass I counted twenty real soldiers, and nearly two hundred coats and hats stuck on poles." This was in China -- how is it elsewhere? What shall we say of the Church? Here are genuine, devoted, Christian soldiers -- a few, but oh, what hosts of "poles with hats on"! Here are soldiers who count, but do not fight; who draw rations, but do not defeat foes. Here is a society or board of officers composed of twenty or thirty men; two or three of them are workers, and the rest are "hats stuck on poles." Would that we could see more reality; there would then be less call for pretenses, less dress parade and sham fight, and more warfare against the world, the flesh, and the devil. We have real foes; let us see to it that we are real soldiers, -- good soldiers of the Lord Jesus Christ, clad in the whole armor of God, and ready to resist unto blood, striving against sin. A LONESOME BOY The boy sat cuddled so close to the woman in gray that everybody felt sure he belonged to her. So when he unconsciously dug his muddy shoes into the broadcloth skirt of her left-handed neighbor, she leaned over and said: "Pardon me, madam. Will you kindly make your little boy square himself around? He is soiling my skirt with his muddy shoes." The woman in gray blushed a little, and nudged the boy away. "My boy?" she said. "My! he isn’t mine." The boy squirmed uneasily. He was such a little fellow that he could not touch his feet to the floor, so he stuck them out straight in front of him like pegs to hang things on, and looked at them deprecatingly. "I am sorry I got your skirt dirty," he said to the woman on his left. "I hope it will brush off." The timidity in his voice made a short cut to the woman’s heart, and she smiled upon him kindly. "Oh, it doesn’t matter," she said. Then, as his eyes were still fastened upon her, she added, "Are you going uptown alone?" "Yes, ma’am," he said. "I always go alone. There isn’t anybody to go with me. Father is dead and mother is dead. I live with Aunt Clara in Brooklyn; she says Aunt Anna ought to help do something for me, so once or twice a week, when she gets tired out and wants to rest up, she sends me over to stay with Aunt Anna. I’m going up there now. Sometimes I don’t find Aunt Anna at home; but I hope she will be home today, because it looks as if it is going to rain, and I don’t like to hang around in the street in the rain." The woman felt somewhat uncomfortable in her throat and she said rather unsteadily, "You are a very little boy to be knocked about this way." "Oh, I don’t mind," be said. "I never get lost; but I get lonesome sometimes on the long trip, and when I see anybody that I think I would like to belong to I scrouge up close to her, so I can make believe I really do belong to her. This morning I was playing that I really belonged to that lady on the other side of me, and I forgot about my feet. That is the way I got you dress dirty." The woman put her arm around the tiny chap and "scrouged" him up so close that she hurt him, and every other woman who had heard his artless confidence looked as if she would not only let him wipe his shoes on her best gown, but would rather he did it than not. THE RIGHT SORT OF RELIGION "That very same night there sat up in the gallery on my left an engine-driver who had been blacklisted by every railway entering Chicago, through his drinking habits, so that he couldn’t get a position with any railway. That night, quite discouraged, he sat up there in the gallery, and, as I preached, the power of God carried the Word home to him. He was born again without getting out of his seat. The next day he went down to the vice president of the Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railway. He got into his office -- how I don’t know -- and said: ’Mr. L., I was converted last night up in the Moody church. I am blacklisted by your railroad and every other, but I am a good engine-driver, and I want a position.’ Mr. L. sprang from his chair, went to the door and locked it. He said: ’I believe in that sort of thing; let’s pray.’ And that railroad vice-president got down and prayed with the engine-driver. I believe in a railroad vice-president like that. It was the first I knew that Mr. L. was a Christian, but he showed it that day. When he got up he said: ’Go down to the round house with this letter. Whatever I say on the Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad goes. And it did, of course. Those two drunkards were born again while I was preaching." -- The Soul-Winner. THE TWO WORDS One day a harsh word, rashly said, Upon an evil journey sped, And like a sharp and cruel dart It pierced a fond and loving heart; It turned a friend into a foe, And everywhere brought pain and woe. A kind word followed it one day, Flew swiftly on its blessed way; It healed the wound, It soothed the pain, And friends of old were friends again; It made the hate and anger cease, And everywhere brought joy and peace. But yet the harsh word left a trace The kind word could not quite efface; And, though the heart its love regained, It bore a scar that long remained; Friends could forgive, but not forget, Or lose the sense of keen regret O if we could but learn to know How swift and sure one word can go, How would we weigh with utmost care Each thought before it sought the air, And only speak the words that move Like white-winged messengers of love! -- Sunday School Times - * * * "How; do you know that Jesus went up into Heaven?" sneeringly asked an infidel of a Christian. "By what He sent down," was the unanswerable reply. TIRED MOTHERS A little elbow leans upon your knee, Your tired knee, that has so much to bear; A child’s dear eyes are looking lovingly From underneath a thatch of tangled hair. Perhaps you do not heed the velvet touch Of warm, moist fingers folding yours so tight; You do not prize this blessing over-much, You almost are too tired to pray tonight But it is blessedness! A year ago I did not see it as I do today We are so dull and thankless; and too slow To catch the sunshine till it slips away. And now it seems surprising strange to me, That, while I wore the badge of motherhood, I did not kiss more oft and tenderly, The little child that brought me only good. And if, some night when you at down to rest, You miss this elbow from your tired knee; This restless, curling head from off your breast, This lisping tongue that chatters constantly; If from your own the dimpled hands had slipped; And ne’er would nestle in your palm again; If the white feet into their graves had tripped, I could not blame you for your heartache then! I wonder so that mothers ever fret At little children clinging to their gown; Or that the foot-prints, when the days are wet Are ever black enough to make them frown, If I could find a little muddy boot, Or cap, or jacket, on my chamber floor; If I could kiss a rosy, restless foot, And hear it patter in my home once more. If I could mend a broken cart today, Tomorrow make a kite to reach the sky There is no woman in God’s world could say She was more blissfully content than I. But ah! the dainty pillow next my own Is never rumpled by a shining head My singing birdling from its nest is flown; The little boy I used to kiss is dead! -- Selected. LITTLE TIM The following incident appears in the New York Mail and Express: The shiners and newsboys around the post office were surprised to see Little Tim coming among them in a quiet way, wishing to sell a kit of tools. "Here’s two brushes, a full box of blacking, a good, stout box, and the count goes for two shillings." "Goin’ away, Tim?" inquired one. "Not ’zactly, boys, but I want a quarter the awfullest kind just now." "Goin’ on a skursion?" asked another. "Not today, but I must have a quarter," he answered. One of the boys passed over the quarter and took the kit; and Tim walked straight to the countingroom of a daily paper, put down the money, and said: "I guess I kin write if you give me a pencil." With slow moving fingers he wrote a death notice. It went into the paper, but not as he wrote it. He wrote: "Died -- Litul Ted of Scarlet fever gone up to Hevin, left one brother." "Was it your brother?" asked the cashier. Tim tried to brace up, but he couldn’t. The big tears came up, his chin quivered, and he pointed to the Counter and gasped: "I- had to sell my kit to do it, b-but he had his arms around my neck when he d-died." He hurried away, but the news went to the boys, and they gathered into a group and talked. Tim had not been home an hour before a barefoot boy left the kit on the doorstep, and in the box was a bouquet of flowers, which had been purchased in the market by pennies contributed by the crowd of ragged but big-hearted boys. Did God ever make a heart which would not respond if the right chords were touched? A DEAF MUTE’S STORY "I have heard and read many pathetic stories," said Senator Hoar, " but none of them ever awoke so much sad sympathy as one which Professor Gallaudet related recently. The professor has a favorite pupil -- a little deaf mute boy, who is exceptionally bright. Mr. Gallaudet asked him if he knew the story of George Washington and the cherry tree. With his nimble fingers the little one said he did. Then he proceeded to repeat it. The gesticulations continued until the boy had informed the professor of the elder Washington’s discovery of the mutilated tree and of his quest for the mutilator. ’When George’s father asked him who hacked his favorite cherry tree,’ signaled the voiceless child, ’George put his hatchet in his left hand -- ’ Stop,’ interrupted the professor. ’Where do you get your authority for saying he took the hatchet in his left hand?’ ’Why,’ responded the boy (who knew nothing of speech) ’he needed his right hand to tell his father that he cut the tree.’ " -- Sel. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 25: 01.14. CHAPTER 14: EXPERIENCE - TO SAVE HIS MOTHER ======================================================================== Chapter 14: Experience - TO SAVE HIS MOTHER We have had a German baron among us, Baron von Karlstein, who has written a book about New York and its inhabitants. One of his anecdotes is very good and interesting: On Washington’s Birthday he was standing in a crowd on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fourteenth Street, waiting for the grand procession to arrive. The first drums were heard in the distance, when a young man, in his shirt-sleeves and hatless, passed through the assembled multitude and addressed the policeman who kept the people back. "Officer," he exclaimed, "my mother is sick in a house near Sixth Avenue; she has suddenly been taken much worse, and the doctor says that if the procession passes our house the noise will kill her." "O. K., young fellow," said the policeman, and left him to run up the avenue, where he stood some twenty feet before the procession and screamed "Halt!" holding up a light rattan cane with both hands. The word was passed along the line, an adjutant galloped forward, bent over his horse’s neck and exchanged a few words with the policeman. Suddenly the command, "Forward! march!" was heard and the immense body of men proceeded to the corner of Fourteenth Street, without any music except the slightest possible tapping of drums. Then came, "Right wheel!" and nearly fifty thousand men, whom immense crowds were waiting to see and cheer, wheeled up Fourteenth Street to Broadway, and down Broadway they marched without music until they were beyond the distance at which they might disturb the sick woman. No one asked why an army of well-drilled, admirably equipped men, many of them battle-scarred veterans, turned out of their path at the simple request of a single policeman, armed with but a little rattan cane. It would have been but a trifling matter for them to take Gotham; but no, the General in command, when he received the young man’s thanks, reminded him that his very natural request was addressed to gentlemen and soldiers. And a gentleman, be he a soldier or not, reveres the sacred name of mother. STORY OF A HUMAN LIFE A man was in his vessel with his wares, when suddenly a storm came down; he was wrecked. Finally, famished, naked and alone, he alone of all in the vessel was cast upon an island. He was glad to have his life. But what was his sorrow, when looking up, to see the natives coming in wild glee toward him. "I have escaped the sea," said he, "only to die miserably on the land." The natives picked him up, carried him to their city, clothed and fed him, put a crown on his head, and set him on a throne, and then stood by as if awaiting his commands. "This said he, "is the insane ceremony that precedes my destruction;" and he awaited with fear the next development. But as nothing further was done, and all seemed anxious to serve him while he sat there on his throne, he ventured to ask where he was and what all this meant. One man answered deferentially, "You are our king, and we are here to do your behests to the last letter." The man could scarce believe it so, but found, after a few weeks’ trial, that, verily, he was king. They did just as he said. The island, with its wealth and resources, was at his command. He could enjoy all at his absolute pleasure. But the whole matter seemed strange to him. So after two or three months he chanced to meet a venerable man, and asked him to explain this strange occurrence. "Oh," said his venerable subject, "there is nothing strange about it; you are our king. Each year a man is thrown upon our shore, and we pick him up and do with him just as we have done with you." "But," said our hero, "what do you do with your last king?" "Oh," said the old man, "as we find him naked, so at the year’s end we strip him again of all his royal surroundings, set him in a boat, and send him away to a barren, desolate island beyond the horizon there, where I suppose he perishes." "And," said our hero, "will you do so with me?" "Yes," was the old man’s answer. When our hero heard that he had but one brief year to reign, and that one third was gone already, he first said he would enjoy himself while it did last. "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." But soon wiser thoughts came. He sought the old counselor again. Said he: "Am I not king now?" "Yes," said the old man. "Can I do as I will?" "Absolutely," was the response. "Then," said he, "I will spend the rest of my time in fitting up that desolate island;" and at once he transported buildings, men, provisions -- everything he could -- and set up a new kingdom on the island beyond the horizon. His year ran out. it happened to him as the old man said it would. He was sent off in a boat alone, to be received with joyful welcome in the island-home he had made. UP IN HEAVEN A very strange and weird story comes from San Jose, California. A Mrs. Williams residing there relates the following about one of her children: "Daisy, my thirteen-year old daughter, died. She called us all to her bedside, and then she fell back and died. Neighbors came in and pronounced her dead. She was cold as ice, her eyes were glassy, her limbs perfectly stiff, and the usual deathly pallor covered her features. She ceased to breathe and her pulse quit beating. "She had been dead one-half hour," continued her mother, "when suddenly she opened her eyes and looked about the room smiling, and seeing her little sister, she said: ’Maudie, I have come back to stay a little while.’ Here the father took up the narrative, cautioning your reporter, however, to make no mistake, saying: "I want you to give just the same words she used, and you must not change them, for I fear some great calamity would happen to us if you did." "She then turned over in bed," continued Mr. Williams, "and slept till night At about nine o’clock in the evening she awoke, sat up in bed, and said: ’Mamma, I was dead, and have been in Heaven. I saw my little sister Anna there. She was singing and was just as happy as she could be, and when she saw me she flew to me and took me to Jesus.’ "Her mother asked her where Jesus was and how He looked. ’Oh, mamma, Jesus has feet and hands, and looks like any other man. I saw God near Jesus, and He was like a man, too. Jesus took sister and me by the hand and showed us all through Heaven. "’I can’t begin to tell you all I saw in Heaven. There were thousands and thousands of angels flying all around me, and soon I met grandma, who is an angel now, and she kissed me several times. I saw my uncle, too, and I knew him as soon as I saw him.’" Mr. Williams says she had never seen him on earth, neither had he ever described him to her, but he declared that she pictured him as exactly as any one could by looking at him. "’I saw Ethel Brown and had forgotten all about her until I saw her. Then I remembered how we used to play and go to school together at Dorland. I saw millions and millions of people in Heaven, but did not see many that I knew. Then Jesus took me by the hand and led me to where I could look down into Hell. It seemed to me that there were a great many people in Hell, but I saw only one there that I knew." Daisy told the name of the woman she saw, but Mrs. Williams said she would rather not give the name, as the woman had died a drunkard’s death. Mr. Williams said he told Daisy that she was surely mistaken, but Daisy was positive about the matter. "She also said: ’I saw her, and I know it was she. Oh, mamma, it’s an awful place. Satan himself was there, and called so loud that all the hollow depths of Hell resounded. I tell you I’m not going to go to Hell. I’m going to go to Heaven. Jesus told me I could now go back and tell my folks and everybody I saw what I had seen, and if they would not believe me He would send down my little sister Anna, and if they did not believe her, He would come Himself. ’Papa, do you believe what I have said? Well, papa, if you do, and also do not swear any more, the Savior said you could come to Heaven, too.’" Such are the wonderful words that Daisy said when she recovered consciousness, and they were repeated again and again before several witnesses. She lingered along for a month and it seemed at one time that she would recover, but she died recently and was buried in Oak Hill cemetery. All of her relatives and many living in the neighborhood believe that she actually was dead and came to life again. -- Arkansas Traveler. THE GREAT MASTER "I am my own master," cried a young man, proudly, when a friend tried to persuade him from an enterprise in which he had a hand. "I am my own master" "Did you ever consider what a responsible post that is?" "Responsibility -- is it?" "A master must lay out the work he wants done, and see that it is done right. He should try to secure the best ends by the best means. He must keep on the lookout against accidents and obstacles, and watch that everything goes straight, else he will fail." "Well!" "To be master of yourself you have your conscience to keep clear, your heart to cultivate, your temper to govern, your will to direct, and your judgment to instruct. You are master over a hard lot, and if you don’t master them they will master you." "That is so," said the young man. "Now, I could undertake no such thing," said his friend. "I should fail sure if I did. Saul wanted to be his own master, and failed. Herod did. Judas did. No man is fit for it. ’One is my master, even Christ.’ I work under God’s direction. When He is master, all goes right." -- Dr. Bacon. * * * A certain minister, when preaching on cleanliness, mentioned how he had seen a brass monkey in his town set up in a store with a cigar in its mouth. The cigar was lighted, and by machinery the monkey could draw the smoke from the cigar and puff it out again. The works stopped on one occasion, and the monkey was taken apart to discover the cause, when the works were found to be clogged and in a filthy condition. The moral was drawn by the preacher thus: "If tobacco smoke will stop the works of a brass monkey, what will it do for you?" -- Forward. IT IS FOLLY TO LOVE WEALTH MORE THAN CHRIST A gentleman traveling on the cars passed a beautiful residence and grounds, which called forth an exclamation of admiration from a friend sitting beside him, when the gentleman replied, "Yes, they are beautiful grounds, and they ought to be, considering what they cost the late owner." "How much did they cost?" asked the other. And the reply was given, "’They cost him his soul." * * * Experience is one of the chief elements of evangelical power. On critical occasions St. Paul, the master logician, when liberty, or even life, hung on the balance of a Roman governor’s will, and some most persuasive argument was needed, told the simple story of his conversion from being a persecutor to a preacher of the faith he once destroyed. In fact, his commission, three times renewed, was not to preach but to testify. "When the omnipresent Jesus," as Bishop Simpson graphically describes him, "standing as picket-guard for the little church at Damascus," took Saul of Tarsus prisoner, He said to him, "I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee." Ananias assured him that he should be a witness unto all men; and years afterward, while slumbering in the castle of Antonia, a prisoner, the Lord Jesus stood by him and said, "Be of good cheer, Paul, for as thou hast testified of Me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness also at Rome." -- Love Enthroned. A PEPPER CORN In a certain part of Scotland the poor people who lived on the land owned by a wealthy man used to come yearly to pay their rent. What do you think this was? Why, simply a pepper-corn. It has been the custom for a long series of years for each one to bring this peppercorn on a certain day. It did not cost the poor man anything; but it was a sign -- tribute which they paid him as their master. Now, it is just so with those who swear. Every oath is a pepper-corn which they give to the devil. It does neither party any good. It just shows who is their master. * * * There is no greater curse in the Church today than unholy marriages between Christian women and unholy men. I went up several flights of stairs one day with my wife, to visit a beautiful young woman, twenty-eight years of age; she had four children. She had once been a Christian and very happy in her Christian life, but now she was in misery and darkness. She had married an unbeliever. He had promised her everything; but the first Sabbath night after their marriage he forbade her to go to church, and she said, "I have lost my religion, and I fear I shall lose my soul." I could have wept tears of blood for that beautiful woman. I know of hundreds whose lives have been wrecked by unholy alliances. I would rather be a nice old maid all my life than marry the richest and best man on earth who is not a child of God and a consecrated Christian, THE WORD OF POWER According to an account by Dr. Harrower, an old negro was the mouthpiece of the word which led to the conversion of one of Methodism’s princeliest friends, John B. Cornell. One day this negro, whose acquaintance Mr. Cornell had made in going to and from his work, said to him: "Be you a Christian, honey?" "I don’t know," was the honest answer. "No right not to know, honey. Master Jesus pays them that serves Him, and they know it." That word stuck to him, and from that time he could not rest till he was a Christian and knew it. Which reminds us of the sable philosopher who soliloquized after the same manner; "I have heard people say, ’I think I have religion, but I don’t know;’ but I never heard people say, ’I think I have money in the bank, but don’t know.’ And the religion which people think they have, but don’t know is worth just as much to them as money in the bank which they think they have but don’t know." YOUR BROTHER IS DOWN THERE "A little while back," said the Rev. A. O. Brown, of London, in the course of an address delivered at the Mildmay Conference, "in the East of London, they were digging a deep drain in the neighborhood of Victoria Park. Some of the shoring gave way, and tons of earth fell down upon several men who were there at work. Of course, there was a good deal of excitement; and, standing by the brink was a man looking on -- I grant you with great earnestness -- at those who were attempting to dig out the earth. But a woman came up to him, put her hand on his shoulder, said, ’Bill, your brother is down there.’ Oh, you should have seen the sudden change! Off went his coat, and then he sprang into the trench and worked as if he had the strength of ten men. Oh, sirs, amid the masses of the poor, and the degraded, and the lost, your brother is there. We may fold our arms and say, ’Am I my brother’s keeper?’ Yes. It is not for us to shirk the responsibility. There lie our brethren, and we shall have to give an account concerning them." SINGING ALL THE TIME A little boy was hurt at a spinning mill in Dundee, and, after being taken home, he lingered for some time, and then died. I was in the mill when his mother came to tell that her little boy was gone. I asked her how he died. "He was singing all the time," said she. "Tell me what he was singing," I asked. "He was singing ’O the Lamb, the bleeding Lamb, The Lamb upon Calvary! The Lamb that was slain has risen again, And intercedes for me.’ "You might have heard him from the street, singing with all his might," she said, with tears in her eyes. "Had you a minister to see him?" "No." "Had you no one to pray with him?" "No." "Why was that?" "Oh, we have not gone to any church for several years," she replied, holding down her head; "but you know, he attended the Sabbath School, and learned hymns there, and he sang them to the last." Poor little fellow! he could believe in Jesus, and love Him through these precious hymns, and die resting "safe on His gentle breast" forever. GLORY EVERYWHERE A Methodist minister was much annoyed by one of his hearers frequently shouting out during the preaching, "Glory!" "Praise the Lord!" and the like. Though often reproved, the happy member persisted in expressing himself. One day the minister invited him to tea, and, to take his mind from the thoughts of praise, handed him a scientific book, full of dry facts and figures, to pass the time before tea. Presently the minister was startled by a sudden outburst of "Glory!" "Allelujah!" and "Praise the Lord!" "What is the matter, man?" asked the minister. "Why, this book says the sea is five miles deep!" "Well, what of that?" "Why, the Bible says my sins have been cast into the depths of the sea, and if it is that deep I need not be afraid of their ever coming up again. Glory!" The minister gave up hopes of reforming him. RUN OVER I heard a mother, a short time ago, give a thrilling account of a child of hers who had been run over by an express wagon in the streets of New York. The mother was quietly engaged in her domestic work when the dreadful news came: "Come to the police station; your child has been run over." She hastened to the stationhouse and found her child surrounded by strangers. The surgeon had not yet arrived. She was told that the wheels passed over his foot, but on examination she found no real injury. She said to the little darling: "Why, Willie, how could the wagon have passed over your foot and not have crushed it?" The child looked up in his mother’s face and said: "Mamma, I guess God put it in a hollow place." The child’s words lingered with me: "I guess God put it in a hollow place;" and then I thought of the crushing sorrows that pass over many, and when you fear that it will be impossible for them to recover from the blow, lo! you see them afterwards walking calmly about. Ah, there is a hollow place! If there were not, many would be crushed by life’s sorrows. There are souls as well as bodies that pass under vehicles of pain every day, and we wonder how they live. It must be as the child said, God has made a hollow place for them. One of the hollow places He has made, where hundreds and thousands are being saved today from the crushing sorrows, is this blessed truth, "All things work together for good to them that love God." But for this, many could not walk forth. And yet, to my mind, the "hollow place" is "Thy will be done." The Son of God Himself, when the crushing weight of a world’s guilt passed over His innocent soul, when He sweat, as it were, great drops of blood, falling down to the ground, was saved here. "Nevertheless, not my will, but Thine be done." And the strengthening angels were on the spot. LOSING ALL -- A FAMILY SCENE There is something exceedingly tender, as well as instructive, in the following, which we take from the Child’s Paper: A few years ago a merchant failed in business. He went home one evening, in great agitation. "What is the matter?" asked his wife. "I am beggared. I have lost my all!" he exclaimed, pressing his hand upon his forehead as if his brain was in a whirl. "All!" said his wife, "I am left." "All, papa!" said his eldest boy, "here am I." "And I, too, papa," said his little girl, running up and putting her arms around his neck. "I’s not lost, papa," repeated Eddie. "And you have your health left," said his wife. "And your two hands to work with, papa," said his eldest, "and I can help you." "And your two feet, papa, to carry you about." "And your two eyes to see with, papa," said little Eddie. "And you have God’s promises," said grandmother. "And a good God," said his wife. "And a Heaven to go to," said the little girl. "And Jesus who came to fetch us there," said his eldest. "God forgive me," said the poor merchant, bursting into tears. "I have not lost all. What are the few thousands which I called my all, to these precious things which God has left me?" and he clasped his family to his bosom, and kissed his wife and children with a thankful heart. Ah, no, there are many things more precious than gold and bank stocks, valuable as these may be in their place. When the "Central America" was foundering at sea, bags and purses of gold were strewn about the deck, as worthless as the mere rubbish. "Life, life!" was the prayer. To some of the wretched survivors, "Water, water!" was the prayer. "Bread, bread !" -- it was worth its weight in gold, if gold could have bought it. THOROUGH AND HONEST WORK A good lady employed a deacon of one of our Baptist churches to do some carpenter’s work, which amounted to quite a large sum of money; and she said, when speaking of the job, "I would just as soon hear Deacon pray now, as I would have done before he did that work for me." Thats it! We want deacons, and all other members of our churches, to do in all business relations just what is right. We believe in a practical religion. Spurgeon asked a young girl, who served as a domestic in one of his families, when she presented herself for membership in his church, what evidence she could give of having become a Christian, and she meekly answered, "I now sweep under the mats." And the renowned preacher said it was good evidence, and we agree with him. Real religion leads one to do work thoroughly. -- Watchman HOW HE CONVINCED THEM A famous artist, wandering in the mountains of Switzerland, met some officials who demanded his passport, writes Rev. H. W. Lathe, in "Chosen of God." "It is not with me, but my name is Dore." "Prove it, if you are," replied the incredulous officers. Taking a piece of paper, Dore hastily sketched a group of peasants standing by with such grace and skill that the man of the law exclaimed: "Enough, you must be Dore." "Write you name," is the challenge of the world to the follower of Christ. No awkward scrawl of a worldly life will do. Nothing but the grace and beauty of a character born of God will convince men that our profession is true. * * * "A physician found a patient shut up in a damp, chilly room. He said to him: ’No wonder you are sick in such a place. You don’t need medicine, but fresh air, sunshine, and exercise. He took that hypochondriac out of doors. He made him walk and ride about. Soon he was well again, and the doctor left him. But in a little while he was sent for. His morbid and perverse patient was lying in the close, damp chamber as before, shivering and moaning. ’Oh, doctor, he cried, ’that sure cure of yours has failed, and I am just as bad as ever!’ ’Did you keep yourself in the sunshine?’ ’No, I thought that I had taken enough of it, not only to make me well, but to keep me so, and then I came back to bed again.’" THE OTHER SINGER No bracelets nor necklaces had she, no white dress had she ever seen, and a common white muslin, even, she had never worn, she was barefooted, and though the morning was warm, she had wrapped an old shawl around her to hide the holes in her dress. A neat little girl was Mandy, or at least she would have been, if she had known how; she always washed her feet in the fast-running gutter puddles, after a hard rain, just because she liked to see them look clean; but she had no needle and thread at home, nor patches; and her work among the barrels, picking for rags, was not the cleanest in the world. Yet on this very afternoon in which Miss Cecilia was getting ready for the concert, and frowning over her white silk, because the trail did not hang quite as she liked, did this little girl, Mandy, give a concert. Her audience was an organ-grinder who stopped to rest a bit, an old woman who was going by with a baby, and a little boy with a load of chips. The words she sang were: "There is a fountain filled with blood, Drawn from Immanuel’s veins." And the chorus, repeated as many times as did Miss Cecilia’s: "I’ve been redeemed, I’ve been redeemed, I’ve been redeemed." "Where did you get that?" asked the organ-grinder. "What?" said Mandy, startled, and turning quickly.. . " "That; that you’re singing. "Oh, I got it at Sunday School." And she rolled out the wonderful news, "I’ve been redeemed, I’ve been redeemed -- been washed in the blood of the Lamb." "I don’t s’pose you understand what you’re singing about?" said the organ-grinder. "Don’t I, though," said Mandy, with an emphatic little nod of her head. "I know all about it, and its all true. I belong to Him; He is going to make me clean inside, and dress me in white some day, to stay with Him for ever and ever. ’I’ve been redeemed, I’ve been redeemed -- been washed in the blood of the Lamb.’" Away down the street, as far as the organ-grinder could hear, as he trudged on, there came back to him the faint sound of that chorus, "I’ve been redeemed. " Nobody threw bouquets to Mandy; nobody said she had a sweet voice. But the organ-grinder kept saying the words over and over to himself; they were not new to him. Years ago, his old mother used to sing those first ones, "There is a fountain." He had never heard the chorus before, but he knew it fitted, he knew all about it, his mother had taught him, and away back, when he was a little boy, a minister had said to him once, "My boy, you must be sure to find the fountain and get washed." He never had. He was almost an old man; and it was years since he had thought about it, but Mandy’s song brought it all back. Was that the end of it? Oh, no. The organ-grinder kept thinking, and thinking, until by and by he resolved to do. He sought the fountain, and found it, and now, if he knew the tune, could sing, "I’ve been redeemed." IT HAD TO DO IT One of the speakers, referring to the dire necessity which forced our forefathers to do the work they did, said it reminded him of the story of the country boy, who was boasting of the prowess of his dog in chasing a woodchuck. The dog got between the animal and its hole, so that it was compelled to run for dear life. The dog was rapidly gaining ground when the woodchuck came to a tree, which it immediately climbed. "But," said a listener, "woodchucks can’t climb trees." "I know they can’t," replied the boy, "but, you see, this one had to!" That, the speaker urged, was the way with the first settlers of this country, they had to do the unexpected and impossible (?) at times! ======================================================================== CHAPTER 26: 01.15. CHAPTER 15: CONSCIENCE - "GOOD-BYE," ======================================================================== Chapter 15: Conscience - "Good-bye," "Good-bye," I said to Conscience, ’Good-bye, for aye and aye;" And I put her hands off harshly And turned my face away; And Conscience, smitten sorely, Returned not from that day. But a time came when my spirit Grew weary of its pace, And I cried, "Come back, my Conscience, For I long to see thy face;" But Conscience cried, "I cannot, Remorse sits in my place" -- Paul Lawrence Dunbar INFIDELITY NOT FOR STORMS That famous son of thunder, Benjamin Abbott, tells of a young man on one of his circuits who, while wasting his health and substance in riotous living, boldly avowed his disbelief in future punishment. Going to sea in a vessel commanded by a pious captain, he found himself one day in imminent danger of sinking with the sloop in a fearful gale. Then he was greatly terrified; and when the captain asked him what he feared, since he did not believe in Hell, he replied, weeping, and wringing his hands, "Oh! that will do well enough to talk about on land, but it will not do for a storm at sea." This was the confession of an awakened conscience. A sleeping conscience can make light of the doctrine of retribution; but when God quickens it into life, it bears unmistakable testimony by its terrors to the truth of the doctrine. JESUS CAN SAVE TO THE UTTERMOST The story of the conversion of Valentine Burke, the burglar, is one of the most remarkable instances of God’s power to save to the uttermost. Twenty-five years ago Mr. Moody was preaching a series of evangelistic sermons in St. Louis and The Globe-Democrat was reporting every word he said. Burke had served twenty or more years in prison. He was a daring, profane and ugly man to deal with. Prof. H. M. Hamill, D. D., in The Epworth Herald repeats the story Mr. Moody told him, in these words: One day somebody threw a Globe-Democrat into his cell, and the first thing that caught his eye was a big headline like this: "How the jailer at Philippi got caught." It was just what Burke wanted, and he sat down with a chuckle to read the story of the jailer’s discomfiture. "Philippi!" he said, "that’s up in Illinois. I’ve been in that town." Somehow the reading had a strange look out of the usual newspaper way. It was Moody’s sermon of the night before. "What rot is this?" asked Burke. "Paul and Silas -- a great earthquake -- what must I do to be saved? Has The Globe-Democrat got to printing such stuff?" He looked at the date. Yes, it was Friday morning’s paper, fresh from the press. Burke threw it down with an oath, and walked about his cell like a caged lion. By and by he took up the paper, and read the sermon through. The restless fit grew on him. Again and again he picked up the paper and read its strange story. It was then that a something, from whence he did not know, came into the burglar’s heart, and cut its way to the quick. "What does it mean?" he began asking. "Twenty years and more I’ve been burglar and jail-bird, but I never felt like this. What is it to be saved, anyhow? I’ve lived a dog’s life, and I’m getting tired of it. If there is such a God as that preacher is telling about, I believe I’ll find it out if it kills me to do it." He found it out. Away toward midnight, after hours of bitter remorse over his wasted life, and lonely and broken prayers, the first time since he was a child at his mother’s knee, Burke learned that there is a God who is able and willing to blot out the darkest and bloodiest record at a single stroke. Then he waited for day, a new creature, crying and laughing by turns. Next morning when the guard came around Burke had a pleasant word for him, and the guard eyed him in wonder. When the sheriff came, Burke greeted him as a friend, and told him how he had found God after reading Moody’s sermon. "Jim," said the sheriff to the guard, "you better keep an eye on Burke. He’s playing the pious dodge, and first chance he gets he will be out of here." In a few weeks Burke came to trial; but the case, through some legal entanglement, failed, and he was released. Friendless, an ex-burglar in a big city, known only as a daring criminal, he had a hard time for months of shame and sorrow. Men looked at his face when he asked for work, and upon its evidence turned him away. But poor Burke was as brave as a Christian as he had been as a burglar, and struggled on. Moody told how the poor fellow, seeing that his sin-blurred features were making against him, asked the Lord in prayer; "if He wouldn’t make him a better looking man, so that he could get an honest job." You will smile at this, I know, But something or somebody really answered that prayer, for Moody said a year from that time when he met Burke in Chicago he was as fine a looking man as he knew. The St. Louis sheriff made him his deputy, and several years afterward when Moody was passing through the city, he stopped off an hour to meet Burke, who loved nobody as he did the man who had converted him. Moody told how he found him in a close room upstairs in the court-house serving as trusted guard over a bag of diamonds. Burke sat with a pack of the gems in his lap and a gun on the table. There were $60,000 worth of diamonds in the sack. "Moody," he cried, "see what the grace of God can do for a burglar. Look at this! The sheriff picked me out of his force to guard it." Then he cried like a child as he held up the glittering stones for Moody to see. Many were converted through him, and when he died, the rich and poor, the saints and the sinners, attended his funeral in great numbers. The big men of the city could not say enough over the coffin of Valentine Burke. And to this day there are not a few in that city whose hearts soften with a strange tenderness when the name of the burglar is recalled. THE GREAT PRAYER-MEETING During a series of gracious revival meetings I was assisted by a lay brother whose great gifts were prayer and house-to-house visitation. One day he visited a home where all were busy as bees. They were too much engaged with the things of the world to allow him even a few minutes for prayer with them. Leaving the home with a sad and heavy heart, he handed them a tract of which the following is a copy: "A great prayermeeting, to be largely attended by the royalty and nobility of all nations, will be held on the eve of the Day of the Lord. The kings of the earth and great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains and others of the ungodly, who seldom attend prayermeetings now, will be there to lead in prayer. ’And they shall say to the mountains and rocks, fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb.’ (Revelation 6:17) ’Flee They minded earthly things. But, dear reader, how about yourself? Do the cares of this life choke your prayer life? Take care, take care, lest some sad day you will be altogether smothered by the devil and asphyxiated by the very gas from Hell. How shall you escape if you neglect to call upon the Lord while He is near? Your time to pray is coming and you will either call upon the Lord now, or cry with remorseful agony unto the mountains and the hills hereafter. But it will then be of no avail. Escape will be impossible, but, thank God, now "whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved." -- Ex. PARROT’S REVIVAL At one of our home missionary meetings some years ago the late James Earnest Clapman related a most interesting and instructive incident He said, "I had preached on Sunday evening in one of our large circuit chapels, and among others who came forward to shake hands at the close of the service was a man who made this remark, ’I was converted in Parrott’s Revival.’ When I got to my host’s, I asked the meaning, and this was told me -- Some years ago, we had on the Plan a village in which we seemed thoroughly beaten, and, at the Local Preachers’ Quarterly Meeting, it was often suggested that the time had came to abandon the village. The brethren hesitated to do this, because they feared it would break the heart of the dear old saint who had stood by our cause for many years. And so they resolved to try again. Then the old man, whose name was Parrott, like Jacob at Peniel, wrestled with God in mighty prayer. He got the victory, and the assurance of a revival. His faith never wavered, although he never lived to see it. He told the people, ’It’s coming, it’s coming’ until it got to be a by-word, and the boys would shout after him, ’It’s coming.’ After his death, at an ordinary service conducted by a local preacher, the mighty power of God was felt, and two persons were converted. The local preacher went on the Monday to continue the services, and again there were conversions. Then one of the converted ones shouted, ’This is what old Parrott said would come,’ and the cry through all the countryside was, ’It’s come,’ and a wonderful revival was the issue." We never fail utterly in any place if we have one man thoroughly in earnest. A solemn responsibility is now resting on all members of our churches. There is a tide in the affairs of our churches, taken at the flood, leads on to revival, but omitted, the curse of Meros becomes our portion. -- Out and Out. PORT YOUR HELM, OR, THE POWER OF CONSCIENCE Several years ago a prize of five thousand dollars in gold was offered to the sailing vessel that would make the quickest time from Liverpool to New York. Several entered into the race and all left the coast of England at the same hour. When the voyage was about half completed, one day while waves were quite high and ocean rough, the captain of one of the racing vessels saw a drowning man floating on a light spar, and true to his better nature, he cried, "Port your helm, there’s a man drowning." Then as the towering waves hid the man from sight, he thought of the gold, and cried to the man at the wheel, "Steady on your course." Again a rising wave brought the man into view, and the captain cried, "Port your helm, there is a man drowning." The vessel veered around under the impulse of the helmsman’s hand, but again the captain thought of the gold, and greed crushing the noble impulse to save, he cried, "Steady on your course." The third time this was enacted, when the drowning man was left to die. The captain was first to reach the Atlantic port and won the coveted five thousand dollars. Some years after an old man lay dying on a cot in an insane asylum. For years he had been insane, and his one cry was, "Port you helm, there’s a man drowning." "Port your helm, there’s a man drowning." Death is now not far off, strength is almost gone, he can just whisper, and his last cry is, "Port your helm, there’s a man drowning." Conscience, with its wired lashes, had driven the captain day by day -- faithfully depicting the scene when he had let a man die for love of gold, until reason tottered from its throne and left him an awful wreck in a mad-house in New York. HE ROSE AGAIN An Arab of the streets stood looking in a window that exhibited a picture of the Crucifixion. He gazed so intently and seemed so deeply interested that a gentleman noticing him said, "My lad, what is that picture about?" and the boy, as though pitying him, said, "Why, mister, don’t you know, that’s Jesus. He was a good man, He loved sinners, and the Jews hated Him, and took Him and nailed Him to that cross. Don’t you see the blood on His hands, and on His feet?" "Oh, yes," said the man, "I see it," now very much interested, and waiting for the boy to go on with the story. The boy was willing; he pitied such ignorance as this man displayed; he wanted him to know. "See that crown on His head, mister? they made that of thorns, and the blood trickled down over his face. Yes, sir, and they thrust a spear in His side, and blood and water came out. They killed him, sir, they killed Him." "Well, where did you learn all this, my boy?" "Down at the Mission Sunday School. I go every Sunday, sir." "All right," said the gentleman, and he went on his way thankful for missions that taught the children until they could give such an account of the death of Jesus as that lad had done. He had gone but a block down the street, when he heard the patter of feet on the pavement, as the boy came running after him, hailing him at the top of his voice. "Say, mister, hold up, hold up. They did kill Him, but He rose again -- He rose again." Yes, the boy was right, there is an incompleteness about the message unless we tell it all. Thank God Jesus rose again, and ever lives above for us. JESUS NEVER TROUBLED ME SINCE During a revival in Princeton, when Dr. Witherspoon was at the head of the College, Aaron Burr, at nineteen years of age, was under deep conviction. Many of the students were yielding themselves to God and the entire school knew the work was in divine order. Burr, much troubled, went to a member of the faculty and asked him what he thought of the work, and received the reply that it was "all excitement, nothing in it soon wear off," etc. But there was a man of God very much interested in Burr, and he pled with him to yield. In answer Burr said: "I am going home for two weeks, and when I return I will decide this matter." Two weeks elapsed, and he returned and was again accosted by his godly friend, who earnestly besought him to give himself to God. Burr, under the stress of intense feeling, said, "Sir, I have made up my mind that if Jesus Christ will leave me alone, I will leave Him alone." The meeting closed and Burr went out into the world to become a man of affairs, a politician, in a certain sense, a statesman, and also a traitor to his country. He left America, went to France, spent several years there, at last coming back to New York. Here he became acquainted with a local preacher, a man of culture, toward whom Burr was attracted because of his rare conversational powers. The preacher was much interested in Burr and sought an opportunity to speak to him in regard to his soul, saying, "Mr. Burr. I have a friend I would like to introduce you to." In his courtly manner, Burr replied, "Certainly, sir, if he is anything like you, I would be glad to meet him." "Well, Mr. Burr," the preacher replied, "my Friend is the Lord Jesus Christ." Instantly Burr’s face seemed to turn to an ashen gray, a look of hate came to his eyes, and in a voice of suppressed feeling he replied, "Sixty-four years ago I settled that matter. I told Jesus Christ if He would leave me alone I would leave Him alone, and He has never troubled me since." The Spirit of the Lord departed from him forever when, at nineteen years of age, he made that awful decision. EXPLORING CANAAN "The light of the Word shines brighter and brighter, As wider and wider God opens my eyes. My trials and burdens seem lighter and lighter, And fairer and fairer the heavenly prize. "The wealth of this world seems poorer and poorer, As farther and farther it fades from my sight; The prize of my calling seems surer and surer, As straighter and straighter I walk in the light "My waiting on Jesus is dearer and dearer As longer and longer I lie on His breast; Without Him I’m nothing seems clearer and clearer, And more and more sweetly in Jesus I rest "My joy in my Savior is growing and growing, As stronger and stronger I trust in His Word; My peace like a river is flowing and flowing, As harder and harder I lean on the Lord. "My praise and thanksgiving are swelling and swelling, As broader and broader the promise I prove; The wonderful story I’m telling and telling; And more and more sweetly I rest in His love." DIVORCED, BUT - A few years ago my doorbell rang and a woman was ushered in, who evidently was laboring under deep feeling. She said, "Elder, I want to see you." "All right, step into the parlor." "But I must see you alone. I am in trouble." Wife stepped out, and this troubled woman began her story, but it was very evident she was reluctant to tell it all, and so went away without any help. A few weeks passed away and again this same woman, evidently in greater trouble than ever, called at the parsonage. "I must unburden. I must have peace. I have no rest. What shall I do? Oh, tell me," was her cry. Then she began, and this time she told it all. A few years before, she was married, lived with her husband a year and grew tired of the relation, leaving him and securing a divorce. In the course of time she married again, and this time seemed more happily mated. She attended church, was wrought upon by the Spirit, gave herself to God, and without anyone saying one word, immediately became much troubled about her marriage relations, and she wanted to know, "What must I do, what shall I do? I cannot live with him and please God." Now mark you, this woman had a divorce, just as lawful as the courts could make it, no plan in it, and yet there was unrest and trouble and darkness, until her, in the sight of God, adulterous relations ceased, then came peace. See Matthew 19:9. A SPIRIT-ENERGIZED CONFESSION "God sent me here. Can I see you?" was the exclamation of a woman who, with tear-stained cheeks, waited my appearance at the door. "I cannot rest until I confess it. I had no bringing up, no one told me about God, no one ever taught me to pray, and when I was a young girl I was married to a man -- an awful sinner. He was untrue to me and I secured a divorce from him. Then a man paid attention to me and betrayed me, and a child was born. I did not want that child and I put my fingers around its neck and strangled it to death, and God made me come over and confess it." How I pitied her as I looked at her in her tearful agony -- young, handsome, attractive and poor. God help the girl who is poor and handsome -- the lustful hounds of Hell will be on her track till her ruin is accomplished, unless she becomes acquainted with the saving grace of God. I said, "Come into the sittingroom (she had been standing in the hall while talking) and wife and I will pray for you." We knelt together and prayed. Then from her heart came forth one of the most touching appeals to the throne of grace to which I ever listened -- a cry for forgiveness, an acknowledgment of sin, a pleading in Jesus’ name, until the answer came, the burden disappeared, and God gave victory. From that time that woman has walked with God, shouting the victory, and an ensample to believers, mighty in prayer, effective in testimony, and an honor to the Church. "Thanks be unto God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." * * * A certain young man in a well known school was an excellent mathematician and was well liked among his fellows, who enjoyed watching him working out problems. One day a man came along who gave him this question, "What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" It was a question which he had never much thought about before, but it so touched him that ever afterward he lived a good Christian life. PRAY! PRAY! PRAY! Mrs. E. E. Williams-Childs tells in the Christian Standard of an affecting incident that happened in her own neighborhood a few years since. She had returned from an evangelistic tour, wearied in body, and was preparing for an evening of quiet and rest, when she was called to visit the son of a neighbor, who was dying. Quickly arraying herself for the call, she was soon in the home, and as she ascended the stairs she heard a hoarse whisper from the lips of the dying man, "Pray -- pray -- pray?’ Entering the room she was met by the mother of the dying man, who said, "Oh, Mrs. Williams, pray for Charlie, pray for him at once." Mrs. Williams is one of God’s chosen women, gifted in prayer and known as such to friends and neighbors. She knelt by the side of the poor fellow soon to enter the eternal world and upon her ears fell again and again the cry, "Pray -- pray -- pray! She began, but there was no unction. The heavens seemed as brass, her prayers went no higher than her head. Soon she ceased to pray -- and the mother said, "Oh, Mrs. Williams, you will pray for Charlie!’ Urged by the entreaties of that mother she assayed again to pray, and with the same result. Rising from her knees she was about to pass from the room when the brother who had called for her said, "You will not go without praying for Charlie?" and again she tried to pray, while the dying man in tones hoarse and low kept crying, "Pray -- pray -- pray." But she, gifted though she was, and urged by mother and brother, and by a soul soon to stand before God, yet could not pray. As she passed down the stairs and out the door, the last sound she heard was the voice in awful whispers, "Pray -- pray -- pray." Would you know the secret of the awful fact. Some years before, while in a revival meeting, this young man, hearing many of his companions asking for prayer, joined with a number of sneering, godless young folks in the vow, "We will never ask any one to pray for us." In the presence of the awful need of a soul entering eternity the vow was repented of, but too late -- and there was no answer, though the last words from his lips were the oft-repeated ones, "Pray -- pray -- pray." MOSES WOULD PRAY, EVEN IF HE HAD TO BLEED AND DIE FOR IT Moses was a negro slave who lived in the South before the war. He was a joyful Christian and a faithful servant. His master, however, was in need of money, and one day a young planter who was an infidel, came to buy Moses. The price was agreed upon and the Christian slave was sold to the infidel. But in parting with him the master said, "You will find Moses a good worker, and you can trust him; he will suit you in every respect but one." "And what is that?" said the master. "He will pray and you can’t break him of it; but that is his only fault." "I’ll soon whip that out of him," remarked the infidel. "I fear not," said the former master, "and would not advise you to try it; he would rather die than give it up." Moses proved faithful to the new master, the same as he had to the old. The master soon got word that he had been praying, and on calling him said, "Moses, you must not pray any more, we can’t have any praying around here, never let me hear any more about this nonsense." Moses replied, "O Massa, I loves to pray to Jesus and when I pray I loves you and missus all the more, and can work all the harder for you." But he was sternly forbidden ever to pray any more, under penalty of a severe flogging. That evening, when the day’s work was done, he talked to his God, like Daniel of old, as he had aforetime. Next morning he was summoned to appear before his master, who demanded of him why he had disobeyed him. "O Massa, I has to pray, I can’t live without it," said Moses. At this the master flew into a terrible rage and ordered Moses to be tied to the whipping post, and his shirt off. He then applied the rawhide with all the force he possessed, until his young wife ran out in tears and begged him to stop. The man was so infuriated that he threatened to punish her next, if she did not leave him, then continued to apply the lash until his strength was exhausted. Then he ordered the bleeding back washed in salt water and the shirt on, and the poor slave to be about his work. Moses went away singing in a groaning voice: "My suffering time will soon be o’er, When I shall sigh and weep no more." He worked faithfully all that day, though in much pain, as the blood oozed from his back where the lash had made long, deep furrows. Meantime God was working on the master. He saw his wickedness and cruelty to that poor soul, whose only fault had been his fidelity, and conviction seized upon him; by night he was in great distress of mind. He went to bed but could not sleep. Such was his agony at midnight that he woke his wife and told her that he was dying. "Shall I call in a doctor?" she said. "No, no; I don’t want a doctor -- is there any one on the plantation that can pray for me? I am afraid that I am going to Hell." "I don’t know of any one," said his wife, "except the slave you punished this morning." "Do you think he would pray for me?" he anxiously inquired. "Yes, I think he would," she replied. "Well, send for him quickly." On going after Moses they found him on his knees in prayer, and when called he supposed it was to be punished again. On being taken to the master’s room he found him writhing in agony. The master groaning, said, "Moses, can you pray for me?" "Yes, bless de Lord, Massa, I’se been prayin’ for you all nigh" and at this dropped on his knees and, like Jacob of old, wrestled in prayer; and before the breaking of the day witnessed the conversion of both master and mistress. Master and slave embraced, race differences and past cruelty were swept away by the love of God and tears of joy were mingled. Moses was immediately set free. He never worked another day on the plantation. The master took Moses and went out to preach the Gospel; they traveled all over the South, witnessing to the power of Christ to save to the uttermost. This is what the love of God will do for a person. THE BABY’S SHOES Scream after scream rang through the jail. It was a woman’s shrill voice, and one of the deputies said with a laugh, "Mag has the jim-jams again." Over in Cell 87 Mag twisted and writhed in a vain attempt to break the straps which fastened her to her cot, cursed and called on the white-headed matron to "chase that little red beast out of the corner; pull that wire out of my mouth." Begged for water, whisky, a knife to cut her throat, and raved incessantly. "George," said the police matron, "I want you to take Maggie to my room. I believe she would do better there. Prison surroundings affect women unpleasantly." "Mrs. Barnes, you don’t want a bloat like Mag in your room; she is a hard egg; nothing will make her better. Prison is too good for her." The matron was undaunted. "Are you going to do what I tell you? I have charge of the women prisoners." Abashed, they carried the wild creature over to a plain little room. The matron gave her medicine, strong coffee, stroked her soft, yellow hair and sang softly, "Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber." On and on she sang; the screaming and cursing stopped. Mag choked and sobbed and said eagerly, "Don’t sing like that; please don’t sing like that!" "Don’t you like me to sing, Maggie?" she queried. "Yes, oh, yes; but not that. I used to sing that to my baby before she died. I was a good woman then. Oh, my God, what am I now?" and the poor woman sobbed bitterly. The matron’s kind eyes were misty. "I had a baby once; he died," she said simply. "I have his little shoes here on the mantle. He never wore but one pair. I’ll show them to you." A step to the mantlepiece and back, and the little worn shoes were clasped tightly in the criminal hands. Mag cried softly now; only the matron’s voice broke the silence as she read that story of ineffable love -- the story of the Prodigal Son. She read the twenty-first verse. Then the broken voice checked her. "That’s me. I am no more worthy. I could only begin over" The next half-hour witnessed a scene in that little room which caused the angels to rejoice. That was the beginning. When Mag left the jail the matron pressed a little paper-wrapped parcel in her hands. "Keep it, my dear; it is for him. I know he would like you to have it." Five dollars out of Mrs. Barnes’ scanty salary were tucked in the baby’s shoes. The end! There is no end. Margaret Adams has an open door and helping hand for sinful women, and the hundredfold increase is more than realized. But time keeps no record of deeds of love. Angels rejoice throughout all eternity, and, instead of "finished," God writes "continued." -- Sel. SORE JAWS Let all things be done decently and in order, because order, we are told, is Heaven’s first law. To give a present of money to a rich man would be inconsistent, as also would be the issuing of a license to go hungry to a pinched and starving beggar. To preach holiness to unrepenting rebels, and plainness of garb to severe examples of funeral and ill-fitting attire, would be a useless expenditure of energy and breath. The following, which we clip from the Advance, indicates that it is not only inconsistent, but hazardous to allow one’s zeal to mistake a suffering mortal, just escaped from a dental chair, for a victim of drunkenness. It points an excellent moral: A reporter is said to have once asked John Jacob Astor if it were true that he had twenty-seven automobiles, five chauffeurs, thirty-three horses and forty-eight carriages. Mr. Astor interrupted: "Statistics are always dry, stupid and even irritating. Let me tell you a story of a temperance exhorter who, while in the suburbs, found a man lying full length on the path with flushed face and tousled hair. He touched him with his foot to rouse him and said in a voice full of gentle reproach: ’My friend, did you ever pause to consider that if you had placed the price of one glass of whiskey out at compound interest at the time of the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon you would now have $7,816,472?’ The red-faced man lifted his head, brushed the place where the other’s foot had touched him and replied: ’No, I haven’t worked that out, but I’m something of a statistician myself, and if you don’t go back 119 feet in seven seconds I’ll hit you forty-three times and make you see 17,598 stars, for I’ve just had six teeth pulled for $8 that’s $1.33 a tooth -- and I tell you, you old meddler, I’m in no mood for fooling.’" ANYTHING BUT THE BIBLE It is related of Napoleon, that When Marshal Duroc, an avowed infidel, was once telling a very improbable story, giving his opinion that it was true, the Emperor remarked: "There are some men capable of believing everything but the Bible." This remark finds abundant illustrations in every age. There are men all about us, at the present day, who tell us they cannot believe the Bible; but their capabilities for believing everything which opposes the Word of God are enormous. The most fanciful speculations that bear against the Bible, pass with them for demonstrated facts. The greediness with which they devour the most far-fetched stories -- the flimsiest arguments, if they only appear to militate against the Word of God, is astonishing. A CHURCH, OR A SOCIAL CLUB? "If you can’t close the theaters you can keep out of them. While you have the Thaw case before you that is enough evidence that the atmosphere of the theater is enough to ruin a woman and murder a man. I don’t think that my Jesus would spend His evenings at the theater giggling at girls dressed in tights. -- If you don’t see a difference in your churches, I do. The churches are becoming more and more worldly. The church parlors are being desecrated by dances and card-parties, and prayermeetings are going out of date. There is far more worldliness then there was ten years ago. Then the weekly prayermeeting was a great thing and was attended by half the membership. Where are the members now? They are playing whist -- gambling, or dancing, or at the theater. I read a notice not long ago which read, ’A progressive whist party will take place as usual on Friday night, admission 50 cents.’ I protest that that ’church’ is not a Lord’s house, but has become an ecclesiastical refrigerator. -- I read in one of your papers that some of your ladies have been visiting certain districts and that they were told by a keeper of one of these brilliantly lighted places that the girls who go there are trained in dance halls and theaters. And yet you are having dances in your so-called Christian home and church parlors. When your churches are given up to that purpose you may write on the doors that glory has departed. To do your part toward preventing the downfall of girls, you men should refuse to ask another man’s sister to go to a dance. If you don’t stand for that you are not worthy of the name you bear." THAT SOBERED ME A gentleman, high in commercial circles in a Western city, was relating some of his experiences to a group of friends. "I think," said he, "the most singular thing that ever happened to me was in Hawaii. "My father was a missionary in those islands, and I was born there. I came away at an early age, however, and most of my life has been spent in this country; but when I was a young man -and rather a tough young man, too, I may say -- I went back there on a visit. The first thing I did was to drink more than I should have done. While I was in this condition an old man, a native, persuaded me to go home with him. He took me into his house, bathed my head, gave me some coffee, and talked soothingly and kindly to me. "’Old man,’ I said, ’what are you doing all this to me for?’ "’Well,’ he answered, ’I’ll tell you. The best friend I ever had was a white man, an American. I was a poor drunkard. He made a man of me, and I hope, a Christian. All I am I owe to him. Whenever I see an American in your condition I feel like doing all I can for him, on account of what that man did for me.’ "This is a little better English than he used, but it is the substance of it. "’What was the name of the man ?’ I asked him. "’Mr. Blank, a missionary.’ "’God help me,’ I said. ’He was my father.’ "Gentlemen, that sobered me -- and, I believe made a man of me. It is certain that whatever I am today I owe to that poor old Sandwich Islander." THE NEIGHBORHOOD TRAGEDY They looked like children, he and she, when they moved into the forlorn little house on the roadside in our village, writes a woman contributor to the New York Tribune. "Just married, of course," said the gossips. "Shall we call? Better wait, perhaps, till we know who they are and what his business is." So no one disturbed them. The young husband went to town early every morning, and the little wife sat alone on the porch and awaited his return. They planted morning-glories and nasturtiums, and hung a birdcage among the vines, so the place blossomed into new life, and looked as it never had done before. The young people seldom left home; only on Sundays, they walked to the church and sat in a far back pew, hand in hand, through the service. One day I saw the doctor’s carriage in front of the little porch. "Dear me," I thought, "I wonder what is the matter there? I must surely look in tomorrow." I did. But alas! a grim visitor, who will not be denied, had been before me. As no one responded to my knock, I opened the front door and found my way to the sittingroom. In an instant I knew what had happened. There sat the poor boy alone, his face buried in his hands, his whole frame shaking with dry tearless sobs. I put my hand on his shoulder. He was younger than my own son. I whispered: "Oh, let me help you, if I can." "Oh," he groaned, "if you had only come before. She was so lonely! She longed so for a woman’s hand and a woman’s voice!" "Yes," he added, "you can help me. Tear down the flowers when I am gone; they were hers. And give away her bird. I shall never see this place again after today." The sorrowful departure took place that very afternoon, and I did as he requested. I never pass the bare porch of that house without remembering that I had practically denied the kindness and the sympathy so sorely needed and craved by one of my sisters. -- Sel. BRUDDER JONES’ OLE PIPE "I say, Brudder Jones. I thought you belonged to de chu’ch." "So I does. "Den why are you suckin’ dat ole pipe?" "Kaint a feller smoke an’ b’long to de chu’ch?" "Well, y-a-a-s, he kin b’long to de chu’ch buildin’, but never to de chu’ch triumphant." "How you make dat out?" "Well, Brudder Jones, look at it dis way: How would you look walkin’ de golden streets ob de New Jerusalem wid de pipe in yo’ mouf?" "I’d snatch it out berry quick." "Yes, but what would you do wid it? You want to fro it out ob sight; no place to hide it; dar yo’ is! You hab been gibben a nice white garment, an’ dar ain’t any pocket in it to put de old pipe in, so you’ll hab to hide it in yo’ hand." "I say, Brudder Perkins, isn’t yo’ gitting a little pussenal in yo’ remahks?" "But dat ain’t all; bymby you’ll want to smoke, an’ you’ll walk de golden streets tryin’ to find a place to hide, so you’ kin smoke, ’cause you’s ’fraid to have decent saints an’ angels ketch you practisin’ sech a dirty habit. De streets ob dat city is about fifteen himdred miles long, and if you go to de end ob de strec you would fotch up agin de wall dat is made ob jasper an’ so high yo’ kaint climb ober, an’ no bole in de wall to stick yo’ haid for a smoke, an’ you will want a smoke so bad you’ll be tempted to pizen de air ob de golden city. Den you’ll want a match to light up, an’ it will come ober you all ob a sudden dat dar ain’t no matches in you new cloes, an’ no brimstone in Heaben. Den you’d wish you was back in dis ole world again wid de ole close, an’ matches, an’ pipe so you could take some comfut." "Brudder Perkins, I kaint afford to lose dem golden streets for de old pipe, so here goes pipe, terbacker, matches and all." "Dat is right. If you was going to a weddin’ whar would you fix up?" "At home, ob course." "Just so. Now if you spec to git to Heaben yo must get ready down heah, for de chu’ch triumphant is de folks dat triumph ober all dare sins by de help oh de lord, ober all nasty habits, and lib just as clean as possible, for de Word says, ’Let him that is filthy be filthy still, and let him that is holy be holy still.’ So if you lub to use de debil’s cologne, you will hab to go whar ’de brimstone kinder kills de smell!" BOB’S RELIGION Bob began to work at a salary of $35.00 per month, and when he drew his first month’s salary he counted out his money, and laid aside $3.50. "Now," said he, "that is my church money for this month." "You don’t mean to give that much out of your own month’s salary, do you?" said some one. "No," replied Bob; "I am not giving that. I am only paying my debt; that tenth belongs to the Lord. After that comes the giving." After that Bob got a raise to $50 per month. Some of the boys said, "Well, Bob, I suppose you will give $5 out of your month’s wages?" "I’ll pay my debts," said Bob. Again he was raised to $60 per month, and it was the same thing. But Bob was to be tested in another way. One Saturday afternoon the assistant superintendent said, "Well, boys, I don’t have you work on Sunday as a rule, but we are behind now, and you will all have to come down tomorrow and work to get things in shape for the end of the month." Bob spoke quietly: "I can’t work on Sunday." "Now, Bob, this is the first time I have had you boys do so, and we must work tomorrow to catch up." "I’m sorry, sir, but it’s against my religion, and I can’t do so," said Bob firmly. "Well, Bob, if you can’t do the work I want you to do, at the time I want you to, I’ll have to get a man that will." Sunday morning every one but Bob went down to work. He went to Sabbath School and preaching. On Monday morning he was discharged. That night, when Bob brought in his part of a month’s wages, some of the boys said: "Well, Bob, I guess you won’t give any of that money to the church, but keep it to live on until you get another job." But Bob paid his dues. Bob started out at once to hunt another job. Days passed and still he was out of work, until the boys thought things pretty blue for him. But there was a brighter day ahead for him. One day the president of the company came in. He knew Bob, and missed him right away. "Where is Bob T___ ?" said he. "I had to let him go." "What was the matter?" "I had some work to do on Sunday, we were so badly behind. Bob refused to work, so I had to let him out." The colonel made no further remark then, but afterward he asked about Bob, where he was and what he was doing. He forthwith sent for him to come to his office. Bob went over next morning. "Well, you are the chap that preferred losing a job to working on the Sabbath?" said the colonel. "Yes, sir." "You are the boy I have been looking for one that will stand by his principles. You can go to work at once in my office. What salary have you been getting ?" "Sixty dollars per month was my last salary." "I’ll start you at $75," said the colonel. And little Bobbie went on climbing up, until he climbed up to New York, and the last I heard of him he was getting $150 per month, and he may be still climbing, for I have lost sight of him for some years. -- Christian Observer. A DYING MOTHER’S LOVE The plague broke out in a little Italian village. In one house the children were taken first: the parents watched over them, but only caught the disease which they themselves could not cure. The whole family died. On the opposite side of the way lived the family of a laborer, who was absent the whole week, only coming home of Saturday nights to bring his scanty earnings. His wife felt herself attacked by the fever in the night; in the morning she was worse, and before night the plague spot showed itself. She thought of the terrible fate of her neighbors. She knew she must die, but as she looked upon her dear little boys she resolved not to communicate death to them. She had before locked the little children in the room, and snatched her bed clothes, lest they should keep the contagion behind her, and left the house. She even denied herself the sad pleasure of a last embrace. Oh, think of the heroism that enabled her to conquer her feelings, and all she loved, to die! Her eldest child saw her from the window. "Good-bye, mother," said he, with his tenderest tone, for he wondered why his mother had left him so strangely. "Good-bye, mother," repeated the youngest child, stretching his little hands out of the window. The mother paused, her heart was drawn toward her children, and she was on the point of turning back; she struggled hard, while tears rolled down her cheeks at the sight of her helpless babes -- at length, smiling through her tears and praying God to "keep her darlings safe from all danger," she turned from them. The children continued to cry, "Good-bye, mother." The sound sent a thrill of anguish to her heart; but she pressed on to the house of those who were to bury her. In two days she died, commending her husband and children to God with her last breath. "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." DOES GOD CARE? In a large, lone house, situated in the south of England, far from any other human habitation, there once lived a lady and her two maid-servants. It was the lady’s custom to go around the house with the maids every evening, to see that the windows and doors were properly secured. One night she had accompanied them as usual, and ascertained that all was safe. They then left her in the passage, close to her room and went to their own, which was at the other side of the house. As the lady opened the door, she distinctly saw a man under her bed. What could she do? Her servants were far away and could not hear if she screamed for help; and even if they had come to her assistance, they were no match for a desperate, armed house-breaker. In an instant her plan was formed, and quickly entering she closed the door, and locked it on the inside, as she was in the habit of doing. She then leisurely brushed her hair, and, putting on a dressing-gown, took her Bible, sat down and read aloud a chapter which had peculiar reference to God’s watchfulness over us and constant care night and day. When it was finished, she knelt and prayed at great length, still uttering her words aloud, especially commending herself and servants to God’s protection, and dwelling on their utter helplessness and dependence upon Him to preserve her from all dangers. At last she arose from her knees, and put out her candle and lay do, but not to sleep. After a few minutes had elapsed, she was conscious that a man was standing by her bedside. He addressed her and begged her not to be alarmed. "I came here" said he, "to rob you, but after the words you have read, and the prayer you have uttered, no power on earth could induce me to hurt you, or touch a thing in your house. But you must remain perfectly quiet and not attempt to interfere with me. I shall now give a signal to my companions, which they will understand and go away, and you may sleep in peace, for I give you my solemn word that no one shall harm you, nor the smallest thing belonging to you shall be disturbed." He then went to the window, opened it, and softly whistled. Returning to the bedside, he said: "Now I go. Your prayer has been heard, and no disaster shall befall you." He left the room, and soon all was quiet, and the lady fell asleep, still upheld by that calm and child-like faith and trust. When she awoke in the morning, she poured out her thanksgivings to Him who had "defended" her under "His wings," and "kept" her "safe under His feathers," so that she was not afraid of any terror by night. The man proved true to his word, and not a thing in the house had been taken. ALL THE BIBLE OF GOD A preacher entered a home one day and saw half a Bible on the center table. He was led to inquire what that meant, and was told by the owner that it was half of his mother’s Bible. "When mother died I wanted her Bible, and brother Bill, he wanted it, so we compromised; he took one-half, and I took the other. His half was blessed to the salvation of his soul, and my half was used of God to my salvation. Say, preacher, that half Bible on that stand is a wonderful book." INTOLERANCE REBUKED There lived in Berlin a shoemaker who had a habit of speaking harshly of all of his neighbors who did not think as he did about religion. The old pastor thought it was time to teach him a lesson. Calling one morning he said, "John, take my measure for a pair of boots." "With pleasure. Take off your boot." The clergyman did so, when the shoemaker measured his foot from heel to toe, and over the instep, noting all down in his book. As he was putting up his book, the pastor said, "John, my son also requires a pair of boots." "I will make them with pleasure, your reverence. Can I take his measure this morning ?" "Oh, that is unnecessary," said the pastor, "the lad is fourteen, but you can make his boots from my last." "Your reverence, that will never do," said the surprised shoemaker. "I tell you, John, to make my boots and those for my son from the same last." "No, your reverence, I cannot do it." "it must be done; on the same last remember." "But, your reverence, it is not possible, if the boots are to fit" "Ah, then, master shoemaker, every pair of boots must be made on their own last, if they are to fit, and yet you think that God is to form all Christians exactly according to your last of the same measure and growth in religion as yourself. That will not do, either." The shoemaker, much abashed, took the lesson, and said, "I thank you, pastor. Hereafter I will try to remember it, and judge my neighbors less harshly in the future." Amen. GOD HAS FORSAKEN ME Rev. Alfred Cookman, of precious memory, was preaching in a Methodist Church in New York, conducting an evangelistic service. His brother George lived in the city, but was unsaved. The last night of the meeting was at hand and Alfred was very much exercised for his brother who, thus far, had not put in an appearance at any meeting. Calling a few of the saints around him, he requested them to pray, saying that he was going to call on George and ask him to come to the service. Leaving them, he went to his brother’s place of business, and after being cordially greeted, he invited him to come to the meeting, as this was the last night, and he had not been there once during the series. Consent was secured, and Alfred returned to his room. That night he preached with such an unction that his friends, who had often heard him, said he surpassed himself. During the sermon, a woman under awful conviction cried at the top of her voice, in agony of soul, "O God! O God!" Mr. Cookman stopped in his sermon and said, "I would give the world, were it mine so give, to hear my brother George cry out like that." In the meanwhile George was up in the gallery. The Spirit, always faithful, was dealing with him. For a time he was undecided and started for home, but under the voice of the Spirit, he at last yielded and returned to the church, went to the altar and was saved. A few years afterward Alfred was called to see a dying woman. Entering the home he failed to recognize her, and she said, "You do not know me, Mr. Cookman ?" "No, ma’am." "Do you remember preaching in the Methodist Church one night and a woman cried out in agony of soul, and you remarked, ’I would give the world to hear my brother George cry out like that?" "O yes, I remember now." "Well, sir, I am that woman. I was under such conviction that night I could not restrain myself, and I cried in my very soul agony; but I would not yield, and that night the Spirit left me forever." Prayer did not avail, promises were powerless, and thus she died. God left her forever that night when she said "no" to God. CARRIER BELTS A terrible accident in a sawmill occurred on the Saginaw Bay, in Michigan. At the noon hour when the machinery was stopped, the five-year-old boy of the proprietor came in and climbed up on the large belt which carried the sawdust and shavings to the furnace. Delighted with the springing of the belt, he played among the shavings, laughing with childish glee, until the whistle blew. The machinery was set in motion, moving the belt slowly but surely toward the roaring furnace. The child laughed for joy, unconscious of his approaching fate. The father came in and, looking up, saw his darling boy going to certain death. He screamed in agony, but it was too late! A moment more and this prattling child was dropped into the fire and entirely consumed. My friend, there are many carrier belts loaded with the pleasures of this vain world -mere sawdust; yet you laugh and sport and realize not that the wheels of time are surely taking you toward that place of torment "where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched." There are carrier-belts running through the ballroom, the saloon, the theater, the "innocent" amusement, the church raffle, to the mouth of Hell. Dear friend, if you are on one of these, sporting amid the shavings of empty pleasure, beware! The fire of eternal torment is just ahead! Your fate is certain unless you turn to Christ, who is able to break the power of sin and make you a "new creature." NOW, SUSAN, SHOUT An old presiding elder, accustomed to preach with great unction, often took his daughter Susan with him to his appointments. She often got blessed and would shout aloud the praises of God -- much to the annoyance of some of the staid brethren. On the way home one day after preaching, the old presiding elder cautiously approached the subject of shouting, and said to his daughter: "Susan, some of the friends object to your shouting; it annoys them, and perhaps it would be better if you would hold in a little." Susan listened very respectfully, and thereafter "held in as much as she could. Time passed on and the preacher became very sick; it was soon evident that the end was near at hand. Somehow or other the way was not clear; clouds threw their shadows on his path. At last he asked all to pass out of the room, excepting Susan. Then he said: "Susan, my daughter, the time is near at hand when I must go. The way seems hedged up, and I have not the assurance that I expected at this hour. I want you to join with me in prayer. Let us pray until the light breaks in." Soon that room echoed, and re-echoed with the earnest petitions from two souls that were determined to test the promises of God until victory came. The promise was on record, "At even time it shall be light." "Call upon Me and I will deliver thee." Surely God heard, the light broke in and a gust of praise filled the room as the old presiding elder cried out "Now, Susan, shout! shout’ till I pass over and join the throng that never cease their praises." Praise was on his lips until he joined the hosts on the other side, who render eternal praises unto Him who washed them and redeemed them "in His own most precious blood." REDEEMED MEN MUST SHOUT In Baltimore, Md., an old-time Methodist lay on his death-bed. The outlook was so good that he would praise the Lord again and again. Some of his friends and the physician by his side said: "Don’t shout; you are wasting your strength, you are hastening the end." But it was no use; he would shout. Then one said: "If you must praise, don’t shout; whisper." But the old saint nearing the glory world cried out: "Let angels whisper; redeemed men must shout" and he kept it up until the gates of the city of God opened to take him into the eternal welcome that awaits the ransomed of the Lord. WHAT IF I SHOULD DIE TONIGHT A Confederate soldier, with feverish energy, said to his chaplain: "The man that lay on that cot was taken out this morning; and I have got the same sickness. I don’t know how soon my turn may come. I want you to tell me what I ought to do." I explained to him the way of salvation, as I supposed, with great simplicity. He looked me in the face with an earnestness which I can never forget, and said: "Stranger, couldn’t you make it very plain to a poor feller that never got no schoolin’?" His words, jerked out in the energy of his fever, had a strangely intense force in them. I tried again, and endeavored to simplify and illustrate my instruction, succeeding, I hope, in bringing the atoning death of Christ before his mind. I concluded by saying; "You must pray to God to forgive you your sins for Christ’s sake." "Preacher," said he, "I can’t pray. Nobody never taught me nothing." Said I, "Have you never prayed ?" His manner grew almost fierce as he ejaculated: "I tell you I never got no schoolin’," and then, as if recollecting himself, he raised his head and added, "Stranger, couldn’t you teach me a prayer? and if I said it maybe the Lord would hear me." I replied, "I will teach you a prayer and the Lord will hear you, if you say it sincerely." I began to recite the 51st Psalm: "Have mercy upon me, O God, -- according to Thy loving-kindness: According unto the multitude of Thy tender mercies -- blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, -- and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions -- and my sin is ever before me." "Yes," said he, raising his finger, "that’s it, that’s it, exactly. But, stranger," rubbing his hand across his fevered brow, and looking at me more piteously than ever out of the pain-encircled eyes, "my head’s full of fever, and I can’t mind it. If it were writ down now, and I was to read it, don’t you think the Lord would hear me. I could spell it out, preacher, -- if you think He’d hear me." "It is written down, my poor brother, and I’ll get it for you, if there’s a Bible in this hospital, and God will hear you." I set out to find a Bible, and in that camp, containing hundreds of sick and dying men and some thousands of rebel prisoners, there was not an accessible copy of the Word of God! I returned from my unsuccessful search, and said to him: "There is not a Bible I can lay my hands on in camp, but I will bring you one tomorrow, if God spares me." "Yes; but stranger," said he, wistfully, "what’s to be come of a poor feller if I should die tonight?" It was a most serious question. A DYING SOLDIER Company F, of the 95th Pennsylvania Volunteers, was lying during the darkness of the night, by the railroad in the rear of the works at Petersburg, in April, 1865, when they were bringing the wounded to the cars, to be taken to City Point, then to be transferred by boat to the North. The ambulances were backed up to the track awaiting the coming of the cars. It was twelve o’clock at night, but not a boy in that company could sleep. They were weary enough; they wanted sleep; but sleep fled from them. Why? There was a dying soldier in one of the ambulances, and his heart-rending cry pierced every ear. The years have rolled by, but still I can hear that awful agonizing cry, "O God, have mercy on my soul! O God, have mercy on me!" He faced batteries and bullets, and not a murmur, no flinching; but now he was facing eternity, and that cry of an unsaved soul, "O God, have mercy on me!" kept us all awake, and it lingers with us in memory yet. GOOD-BYE, OLD ARM A wounded hero was lying on the amputating table, under the influence of chloroform. They cut off his strong right arm and cast it all bleeding upon the pile of human limbs. They then laid him gently upon his couch. He awoke from his stupor and missed his arm. With his left hand he lifted the cloth, and there was nothing but the gory stump! "Where’s my arm ?" he cried, "get my arm; I want to see it once more. They brought it to him. He took hold of the cold, clammy fingers, and looking steadfastly at the poor, dead member, thus addressed it, with tearful earnestness: "Good-bye old arm! We have been a long time together. We must part now. Good-bye, old arm! You’ll never fire another carbine nor swing another sabre for the Government" and the tears rolled down his cheeks. Looking round on those standing by, he said: "Understand, I don’t regret its loss. It has been torn from my body, that not one State should be torn from this glorious Union." Was not the poet speaking for him when he sung? "Some things are worthless, some others so good That nations that buy them pay only in blood; For Freedom and Union each owes his part, And here I pay my share, all warm from my heart.’ UNRESERVED TRUST A clergyman tells that when he visited the great pyramids in Egypt, he found both the ascent and the descent of the interior passages very difficult. At length, in descending, he came to a place where he stood upon a narrow, slipper"’ shelf of rock over a deep chasm, and the next step would take him to a still narrower one, and right there the candle of the Arab guide went out. The guide then required him to cast himself upon his shoulders, saying, "You’ll be quite safe, resting on Arab. But you must trust all; if you try to help yourself, you’re lost." At length he concluded, though with much fear and trembling, to do as the guide required, and was soon brought to a place of light and safety. Even thus did Abram "believe on God," -- commit himself wholly to Him, rest upon Him as a babe in a mother’s arms. And Abram rested upon an arm that has never yet lost one committed to Him. -- Sel. THANK HIM FIRST After service, one of the nurses asked me to go down to Ward E. A sick man wanted a chaplain. Dutton and I went. We found him -- an East Tennesseean -- prostrate with fever, a tall, athletic man of middle age, evidently wholly unused to sickness. I approached him cautiously, saying to myself, this is one of those cases of religion sought, not so much because the man wishes for it, as because he feels that he must have it. He would not have God when he was well, and wants me to make it up for him in this last sickness. So I began a long way off: "I am sorry to see you in this trouble." He interrupted me. "I’m sick, parson; but I’m not troubled. Did the nurse tell you I was in trouble?" His cheerful tone and sweet smile showed me my mistake; that was a Christian’s voice; and I became as much interested to test his faith as I had been before distrustful of his sincerity. "You are very sick?" "Yes, and a heap of men are dying in this hospital; but I am not troubled; it’s all right parson." "You have a wife?" "Yes." "Children?" "Six." "Do they know at home how you are?" "No, sir," said he, for the first time showing emotion, "and I don’t know how they are; but I ain’t troubled about ’em. You see, parson, when the rebels run me off, my wife fed me in the bushes. One night she came to tell me the rebels were getting hot after me, and I must go directly. We knelt down by a gum tree and prayed together. She gave me to God, and I gave her and the children to God; and then made for the Union lines and enlisted. I haven’t heard from them since eight months ago. But I am not troubled about them. It’s all right, parson; it’s all right." "Why did you send for me?" I asked. "I wanted somebody to pray for me." "What shall I pray for? You don’t seem to want anything." "Why, parson, can’t a man pray without he’s in trouble? My mind is weak and scattered like, and I wanted somebody to come and help me thank God. You can pray for anything else you reckon, but thank Him first." We knelt on the ground by the cot, and with tears and difficult utterance prayed with thanksgiving, the prostrate soldier occasionally breaking in, "Yes, Lord; yes, thank God." QUENCH NOT THE SPIRIT During the ministry of the Rev. John Wesley Childs, the following awful incident, as related in the Earnest Christian, took place: Mr. Childs had preached on Sabbath morning with unusual power and effectiveness. The whole congregation was deeply impressed, and in every direction sinners, cut to the heart by the power of God, were weeping and praying for mercy. Seriousness was depicted on very countenance. Mr. Childs walked out into the congregation and conversed with such as attracted his attention, upon the subject of religion. Passing about from one to another, he came to a gentleman, well known in the country, who appeared rather indifferent, and he spoke to him kindly about his soul. The man was an avowed infidel, and was engaged in a traffic well adapted to blunt and destroy all the finer sensibilities of the human heart. He was wealthy and proud; he disdained religion. When Mr. Childs spoke to him on the subject, he treated the matter with the utmost levity and contempt. He was tenderly besought to think more seriously and to speak less rashly about a matter in which he really had so deep an interest. But he grew angry, and cast every indignity that he could upon the gentle and holy man that sought to lead him to Christ. Mr. Childs proposed prayer, and as the man of God pleaded for him the man began to curse him; and with all conceivable oaths and blasphemies, he continued to vent his feelings of malignity and contempt until Mr. Childs closed his prayer. He then turned away in a rage, and in a short time left the campground and returned to his home, which he reached about the going down of the sun. He sat for a long time on the long piazza in front of the house and conversed sparingly with his family. As the twilight deepened and night let drop her curtain, he commenced walking up and down his piazza. Presently his tea was announced, but he refused to join his family at the table, saying he felt a little indisposed and did not feel like eating anything. He continued to pace his piazza until it was time for the family to retire for the night. His wife requested him to go to his chamber. "No," said he, "not now. Leave me alone for the present." She urged him to go in from the night air; that he was further endangering himself by his exposure. "Let me alone," said he, as she insisted upon him leaving the piazza. "When I go in at that door," said he solemnly, "I shall come out no more, until I am carried out to my grave." At first his wife was startled, but she recovered herself and remonstrated with him for using such language and indulging such gloomy feelings. Said he, "I cursed the preacher today. I did wrong. He is a good man, I doubt not, and I should not have treated him the way I did; and now I am going to die, and I shall go to Hell. I ought not to have cursed that man. She continued to expostulate with him; told him that he was depressed and low-spirited, and did what she could to relieve his mind, but all to no avail. At a late hour he went to his bed; but alas! to rise no more. In the morning he was found quite ill. Medical aid was called in and everything was done for him that could be to give him relief. But he told them that it was all in vain, that he should die and go to Hell that his case was hopeless for this world and the world to come. He grew worse; and it admits of a doubt whether the dying chamber of any man ever presented a more terrible and heart-appalling scene than did the chamber of this miserable man. He sent for the pious tenants of his farm to come and sit by him and keep the devils out of his room. He said that the multiplied sins of his wicked life were like so many demons tearing at his bleeding heart. Some attempted to direct his mind to the Savior of sinners. "Oh," said he," "I have rejected the last offer! I have cursed the minister who made the tender of salvation to me in the name of Jesus." The scene was too awful to behold. His neighbors fled from his presence, and his words of despair and remorse and unavailing regret haunted them wherever they went. The scene grew still more frightful. Despair -- utter despair -- was depicted in his face. His eye seemed to be kindled as with a spark from the pit of Hell. His voice was unearthly. He called his friends to his bedside for the last time. Said he, "I am dying. When I am gone you will all say that I died frantic and out of my senses. This report will spread through all the country. Now," said he, "I am perfectly in my senses. I never was more rational. I know what I am now saying, and all that I have said; and I now make this statement that what I have said may not be lost upon you." He then, with his remaining strength, cried out in the most startling accents, "The devils are around my bed; they wait for me; they mock my dying struggles, and as soon as I am dead they will drag me to the hottest place in Hell." These were his last words. HOW LOVE LIGHTENS LOADS The story is told of Dr. McGregor, that he one day met a little Scotch girl carrying in her arms a baby so large that she fairly staggered under its weight. "Baby is heavy, isn’t he, dear?" he said. "No sir," said the little girl. "He isn’t heavy; he’s my brother " -- Sel. TO DIE LOOKING UP A surgeon going over the field to bandage bleeding wounds, came upon a soldier lying in his blood with his face to the ground. Seeing the horrible wound in his side and the death pallor on his face, he was passing on to attend to others, when the dying man called him with a moan to come just for a moment. He wanted to be turned over. The doctor lifted the mangled body as best he could, and laid the poor fellow on his back. A few moments after, while dressing wounds near by, he heard him say: "This is glory; this is glory!" Supposing it was the regret of a dying soldier, correcting, in this scene of carnage, his former estimate of the "pomp and circumstances of war," the surgeon put his lips to his ear and asked: "What is glory, my dear fellow?" "O doctor, it’s glory to die with my face upward!" and moving his hand feebly, his forefinger set, as if he would point the heavenly way, he made his last earthly sign. A GOD-GIVEN DUTY No duties that are God-given ever lead a mother to neglect her child. Above all others, to the little ones, home should be the place of love and prayer and blessing. A wealthy New York lady said, "One day my little daughter, Constance, came to my room as I was hurriedly dressing to drive to a director’s meeting. The child held a new game in her hand. ’Oh, mamma,’ she cried eagerly, ’this is the loveliest game; do try it with me.’ Her request, in my haste and absorption, seemed in the highest degree trivial. ’Nonsense, Connie, you know I cannot,’ I replied, rather sharply; ’this is board day at the hospital, and I am late now.’ Standing in front of the mirror, I saw in the glass how her face fell and the light died out of it. ’I wish,’ she said wistfully, ’you would sometimes have a day with me, mamma.’ The child’s speech went through me like a knife. I had never received so stinging a rebuke. Was it possible that in the pursuit of other duties I was neglecting the one that should be chief? My drive to the hospital that morning was full of serious introspection, and Connie has had her Saturday ever since." -- Ex. IN THE INDIAN’S HEART Red Owl was the great orator of the lower Sioux during Bishop Whipple’s early missionary work among the Indians. Red Owl never attended church, because he was afraid he would lose his influence among the people. But one day he came into the school room and stopped before a picture of Christ, and asked, "What is that? Why are His hands bound? Why are those thorns on His head?" With patient gentleness the school-teacher told again the old story of Him who was rich, yet for our sakes became poor; of Him who wore the crown of thorns, was nailed to the cross, and who rose again, that we, too, might live. Red Owl was so touched by the story of the love of the "Son of the Great Spirit" that he came again and again to ask about Jesus. One day as the bishop rode over the prairie, he saw a new-made grave, and over it was a plain wooden cross. He learned that Red Owl was dead. He had been taken ill suddenly, and when dying, he said to his young men, "That story which the white man has brought into our country is true; I have it in my heart. When I am dead, I wish you to put a cross over my grave, that the Indians may see what is in Red Owl’s heart." -- Sunday School Times THE BLOOD WAS GONE I once met a Christian man, who told me that years before he had taken a man’s life, but when tried had been acquitted on the plea of self-defense. He told me that although he had escaped the penalty of the law, he could never get away from the impression that there was blood on his hands whenever he found himself alone in the dark. He would wash his hands, again and again, with the strongest soap, and think he had them clean at last, but as soon as darkness came on again he would feel the blood on his hands. This went on year after year, making him untold suffering and the most bitter remorse, but from the moment when he was converted, and realized what it means to be washed in the blood of Christ, his hands had been clean, and never troubled him again. How fully this confirms the promise: "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow, and though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.’ -- Selected. PERSEVERANCE Thirty years ago a bare-footed, ragged urchin presented himself before the desk of the principal partner of a manufacturing firm in Glasgow and asked for work as an errand boy. "There’s a deal of running to be done," said Mr. Blank. "Your qualification would be a pair of shoes." The boy, with a grave nod, disappeared. He lived by doing odd jobs in the market, and slept under one of the stalls. Two months passed before he had saved enough money to buy the shoes. Then he presented himself to Mr. Blank one morning, and held out a package. "I have the shoes, sir," he said quietly. "Oh!" Mr. Blank with difficulty recalled the circumstances. "You went a place? Not in those rags, my lad. You would disgrace this house." The boy hesitated a moment, and then went out without a word. Six months passed before he returned, decently clothed in coarse but new garments. Mr. Blank’s interest was aroused. For the first time he looked at the boy attentively. His thin, bloodless face showed that he had stinted himself of food for months in order to buy those clothes. The manufacturer now questioned the boy carefully, and found, to his regret, that he could neither read nor write. "It is necessary that you should do both before we could employ you in carrying home packages," he said. "We have no place for you.’ The lad’s face grew paler, but without a word of complaint he disappeared. He found work in a stable near to a night school. At the end of the year he again presented himself before Mr. Blank. "I can read and write," he said briefly. "I gave him the place," the employer said afterwards, "with the conviction that, in process of time, he would take mine, if he made up his mind to do it. Men rise slowly in Scotch business houses, but he is our chief foreman." -- Sel. WHILE WE MAY By Neal Dow The hands are such dear hands; They are so full; They turn at our demands So often; they reach out With trifles scarcely thought about, So many times, they do So many things for me, for you, If their fond wills mistake We may well bend, not break. They are such fond, frail lips That speak to us. Pray, if love strips Them of discretion many times Or if they speak too slow or quick, such crimes We may pass by, for we may see Days not far off when those small words may be Held not so slow, or quick, or out of place, but dear, Because the lips that spoke are no more here. They are such dear, familiar feet, that go Along the path with ours, feet fast or slow, And trying to keep pace, if they mistake Or tread upon some flower that we would take Upon our breast, or bruise some seed. Or crush poor hope until it bleed, We may be mute, not turning quickly to impute Grave fault; for they and we Have such a little way to go, can be Together such a little while along the way, We will be patient while we may. So many little faults we find, We see them; for not blind Is love. We see them, but if you and I Perhaps remember them some bye and bye They will not be Faults then, grave faults to you and me, But just odd ways, mistakes, or even less Remembrances to bless. Days change so many things, yes, hours; We see so differently in sun and showers; Mistaken words tonight May be so cherished by tomorrow’s light, We will be patient, for we know There’s such a little way to go. MORNING PRAYER Let me today do something that shall take A little sadness from the world’s vast store, And may I be so favored as to make Of joy’s too scanty sum a little more. Let me not hurt, by any selfish deed Or thoughtless word, the heart of foe or friend Nor would I pass, unseeing, worthy need, Or sin by silence when I should defend. -- Ella Wheeler Wilcox THE END ======================================================================== CHAPTER 27: 02.00.0. THE CALLUSED KNEES ======================================================================== The Callused Knees by George Brubaker Kulp (1845-1939) "There was a man sent from God, whose name was John." John 1:6 ======================================================================== CHAPTER 28: 02.00.1. CONTENTS ======================================================================== CONTENTS Foreward Chapter 1 A Man Sent From God, Whose Name was John Chapter 2 Behold He Prayeth Chapter 3 Preparation for Life Work Chapter 4 Call to the Ministry Chapter 5 Abundant in Labors Chapter 6 Conquering and to Conquer Chapter 7 A Student of the Word Chapter 8 Travailing in Soul Chapter 9 Victories in the Pastorate Chapter 10 As a Personal Worker and Preacher Chapter 11 Give Me Souls, or I Die Chapter 12 Obtaining More of God Chapter 13 A Steward of the Mysteries of God Chapter 14 The Manliness of the Man Chapter 15 As God’s Revivalist Chapter 16 A Partial Cessation From Labor Chapter 17 Saving Souls From Death Chapter 18 Cry Out, and Shout, Thou Inhabitant of Zion Chapter 19 Light in the Valley of the Shadow Chapter 20 Conqueror in Death ======================================================================== CHAPTER 29: 02.00.2. FOREWARD ======================================================================== Foreward While but a boy less than ten years old I heard my father speak of a book that he prized highly, and quoted frequently, because it told of one who was much gifted in prayer, and who through prayer achieved mighty results for God. I long tried to secure a copy of that book, but found it had gone out of print. I regretted this very much; more especially so, as the book would be an inspiration and blessing to any child of God. Within the last two years, having providentially discovered a copy in the home of an old English saint, I have been impressed that I should put at least a portion of this book before the public such excerpts as would portray this man of God on his knees. "The gift of the knees" comes through practice; Heaven’s choicest blessings await the man who waits on God. My earliest recollections are a blessing to me, as I recall the stalwart men who would pray until the heavens would bend, tears start, and shouts ascend to the God who heard and answered. This work is sent forth in humble faith and prayer that it may prove an inspiration to men and women to "pray without ceasing," knowing by experience "they that that wait upon the Lord do renew their strength, they mount up with wings as eagles, they run and are not weary, they walk and are not faint." "And when He had sent the multitudes away, He went up into a mountain apart to pray, and He was there alone." Who will go with him? Battle Creek, Mich., March 19, 1909 ======================================================================== CHAPTER 30: 02.01. CHAPTER 1. A MAN SENT FROM GOD, WHOSE NAME WAS JOHN ======================================================================== Chapter 1 A Man Sent From God, Whose Name was John "I would that men should pray always." "Pray without ceasing." Author Geo. H. Hubbard, in his book "Spiritual Power at Work." evidently has given much thought and prayer to the subject says: "No religion can be dynamic without prayer. A prayerless religion is a mere philosophy, and philosophy at best is static, not dynamic. Prayer is the channel through which the divine power of the Holy Spirit is brought to bear upon our human machinery to make it effective in accomplishing desired results. Religion without prayer is like a trolley line with tracks all laid, cars in good condition, but no wires connecting with the power house." We must keep in touch with God, heed the exhortations of His Word, use the means therein indicated, if we would prove every promise true. Our fathers were men of prayer. Apostles, martyrs, reformers, men who were pioneers for God, and blazed the way we should follow, were eminently men of prayer. The promises that encouraged them are still on record, and we may prove them and know experimentally their power. God has had witnesses in all ages, the path that leads to eternal triumph is marked by the footprints of men who took His way, followed His precepts, and won many souls who shall shine in the diadem of Jesus "while light and life and being last, or immortality endures." The need of the church militant today is men and women who pray; not "say prayers," but pray wait on God. The divinest element in prayer is perseverance. "Wait, I say, on the Lord." John Smith not Rev. John Smith, D. D., LL. D., but plain John Smith, sent of God, and by godly parents named John, was a living example and exemplar of the power that energizes the soul, body, thoughts, words and labors of the man who minds God and prays unceasingly. He was known among his brethren, and wherever he labored, as "John Smith." It is quite refreshing in these days when men are angling for titles, pulling wires for "honorary degrees," having petitions sent in to Boards of Trustees begging for a title, putting names on door plates and hotel registers with "D. D." attached, to find a strong character known, loved, revered, and sought after as, John Smith. A perusal of these pages will reveal the secret of his power. He was a man pursuing Bible methods, minding the Holy Spirit, and living for the glory of God. He had a passion for souls, an intense longing to get people saved, that impelled him to vehemently urge them to forsake sin and yield themselves unto God. Nothing that men could add by way of "honors" would have increased his power; he looked unto God, kept yoked to Omnipotence by faith, and almost lived in the "power house." Victor Hugo says: "If you would civilize a man, you must begin with his grandmother." Godliness in parents is profitable unto their children. The subject of these pages was born of godly parents at Cudworth, England, January 12th, 1794. His father for many years was a class-leader and local preacher in the Methodist Church, while his mother adorned her profession and exerted a holy influence in her own home, neighborhood, and church that told for God. From his earliest infancy he was placed under the direction and loving restraints of a model Christian home, where he was carefully instructed in the verities of God’s Word and the truths of Christianity. The Spirit wrought with him at a very early age, and when but nine years old he was powerfully affected by a concern for his soul under a sermon by a local preacher from Psalms 144:15, "Happy is the people ... whose God is the Lord." His serious impressions wore off and he manifested an ardent and headstrong spirit. At times he was mischievous, and the result at one time would have been of the most serious kind had it not been for a merciful Providence. His sports were of a bold, boisterous and wicked kind. He would even attend the prayer-meetings held in his native village to collect material for the mirth of his ungodly companions, and being endowed with extraordinary powers of mimicry, he would amuse them by striking and ridiculous imitations of the peculiarities which he had observed in the pious persons who conducted these means of grace. During the time that he remained at home, he was, of course, prevented from the full indulgence of his depraved propensities; but when about fourteen years of age, being placed as an apprentice with a grocer at Sheffield, and of consequence more free from control, he became decidedly wicked. He conducted himself generally in so irregular a manner, that, after two years, his employer, unable any longer to endure his bad conduct, sent him back to his parents. He then obtained a situation at Barnsley, in the same line of business. Here he even gave up attendance at a place of worship, and thus broke the last link which seemed to connect him with the principles and example of his pious parents. He associated himself, without restraint, with other ungodly young men, and had his natural corruption increased, and his habits of evil confirmed, by their example and counsels. He imitated their profane language, and learned to blaspheme the God of his father. As far as his means permitted, he became a gambler, and contracted a strong passion for wrestling, and other athletic exercises, especially for pugilistic contests. He often traveled considerable distances to attend prize fights, and actually put himself under the training of scientific boxers. These pursuits led him into debasing society, which was congenial to his corrupt affections. He became an adept, and an enthusiast in vice, and gloried in the awful distinction which an athletic body and a desperate mind enabled him to maintain among his sinful associates. But even in this course of sin, there could easily be discerned indications of the same natural character which afterwards, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, rendered him so distinguished a Christian and minister. Here was the energy which in good or evil allowed him to be satisfied with nothing like a medium of feeling or exertion. Here was the strong, concentrated passion urging him on by its hurricane power, to the utter abandonment of religion, which, in a brighter era of his life, became the impulse of generous sacrifice, self-devotion and labor. If he now spurned reproof, rejected all care of reputations, and hardened himself against every suggestion of peril on account of sin, he was equally daring and independent when "the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus" became the object of his emulation. The popularity which, by his highly social qualities, he acquired among the vain and worldly persons by whom he was at this time surrounded, was succeeded, in a more honorable period of his history, by the warm Christian attachment of all who had the privilege of his intimacy. It is a melancholy fact, also, that he was a sinner of influence; and there were some of his companions in vanity who, according to human probability, were prevented from the choice of a religious life, only by the fascinations of his society. How fully, as a Christian and a Christian minister, he exerted a similar power over those with whom he associated, the succeeding pages will tend to show. The extreme profligacy of some who have had a religious education is no evidence of their having forgotten the pious instructions of their childhood. In fact, paradoxical as it may appear, their resolute abandonment of themselves to vicious practices is, in not a few cases, a proof of the depth and permanence of their previous impressions. Next to making him virtuous, the best effect of admonition on a sinner is to make him unhappy. Dissipation is an indication of a mind ill at ease. The natural posture of happiness is calmness and repose, and where men are not fully stupefied by the influence of sin, the love of reputation, and many similar principles of counteraction, will frequently lead them to moderation in pursuit of forbidden pleasures. On the other hand, where there still remains a considerable degree of moral sensibility, the spirit seeks, in the perpetual hurry of business or vice, to still the voice of conscience, and to overcome the striving of the Spirit. This, of course, will be more apparent in persons of such great power of feeling as was possessed by the subject of these pages. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 31: 02.02. CHAPTER 2. BEHOLD HE PRAYETH ======================================================================== Chapter 2 Behold He Prayeth "Repent and be ye converted." "Except ye be converted, ye shall in no wise enter the Kingdom of Heaven." The patience, counsel and prayers, with godly example of praying parents, are not forgotten before Him as a memorial. Again and again has it been proven true the prayers of a father or a mother avail much with God. We were very much impressed and encouraged as we read a short time ago the following incident right along this line. Father, mother, read it and be encouraged; pray on; God is faithful; He will answer. The President of the Sunday Breakfast Association, Philadelphia, Mr. Lewis U. Bean, relates the following: "One Sunday morning, on my arrival at the old church, a gentleman stepped up and said: ’There is a lady on the platform upstairs, wearing a sealskin coat, who wishes to see you.’ I went up to her. She said: ’Oh, sir, can’t you help me find my poor lost boy?’ and tears ran down her face. She said he had run away from home three years ago, when about thirteen, and as far as she knew he was a tramp. I said to her: ’Are you a praying, Christian woman?’ ’Yes, and a member of the Presbyterian Church.’ ’How came you here to seek your boy?’ ’I thought he might be in the congregation.’ After getting the boy’s name, I stepped to the front, and called for him, but no reply came. After two or three inquiries, I went to the lower room, into the overflow meeting, and made the same inquiry, but without response. After standing on the platform a little while, in deep meditation and prayer, I stepped down through one of the narrow aisles, where I never go excepting to see some one or on special business, and about one-third of the way down the aisle I stopped, with my hand under my chin, and thought: ’It cannot be possible that God will send a poor, broken-hearted Christian mother on a fool’s errand after her boy. Lord, show us where to find the boy.’ Then at my right elbow I saw a young fellow, dirty all over, looking almost like a colored person, and as if he had not had a bath for months, or as if he might have just arrived in the city under a freight car, after many miles’ travel. He said: ’What did you say the boy’s name was?’ I said, ’You know his name better than I do; you are the boy.’ He burst into tears, and said: ’Yes, I am the boy. What are you going to do with me?’ evidencing at once that he had been doing something criminal and expected arrest. He went with me behind a large partition in the back of the room, while I went and beckoned to the mother. I stayed between her and the boy, so that she could not see him until I stepped aside. When the mother discovered the boy, they both made a wild rush for each other and were gathered in each other’s arms. Such a scene of love and affection I never before witnessed. The mother would press him to her bosom, kiss and hug him, and then hold him at arm’s length to be sure that she was not mistaken, while I stood with my head against the partition and big tears ran down my face and dropped to the bare floor. She cried out, ’Oh, my boy! my boy! Why did you not come home?’ He said, ’Mother, I didn’t know that you would allow me to come home.’ "We men folks know little or absolutely nothing about a mother’s love for her children, and yet we are told in Scripture that a mother may forget her child, but Christ never forgets His children. After breakfast the mother took her boy home. Some time afterward one of the cleanest, brightest, nicest young men came to me and asked me if I remembered about that boy. ’Yes,’ I said, ’I do.’ ’I am the boy,’ he said. ’You cannot be the boy,’ said I. ’What are you doing?’ ’I am in business in our little town, living with mother. I joined the church, and I am teaching a Sunday School class.’ I gave a shout: ’Amen! praise the Lord!’ Will any one who doubts the efficacy of prayer please tell us how it came that this mother came to the Sunday Breakfast Association that Sunday morning, never having been there before in her life, and that this boy should have arrived from the far west about two o’clock that Sunday morning, having ridden underneath coal and freight cars all the way?" In the Spring of 1812 it pleased God to visit Cudworth with a gracious revival of His work in answer to the prayers of His people. Several persons were awakened and converted, and, among others, a cousin of John Smith. On Sunday, April 5th, of that year, John, with one of his companions, came over from Barnsley to Cudworth. He there saw what had been done for others, and his mind was much affected. In the course of the day his pious mother conversed with him at large on his miserable condition; and, when he was about to return, she said to him: "You are wandering about in search of happiness, but you will never find it till you turn to God." Her conversation produced so powerful an effect on him, that he abruptly left her, lest she should notice his emotion. He and his companion had not proceeded far on their journey home before Smith suddenly stopped, and, with a deep groan, and a gesture expressive of strong determination, exclaimed: "I am resolved to lead a new life." As soon as he had uttered this resolution, he felt a measure of satisfaction to which he had before been an entire stranger; and he immediately proposed to return, and attend the prayer-meeting which was that evening to be held at Cudworth. When he arrived at the chapel, the meeting had begun. He entered, however, and almost instantly the agitation of his mind became uncontrollable. He cried aloud and besought the friends to pray for him. The meeting closed, but he obtained no relief. Several others who were in distress accompanied him to his father’s house, where another meeting commenced. Mr. Smith, the father, had been out on the circuit filling an appointment. His feelings may be imagined when on entering his home the first objects which presented themselves were two of his children, in deep agony of soul crying unto God for mercy. One of them was the prodigal upon whom he had expended so many tears and prayers, and for whom he had undergone such deep anxiety. God answers the prayers of the distressed youth that night, and brought him into glorious liberty, filling his heart with peace and joy in believing. The next day he was again brought into bondage by giving way for a moment to the hastiness of his temper, and for awhile he walked in great darkness and disquiet. He was encouraged, however, by the advice and intercession of some Christian friends, again to trust in the atonement of Christ and the comfort of the Holy Spirit once more returned to his soul. From that time, there is reason to believe, to the day of his death, he walked uninterruptedly in the light of God’s countenance. Perhaps these pages may fall into the hands of some pious parent, who has to mourn over the irreligion of a dear child. To such the conversion of John Smith ought to be a source of the highest encouragement. No condition, surely, can be marked by a more obvious alienation from the spirit and practice of Christianity, than that in which the mercy of God found him. In his case, there is the strongest illustration of the honor which the Almighty will put upon the Labors of godly parents. The Holy Spirit is the Giver of pious and compunctious recollections. Christ expressly promised that the Comforter should recall to the minds of the disciples whatsoever He had declared to them during His personal ministry. (John 14:26.) The instructions of pious parents are treasured up in the secret cells of memory, hidden, it is true, for a time, and perhaps supposed to be forgotten. But the time will come, when the energy of the Spirit will quicken them, and they shall stand forth in the sudden broad light of Heaven, endued with accumulated power to astonish and confound the heart of the careless and ungodly child. It may be in the hour of sickness, or in some other time of darkness; it may be when shame and want shall have driven away the companions of his dissipation. He may be far from the influence and example of his Christian instructors. He may have hardened his heart and stiffened his neck, and given himself to the companionship of the infidel and scoffer, but there is no condition so remote from piety, as not to be within reach of the mercy of God, and He has promised His Spirit to the seed of Jacob, and His blessing to the children of His servants. Isaiah 44:3. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 32: 02.03. CHAPTER 3. PREPARATION FOR LIFE WORK ======================================================================== Chapter 3 Preparation for Life Work "Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed." "Search the Scriptures; they are they which testify of Me." John Smith was faithful to his opportunities. He was a new creature old things had passed away old associations and places knew him no more. He had an appetite for the things of God, and a strong attachment for the house of God, and the means of grace. He "loved much," having been "forgiven much." One of the first and most striking evidences of the Divine change which had taken place in his heart, was an insatiable appetite for the Word of God. His long-neglected Bible was now resorted to, as a source of the highest delight. On the day after he obtained the evidence of the favor of God, he read about thirty chapters. He kept the sacred volume upon the counter of the shop in which he was employed, and at every opportunity flew to it with the most ardent desire and relish. He naturally possessed a very quick and retentive memory, and at this time he learned several of the New Testament epistles. The practice of committing to memory large portions of the Scriptures he continued in after years, and found it productive of great comfort and advantage. His earnest love of God’s book remained with him during the whole of his life, and his acquaintance with it was remarkably extensive and perfect. He also became distinguished for his habitual devotion. This was in his case peculiarly necessary. When his former sensualizing and degrading course of life is considered, and the steadfast alienation of his mind from God, as well as the natural strength of his passions, it is not too much to affirm that he required an extraordinary measure of inward religion. Persons of constitutional equanimity, and generally moral conduct, cannot calculate on the temptations and difficulties which await a babe in Christ of the character of John Smith. The measure of grace which suffices to maintain them in a regular course of consistent, and it may be even eminent, goodness, would have been totally inadequate to a successful encounter with the obstacles which crowded his path. The constant sense of his peril appears to have been exceedingly vivid on his mind. He lived, therefore, in jealous watchfulness, and spent a large portion of his leisure hours in intercourse with Heaven. In retired in fields, in woods, and other places of concealment, he was accustomed to wrestle with God, till he was copiously baptized by the Spirit. His very intimate friend, the Rev. William Henry Clarkson, states, that "one day, soon after his conversion, being under temptation, he retired into a cavern where he continued for a considerable time in prayer, till he felt such an overshadowing of the Divine presence as overwhelmed him, and he has been heard to say "that had he not often had such visits from the Lord, he never should have been able to persevere in the Christian warfare." Another of the qualities which distinguished his subsequent career and now began to manifest itself, was his concern for the condition of sinners. He took every opportunity of visiting and conversing with his former associates on their spiritual welfare. He detailed what God had done for him, he reproved their vices, and entreated them to abandon their sins, assuring them of the readiness of the Savior to receive them. His course was not without success, and he had the happiness of seeing two of his former companions saved and uniting with the church, the first fruits of a mighty harvest. Having become sensible of the value of mental cultivation, and of his responsibility for the exercise of his intellectual powers, he referred with great regret to the time which had been so entirely lost to improvement of this kind. He began religiously to cultivate his mind as a duty, and as he did this his piety increased, and his mental improvement. Friends interested in him noticing this, made arrangements to send him to school, and accordingly, in May, 1813, he was placed under the care of Mr. James Sigston, of Leeds, being now twenty years of age. Ignorance and mental imbecility are no auxiliaries to Christianity, though sometimes associated with it. The religion of the New Testament, though it has frequently found a race of men in a state of intellectual prostration, has never left them so. The world at large is indebted to religion for all that exalts man as a thinking being, more than to all other causes combined. When the requisite and promised influence of the Holy Spirit accompanies the lawful use of study, Christianity assumes a higher and more influential character, and those who thus entrust their talents to the Master’s use, become vessels of honor to His glory. Mr. Smith applied himself vigorously to his studies that he might be more useful. He attained a perfect acquaintance with his own language, and a gentleman of classical education, who enjoyed his intimacy at a subsequent period, remarked, that of all men he had even known, Mr. Smith possessed the most accurate and extensive syntactical knowledge. He had also a high regard and relish for the best English authors, both in theology and general literature. His taste for poetry was chaste and classical, and he had a feeling of its beauties far superior to that of many more perfectly cultivated minds. He so diligently prosecuted his studies that he was soon deemed qualified to act occasionally as a teacher in the school. In 1814 he became a regular assistant, and then came his call to the ministry. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 33: 02.04. CHAPTER 4. CALL TO THE MINISTRY ======================================================================== Chapter 4 Call to the Ministry "The Word of the Lord came unto me saying, I sanctified thee, and ordained thee a prophet." "Gird up thy loins and arise, and speak unto them all that I command thee." "Here am I; send me." Children dedicated to God, and nurtured in prayer, are very apt to be found at last where God wants them. Men and women with a passion for souls, and a determination to fit themselves for God’s will, whatever that may be, will get to the right place. The secret of many a life spent in the ministry, or in mission fields, is to be found in a dedication to God for His work before they were born. In a large church in a great city a little group of ministers and delegates assembled to ordain an assistant pastor. They filled only a few front seats in the vast auditorium, but they were men of note, and most of them met the candidate for the first time. Among them sat, unrecognized by most of them, a little old man in clerical attire, who gave closest attention to the proceedings. The young man presented his diploma from a small college, his diploma from the theological seminary in the city, and other credentials customary at such gatherings, and the examination proceeded in regular form, developing, as it went on, his life story. Born in a home missionary parsonage, living through his boyhood in several small and isolated villages, educated in a remote and struggling college, he had come to his theological studies with a well-trained mind, a strong and deep purpose that was tinged with passion for humanity, and a life clean and robust and strong. The three years of city life and of special study had enriched his mind, added cultivation to his equipment, and broadened his outlook without abating his zeal or lessening his spiritual earnestness. He was fulfilling his life purpose a purpose he did not remember to have formed when he gave himself to the ministry, nor had he any recollection of struggle in the consecration of self to the higher life of the soul. To him it had all been normal. The processes had been logical and sweetly reasonable. The council retired for its deliberations, and the vote for the ordination of the young man was unanimous and hearty. But before the council recalled the visitors to the auditorium to announce its decision, and to assign the several parts for the ordination services to follow in the evening, it was suggested that it would be a pleasant and courteous thing to call in the aged father and say a word of felicitation to him concerning the promise and rare spirit of his son. The old man re-entered the auditorium, walked down its long, carpeted aisle, and was introduced by the moderator with words of hearty congratulation. His eyes and heart were full, and it was with difficulty he controlled his voice. Then he said, "You haven’t yet learned the secret of my boy’s life. When his mother and I were married we prayed to God for a son, and promised Him that our first-born should be His. When he was born, I took him in my arms and carried him up to my study, and kneeling there among my books, I gave him to God. And I felt in my soul that day the assurance of what I now experience. "Before he was two years old he was sick unto death. Four physicians, two of them from this very city, called, at great expense, to save his life, declared he could not live till morning, and left us alone with him. But we could not believe he was to die, and we asked God for his life. For six weeks I never removed my clothing, but in the end he lived. "He grew up generous, light-hearted without frivolity, courageous without being rude, strong and gentle, and always a child of God. "His mother passed on and did not live to see this day. But I have lived through all these days of faith and struggle, and now I can sing, like Simeon of old, ’Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.’ Whatever he does and wherever he preaches, I know my boy will be true." The little, thin form rose to higher stature. The voice that began low and with hesitation rose to prophetic earnestness. The men gathered about listened with breathless interest. And when he sat down no one could speak, but every one was thinking that with such a heritage it was little wonder that the young man was what they had discovered him to be. John Smith heard the call of God saw fields white unto harvest and few laborers. He undertook the duty of carrying the message, with much fear and hesitation. The first time it had been arranged for him to address a congregation, he could not summon sufficient resolution to fulfill his engagement. At the advice and entreaty of some of his friends, he a second time promised to make the attempt; but it is probable that, had it not been for the remonstrance of his friend, Mr. Stoner, he would not even then have ventured. "As the time approached, he yielded again to timidity, and retired to the teacher’s room, intending not to make his appearance at the place appointed. Mr. Stoner was in the room. ’I thought,’ said he to Mr. Smith, ’that you had agreed to preach tonight.’ ’Yes,’ said the other, with much hesitation and embarrassment; ’but I must give it up.’ ’What!’ rejoined Mr. Stoner, with severe and powerful emphasis, ’do you mean then to ruin yourself? This pointed question, resting a compliance with acknowledged duty on a regard to personal safety, produced the desired result." The place at which Mr. Smith commenced his public labors was a school-room in Park Lane, where Mr. Stoner himself, some time before, had preached his first sermon. His text was Proverbs 18:24 : "There is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother." The embarrassment which he felt upon this occasion was most painful both to himself and his hearers. After having proceeded with great difficulty for some short time, he was compelled to tell the congregation that he could not address them any longer, and he sat down in a state of distress, such as may be anticipated from so humbling an issue of a first attempt. His want of suitable expressions seemed to be the cause of his failure in this instance, and, indeed, for several years afterwards he was not infrequently straitened in his pulpit labors from the same circumstance. The ill success of Mr. Smith’s first attempt to deliver a sermon tended, of course, to increase his indisposition to the work of the ministry, and it was probably some time before he made a second. It was not till the Christmas quarterly meeting following, that he was proposed to be taken on the plan as a probationary local preacher. His name was introduced at the local preacher’s meeting by Mr. William Nelson, who had been his fellow-assistant at Mr. Sigston’s, and who was at the time gradually sinking under the power of a disease which ultimately proved fatal. Mr. Smith, who was spending the vacation with his parents, received the intelligence of his having been appointed to preach a trial-sermon, in a letter from his dying friend, whose case had just then been declared hopeless by his medical attendants. Mr. Nelson, in the conclusion of his communication, says: "It is settled that you are to take my plan. I hope to live to see you return, but that is only known to God." This entrance upon the more regular work of a local preacher must have been very affecting to Mr. Smith. A solemn bequest was thus committed to his trust, and if the spirits of those who die in the Lord are allowed to trace the steps of their survivors, the fidelity of the subject must have given a spring-tide of gladness to the heart of him, whom he was thus impressively called to succeed. Undertaking the work in the fear of the Lord, he was blessed; and using the talents given, he proved it true that "to him that hath it shall be given." Soon a wider sphere of usefulness opened before him, in a call to the itinerancy, and he entered upon the work with humble trust in Him who called him, putting him into the ministry. There was one trait of his character which every minister would do well to imitate his constant endeavor to promote the salvation of sinners. For this he studied, prayed and preached, and oftentimes he agonized for souls. In the course of the year 1816 he became quickened to seek the full power of the cleansing blood of Christ and the utter extirpation of the carnal mind. In a letter bearing date October 5th he says: "My heart is given to God. I am seeking and longing for all the mind which was in Christ Jesus. Blessed be God, I am encouraged by His gracious promises to persevere in seeking full salvation. I long to experience this purity of heart. For this I pray, read, study, watch and trust. It is thy work, blessed God; let me enjoy it. In your prayers do not forget him who blesses God for such parents, and who daily prays for you." His correspondence with his parents lets us into his inner life. The reader of these extracts that follow, will see evidences of advances in knowledge and love. The first was written announcing his arrival at York, and the commencement of his labors there, and it shows also with what pious resolution he entered upon his ministry: "Nov. 15, 1816. Various have been the exercises of my mind. I think my confidence in the Lord is a little strengthened. I am more and more convinced of the absolute necessity of being clear respecting my own salvation; and, blessed be God, I am saying, ’Lord, I am Thine; save me!’ The people are very kind. I am only afraid that my coming among them will prevent some other person from coming, who would be more useful. I feel, however, resolved to be diligent, to lay myself out for usefulness in every possible way, and to give myself into the hands of God. Never did I need your prayers so much as I do at present." "Jan. 15. Yesterday and today I have experienced much uneasiness of mind. I wish to please God, but I fear I am not where I ought to be. It matters not what I hear, or what I read: I have to do with God. It is a personal concern. I shall quickly be gone: then where or what shall I be? O eternity!" "Jan. 21. I have had this day a renewed sense of the favor of God, and a foretaste of the rest from inbred sin. The blessing seemed to be very near. Oh, that I may be enabled to lay hold of it tonight!" "Jan. 23. The Lord is reviving His work in my soul. I am longing for an increased conformity to my Savior, I want more feeling for poor sinners. I must look to Him who had not where to lay His head. I must view Him in the garden, behold Him at Pilate’s bar, see Him nailed to the cross, hear Him say, ’Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,’ and the heart-rending cry, ’My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me." It is this that melts the stony heart. God grant that we may be ever properly influenced by it! The Lord has lately brought many souls to Himself in York. We are expecting a signal outpouring of His Holy Spirit. Oh, that a gracious shower may very soon descend upon us! I have heard Mr. Nelson preach some such sermons as I never heard before. I never see my littleness as a preacher under any man so much as under Mr. Nelson. He has the unction; this makes him great. He tells me that I must bless God for barren times. Mr. John Burdsall was at York last week, and from him I got some important directions respecting study. He recommended a few books, some, some of which I have procured. I am to write to him in a short time, to let him know how I come on." "Feb. 12. My mind has been much composed and stayed upon God for several days past. My confidence in Him has been much increased. I feel conscious of my inability for the great work in which I am engaged; but He has all the wisdom and power, and in Him I trust. If He has called me to preach the Gospel, He will qualify me; if not, He will, I trust, show me, and save my soul. Blessed be God!" "April 3. I am thankful that I am in my closet at half-past nine o’clock. Oh, that I may be able to cultivate habits of regularity! [In allusion to his exercises of mind about preaching, he adds,] I think, surely, no preacher was ever in my situation. Blessed be God, I can cast my soul on the atoning sacrifice of Christ ’Jesus, to Thee my soul looks up.’" "April 8. Oh, the happiness to know that my sins are put away by the sacrifice of Christ! Of this I have not the shadow of a doubt. I want more of the Spirit: for this I pray, for this I read, for this I believe, and I want to believe more. I must believe for salvation; not be saved, and then believe. I have a painful sense of my inability for the important work in which I am engaged: but it is the work of God. He is all-sufficient: if He has called me to it, He will help me; if not, He will send me home again, and He will save me. I am in His hands, bless the Lord! I never was more sensible of the necessity of experiencing the truths of the Gospel, in order to preach them successfully to others." "York, May 29, 1817. Of late I have had many visits from the Lord, especially in private. Mr. Bramwell once said, ’If you wish for any great and lasting blessing, expect it in private.’ Many here speak very clearly on entire sanctification; and, I believe, give satisfactory evidence that they are in possession of that blessing. Who is a people like unto this people? The District Meeting commenced on Wednesday. I was rather afraid that the list of books which I had read since I became a traveling preacher would incur the censure of the meeting: however, it was quite the reverse. I hope to be more diligent than ever. I still anticipate almost insurmountable difficulties in preaching. I am ashamed of my sermons, but I yet hope. This hope, how it encourages animates strengthens! Mr. Nelson is as valuable to me as ever." At the Conference of 1817 Mr. Smith was appointed to the Barnard Castle and Weardale Circuit. Here, although he was separated from his friend, Mr. Nelson, he still maintained a correspondence with him, that was a blessing to his soul. One of Mr. Nelson’s letters we give as so eminently characteristic of the man, and giving us an insight to this Boanerges that is refreshing and helpful today, as doubtless it was to Mr. Smith. We commend it to the ministry of today: "York, Nov. 7, 1817. My Dear Brother: I received your welcome epistle. I bless God for strengthening your soul and body; and also giving you to see some fruit. The Gospel of God our Savior, preached in faith, will be followed with signs more interesting than even taking up serpents, or drinking deadly poison, and taking no harm thereby. Always go sword in hand, and beg of God the power of the Spirit, while you raise it to His glory, that prejudice with every opposition may be cut down. Eye your Captain, hear His voice, follow closely; be deaf to the voice of the enemy. Now is your time to play the man. Do not study until your head aches. Lay your plans short but clear: look always for Divine aid; and after you have spread the net, close it with great care, that you may there and then bring some to shore. I lately heard a good sermon; the net was well spread, and at the close the righteous were encouraged and the wicked threatened; but no attempt was made to catch a fish. We had better catch a few fishes with a little net, than dash with a great one, and let them all slip under or by the side. Preach in the Holy Ghost, and, before you dismiss your audience, offer them salvation now. Remember first to convert, and then the good fruit will follow: only, the rebel must lay down his weapons, yea, all of them, or he will not succeed with his Prince; but they may be all dropped in a moment. Never lose sight of present salvation, nor of God who is to work it. Give Him all the glory. Should any attempt to praise you, dart immediately to God, ’Lord, I am Thine; save me!’ "My soul is kept in peace and purity. I have some good times in the new chapel. We are all peace: would to God we had prosperity also. We had better be saved in a storm than lost in a calm. God bless you. Write soon. I am," etc. Oh, that men would learn that the first and most important business of the ministry is to get people to God. For this purpose Jesus came, suffered, died, gave the Holy Spirit, instituted the ministry, and gave the great commission. Some time ago a man was marked for his wickedness and enmity to the Gospel. He seized the hour when people were going to church to drive through the streets with his fishing-tackle strung over his shoulders. Gaming was his delight, and his blasphemy was terrible. Going home from dissipation one Sunday night, he heard that an associate, with whom he had played cards the evening before, was dead. He died without hope, and in great terror; died, calling on God to have mercy upon his own soul and that of his friend. Alarm seized upon him. As his servant came in to kindle the morning fire, the man threw himself on his knees and cried for mercy. He then and there found the Savior. He at once went to work leading his friends to religion. He pretended to be a preacher in his wild and wicked days, and now he commenced preaching in earnest. When he appeared in the streets and began to preach, people thought he was trying on his old tricks. One of his old cronies and boon companions stood at the foot of the pulpit. He could not tell whether his friend was acting or was in earnest. When the sermon closed, he went up to the preacher and said: "Are you in earnest, or are you doing it for a wager? If you are only trying it on, you are acting splendidly." "Oh! no, my poor friend, I am in dead earnest, and so is my God. He is willing to receive you, as He was to receive me. He has answered prayer for me, and He will answer prayer for you." Crowded congregations follow this devoted servant of the Lord, and under his ministry, desperadoes and the perishing press into the kingdom of God. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 34: 02.05. CHAPTER 5. ABUNDANT IN LABORS ======================================================================== Chapter 5 Abundant in Labors "Cry aloud, spare not, sound an alarm." "Give me children or I die." "Though I preach the Gospel I have nothing to glory of." "Nourished up in words of faith and good doctrine." "This one thing I do" was eminently true of Brother Smith. In the closet, around the family altar, in his public ministrations, in his pastoral calling, he was ever alert for souls. The Word of God was the comfort and stay of his soul. Oftentimes while engaged in his devotions, some appropriate passage of Scripture would be brought to his mind by the Spirit. They only who have heard the voice of God can form an idea of the stability and repose which it communicates to the spirit. The subject of these pages was privileged at this stage of his ministry to have emphatic adaptation of the Word to his condition. In two several instances while engaged in prayer, passages of God’s Word were applied with Divine power to his mind. The one was Proverbs 3:6 : "In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths." The other, Matthew 6:33 : "But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." Their united influence on the one hand soothed, and on the other stimulated him. From this period it is not thought that he was ever disturbed on the subject of his call to the ministry, and the following extracts will readily be admitted as indicative of the quickened state of his personal piety. The most interesting feature of the first is the emphasis with which its writer speaks on the subject of humanity; that virtue, the perfection of which is, perhaps of all the virtues in the Christian character, the least enjoyed, and the last attained. To His Parents. "Oct. 22, 1817. Oh, what humblings I have had of late! My soul has been in the dust before the Lord, and at the same time I have felt the confidence of a little child. I love to be in this state. In your class, press the necessity of purity of heart; show that it is received and retained by faith; show it to be a privilege. Oh, what a happiness to be delivered from all anger, peevishness, pride, malice, etc., and to be filled with gentleness, patience, humility, love, etc.! Let us feast ourselves on Jesus. Let us contemplate Him, our infant Savior, in Bethlehem, and be humbled. Let us listen to Him, ’Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head,’ and be humbled. Let us look at Him washing His disciples’ feet, and be humbled. Let us walk with Him in the garden, view Him prostrate on the ground, sweating great drops of blood, hear Him crying ’If it be possible, let this cup pass from Me,’ and be humbled. Let us behold Him on the cross, and be humbled: yet still let us be confident." And this is evangelical humility; since that alone can consist with confidence. Nothing can be more anti-evangelical than the doctrine which makes inbred sin necessary to the production of humility. The lowliness of mind which the Gospel commends is the lowliness of love, and not the depression which results from the consciousness of our own depravity. In another part of the same letter, Mr. Smith thus speaks of the work of God: "The work of the Lord is prospering, especially at Barnard Castle. Glory be to God, a spirit of prayer is given. Last Tuesday week four souls obtained liberty, on Sunday night after preaching two or three, and last night, one. There seems to be a good work on the minds of many. Oh, that God would pour out His Spirit upon us in an abundant manner! There are several seeking purity of heart. You are in a deplorable state at Cudworth, so many backsliders, So many who have been pricked to the heart and yet have not found the Lord. Oh, do not cease to cry unto God. Make an effort; do not be ashamed to be a fool for Christ’s sake. You will remain low if extraordinary exertions are not made. Extraordinary effects are not produced by ordinary means." The soundness of these views will be appreciated by all who have made themselves conversant with the indications of a prosperous and promising condition of the work of God. One of Mr. Smith’s principles was that the world was to be benefited through the agency of the Church, and that signal manifestations of Divine power in awakening and conversion are to be expected through a quickened state of piety among believers. In the foregoing extract, he refers to the means, through the Divine blessing upon which we may rationally anticipate the salvation of sinners, and the enlargement of the tabernacles of the faithful. These are, increased desires after holiness, the spirit of prayer, and extraordinary effort among the people of God. And if those who are most holy are likely to be the most concerned for the salvation of men, and to have most of the power of the Holy Ghost; if God will hear the voice of His elect, who cry day and night to Him for the outpouring of the Spirit; and if they who are most scripturally diligent and energetic must be the most successful; it follows that the principle to which we have just alluded, with the practical illustration which accompanies it, is in the most perfect manner borne out in Scripture and matter of fact. The converse must be equally true, that, where no sinners are converted, a church must be either defective in its views, or low in its attainments. Where there is no influence diffused without, the principle of piety is certainly languid within; where there is no shining, there is little burning light; where souls are not saved, Christians in general must be imperfect in the character or degree of their personal religion. The building up of believers in the most holy faith was a principal object of Mr. Smith’s ministry; but he never considered this species of labor successful, except as its results were indicated in the conversion of sinners. That edification he justly deemed of a very low and questionable order which was not accompanied by a spirit of intercession for those who were without God, by the work of faith and labor of love. He rationally argued that where there were no answers to prayer, the throne of grace could not be very urgently importuned; where there was no outpouring of the Spirit, the promise of the Spirit could not be very definitely and earnestly pleaded; where there was no exertion for perishing men, there could not be much of the love of Christ. And whether that church can be correctly esteemed in a high and advancing state of improvement where prayer is cold and cursory, where faith is weak and love is listless, it requires no great sagacity to determine. Our brother embraced every opportunity of attempting to rouse the consciences of such as were hardened by the deceitfulness of sin; but he anticipated extensive success, even in this respect, only as the faith and intercessions of God’s people were brought to accompany his efforts, His labors, he knew, could be succeeded or frustrated by them alone. Hence he strove primarily to obtain the quickening influences of the Spirit upon them: nor was he unsuccessful. Had it been possible that his exertions for the conversion of sinners should prove utterly unavailing; had he never succeeded in awaking the most transient alarm in a stupefied conscience, or the smallest desire after goodness in a depraved heart; had he never plucked one brand from the fire, nor ever pointed a penitent to the blood of Christ; still his memory would be blessed in Zion, for the many instances in which, through his instrumentality, the Spirit was "poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness" became a "fruitful field," and what was once esteemed a "fruitful field," in the comparison, was "counted for a forest." In short, the retrospect of his labors furnishes the most satisfactory sanction to his favorite opinion on the subject, that he most certainly and perfectly edifies believers who is most ardently and scripturally laborious for the conversion of sinners. The preacher who is in earnest to win souls, will make every effort to do so, though tired body and home comforts may plead with him. A preacher came home late, very tired, and had gone to bed to seek needed rest. The friend with whom he boarded awoke him out of his first refreshing sleep and informed him a little girl wanted to see him. Said he, "I turned impatiently over in my bed, and said, ’I am very tired; tell her to come in the morning, and I will see her.’ My friend soon returned, and said, ’I think you had better get up. The girl is a poor little suffering thing. She is thinly clad, is without bonnet or shoes. She has seated herself on the doorstep, and says she must see you, and will wait till you get up.’ I dressed myself, and opening the outside door, I saw one of the most forlorn-looking little girls I ever beheld. Want, sorrow, suffering, neglect seemed to struggle for the mastery. She looked up to my face, and said, ’Be you the man that preached last night, and said that Christ could save to the uttermost?’ ’Yes.’ ’Well, I was there, and I want you to come right down to my house, and try to save my poor father.’ ’What’s the matter with your father?’ ’He’s a very good father when he don’t drink. He’s out of work, and he drinks awfully. He’s almost killed my poor mother; but if Jesus can save to the uttermost, He can save him. And I want you to come right to our house now.’ "I took my hat and followed my little guide, who trotted on before, halting as she turned the corners to see that I was coming. Oh! what a miserable den her home was! A low, dark, underground room, the floor all slush and mud not a chair, table, or bed to be seen. A bitter cold night, and not a spark of fire on the hob; and the room not only cold, but dark. In the corner, on a little dirty straw, lay a woman. Her head was bound up, and she was moaning, as if in agony. As we darkened the doorway, a feeble voice said, ’O my child, my child! why have you brought a stranger into this horrible place?’ Her story was a sad one, but soon told. Her husband, out of work; maddened with drink, and made desperate, had stabbed her because she did not provide him with a supper that was not in the house. He was then upstairs, and she was expecting every moment that he would come down and complete the bloody work he had begun. While the conversation was going on, the fiend made his appearance. A fiend he looked. He brandished the knife, still wet with the blood of his wife." The missionary, like the man among the tombs, had himself belonged to the desperate classes. He was converted at the mouth of a coal-pit. He knew the disease and the remedy; knew how to handle a man on the borders of delirium tremens. Subdued by the tender tones, the madman calmed down and took a seat on a box. But the talk was interrupted by the little girl, who approached the missionary, and said: "Don’t talk to father; it won’t do any good. If talking would have saved him, he would have been saved long ago. Mother has talked to him so much, and so good. You must ask Jesus, who saves to the uttermost, to save my poor father." Rebuked by the faith of the little girl, the missionary and the miserable sinner knelt down together. He prayed as he never prayed before; he entreated and interceded in tones so tender and fervent that it melted the desperate man, who cried for mercy. And mercy came. He bowed in penitence before the Lord, and lay down to sleep that night on his pallet of straw a pardoned soul. Relief came to that dwelling. The wife was lifted from her dirty couch, and her home was made comfortable. On Sunday, the reformed man took the hand of his little girl, and entered the infant-class at Sunday School, to learn something about the Savior who "saves to the uttermost." He entered upon a new life; his reform was thorough. He found good employment, for, when sober, he was an excellent workman; and next to his Savior, he blesses God for the faith of his little girl who believed in a Savior who was able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God by Him. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 35: 02.06. CHAPTER 6. CONQUERING AND TO CONQUER ======================================================================== Chapter 6 Conquering and to Conquer "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." "Not I, but Christ." "Lo, I am with you always." "Go in this thy strength, that I have sent thee." "Happy if with my latest breath I may but gasp His name, Preach Him to all and cry in death, Behold, behold the Lamb." In the early part of the year 1818, a revival of the work of God took place in his native village. On this occasion, he writes to his father as follows: "I am glad to hear of your prosperity at Cudworth. Only keep the people in action, and you will get on. There is no standing still. Oh, let us come to God for great blessings: He is willing to save the world. We must make a noble effort in the name of God, and we shall not labor in vain. The Gospel, preached in faith, must do execution. ’Cry aloud, spare not; sound an alarm in the holy mountain.’ Offer a present, free, and full salvation, and you will see signs and wonders. Blessed be God, He is doing great things for us at Barnard Castle. On Sunday last, four souls got into liberty; on Tuesday night, at the prayer-meeting, seven more. Many, I believe, are awakened; and I expect the work will go on. My soul is alive to God. I am longing for more of the life and power of godliness. I wish to feel what I preach." To the same, April 7, 1818: "Blessed be God, He is carrying on His work in my soul. Of late, I have had some precious seasons, both in public and private. I want more of the spirit of prayer. There is nothing like getting filled with the Spirit before we go to the house of God, and then pleading with God in the presence of His people. The Lord is deepening His work in the hearts of professors among us, and awakening and converting sinners. Last Tuesday night, at the prayer-meeting, there were six souls set at liberty. On Sunday night, I preached a funeral sermon, from John 9:4. At the prayer-meeting afterwards the Lord brought three into liberty, and I believe many others were much affected. ’This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.’" To the same "April 27, 1818: God is still carrying on His good work among us. I was much pleased with a woman at Staindrop, who was converted as clearly, and in as scriptural a way, as ever I knew any one. I saw her the next day; she was still praising God. I asked, ’How was it that you were made happy?’ She said, ’While you were showing Christ as a Savior, and telling us to believe on Him, I thought, I can believe, I can believe. Something said, I was to repent longer yet; but I said, I think I can believe I do believe. IT CAME, and I believed that God had pardoned all my sins.’ On the Tuesday following a woman came from the same place; at the prayer-meeting after preaching, she was enabled to believe on Jesus Christ to the saving of her soul, and she went home rejoicing in God. Oh, let us go on in the name of the Lord and expect present effects; yea, let us be restless for the salvation of souls. We shall not labor in vain. What condescension in God to use such unworthy creatures in the accomplishment of His designs. The walls of Jericho fell at the blowing of rams’ horns. Of late I have had many visits from the Lord. I can venture on Christ for deliverance from sin; but I want to be filled with all the fullness of God, to have the mind of Christ in me. Oh, urge your members to purity of heart! Much will be done by a single act of faith in the blood of Jesus." Mr. Smith this year attended the Conference, which was held at Leeds. A principal reason which induced him to do so, was a wish to converse with, and receive instructions from, the venerable William Bramwell. Of the manners of this eminently useful minister, Mr. Smith’s prepossessions were rather unfavorable; and he thought it not improbable that his inquiries would be met with something like austerity. At every expense, however, he resolved, if possible, to gain the information which a man of Mr. Bramwell’s character would alone be able to communicate. Like the Athenian who said to his opponent in council, "Strike, but hear me," so he, with his characteristic disregard to everything but improvement, was willing to be rebuked if he could but he instructed. He had several opportunities of being in Mr. Bramwell’s society. On one occasion, if not oftener, he was accompanied by Mr. Stoner, and in this interview the distinction between the two friends must have been sufficiently marked. Mr. Smith asked a variety of questions on the subject of Christian experience, and the best methods of carrying on the work of God. He stated at large his own difficulties and plans, proposing inquiries on each as it was mentioned. Mr. Bramwell looked surprised, but replied in a concise and generally in a satisfactory manner. Mr. Stoner in the meantime sat by, listening with profound attention, and in unbroken silence; and, as he afterwards confessed to him, wondering at the readiness with which his friend succeeded in drawing forth the lights of an experience so deep and varied. In the course of a few days after this conversation, the treasures of Mr. Bramwell’s ardent and manly heart were forever sealed to all earthly inquiries by the hand of death; and it was an act worthy the close of so signally useful a life, thus to cast his garment on one who already emulated his spirit, and who subsequently to so great a degree inherited his success. To a man of nervous mind and resolute decision nothing seems to give so great an increase of determination as the absence of all encouragement from without. A feeble spirit will falter in such a situation; but the having to rely on his own resources, makes him who is capable of elevation truly great. Where mighty interests the interests of truth and eternity depend upon the principles which such an one has espoused, or the plans which he has adopted, his perseverance under discouragement is the highest moral sublimity; the truest and most illustrious heroism. No test of strength of mind is so severe, or so infallible. An obstinate man may be rendered confirmedly pertinacious by contradiction; but it is the attribute of nobleness and greatness alone, to triumph over neglect, indifference, or neutrality. The removal of Mr. Smith to the south of England was, at this period of his life, the most happy arrangement which could have been made for the establishment of his principles, and the completion of his character. The societies to which he was now introduced, it is true, were able to discern and value ministerial zeal and diligence. They possessed many members of great personal devotedness, whose piety was silently but powerfully influential, and whose hearts longed for the prosperity of Zion. But the appearance among them of a man of Mr. Smith’s peculiar views and singular modes of operation was in many respects a phenomenon. They had no previously formed standard of ministerial character by which he could be measured, there was no class under which he could be ranged. They required time to fully comprehend the man and his principles. They were at first startled and confounded, and, as a consequence, unable to come to any correct or even sober judgment concerning him. Meanwhile he was, of course, without any considerable co-operation on their part. He was alone; "a man to be wondered at." It was now to be tried whether he would sink into an ordinary character, or become more established and eminent than he could have been with the assistance and the encouragement which in other places he might have at all times to a considerable extent secured. It was a crisis of fearful importance Is it too much to say that the destinies of immortal men were suspended on its issues? And if those philanthropic spirits who serve "the heirs of salvation" contemplate with the deepest concern the moral crisis of the history of an individual, with what anxiety must they watch the turning-point in the character of a minister, and especially such an one as John Smith! All glory to God, the decision in this case was worthy a strong and enlightened mind. How many will forever adore that grace which at this time wrought effectually in him, the revelation of the great day alone can determine. The following extract from his private papers will serve to show with what pious and humble feeling he entered upon his new situation: "Brighton, Sept. 1, 1818. I am ashamed before the Lord on account of my unfaithfulness; yet I feel encouraged to put my trust in Him. He is a God of boundless mercy. I have an affecting sense of my own inability; the Lord must undertake for me. I wish to be useful. By the grace of God. I will aim at souls. The people here seem very kind, but the place is very gay. I know not how to proceed. Lord, direct and strengthen me, and deliver me from the fear of man. Oh, that this may be a growing year to my soul, and a year of general prosperity throughout the circuit!" At the commencement of his ministry at Brighton, Mr. Smith seems particularly to have dwelt upon the high calling of believers with the hope of producing among them that quickened feeling which he deemed essential to permanent prosperity in the Church of God. He particularly insisted on The Necessity of Christian Perfection, and that so frequently that at the conclusion of one of his sermons on this subject a member of the congregation met him at the foot of the pulpit stairs, and accosted him with, "So, Mr. Smith, you have given us the old thing over again!" "Yes," said he, with his accustomed benignant smile, "and till all your hearts are cleansed from sin you shall have it still over and over again." Nor were his labors in this respect without encouragement. In one of his first letters to his parents, dated October 8th, he says: "I trust we shall have a revival of the work of God. We have had a few drops. Several seem to be longing for heart purity." The following interesting testimony of the state of his own experience, and the fullness and force of his views of evangelical trust, is also from the same letter: "Blessed be God, He is carrying on His good work in my soul. He has of late poured upon me a spirit of wrestling prayer. He has also astonishingly answered my prayers. I hang upon Him continually, and He keeps my soul in peace. There is nothing like getting into, and keeping in, action. Let us be constantly at work; we shall soon have done; the night is coming on apace. If our work be done, we shall have a calm night. The Lord still inclines me to offer and urge a present and full salvation. The Gospel offers nothing less than a full salvation. We want the faith that cannot ask in vain; a holy panting, laboring, hungering, thirsting; and this constantly. Self-denial is absolutely necessary. Do not hear much of, ’I am unworthy,’ in your class. God does not save us because we are worthy, but because He is bountiful. God knows that we are unworthy, and therefore offers us the blessings of salvation freely. Should we not be nearer the truth if we were to say, ’I will have a little sin to remain, a little pride, anger, love of the world, etc.’? Oh, let us say as God says, "destruction to sin." And we must have the whole man engaged constantly in the service of God, or we shall soon be tainted again." The Word of God, when faithfully preached, will accomplish that whereunto it is sent, and reach hearts that to human vision seem so hard and unapproachable. A protracted meeting was held in a town, that attracted much attention. Crowds came in from the region round about, and many turned unto the Lord. A farmer a very worldly-minded man, was greatly exercised about the meetings. He believed in the literal command, "Six days shalt thou labor." He was offended at the fanaticism which could devote working days to religion. More than all, his family became interested in the work of grace. In following out his plans, it became necessary that he should spend a day in plowing in the vicinity of the meetings. He was not a Christian, but he was not an opposer of religion. He attended church regularly, paid his subscription, and was a regular supporter of religion. He did not want any revival. The old-fashioned way of seeking the Lord suited him. When he saw the crowd around the church, looked at the well-known teams hitched in the shed and at the fences, and as the singing was wafted over the field where he was at work, he was stirred up marvelously. The windows of the church were opened, and a sentence or two of the sermon struck his ear. The voice of the preacher was sonorous and clear. As the farmer came up and turned his furrow, he heard again and again the text repeated, "Turn ye to the stronghold," "Turn ye to the stronghold." So again and again he heard the invitation, which sometimes sounded like a warning. The Word finally took effect. The plough was left on the furrow; the oxen were unhitched and unyoked, and seemed to look with astonishment, as they cropped the grass, that the burden was lighter for an hour. In his working clothes, the farmer stood in the vestibule of the church, leaning, with a sad expression, on the lintel of the door. He was one of those who asked for prayers. He went to his labor a renewed man. The golden text in that family is, "Turn ye to the stronghold, ye prisoners of hope." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 36: 02.07. CHAPTER 7. A STUDENT OF THE WORD ======================================================================== Chapter 7 A Student of the Word "Preach the preaching that I bid thee." "Search the Scriptures; they testify of Me." "Give attendance to reading, to doctrine." "These things command and teach." "The Word of God is quick and powerful." Of Mr. Smith’s personal attachment to the Word of God, and its influence on his ministry, the testimony of Mr. Calder is very striking. "The whole force of his mind," Mr. Calder remarks, "was directed to the object for the accomplishment of which he undertook the Christian ministry, the presenting God’s truth to men in order to effect the salvation of those who heard him. And while he was fully capable of luxuriating in the riches of literary pleasures, he steadily and conscientiously avoided that species of reading which, though innocent in itself, was not immediately connected with his great work. He would frequently remark to me, in relation to any work of a generally interesting character, Yes, it is very good, I have no doubt; I shall be glad to read it at a future period, if God spare my life; but I must read my Bible more; I must devour God’s book, or how can I know His mind? I do not legislate for others, but I must be allowed to follow my own views on this subject.’ The result was a compactness of thought, a distinctness of conception on the subjects of evangelical and experimental religion, accompanied by a simplicity and perspicuity of statement, I had almost said, unique in its kind. His style and manner of preaching always accorded with the great end of leading men to God. It was emphatically scriptural and in the best sense of the term, highly theological. Indeed he was a great divine, if understanding God’s Word makes a man such, and especially understanding and exhibiting God’s mode of saving a sinner. "His memory was extraordinary, and I believe it would have cost him very little trouble to commit any moderate sized volume to its storehouse. To God’s book his pious and devout heart turned as to an ever-living fountain of truth and light, to satiate and delight his soul. He usually read twelve chapters, or the whole of a scripture-book, in a day, and committed a portion of it to memory. In consequence of being shortsighted, and not able to read when traveling on foot, he was accustomed to repeat some considerable portion of the sacred oracles as he itinerated his circuit; and when I informed him on one occasion, in a village where he met me to assist in holding a missionary meeting, that he must preach before the public meeting commenced, it being his appointment, he smilingly replied that he had no sermon to preach, but that he would go into the pulpit, and repeat the Epistle of St. James, having just done so on the road as he walked to the village. I need scarcely add, that we had not the Epistle so repeated, yet it ought to be stated, that amongst those causes which contributed to the wonderful success attending his ministerial labors, the aptitude with which he could use the Sword of the Spirit may be deemed not one of the least. To souls in distress on account of sin his quotations of Scripture, as suited to their state, were singularly appropriate, and attended with blessed effects. "His own views of Divine truth might, with great propriety, be described as those of a minister of the Spirit. His mode of presenting the subject of God’s love to man, His willingness to save sinners, the value of the atonement, and the power of faith to secure personal salvation, as known in its different degrees of justification or entire purity, might well entitle him to the designation of a master in Israel." Notwithstanding his simplicity, plainness and vehemence, the congregations at Brighton increased considerably soon after his arrival. Some, no doubt, came from motives of curiosity, many were surprised, and a few were terrified. His own feelings may be readily gathered from the following sentence, from a letter to a friend: "Our congregations increase, but we are not in the way, I am afraid, of looking for present blessings. This is of the greatest importance. He cannot do many mighty works because of our unbelief. In the circuit I had a prayer-meeting after preaching in every place during my last round. We saw nothing very particular. Perseverance; we must have souls converted." Under the influence of this last sentiment he appears constantly to have lived. Whether in the pulpit or in the closet, in social intercourse or alone, he never lost sight of the great design of his mission. Of that species of preaching which only produced intellectual pleasure he had a holy abhorrence. Nothing can be more characteristic of the man than his remark to a friend, on sermons in which power of intellect or imagination is almost exclusively predominant: "They achieve nothing, sir." Perfectly capable, as he was, of appreciating what was refined and intellectual, a sermon which achieved nothing, however characterized by taste, argument, eloquence, or even abstract and generalizing theology, was to him merely as the play of the painted fly in the sunshine, whose parent is a worm, and whose life is a day. The importance of the object of his vocation held his faculties in a state of excitement which was too rigid to be affected by lighter interests. All his subordinate feelings lost their separate existence and operation by falling into the grand one. There have not been wanting trivial minds who have marked this as a fault in his character; but he is above their sphere of judgment. The invisible spirits who fulfill their commission of philanthropy among mortals, do not care about the objects we so much admired: no more did he, when the time which he must have devoted to them would have been taken from the work to which he had consecrated his life. Such a sin against taste is very far beyond the reach of common saintship to commit. It implied an inconceivable severity of conviction, that he had one thing to do, and that he who would do some great thing in this short life must apply himself to the work with such a concentration of his forces, as to idle spectators looks like insanity. Where the results which he desired did not attend his ministry, he would spend days and nights almost constantly on his knees, weeping and pleading before God, and especially deploring his own inadequacy to the great work of saving souls. He was, at times, when he perceived no movement in the church, literally in agonies, travailing in birth for precious souls, till he saw Christ magnified in their salvation. He was accustomed to saying, that a preacher ought to have restless solicitude on the subject of fruit, that God demands this of us, and that whenever it is found it will secure His approbation. How far he was right let the case of Jeremiah testify, who said: "If ye will not hear it, my soul shall weep in secret places for your pride, and mine eyes shall weep sore, and run down with tears; or, indeed, the Prince of preachers, in His weeping over Jerusalem. Of Mr. Smith’s humility and watchful jealousy over himself, the following private memorandum will give some idea: "Dec. 6, 1818. I am more fully persuaded of the necessity of looking constantly to Jesus, in order to be preserved from falling; yet I am afraid I am not sufficiently sensible of the great evil of falling. Gracious God, deliver me not up to vile affections! I wish to be more diligent in redeeming the time, and in my studies; I am persuaded that much depends on this. I have been one of the most unfaithful of all the servants of God; yet I am encouraged to come to Him, because I ’have an Advocate’ with Him, ’Jesus Christ the Righteous;’ and ’Jesus’ blood, through earth and skies, Mercy, free, boundless mercy, cries!’" In further illustration of these amiable and Christian qualities, we give the following incident: During Brother Smith’s residence in Brighton, a certain lady became deeply distressed because of her condition as a sinner. He deemed it right to pay her several visits in order to instruct, and pray with her. The husband, a violent and unconverted man, was greatly incensed at these intrusions, and, it was said, put Mr. Smith out of the house by violence. After his departure from the circuit, the man was converted, and he greatly deplored his former action. In days after, Mr. Smith said the man did not thrust him out, but, said he, "I saw he was under the power of strong feelings, and I apprehended that he was about to lay hands on me, so I left the house, not because I was afraid of him, but because I was afraid of myself, not knowing to what I might have been tempted had he touched me." Again, ponder the following extract and see how severe is his self-accusation: "Dec. 11. I have not had that lively sense of the presence and favor of God, the whole of this day, which I wish to enjoy. I am deeply sensible of my ignorance, and of my want of ability for the work of the ministry; yet the Lord is all-sufficient, and He will qualify and help. I trust I shall be more diligent than I have been. I have to lament my instability in everything. I have not prayed against it as I ought to have done. By the grace of God, I will make a renewed effort." Under the same date as the foregoing, he writes thus to Miss Hamer: "I am glad that the good Spirit of God continues to strive with you; but I would just say, do not let Him strive: Yield to Him: be led by Him at all times. Be as much in private as possible. Come to the throne of grace with boldness ... God’s having given His Son is an infinite and everlasting proof of His willingness to save us to the uttermost. Oh, get transforming views of Christ: these you must get in private. Do not rest without the constant enjoyment of the perfect love of God. Get deeper baptisms, signal revelations of the love of God in your heart. Experience the Word, feel that you have the same Spirit that inspired the sacred penman. Of late I have had severe and peculiar temptations, and, blessed be God, I have had strong and peculiar consolation and support." In reference to the work of God he adds: "Our prospects are very cheering. Congregations increase, the people in many places are greatly quickened, and some are brought out of darkness into God’s marvelous light. Last Tuesday night in one of our country places, there were many in distress, and several professed to be made happy. On Wednesday night also there were some in distress. Oh, if we were always filled with the Holy Ghost before we go to the house of God we should see signs and wonders." Mr. Smith’s letters to his parents usually contained a few words specifically addressed to his mother, as she was often much afflicted; they commonly suggested some topics of consolation. The following is a specimen: "Dec. 22. Your bodily indisposition has a tendency to weigh down your spirits, but cast body and soul on Christ. However you may feel, trust in Christ. Cast your burden on the Lord, and He will sustain you. Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him. The father attends to the afflicted child, because it is afflicted; and we have not a High Priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities," etc. Nothing could be more sober and scriptural, nothing farther removed from the visionary and enthusiastic, than Mr. Smith’s sentiments on the subject of Christian consolation. One of his friends relates, that "to a person suffering from debility, he said, ’You must not make joy the criterion of your state, but confidence in the truth of God. It would be a miracle for you to rejoice.’ And again, to the same person, ’Now, do not be giving way to despondency because you are weak. I used to do it, but I know better now. I use my privilege, and rejoice:’ " meaning, of course, by the term "rejoice," in this latter case, not to describe the abounding of active delight, but the calm satisfaction arising from an unshaken sense of God’s fidelity. In the letter from which the above it extracted, he elsewhere remarks: "Let us plead with God for deeper baptisms. We want more of the Spirit. This should be our grand petition, The Spirit. He will purify, strengthen, comfort, yea, all is in Him. Give God no rest. How soon can He come down and shake the mountains, and dash the rocks to pieces? We may be assured if we are not saved, the hindrance is in us. Let us take hold of our fellow creatures, consider ourselves one with them, and plead with God for them." All around us there are hungry souls, people who are waiting for some earnest believer to lead them to Jesus. A wealthy merchant had an only son to whom he was tenderly attached. He spared no expense with his education; he sent him to foreign lands, and at home denied him no gratification. To the sorrow of his father, he became despondent, and a deep melancholy settled upon him. Physicians were called in, who prescribed amusements, entertainments, recreation, and pastimes. All this did no good; young associates surrounded him; he was taken to the theater, to balls, parties, and soirees. Nothing relieved him; like the woman in the Gospel, he seemed no better, but rather worse. The physician thought a sea voyage might do him good. A yacht was fitted out to send along the coast. On the land and on the water, the settled melancholy weighed him down. The yacht ran into a harbor on Cape Cod; the young man stepped ashore, listless, indifferent, careless about where he was or where he was going. The shades of evening fell upon him. He saw a light in the distance, and walked on toward it. As he approached the building, he heard the voice of song. The house was a carpenter’s shop, fitted up for worship with a rude altar and ruder benches. It was a season of revival, and a few earnest Christians had assembled for prayer and praise. Exhortation followed prayer, and praise followed exhortation. As one after another spoke of the love of the Savior and the joy of religion, the despondent individual arose. "This that you’ve been talking about is what I want. Will your Savior accept me? Are there any blessings left for one as wretched as I am?" Christians gave the poor seeker a hearty welcome; led him to the altar and prayed with him. That night, he found peace in believing, with an elastic step, he went on board his yatch, and turned its prow homeward. He entered his home, and informed his astonished household what great things the Lord had done for him, and what great peace He had imparted. He entered a theological seminary, fitted himself for the ministry, and went out to tell a dying world what peace and joy there are in religion. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 37: 02.08. CHAPTER 8. TRAVAILING IN SOUL ======================================================================== Chapter 8 Travailing in Soul "For as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children." "He shall see of the travail of His soul, and be satisfied." "Oh, that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people." "For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh." In every instance the man who prevails in prayer is the man who is alone as he prays with God. Abraham leaves Sarah behind when he pleads with Him for Sodom; and if he fails, it is because he ceases to ask before God ceases to grant. Moses is by himself beside the bush in the wilderness. Joshua is alone when Christ comes to him as an armed man. Gideon and Jepthah are by themselves when commissioned to save Israel. Once does Elijah raise a child from the dead, and Elisha does the same, and in each case not even the mothers come in, while the prophet alone with God asks and receives. So of Ezekiel, so of Daniel. Although others are present, Saul journeying to Damascus is alone with Christ after that He breaks upon him. Cornelius is praying by himself when the angel flashes upon his solitude; nor is any one with Peter upon the housetop when he is prepared to go to the Gentiles for the first time. One John is alone in the wilderness, another John is by himself in Patmos, when nearest God. It is when alone under his fig-tree in prayer that Jesus sees Nathaniel. All religious biography, our own closest communion and success with God, show what Christ means when, as if it were the only way to pray, He says: "And thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly." John Smith spent many an hour alone with God pleading for souls, and, jealous for His Master’s cause, sought opportunities to personally present to the individual the claims of the Gospel. Some eminent ministers have been possessed by so great a jealousy for the honor of God, and by so determined a resentment against sin, that their minds have been shaded by sternness, rather than softened by compassion. But there was a native softness and susceptibility about Mr. Smith’s affection which, when sanctified by the power of grace, would have peculiarly disposed him, had he been merely an ordinary Christian, to weep with those who weep. And while, on the one hand, as will be hereafter shown, he never forgot the claims of the Divine purity, and thus invested with an extraordinary power in his denunciations of sin, he preserved the full-flowing tide of human feeling, and the condition of sinners inspired his heart with an unutterable pity. He entered so fully into their misery and peril, and had so poignant and distressing a sense of the malignity and heinousness of their violations of the law, as to be often indescribably oppressed. It was a settled principle with him to "confess the sins of the people." "I remember," says Mr. Clarkson, "to have heard him remark, that "unless a preacher carries about with him a daily burden, he is not likely to see many sinners converted to God."" That he himself carried about this burden, Mr. Calder’s testimony will be sufficient to evince. This gentleman remarks: "I have often seen him come downstairs in the morning, after spending several hours in prayer, with his eyes swollen with weeping. He would soon introduce the subject of his anxiety by saying, ’I am a broken-hearted man; yes, indeed, I am an unhappy man; not for myself, but on account of others. God has given me such a sight of the value of precious souls, that I cannot live if souls be not saved. Oh, give me souls, or else I die!’ And as the sympathy which he felt for sinners was unusually strong, so was it also peculiarly practical. This was strikingly manifested in the case of penitents. "When you are with people in distress on account of their sins," he sometimes said, "you must not only pray for them, but you must throw yourself into their circumstances; you must be a penitent too; they must pray through you, and what you say must be exactly what they would say if they knew how." He carried out the same principle into the matter of faith; and he has related instances in which, when he has been laboring to exert the faith of sympathy, actual faith has arisen correspondingly in the mind of the sinner, and the power of God and of salvation have burst upon both, as they simultaneously appropriated the atonement of Christ. We now give our readers a statement of the way of salvation that is very simple and happy. It is a specimen of the form in which John Smith greatly delighted to propound the truth: "Jesus Christ is the gift of God to a lost world. It hath pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell. Faith is the condition on which we receive the blessings of the Gospel. I am a lost sinner. Jesus is offered to me. I trust in Him and am saved. I continue to trust, and am continually saved. God testifies this by His Holy Spirit. So all the way through, in every situation, and in all circumstances, if we only trust in Christ, we cannot be confounded. What is it that I want? It is in Christ, and Christ is offered to me; then I must take what I want in Christ. Nothing but a want of this faith can prevent me from enjoying the blessing. This completely strips man, and puts the honor of God’s grace on Christ. This is the Gospel, good news, glad tidings. ’Glory to God in the highest; on earth peace, good-will to men.’ ’O for a trumpet voice, On all the world to call!’" Of the progress of the work of God he remarks: "I think we are rising a little throughout the circuit. My dear colleague has had some glorious seasons. At Framfield, a number of praying souls were met together to spend a day during the Christmas holidays. Mr. Calder had to go that way; he called, and preached to them. While he was preaching, the power of God came down. Several cried aloud for mercy. I suppose there were twelve in distress, and one of the local preachers was enabled to believe for entire sanctification." At the District-Meeting held in London in the month of May, Mr. Smith was appointed to assist in conducting a watch-night at City-road Chapel. The whole of the preceding afternoon he spent in earnest entreaty for the Divine blessing upon the meeting. He had great enlargement in delivering an exhortation on the occasion; and while he was afterwards engaged in prayer, the influence of the Holy Spirit descended in an unusual manner. The effect was extraordinary. Some cried aloud under a consciousness of their sin and peril; some were unable to repress exclamations of praise to God; while others were so overwhelmed as to be obliged to retire from the chapel. Among these last was a baker, who had been accustomed to follow his business on the Sabbath-day. His alarm was so powerful that he was bowed down towards the earth, and it was with great difficulty that he succeeded in reaching his own house. When he retired to bed, sleep had forsaken him. He arose in inexpressible agony, and casting himself on his knees, wrestled with God for about two hours, when the Lord pardoned his sins, and filled his heart with joy, and his mouth with thanksgiving. His wife also soon experienced the same blessing; the immediate result of which was, that they altogether relinquished baking on the Sabbath day, and sacrificed the gains of iniquity, which amounted to one guinea per week. "I had an interview with them," says Mr. Clarkson, "about two years afterwards, and they assured me that the Lord had so prospered them in their business that they had been gainers ever since. Honoring God always pays. Godliness is profitable unto all things, having the promise of the life that now is, and that which is to come. A young man held a position as confidential clerk in a large banking house. He was a decided Christian, but not a demonstrative one. One Saturday the president came to him, and handing him a bundle of papers, told him they must be copied and ready for use Monday morning. "I will have to work all Sunday to finish that job." "That may be," said the president, "but my work must be done when I want it, and my employees must meet my wishes." "But I am a Sunday School superintendent," said the clerk, "and I would not have my scholars know that I worked on Sunday for your salary." "Well, you must choose between complying with my wishes and losing your place." "With such an alternative, I should not hesitate a moment," was the reply. The president was not prepared for such a stout resistance, and was a little touched. "You’d better consider well what you’re doing," he said; "I can put you in the forefront of financiers; if I discharge you, you’ll be ruined." "’I have been young, and now am old: yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread,’ that was my father’s text." said the young man. Of course there could be but one issue. The clerk took his discharge. Sunday was a gloomy one in his house; his associates said he was a fool to be so nice. On Monday, the banker was visited by some gentlemen; they were about to start a bank, they said; they wanted a cashier, a man prompt, capable, reliable. "I know just the man you want." "Where is he now?" "He is not in any employment. He has been discharged." "We don’t want any cast-off man," was the reply; "if the man is what you say, he would not be unemployed, for such men are Tare." "The fact is," said the president, "I discharged him because he wouldn’t work Sundays; even then I admired his principles, and I’ll be his bondsman to any amount." Over the mantel of this cashier’s dining-room can be found, in a handsome frame, the golden text, "I have been young, and now am old: yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread." In the course of the District-Meeting, some conversation took place on the decrease in the number of members during the preceding year, and several measures were suggested to prevent the recurrence of so melancholy a circumstance. Among those who spoke on the subject, was a preacher of the highest character and influence, who had known Mr. Smith before he entered on the itinerant work, and who highly estimated his devotedness and ardor. After having alluded to several other particulars, he added, with much emphasis: "If we all possessed the burning zeal of the brother who addressed us last night, we should not have to lament any diminution of our societies." This remark, from such a quarter, had a happy effect upon the minds of those who had previously been unacquainted with the worth of the person to whom it referred. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 38: 02.09. CHAPTER 9. VICTORIES IN THE PASTORATE ======================================================================== Chapter 9 Victories in the Pastorate "Feed my sheep." "For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ and Him crucified." "Which things also we teach, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth." "Now thanks be unto God which always causeth us to triumph in Christ." "We use great plainness of speech." The pastoral work of Mr. Smith now demands our attention. Let this incident illustrate his methods: Having to go to a distant part of the Brighton circuit, Mr. Smith stayed to dine at an intermediate village. After dinner, an interesting and intelligent servant girl, of about fourteen years of age, who was engaged in the room in which he sat, arrested his attention. "Come hither, my dear," said he, in his usually serious and impressive manner; "I wish to speak to you." She immediately came, and, looking very earnestly in his face, awaited, with an appearance of great interest, what he had to say. "Do you know that you are a sinner?" he asked. Heaving a deep sigh, she replied, "Yes, sir."" Do you know that you will be lost unless your sins be pardoned?" "Yes, sir." "Are you unhappy?" "Yes, sir." "Do you ever pray?" "Yes." "Do you say your prayers, or do you ask God for what you feel you want?" "I say my prayers." "But you could ask me for anything you wanted, could you not?" "Yes, sir." "Suppose you were a poor girl and went to Mrs. Smith to beg, you could tell her of your distress and ask her for something.?" In a voice full of emotion she replied, "Yes, sir." "Well, you are a poor distressed sinner; God pities you; you can ask Him to forgive you. Shall I pray for you? The poor child could not reply for weeping. They then kneeled down, and in a very few minutes she began to cry aloud for mercy, and to confess and bewail her sins in the most affecting manner. She continued to cry till God revealed His Son in her. The change in her countenance and accents was most astonishing. She praised God in a loud and joyful voice, and with a faith that greatly surprised Mr. Smith, who stood at her side, interceding for her relation, for all sinners, and for the world at large. Her gratitude taught her new and eloquent language. With extraordinary emphasis, she said over and over again, "Jesus has died for me! Jesus has died for me! Blessed Jesus! My God! My Father! God pities, God loves me, and I love my God! Oh, when shall I be with Thee in glory to praise Thy name for ever and ever!" She continued on her knees for more than an hour, and her state of rapture was so extreme, that, as Mr. Smith afterwards said, it seemed as if it had been impossible for her to survive so overpowering a revelation of the Divine love. In the month of July, Mr. Smith visited Chichester, to assist in the opening of a new chapel, and remained there for several days. His labors in that city were honored by God. He preached one evening from 1 Peter 3:13 : "Who is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good?" and had great liberty of speech. During the concluding prayer, the influence of God descended on the congregation in a remarkable manner, and several groaned audibly under the burden of their sins. Mr. Smith cried out, "Now let your hearts yield!" and began to pray again. He then came down from the pulpit, and Mr. Hiley, the resident preacher, continued to plead with God on behalf of the distressed. Mr. Smith, in his usual way, immediately addressed those individuals who were seeking salvation, and exhorted them to trust in Christ for a present deliverance. Arrangements had been made for letting the seats in the chapel; but all other business was forgotten, in the urgency of the cries of penitent sinners, and the meeting was protracted unto a late hour. Nine persons were brought into the enjoyment of pardoning love that evening and many others still remained under deep and painful concern for their souls. The beginning of the year 1820 was marked by considerable increase of religious interest on his charge, and he had the satisfaction of seeing the grace of God displayed in several instances of clear and striking conversion. Calling one day on Mrs. M____, a pious lady of Lewes, he there met with her niece, who was under concern for her soul. He engaged in prayer with peculiar sweetness, and was afterwards led to speak of the excellencies of the Savior, and the happiness of those who are united to Him. His word was accompanied by special unction, and Miss M____, the young person before alluded to, was so powerfully affected that she arose from her seat, and, casting herself on her knees, began to plead with God, in earnest prayer for the blessing of a present salvation. In a short time, hope sprang up in her heart. She exclaimed, "I will believe," and instantly the Comforter came. She rose and cried, "The Lord has washed away my sins for the sake of the blood of Christ;" and, in an ecstasy of gratitude and triumph, she flung herself on the neck of her rejoicing relative, exclaiming, "It is you that have brought me to this!" with similar expressions of joyful feeling. They then united in the praise of a pardoning God. If my information be correct, two other persons in the same family were, a few days afterwards, through Mr. Smith’s instrumentality, made partakers of the blessings of saving grace. In a letter to Miss Hamer, dated February 5, 1820, Mr. Smith thus speaks of his own experience: "My soul is kept in peace and purity. Glory be to God! What charms there are in Jesus! ’Unto you that believe He is precious.’ I believe; and God testifies that He approves of my faith, by continually sending ’the Spirit of His Son into my heart, crying, Abba, Father.’ I am grafted in the true Vine; life flows into my soul, and shows itself in buds and fruit; love, joy, peace, etc. I wish to be "led with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.’ I ’hunger and thirst after righteousness.’ Blessed are such. My soul longeth after God. He is all my desire. I am yet but foolish in using the means, especially prayer. I want more of Bramwell’s spirit, more of Longden’s spirit, more of Nelson’s spirit. It is to be had. I believe I shall have it ... Lately God has signally blessed me in visiting the sick. ’It is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting.’ My soul has been filled and expanded. The excellencies of Jesus have been more fully revealed. It is good frequently to visit the abodes of the afflicted, especially when Jesus gives us sympathy for the afflicted. I long for more sympathy. I must go to Jesus for it. As man, He was full of it. As God-man, He is the fountain of it. Jesus, come and live in me, that I may, like Thee, go about doing good." Mr. Smith excelled in pastoral qualifications and duties, and was often distinguishedly useful in private society. "Kindness," says Mr. Calder, was peculiarly prominent in his moral constitution, and gave to his piety the most interesting forms of sweetness and benignity. And this induced an individual, who was no mean judge of religious character, to observe of him, that he had the piety of a certain distinguished saint and minister. Hence the absence of all austerity from his manners. Of this, children seemed to be conscious and soon attached themselves to him with peculiar fondness, which he amply returned. In this respect, he resembled the founder of Methodism, and, I may add, the Founder of our holy religion also. Not satisfied with merely doing the work of the pulpit, he deemed it right to acquaint himself with, and frequently to visit, every family connected with the society. An unconverted individual in such a family became the subject of his peculiar solicitude, and he was placed upon his list to be specifically remembered before God with many tears and persevering intercessions. This ceaseless concern for the children and servants of the members of the church was attended with glorious results. My house was frequently the scene of holy triumph, for if a visit was paid to me by any of the children of our friends residing in other parts of the kingdom, they became objects of his peculiar regard. By his kind and affectionate behavior he first ingratiated himself into their favor, and then watching the effect of his admonitions, he was restless till they obtained the mercy of God. Never shall I forget the case of one of the sons of the late Mr. B., of London, upon whom, while paying a visit to my house, Mr. Smith commenced a serious attack on the subject of his salvation. This was followed up from day to day until the young man became duly impressed with the importance of religion, and not long after our friend called me into the study to join with them in praising God for having bestowed pardon upon this person. He shortly afterward returned to his family, a truly saved man, giving every evidence in his life of a work of grace." The letters of Mr. Smith to his parents give us a glimpse into his inner life. October 1, 1819, he writes: "Your kindness towards me aids me much in my approach to God. It is said, ’If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give His Holy Spirit to them that ask Him.’ I think, what is it that my parents would not do for me? what is it that they have not done for me? They have provided for me, wept over me, prayed for me, dealt tenderly with me, forgiven me, and, under God, have been my spiritual parents, too. They cared for my soul as well as my body: God regarded them, and crowned their efforts with success: their kindness has been a flowing stream. Well, God is my heavenly Father; He cares for me: there is no evil in Him. He is full of pity and compassion. He has given His Son. He is willing freely to give all things. I may come to Him with confidence; I do come with confidence, with the confidence of a little child, and He blesses me. He gives me His Holy Spirit. Of late, I have had such revelations of the love of God in my soul, such baptisms of the Holy Ghost as I never had before, and such as I had no conception of. God is not only able, but willing, ’to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think.’ ’Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it.’ We want more faith; power implicitly to rely on what God has said, to take God at His word. ’Faith, mighty faith, the promise sees, And looks to that alone.’ I see more clearly than ever that God Himself is the portion of His people. All the promises lead into God. Faith looks at them as living springs always sending forth something fresh. There is an infinite depth in the promises of God. ’If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink.’ ’The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water, springing up into everlasting life.’ I am happy, increasingly happy in God. God is my portion. Bless the Lord, O my soul! Christ is in me the hope of glory. I have the earnest of Heaven in my heart. This is my treasure, I esteem everything else as nothing in comparison with this.’ "Nov. 29th. Thanks be to God for His continued and increasing goodness to me, the most unworthy and unfaithful of His servants. What shall I say about my soul? Oh, my dear parents, Jesus was never so precious to me as at present. He is the fairest among ten thousand and the One altogether lovely. My soul is penetrated with His excellencies. All I want is in Him, and He is mine. I have power to give Him my whole heart, and I have the witness that He takes it. His Spirit dwells in me, and reveals to me the beauties of my Savior. I ’rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.’ My ’conversation is in Heaven;’ my treasure and my heart are there. God fills my soul. I know that He has taken away the body of sin. In obedience to Him, I reckon myself ’dead indeed unto sin, but alive to God through Jesus Christ.’ God is my portion. His fullness is mine. yet he is able to do exceeding abundantly above all I ask or think.’ I am looking for fresh discoveries of His glory. My soul thirsts for God. I never needed the blood of Christ more than I do at present. But I have it, and I never made so much use of it as I do now. I have been mightily assailed by the powers of darkness, but Jesus is my Protector. Protected by omnipotent love, what can harm me? ’Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee.’ I wish to live in the act of casting my helpless soul upon Christ. I am thankful for your prayers, and for the prayers of God’s people. I have the prayers of some who have power with God. I am filled with shame when I turn my eyes backward." To the same, he thus writes, May 19: "God has possession of my heart. Christ not only visits me, but dwells in me by faith. Christ is all, and Christ is mine. His excellencies exert a continual attraction. The world is unmasked to me. I see it unsuitable for the portion of my soul. It is unsatisfying and perishing. But Christ possesses everything that is suited to me. He is the eternal God. I choose Him for my portion. Yet I want more Divine power. This must result to me from deeper and more glorious revelations of the excellencies of Christ in my soul, by the Holy Ghost. Oh, that I may ever lie at the foot of the cross, and feel my need, and have the merit of the death of Christ! ’Weaker than a bruised reed, Help I every moment need.’ I am kept no longer than I am kept by the power of God through faith. But does He not say, ’Fear not: I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee’? Amen. My Lord, never leave me, nor forsake me." This spirit of prayer was the secret of power with Mr. Smith, as with many others who were like him, real soul-winners, and made his sermons like messages from Heaven. Years ago, Claus Hames, one of the most useful preachers in Germany, once met a friend to whom he told how many times daily he had to speak. His friend presently asked, "But, friend Hames, if thou hast so much to say, when art thou still? And when does the Spirit of God speak to thee?" That simple question so impressed Hames that he resolved from that time to devote a portion of each day to retirement and silent study. "How is it," said a Christian man to his companion, as they were both returning from hearing the saintly Bramwell, "How is it that Brother Bramwell always tells us so much that is new?" The companion answered: "Brother Bramwell lies so near the gate of Heaven that he hears a great many things which the rest of us do not get near enough to hear." And it is equally true that every child of God may learn by experience that in all things God will hear and answer if we but consult Him. A laboring man agreed to pay installments for the little house in which he lived. He spent his leisure planting trees and cultivating his garden. One hundred pounds was the price of the property. He was to pay ten pounds a year, with interest. Year after year he met his obligation, and when he died there were but ten pounds due on the cottage. By hard toil and much saving, the poor widow scraped together ten pounds, and was rejoicing in the prospect of a comfortable shelter for herself and child during the rest of her life. The man who owned the mortgage had died, as well as her husband; but great was her astonishment and grief, when she visited the attorney to pay off the remaining encumbrance on the cottage, to find a bill presented for one hundred pounds, instead of ten. "You must pay the money, or produce the receipts, or I shall sell your property under the hammer," said the lawyer. The poor widow searched her cottage from top to bottom, and emptied drawers and closets to find receipts; but all in vain. The prospect of being turned out of her little house stared her in the face. Her little boy said to her: "Mother, don’t you think Jesus would help us in our trouble if we should pray to Him? He is our only help in this our time of distress. Let us kneel down and pray." The little boy offered a sweet prayer to the Savior, begging him to interpose to keep his poor mother from being turned out of her home. As he arose from his knees, the lad saw a large fire-fly coming in at the window. Boy-like he started for it. He chased the fly round and round the room, till at length the brilliant little creature made a dive under a chest of drawers. The little boy tried to reach him, but could not. "O mother!" he said, "just pull the drawers out a little bit, and I’ll catch him!" As the drawers moved, something fell on the floor. It was her husband’s lost receipt-book. The attorney was so astonished when she produced it, and heard the story; that he refused to receive the remaining ten pounds, but gave her a receipt in full. That night, as the widow sat with her little son by the cozy fire, she told him how easy it was for the Savior to answer prayer by little things. The fire-fly, conducting Freddy to the lost receipt-book, was as good as if an angel had been sent from Heaven. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 39: 02.10. CHAPTER 10. AS A PERSONAL WORKER AND PREACHER ======================================================================== Chapter 10 As a Personal Worker and Preacher "Let him that heareth say, Come." "Lo, I am with you alway." "Run speak to that young man." "Let him know that he which converteth a sinner from the error of his ways, saveth a soul from death and hideth a multitude of sins?" At the Conference of 1820, Mr. Smith, having passed the usual examinations, was admitted into the connection. Immediately afterwards he was married and proceeded with Mrs. Smith to the Windsor Circuit. Here the circumstances were peculiarly trying. Villages and towns on every side inadequately provided with evangelical instruction. Spiritual destitution prevailed. In his own charge there was great and manifest torpor. Many had a name to live and were dead; and not a few of the members had never known the regenerating power of the Holy Sprit. Those who do not know the perversity of human nature might have anticipated that in such a state of things, the labors of Mr. Smith would have been hailed with a universal welcome. It should be particularly noted, that he was now no theorist, however he might have been esteemed such at an early period of his ministerial life. Many of those to whom he was now called to minister, must have been acquainted with his devoted zeal, and his considerable success; and all might, without difficulty, have ascertained how far his experiments had previously tended to the accomplishment of the great object of the Christian ministry. Yet (to employ the testimony of one who was intimately acquainted with him at this period) "his efforts, by some individuals, were, for a time, neither understood nor appreciated. This circumstance rendered the struggles of his faith far more painful to himself, while it delayed no less the general blessing for which he ardently longed. It appeared to me, as if settled unbelief, though only in a few, weighed down his own faith much more than the coldness and indifference of a far greater number. It seemed to hang upon him (and I think I have heard him so describe it) ’as a dead weight,’ encumbering and retarding his spirit, when it was struggling to get free and plead with God for the congregation. Under such pressure I have even known him to request such as were indisposed to believe to leave the church, with a tone and earnestness of manner which must have thrilled every mind. That he was instant in season and out of season, always on the alert for souls, will be gathered from the following extract from a letter. It will be seen he not only went where he was needed, but where he was needed the most: "Windsor, Sept. 15, 1820. I am going to Uxbridge today, God willing; a place nine miles distant, formerly connected with Windsor, but which has been given up about two years. I was there last week, making the necessary inquiries. I believe it is a providential opening, and I anticipate much good. Several are longing for the bread of life. Last Tuesday night I visited a place near Windsor, where I hope good will be done. When I came, I saw that very little indeed was done, and also that much needed doing. I was almost ready to despond; but I recovered myself by considering that the work is God’s, that He has all power, and that He is willing and solicitous to save the whole world. Last Sunday afternoon, it pleased God to set two souls at liberty, while I was preaching from, ’Come unto Me, all ye that labor, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’ One woman got down upon her knees while I was preaching, and kneeled until we concluded. I then hastened to her, and said, ’Woman, are you happy?’ She said, ’I am.’ ’When did you receive this happiness?’ ’While you were preaching,’ she said, ’I believed that God had pardoned all my sins.’ I then called upon the friends to sing, ’Praise God, from whom all blessings flow,’ etc. They who were going out stopped, and assisted us to praise God. The other woman did all she could to conceal her emotions, but she was observed by her leader, to whom she confessed that God had then set her soul at liberty. I was not acquainted with this until afterwards. Last night I was renewing the tickets. A young man was present who had not found peace. I told him God was ready to pardon him then. While I was at prayer, he began to be in deep distress, and cried aloud. I concluded, that those who wished to go might have an opportunity, and requested any who were so disposed to remain with us. The young man continued on his knees, unwilling to rise without a sense of pardon. I and one of the leaders remained with him until, after a smart struggle, it pleased God to set his soul at liberty. He then sang, ’O Lord, I will praise Thee; though Thou wast angry with me, Thine anger is turned away, and Thou comfortest me.’ We all triumphed in the mercy of our God. I do not intend to despond. God can and does, and will work. We have a few in this place truly pious, who long for the prosperity of Zion. The people are very kind and are solicitous to make us comfortable. We are in good health through mercy and are trusting in God for full Salvation. A daily prayer-meeting at five o’clock in the morning, and a similar meeting after the Sunday evening preaching, were some of the methods for the revival of the work of God which Mr. Smith employed almost from the time of his arrival at Windsor. They were attended by the happiest results; and to them he, in common with the most successful ministers of modern Methodism, was greatly indebted for his usefulness. "In different places," says one of his familiar friends, in special reference to this period of his life, "and according to the different circumstances in which Mr. Smith found himself, or the people among whom he was stationed, his plan of action, in reference to that revival of the work of God which was everywhere his first object, was doubtless subject to various modifications. But, in general, I suppose, as it pre-eminently was wherever I have witnessed his labors, the fruits of his ministry were most decisive and abundant in meetings for prayer." These were usually to him seasons of extraordinary physical as well as spiritual efforts, though there were interesting instances of a different class. "On one occasion, after returning from a meeting, where nine persons had obtained entire sanctification the same night, he remarked, "I was not equal to strong exertion and chiefly said, ’Thy blood was shed for this very purpose; cleanse them, Lord.’ But is was not only by his own individual efforts that Mr. Smith acted upon others. Among the numbers converted by his ministry there were always some who imbibed his views and Spirit, and who engaged themselves after his example in holding forth the Word of life. It was indeed part of his plan to encourage others to work for God. He aided them by his counsel, and prayers, maintained an intercourse with them when separated, and made occasional visits to London and elsewhere, in order to assist their exertion, they looking to him for direction and encouragement. Nor was it merely among the host of souls of whose conversion he was the direct instrument, that he found the partakers of his spirit, and the willing agents of his plans. The Christianity of many others he succeeded in modeling; to occasional and untaught fervor he often gave principle and direction, and kindled scriptural and persevering zeal in hearts which before had been comparatively cold and inert. It was especially in meetings for prayer that such characters were formed. There was in his atmosphere at these times a moral stimulus so powerful that sincere minds could scarcely fail to catch a portion of his Heaven-descended spirit. Here they saw his principles brought into actual practice, and the value of his plans attested by their skillful and anticipated operation. Every such meeting was a series of striking and triumphant experiments; and it was thus, mainly, that there was formed that class of individuals whom he, from the most prominent feature in their character, was accustomed to designate "The Praying Men." Of the majority of these the probability is that had it not been for his influence they would have remained, however personally upright and sincere, of little service to the Church of God. "Among those who engaged his particular attention and care," says the friend from whom I have already quoted largely, "were the soldiers of the regiments of Life Guards who were successively stationed at the neighboring barracks. To many of that fine body of men he was made eminently useful. He felt for their naturally exposed situation, and rejoiced in their profession of godliness, as marked by more decision, and maintained under severer temptations, than ordinary. Nor was he, I think, insensible to the manly bearing of these Christian soldiers. Certainly, if there was any quality he admired that was not in itself religious, it was manliness under all its forms. We love to see the feelings of the man thus disclosing themselves in the Christian. And thus I remember being pleased, when the habitual current of his thoughts and conversation was interrupted (though but for a moment) by a natural expression of pleasure at the interesting appearance of some Eton boys, whom he seemed to regard with just the sort of complacency which a father might have expressed had they been his own. Several of these pious soldiers were men of no common faith and prayer; and using such means as were calculated to spread religion." Of the work of God among this interesting class of persons, Mr. Smith thus speaks, in a letter to his parents, dated January 11, 1821: "On the Sunday evening before Christmas day, a corporal in the Horse Guards found peace’ He was awakened about three weeks before at our chapel. His father is a Methodist at Cleckheaton. Last Tuesday week, he had an affecting discovery of inbred sin, and the whole of the week longed for a clean heart. This morning, at our half-past five o’clock prayer-meeting, God cleansed him from all sin, and he made confession before all present: such a conclusion, I think, I never heard. I hope he will be very useful. On Christmas day, another soldier and his wife were awakened while I was praying in our chapel. The Wednesday following they came to our house with Corporal E___., a pious man, who obtained entire sanctification about three weeks ago, and it pleased the Lord to set them both at liberty. Several other soldiers are earnestly seeking pardon." Among those for whom Mr. Smith was peculiarly interested was a corporal who had once enjoyed religion, but who had forsaken God and His people. His wife was a pious woman; she mourned deeply on his account, and prayed for his restoration. It was one day impressed on Mr. Smith’s mind to visit this man, and accompanied by Mrs. Smith, he walked as far as the door of his house, where he met his wife. "Well, Mrs. B.," said he, "where is your husband?" With much concern, she replied, "Yonder he is, going to the races." "I will follow him," he said, and without entering the dwelling he hastily set off in the direction indicated. The corporal soon perceived that he was being followed, and, quickening his pace, he succeeded, before Mr. Smith came up, in getting into a ferry-boat which would have taken him across the river to within a few minutes’ walk of the race-course. The boatman, however, had to put back for another passenger, and thus brought him near the friend whom he so much wished to shun, who solemnly accosted him with, "Did you pray about it before you set out?" The inquiry fastened on his conscience. He went to the races, and was wretched. "Did you pray about it before you set out?" still seemed to ring in his ears. When Mr. Smith next visited him he was in deep distress. Mr. Smith invited him to unite himself with the people of God. He did so, and never rested until the Lord healed his backslidings and restored him. He became useful and a class-leader in the regiment. In the letter from which our last extract was made, Mr. Smith speaks of the work in general: "I have still to lament an almost general want of effort in these parts. It is lifting work to get the people to God; but help is laid upon one that is mighty to save. When the Spirit comes there must be a moving. We are encouraged to expect the Holy Spirit, not only by the sure Word of promise, but also by what we receive. Thank God, there is a striving among the people. Some are teased and are ready to leave the society; or at least have had thoughts of it; but others are looking to God, panting, laboring for God. Several are on the point of receiving entire sanctification, and a few have received that blessing. Others have obtained pardon. The last time I was at Uxbridge, two souls found peace and one the time before, who shortly afterwards was cleansed from all sin, as he and I were praying together in his bedroom. He has just begun to preach, and I hope will be useful. For two years he was a backslider. This day fortnight I and my wife went to take tea with Brother S., whose wife a short time ago was a persecutor. On my return from Stoke, after preaching, I thought God would save her. After a few inquiries, we began to pray. The power of God came upon her: she groaned for mercy, and, after a struggle, God set her soul at liberty. Her husband found peace a few months before. A young woman found peace at one of our morning meetings, about a fortnight ago. God, you see, is working. Since I wrote last, I have changed with one of the Reading preachers. At the prayer-meeting after evening preaching at Reading, four or five found peace. But it is rather strange work in these parts for souls to be in distress and to get liberty. I hope it will not continue so, and that it will not be opposed, but desired and labored for. My soul is happy in God. I am looking for a greater personal salvation, and for glorious outpourings of the Spirit upon the people. I confidently expect them." As a still more striking illustration of the scriptural character of Mr. Smith’s piety, the following remarks of the friend whose communications have already so enriched these pages are quoted: "Of all that he did or suffered, of all that he experienced or enjoyed, faith was the great, the animating principle; and the truth of God (which is nothing more nor less than the reality of things) was the groundwork and basis of his faith. To believe, as it constitutes the whole of religion, the highest attainments of which are only a development of that all-comprehending principle, constituted the substance of all his exhortations to others, and the scope of all his own prayers and exertions. To the efficacy of faith he set no limits. ’If,’ said he, ’a man were as black as a devil, and had upon him all the sins that were ever committed, if he would but begin to believe, God would raise him.’ Again, I have heard him say, ’That it the way I rise. I will not suffer myself to dwell on my unfaithfulness; if I did, I should despond.’ I have known him quote with great seriousness a remark of Mr. Wesley to the effect that most persons perish through despondency. On my asking him as to his confidence of final salvation he replied that he ’had no doubt whatsoever on the subject, for he was determined to believe.’ And as he set no bounds to the efficacy of faith, so he appeared to set none to its application. When I have been engaged in writing a letter he has called out to me, ’Write in faith.’ In the month of June he paid a visit to his old friends at Brighton, and was deeply affected, to use his own words, "with the goodness of God, in the kindness of the people." On the Sunday evening on which he preached there, the Spirit of God descended powerfully on the congregation. Many were deeply convicted of sin; fifteen or sixteen persons obtained pardon, and the meeting was continued till nearly midnight. On the following day he attended the quarterly meeting of the circuit at Lewes. In the evening he preached, and the Lord granted the congregation a baptism of fire. His subject was the love of God to man: and he urged on his hearers the duty of loving God in return, from the consideration that this alone would fit them for Heaven. For himself, he said, in his own pathetic style, he did love God, and he intended to get to Heaven. He then appealed to the people, whether they would go with him. When he paused, as for a reply, there was, of course, profound silence, and every heart seemed filled with the deepest emotion. Then, turning to his friend, Mr. Calder, he said, in a thrilling tone, "Brother Calder, will you go to Heaven?" As well as he could articulate for weeping, he replied, "By God’s grace, I will." "Hear him," cried Mr. Smith with a loud voice, "he says he will;" and then, as if putting a seal to a solemn covenant, he feelingly added, "Amen, and now for all of you. God is here to receive your vow, and help you to fulfill it." The effect was magical; awe appeared to rest on every spirit, and multitudes testified that they had never before observed such an impression from simple and anointed eloquence. Nothing can convey to the reader who never witnessed the exertions of the man, the degree of intense fervor to which he was wrought by the time he had finished his sermon. He seemed rapt, inspired; and, to a certain degree, his auditors were carried with him. He then called on the Rev. John Pipe, who had succeeded him in the Brighton circuit, to pray. The Spirit of intercession had come on him also, and with extraordinary earnestness he besought God to bless the circuit. Full of confidence and ardor, and forgetful of everything but the amplitude of the petition, Mr. Smith pronounced an Amen like the sound of thunder: A second petition that God would bless the nation, elicited a second and still louder AMEN. But when he who prayed, extending the exercise of his faith and charity, called on God to bless the world, Mr. Smith uttered at the extreme of his voice an AMEN which thrilled through every heart; and seemed to infuse the energy of his faith into those that heard it, "making," says Mr. Calder, "the three most memorable Amens that I, or I think, any other human being ever heard." When the first service was concluded, he proceeded to assist in the prayer service that followed, and had the happiness of seeing that night about twenty souls delivered from the burden of their sins, as two more were the following morning. Doubtless many will call Mr. Smith an enthusiast. If by enthusiasm be meant the single, devoted, unwavering pursuit of one object, the concentration of mighty and sanctified affections, the laboring night and day with many tears for the salvation of men, the literally counting all things but loss for Christ, the expecting the fulfillment of the promises of God in their most ample sense, the ready and constant preference of the things of eternity to those of time, however worthy, be consulted; if, in short, the loving God with all the heart, and serving Him with all the strength, be enthusiasm, John Smith was an enthusiast. But the term which describes such a character, far from being a term of reproach, is a title of the highest dignity; and there is no instructed Christian who would not covet to gain it, or would not glory in it when acquired. To use the words of Mr. Smith’s attached friend: "He who best secures an end which many aim at, may well be presumed to have employed the best, and therefore the most rational, means. And, consequently, since the salvation of souls is the end of the Christian ministry, his known and eminent success, compared with that of most others, may well establish the superior fitness of the means employed by him. In other words, it transfers the suspicion of enthusiasm to those" who imagine that a pointless generalizing harangue of some theological subject, that the mere "letting off a sermon," is to convey "life from the dead," and to demolish the bastions of Satan and unbelief. The "gentle theologues," whose nerves are strung with such exquisite sensibility that they are alarmed at the slightest ripple on the dead calm of human affections, and yet expect to accelerate the period when the sea shall roar and the fullness thereof, are the real visionaries. Whether he were beside himself, it was for God, or whether he were sober, it was for our cause, for the love of Christ constrained him. The labors of Mr. Smith with the soldiers was wonderfully owned of God, and in the ranks of the English army have been men who honored God while they served their country. Hedley Vicars and Havelock were men of God. Bad men pretend that religion does not make men better. They say that a man can be just as good without being a professing Christian, as he can if he take on him the vows of religion. All the while, these men keep their eyes on professors. They demand of them a higher style of morality. They condemn members of the church for conduct in which they themselves indulge. When censured for their inconsistency, they reply, "Oh! I don’t profess anything; that man does." Some object to religion, that it makes men effeminate. But the bravest of troops and the most victorious of soldiers have been religious men. Men are hard to meet, and dangerous to contend with, who sing the psalms of David as a battle-cry; who hang the Bible to their horses’ bridles; who mount with prayer, and shout to the host, "The sword of the Lord and Gideon!" General Havelock commanded a corps of religious men. The troops drank no intoxicating drinks; they swore no oaths. The morning and evening were saluted with prayer. The cant name given to this corps was "The Saints." More than this, the general was the chaplain. On the Lord’s day, the regiment formed a hollowed square, and the commander preached. All this was told to the government at London. A commission was sent to inquire into these strange doings. The report came that the charges were all true, the Saints prayed and the commander preached. "But," it was added, "no troops in India are as well drilled, as well equipped, as efficient. In time of trouble, the cry is, ’Bring out the Saints. They are never drunk. Havelock never blunders.’" It was added, as if prophesied, "Should trouble arise in India, Havelock’s corps will be the main reliance of the government." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 40: 02.11. CHAPTER 11. GIVE ME SOULS, OR I DIE ======================================================================== Chapter 11 Give Me Souls, or I Die "It is accounted of a steward that he be found faithful." "The soul that sinneth it must die." "He that winneth souls is wise. "For they watch for your souls as they that must give account." "What will a man give in exchange for his soul?" Rev. Maltbie D. Babcock, D. D., in a meeting of ministers, told of the day when Harry Morehouse, the celebrated evangelist, was a guest in his father’s house. He was staying one night in his room, waiting for time of the service, when he heard the door open, and looking about, saw it close quickly again. He turned to his Bible, and heard the same thing repeated; and then without turning, he said, "Come in," and there entered one of the children of the household, who had seen so much of Christ in the face of the preacher, that she desired to know him, and she said: "Mr. Morehouse, I should like to be a Christian." "Well," said he, in his quiet, gentle way, "you may;" and he said: "Will you please turn to the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah and read it, making it personal to yourself? Wherever the pronouns are general make them personal." She began: "He hath no form nor comeliness; and when I shall see Him there is no beauty that I should desire Him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and I hid as it were, my face from Him; He was despised, and I esteemed Him not. Surely He hath borne my griefs, and carried my sorrows; yet I did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted." When she had read thus far, she stopped, and Harry Morehouse said: "Go on and read it." "But He was wounded for my transgressions. He was bruised for my iniquities; the chastisement of my peace was upon Him; and with His stripes I am healed." She could not read any farther for her tears, but she had caught a glimpse of her Savior in this reading, and Harry Morehouse said to her: "This is all we need to do to be saved, to lay hold upon Him by faith, of whom Isaiah speaks." Mr. Smith possessed much of the evangelistic spirit, always seeking the lost, always about His Master’s business. In October, 1821, fifty persons had received the blessing of pardon in Windsor, and scores of souls in Hammersmith. "There prevailed a spirit of earnest piety everywhere, acquiring from Mr. Smith’s example a deeply interesting and useful character." Such is the statement of the friend from whom I have already quoted so much at length, as to the spiritual prosperity which presented itself, almost immediately after the re-appointment of Mr. Smith to this circuit. Writing to a person about this time, he thus exhorts him: "If I do not see you, present yourself as a Hell-deserving sinner before God; acknowledge the goodness of God in the gift of His Son, whether you feel it or not. Rest your soul with your sin on the atonement and mediation of Christ, and wait for the Holy Ghost. Claim the Spirit. The promise is to you. Everything must yield to His working. Do have the Spirit, in spite of Hell and yourself. God is for you: wait, O wait, my dear brother; God will come. He will make you unspeakably happy." The following is an extract from a letter to Mr. Calder, dated October 22: "I was much pleased with your letter. God is teaching you by His Spirit some important lessons. The same lessons are taught in His Word, and have been taught by wise and good men; but we want the Spirit: we must have the teaching of the Spirit, or after all we shall be foolish. I thank God for what He is doing in you and by you. Be in the will of God: know that you are in it fully, constantly. Perhaps you will have to spend hours on your knees, or upon your face, before the throne. Never mind; wait. God will do great things for you, if you will yield to Him, and cooperate with Him. Oh, play the man! Dwell in the clear light. I am hoping that God will make you a great blessing; but you must be a burning and shining light. The first must come from Heaven: you have free access. Nelson says to me, ’Remember, men must be saved first.’’ Be determined not to rest, unless souls get into clear liberty. We have a deal to say to them, but they must be saved. Oh, what numbers among us are not clear in pardon! Let us agonize to get them into liberty. Maintain simplicity. If you spend several hours in prayer daily, you will see great things. I long for you. I do not cease to pray for you. You and your family are closely connected with my mercies; when I think of them, I think of you; so that, as long as I have piety, I shall not forget you. I am resting on the atonement and intercession of Jesus ... God gives Himself to me. His Spirit is in me. Oh, what rest is connected with an indwelling God. The abominations of the people around me fill me with grief. I can only find relief in the power of God and in the merits of Christ. Many of our people are very ignorant of the way of faith. When the power of God is mightily upon them they do not lay hold of what they want. Until there be a taking hold of God we cannot expect much signal work." Some friends, knowing Mr. Smith was laboring far beyond his strength, resolved to admonish him kindly, and while on a visit to the home of a mutual friend, they implored him to be more careful. Mr. Smith, laying down his knife and fork, listened with the most patient and respectful attention. As soon as the former had ceased, he burst into a flood of tears, and, literally sobbing with grief, at length replied, "What you say is all correct. I ought to put restraint on myself; but, Oh, how can I? God has given me such a sight of the state of perishing souls, that I am broken-hearted, and can only vent my feelings in the way I do, entreating them to come to God, and pleading with Him to act upon and save them." Still weeping as in an agony, he continued, "Look round you, my brother; do you not see sinners going to Hell? and when I thus see and feel it, I am compelled to act." To this pathetic statement there was no reply; all the company were melted into tears; and Mr. Methley was so deeply affected, that, unable to restrain his emotions, he abruptly arose from the table and left the house. During this visit, Mr. Smith was, as usual, made the instrument of the conversion of a considerable number of persons, and among others, of a young lady, the daughter of a friendly person in a neighboring town. Mr. Calder states that this was the most interesting result of all Mr. Smith’s labors in private which he ever witnessed. It appears she was very much afraid of meeting Mr. Smith, lest he should address her on the subject of personal religion. She was finally prevailed upon to call, and, as she expected, he immediately began to converse with her about her soul and the necessity of a personal salvation, until she was melted to tears, and yielded to God. For three hours the friends prayed with her, and her soul was filled with peace and joy. She returned home a new creature and walked from that time worthy of her vocation. This was only an earnest of the blessing which attended his labors during the next few days. Previously to this God had begun a good work in London West through the instrumentality of some pious soldiers, who, while stationed at Windsor, had obtained the blessing of entire sanctification and had imbibed the spirit of Mr. Smith and been taught his plans. He had visited them a few weeks before, and had seen the arm of the Lord gloriously revealed. He now witnessed, to use his own words, "the greatest work he had ever seen. In the course of a very short time, there were, including the fruits of his former visit, nearly seventy individuals pardoned, and about sixty made profession of having attained purity of heart. In the same week he also received a letter, giving an account of a revival in the London east circuit, of which, under God, he had been the first mover. In his own circuit, too, several interesting conversions occurred about the same time. "So mightily grew the word of the Lord and prevailed." Mr. Smith’s house was frequently resorted to by persons under the awakenings of the Holy Spirit, and scarcely a week elapsed in which it was not the scene of devout exultation, on account of the liberation of some captive soul. One afternoon a stranger called, in deep distress. Mr. Smith invited him to take tea, and inquired into the means by which he had come under religious concern. He stated that his name was D____, that he was a publican at Hampstead, and that for many years he had given himself up to the love and practice of vice. He never attended any place of worship, was a gambler, a hard drinker, and, in short, a sinner in every conceivable way. One of his companions in riot, having left his house in a state of intoxication, fell into the river, and was drowned. This incident aroused his fears, which were increased by the discovery that through his intemperance his mind was so weakened he could not keep his accounts. He thought he was about to lose his reason, and while under this distressing apprehension his sins of the past rose mountain high before him. He was led by a friend to Mr. Smith to be prayed for, but his distress was so great that before tea was concluded he was down upon the floor, a large muscular man, prostrated by extreme anguish of soul, while he groaned and prayed in unspeakable disquietude. It happened to be the night on which Mr. Smith met a class, which he had formed, to the members of which, after the ordinary conversation had concluded, he introduced the case of this penitent, requesting their intercession on his behalf; at the same time urging him to the exertion of faith in Christ, and the expectation of a present salvation. The struggle was continued for a considerable time. At length Mr. Smith perceived that the man was relaxing in his efforts. "What, will you give it up?" said he. Mr. D. complained of exhaustion. "You have danced for whole nights together," was the reply. "That’s true," said the other, and with renewed energy he began again to cry to God; nor did he rest till about eleven o’clock, when his guilt was removed, and he rejoiced in the assurance of the Divine favor. The following morning, as he and Mr. Smith were walking out, he suddenly stopped, and cried, "Oh, my load is all returned!" In vain did Mr. Smith tell him that this was only an effort of the tempter; in vain did he remind him of the peace which he had before enjoyed. He remained almost on the verge of despair the whole day. The religious services of the next day, which was Sunday, seemed to produce no beneficial effect on his mind. In the evening prayer-meeting he was again the subject of special prayer. One of the friends employed to him an argument similar to that of Naaman’s servant: "If thou wert bidden to do some great thing, wouldst thou not have done it?" "Yes," said he, "I would stand and be shot." The meeting was continued until a late hour, his strength was exhausted, but his soul refused comfort, and the next day he returned, promising that he would try to believe all the way home. He immediately sold his inn and retired to a private house. For some weeks his despondency continued, but at length the Comforter returned and he wrote to Mr. Smith, giving an account of his deliverance. A short time afterward he took cold, fell into a rapid consumption and died in peace. During one of these services, Mr. Smith noticed a woman standing near the door, and looking at what was going forward with much apparent curiosity and surprise. Her garb indicated much poverty, and it afterwards appeared that she gained a miserable subsistence, partly by gathering and selling water-cresses. She had attended the chapel a few times before, but her ignorance was extreme. Mr. Smith went up to her, and said, "Woman, get down on your knees, and begin to pray." She immediately knelt down, and asked, "What shall I say, sir?" "Ask God to give you true repentance," was the reply. The poor woman for the first time opened her mouth in prayer: "Lord, give me true repentance." She had not long uttered this petition, before it was in a measure answered, and she came under the gracious influence which was in the meeting. She began to tremble, and with great anxiety inquired, "What shall I do now? what shall I pray for?" "Ask God to have mercy upon you," said Mr. Smith. "Lord, have mercy upon me, a poor sinner," cried she, "a guilty sinner!" Who need be told the sequel? She was that night clearly converted, and filled with the love of God. When Mr. Smith was about to leave Windsor, she, with others, came to look upon him who had proved to be her best friend. And so deep was her emotion that when he extended his hand to her, she fell down on her knees, filled with a gratitude which she could not express. Mr. Smith was deeply affected, and, no doubt, that moment amply repaid him for all his labors in that circuit. About the midsummer of 1822, he went into the High-Wycombe circuit to preach occasional sermons. On the Sunday morning, when the congregation was assembled, he had not arrived at the chapel, and several persons were dispatched in different directions to seek him. After the lapse of a considerable time, he was found in a solitary place out of doors, forgetful of all time, wrestling with God in mighty prayer for His blessing on the services in which he was about to engage. The result may be readily anticipated. Throughout the day his mind appeared to be peculiarly impressed with the Divine benevolence; and in one of his sermons he repeatedly, and with extraordinary vehemence, cried out; "He is willing! He is willing!" Many, on that occasion, had a blessed experience of God’s willingness to save, and numbers of others were powerfully awakened and sought and found salvation. . Speaking at one time of urgency in prayer, he said: "There is no impediment on God’s part. He has given us His Son." By thus firmly asserting the willingness of God to save, against all the temptations of unbelief, he urged and encouraged himself to plead with God for sinners. "It is by justifying God," said he, "that I sting and stimulate myself to contend." And again, "The necessity of wresting arises not from the unwillingness of God, but from ourselves or Satan: God is the same." And thus his resolute purpose to justify God, and to believe, at all events, that there is no hindrance on His part, since He has given His Son, was to him like cutting off retreat: it left him no alternative but to wrestle and prevail. This was the principle which he would never suffer himself or others to call in question. But in following it out, in still tenaciously hanging upon it, and pleading it, in spite of every impediment, of all that Satan could oppose, or unbelief suggest; this was the conflict which was seen in him; this was the agony to believe which he was heard to describe as so severe that it had been as if soul and body were ready to part asunder. Mr. Smith sought his converts everywhere in the ranks of the army, in the wayside inn, on the ferryboat; and why not, when we consider from what strange places God calls men? Wilberforce, when a young man, was gay, worldly, and dissipated. He ran the whole career of the young men of the age. Gaming, that sweeps into the vortex of ruin so many youth, seized him. Night after night, he was found deeply immersed in play. His conscience often troubled him, but he rushed wildly on. One night, he was induced to keep the bank. Then his eyes were opened for the first time to the great horrors of play. He saw how men lost their thousands at a sitting; how young men, with prospects far brighter than his, went out of the room to suicide or dishonor. Amid the rattle of the dice, the call of the card table, the glare of the room, the shout of despair, he vowed never to gamble again. With him, to make a resolution was to keep it. From that moment to the day of his death, Wilberforce kept the vow he made under such strange surroundings. Changing his pastimes, he changed his associates. A new life opened to him; and not long after that night at the far-bank, Wilberforce gave his heart to Jesus, and devoted his life to the service of the Lord. How strangely God calls people to His service! The woman of Samaria, at the well-curb; Matthew, from the custom-house; Zacchaeus, from the sycamore; Bartimaeus, from the wayside; Whitfield, from an ale-house, and Wilberforce, from a faro-bank; "that he might have known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory." "He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 41: 02.12. CHAPTER 12. OBTAINING MORE OF GOD ======================================================================== Chapter 12 Obtaining More of God "They shall run and not be weary." "I can do all things through Christ strengthening me." "In all things more than conquerors." "A well of water springing up unto everlasting life." "Thanks be unto God which giveth us the victory." When General Taylor came to the White House, he brought in his train his war-horse, known as "Old Whitey." He had borne his master through all the perils of the Mexican war, and when the high honors of the nation were conferred on the General, the old war-steed was not forsaken. The horse was made to feel at home in the paddock on the east side of the White House. There the small chubby steed could be seen feeding in quietness, day after day. The horse was blind and lame, but his hearing was acute: he knew the voice of his master, and came daily at his call; but to all other voices he was deaf as an adder. Dull, and seemingly lifeless, he was indifferent to all surroundings. But the love of the military never died out in the old horse. Like the war-horse of the Bible, "Old Whitey" snuffed the battle afar. He could hear a fife and a drum blocks away. A band made him nearly wild. When the government troops moved from one part of the city to the other, it was the custom to pass the field and salute the old horse. All military visitors came up to the field and paid the horse a salute. A loud snort answered the bugle of flying-artillery. He knew every note, and put himself in position at every blast. He took the review in good earnest. Taking position, he accepted the salute; and when the grand rounds were marched, "Old Whitey" was in his glory; he would snort, elevate head and tail, dart round the enclosure, and seem wild with delight. Crowds filled the avenue to see the old war-horse recall the days of his stirring life. He who taught men by the ravens, the storks of the air, and the birds who have nests in the trees, could give a lesson of integrity and devotedness from the white horse at the capital. Mr. Smith was never so much at home as when in the midst of the battle for souls. Like the war-horse, an opportunity to engage in the fray was to him a blast from the bugle, a call to action. The first Sunday evening on his new charge at Frome, in 1822, an interesting young female obtained mercy at the prayer-meeting. She was the youngest of three sisters, all of whom were members of the society; but neither of the others had entered into the enjoyment of the Divine favor. A short time afterwards, the second sister called one morning at Mr. Smith’s, and, according to his custom, he inquired whether she had received the blessing of pardon. Upon her replying in the negative, he proposed prayer, and they did not rise from their knees till she also was able to testify the power of the atoning blood; nor was it long before the eldest sister was likewise brought into the same happy state of experience. The parents of these young persons were members of the Society of Friends. Upon one occasion of Mr. Smith’s visiting them, he was invited upstairs to see the mother, who was very ill. He found her surrounded by her weeping family, and suffering under pain so severe that they apprehended her speedy death, unless it were mitigated. After making a few observations, he kneeled down and brought the case before the Lord. The answer was immediate. The pain entirely left her, and, with the return of bodily ease, came an extraordinary blessing upon her spirit. An answer to prayer of an equally remarkable kind was granted to Mr. Smith during the time he was at Brighton. Calling one day at the house of Mr.____, he there found an infant lying on the lap of its distressed mother, and writhing in a severe convulsion-fit. It had frequently been affected in a similar way, even from the time of its birth. Mr. Smith took the child from the mother’s arms and sitting down, sang one of his favorite hymns. He then engaged in prayer on its behalf. Having risen from his knees he gave it back to its mother and retired. From that time the affliction ceased, the child became strong, and after the lapse of years the grateful mother said the child had never had a single fit. This was only one of many cases in which similar effects resulted from Mr. Smith’s prayers. Such a man, earnest in prayer and faithful in his ministry found fruit everywhere he went. Oh, that preachers of today would emulate the example of this master workman and make full proof of their ministry. "At Frome," he says, "the people very generally are getting into action. They look for present blessings in their meetings. Some of the leaders and local preachers are very active and successful. I have frequently seen eight or ten saved at a meeting; I think twenty more than thrice; and once at Frome, between thirty and forty. This blessed work melts me into grateful love to God." "March 22. I have witnessed many signal displays of the power and grace of God since I last wrote. At Badcomb, in the Shepton-Mallet circuit, about twenty souls found peace with God in one night; and a person who does not relish a revival in what is called a noisy way, says he believes forty souls were awakened. At our love-feast upwards of twenty found peace. In several of the country places many have been saved. Glory be to God!" "June 26. A short time ago, we had a prayer-meeting after the missionary meeting at Shepton. Numbers were in deep distress, and many found peace with God. I was informed on Monday last that the work was still going on, and that fifty have been saved since the Missionary meeting. [Camp-meeting committees that bar out missionaries for fear of finances, or that it will hurt the meeting or the offerings, take notice. From such narrowness and meanness, good Lord deliver the holiness movement.] We are trying to keep those whom God has given us, and to get more converted. It is God’s work, it must prosper." "July 30. The work of God has been going on ever since. On the 20th I preached there. There was much of the power of God on the people during the sermon. A special power came down in the last prayer. I called on a local preacher to pray. Some ran out with all speed, some were in great distress, some were taken into the vestry apparently senseless. I concluded, and commenced a prayer-meeting, and I think nearly thirty souls found peace with God." "Oct. 8. The work of entire sanctification is going on in many parts of the circuit. We have a number of private bands and have begun to meet them on Saturday evenings. We anticipate much good from this. God is giving stability to the work already done. The backsliders are comparatively few. Some that sustained loss during the harvest, are stirring themselves to take hold of God again. There is a blessed spirit of union among the people. Our leaders at Frome are one, and they are prepared to hail a continued revival. I have been at Bristol since I wrote last. I preached at Easton on a Sabbath evening. During the last prayer, a woman cried aloud for mercy; others were in distress, and five or six found peace. We have had a friend of ours from London, spending a week with us lately. He was one of eleven who were cleansed at one meeting in London: ten of the eleven, he tells me, have been made leaders. He went with me to several places, and was astonished at the work. One evening six persons obtained purity of heart." In the course of the year Mr. Smith paid several visits to Bath; and in that city his labors were greatly blessed. On one occasion, at a prayer-meeting at Walcot chapel, several were in distress, and seven or eight obtained mercy. On the following evening, Mr. Smith preached at King Street chapel. Much Divine power was present, and upwards of twenty penitents received pardon. "The work," says he, in one of his subsequent letters, "is going on still. At one meeting since, I have heard twenty found pardon." The Earl of Cork had some game preserves in the neighborhood of Frome; and it was remarked, by a person who knew the extensive results of Mr. Smith’s labors, that he was of more service to this nobleman than all his gamekeepers. But although the Divine blessing thus remarkably succeeded his efforts, his own spirit looked higher for satisfaction and happiness. No outward events could afford him greater delight than the salvation of men; yet on one occasion, after expressing his gratitude for the good work going on in the circuit and neighborhood, he added, "But God is my portion." To employ his own phrase, his first object was to "obtain more of God;" his second, to "diffuse more of God." God was the beginning and ending of his meditations, his affections, and his labors: having received, he diffused; and in diffusing he obtained. But he never transposed the order of these duties, or allowed ministerial efforts to call forth any other than an interest subservient to the cultivation of personal holiness. In the latter part of the year 1823, his robust health yielded to severe and long continued exertion. For some time his friends feared that his lungs were affected, and his doctor advised a rest, which he was compelled to take. In February, 1824, he went into Yorkshire with the hope of being benefited by his native air. After spending some time with his parents, he paid a visit to his friend, Mr. Nelson, preacher in charge. At the band meeting he could not resist the impulse to labor, and thus risk the little strength he had been gaining. The following Sunday he persuaded Mr. Nelson to allow him to preach, by way of experiment, promising to be very cautious. For a little while his exertions were moderate; but at length, warmed by the subject, he forgot his agreement, and gave way so fully to his generous ardor, that it seemed as if he would have fallen in the pulpit. Of course, he was not again to be trusted. He returned to Cudworth; and, finding that he was there in danger of expending his strength as he gathered it, he judged it prudent to travel home. He soon after resumed his labor, and witnessed still greater displays of the grace of God than he had before seen. From the effects of this illness, however, he never fully recovered; and, though his exertions in public were still almost unexampled, yet the prostration of his strength immediately consequent upon them was, in nearly all instances, more severe and long-continued than at any previous period. In the latter part of the year he was again afflicted. Under the date of October 18th, he thus writes to his father: "You would have heard from me sooner, had I not been unwell. I have had a touch of a fever, which has been making dreadful ravages in Frome and its neighborhood. I providentially attended to it in time, so that I have had but a slight attack. I think it likely that I took the fever through visiting some who were ill from it. I had for a few days much pain in my head. Thank God, it has been to me the best affliction with which I was ever visited. It has brought me much nearer to God. I was so touched with the Divine goodness, while in an agony of pain, that I was constrained to shout the high praises of God. We had a blessed baptism of the Spirit last night at family prayer. We have devoted ourselves afresh to God, and He accepts us." Nor was this a solitary instance of peculiar Divine blessing upon Mr. Smith’s family worship. In domestic life he was a happy and an interesting man; and the uniformity of his personal religion exerted a perpetual influence over his home. But it was especially when the members of his household accompanied him to the throne of mercy, that the piety of the husband, the father, the master, and the friend was presented in the most impressive and touching aspect. Many, who had the privilege of uniting in these solemn engagements, never forgot the emotions which were then excited. Mr. Smith’s pertinent observations on the portion of Scripture, (the reading of which formed a regular part of the service), the singular sweetness of the family music, succeeded by powerful and appropriate prayer, could not fail to affect a mind endowed with any measure of religious feeling After the family worship of the morning, which Mr. Smith usually prefaced by several hours of private devotion, he returned to the exercises of the closet, and sometimes on his knees, and often on his face, wrestled with God, till not infrequently a considerable part of the floor of his study was wet with tears. In his unreserved disclosure of his feelings to his friend, Mr. Clarkson, he once remarked that he was sometimes engaged in Prayer two or three hours before he enjoyed that unrestricted intercourse with Heaven which he always desired and which he generally succeeded in obtaining. "Often," says another of his friends, "when I have gone to his home with those who were seeking salvation, I have interrupted his devotions in which he would be engaged seven or eight hours at a time." He occasionally spent all night in prayer, like his Master, and in homes where he was being entertained they were often awakened by his groaning in the night when his desires became too great for utterance and his emotions could not be controlled. His reproof’s of sin were at times overpowering A woman kept her shop open on Sunday. Mr. Smith warned her several times of the sin of this, but though she promised amendment, her heart was too fully wedded to worldly gain, to be persuaded to abandon the sin. One Sunday, as Mr. Smith was going to the chapel, he stopped at her house. Leaning over the half-opened door, he fixed his eyes intently on her as she served her customers, and, shaking his head, silently withdrew. Had a bolt from Heaven fallen at her feet, she could scarcely have been more affected. The shop was never again opened on the Sabbath; and in a short time she herself, having joined the society, became savingly converted. A sinner within the sphere of Mr. Smith’s influence was perpetually exposed to the holy compassion of his expostulations and prayers; and few who were resolved to cleave to their sins, ever had the hardihood to endure a second interview with him, if it were possible to be avoided. At a prayer-meeting in the Frome circuit, where several were in distress, he once noticed an old man looking on with much surprise. "Well," said Mr. Smith, "do you intend to leave off your sins, and be saved tonight?" "Why, no," replied the other with great coolness: "I think I will wait till next time." Had this been his real design; his policy would have been immediately to leave the place. He remained, however, and presently the hand of God came upon him. He cried aloud in anguish and horror, and in a short time the Lord gave him "the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness." He afterwards died in peace. The following incident also, which belongs to the same class of facts, deserves insertion here: A young lady of Frome, who was very ill, expressed a strong desire to see Mr. Smith. Her state of weakness, however, was such, that it was with difficulty her friends were prevailed on to comply with her wishes. At length he was admitted to visit her, and he had the happiness of leading her into the enjoyment of the peace which passeth all understanding. For two or three days she retained the assurance of her acceptance, and her spirit then returned to God. Shortly afterwards, her sister, who was religiously disposed, remarked to a pious female, that she feared Mr. Smith’s visit had hastened the death of her deceased relative. The person to whom this observation was made replied, that, if this was her feeling, she would recommend her to go to Mr. Smith, and express it to him; at the same time offering to accompany her. They went, and found him at home. He immediately addressed her on the subject of personal salvation. "Your sister," said he, "has gone to Heaven. Are you preparing to follow her?" She was much affected, and united with him in prayer at his request, and was blessedly saved. In the beginning of 1825, Mr. Smith spent a fortnight in London. Here his labors were attended with extraordinary success; nearly one hundred and twenty obtained peace with God through his instrumentality. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 42: 02.13. CHAPTER 13. A STEWARD OF THE MYSTERIES OF GOD ======================================================================== Chapter 13 A Steward of the Mysteries of God "I will raise me up a faithful priest that shall do according to that which is in my mind." "Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters." "I will give you pastors according to Mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding." "But His Word was in mine heart, as a burning fire shut up in my bones." "The law of truth was in his mouth, and iniquity was not found in his lips." At the Conference of 1825 Mr. Smith was appointed to the Nottingham circuit. Among the people his ministry was awaited with great expectation, which was strengthened by his first public appearance among them, which happened to be at the meeting of the bands. A person present on that occasion remarks: "He professed in striking language what the blessed God had done for him; the deep concern he felt for the Divine honor, the state of the world, and the salvation of souls; after which he engaged in prayer. Never shall I forget the impressions made upon me by his fine athletic figure, his open and majestic countenance, his powerful and sonorous voice, and, above all, his fervent and mighty prayer. It seemed as if Heaven were opened, and we all believed that success was certain." On the following Sunday evening, he preached with great power at Halifax-place chapel. His subject was the love of God, and on this (to him) most delightful of all topics he dilated in "breathing thoughts" and "burning words." "I preach in faith," he cried in one part of his discourse. "God will answer prayer, and save souls tonight." About twelve persons at the prayer-meeting that evening professed to receive the blessing of pardon. This was an encouraging presage of the great work which succeeded; for, perhaps, in no place were Mr. Smith’s labors attended with more remarkable results. The spirit in which his ministry was at this time conducted, may be gathered from the following facts. Shortly after his arrival in the circuit, a pious friend remarked to him one morning that he looked very unwell. He said, in reply, that he had spent the whole of the preceding day and night in fasting and prayer, and that he was assured that God would shortly begin a glorious revival in Nottingham and its neighborhood. Some time afterwards a few friends called at his house one evening, and found him in a state of deep depression of mind. He had been meditating on the condition of the sinners in the town and its vicinity, and lamenting, with many tears, their dishonor of God and His laws. One or two engaged in prayer, and then Mr. Smith himself poured forth his sorrows before the Lord, confessing and bewailing the sins of the people with great minuteness and indescribable emotion. His vehement agony was so extraordinary that Mrs. Smith, accustomed as she was to witnessing his exertions, was unable any longer to endure the sight; and withdrew from the room. His friends rose from their knees and gazed on him with astonishment, mingled with apprehension. One of them expostulated with him and besought him to cease. Mrs. Smith turned to him and said: "Go, man, kneel down and cry and sigh for the abominations of the people." For nearly two hours did he call on God with his utmost strength. These exercises were accompanied and followed by signs of a coming revival, and in a short time "there was a great rain." We now give a few extracts from his correspondence during the first part of the year 1826, which will serve in some degree to exemplify his success: "Jan. 13. A few weeks ago, I was at Ikestone. In the evening we had a very interesting time. Many were in deep distress, and, after a good deal of labor, I think eight persons found peace with God. The following morning, I learned that there were several very unhappy, who had been at the preaching on the preceding evening. I agreed with a local preacher to go to a lace warehouse, where some of them were working. We went. I made a few observations respecting the importance of salvation, etc. Many were much affected: we sang, ’Take my poor heart,’ etc., and began to pray. The distressed souls cried aloud for mercy. Such anguish as some of them were in for more than an hour, I have seldom witnessed. After considerable struggling, six found peace with God. May God give stability to His good work! We want more nurses in the church of Christ. Last Tuesday evening, I was at Draycot, in the Derby circuit. We had much of the power of God among us. Many were in distress, and I think about twelve found peace with God." "April 8. God is blessedly moving among the people in various parts of our circuit. More than one hundred and fifty were added to the society the last quarter, and upwards of two hundred and twenty on trial. In two or three places the awakening influence of God seems to be general. The people are distressed in their houses without any outward means, doubtless in answer to prayer. At New Basford the people appear to be panic-stricken. Some of the most wicked have been converted to God. I had a blessed time there last Thursday. The glory of God filled the place, and five obtained mercy. Many souls have been saved there every week for some time past. All who received notes professed to have been set at liberty. The work is going on. In several places it is spring. Hallelujah! At Nottingham souls are saved every week. More than a dozen were saved after Mr. Dawson preached, a few weeks ago, and six found peace with God on the morning of the same day in a private house. I have seen some signal work, also, in the Mansfield and Ikestone circuits!" "June 29. Although our increase of members has not been very great two hundred we have four hundred and forty-seven on trial. In some places, the work astonishes the old members: they never saw anything equal to it. Numbers have trusted God for a full salvation, and many more are panting for it. It is the good pleasure of the good God to save to save fully. How important it is to hold this truth fast through everything!" "July 12. Many backsliders are returning to the Lord, and cleansing work is going on. Last Sunday night, at Carlton, upwards of twenty, I think, either found peace with God, or obtained a clean heart. We had a still greater night on Monday, at Halifax chapel; and last night, at New Sneinton, many souls were saved. Glory be to God! I have not time to enter into any particulars." It is, of course, impossible to trace the good which was effected primarily through Mr. Smith’s instrumentality, as it extended in numerous ramifications. Many instances there are, in which whole families were brought to the knowledge of the truth, in consequence of the influence which, in the first place, he had exerted upon individual members of them. The following case is too remarkable to be omitted. A young man left his home and his friends in Derbyshire in rather a discreditable manner, and came to reside in Nottingham, a little after Mr. Smith’s appointment to that circuit. A pious woman called where he lodged during the time of the fair. With her he was very jocose, and pressed her to go with him to the fair. To this she agreed, provided he would go with her to the chapel. Having gained his consent, she took him to hear Mr. Smith. During the sermon he was deeply convinced of sin, and soon he obtained peace with God. He soon returned home and surprised them all by the great change. His mother asked him how it was he was so constantly happy. He told her his experience and assured her God was willing to make it equally hers. Upon this they prayed till God revealed Himself in her heart, and mother and son rejoiced together in unspeakable joy. Some time afterwards, her other son was married. The young man besought the Lord to grant that on the day of the wedding one soul might be saved; and though up to the very morning there was no appearance of any answer to his prayer, he felt assured that his request would be granted. Upon the return of the bridal party from church, he retired to renew his suit before the Lord. He then came back to the company, and solemnly called upon them to join him in prayer. They did so, and before they rose from their knees, the bride was awakened, and clearly converted. The youth once more withdrew, and confessed and bewailed his sin in only asking for one soul, as he was convinced that God was far more desirous to save the whole than he could be. As he came down from his devotions, he heard a noise in one of the chambers, and, upon entering, found his brother in deep distress, crying to God for the pardon of his sins. In a little while, he also was filled with peace in believing. Shortly after, two musicians, who had been hired to contribute to the hilarity of the party, came in. The bridegroom, in the fullness of his joy, told them they were not wanted. "We have other music," he said, and invited them to unite in it. Again they had recourse to prayer, and once more the Savior answered. Before they ceased praying one of the musicians was convicted of his sins and brought into the enjoyment of the favor of God. The melody of renewed hearts celebrated their espousals to Christ on that happy day, and the burden of their chorus may well have been, "Unto Him that loved us and washed us in His own blood, be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen." The strength of Mr. Smith’s faith was never more fully displayed than in behalf of dying sinners. The condition of many of these is such as to extinguish all hope in the minds of an ordinary Christian, but I never heard of a case which he regarded hopeless; and what discouraged others, was only a stimulus to him. He was called to visit an aged woman, who was dying in the most miserable circumstances. Her heart seemed shut up in despair, and she expressed herself as having made up her mind to be damned! Mr. Smith spent several hours with her, exhorting, praying, and reading appropriate portions of Scripture. She repeatedly begged him to desist, assuring him that his efforts were of no sort of use; but every rebuff seemed only to increase his zeal for her salvation. At length she confessed that for many years she had been a backslider; she added that she had sinned away her day of grace, and her salvation was utterly impossible. He now renewed his exertions; his faith appeared to gather fresh strength, and he wrestled yet more mightily with God in her behalf. He considered the infinity of the merits of Christ, that His atonement was available even for her aggravated guilt, that the Holy Spirit was purchased by the blood of the Savior, that a sufficient measure of His influence might be exerted upon her to meet her case, and that this influence might be obtained by believing prayer. He persevered, therefore, in the contest of faith with despair; and at last the dying sinner began to yield, to relent, to weep, to hope that it was yet possible that she might be saved. Shortly afterwards, she ventured to cast her soul on Christ, and the Holy Spirit witnessed in her heart that God had accepted her. She was filled with joy and gladness, and having praised the grace of Christ on earth for a few hours, went to join the remembered thief in paradise. In the course of the year, a pretty little chapel was built at New Basford; and there were several events connected with the work of God in that place sufficiently striking to demand insertion in these pages. The first exhibits faith resulting from effort. Mr. Smith called on a person who had been a Socinian. After some conversation, he complained that he was unable to believe the Divinity of our blessed Savior. It was one of those cases, with which every minister is familiar, where argument would have availed nothing. "We will pray about it," said Mr. Smith; "and if you will only try to believe, I will forfeit my head if God does not give you the power." The result answered his anticipations. The man became there and then a true believer, and united with the society. The following illustrates the clearly Mr. Smith’s counsel: Mrs. M____ had the happiness of seeing all her children but one converted to God. He was the subject of many prayers, but he persisted in his sins, seldom went to church, and avoided meeting Mr. Smith, of whose expostulations he was afraid. The mother requested Mr. Smith’s advice. "Lay your hand on one thing at once," was his reply, meaning that she should define to her own mind a distinct object of petition, and not cease till her prayer was answered. She did so, especially in reference to her ungodly son; and a short time afterwards, returning from the chapel, where Mr. Smith had been preaching on the subject of prayer, she said to the young man, "Now I believe that the Lord will have mercy upon thee; for He has heard my prayer on thy behalf." The impression which these words produced was indelible. In about a fortnight afterwards, he was brought into the enjoyment of true religion, and became an active leader and local preacher. Mr. Smith was one evening preaching at New Basford, and the Spirit was very present. In the congregation was a woman who had recently begun to seek the Lord, and her husband was very wicked. During the sermon this man came to the door of the chapel and angrily said: "Is Mary C____ here? If she does not come out, I will break her legs." Mr. Smith stopped in his discourse and cried, "Lord, lay Thy hand on that man, put a hook in his nose, and Thy bridle in his mouth," etc., and then proceeded. A prayer-meeting, as usual, followed, and, before it was concluded, the man returned to the chapel. But he was now a different character. He came to tell the people that God had forgiven all his sins. It appeared that when, at the conclusion of the first service, his wife returned home, accompanied by a pious female, they found that, in the interval, God had powerfully wrought on him, and he now gladly joined them in prayer for pardon. Some persons were sent for to pray with him, and in a short time the Lord answered, and poured out upon him the regenerating and adopting Spirit. When he thus publicly declared the mercy of God to him, incredulity sat on almost every countenance; nor could the people be persuaded "that he was a disciple," till his Christian deportment manifested the greatness of the change which had been effected in him. The following is another characteristic incident, which occurred in the early part of Mr. Smith’s residence at Nottingham. While, on one occasion, he was preaching at a village in the circuit, the whole audience appeared to be moved, and cries and groans resounded from every part of the chapel. The extraordinary scene which followed at the prayer-meeting attracted a considerable number of careless, or scoffing spectators, who crowded in at the door, producing much confusion by their behavior, and arresting the progress of the work of God by their unhallowed spirit. Mr. Smith went to them and begged them to kneel down, and join in the worship. This they refused to do. He then fell on his knees and again entreated them. Finding, however, they were unmoved, he rose from his knees and stretching our his arms, he drove them all out of the place, declaring that he would not suffer God to be insulted in His own house. The Lord then wrought a great deliverance. Fifteen persons were saved that evening. One of the very noticeable things following in the wake of the revivals held by Mr. Smith, was the practical results as seen in the homes and social life of the people. So it is ever where the Gospel is preached in its purity and with the Holy Ghost sent down from Heaven. This is well illustrated by the following: An English workman and his wife lived an unhappy life. The woman was a scold. Her person was untidy, and her house the abode of disorder and negligence. Some good women got up a tea-meeting, and the workman and his wife were of the company. The next day, the benevolent women took a run among the families of the invited. In their rounds, they came to the home referred to. It was a loathsome place. Squalid poverty and filth met the eye everywhere. The children were offensive, and the woman, stout and strong, but clearly disheartened, sat composedly in the midst of the disorder. She gave her visitors a sullen welcome, evidently ashamed to have the ladies look on the squalid poverty in which she lived. The visitors were practical women. In reply to the inquiry, "Why not clean up?" the woman said, "What’s the use? Jim spends all his time in the ale-house. He don’t know dirt from cleanliness. He does but little else than drink and swear. I have to support the family, and I have no time to clean my own room." In the meantime, the ladies began to put things to rights and tidy up matters. The poor woman was surprised with the ease her visitors went to work, and how little trouble it was to make things tidy. They persuaded her to clean her children; make herself look decent; sweep up the room, and even clean the doorstep. Her work done, the wife waited for her husband. He came in due time. Somehow he forgot to stop at the tavern. He was sober for once in his life. He drew near to a clean door-stone, whitened after the manner of English door-stones. He thought he had made a mistake. He leaped over the stone, that he might not soil it. On opening the door, he found a clean room, well-dressed children, and a tidy wife. "Come in, Jim; this is all for you." He turned and fled. Soon he came back with his arm full of goods. He sat down to a fine tea. The clean door-step began a new life. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 43: 02.14. CHAPTER 14. THE MANLINESS OF THE MAN ======================================================================== Chapter 14 The Manliness of the Man "A minister according to the gift of the grace of God." "A minister according to the dispensation of God." "Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me. "I have appeared unto thee to make thee a witness." "Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given." At a love-feast which he conducted several persons spoke of their trials doing them good by driving them to prayer. At the close Mr. Smith made some striking remarks on what had been said. He thanked God on behalf of those whose afflictions had been so beneficial to them. "But," said he, "there is a more excellent way: that state of mind is to be attained, in which a man shall not need to be whipped to his knees, but shall go to his duty, attracted by the delight which he feels in it." He then exhorted all to seek this happiness, at the same time assuring them that he himself enjoyed it. And while his views of the omnipotence of faith gave to his own experience the aspect of simplicity and ready attainableness, they also supplied a singular unity to his theology. Hence, his profound and painful discoveries of the depravity of the sinner were combined with the most lively and practical perceptions of the high vocation of the saint. The sinner and the saint, in some schools of theology, are two isolated characters; and generally it is impossible to perceive, with any degree of clearness, how one individual can, at different periods of his life, sustain them both. The impression on the mind of a partially instructed reader, after rising from the perusal of some popular evangelical treatises, is of a fearful and insurmountable distinctness between man in his natural condition, and the elevated privileges of the New Testament. Heaven and earth could not have been more remote, before the promise of a Mediator beamed from the one, to enlighten the despair of the other. But Mr. Smith’s faith, boundless, untiring, undelaying, perpetually grasping a present promise in its illimitable breadth, brought the deepest depravity into contact with the fullness of evangelical purity, and seemed continually to cry, "The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart." His extraordinary humility gave a peculiar charm to all the other graces of his character, and not infrequently assumed a most affecting prominence. During the time he was at Windsor, he had a rather severe illness; and with emotion he directed that; should it terminate fatally, his coffin should have no inscription but "UNFAITHFUL JOHN SMITH." There was in his mind, to use a happy phrase of one of his friends, "a springing forth to meet instruction;" and with it was combined a prompt and extensive sympathy for the infirmities and even unbelief of others. Of the tenderness of his spirit, mention has already been made; and this rendered him a peculiarly welcome visitant to the chamber of affliction. "I remember accompanying him," says a friend, "to see one of our leaders in Nottingham, a poor but pious man, who was near his end. When we arrived at his house, he was in the article of death. His eyes were glazed, and there was in his throat that awful sound which announces the immediate and inevitable approach of the king of terrors. We stood for some time gazing in stillness, but not in sadness, on the solemn spectacle. I looked on my dear friend: the tears were chasing each other over his face, his chest was heaving, and the whole of his athletic frame was agitated by irrepressible emotion. At length he broke the silence, and in a tremulous voice repeated, with a pathos and freshness with which I could scarcely have conceived it possible to have invested so hackneyed a passage, ’The chamber where the good man meets his fate. Is privileged beyond the common walk Of virtue life, quite in the verge of Heaven:’ and truly it was so at that hour, as we successively commended the soul of the departing saint to the hands of God." And this susceptibility Mr. Smith preserved at all times to a remarkable degree. No sort of personal gratification seemed to have the power to shut up his heart in selfishness, or even at all to take off the sensitiveness of his feelings. Walking, for example, one day in the streets of London with a friend, the conversation took some turn which he highly enjoyed. In the midst of his full flow of pleasure, he casually turned his head, and saw, slowly moving along, a young man who appeared to be in the last stage of a consumption. The smile instantly forsook his face, and he burst into a flood of tears. Mr. Smith’s manners, though plain, were kind and inviting. His good nature was unbounded; and in his conversation there was often a quiet, and harmless, but shrewd humor, which gave to his remarks on human nature an unusual vivacity. His relation of incidents, principally those which respected the work of God, were strikingly graphic, though no one had a greater contempt for the stringing together of anecdotes, merely for the purpose of amusement. Yet, with all the playfulness of his natural disposition, it was impossible not to perceive that there was a constant and powerful undercurrent of religious feeling; and he never allowed himself to diverge from the most solemn topics to a degree which rendered his instant return to them either difficult to himself, or harsh and startling to those who enjoyed his society. In this respect, his character was marked by a perfect harmony. He was... "A creature not too bright or good For human nature’s daily food: And yet a spirit still, and bright, With something of an angel light." In common with some other eminent Christians, he enjoyed distinct intercourse with the blessed Three; and it was not unusual for him to commence his prayers in public with adoration, severally and successively, of the Persons in the Godhead, and acknowledgment of the proper divinity of each. Nor was this species of distinction confined to the exordium of these addresses. Other passages in his prayers were addressed to the Savior and the Spirit, as well as to the Father; and to these no one who had spiritual ears could listen, without perceiving that the mind of the speaker was engaged in clear and distinct communion with the glorious Being on whom he called. To this practical recognition of the mystery of the Trinity, may possibly be attributed, in part, the peculiar impressiveness which frequently accompanied his administration of the ordinance of baptism. Such services were often with him seasons of unspeakable unction. One gentleman states, that the Divine influence which attended the baptism of one of his children by Mr. Smith exceeded anything he ever witnessed. Another similarly memorable incident occurred at New Basford, when Mr. Smith baptized one of the children of Mr. H. Beeson. Having, with deep solemnity, dedicated the infant to the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, he lifted it up towards Heaven, as far as his arms would extend, and with abundance of tears presented it to the Holy Trinity. The impression upon the crowded congregation cannot be described. One writing of him at this time, says: "Of his style and diction in preaching, I will only add, that it was chaste and unaffected, simple, and perspicuous; and, on subjects which had much exercised his thoughts, eminently vigorous and energetic. Clear and acute in his conception of any subject, he was distinct and intelligible in his enunciation. In general, his discourses were distinguished chiefly by their vivid exhibition of the fundamental truths of the Gospel, and an earnest and powerful application of them to the cases and consciences of the hearers. Accordingly, they were hortatory rather than didactic: characterized by the force and persuasiveness of their appeals, rather than by any regular exposition of doctrines or discussion of principles. "Whenever I have had an opportunity of hearing him, his discourse has been regular and systematized, and the most correct, simple, and unadorned taste. Some short time before his last illness, he destroyed almost the whole of his manuscripts, lest they should afford him any sort of apology for inattention to the composition of his sermons. I am therefore unable to offer the reader any adequate specimens of his preparations for the pulpit. The few skeletons which still remain, however, cursory and meager as they are, afford sufficient evidence of his regularity and coherence in the treatment of his subjects. He was accustomed to remark, that ’thought only could produce impression;’ and he was convinced that arrangement and unity were necessary to give thought its proper and intended effect." Having an experimental knowledge of God’s power in his own life, he was the more earnest to bring others to Jesus. And why not? A well-known physician was riding through the streets. He heard the crying of a little dog, who was lying in the gutter, apparently in great pain. The kind doctor left his carriage, and lifted the dog up. He had been run over by a passing carriage, and his leg badly crushed. The doctor bore him to his office, tenderly set his limb, and cared for him from day to day. The dog became a great favorite in the family, and seemed very much attached to his kind friend, the doctor. One day, the office door being open, the dog darted out and disappeared. "That’s the way," the doctor said, "it is with dogs and men. They get all they can out of you, and when you can do no more for them they disappear. There is no gratitude in the world." The dog and his relations to the family had nearly passed out of mind. One morning, the doctor was sitting in his office, when he heard a whining at the door. He opened it, and there stood the little dog whom the doctor had treated, bringing with him another little dog who had been run over. He had communicated his relief to a suffering friend, and, in the spirit of a true missionary, had brought the sufferer to a skillful physician whom he knew was ready to aid. Nor did his instincts mislead him. He came occasionally to see his companion, but no persuasion could induce him to make the doctor’s house his home. That is the true missionary spirit. Get relief yourself. Then go out and tell the suffering, and bring them to the Great Physician. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 44: 02.15. CHAPTER 15. AS GOD'S REVIVALIST ======================================================================== Chapter 15 As God’s Revivalist "O Lord, revive Thy work, in the midst of the years make known, in wrath remember mercy." "Revive us again, fill each heart with thy love, Let each soul be rekindled with fire from above." On the subject of Revivals, Mr. Smith’s opinions may be expressed in a few words. He believed they are the results of the Holy Spirit’s operation, and that faith and prayer will certainly secure that operation at all times and to an unlimited extent. He evidently believed that anybody could have a revival, and so do we anybody that will pay the price. The sister of one of our pastor-evangelists writes most forcibly along this line: "The first and prime requisite for a revival, the absolutely necessary condition, without which there can be no revival, is somebody who can pray with the determination to have a revival, cost what it may. It is one of the things of which it is said, ’The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.’ "God is one pent-up revival. He breaks forth whenever He can find an instrument that is determined to break what hinders him. Anybody may do it; the lowliest man in the church, the most obscure person, provided that one knows how to pray. "With all our praying, so few people know how to pray; so few have spiritual discernment enough to know that God is working for us powerfully, often when everything seems against us; or to perceive when God ceases to work, and what it is that hinders Him. So few have the courage or faith to hold on through what may be a long, long struggle before full victory is manifested. But anybody can have a revival who knows how to pray. This truth is well illustrated by the fact that some revivals come as a surprise to the pastor, although usually they travel through his bleeding heart. Pinney tells us of a very lowly woman who beseeched her pastor again and again to call an inquiry meeting for the souls that she was sure were hungry for the bread of life. To get rid of her he finally yielded to what he considered an impertinence, and the room was filled. Do we want a revival? Then let us have one. "Perhaps the most difficult part of the work will be in getting God’s own people where He can give what is ordinarily understood by a revival. Why can’t we see that only God’s people can hinder Him giving a revival? He has so many more Christians to manage than in the days when the presence of a Methodist preacher and his saddle-bags in a log-house meant a revival every time, and alas! so many of them are weaklings, whom the rest must carry while they push the battle for sinners. Nevertheless any one can have a revival, if possessed of enough faith and courage. The time needed will depend upon the weight of the load to be lifted over the bar in the church, and whether those who are carrying the load manage to constantly have the mind of God. "Who is willing to bear the burnt of things; to find out what it costs to have revivals? Who is willing to be so threshed clean of the self-life, that tremendous power may flow through him? Often we start out to pray for a revival with great desire and honest purpose, but with no conception of what it will cost, with no idea of the weakness in ourselves that will break down at the critical point. Are we willing that God shall discover it to us? Are we willing to be ground to powder in order that souls may be saved? Better not begin to pray for revivals, unless we are willing that they should cost every conceivable thing. "Those who are so well saved from self-interest that they have nothing to lose, and so filled with Christ’s passion for souls that hardship in securing them is not taken into account, are the people God can use to capture souls anywhere on the face of the globe. Christ did not weigh the cost of His sacrifice. Neither must we weigh the cost of ours if we want souls. And just in proportion as we are indifferent to what it costs us will the revival come easy." The terms on which the influences of the Holy Ghost are granted are clear and unalterable: "If ye, then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?" Here is no restriction, either as to the time or degree in which we may expect our prayers to be answered. It is the presumption of unbelief alone, therefore, which can suggest any other restriction than the wants of men, or the measure of their prayers. Nay, more, as if to anticipate all objections, and silence all cavils, the promise is that we shall receive whatsoever we ask in the name of Christ; so that, unless it can be proved that no man can pray in faith for the reviving influence of the Holy Spirit, it must be admitted as one of the gifts which the veracity of God is pledged to grant the intercession of His people. Can it for a moment be supposed that man’s exposition of the Divine promises can exceed in comprehension the benevolence of "Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all we ask or think"? Is the atonement of Christ so circumscribed in its validity, that it is within the power of the lowest Christian daily to seek for blessings which it is unable to procure? It is not to be supposed. But arguments in favor of Mr. Smith’s views on this subject are abundantly supplied by every analogy which can be brought to bear upon the case. It is not to be denied that, in answer to prayer, God will vouchsafe grace sufficient for the sanctification of an individual believer, or the awakening, repentance, and justification of an individual sinner. He who questions this, makes all intercession for spiritual blessings idle and profitless; and he is confronted by the evidence of thousands of examples, in which immediate salvation has been procured by this means. And if one soul can be saved in answer to prayer, why not a hundred? All that is required in the latter instance is a proportionate increase in the pleading of faith. God cannot change; the principle upon which prayer is answered in the one case must be maintained inviolate in the other; and when brought to bear must induce similar results. The mode of the Divine working is dictated by sovereign wisdom, but the degree depends on the faith of the church. God Himself determines whether He will descend as the dew upon Israel, or as the burning flame; but it is for His people to decide whether He shall come upon the single fleece while the rest of the floor is dry, or whether the whole of the camp shall be surrounded and gladdened by the scattering forth of angel’s food. It is no objection to Mr. Smith’s views that revivals have arisen when, so far as we could trace, there existed no ardent spirit of believing prayer, and where there were indications of a low spiritual condition. It would be strange reasoning, indeed, that because, in some cases, God had transcended the express terms of His engagement, He would therefore, in others, fall short of them. As well argue, that because He, of His spontaneous compassion, gave His Son to die for the sin of the world, He therefore will not fulfill the covenant procured by His death; or that, because He is found of some who seek Him not, He will refuse to be found of those who do seek Him. No: the argument manifestly tends to the directly contrary conclusion. If God gave His Son, He will with Him also freely give us all things. If His grace comes to those who are comparatively indifferent about it, much more will it come upon those who long after it; and if some revivals occur where there is no importunate spirit of faith and prayer, it is the more certain that, if such a spirit can be produced in the church, a revival will succeed. A spurious faith is to be distinguished from the genuine and scriptural, first, by its want of success; and, secondly, by its hurtful reaction upon its possessors. Now let us, by these infallible indications, try that faith which respects revivals. Mr. Smith made experiment, and what was the result? In every circuit in which he traveled, from the time he went to Brighton, it was productive of great effects. God owned and honored it, and that in no common degree. And would this have been the case, had it been a presumptuous interference with the Divine prerogative? which it must have been, if revivals be a mere question of the sovereignty of God. Let no man venture to impugn this order of faith, unless he himself has tried it, and found it to fail. To him who has in vain believed on the promise of the Spirit we will listen, as a rational opposer of Mr. Smith’s principles; but it is obvious that the mere assertion of any other person is worth nothing in the argument. The only question which remains, therefore, is, whether those individuals and churches whose faith immediately respects revivals are really less holy and prosperous than their neighbors. Mr. Smith, of course, decidedly rejected the popular maxim, in its common acceptation, that "we must do our duty, and leave the result to God." This is, on all hands, admitted to be a correct rule in respect to temporal blessings, since for them the Scriptures offer no unqualified promise. But Mr. Smith maintained, that while it is folly and presumption to suppose that any success can attend the Christian ministry except through accompanying Divine influence, it is equally contrary to the reason of things to make God responsible for that which He has put into our own hands. In other words, as it is within the power of the church to secure a certain measure of the Holy Spirit’s operation, it is irrational and unrighteous to impute the absence of that operation to any thing but the want of effort and faith in the church. It is therefore, he argued, for every Christian minister in part to decide the measure of his own success: nor is it possible to avoid this conclusion, if the foregoing reasoning be correct. A few extracts from Mr. Smith’s correspondence may not be unacceptable to the reader: "Oct. 7, 1826. I trust that there be many who will actively concur with the Spirit. The Spirit is grieved by opposition and inaction. Some scores have been set at liberty since I was at Cudworth, and many have obtained clean hearts. During the feast week at Ratcliff I think about thirty souls found peace. Last Tuesday in the prayer-meeting five souls were saved. Two years ago we had no society at Hyson; now we have fifty in the church and ten on trial, and a chapel that will hold three hundred people." "Feb. 21, 1827. God makes some little use of me in awakening sinners, and in leading them to Jesus, the sinner’s Friend, for which I praise His name. Last Sunday fortnight at Arnold eight or nine found peace with God. At Granby, three weeks ago, nine souls obtained pardon, and two were cleansed. At Ruddington, in our circuit, about fifty have joined the society within the last quarter, most of whom have peace with God. The cleansing work is also going on. This will secure permanency and give extension to the church." "March 22. I am still choosing God for my portion, and His good service for my employment. I wish to be used much, and God to have all the glory. I cannot, I will not, be easy without seeing effects. Nay, I must not, I dare not, thanks be to God! and I am determined that He shall have all the praise. God is working mightily among us. I think we have on trial, this quarter, about four hundred and fifty. Laboring, pleading men are increasing. God will stand to His engagement: the work must go on. About a hundred have begun to meet in class at Arnold during the last quarter. The last time I was there, not fewer, I think, than twenty found peace. God seems to be agitating nearly the whole village. Lenton, which has long been desert, is fresh and green; the society has been more than doubled; Burton, the same. At Bulwell, last Monday night, my very dear father preached. Two were cleansed from sin, and eight or ten found peace. On Tuesday, at Old Basford, one obtained a clean heart, and twelve or fourteen found peace. Glory, glory be to God!" "April 24. At Old Basford last Sunday night sixteen or eighteen obtained entire sanctification, and eight were pardoned. At Halifax ten or twelve found peace; and last night two were pardoned and one was cleansed. The work is sure to go on, for God and we are agreed. Labor, labor is absolutely necessary." "May 19. At Normanton, the last time I was there, twelve found peace. The following evening, after a mighty struggle, twelve were saved. I heard this week that last Sunday and Monday nights thirty were set at liberty. A short time ago I saw nine or ten saved at Epperstone. Last Sunday week I was at Mt. Sorrell preaching for their Sunday Schools. I think nearly twenty got liberty and some others were awakened. Glory be to God!" "July 11. Last night at Old Basford many were pardoned and several cleansed. On Monday night at Bulwell I suppose between twenty and thirty were either pardoned or cleansed. Our increase this year is about six hundred, and we have about three hundred on trial. I have been in the Loughborough and Derby circuits, and saw many cleansed and pardoned." Mr. Smith’s correspondence supplies many other equally striking details of a similar kind, which are only omitted from the fear of swelling the work to an improper size. The following incidents, however, seem worthy to be preserved: Among others converted through Mr. Smith’s instrumentality, in a country place of the Nottingham circuit, was one of those persons who, even in their sins, appear to be the subjects of peculiar providential care. He was at the battle of Waterloo, and had two horses shot under him, but himself escaped unhurt. Some time afterwards, four ruffians assailed him, and having beaten him severely, left him for dead. He recovered, however; and the persons who ill-used him were transported for the offense. Only three days before he was awakened, he was fighting in the streets of Nottingham, and had his shoulder dislocated through a fall. In this condition Mr. Smith’s ministry was made the means of giving him to feel the anguish of a wounded spirit. After he left the chapel, he spent nearly the whole night in agony, and the following morning, through the prayers and counsel of Mr. Smith, he was set at liberty, and made happy in God. That evening he led another person to hear Mr. Smith preach at an adjacent village where he also experienced the pardoning love of God. At a love-feast in Halifax-place chapel, Nottingham, which Mr. Smith conducted in the month of July, 1827, an extraordinary Divine influence prevailed. There was much good speaking; and toward the close of the meeting, Mr. Taylor, a local preacher, rose to relate his experience. He said that he had once enjoyed the blessing of entire sanctification, but, through unwatchfulness, had suffered loss. With much feeling, he added that he was now earnestly longing and waiting for the restoration of this great privilege. Mr. Smith instantly started from his seat in the pulpit, and cried, "The cleansing power is on you now!" For a moment he hesitated, it was but a moment, and he then exclaimed, while the whole of his body quivered with emotion, "It is; I feel it in my heart!" The congregation then united in thanksgiving and prayer; and in a short time the windows of Heaven were opened, and there was a rush of holy influence, such as by the majority of that vast assembly was never before experienced. It seemed like a stream of lightning passing through every spirit. At one time, twenty persons obtained the blessing of perfect love, and rose up rapidly one after another, in an ecstasy of praise, to declare that God had then cleansed their hearts from all sin. The following will exemplify Mr. Smith’s tact and courage in reproving sin: He was walking in the streets of Nottingham, and overtook two men in conversation, just in time to hear one of them say, "I’ll be _____ if I do." Mr. Smith touched him on the shoulder, and with a mingled air of severity and compassion said, in a low impressive voice, "It is a serious thing to be damned!" The man turned pale, and instantly replied, "You are right, sir; it is so." "Then do not talk so fluently about it," returned Mr. Smith, and passed on. One Saturday evening, soon after he had retired to rest, he was aroused by the outcries and execrations of a number of persons, who had come into the street to decide a public-house quarrel. Mr. Smith threw up his window, and with an overpowering voice exclaimed, "Who is that swearing and blaspheming the name of my God? I cannot allow such language in the ears of my children." Then, slipping on his clothes, he hastily mingled with the crowd, and began to remonstrate with the combatants. When they would not listen, he seized the more athletic of the two by his arm, who, feeling the force of his grasp, cried out, "You are too strong for me, sir." Mr. Smith led him away and received from him a promise never to fight again. At Nottingham, after dining with a man converted under John Nelson, he turned to the son of his host and said, "Well, young man, have you got salvation?" To which the young man replied, "No, sir." Mr. Smith then said, "Well, do you think God is able to save you?" The young man replied, "Yes, I do believe He is able." "Then do you believe He is willing to save you?" "Yes, I do." "And do you believe God is willing to save you now?" The poor young man said, "Yes, I believe God, for Christ’s sake, is willing to save me now." "Then," said Mr. Smith, "let us pray;" and, falling upon his knees, he cried to the Lord in an agony. The young man soon found Jesus, to the joy of his soul. His affliction terminated in three months after this change. He died most triumphantly, shouting praises to God and the Lamb to the last. On the same day that he visited the above young man, Mr. Smith called upon a friend who had been a local preacher and leader for more than thirty years. His daughter being under some concern, Mr. Smith proposed prayer: they kneeled down and continued in supplication until she found peace with God. She continued a pious and consistent member of society for ten years. Several years after she sickened and died, a believer in Jesus Christ. Her death was a most happy and triumphant one. In the beginning of the year 1828, Mr. Smith’s health began to decline. One day, when he was very unwell, a person called and said he must see him, as he had come upwards of twenty miles for that purpose. His urgency procured him admission to the chamber where Mr. Smith was confined to his bed, suffering at once from weakness and pain. The man told him that he had been a backslider, and that, for some time past, he had been under deep convictions of sin; that he had sought the Lord with many tears, and had fasted and prayed, but still remained without comfort. "Yes," said Mr. Smith, "and you may do so a long time, and be no better, unless you believe God. You do not need to leave this room without salvation. God would rather save you today than tomorrow. You may die today; and, if you die unpardoned, you are lost forever; but God wishes to save you. He says it, and He means what He says." "But," said the man, "If I should believe and not get the blessing." "Do not meddle with God’s business," replied Mr. Smith. "But it is God that saves, is it not," "Yes; but it is not God’s work to believe; that’s your business. Do your part, man, and God will do his. Go down on your knees and ask God to save you at once." He did as he was directed. Mr. Smith then began to pray; but finding his strength was gone, he stopped and said, "We cannot get a step farther unless you believe. How long is God Almighty to wait for you?" "I will believe," cried the penitent, "I will believe; I cannot do wrong in believing; I do believe," and that very moment God filled him with such joy he actually danced upon his knees. "Didn’t I tell you God would attend to His business?" said Mr. Smith. The poor fellow rose from his knees, kissed Mr. Smith’s hand and hurried home in wondrous delight. We now give an extract from Mr. Smith’s diary in regard to his own personal experience: "Yesterday I had a very signal baptism of the Spirit, which had connected with it an assurance that the body of sin was destroyed, and that God had full possession of my heart. This assurance I retain, glory be to God! I feel indescribable pleasure in surrendering my all to Him. I have had today a very affecting view of the shattered and miserable state of the world, but I have also had a very relieving view of the efficacy of the atonement of Christ, of the power of the Spirit, and of the covenant engagements of the blessed God. He willeth that all should be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth. I have a strong desire that I may be better fitted for the good service of God, that I may be employed much, and that He may get all the glory. Amen. My body has been out of order, but my faith has not wavered. God is mine, and I am His; glory be to God!" The religion of Mr. Smith was genuine, stamped with the blood of Jesus, and he fully expected that, regardless of all circumstances, it would carry him clear through. An English minister one time addressing a large number of workmen declared the same truth: "I came here today in the cars. I am not a well-dressed man, as you see, and I generally travel second-class. I went to the booking-office to get my ticket, when a friend met me, asked me where I was going, and if I had a ticket. I told him I was going to Manchester, and that I was on my way to buy my ticket. ’Just wait,’ he said, ’and I’ll get you one.’ The ticket admitted me to a first-class car. We had several changes to make, but my friend said, ’That ticket is good clear through.’ On approaching the gate, the guard said to me, ’second-class?’ ’No, first-class.’ ’Let me see your ticket. All right, pass in.’ I didn’t look much like a first-class passenger. It wasn’t my clothes, nor my looks, that gave me my seat, but my ticket; that carried me through. We came to out first change. The man at the iron gate repeated the question, ’Second class?’ ’No.’ ’Let me see your ticket.’ And on I went. Change followed change, till at length I was landed in the station at Manchester. One ticket brought me clear through. Nobody asked me where I came from, how old I was, whether I was rich or whether I was poor. The authorities asked for my ticket; if that was all right, I was all right. I took the right ticket at the booking-office before I started, and needed no changes, no alterations, no additions. It landed me just where I would be. It is just so with religion. Get it at the start, get it genuine. Have it stamped with the blood of the Savior, and it will carry you clear through to the pearly gates. No matter what may happen; no matter what there is in the future, you will be safe. Your ticket will pass as you enter the gates of death; and if the golden gates swing inward to your approach, it will be because your ticket is right." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 45: 02.16. CHAPTER 16. A PARTIAL CESSATION FROM LABOR ======================================================================== Chapter 16 A Partial Cessation From Labor "Come ye apart into a desert place and rest." "By the river Chebar the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God." "And many shall be purified and made white and tried." "I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day and heard a voice." A clergyman was settled over a large and influential church. He was a man of commanding talents, but was distinguished for his intellectual strength, rather than for his susceptibility. He was not sympathetic or tender. He had no magnetism, yet his grip on the intellect was strong. He hardly knew what sickness was. Death had never come into his family. Though he was kind, and meant to console the sick and afflicted, he lacked the gush and heart that only experience can give. He seemed out of place at a sick-bed, and at a funeral he appeared awkward, embarrassed, and almost indifferent. The Lord had a discipline in store for him. He put him in the furnace of affliction, and tried him "as by fire." He loved his youngest child, a bright, beautiful boy, as he had never loved any thing else. He would turn aside from his books for his prattle, and the study door, barred against all visitors at certain hours of the day, was always opened at the tap of the child. A scourge came into his household. Every member but the pastor was sick. The mother was helpless, and assistance was sought in vain. The darling boy sickened at the last, sickened with a noisome disease. The father was his nurse. He attended him night and day, and, like David, he prayed God earnestly that the child might be spared. He would have borne the disease, taken the pain, and even died for his darling boy. But no human aid could avail. The little boy died in convulsions, and died in the arms of his father. The pastor came out of that furnace a changed man. He had seen affliction, and it melted him. He was tender, considerate, and tearful. He was especially a comforter at funerals. The death of a child unmanned him. He was a constant visitor to the homes of the lowly, and took a special interest in sick and poor children. Like his exalted Master, he seemed to be "made perfect through suffering." Mr. Smith was always tender and sympathetic, and yet in the school of suffering he was to learn lessons with Christ, that would still further enhance his usefulness, and bring him into closer touch with the suffering and sorrowing around him, who needed help. At the Conference of 1828, Mr. Smith was compelled to become a supernumerary. His constitution was so broken up, that it was manifest his life could be prolonged only by, at least, a partial cessation from labor. It was with great reluctance that he submitted to this arrangement; but of its necessity he had in himself evidence too palpable to be resisted. He therefore took up his residence at Beeston, a pleasant village a few miles from Nottingham; and it is proper to be recorded; that a handsome provision was made for him from the circuit funds, and that his friends were assiduous in supplying every alleviation of his affliction which was within their power. Yet with all the consolations which faith can command, and friendship afford, the situation of a supernumerary is deeply painful. To Mr. Smith it was peculiarly so, and his mind was often exercised by powerful temptation and deeply depressed. He could not be prevailed upon to remain in an inactive state. That relaxation which he took was, however, highly beneficial, and through the year his health gradually improved. We give a few extracts from his letters during this time. From Barnsley, where he was staying for his health, he wrote to his wife, September 11, 1828: "I am very glad that you are rising in your soul. There is no substitute for intercourse with God. Without Divine communications the soul droops and dies, and becomes a corrupt thing. But with what life and beauty and blessedness God can impregnate a soul! Yes, before the mighty energy of God, the Holy Ghost, everything that is foul and corrupt is driven, and from the indwelling Spirit spring love, joy and peace. Let us, my dear, pray on, and pray hard. God will not disappoint a feeble worm that trusts in Him. I thank you for the help of your prayers. You have my poor prayers, and shall have them. Notwithstanding much unfaithfulness, I believe it possible for us to live to God as we never have lived. Let us try. God’s blessing, His peculiar blessing, is always connected with entire devotedness to Him. It will also be an inheritance to our children. Oh, that the blessed God would send us speedy and appropriate help! I am in a fair way to come about again. Most likely I shall long be a delicate man with respect to bodily health. This may be the best for me. This I know; God cannot err, nor can He be unkind. Glory be to Him! With a peculiar sense of the value of your affection, and wishing that you and your charge may dwell under the shadow of the Almighty, I am," etc. Under the date of December 26, 1828, he thus writes: "My soul has fast hold on God. He is mine, and I am His. I have had, of late, some very gracious Divine communications. I am looking for brighter, more penetrating, and soul-transforming manifestations of God. I want, ’beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord,’ to be changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.’ The grand adversary has laid hard at me, but God has pitied me and rebuked him. Disorder is retiring from my body, health and vigor are returning. With caution on my part, God seems disposed to build me up again. Much prayer has been made, and God has heard and regarded. I mean to use my returning health for God and souls. He will help. You are aware that I have commenced preaching again and God is pleased to connect His soul-saving power with me. I have raised a class which meets in our home. God has owned it. The first night a local preacher got a clean heart, the second four obtained pardon; the third, two others; the fourth, two more, and last Wednesday night, five were cleansed, as was another who came to our house just as we were commencing family worship. Glory! glory be to God! The cleansing God still lives and works. My wife is well and happy in God. Ellen is under a Divine influence. What a pleasing thought, our children are the Lord’s. We must try and prevent the devil making any use of them. The provisions of the Gospel are neglected. The promise is to us and to our children. We will try that they may be a holy seed. May the Lord help you and me to claim the grace which is provided and offered in Christ ... I am loaded with the kindness of the people in this circuit. I trust God will reward them. My prayers they shall have. You and yours have my prayers and tears. I am, dear brother, yours," etc. "March 17, 1829. My Very Dear Father: A few weeks ago, I spent upwards of a fortnight in London. I had liberty beyond my expectation in preaching at Hinde Street one Sunday night, from, ’As I live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked,’ etc. The strong power of God was among the people. One woman cried out while I was preaching, and a general burst was anticipated. This, however, did not take place, perhaps through not going to prayer at the time. A great multitude stayed at the prayer-meeting. Many were powerfully wrought upon, and it was supposed about thirty were saved. Glory be to God! On Wednesday I and Brother McD____ went to Woolwich. I preached in the evening from, ’Ask, and ye shall receive,’ etc. D and I returned to London that night; but we afterwards learned that the pardoned and cleansed amounted to sixteen. The following Sunday night I had special liberty from, ’This is a faithful saying,’ etc. There was much of the cutting power of God among the people. Fifteen hundred people stayed to prayer-meeting. The praying men then came forward, several got liberty, the high praises of God were sung. Mr. Reece marshaled the meeting until after ten o’clock, and then requested the seekers to retire into the vestry. It is said not fewer than forty were saved that night. You would not be surprised at this were you to hear these mighty men pray. Oh, what straightforward believing in God! Oh, what powerful wrestling! The following Wednesday I preached at Charles Street from, ’Wilt thou be made whole?’ God displayed His power and mercy in saving souls, and not fewer than thirty prayed through. Glory be to God! By this time my body was shorn of its strength, and I was glad to seek rest by returning to Nottingham. In different places, in our own circuit I have seen several saved. To God be all the glory! Amen, and amen. "July 2, 1829. I preached at Sheffield, according to appointment, to a large congregation; and there was a powerful influence connected with the truth of God. I should think twelve or fourteen hundred stayed to the prayer-meeting. Many were in distress, and a goodly company either found peace or were cleansed from sin. I preached out of doors at Chilwell, a few days afterwards: three or four were awakened, and have since joined the society. On Whitsunday, we had a good day at New Basford. Five found peace in the evening. They are going on well there. I was at Hickling, in the Melton circuit, a short time ago. Many were in distress, and five found peace. The week before last I went to Clauson, where we had a very signal time; a crowded chapel, much power under the sermon, and, after some powerful struggling in the prayer-meeting, fifteen or sixteen were saved. We had one saved at our class last Tuesday night. So you see the Lord is still working among us. O Jesus, ride on till all are subdued. Through mercy we are all tolerably well in health, and determined to try and get and diffuse more of God." Then, in allusion to his temporal circumstances, he adds: "I would rather break stones on the road than pass another such year as the last. I like to earn my bread, and that has Sometimes made me labor when I ought to have rested. But I hope God will smile after bruising me a little." On Easter Sunday evening of this year, Mr. Smith preached at Hockley chapel, and, having commenced a prayer-meeting, went into the vestry, intending immediately to return home. A poor man followed him, and with an expression of extreme disappointment, exclaimed, "What! are you going?" "Yes," said Mr. Smith; "what is the matter with you?" "Oh, I am a miserable man, sir!" "Are you a backslider?" "Yes, I am; and I am a miserable man!" "Do you wish to come back? do you want to be saved again?" "I am come on purpose; and now you are going." "Go into the chapel, and get upon your knees," said Mr. Smith, "and I will be with you in a few minutes." He did as he was directed, and, when Mr. Smith went to him, he found him in an agony of distress, exclaiming, "There never was such a sinner as I am." "You deserve Hell," said Mr. Smith. "That’s true," replied the other, with a deep groan; "I do indeed." "Oh, man! God will not allow you to remain in this distress. He says, ’I will heal your backslidings, and I will love you freely.’ Do you think God tells lies?" "No." "Then He will do it, will He not?" The penitent laid hold on the truth, and was instantly delivered and his joy was as extreme as had been his previous anguish. The same evening a poor woman went forward with two others; she said: "Mr. Smith, this is my daughter, and this other is my son’s wife; they both want salvation." God gave them the desire of their hearts. Mr. Smith’s health being sufficiently restored, he resumed his labors and was appointed in 1829 to the Lincoln circuit. Monday evening he preached a farewell sermon and twenty were saved. Among these was a woman who had a persecuting husband. She had once enjoyed the favor of God, but permitted her domestic troubles so far to prevail over her that she lost out in her soul. On this evening she went up to the form usually appropriated to penitents, and, kneeling down, resolved not to rise till the Lord again lifted on her the light of His countenance. In a short time, the Comforter returned to her heart; and, with a face wreathed with smiles, she was retiring, when she caught a glimpse of a man who had just obtained a similar blessing. It was her husband. She rushed into his arms, and fainted. It afterwards appeared that each of them was ignorant of the other’s coming to the chapel. The power of God laid hold of the ungodly man’s heart during the sermon; and just at the time that his wife received the renewed assurance of the Divine favor, he also entered into the enjoyment of peace in believing. Such was the closing scene of Mr. Smith’s regular ministry in a circuit most tenderly endeared to his own heart, and in which his name will long be remembered with deep emotions of gratitude and reverence. He began in Lincoln on Sunday, August 30th, by a powerful sermon from John 16:24, and in the evening from Job 22:21. In both these discourses he gave his hearers to distinctly perceive the order of his preaching. "Whoever discredits my Master," said he, in one of them, "I do not. His promise is, ’Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst.’ Jesus is here. Glory, glory be to God!" He thus speaks of the results of his early labors in this circuit, in a letter to a friend: "Oct. 21, 1829. I am rather strong to labor; I am disposed to labor. I have plenty to do; and the best of all is, God is with me! I had been told that the Lincoln congregation consisted of very still sort of people, who were incapable of excitement, etc., etc. Caution, caution would be necessary. Well, pondering took place in my mind. The result was, I will strike the first Sunday. I did so; execution was done. God saved four; and He has saved, I should think, at least fourscore since in Lincoln. Hallelujah! Hail to the Lord’s Anointed! The royal diadem belongs to Him! We will crown Him Lord of all! The floods are coming! Many drops, some showers, have already descended. How refreshing! But the floods are coming! If our people continue in agonizing, believing prayer, which has fast hold of them at present, and why not? nothing can stand before them. Satan will fall as lightning from heaven. Hardness, levity, carelessness, and profanity are as chaff before the wind. God has risen from His holy habitation, and speaks salvation in every direction. What an honor to be one of His attendants! to be one of His heralds! I cry out, He is coming; and often, He is here! His royal presence is known by His bounty distributed, pardons in great numbers, the frequent healing of backsliders, clean hearts: filled spirits go away rejoicing, and the arrows stick fast in the hearts of the King’s enemies. With tears, and cries, and groans, and rejoicings, I say, ’Live, for ever, wondrous King, Born to redeem, and strong to save!’ Good luck to Thee! ride on, win, subdue, conquer, triumph, have the glory forever and ever! What! do tears of joy fill your eyes, and do you say, ’Amen, my God! let there be a sweeping work! and strengthen his body?’ Oh, my brother, I have just had to wipe away my tears at the thought of your praying for me body and soul. Thank you, thank you! Well, when we shake hands on the banks of the river, we will sing, ’Hallelujah to the Lamb!’ I should like to enter into particulars, but for want of space cannot. Some of the most unlikely ones found salvation, proud spirited, haughty young men. But what is this to the omnipotent Spirit whose work it is to save? From four to twenty have been saved at one meeting in Lincoln again and again. Persons from nine to seventy-six years of age are among the saved. Last Sunday I was at Bassingham. I preached at one-thirty from, ’Create in me a clean heart.’ We then had a good love-feast. Just as I was about to give out a verse, a young man got up and said some time ago he had lost a clean heart, but the sermon had convicted him. Then suddenly he cried out, ’God cleanses me again.’ It went like an electric shock. I said, ’Now you see God is here in cleansing power. If you want a clean heart you may have one.’ A young man exclaimed, ’I have got it,’ and looking round added, ’You all may have it.’ We began to pray and the meeting did not conclude till I went to preach at six o’clock. I was told that thirty-three obtained entire sanctification, and many were pardoned. In the evening, the strong power of God was present. I suppose towards thirty were pardoned, and many cleansed. Glory be to God! I went on Monday to Besthorpe. Seventeen found peace, several were cleansed, and others in distress. Yesterday morning, I saw two cleansed, and one get into liberty. These are days of grace. It is God’s will that they should continue. Hallelujah! On Monday night, at the prayer-meeting in Lincoln, four or five and twenty were saved. Expectation is high, and God will not fail. Love to the praying men." November 4, 1829, he writes to his friend, Mr. Alderman Carey: "God is with us; yes, He is mightily working. Not a week passes without some being pardoned or cleansed. Last Sunday afternoon, at the prayer-meeting after the sacrament, about twelve found peace; three more at night, ten others on Monday. Last night I was at Saxilby: three found peace, six obtained clean hearts. Today I have seen one cleansed, and two pardoned. I say to our friends in Lincoln, that if they will only stick to it, if they continue in agonizing and believing prayer, there will be such a work in Lincoln as was never witnessed. Glory be to God! Forty-five were proposed [one evening] to receive notes on trial, besides many more who have begun to meet in class. We have begun to confess the sins of the people, to plead the blood of the covenant, and the promise of the Spirit. The business, I trust, will be continued: the Lord will not fail. In many places in the circuit God is working mightily, and souls are entering into Canaan." In January of 1830 he went to Nottingham to preach for the Tract Society. He wrote in his diary: "My object in going is to glorify God: 1. In the awakening of sinners, the bringing them to Christ that they may be pardoned, accepted, adopted, and regenerated; 2. The restoration of poor backsliders; 3. The entire sanctification of believers; their support and comfort under trouble and temptation; and their being filled with all the fullness of God; 4. Begetting and increasing, in God’s people, concern for the salvation of souls in general, and of sinners in Nottingham in particular. Every soul in Nottingham was called into being by the blessed God, and has been preserved and redeemed by Him; and it is God’s will that each should be saved. For the getting and cultivating sympathy for souls, consider that they are, 1. Immortal; 2. Accountable; 3. Capable of bliss or pain extreme; 4. Naturally corrupt; increasers of corruption in themselves, and propagators [of it in others]; also, that they are acted upon injuriously by men and devils. God pities them, and bids them welcome to the blessings of His house; Christ died and intercedes for them; the Spirit works upon them, and is ready to furnish still more powerful influence; but they must use the means of God’s appointing, actively concur with the Spirit, or perish everlastingly. They are our brethren; we have access to them in person or by proxy. We are capable of acting upon them. A Divine influence is connected with every Christian. God and Christ require it of us. We have power with God for them. Their state must be looked at with as much particularity as possible. The atonement must be believed for them; promises of the influences of the Holy Spirit must be seized and pleaded for them; their hardness, profanity, pride, carelessness, will give way; and it will appear that God is with Zion, making her ’a sharp threshing instrument, having teeth.’ Individual pleading in this way will do much; united pleading will do more. Who will come up to the help of the Lord against the mighty? Allow not the work to flag; stick to it. Personal piety will improve, and there will be accessions to the church of Christ, etc. Who is sufficient for these things? No one, but the man whom God fits for the work. Lord, help me!" Mr. Smith’s labors at Nottingham, on this occasion, were greatly blessed; and, among other cases of his success, there was one meeting which he conducted, in which not less than forty souls obtained the pardon of their sins. In his correspondence, he speaks of the Sabbath which he spent with his Nottingham friends at this time as a day never to be forgotten. Why are there not more mighty "praying men" today? more "wrestling men" who will not leave go until the heavens bend, and the answer is felt and seen? Our pulpits in too many places are dealing in glittering generalities, and these are the death of prayer and of spirituality. Children may be taught the value of prayer and to realize its power in their own experience. A little girl was placed in an attic to pass the night. It was a room seldom occupied; but it became necessary to put her in this chamber, to make room for friends who had come unexpectedly to the house. She was awakened in the night by troops of rats running over the bed. The animals were large and bold; they not only chased each other round the room and across the bed, but even across the face of the little girl. Some of the rats took their station on her bosom and looked her fiercely in the face. The little child was terribly frightened and screamed in terror. Her cries did not seem to disturb her visitors; they continued their gambols all the same. She was so far away that the family could not hear her outcries. The child had been trained in the fear of the Lord. She wondered if the Lord would hear her in her extremity, and send her deliverance. She thought over the lessons she had learned in Sunday School. She remembered that her Heavenly Father heard Joseph in prison, and delivered Daniel from the den of lions. Timid and fearful, she resolved to call upon the Lord. Her prayer was first that the Lord would send her deliverance. If it did not please Him to do that, she prayed that He would keep her from harm. While she prayed, a scratching was heard at the door. The little child jumped out of bed, and hurriedly opened the door, when a large cat entered. She was a stranger to the house, but immediately fell upon her enemies. She cleared the room in a trice. The child returned to her bed, and soon fell asleep. She was not disturbed again through the night. In the morning, her deliverer was nowhere to be found. Where she came from or where she went to, no one knows. The child still affirms, and her family believe, as she is a child of undoubted truth and intelligence, that He who shut the mouths of lions when His servant was in peril, had pity on the sufferings of a little girl, heard her prayer, and sent deliverance. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 46: 02.17. CHAPTER 17. SAVING SOULS FROM DEATH ======================================================================== Chapter 17 Saving Souls From Death "The soul that sinneth it shall die." "Turn ye, turn ye; for why will ye die?’ "As I live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, but would rather that all men should turn unto Me and live." "Look unto Me and be ye saved, for I am God, and there is none else." "Whosoever believeth shall not perish, but have eternal life." It may seem a very simple thing to kneel down and talk thirty minutes or more with the Lord; but those of us who love to pray and are trying to live a life of prayer find out after awhile that it requires strength from the Holy Spirit to pray effectively. To pray scripturally, and in the Spirit, requires a Divine touch upon our wills to give us patient perseverance, and another touch upon our affections that we may pray with a proper feeling and intense desire after God’s glory. Without Divine strength to pray with, our prayers will wither just like flowers without water. So at the beginning of a season of prayer we should ask our Heavenly Father to impart to us by the Holy Spirit special strength all through our faculties, that we may pray acceptably and effectively. Living Words "In the month of June," says a friend, "I had an opportunity of spending half an hour with Mr. Smith as I passed through Lincoln. I found him, as usual, absorbed in his great work. He related to me, with much delight, many pleasing instances of the power of grace which had recently occurred in the circuit; and, among others, mentioned one place in the country, at which, a few evenings before, between twenty and thirty souls had been set at liberty at a prayer-meeting. I was particularly struck with his powerful expressions on the subject of the Divine benevolence, and more especially with the last sentence which he uttered before I took my leave of him: ’If God will not save men, it is no business of ours;’ a truth deeply momentous and interesting; since human exertions for the salvation of souls are only rational on the ground of the surpassing and infinite willingness of the Almighty." As an instance of Mr. Smith’s spiritual discernment, we give the following: A sick woman was visited by him. She was under deep concern, but made no advance in the Divine favor. Mr. Smith at last said to her, "Have you not at some time known the grace of God, and proved unfaithful?" With some hesitation the woman confessed that this was the fact. "Oh, then," said Mr. Smith, "you must take your right character before the Savior you are a backslider; you must come to God as such, and He will receive you." He then prayed with her, and she was enabled to exercise faith in the promises adapted to her state. She was filled with peace and joy, and shortly after her spirit returned to God. Mr. Smith was a perfect stranger to her character at the time of his visit; and the friend who accompanied him, and who gives the relation, had not the slightest idea of the real state of the case. Mr. Clarkson relates the following examples of the success which, about this time, attended Mr. Smith’s labors in private. The latter is inserted as an illustration of his faithful and searching method of dealing with sinners: Mr. Smith was one evening at the house of a friend, and among the company was a young lady, the daughter of an eminent and exemplary deceased member of the society. He addressed her on the subject of religion, and inquired whether she wished to go to Heaven. She replied in the affirmative, but added that she thought she might succeed in arriving there without meeting in class, etc. "But that was not the way your father went," said Mr. Smith. "No," she rejoined, "it was not." "Then," said he, "you are wiser than your father;" and after some further remarks, he added, "The Lord has hold of you, Miss ____." The next day she met him in the street, and asked permission to come to his class. He inquired the reason of her wish. With much emotion she replied, that his conversation the previous evening had made an impression on her mind so deep, that she could not rest in her present state: she was resolved, she said, to go to Heaven the same way as her father. She attended the class, and shortly afterwards entered into the enjoyment of the salvation of the Gospel. A respectable class-leader of the Lincoln society has supplied an account of a visit, which, in the early part of the year, he and Mr. Smith paid to a sick person; and which, as somewhat resembling the preceding narration, is inserted in this place. The individual had been the engineer of a steam-packet, and, from what can be gathered, a very profligate sinner. He appears to have had some serious impressions from the time he was taken ill; but these were matured and rendered indelible by a dream which he had a few days before Mr. Smith called on him. He imagined that he saw four of his children, who died in their infancy. They appeared very beautiful, and unspeakably happy. But when they passed the foot of his bed, they assumed a severe aspect, and, looking frowningly on him, exclaimed, "Where we are, you can never come." He awoke in extreme agitation; strong convictions of sin seized upon him; and his past life, in all its defilement and rebellion, rose in vivid array before his conscience. His medical attendant, finding him in great distress, begged Mr. Smith to visit him. When he and his companion came into his room, they found him half sitting up in bed, crying earnestly, "Lord, have mercy upon my soul!" "Amen!" said Mr. Smith. "Lord, save my soul!" "Amen!" "Just now extend Thy mercy to me." "Amen, my God!" "Canst thou pardon such a wretch as I am?" "O man," cried Mr. Smith, "you are in a desperate condition; how long have you been thus?" The man told him, adding, "Sometimes I think God will save me, and at other times it is suggested that I am such a wretch there is no mercy for me." Mr. Smith said, "God is able to save all them that come unto Him. Do you believe God is able to save you?" "Yes." "He would much rather save you, than damn you. Come, let us pray." Having prayed, he called on the sinner to pray and endeavored to induce him to cast his soul on Christ. "You deserve Hell, you deserve Hell," he said. "Hell is too good for me," cried the other. "But, glory to God," continued Mr. Smith, "you are out of Hell, and may be kept out. Now, try and pray for yourself." He did so; hope began to beam on his mind; his efforts for salvation became more resolute and confident. Mr. Smith kneeled once more, and wrestled with God in mighty agony, till the trembling penitent was enabled to cast himself fully on the atonement. He then rose up in bed, and cried, "I see Him; He died for me; He is my Savior, nailed to the cross for me and my salvation. I do believe in Him; yes, I do believe that God, for Christ’s sake, has pardoned all my sins." His burden was all removed, and he united in singing the praises of that "God from whom all blessings flow." He was afterwards partially restored to health; but he still maintained his confidence, and for a short time walked worthy of his high calling. It then pleased God to take him to Himself. "Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?" The Conference of 1830 was held at Leeds. Mr. Smith attended it, and preached several times with much power and considerable success. To one of these occasions he thus alludes in a letter to a friend: "At the Conference, one Tuesday morning, the floods came down. Many were pardoned, many were cleansed. At the glorious coming down of Jehovah, the noise of the people was as the sound of many waters. It required strong measures to get order, but it was secured, and God stayed and worked signally and clearly. His hand was seen and adored. He will stand by His own plan. His good pleasure is to save." Finding, however, that he was in danger of injuring himself at Leeds, Mr. Smith retired to Cudworth before the Conference concluded. Here he preached once, and several souls were given to his ministry. A gracious work began in the village from this time. Writing to his father, a few months afterwards, he thus speaks on this subject: "The tidings of your prosperity at Cudworth gave me great pleasure. Only stick to the work, and then this is a must be. There should be no flagging: in order to this, lengthened meetings generally should not be encouraged. If you mind, you may have a sweeping work this winter. Try!" On the first Sunday that Mr. Smith preached at Lincoln, after the Conference, seven persons were converted to God, and in general the circuit continued to present gratifying indications of prosperity. At the September quarterly meeting, sixteen hundred members were reported, being, after all deficiencies arising from deaths, apostasies, and removals had been supplied, about half as many again as twelve months before. Under the date of September 24th, Mr. Smith thus writes to Mr. Calder, in reply to an invitation from the Missionary Committee at Leeds: "Such is the state of my health, that I must not leave my circuit for some considerable time. Indeed, at present, I am taking rest. My windpipe is the failing instrument, and Mr. Harvey is trying his ability to mend it ... God is smiling upon us in this circuit still. Our people have stood well during the harvest: a good omen this. Expectation, too, is rising. I suppose you will join with me in saying heartily, I am sure God will not fail. No, it is the good pleasure of His goodness to save. Let us take fast hold of God’s good will to man. Strong exhibitions of the superabounding goodness of God do much execution, and desponding man needs them. I love you much and should like you to have much fruit. My Christian love to your family. Praying that God may hold you in His right hand and employ you in saving many souls, I am," etc. Shortly after this, Mr. Smith spent some time at Nottingham for the recovery of his health and appeared to derive much benefit from the change. In consequence of taking cold upon his return, he was again laid aside. In a letter dated October 22nd, he says: "Ever since Conference I have been under pain. My body is badly shaken, but I believe it will be repaired again. God is doing much good on this circuit. Why do we dwell upon earth but to get and diffuse good? Appropriate labor always tells. Labor we must use. I intended being in London this month, but it is over: my health has interfered. An idle or a resting man I could not be in London. Safety is connected with staying at home. I have had to say No to, I should think, near twenty requests since Conference, to visit other circuits. This has been painful, because God has used me in this way. I must and do submit. Much of the steel has been forced from my body; I still hope it will harden." After passing a few weeks in rest at his native village, Mr. Smith returned to Lincoln, sufficiently recovered to resume his beloved employment. To his father he thus writes immediately afterwards: "Dec. 10. You will be glad to learn that I got to Lincoln without taking any cold. I have taken my full work ever since, except one sermon. Two souls found peace on the first Sunday evening at Lincoln, and I have some very gracious seasons in the country; some good has been done. I stand my work better than I anticipated; and I trust, with care, that I shall be able to go through my labors with tolerable ease. At P__. we have a remarkable work. At the prayer-meeting seven got liberty. I was much concerned for the family that entertained me. They seemed far off. I was in my closet about them next morning, and went to breakfast in a pensive mood, pondering and pondering what to do. While we were at breakfast, the leader’s wife came in, and said, ’Seven got liberty last night, and your charwoman was one.’ Mrs. Smith, my hostess, said, ’She saved? she is as much saved as I am!’ I said nothing. The woman came in to breakfast, and after reading I said, ’Well, some say that you got your sins forgiven last night; did you?’ ’No, sir.’ ’Then you are not happy.’ ’No, sir.’ ’Do you wish to be saved?’ ’Yes, sir. When?’ ’Now, sir.’ ’Then God and you are agreed. Well, Mrs. S., how long is God to wait for you?’ ’I do not know, sir. I do not think that either I or anybody else can come to God for salvation unless something particular comes upon them.’ ’Of course, the fault is God’s, then,’ said I. ’Now, I assure you, you are wrong; for God would have saved you long ago. Your conduct is telling God that He is a liar. We must pray.’ The charwoman and Mrs. S’s daughter cried aloud for mercy. They soon found peace. ’Now, Mrs. S., what will you do?’ She shook as if she had four agues upon her, and cried for mercy, till God saved her. I then went to the husband. He said he could not believe. I prayed; he then said, ’I can, I can believe.’ We arose, and praised God for liberating the four. I was at the place this week, and they all stand. I believe not fewer than fifty have been brought to God there in a very short time. Upwards of twenty were saved that week. Glory be to God! ... I am going to Leeds tomorrow week. Get your class to pray for me." In a postscript he mentions a love-feast which had recently been held at Lincoln, "the fruits of which were twenty souls pardoned or cleansed." Several circumstances conspired to render the last six months of Mr. Smith’s life a season of severe trial. Pain, his natural fortitude might have enabled him to endure; but, to be cut off from his beloved occupation and to have to contemplate the anxiety of a beloved wife, was indeed sorrow. Disease made progress, and nothing seemed to repel it. His aged father said, "Oh, how glad I should be to die for thee." But now the good man must endure his own suffering and privation. On Sunday, May 1st, he went from his bed to the pulpit and once more labored to enforce that text on which he had so often preached, "A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh; and I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep My judgments, and do them." (Ezekiel 36:26-27.) It was with the utmost difficulty that he proceeded with his discourse; and, at its conclusion, he told the congregation that he felt so ill as to be quite incapable of addressing them in the evening. He then closed the service, and retired from the pulpit. This was his last sermon. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 47: 02.18. CHAPTER 18. CRY OUT, AND SHOUT, THOU INHABITANT OF ZION ======================================================================== Chapter 18 Cry Out, and Shout, Thou Inhabitant of Zion Before proceeding to the chamber where the good man met the last enemy, and conquered through grace, we will consider one phase of the meetings in which Mr. Smith engaged, that often aroused the antagonism of the formal and churchy, and at the same time drew the curious to increase the numbers that awaited upon his ministry. Demonstrations attended the preaching of the Word. Mr. Smith himself, when aroused by the indifference of the throng, the peril of the unsaved, the pleadings of the penitent, and the presence of the Spirit, preached in the demonstration of the Spirit and with power. Seekers converted, were loud in their praises, and, to the world, extravagant in their actions, while saints made the welkin ring, joining with the angels in Heaven, in joy over one sinner that repenteth. Methodism in its palmy days often witnessed scenes where saints made merry over prodigals returning, and obeyed the injunction, "Cry out and shout, thou inhabitant of Zion, for great is the Holy One of Israel in the midst of thee." Live men in the pulpit, filled with the Spirit, carrying a God-given message, loving the purchased of a Savior’s blood, and preaching in the Spirit, generally stir the hearts of their hearers. Livingstone in Scotland, Edwards and Whitefield in America, Wesley and Nelson in England, and the early itinerants of Methodism expected to see, and often witnessed, the workings of God among the people to whom they preached. That prince of pulpit orators, Rev. Charles Pitman, in old Green Street Church, in Trenton, N. J., and in old St. George’s, in Philadelphia, again and again would hear the congregations to whom he preached, shout until the echoes rang with the King’s praises, and many of his converts went out to bless the world and shout on the battle in New Jersey camp-meetings and churches and tell over and over again the triumphant scenes they witnessed in days gone by. That genial man of God, Chaplain C. C. McCabe, who sang and shouted the praises of God in Methodist pulpits, conferences, and camp-meetings, wrote once in reference to the shouting kind of folks as follows: "You do not believe in shouting? I am sorry. It annoys you, does it? Have you ever stopped to ask why it annoys you? To tell the truth, have you not been so egotistical as to conclude that of course you are just in the right spiritual condition yourself to make you a competent judge of the propriety of shouting the praise of God? "The sweetest note that ever fell from an angel’s harp would be only another discord in the jangle of some tunes. Now, may it not be that your whole heart is so out of tune with any sort of worship but what is formal, cold, lifeless and dreadfully proper, that you would not know the bells of Heaven if you should hear them ringing? Last Sabbath, while your pastor was preaching from the text, ’He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich,’ that poor washer-woman up in the ’Amen Corner,’ with a little fatherless boy on either side of her, was wonderfully happy. "First, there was a light, a strange, unearthly light, gleaming upon her tear-stained cheeks; and then, when the preacher described the wealth there is in Jesus, that poor woman, though by nature as modest as you are, shrinking ever from the public gaze, yet when her cup of blessing ran over, she raised her withered hands, and clapped them in holy rapture, shouting ’Glory! glory! GLORY TO GOD!’ until the church rang again, and the preacher stopped preaching, and covered his face with his hands, and wept for joy. "Did you observe how awe-stricken her children seemed while they gazed upon her? Ah! well they knew the story of those wrinkled hands that kept toiling on that they might have bread! Those beautiful hands! Well they knew how their humble home was illuminated and made glorious by her saintly life; but they do not know just yet how tightly her grave will hold them to truth and virtue when she is dead. They do not know just yet how unspeakably sacred will be to them the old Bible from which she reads, the old chair in which she sits. They do not know as yet how the echo of her voice will sound in temptation’s darkest hours. Yet her shouting troubled you. You said something to your neighbor in the next pew about ’feeble-minded and uncultivated people.’ Ah! my friend, you never saw the inside of Heaven from the depths of poverty and the midnight of sorrow. "Yesterday I visited Mother Stoner. She resides in Lewiston, Pennsylvania. Mother Stoner is eighty-five years old and lies upon a bed of ceaseless pain. Heart and flesh are failing fast. Many years ago she was called ’the shouting Methodist.’ Even the little boys used to follow her in the streets and cry ’Glory!’ after her as she passed along. She has been shouting ever since. "Yesterday we were singing, ’Let me go, ’tis Jesus calls me,’ and the old familiar ’Glory!’ came from her aged lips, and her dim eyes lighted up with joy, and she waved her hands in token of victory. Brother Sears, her pastor, shouted with her. Who is Mother Stoner? "Many years ago she was exalted to the high position of Sabbath School teacher. One day she saw a little white-haired boy lingering about the door of the church. She went out, laid her hands upon his head and invited him into her class. Some time afterward she led him to the mourner’s bench. He became converted to God, and Mother Stoner shouted over him. "That boy became an able preacher of the Gospel. He has been a missionary, he has been editor of the Ladies’ Repository, he is now Bishop Wiley, and will some day be a redeemed saint before the throne of God. "In another room of the same house with Mother Stoner lies a beloved daughter, who for ten years has not been able to leave her bed. Is she happy? In many a day’s journey you will not look upon so restful a face as hers. ’His will, not mine, be done,’ she said. She is educated, fitted for society, young enough to enjoy the world with keenest delight; but there she lies, exulting in the Lord, shouting for joy the Savior’s name. "I want to tell you a story. Years ago, at the Round Lake Camp-meeting, a company of these ’full cup’ Christians were talking upon this subject. One lady, whose face looked like the Sea of Galilee after it heard the ’Peace, be still’ of Jesus, arose and said, ’Friends, I have had to bear this cross of shouting all my Christian life. When I was converted, God saved me wonderfully. I could not restrain my shouts of praise. My father was a presiding elder. He used to take me with him on his district. I would shout under my own father’s preaching. ’Several times he reproved me sharply. He said to me one day, as we were riding home together, "Not so fast, Susan; not so fast;" and intimated that my conduct was not pleasing to many Christians who had been long in the way. I tried to reform, but failed to do so. "’Years sped on and my father came down to die. When he saw his sickness was unto death, he began to examine carefully the foundations of his faith. A strange gloom hung over his mind. It was so different from what he had expected. He prayed much, but found no relief. ’At last he said, "Please, let all retire from the room but Susan." My mother, brothers and sisters went out, and I was left alone with my dying father. I prayed with him. The struggle was severe, but victory came. His soul was filled with joy unspeakable. "Call them in now," he said; "but, Susan, stand by me when I am dying, and shout me through." I had to do it, and the last thing I heard my father say was, "Go ahead, Susan, go ahead!"’ "The lady sat down. There was a flash of light as though a window had been suddenly opened in Heaven. "You do not believe in shouting? Do you believe in the Bible? Have you searched the Scriptures upon this subject? There was shouting when the world was created. There was shouting when Christ was born in Bethlehem. There has been shouting all along the line of march from Pentecost till now. There has been shouting at millions of death-beds. There has been shouting on the rack, shouting in the prison, and shouting at the stake; and there will be shouting when the world is on fire and the elements are melting with fervent heat. There will be shouting when the Lord Himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout, and with the voice of an archangel and with the trump of God. "And when the graves give up their dead and the followers of Jesus who are alive and remain shall be caught up to meet the Lord in the air; when the ransomed of the Lord return to Zion; when the gates shall lift their heads for the King of glory and all the hosts of the redeemed there will be shouting then." The old-fashioned saints knew how to pray as well as shout; in fact, the praying habit always precedes the desire to praise. They prayed about all things let their request be known to God in supplication. The Boston Globe vouches for the truth of the following: "No," said the lawyer, "I shan’t press the claim against that man; you can get some one else to take the case, or you can withdraw it, just as you please." "Think there isn’t any money in it?" "There would probably be some little money in it; but it would come from the sale of the little house that the man occupies and calls his ’home.’ But I don’t want to meddle with the matter, anyhow." "Got frightened out of it, eh?" "Not at all." "I suppose likely the old fellow begged hard to be let off?" "Well, yes, he did." "And you caved in likely?" "Yes." "What in creation did you do?" "I believe I shed a few tears." "And the old fellow begged you hard, you say?" "No, I didn’t say so; he didn’t speak a word to me." "Well, may I respectfully inquire whom he did address in your hearing?" "God Almighty." "Ah, he took to praying, did he?" "Not for my benefit in the least. You see, I found the little house easily enough, and knocked on the outer door, which stood ajar, but nobody heard me, so I stepped into the little hall, and saw through the crack of the door a cozy sitting room, and there on the bed, with her silver head high on the pillows, was an old lady who looked for all the world as my mother did the last time I ever saw her on earth. Well, I was on the point of knocking, when she said, ’Come, father, now begin; I’m all ready.’ And down on his knees by her side went an old, white-haired man, still older than his wife, I should judge; and I couldn’t have knocked then for the life of me. Well, he began. First, he reminded God that they were still His submissive children, mother and he, and no matter what He saw fit to bring upon them, they shouldn’t rebel at His will. Of course, ’twas going to be very hard for them to go homeless in their old age, especially with poor mother so sick and helpless, and, Oh, how different it all might have been, if only one of the boys might have been spared! Then his voice kind of broke, and a thin, white hand stole from under the cover-lid, and moved softly over his snowy hair. Then he went on to repeat that nothing could be so sharp again as the parting with those three sons unless mother and he should be separated! But at last he fell to comforting himself with the fact that the dear Lord knew that it was through no fault of his own that mother and he were threatened with the loss of their dear little home, which meant beggary and the almshouse a place they prayed to be delivered from entering, if it could be consistent with God’s will. And then he counted a multitude of promises concerning the safety if those who put their trust in the Lord. In fact, it was the most thrilling plea to which I ever listened. And at last he prayed for God’s blessing on those who were about to demand justice." The lawyer then continued, more slowly than ever: "And I believe I’d rather go to the poor-house myself tonight than stain my heart and hands with the blood of such a prosecution as that." "Just afraid to defeat the old man’s prayer, eh?" "Bless your soul, man, you couldn’t defeat it!" said the lawyer. "I tell you he left it all subject to the will of God; but he claimed that we were to make known our desires unto God, but of all the pleadings I ever heard, that beat all. You see, I was taught that kind of a thing in my childhood. And why was I sent to hear that prayer? I’m sure I don’t know but I hand the case over." "I wish," said the client, twisting uneasily, "you hadn’t told me about the old fellow’s prayer." "Why so?" "Well, because I want the money the place would bring; I was taught the Bible straight enough when I was a youngster, and I’d hate to run counter to what you tell about. I wish you hadn’t heard a word about it, and another time I wouldn’t listen to petitions not intended for my ears." The lawyer smiled. "My dear fellow," he said, "you’re wrong again. It was intended for my ears and yours, too; and God Almighty intended it. My old mother used to sing about ’God moves in a mysterious way,’ I remember." "Well, my mother used to sing it, too," said the claimant, as he twisted the claim papers in his fingers. "You can call in the morning, if you like, and tell ’mother and him’ the claim has been met." "In a mysterious way," added the lawyer smiling. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 48: 02.19. CHAPTER 19. LIGHT IN THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW ======================================================================== Chapter 19 Light in the Valley of the Shadow "Fear not, for I am with thee." "The time of my departure is at hand." "When the day breaks and the shadows flee away. "Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly." So I am watching quietly Every day, Whenever the sun shines brightly, I rise and say, "Surely it is the shining of His face!" And look unto the gates of His high place Beyond the sea; For I know He is coming shortly To summon me. And when a shadow falls across the window Of my room, Where I am working my appointed task, I lift my head to watch the door and ask If He is come; And the angel answers sweetly In my home, "Only a few more shadows And He will come." Selected Mr. Smith’s experience, during his last affliction, appears to have been marked by considerable variety. He had no fears of death, no apprehensions of eternity; but he had seasons of strong conflict. Nor was he privileged by those revelations which have often shed unspeakable rapture on the souls of inferior Christians, in the like circumstances. His spirit generally rested with calm confidence in God, and more than this was not necessary either to himself or his friends. None who knew him could entertain any anxiety as to his final safety; and had he, like the venerable Bramwell, been suddenly snatched away, all the mourning for him would have been mingled with "sure and certain hope." In his actual state of mind, however, he was fully alive to whatever aggravations of affliction his circumstances might present; and the anxiety which he felt respecting Lincoln circuit, must be alluded to as one which, it is to be feared, tended materially to increase the virulence of his disease. Some of his appointments were kindly supplied by local preachers; but no arrangements were made by which the claims of the country society could be regularly and permanently met. This was to Mr. Smith a source of continual uneasiness, at a time when it was of the last importance that his mind and body should be kept in a state of perfect quietness. The following is an extract from a letter written by him to his friend Mr. Herbert, of Nottingham, soon after he terminated his public labors: "May 12, 1831. Oh, sir, I did myself and you wrong, in not uttering my thoughts and feelings to you, on the death of your sweet little Anne. My mind was completely thrown to you; it lingered with you. I wept, I prayed for you, and, strange to say, I rejoiced. I said, Well, he has another attraction in Heaven! These strong and pensive feelings gave way to something, which I do not now remember; and what I had fancied a letter never reached you. Forgive me. Defectiveness seems to be a constituent of my character, and mixes itself prominently with my proceedings. Little fineness of spirit comes out of me. . . . What a blessed thing it is to have fast hold of God’s concern to save man!" In the beginning of June, the district meeting was held at Horncastle. It was to be preceded by the missionary anniversary, in the services connected with which, it had been arranged that Mr. Smith should take some part. This, of course, was impracticable, and, without doubt, it would have been prudent for him to avoid every species and degree of excitement. His wish to meet his brethren once more, however, was so strong that he would not absent himself from the district meeting. On Tuesday he went, but was compelled to return to Lincoln, owing to his ill health. He had taken fresh cold, his cough became violent, and his symptoms were alarming. A consulting physician was called in, who gave some hopes of recovery. To a friend he wrote: "The doctors pronounce me improving, but I am low. When I shall preach again is quite uncertain." About this time he was seized with violent inflammation of the passages leading to the lungs. The most decisive measures were immediately resorted to. Forty leeches were applied to the chest, and were succeeded by cupping-glasses, and a large blister. These, with the use of calomel internally, produced the desired effect; and Mr. Smith began again slowly to amend. To his father he thus writes, June 14 "I am still ill, but have a turn for the better ... I am in the hands of God; good hands! He is with me, giving me peace and rest of soul, and a hope that is a while I shall make known, with power, His will to the sons of men. I thank you for your prayers." July 1, writing to the same, he says: "I am yet on the shelf, an awkward place for me; but perhaps it is the best place for me. God knoweth. I wish His will to be done. His will is best. . . . I think our circuit is in a good state, from accounts at our quarterly meeting. Thanks be to God." In reference to his next year’s appointment, he remarks: "What God will do with me, I know not, nor am I anxious about it. All will be well." This was Mr. Smith’s last letter to his parents. We do not, at any time, claim for Mr. Smith the praise of prudence respecting his own health: there can be no doubt, indeed, that he was a self-sacrificed man. But there was now no one near him who had friendship enough to lay upon him, in God’s name, the strong arm of restraint. When he was at home, he was forbidden even to conduct the family worship. His only chance of life was in being kept perfectly still. Exertion was suicide; and to many of his friends it must ever be a matter of regret, that, at every risk, he was not at this time shut out from all excitement, and compelled to remain in complete retirement. The results soon showed themselves. In his third and last communication to his family from Bright on, he says: "Some time ago, I was looking forward with pleasing anticipation to the time when we should again be placed in a circuit, and I resume my labors. But last week a dreadful bowel complaint seized me, devoured my strength, and reduced me to feebleness itself. It seemed to have subsided, and I fancied health was again springing; but a second slight attack dashed my hopes to the ground. I was so perplexed in my mind respecting my appointment, that, if possible, to get something like satisfaction, I consulted Dr. King, an eminent physician in Brighton. He seems to understand my case well; and he says that there is no chance for the recovery of my health, unless I abstain from all vocal exertion in preaching and praying, and as much as possible in conversation, for at least three months. I am now attending to his prescription, and have already derived some benefit, I think. But I am exceedingly weak. I have communicated these tidings to Mr. Clegg. I expect to sit down. I have requested to be put down for Sheffield, that I may have opportunities of breathing my native air, and consulting Dr. Dawe. I intend leaving Brighton next Tuesday or Wednesday, and, God willing, seeing you at the close of next week. Hanging upon Jesus, and commending you and the children to His sympathy and care, I am," etc. After resting in Lincoln for a few days, Mr. Smith and his family removed to Sheffield. He bore the journey better than had been anticipated. "When he arrived in Sheffield," says the Rev. Alex. Strachan, "the disease under which he had for some time labored had made a deep impression on his constitution. His friends in Sheffield prevailed upon him to go to his father’s house in Cudworth, for the benefit of the country air. I called there to see him, and found him in bed. The keen glance of his eye was gone. The face was paled. ’My dear brother,’ said he, ’I have experienced the goodness and severity of God, but in patience I have possessed my soul. You are expected to preach here this evening: may God come with you! Oh, how I should rejoice to lift up my voice once more in the sanctuary of my God! but you see that I am confined here as His prisoner. Well, God is with me, and I must not complain. The sinners of this village have been much upon my mind, ever since I obtained mercy myself; and wherever I have been stationed they have had an interest in my prayers. The time to favor them is surely come. May many of them receive the message of salvation which you are come to deliver.’ After proposing several questions relative to the state both of his body and his mind, to all which he replied with his usual frankness and candor, I prayed with him. In prayer, I expressed strong confidence in the sufficiency of Christ’s atonement to justify the ungodly who believe in Him; in the willingness of God to sanctify the unholy who continue in the faith; in the competency of providence and grace to preserve the soul, thus sanctified, ’blameless, unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ;’ and concluded with especial reference to his condition. During prayer, he frequently said, ’Glory be to God,’ but when I rose from my knees he gave free utterance to the strong and lively feelings he had been suppressing, and was very happy in God." Mr. Smith’s mind at this time seems to have been in a state of delightful tranquillity. He was filled with grateful resignation to God; no murmur escaped his lips. The attentions of his friends he acknowledged with peculiar sweetness, and the whole of his piety exhibited a mellowness and maturity which seemed like the pluming of the angel wing of his spirit for the region into which he was about to enter. The day after his arrival at Cudworth he was especially happy. He said to his friends: "If the Lord has a little more work for me to do, and I think He has, I shall be restored to my family and the church of God;" adding, "What blessed lessons have I learned in this affliction!" The Word of God became increasingly dear to him; his soul seemed to long for its blessed truths, as a parched land for the refreshing shower. The Scriptures, he used to say, were the food of his soul. On one occasion, he expressed himself as peculiarly delighted with the first chapter of St. Peter’s First Epistle, which his sister had just read to him. "Oh," he remarked, "the Word of God is such a comfort to me!" Then observing his mother weeping, he said, "Mother, why do you weep? all is right: praise the Lord!" At another time, when in severe suffering, she exhorted him not to be so anxious about recovery, but to yield himself fully into the hands of God. "Bless the Lord!" he replied, "I have done that; I still give myself to Him; He is my portion." Often in the night for he was very wakeful the voice of his thanksgiving sounded sweetly through the house; and many were the seasons of delightful intercourse with Heaven which he and his pious father enjoyed while others slept. His soul dwelt in the repose of love and peace. In his experience there was nothing of the tumult of rapture; there were none of those bursts of ecstatic joy, of which we sometimes hear in such cases. And herein we cannot but recognize the arrangement of Divine wisdom. In the scenes of active life, his principles and labors had often been deemed extravagant. He was now cut off, not only from all external, but also from all internal, excitement. There was nothing to interrupt the calm examination, the sober deliberate testing, of his personal experience, and his methods of exertion in the church. Had his principles been unsound, they now would have certainly failed him. In the severe scrutiny of the hours of sickness,. and of ebbing life, when all that tends to warp the judgment is done away, and with no extraordinary revelation of ravishing joy to withdraw his thoughts from the subject, he was qualified, more fully than at any former period, to form a calm and candid opinion of his past life, and to afford, to those who questioned the correctness of his views, the most decisive evidence the nature of the case would admit. But he never wavered, no shade of suspicion that he had been wrong appears ever to have darkened his spirit. On the contrary, he mentioned those opinions and modes of actions in which he had been considered singular as subjects which at this time called forth his special gratitude to God. They had before proved themselves practically beneficial, and they now proved sources of consolation in weakness, in suffering, and in death. His disease at times was quite flattering, causing him to think a short time would complete his recovery and enable him to get back to his pulpit. His appearance indicated a change; but it was equally evident that the wound his health had received was too deep to be healed in so short a time as he supposed. A friend expressed a doubt as to his ultimate recovery, and asked him how he could reconcile the extreme anxiety which he felt, in reference to the final issue of his affliction, with that perfect submission to the Divine will which he professed to enjoy He replied: "I have many reasons for wishing to regain my former strength, but none weighs with me so much as a desire to improve the opportunity that would thus be afforded for saving souls." He then remarked on the various methods adopted by the mercy of God to bring sinners to repentance; illustrating these methods by examples that had come within the range of his own observation. He described some of the plans which he himself had employed to revive, extend, and perpetuate religion among the people in the different circuits in which he had traveled; exalting, however, above all prudential means, the ministry of God’s Word, and meetings for social prayer. On another occasion he gave a brief narrative of his experience, from the commencement of his Christian profession; from which it appeared that his path had been "as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day." He alluded with peculiar emotion to the time of his admission into full connection at the London Conference, in 1822. "It was," he said, "a time never to be forgotten. I look back with great satisfaction to the entire surrender which I then made to God, and which is expressed in the lines: ’Take my soul and body’s powers, Take my memory, mind and will, All my goods, and all my hours, All I know, and all I feel, All I think or speak or do, Take my heart, but make it new.’ "From that day to this I have been enabled to serve God without fear. Return unto thy rest, O my soul, for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee. On that evening, a remark was made by one of the young men," he continued, "that made a deep impression upon my mind." Brother Smith, in speaking of the manner of his justification, observed that while wrestling with God for the pardon of sins, he obtained such clear and believing perceptions of the atonement of Christ as constrained him to exclaim, "O God, if all the sins of all the individuals in the world were charged to my account, here is a fountain in which I could wash them all away and in an instant. With these words, the Spirit presented before my mind the atonement of Christ in all its infinitude of merit and efficacy, and filled my soul with the love of God." A friend relates the following: "While conversing, one day, on the necessity of constant communion with God, in order to our personal happiness and the success of the ministry; the difficulty of discharging, with uniformity and fidelity, the important duties of self-examination and self-denial; and our proneness to luke-warmness and self-deception; I used an expression (inadvertently, of course) which conveyed to his mind the idea that I doubted the sincerity of his motives, and the soundness of his faith. He took no notice of it at the time; but afterwards, while engaged in prayer, I happened to use the same expression, when he rose up, and, with one of those piercing looks which he always assumed when under excitement, said, ’Lord, Thou knowest all things, and Thou knowest that I love Thee. Living and dying, I am Thine. Were I to depart now, I should go to glorious happiness. My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed. I will sing and give praise.’ After pausing for a few moments he said, ’My dear brother, as I felt a little drowsy at the time, and heard you indistinctly, it is possible that I misunderstood you.’ "Returning from the country one Sunday evening, I called and found him very feeble, but truly ’in the Spirit on the Lord’s day.’ We united in prayer and found it good to wait upon the Lord. While engaged in family worship the service was prolonged for some special manifestation of God’s love. In a short time our prayers were turned into hallelujahs. It seemed as if we had been suddenly raised up together, and made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus; or that the full tide of Heaven’s glory was poured forth on our souls. Mr. Smith, mentioning these circumstances when we met, observed that on that night he believed that the sanctifying power of God penetrated every part of his nature, expelled every degree of evil, and filled him with perfect love. . During this time Mr. Smith wrote to his daughter as follows: "Sept. 24. My Dear Ellen, I invite you to join me in giving warm thanks to the blessed God, for His great kindness to me. This is the third day I have been downstairs, and I am much better today than on either of the preceding [days]. The doctor was here yesterday, and seemed very much pleased with my state. I said, ’Sir, I feel it is life from the dead.’ ’Bless the Lord, O my soul!’ The Lord has blessed me exceedingly in body and in soul. He has again and again richly baptized me with His blessed and Holy Spirit, and called forth from me songs of thanksgiving. I have had some most delightful seasons in thinking on His adorable name which is a strong tower. I wish to be eminently a minister of the Spirit. Christ says, ’Without Me ye can do nothing.’ ’It is the Spirit that quickeneth.’ ’Ask and ye shall receive.’ I purpose visiting Leeds and Northampton, partly on business, partly for health, and finally that I may meet the saints that our spirits may be refreshed together, that they may see the kindness of the blessed God, to one of the most unworthy, worthless, and unfaithful creatures among the progeny of man; but one who the Triune God is intensely concerned to bless with a present, a free, a full, and everlasting salvation, in sharing in His own ineffable and endless bliss, in His eternal Heaven. Who is a god like unto our God? (None in Heaven, or upon earth;) who has set His heart on man, and manifested His intense interest for his present, constant, and everlasting happiness, as ought, and must, and will fill angels and men with delightful astonishment, admiration, and gratitude, through endless ages. Glory be to the ever-blessed and Triune God, for ever and for ever! Amen and amen. So says John Smith, from the very bottom of his heart, which is warm with universal love, love to God and universal man. It is the deep and strong, and, he trusts and hopes, will be the constant and lasting wish of his heart, to get and diffuse as much of God in the world as he can. Who is sufficient for these things? No one, but the man whom God fits for the business. But nothing is too hard for the omnipotent God, who has promised to be with them that seek to promote His glory upon earth. I will try for one, by the help of God. My trust is in a promise-keeping God, whom I wish to adore and worship through endless ages . Later Mr. Smith’s state grew worse, and they sent for his wife. He knew her, and said, "This is what I have wished to see," and then relapsed into a stupor, and it was nearly a week before he was again fully conscious. He then expressed some anxiety about the children, and begged Mrs. Smith not to protract her stay. On the day following, therefore, she returned to Sheffield. During nearly the whole of his delirium, he imagined himself occupied in the duties which he had so much loved. He was almost constantly engaged in preaching, praying, or praising God. One morning, after having been delirious during the night, he began to sing with extraordinary sweetness. He had always been remarkable for the taste and music of his singing; but never before had it sounded so rich and melodious. Both the words and tune were unknown to those who heard them; and it seemed as if he were preparing to assume his place in the chorus of a world of peerless and immortal harmony. Before this time, he had had strong conflicts "with principalities and powers, and the rulers of the darkness of this world." On one occasion, he requested that he might be left alone for some time. When his father returned to the room, he said, "Father, I have had a mighty conflict with the powers of darkness; but, praised be the Lord, He has delivered me. I have come off ’more than conqueror,’ through the blood of the Lamb." He then broke forth in an animated strain of praise. But it was now, while his physical powers were oppressed with fierce disease, and his mind generally was weak and wandering, that the foe was permitted to make the most terrific and the last attack. Yet, though fever raged in his veins, and his body was tossed and writhed in frenzy, his soul was enabled to collect its energies for the shock, and, as nearly as could be recollected, he thus addressed his spiritual assailant: "Thou art a devil! How thou didst become one, I do not know; but God did not create thee so. The blessed God cannot be the author of evil. God made thee an angel of light! Thou didst not keep thy first estate! Thou didst become a devil; but how I do not know; but thou art a devil now! It pleased the blessed God to create man a happy creature, and place him in paradise; and thou hadst the impudence to go to paradise and tempt our first parents to sin against the blessed God. They hearkened to thy suggestions, and disobeyed the command of God, fell into transgression, and brought down the curse of God upon themselves and their posterity. It pleased the blessed God to send His Son, Jesus Christ, to die for the sin of man. And I am John Smith, was born of pious parents, who brought me up in the fear of the Lord. But I was a bad lad, was led captive by thee, and loved my sins. I caused my parents much grief, they prayed mightily to God in my behalf, with many tears. It pleased the blessed God to connect His Holy Spirit with me, to convince me I was a miserable sinner on the road to Hell, and under His curse. I resolved through grace to leave my sins. I prayed the Lord, and He heard me, and was pleased to forgive my past sins, for the sake of Christ and to put His love in my heart, and to give me the witness of His Holy Spirit that I was adopted. And I believe that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is a Divine Person, equal with the Father, and that it pleased God to send His Son into the world. And I believe that Jesus Christ became incarnate, and was born of the virgin, that He was a man of sorrow, and acquainted with grief; that He lived three-and-thirty years in this our world; that He died a shameful and accursed death upon the cross; that it pleased the Father to bruise Him for the sin of man; and that He rose again from the dead on the third day. Death had no power to hold Him, and He triumphed over thee and all thy power: and He ascended into Heaven; sat down on the right hand of the father, to make intercession for man; and all power in earth and Heaven is committed into His hands. And I believe that He, by His sufferings and death, made a full and sufficient atonement for the sins of the whole world, and purchased for mankind the Holy Ghost. And I believe that God is pleased, in answer to the intercession of Jesus, to connect the Holy Spirit with every soul of man, with saving purpose and intention, in order to bring them to Christ for salvation. And I believe that there is salvation for all who apply. The blessed God is unwilling that any should perish. And I come by faith to Jesus Christ. I believe that His precious blood avails for me, and I cast my soul upon Him: I rest upon His atonement; and I defy thee, Satan! Thou art a malignant being, the enemy of God and man; and thou art seeking to destroy me; but I defy thee; I commit my soul to Jesus, and I defy thee. Thou can’st not hurt. In the name of Jesus I defy thee, Satan!" This remarkable contest with his spiritual adversary continued from ten o’clock at night until three in the morning, with loud and distressing cries and tears. Much of the address to Satan, particularly the former part, was repeated many times; for whenever an interruption occurred, either from without or in his own mind, he recommenced, nor would he cease until he had delivered it throughout in an unbroken form. His voice was strong and his body was violently agitated by the agony of his mind, so that it required five men to hold him in bed. It was distressing to behold him, and to hear him crying many times successively, in the most pathetic tones, "Jesus!" Jesus! Jesus Jesus help!" At length deliverance came, the enemy was overcome, and there is every reason to believe that from this time his heart was uninterruptedly glad in the light of the Divine countenance. After having spent about six weeks at Cudworth, Mr. Smith was removed to Sheffield. He still entertained the hope of recovery: several of his friends endeavored to cherish a similar expectation, and held a weekly prayer-meeting for the specific object of intercession on this subject. But the decree had gone forth, sanctioned and sealed by infinite wisdom and mercy; and it was irrevocable. Mr. H. Beeson, an attached and kind friend of Mr. Smith, was one of those who watched with him during some of the last nights of his life. In a conversation with Mr. Beeson upon the various orders of intellect, he said of himself, "I am a minister of the Spirit. Soul-saving is my business. God has given me a heart for it. I will go on in His name, and believe for effects." Of his labors in the Lincoln circuit, he remarked, "I was always anxious to get as much business done as possible; so I worked while God was working, and His arm was made bare in many places." He added, "I ought to have given over preaching three months before I did;" and, after some further observations on the same subject, he broke forth, "Hallelujah to the blessed Jesus! I have not had one pain too much, not one stroke too heavy. God can do without me." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 49: 02.20. CHAPTER 20. CONQUEROR IN DEATH ======================================================================== Chapter 20 Conqueror in Death "Even so, come, Lord Jesus." "The time of my departure is at hand." "Thanks be unto God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." "Death shall be swallowed up in victory." "My father, my father, the horsemen of Israel and the chariots thereof." "The chamber where the good man meets his fate, is privileged beyond the common walks of life, quite on the verge of Heaven," while the candle of the wicked is snuffed out. A short comparison of the testimonies of dying saints and sinners prove this to be true. Balaam, the mad prophet who loved the wages of sin, said, "I shall see him, but not now; I shall behold him, but not nigh. Let me die the death of the righteous." The Emperor Julian, the apostate, who, to falsify the Savior’s word attempted to rebuild the temple at Jerusalem, died in despair, shouting, "O Nazarene, thou has conquered;" "I shall go to Hell, and you shall go with me," said Voltaire to his doctor. Paine, on his death-bed, alternated between blasphemous. oaths and his piteous cries to the Lord for mercy. "Remorse, remorse!" were the last words of Randolph. "It is the last of earth; I die content," said John Quincy Adams, as he passed away. "This unworthy right hand," said Cranmer, as he thrust it into the flames. "Welcome this chain, for Jesus’ sake; welcome, life everlasting," said Saunders, as he was bound to the stake. "Be of good cheer, Master Ridley," said Bishop Latimer, as he was burning in the flames. "I am dying," were the closing words of Whitfield. "Death can never take me by surprise," said Judson, as he was dying. "The best of all is, God is with us," said John Wesley. His brother’s testimony was, "I shall be satisfied with Thy likeness." "The victory is won," said Payson. "I will now go to sleep," said Neander. Mozart wrote his requiem under the conviction that it was for himself. "I shall be saved as a pardoned sinner," said John Howe. "I am abundantly satisfied," said Calvin. Baxter said, ’I have peace, I have peace." Humboldt exclaimed, "These rays beckon earth to Heaven." "Die a man, die a man, Paine!" said one of his hardened associates, who saw the infidel shivering in his bed. Lord Byron said, "Come, come! no weakness! let’s be a man to the last." It was Hobbe’s wish that he might find a hole to creep out of the world at. The death to come is more bitter than this; the life to come more sweet. Polycarp, on the edge of martyrdom, said, "O Father of thy beloved Son Jesus Christ, I bless thee that thou has counted me worthy of this day, to receive my portion in the number of the martyrs in the cup of Christ!" It was not until the last week of Mr. Smith’s life that the truth broke on his mind, and he felt that he was now to die. But it was no shock to him: his spirit did not for a moment quail in the solemn certainty. He rested in Christ, and calmly awaited the end. To a friend he said, "It appears that I shall die." "Yes, sir," was the reply, "there is no other prospect." "Well, God can carry on His work without me." "I want more prayer," and he begged his friend to pray with him. "What shall I pray for? I cannot pray for your life." "Pray," said Mr. Smith, "as the Spirit may direct. Prayer, as Mr. Bramwell once remarked, ’always brings one out on the right side.’" They then prayed together, and the Lord blessed the soul of His afflicted servant. At another time he said to one of his medical attendants, with his accustomed promptness of expression, "Shall I die, doctor?" Observing that Dr. Young hesitated, he added, "You need not fear to tell me: I am not afraid." Mr. Wild, his other medical friend, observed, "You must keep your mind constantly fixed on eternal things:" to which Mr. Smith answered, "My mind is constantly fixed there." The friend to whose communications this work has already been so much indebted, remarks: "The prospect of meeting in Heaven with Wesley, and Whitefield, and Fletcher, and Bramwell, and Nelson, and others, whom he loved for their distinguished excellence, was peculiarly dear to his thoughts, and often furnished matter for enlargement and glad anticipation in his acts of devotion. The thought of not recognizing the saints in the eternal state never appeared to have any place in his mind; as it is, in fact, one of those refinements which busy speculation has built upon the silence of Scripture respecting subjects which are only not distinctly enunciated, because nothing but the credulity of unbelief could have ever called them in question. ’By faith, when he was dying, he gave commandment concerning his bones,’ that they should lay them beside those of his friend Nelson; thus attesting not only his assured hope of a joyful resurrection, but of a glad recognition, also, of him whom he had known and loved on earth." To a person who visited him, he said, "Mind your business, and take care of your family; but, above all, see that you keep the love of God in your soul. Be firm; and let nothing for a moment lead you to think of giving up your class, or declining any exertion in behalf of the cause of God." To a young man whom he believed to be called to the ministry, he said, "Do, my brother, be diligent; play the man; play the man." Of his own experience and feelings, he remarked, "I rest in the atonement; I am hanging on the cross of Christ; this is my only hope." To one of his colleagues, he said, "All is clear. I have had some success in my labors, but my happiness does not result from that; but from this, I have now hold of God. I am a very great sinner, and am saved by the wonderful love of God in Christ Jesus. I throw my person and my labors at His feet." When on one occasion Mrs. Smith was speaking of his being taken from her, he replied, "The widows and the fatherless in Israel are God’s peculiar care." Then clasping his hands and lifting them upward, he exclaimed in the most impressive tones, "I commend to the care and protection of the Triune God my dear wife. May she be supported and consoled. I commend to the same God my Ellen Hamer Smith." And then he proceeded to name all the dear ones separately and to place them tinder the charge of a faithful and merciful God. He continued, "This body I give to be committed to the dust, in sure and certain hope of a joyful resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ. This immortal spirit I commend into the hands of Him who gave it." The salvation of souls was almost constantly the subject of his meditation and conversation. One day when he supposed himself alone, he was engaged in fervent mental prayer, and at length he broke out, "Glory be unto our God Glory be unto our God. What god can deliver like unto our God!" Then extending his arms, while his countenance was lighted up with joyful confidence, he exclaimed, "Glory be to God! Sheffield circuit shall rise! Sheffield circuit shall rise!" a prediction which the following year was most happily fulfilled. On Thursday, November 3rd, some of the brethren visited him, and while they engaged in prayer a heavenly influence filled the room. Prayer was turned into praise, and although Mr. Smith was in the last agony, his spirit caught the strain, and an expression of sacred joy lighted up his pale countenance. When prayer was ended, he beckoned Mr. McLean to him, and labored for several moments to give expression to something which he wished to say. After a repetition of unsuccessful efforts, he abandoned the attempt as hopeless, and, condensing what he had purposed saying into the fewest possible terms, and concentrating his whole strength to the single effort of expressing them, he exclaimed, with an energy almost equal to his former self, "You said, Praise God; and I said, Amen." This was the last articulate sound that he was heard to utter. It was the sealing of the volume; the closing testimony of an unwavering spirit, the echo of which he was to catch from myriads of immortal and redeemed intelligences, in a world where the song shall never languish, nor the festival ever terminate. In the course of the morning, the medical gentleman called. Mrs. Denton, an affectionate friend, who was present, followed them out of the room. Dr. Young then told her that it was probable that Mr. Smith would not live an hour longer. Upon her return, he beckoned to her to tell him what they had said. For a moment she was silent. She then replied, "In less than an hour, sir, it is likely that you will be in eternity." A heavenly and triumphant smile played on his emaciated face; he turned his head on his pillow; and about a quarter before ten o’clock, while several of his friends, in an attitude and spirit of prayer, commended his soul to God, he entered the realms of eternal praise. "Oh, may we triumph so When all our warfare’s past, And dying, find our latest foe Under our feet at last." In closing this account of the man of callused knees, we would subjoin the following poem, by Frances Eastwood, that gives a beautiful description of the last days of THE AGED JOHN I’m growing very old. This weary head That hath so often leaned on Jesus’ breast, In days long past that seem almost a dream, Is bent and hoary with its weight of years. These limbs that followed Him, my Master, oft From Galilee to Judah; yea, that stood Beneath the cross and trembled with His groans, Refuse to bear me even through the streets To preach unto my children. E’en my lips Refuse to form the words my heart sends forth. My ears are dull; they scarcely hear the sobs Of my dear children gathered ’round my couch; My eyes so dim they cannot see their tears. God lays His hand upon yea, His hand, And not His rod the gentle hand that I Felt those three years, so often pressed in mine In friendship such as passeth woman’s love. I’m old, so old I cannot recollect The faces of my friends, and I forget The words and deeds that make up daily life; But that dear face, and every word He spoke, Grow more distinct as others fade away, So that I live with Him and holy dead More than with living. Some seventy years ago I was a fisher by the sacred sea. It was at sunset How the tranquil tide Bathed dreamily the pebbles! How the light Crept up the distant hills, and is its wake Soft purple shadows wrapped the dewy fields! And then He came and called me. Then I gazed For the first time on that sweet face. Those eyes, From out of which as from a window shone Divinity, looked on my inmost soul And lighted it forever. Then His words Broke on the silence of my heart and made The whole world musical. Incarnate Love Took hold of me and claimed me for its own; I followed in the twilight, holding fast His mantle. O! what holy walks we had, Through harvest fields and desolate, dreary wastes; And oftentimes He leaned upon my arm, Wearied and wayworn. I was young and strong, And so upbore Him. Lord! now I am weak And old and feeble. Let me rest on Thee! So put Thine arm around me closer still! How strong Thou art! The twilight draws apace; Come, let us leave these noisy streets and take The path to Bethany, for Mary’s smile Awaits us at the gate, and Martha’s hands Have long prepared the cheerful evening meal. Come, James, the Master waits, and Peter, see, Has gone some steps before. What say you, friends? That this is Ephesus, and Christ has gone Back to His kingdom? Aye, ’tis so, ’tis so. I know it all; and yet, just now, I seemed To stand once more upon my native hills And touch my Master! O! how oft I’ve seen The touching of His garments to bring back strength To palsied limbs! I feel it has to mine. Up! bear me once more to my church once more There let me tell them of a Savior’s love; For by the sweetness of my Master’s voice, Just now, I think He must be very near Coming, I trust, to break the veil which time Has worn so thin that I can see beyond And watch His footsteps. So, raise up my head. How dark it is! I cannot seem to see The faces of my flock. Is that the sea That murmurs so, or is it weeping. Hush, My little children! God so loved the world He gave His Son; so love ye one another; Love God and man, Amen. Now bear me back. My legacy unto an angry world is this, I feel my work is finished. Are the streets so full? What call the folk my name, The Holy John? Nay, write me rather Jesus Christ’s beloved, And lover of my children. Lay me down Once more upon my couch, and open wide The eastern window. See! there comes a light Like that which broke upon my soul at eve, When, in the dreary isle of Patmos, Gabriel came And touched me on the shoulder. See! it grows, As when we mounted toward the pearly gates. I knew the way. I tred it once before And hark! it is the song the ransomed sang Of glory to the Lamb! Now lend it sounds! And that unwritten one! Methinks my soul! Can join it now. But who are these who crowd The shining way? Say! joy ’tis the eleven! With Peter first; how eagerly he looks! How bright the smiles are beaming on James’ face! I am the last. Once more we are complete To gather ’round the Paschal feast my place Is next my Master. O my Lord! my Lord! How bright thou art, and yet the very same I loved in Galilee! ’Tis worth the hundred years To feel this bliss! So lift me up, dear Lord, Unto Thy bosom. There shall I abide. THE END ======================================================================== CHAPTER 50: 03.00. THE MAKING OF A PREACHER ======================================================================== The Making of a Preacher By George Kulp Contents Chapter 1. The Preacher’s Call Chapter 2. The Preacher’s Education Chapter 3. Personal Piety Chapter 4. The Earnest Preacher Chapter 5. The Revival Preacher Chapter 6. The Man in the Pulpit Chapter 7. The Growing of Sermons Chapter 8. The Preacher as a Pastor Chapter 9. The Preacher’s Difficulties Chapter 10. The Preacher’s Reward ======================================================================== CHAPTER 51: 03.01. CHAPTER 01. THE PREACHER'S CALL ======================================================================== Chapter 1. The Preacher’s Call Bishop Quayle, in his latest work, "The Pastor Preacher," says, "If God or man has a manlier business than preaching, that business has not been set down in the list of masculine activities. Preaching is a robust business ... ’If, after the manner of men I have fought with the beasts of Ephesus’ is not a phrase descriptive of physical or metaphysical lassitude or incapacity. The preacher is not a man of cartilage, he is a man of bone and sinew. He feels the riot of mighty deeds. Life is epic to him. ’I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus’ was another of the granitic sayings of Brother Paul, sometime preacher in the Church of God." But let me say right here this preacher must be God’s man-called of God to this business, saying, "This ONE thing I do"; "Woe is me if I preach not the Gospel"; conferring not with flesh and blood, but inquiring, "What wilt Thou have me to do?" and knowing by the Holy Ghost that he is a chosen vessel of God; the answer of the entire being is "Here am I; send me." God alone can call a man to the ministry. This is a Divine prerogative. No sovereign would allow another to appoint his ministers. The Sovereign of the universe calls whom He will. Christ is the head of the Church, and He makes known to the Church that waits for guidance, whom He designates by the Holy Spirit. "Casting lots" or an apostle never was God’s method. Jeroboam dared to make priests of others than Levites, and took of the lowest of the people for this high office, but it meant the doom of Israel and ruin for himself. No man taketh this honor unto himself but he that is called of God. Listen to the Word, "I have given your priest’s office unto you as a service of gift, and the stranger that cometh nigh shall be put to death." "The prophet which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, shall die." "Behold, I am against the prophets that steal my words." "Woe unto the foolish prophets, that have followed their own spirit, and have seen nothing." "The Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work WHEREUNTO I HAVE CALLED THEM." When God gave the plan of the Tabernacle to even the most minute detail, He also "called Bezaleel and filled him with the Spirit of God, in wisdom and understanding and in all manner of workmanship, to devise cunning work, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, and in cutting of stones, to set them, and in cutting of timber to work in all manner of workmanship," and it may be granted He would not have men to enter on the greatest work to which a mortal can be called, without the leading, inspiration and equipment of the Holy Spirit. The Church of God, in all generations, has recognized this great truth. Luther, the moving spirit under God in the great Reformation, solemnly warns men, whatever their attainment in learning and wisdom, never to enter the ministry unless called of God. Vinet says: "We MUST be called of God. Whether external or internal, the call ought to be Divine." The Church of England requires an affirmative answer to the solemn question, "Do you trust that you are inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost to take upon this office and ministration, to serve God for the promoting of His glory and the edifying of His people?" Burnet well says, "Certainly the answer that is made ought to be well considered, for if any says, ’I trust so,’ that yet knows nothing of any such motive, and can give no account of it, he lies to the Holy Ghost, and makes the first approach to the altar with a lie in his mouth, and that not unto men, but unto God." There will be a time come in the ministry of every preacher when he will be glad "that God put him in the ministry," that he did not seek the office, for with the knowledge that it was God who called him there will come the assurance that He who called will also equip, defend, accompany and energize his servant, rendering him effective wherever his lot may be cast. "To me is this grace GIVEN that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, having this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of men." Let us consider for a little, what do we understand by "a call to the ministry" or the "Preacher’s Call"? When God calls to the work that an archangel might covet, the man knows it, and feels it so strongly that he says, "Woe is me if I preach not the Gospel." There is a necessity laid upon him, a sense of moral constraint, a consciousness that, unless he minds God, the heaviest of all woes, the woe of a remorseful conscience, the woe of a spirit that has fallen from a height of glory that might have been its own forever, would fall upon him if he proved unfaithful to the call. God’s will becomes his will, God’s purpose becomes his purpose. The manifested love of God in his heart must be an impelling power leading his whole being into captivity to the one work, drawing forth every energy of his nature into a holy and joyous service. Accompanying this will be an intense desire for the work, a cheerful obedience to the will of God. There may be, because of the knowledge of unworthiness and unfitness, a shrinking from such an humble dependence on Him who saith, "My grace is sufficient." If there is not this earnest desire for the work, founded upon obedience to God, and a burning love for souls, the trials to be met with in the ministry will soon quench one’s zeal. THE MINISTRY IS A LIFE WORK, THE LOVE OF IT MUST BE LIFELONG. The desire is not for honor, or leisure, or ease of office, or plaudits of folks, or opportunities for advancement, but for the work belonging to it, with the joys and sorrows, pains and pleasures, labors and comforts attending a conscientious discharge of its duties. God equips for this service, therefore take heart. When Jeremiah was told that he was ordained of God to be a prophet, that burning flame said, "Ah, Lord God, I can not speak, for I am a child," but God gave him assurance of all needed strength and succor. When Jesus called "the tiger of Tarsus," he knew what difficulties he would have from his past life in his future labors, and He personally said to him, "Rise and stand upon thy feet, for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to MAKE THEE A MINISTER AND A WITNESS both of these things which thou hast seen, and those things in the which I will appear unto thee, delivering thee from the people and from the Gentiles, unto whom I now send thee, to open their eyes and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me." Paul never forgot this interview. He quoted these words in his old age. They made him calm and firm before the mighty and cruel. But for them, he might have fallen at the very threshold, for, be it remembered, his sense of personal weakness and unworthiness never left him; rather, it seemed to grow upon him, and though looking unto Jesus he could shout, "I can do all things through Christ strengthening me," yet he writes, "I am less than the least of all saints," and still later he cries, "I am the chief of sinners." Good men, men called of God, invariably shrink from the awful responsibilities of the ministry. When Philip Henry was ordained, he humbly wrote, "I did this day receive so much honor and work as I ever shall know what to do with. Lord Jesus, proportion supplies accordingly." The better men are fitted for this great work, the deeper is their sense of unfitness and unworthiness. Let this be laid down as a maxim, "Men who seek and demand ordination are unworthy of it." A call to the ministry that is from God will also be accompanied by a sense of the dignity of the office. Paul said the ministry "is a good work." He honored his own calling. There is no human comforter like an able minister of the New Testament. There are no glories like those to which he points and invites. A keen writer says, "A poor country preacher fighting the devil in his parish, has nobler ideas than Alexander ever had." When a man voluntarily quits the ministry for any secular office, it is as if the king of a great people had laid aside his scepter for a constable’s bauble. A high appreciation of the ministry will produce a hearty devotion to it, and keep one from dabbling in stocks, promoting doubtful enterprises, or making the office a stepping-stone to some more lucrative profession. Another part of a call to the ministry is a desire and willingness on the part of the one called to study to show himself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed; to "give attendance unto reading," acquiring the necessary learning and power of explaining and enforcing the truth. If God can do without our wisdom, He can certainly do without our foolishness, and it is foolishness to think that a call to the ministry is the end-it is only the beginning. It means putting forth every energy that God has given us, that we may be polished shafts in His quiver for the accomplishment of His work. No man is called to teach what he does not know and cannot or will not learn. One of very limited knowledge of divine things may be called TO PREPARE for the great work of this holy calling. "Follow me and I will make you fishers of men." A minister called of God must have an experimental knowledge of saving truth, and an acquaintance with the truths of Scripture that only comes through intense mental application and study. It is "the words of the wise that are as goads." God’s ministers must indeed be harmless as doves, but they must also be wise as serpents. The truth must be spoken, and it must be SPOKEN FITLY. Does that mean a college course? Not always. It may be "Brush College," or burning midnight oil, or "studying between times," but be sure of this, IT MEANS STUDY, and God’s man always wants to be at his best. One preacher beginning his study for the ministry walked all the way to college, and slept out of doors on the ground for lack of money to pay for lodgings. Another blacked boots, swept corridors, and was a man of all work. Where there is a will there is a way-and YOU may find it. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 52: 03.02. CHAPTER 02. THE PREACHER'S EDUCATION ======================================================================== Chapter 2. The Preacher’s Education The Apostle declares we are to speak to men to their edification and comfort. While it is true that none but God can make a minister of the Gospel, it is true also that study and application and culture will make him an effective minister. We are not discounting the Holy Spirit-without Him the man educated at the feet of Gamaliel would have been a complete failure; He alone can give true spiritual views of God and life everlasting. A man who is rightly instructed as a servant of God will put a high estimation on the work of the ministry, and will use every lawful means to fit himself for his holy calling. Under the old dispensation, a thorough knowledge of God’s will was enjoined upon all religious teachers. The true object of learning is to make truth plain, and in order to profit, learning must be sound-along right lines. The great American humorist said, "It is better not to know so much, than to know so much that isn’t true." There cannot be too much SANCTIFIED learning. I trust that Holiness preachers, and all others, will learn the truth made manifest by so many complete failures all around us-God does not communicate necessary learning to ministers otherwise than by the Divine blessing upon the use of the ordinary means such as HEARING, READING, INQUIRY, STUDY AND REFLECTION. The apostles may have been ignorant men when called to follow Christ, but they were not so when they went forth to preach the Gospel in His name. They enjoyed His private and public instruction for three years in all, and in addition they had gifts of tongues.. gifts of healing and revelations. A preacher should be diligent in the use of the means. The man who is not industrious will not be effective. An idle, lazy man is a disgrace to the calling. A man of God should have no idle moments. Every day in one’s life is a page in one’s history. We must put into our treasury things new and old if we would have something to set before folks when they come. This cannot be acquired in a day; learning comes in a slow but regular process of accretion. Real knowledge, like everything else of the highest value, is not to be obtained easily. It must be worked for, studied for, thought for and prayed for. A liberal education will develop the whole mental system of the preacher, make his speculative inferences coincide with his practical convictions, and enable him to render a reason for the hope that is within him. Addison very beautifully says, "A statue lies hid in a block of marble; the art of the statuary only clears away the superfluous matter, removes the rubbish. The figure is in the stone, the sculptor only finds it." What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul. The philosopher, the saint or the hero; the wise, the good, or the great man, very often lies hid in the plebeian, which a proper education might have disinterred, and have brought to light. Such a course of study should be pursued as will enlarge and train the mind and enable one to communicate his thoughts in a proper manner. A good knowledge of our own tongue is a great attainment. I have known young men going to the foreign country where they must acquire the language of the people to whom they minister, who murdered the king’s English, and apparently were unable to construct a sentence grammatically. In these days of good common schools such lamentable ignorance and neglect of opportunities is almost inexcusable. The great object of a good education is to train the faculties to just and accurate thinking, investigation and statement, and to prepare them to acquire and use knowledge. Having acquired such a preliminary education as was attainable, let the preacher bring his mind to the study of all those things belonging to a thorough course of theological study, and store his mind with the facts and principles of revealed truth, as taught by inspired men, and as illustrated in the history of the world and of the Church. Let him bend all his energies toward acquiring the art of rightly presenting the Word and persuading men to righteousness. In this work, natural and acquired, intellectual and moral qualities strangely unite. South says, "I am confidently persuaded that there is no endowment, no natural gift whatever, with which the great Father of lights has furnished the mind of man, but may in its highest operations be sanctified, and rendered subservient to the work of the ministry. Real religion engages no man, particularly no minister, to be dull, to lounge, and to be indolent, but on the contrary, it stirs up all the active powers of the soul in designing and bringing about great and valuable ends." All knowledge should be to one end, making the student an able minister of the New Testament. All studies are subservient to the great work of ministering holy things to immortal souls. All powers and attainments should be laid under tribute to one great end of holding forth the Word of life. The imperial part of man is his will, and any man called of God to preach, and not over fifty years of age, regardless of all his lack of opportunities in the past, may WILL to acquire knowledge and succeed in the acquisition. Let him study systematically, sacredly setting apart and observing certain hours of the day, applying his mental powers to the work in hand, and he will fit himself to be a workman that needeth not to be ashamed. Theodore Cuyler says, "In the morning study books, in the afternoon door-plates." This will make him a preacher-pastor and acceptable to his congregation. Without study, he will be acceptable nowhere. What more pitiable sight can one see than that of a man called to preach, sitting on a dry-goods box in a corner store, discussing the weather, crops, politics, the latest fad, when he ought to be studying hard as a preparation for future effectiveness? He must be a scribe well instructed unto the kingdom of Heaven, bringing out things new and old, and he must "meditate on these things." Visitors must not be allowed to break in upon these hours. Orton said, "I have little company and acquaintance, but I have a numerous and excellent society of prophets and apostles, practical writers with whom I have lately been conversing." More than one eminent man has had a warning to visitors put upon the door of his study, calling on them to be short, just as professional men have their card, "This is my busy day." How many hours should one study? Find out by practice what is best for you, and then stick to it. Two hours a day for the secular days of the year are equal to 104 days of study of six hours each. In that time, the record proves, it, "many a man has learned a language, mastered science, or quite changed his mental habits." The hardest studies should be taken up in the earliest part of the day, while the mind is fresh and the body rested, and lighter studies reserved for afternoons and evenings. The morning hours are by far the best for study. One thing more and this chapter closes. In study, earnest prayer is a great help to success. Philip Henry wrote upon a studying day (which implies that this eminent divine had studying days), "I forgot when I began, explicitly and expressly, to crave help from God, and the chariot wheels drove accordingly. Lord, forgive my omissions, and keep me in the way of duty." Another old divine wrote, "If God drop not down His assistance, we write with a pen that hath no ink. If any would need walk dependent upon God more than another, the minister is he." It was once said to a minister of Christ whose labors had been abundantly successful, "If you did not plow in your closet you would not reap in your pulpit." STUDY AND PRAY, PRAY AND STUDY. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 53: 03.03. CHAPTER 03. PERSONAL PIETY ======================================================================== Chapter 3. Personal Piety Dr. Porter affirmed, "Vigorous piety is never maintained without systematic attention to reading of the Scriptures and sacred prayer." The preceding chapter takes it for granted that the man called of God to preach studies and prays, prays and studies. In so doing, he is becoming established, rooted and grounded, sinking down into God. Prayer will make the preacher a man of piety, and piety will make him a man of prayer. People have a right to expect more than ordinary piety in a minister of the Gospel, because he is a representative of Jesus Christ and should be "an ensample to the flock." The great object of preaching the Gospel is to form godly character, and therefore the preacher himself should strive to exhibit a character of the highest possible type. The Apostles were not only preachers, they were witnesses, having in themselves an experimental knowledge of the power of the Gospel they preached. A hearer once remarked, "My pastor’s discourses are not brilliant, but his daily life is a sermon all the week." The "living epistle" is as eloquent and convincing as any words that may be uttered. It exemplifies the sermon. "Like priest, like people." John Wesley said in one of his Conferences, "Why are not the people more holy? Because we are not more holy." If the standard is lower today than formerly, it is because the pulpit has lowered it. As vital piety decreases in the occupant of the pulpit, the utterances will be uncertain. Paul, whose logic was set on fire of the Holy Ghost, wrote to Timothy, "Keep thyself pure," "Let no man despise thee." Be true to all convictions founded upon God’s Word and live what you preach. This implies that the preacher is to be like his message. If so, then he must obey the injunction, "Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life." The heart life hid with Christ in God insures the integrity of the outward life. THE GREATER YOUR PIETY THE GREATER WILL BE YOUR POWER. Scholarship, eloquence, great sermons, so called, are no substitutes for holiness of heart and life. The deeper you live in the heart of Christ, the deeper will you go into the hearts of your hearers. An ordinary man becomes extraordinary when he is a temple of the Holy Ghost. Bishop Quayle says, "The preacher must be like Christ all the day long, and all the night through. He must be a rock. He must be a voice. He must be a torch. Always going about doing good, always wanting to be a helper of mankind, always wanting to know things from God to tell man." To do this he must keep in communion with the Infinite One. A man of God, called to preach, and keeping step with God, which implies walking with Him, will be led to preach much to his own soul. In so doing he will save himself and be enabled to win others. Melancthon said, "I feel sure that I have not otherwise handled theology than that I might derive profit myself. Another said, "I have prayed, I have talked, I have preached, but now I should perish if I did not feed on the bread I have broken to others." Henry Martyn wrote, "My first great business on earth is the sanctification of my own soul." Vinet adds, "Our first business is to be our own pastors," and every true preacher knows before we preach a sermon to others we derive good from it ourselves. We must not only commend holiness, but WE must practice it. The unction that attends the ministry comes from being "apart often with God." Living piety prays and plans, weeps and rejoices, looking for the extension of Christ’s kingdom and His glorious appearance. Rutherford, that sweet saint of old Scotland, assured his flock they were the object of his tears, cares, fears and daily prayers, and "My witness is above that your heaven would be two heavens for me, and the salvation of you all as two salvations to me." Alleine, the author of the "Alarm to the Unconverted," was infinitely and insatiably greedy of the conversion of souls, and to this end "he poured out his very heart." Doddridge, writing to a friend, remarked, "I long for the conversion of souls more sensibly than anything beside. I think I could not only labor but die for it with pleasure." President Edwards wrote, "My heart has been much on the advancement of Christ’s kingdom in the world; the histories of the advancement of His kingdom in the past have been much to me. When I have read histories of past ages, the pleasant thing in all my reading has been to read of the kingdom of Christ being promoted." Men without piety never felt, or thought, or planned, as these men did. The energies of the minister of the Gospel should be spent on things having connection with his work. An idle life, or an easy life is to be deplored. How can a man of God "take things easy," when all around him are thousands of blood-bought souls who are going rapidly toward eternal rum, and more heathen are being born into the world every year than there are converts to Christianity from among them? Real genuine piety will beget and foster a generous love for perishing men, without which the most sacred duties will be dull, and seem a task instead of a delight. Blessed is he who is joyfully ready to spend and be spent for Christ and perishing men. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 54: 03.04. CHAPTER 04. THE EARNEST PREACHER ======================================================================== Chapter 4. The Earnest Preacher Earnestness in the pulpit is so rare in these days that an earnest preacher excites remark, and is a subject of criticism. Men can be earnest in every other profession and command favor, but the minister of the Gospel must be calm and precise. Theodore Cuyler was a popular pastor in a leading denomination, and so earnest in his delivery of the messages and so intent upon winning souls, that critics remarked, "As he flings his arms and gesticulates, he makes one think of an old-fashioned Methodist exhorter." But where will we find men who did more effective work for God than these same old-fashioned Methodist preachers? Cuyler says, "The preaching of the Gospel is spiritual gunnery." When the old Methodist preacher went gunning he went "loaded for bear." He "aimed" to hit something, to arouse the indifferent, to warn the careless, to rebuke the faithless professor, as well as comfort the sorrowing, strengthen the weak, and edify believers. Many an ordinary discourse has produced an extraordinary effect by an intensely earnest delivery, and it is equally true that many an excellent discourse has failed to produce any impression on account of the dull and motionless manner of the speaker. If the preacher does not "warm up," he may be sure his congregation will not be warmed under his preaching. One of the Christian philanthropists of New York City died a few weeks ago. He was a cultured business man, a constant attendant upon the Sabbath services and the prayer meetings, and Dr. Buckley said of him in an editorial in the "Christian Advocate," "He liked sermons that instructed him and aroused his emotions." The preacher whose soul is red hot with a holy love of Jesus and dying souls will arouse his hearers, and if he does not succeed in moving them toward a better life, his effort is a failure. The earnestness of purpose of the fiery Paul, apostle to the Gentiles, is marked in emphatic declaration, "This one thing I do," and is seen in his addresses, leading his hearers to say, "Thou art beside thyself; much learning hath made thee mad." Rowland Hill said, "Because I am in earnest men call me an enthusiast," but he lives today in the lives of hundreds of his spiritual children while his critics are forgotten. Charles Simeon kept the picture of Henry Martyn in his study. Move where he would throughout the apartment, it seemed to keep its eyes upon him, and ever to say to him, "Be in earnest, be in earnest," and the good Simeon would bow to the speaking picture and say, "Yes, I will be in earnest, I will. I will not trifle, for souls are perishing and Jesus is to be glorified." It was said of John Wesley, "In his preaching he had clearness, force and earnestness-the qualities that produce connection." When he preached in the prison at Bristol, men dropped on every side as thunderstruck, while God bore witness to His Word, and the convictions were so lasting that in the prison the corridors "rang with cries." Wesley exulted in these experiences. When the Word of the Lord is as fire in a man’s bones, he will be in earnest, and the fire in his own soul will not only kindle his tongue but also the hearts of his hearers. The sermons of Frederick W. Robertson were models of clearness of thought and read well today, but they owed much of their power to the fact they were delivered "with a fiery glow." Where is the minister who has not seen his congregation marvelously moved under a sermon, but upon preaching that same sermon elsewhere, produced no impression whatever? Was not the difference in the preaching? Do not be afraid of earnestness when it is the result of the unction from the Holy One. Dr. Duff’s eloquence would sweep his audience like a hurricane, yet an admirer says of him, "Such outlandish contortions of gestures as his I never witnessed before. A distinguished lawyer has said, "The two best qualities of a sermon are simplicity and earnestness," and he added, "If I had a student in my office, who was not more in earnest to win his first ten-dollar suit before a justice of the peace than some ministers seem to be in trying to save souls, I would kick such a student out of my office." Downright earnestness to save souls "hides a multitude of sins" in all preachers. If a preacher is in earnest, has a passion for souls, makes their salvation his one object, his hearers will forgive many blunders and mistakes. Load your gun with uncompromising truth, take aim and FIRE, let God take care of results. Preach for souls, preach for eternity; the more soul you put into your preaching, the more souls you will win for Christ. Baxter preached while his heart burned within him, and while he was speaking a live coal from off the altar fired his sermon with seraphic fervor. He had a large mind, an active intellect, a melting heart, a kindling eye and a moving voice, and he called on all that was in him to aid him in his preaching. The only teacher that gave him lessons in action and attitude was feeling, real, genuine, holy feeling; and this taught him how to look, how to move, how to speak. He believed with Paul that "it is a good thing to be zealously affected always," and consequently that earnest, fervid preaching is truly apostolic. Two lines Baxter wrote reveal the preacher: "I’ll preach as tho’ I ne’er should preach again, And as a dying man to dying men." Ryle says of him, "He always spake like one who saw God and felt death at his back." George Whitefield was a burning example of the earnest minister. He had preached 18,000 times, though he died at the age of fifty-six. He lived to win souls for Christ. He made everything bend to that one great purpose. He was not in the same class with John Wesley, had neither the depth nor the knowledge, yet he was the greater preacher. He was something that brings to mind the Word: "His ministers a flaming fire." He lived, he prayed, he read, he wept, he rejoiced to accomplish this one great purpose of his life. How few ministers preach with all their might, or speak about everlasting joy or torment in such a manner as to make men believe they are in good earnest! The blow falls so lightly that hard-hearted sinners do not feel it. People do not need to have their heads stoved so much as to have their hearts touched, and they stand in the greatest need of that sort of preaching which has the greatest tendency to do this. An earnest heart in the preacher will produce an earnest manner, and as he sows so shall he reap. How can a man be earnest for souls, and overlook the invitation to the convicted sinner? Are camp meetings and revival services the only time for reaping? We have heard men preach sermons that stirred the hearers, and have seen them sit down, without an altar call. The one object of the Gospel is to get men to God. "He that converteth a sinner from the error of his ways saveth a soul from death and shall cover a multitude of sins." If but one soul responds, it will set all the joy-bells of Heaven ringing and make the heart of God glad. The earnest preacher will be a SOUL-WINNER. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 55: 03.05. CHAPTER 05. THE REVIVAL PREACHER ======================================================================== Chapter 5. The Revival Preacher "He that winneth souls is wise" and "He that is wise winneth souls." The one object of the man called of God to preach is to win souls; all his preaching tends to this one end. If he preaches to the Church it is to instruct, confirm, establish, that it may be effective in the work for which God established it. The increase in the membership of the Church should, and will if it is of God, increase its power. The first disciple of Jesus went out and brought another; the third went and brought in the fourth. A revival was on hand immediately. The Church of God today needs the revival preacher, and no other makes full proof of his ministry. "Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? and how shall they preach except they be sent?" (Romans 10:13-15). Here the salvation of souls and the preaching of the Gospel are forever united by the Holy Ghost. "What God hath joined together let no man put asunder." "As the Father hath sent me, even so have I sent you." "The Son of man came to seek and to save the lost." The Spirit and the Church and the individual believer all unite in saying, "Come." All Heaven is interested in sinners getting back to God. There is joy in the presence of God among the angels over one sinner that repenteth. What engages the interest and effort of Heaven ought to engage the interest and effort of the church on earth; the Church triumphant and the Church militant are one. "One army of the living God Before His throne they bow; Part of the host have crossed the flood And part are crossing now." Revivals are the necessity of the Church. Without them, it will cease to exist. Revival preachers are a necessity. There are preachers, men of reputation too, that never once in all their lives distinctly concentrated their efforts to the single purpose of converting men. Their efforts are to finish an eloquent sermon, to develop theological or biblical truth, to thrill aesthetically an audience, to spread a popular fame, to gather crowds, to build a large church. These have their reward, success in their objects. But here is a lonesome preacher, faithful to his calling, by prayer, by fasting, by waiting on God, by study of the Word, by humble dependence on the Holy Ghost aiming to win men for God, and he does it; he honors God and God honors him. Jacob Knapp, laboring in New York, in a meeting when the devil put up great resistance, said publicly, "My bones bleach in Pennsylvania, or I see the work of the Lord prosper." Of course a revival began, and began at once; that night people ran to the altar. The preacher who pays the price will enkindle the faith and prayers and enthusiasm of others. If we would have extensive and powerful revivals of religion, we must have a good estimate of their value, remembering, in the first place, that the Holy Spirit, the Executive of the Godhead, is the sole Author of genuine revivals. He is the true oil of gladness; when He blows on the garden the spices will flow out. Nothing that man can do is a substitute for His presence. The preacher, without the Holy Ghost, is as dead as the branch in which there is no sap. The Church, without Him, is as dry and barren as the fields without heaven’s dew and rain. If the Spirit of God does not aid, our hearts fail us while longing for much valued blessings. The revival preacher preaches the Word of God, remembering that his Master said, "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel." He enjoined His disciples to do as He had done. He has set them as watchmen, they must give the alarm. He has given them the trumpet, they must blow until the gladsome sound is heard. His object and theirs is the same -- "to open the eyes of the blind, to turn them from darkness, to light, and from Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in Christ Jesus," to turn men from sin unto holiness. He not only preaches the Word, he preaches it boldly, without fear or favor, yet preaches it in love, his heart bathed in tears. Spurgeon said of Paul, "He was the kind of preacher whom you would expect to see walk down the pulpit stairs straight into the coffin and then stand before his God ready for his last account." Why not so of every preacher? Preaching for eternity, the blood-bought souls, over whom Christ wept, why not? "Judgment will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet, and the hall shall sweep away the refuge of lies, the water shall overflow the hiding-place, and your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with Hell shall not stand." God’s Word, His message for the preacher, to the unsaved, impenitent hearer before him, prevents, will not allow, of any law or cold standard of indifference. We must preach the Word; preach not what people want to hear, but what they ought to hear. Woe be to him who willingly keeps back any part of the counsel of God! "Preach the preaching that I bid thee preach." This means surely, he must unfold doctrines and enforce duties, must present promises and pronounce threatenings, must hold forth encouragement without concealing responsibilities; must preach the law and the Gospel distinctly; yet he must not forget that mercy triumphs over judgment, and that where sin abounded, grace does much more abound. As a physician of souls, he must know and declare the extent of the malady, no less than the perfection of the remedy. As men are poor, let him show them the riches of divine grace. As men are dead in trespasses and sins, let him point them to Him who is the life of the world. As they are naked, let him tell of the Lord our righteousness. As they are vile, let him show how Christ is made unto us sanctification. In short, let him preach the whole truth of the Scripture. "The prophet that hath a dream let him tell a dream, but he that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord. Is not my word like as a fire, saith the Lord, and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?" This kind of preaching will not make the preacher popular, but nevertheless he will be in demand. There will be hungry hearts crying out to know the way, to be delivered from the burden of sin, and while the God-given message will bring the sinner to Sinai where rolling thunders and lightning flashes will make him fear and tremble. yet, if he "follows on to know," he will also be brought to Calvary where he will lose his burdens and be enabled to say, "Thus far did I come laden with my sin, Nor could ought ease the grief that I was in, Till I came hither; what a place is this? Must here be the beginning of my bliss? Must here the burden fall from off my back? Must here the strings that bind it to me crack? Blest cross; blest sepulcher! blest rather be The Man that there was put to shame for me!" That great revival preacher Whitefield often said, "Would ministers preach for eternity, they would act the part of true Christian orators, for then they would endeavor to move the affections and warm the heart, and not constrain their hearers to suspect they dealt in false commerce of unfelt truth." There is a Heaven and there is a Hell. Let the preacher duly speak of both. The Word of God teaches us all we must believe, practice, and experience in order to salvation. It is the Word of life. It is the doctrine according to godliness that is able to make men wise unto salvation. The revival preacher preaches the whole Gospel and preaches it AS becomes a man sent of God. This little adverb leads us to the manner of preaching. Someone may say, "Is it necessary to say anything of the manner?" One with any experience would think so. The Archbishop of Canterbury said to Garrick, "Pray inform me how it is that you gentlemen of the stage can effect your auditory with things imaginary as if they were real, while we of the Church speak of things real, which many of our congregation receive as imaginary?" "The reason is plain," said Garrick, "we actors speak of things imaginary as though they were real, while too many in the pulpit speak of things real as if they were imaginary." He who speaks of God, eternity, sin, salvation, death, judgment, Heaven and Hell, should speak as becomes an ambassador of Heaven bearing a message to dying men and women, Hell bound without Christ, yet who may become sons of God without rebuke. It must be serious preaching that will make men serious in hearing and obeying it. We are dealing in eternal verities. Heaven is not a dream; Hell is not the vagary of disordered imagination; damnation is not fiction. It is a solemn thing to die, it is a solemn thing to live. It is an awfully solemn thing to preach to candidates for Eternity. He who "woos a smile" when he should "win a soul" is a clown, not a preacher, such as God’s man should be. The preacher aiming for the glory of God should preach in plain English. I have been amused at men whose early advantages were limited, as they gave Hebrew and Greek, acquired not through culture, but a concordance, while educated hearers smiled at their pronunciation, and their revelation of weakness. Baxter said if people had sinned in Latin, he would have written his "Reformed Pastor" in Latin, but as they had sinned in English, he must also write in English. Romaine was required by some of his hearers to display a little more learning in the pulpit. His very next opportunity he read his text in Hebrew, saying, "I suppose scarcely anyone in the congregation understands that." He then read it in Greek, and added, "There may be one or two understand me now. I will now read it in Latin." He did so, and said, "Possibly a few more comprehend me." Last of all he repeated the text in English, and said, "There now, you all understand it. Which do you think is best? I hope always to preach that the most ignorant person in the congregation may understand me." Aim to give men the truth, show the people their sins, not your eloquence or learning. "That is not the best looking-glass which is most gilded, but which shows the truest face." Luther said, "To preach simply is high art. Christ does it Himself. He speaks of husbandry, of sowing seed, and uses peasant similes." The old bishop was right when he said, "Brethren, it will take all our learning to make things plain." The revival preacher will preach to the consciences of men, and the preaching should be direct. Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost was a model in this respect. How it bore down on the conscience of every man! Such preaching God blesses. "Ye have taken and by wicked hands crucified and slain." Conscience was on the side of the speaker, and the appeal had a visible effect which could not be concealed. We need today preaching that will convince and move men to act from force of truth. Men cannot extinguish their conscience even by false principles, or by their creed. Herod was a Sadducee, did not believe in angel, or spirit, or resurrection, but when he heard of the mighty works of Jesus, he said, "it is John whom I beheaded." His principles fled before the power of conscience. Direct preaching to the conscience of men impels to action. Here the Methodist exhorters were "at home." They pushed men to action. Moody and Harrison and Sam Jones were especially effective because they were direct in their appeals and urged to action at once, pointing out the peril of delay. God uses the gift of urgent appeal; directness always has force, and produces results. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 56: 03.06. CHAPTER 06. THE MAN IN THE PULPIT ======================================================================== Chapter 6. The Man in the Pulpit It may seem rather strange that after the preceding chapters we should take such a caption as the above, but we believe there is a demand for MANLY men and WOMANLY women. We have no more use for the effeminate man than we have for masculine women. The Amazons of Africa have always to us appeared out of place, and we still think so, though the suffragettes of today declare they are willing to enroll at the country’s call. The man in the pulpit should be so God-centered he will lose sight of himself. I have heard men preach and all the time thought of and saw the men, they were self-centered, with an air of "I am doing this"; the message was in the background. I think it was Rowland Hill who saw an auctioneer selling off a picture. He was behind it, expatiating upon the merits of the picture. The picture was in full view, but he was out of sight. "That," said Hill, "is the way I want to preach, so Christ only will be seen." Let the man be lost in the message. It is not the spoon that nourishes the invalid, but what the spoon carries. It is not the preacher that blesses the hearer, but the message that the preacher brings. A preacher must be a positive man; that is, must have a positive religious experience Roberts says, "Ministers who are lacking in religious experience not only cannot build up others in a faith and holiness which they do not possess, but they will be likely to bring down to their own level those under their care who have a deeper experience than themselves, or, falling in this, to persecute and oppose them. Godless ministers are the real cause of the decline in the Church of spirituality. The purest light shining through a colored medium becomes colored. Worldly, timesaving preachers promote a worldly religion. They may multiply converts, but their converts mold the Church more than the Church molds them." A positive religious experience will produce positive preaching. The compromising preacher may have more joiners, but the positive preacher will get more people to Christ. Ever since Constantine took the Church up into a high mountain and showed it the kingdoms of the world, seducing it from allegiance to its lawful Head, the Church has had the favor of the State, but has lost its power. What Almighty God put asunder man should never join together. It is high time for a divorce, and positive preaching by a positive man with a positive religious experience, will aid much in bringing it about. The preacher should have a standard such as a positive religious experience will give, and this standard he will preach, and he should examine himself to see if he abides in the faith. Bishop Hedding said in an address to the Conference, "’Examine yourselves whether ye be in the faith,’ is an admonition necessary for ministers as well as for people. Men are liable to be deceived in regard to their own conversion, and to satisfy themselves with a work of the imagination instead of the work of the Spirit. Let us therefore compare our experiences with the Word of God and satisfy ourselves that we are really born of the Spirit." "We are in danger of being deceived in another way. Having been really born of God, we may backslide in heart, lose the spirit we received from Heaven, and yet retain the form, the morals, and the profession of Christianity, and still persuade ourselves we are as pious as when in the first love. Let us look into this matter and see whether we are indeed as near to Christ as when we were first made partakers of His love. We ought to be nearer. We should be growing in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ." Unless we examine ourselves frequently, we will be in great danger of lowering the standard below that of the Bible. We say the standard of the Bible, for the Church is way below the standard, and the positive preacher is needed because he must combat the present state of the Church, and in so doing he will surely arouse the carnal and unsaved. President Finney says, "Until we put away from the minds of men the common error that the current Christianity of the Church is the true Christianity, we can make but little progress in converting the world. For, in the first place, we cannot save the Church itself from the bondage to the world in this life, nor from the direct doom of the hypocrite in the next. For this religion of the mass of nominal professors does not answer the descriptions given of true piety in the Word of God." Mark you, this is from a man of God, a positive preacher, who held meetings extensively all over the country and was acquainted with the most spiritual of the churches, and since his time there has been a great decline in piety. Finney holds most emphatically that the Church standard is low. Will it not require, then, a positive man to face such a condition? Mr. Finney was not alone in this view of the Church. Bishop Foster, of the M. E. Church, said in a public address, and we give it just as reported: "Just now four out of five with their names on the Church roll are doing nothing -- almost absolutely nothing. Four out of five contribute but little to the treasury of the Church benevolences, and four out of five do nothing in the line of personal work for Christ. They go to church perhaps once on each Sabbath, if the weather is not inauspicious, and when the next Sunday comes, and the conditions are the same, they go again, and so on through the weeks and months and years, and God’s blessed cause is not made one whit stronger in membership or influence for their living." Bishop Peck confirms these statements, and says, "There is a general impression that many members are not useful, not holy in life, not worthy representatives of practical Christianity, really a burden and not a help to the Church. But the extent of the sad fact is not seen, that the cold, worldly or indifferent in our midst are really a large majority, and that the Church it compelled to bear the reproach of a vast multitude of sinful men. Nor is the peril of these brethren fully appreciated. It comes to be considered so much a matter of course that the evil is looked upon as irremediable, and the few to go on to bear the burdens, and do the work which belongs to the many, and charity becomes indifference. Discipline is rare and finally impossible. Let me say distinctly, but with tender concern, that this represents a fact so large as to explain, to a great extent, our failure in Church reforms and Christian power, and calls for the most rousing, pathetic, and persistent appeals from the pulpit and press." With these facts, substantiated by spiritual men in the Church everywhere, is there not a crying demand for positive men, with positive experiences, preaching persistently the whole Gospel, crying unto ZION, ’awake and sin not’?" Some time ago, a leading divine in one of our large denominations said, "You know very well half of the members in the churches are not converted." Will anything less than positive preaching, backed by the Holy Ghost, ever produce a better condition, or lead to a better state of affairs? It is incumbent upon the man in the pulpit "to cry aloud and spare not"; to lift up his voice like a trumpet and show the professed Church of God its transgressions and the house of Jacob its sins. The Church today is dying because of the weak pabulum it receives from the invalids in the pulpit, and rugged Christian characters under such ministration are surely impossible. A positive man with a positive knowledge of the power of the Gospel in his own life will "speak as one having authority," and sure of his position. "He is God’s man sent to preach to God’s other men," bearing the message he was ordained from before the foundation of the world to deliver, and having this assurance, how can he do anything else but give it, without any qualification, but, on the contrary, rejoicing in being honored of God to speak for Him, to the dying and unsaved all around him? The gnashing of teeth, black looks, unkind criticisms, will not affect him. Praying at him will not stir him. He is so yoked up with God and centered in Him, he prances in his soul, whenever he has the privilege of preaching the Gospel, of carrying the King’s message. He says "Amen!" to all the will of God and wins souls that they may be stars in the crown of Jesus his Master and Lord. Such men are needed and will be a success everywhere. Like their Master, they "cannot be hid"; they will not have to seek places, places will seek them. They will have a holy independence that God will bless, for it is founded upon a conscious dependence upon Him. May the tribe of positive, manly men, Christ-men, increase, and may the day hasten when we will be rid of the namby-pamby mugwumps [mugwump n. US = a great man; a boss, a person who holds aloof, esp. from party politics. -- Oxford Dict.] who adorn (???) the profession for the bread and butter that comes with it, and, dealing "in milk and mildness," neither please God nor offend the devil. Amen! ======================================================================== CHAPTER 57: 03.07. CHAPTER 07. THE GROWING OF SERMONS ======================================================================== Chapter 7. The Growing of Sermons Someone has said, "Poets are born, not made." Talmage said in one of his sermons, "Church sextons are born, not made." There is truth perhaps in both statements, but we KNOW sermons "grow, they are not made." The man who is called to preach has a message, and he knows it. His message the theologians call a sermon. It must be of God and founded upon the Word of God; in other words, it must be Scriptural. The Apostles were not only preachers, they were witnesses. "That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you." The tongue’s holiest mission is to proclaim the Christ of whom we have an experimental knowledge. "We KNOW whom we have believed"; "we preach not ourselves but Christ Jesus the Lord." To be an ambassador for the Lord Jesus Christ is the noblest vocation to which angels or men ever have been called. An ambassador bears the King’s message, the counsels of God once delivered to the saints. As a student of the Word of God, he will constantly be receiving inspiration from the Word. Texts, messages, will flash before him, his mind will seize upon them, measure them, investigate them, enlarge upon them. Some precious truth from Calvary will be as tender as a mother’s caressing speech, or if from Sinai, it will trumpet in thunder tones; again, it will glow with the glory akin to that on Tabor’s summit, or manifest itself in tears and sobs over a perishing world. As God’s man, with a message to the people for whom He gave His Son, thinks upon themes for eternity, they will be marvelously magnified by the Holy Spirit, and be as fire in his bones until he delivers them, for he is to preach "the things angels desired to look into." The preacher who is God’s man will have a sermon, not a lecture, if he studies the Word, and a careful study of the Word will make him a doctrinal preacher. He who "spake as a man never spake," to whom was given the tongue of the learned, who could say, "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach," dealt in doctrine. Meeting Nicodemus, He preached to him of human guilt, the Atonement, regeneration, divine love in redemption, the need of faith and the promise of Heaven. Paul reveled in great doctrinal themes, giving us in one book, the Epistle to the Romans, what Coleridge pronounced the profoundest book in existence. Finney, a prince among evangelists, "bombarded the consciences of sinners with a tremendous broadside of doctrine." Cuyler says, "Merely hortatory sermons seldom amount to much. You must tell your hearers what to believe and what to do, before you urge them to do it." God in His Word gave law, then repentance, threatens vengeance for sin, casts man down in his own sight, and lets him look even into Hell, with fear of conscience for his disobedience, but afterward He comforts him, raises him up and heals him. Men need law and Gospel today, but law first. Sinai came before Calvary, and both precede Pentecost. Let them stay where God placed them and let us follow always the divine order. Sermons grow? Surely Law proclaims the need of the Gospel; Sinai demonstrates there must be another mountain -- a Calvary, and living witnesses to the power of the Blood must be energized by Pentecost. Genesis foreshadows all the doctrines that followed after, and without Revelation the Book would be incomplete. The one book grew to sixty-six. It heartens us who experienced "Paradise Lost," to know of "Paradise Regained"; no angel barring the way to the Tree of life, but an invitation from the heart of God: "Whosoever will, let him come" -- He who lost the right to the tree, may do His commandments, and have a right to the tree again, and enter in through the gates into the city. Sermons will grow with experience. "If any man will do his will, he shall know (experience) the doctrine." Prove it true in his own heart and life, and as his experience widens and deepens, his sermons will take on breadth and depth. It had the force of a sneer when the wits of the days of early Methodism said of the preachers, "Having nothing else to preach, they inevitably fell back on their experience," but what a blessing to have an experience, an experimental knowledge of God’s power and willingness to forgive sins, of the power of the Blood to cleanse from all sin, to be able to say in the Holy Ghost, "the Comforter has come." "Jesus sanctifies me NOW." Thank God where there is corn in the hopper you will surely get meal. When there is a treasury, the good man will have no trouble getting out things new and old. Where sermons do not grow, there is either shallowness, or laziness. The man who boasts he has not produced a new sermon for years is backslidden already and needs to go to the altar. If God calls men to preach, HE CAN ALSO RECALL THE CALL, and I can readily believe a lazy preacher has lost his call. Soil that grows sermons will keep it up if well fertilized. What do I mean? simply this. One who keeps in touch with Heaven will have the vernacular of Heaven; keep in touch with Jesus and travail of soul for the lost will obtain; have the Spirit abiding within, and there will be an outgush of soul speech that will reach souls. Be conscious that you are God’s man, called to tell His message to His men who need to hear more than they need all else beside, and that very consciousness will cause one to see "sermons in stones, books in rolling brooks and God in everything." Chalmers, riding with the driver on a stage coach one day, observed the Jehu use his long lash on the leader, and said to him, "What did you do that for?" -- and the answer was, "See that big stone ahead by the road side? That leader always shies when he gets there, so I gave him something else to think of." Chalmers went home with that thought, and out of it GREW that great sermon, "The Expulsive Power of a New Affection." Bunyan’s "Pilgrm’s Progress" grew. The author said so, and thus poetically expresses it: "And thus it was, I writing of the way And race of saints in this our glorious day, Fell suddenly into an allegory About their journey and the way to glory, In more than twenty things which I set down. This done, I twenty more had in my crown, And they again began to multiply Like sparks that from the coals of fire do fly." "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh," and where the heart is full there will be no trouble about the delivery. Do not be alarmed if you cannot memorize as some do. Find out God’s method for you and follow that. Better a thousand times, "notes" and "outlines" than labored memorizing of an entire sermon, word by word. The example of many of our most useful ministers will be helpful if you study their methods. The admirers of Dr. Seiss would do to remember that this natural-born orator took the manuscript of his entire sermon into the pulpit with him, and Dr. James M. Buckley, of the "Christian Advocate," in an editorial after Dr. Seiss departed, said he was one of the most polished speakers he ever listened to, holding his audience during a long pastorate in Philadelphia. No one can deny his spirituality, ability, judgment or usefulness. John Fletcher, the sainted vicar of Madeley, of whom Wesley said, "He was the holiest man I ever knew," has left behind his notes upon many sermons. Charles Spurgeon, whose usefulness and ability were undoubted, left behind a wealth of "sermon notes" which his publishers and executors have issued. Charles Pitman, that prince of pulpit orators, used carefully written notes in his ministry and won thousands for Christ. Repetition of sentences laboriously acquired in memorizing hour after hour is not the manner of the true orator, is death to spontaneity, and checks the flow of language prompted by the Holy Spirit. I have seen men take a text, put the Bible to one side at once, and then proceed to deliver their carefully memorized sermon, word for word, and I have seen that which would excite ridicule, were it not so painful-men, just beginning to preach, supposing these brethren were speaking extempore, take a text, put the Bible to one side, and then, open their mouths, and begin. They were called of God, had in them material out of which preachers are made, but foolishly imitating others, they floundered and fell. Ezra stood upon a pulpit of wood, opened the Book in the sight of all the people and blessed the Lord. The book was honored, should be today. We are preachers of the Word; the Book is our authority; let us act what we profess. There is a method best adapted to each one, helpful to one’s usefulness, and that God will honor. It will be natural to the speaker, leaving him unembarrassed and receptive, reveling in his privilege as an ambassador of God and speaking as one that has authority. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 58: 03.08. CHAPTER 08. THE PREACHER AS A PASTOR ======================================================================== Chapter 8. The Preacher as a Pastor Paul in an address declared that he not only taught publicly but from "house to house." An uncouth, uncultured, hard-handed son of toil, who had found God in the pardon of sins, said he always enjoyed the sermon better if he had had a chance to shake the preacher’s hand during the week. Theodore Cuyler, one of the best examples of the preacher-pastor the Church has produced in a century, remarks: "The work of every preacher is twofold -- partly in the pulpit and partly out of the pulpit. The two ought to be inseparable. What the providence of God and good common sense have joined, let no man put asunder." Labors outside of the pulpit occupy more or less time during every day of the week. The great business of a preacher is to win souls to Jesus Christ, and to build them up in godly living, and all this cannot be accomplished by two sermons a week, even if they were the best that Paul himself could deliver. In fact, the largest part of Paul’s recorded work was quite other than public preaching. As for our Lord, He has left us but one extended discourse and a few shorter ones, but we have many narratives of His personal visits, personal conversations, and labors of love with the sick, the sinning, the suffering. He was the Shepherd who knew every sheep. Only a few men can be great preachers, but every minister who has a good heart and good sense can be a good pastor. Devote the forenoon of every day except Monday to your studies, and in the afternoon of five days in the week to pastoral visiting. Religiously observe Monday as your sabbatic rest day, remembering that He who sent Israel into captivity seventy years because they, for 490 years, deprived the land of its "seventh year sabbath," will not prolong your life if you violate His law, and abuse your body. The physical exercise in pastoral visiting will be a benefit, and the spiritual benefits will be tenfold more. Do not "loaf" in any home, especially if it’s a fine one, but visit the poor and needy as well as those in influence. "Go not only where you are needed" but "where you are needed most." Always, night or day, visit the sick and dying. Spurgeon said once, "I have been today to visit two of my church-members who are near eternity, and both are as happy as if they were going to a wedding. Oh, it makes me preach like a lion when I see how my people can die!" Never spend your time in frivolous conversation or gossip. Talk about religious experience, personal relation to God, not with the air of a schoolmaster examining a pupil, but in the real spirit of the "Shepherd and Bishop of our souls." In your visiting you can discover whether your preaching is going home, whether Gospel shot is striking. The officers on the battleships off Santiago were anxious to know how many shots "struck home," and they smiled at the almost fruitless shooting of the enemy. "Gunnery that hits no one is not worth the powder." Preaching in the Holy Ghost accomplishes something, and glorifies the Triune God. Help the weak, lead the penitent inquirer to Jesus, comfort those who place confidence in you and seeking your advice reveal their hearts unto you. Never violate the confidence reposed in you, but, as in Christ’s stead, lend the helping hand to the needy. A home-visiting, hot-hearted preacher, with the real Spirit of Jesus, seeking to "walk even as He walked," will not have to bemoan empty pews. Having won the hearts of his people, the preacher can preach plainly and give no offense, and lead on up into Canaan. Do not make long visits. John Wesley declared it hard to spend over thirty minutes profitably. "People do not need sitting up with unless they are sick." Learn to distinguish between social visiting and pastoral visiting. You represent Jesus. You are not a "society" man, nor a "club" man, but, like Elijah of old, a "man of God." "The King’s business requires haste"; transact your business for God and souls, and move on. A minister’s visits, nine times out of ten, relate to the souls, the spiritual welfare of his people. Gossiping and visiting after meeting is dismissed at night have often grieved the Holy Ghost, and ruined the service, and social visiting and chit chat after spiritual exercise undo all the work previously done in pastoral calls. Never lose sight of the fact that you are seeking the lost, comforting and instructing the saints; and nothing is unimportant, nothing costs too much, that will win a soul or lead it closer to God. Let every preacher learn well the lesson-pay attention to the aged. It is especially due to them when they are the servants of the Lord Jesus Christ. "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it unto me." Many of them live in the past. They talk of the good times of long ago, and catch fire when they talk. Some time ago I was in Kentucky, on one of Dr. Godbey’s first charges, and I was told that many old saints there, when relating their experience in witnessing for God, tell of their conversion "when Brother Godbey was on the work." One of the greatest sorrows of old age flows from neglect. The prayers of the aged saints are a benediction to the preacher. I cherish through the years the memory of a precious old saint, Sister Anderson, the mother of Mrs. Elizabeth Hoag, of Martin, Mich., who would meet me on Monday morning during the winter seasons, when she could not get out to services, and say, "Did you have a good time yesterday, Brother Kulp?" and upon being told of the services, she would say, "I knew you would, I was praying for you." She was eighty years of age, knew God, and knew how to prevail in prayer. We missed her when she went home. Pay attention to children. Jesus did. You must. "Of such is the kingdom of heaven." "Except ye... become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter the kingdom." Aim to win them for God, and to retain them in the Church. Instruct them, help them to get settled, rooted, grounded, established, before they backslide. Half the effort made to retain them, would keep them. Said a young girl, "They leave us alone till we are fourteen, and then they bother the life out of us." Paul wrote to Timothy, "From a child thou hast known the Scriptures." A child five years old was asked, "How long have you been a Christian?" and he replied, "Ever since I was a little boy." And his mother affirms he was converted when he was two years old and was the best Christian in the house. Some time ago I read the obituary of a woman who passed on at one hundred and five years of age. She was converted when five years old, and lived a century for God. Someone cared for a child, and thus secured a hundred years of godly testimony. The preacher should help train the child in the way he should go. Claim the young for God, make it a business. We have hundreds of evangelists who are in the field and doing good work for God, but only one Payson Hammond. Bishop Quayle says, " ’Snug up to youth’ is the advice of a wise pastor to his church, and is the wise advice to a pastor for himself. Youth for God is the world’s safety. To start with God and stay with God, what a shelter from temptation, what a safe conduct on the long, grim way of life." To start with God, we said-and we mean it. I wish every preacher would procure Dr. Godbey’s book, just issued, on theology, and read there a Scriptural presentation of the truth regarding children. A recent author writes, "Only two theories are possible touching a child at his birth. Theory one: The child belongs to the devil. Theory two: The child belongs to God."* [*Quayle "The Pastor-preacher."] The church or the person who would rise and make a disquisition to prove that the child belongs to the devil would have a hazardous enterprise. The common sense of mankind knows better. When the common sense of mankind, and the view of Jesus are at one, we may allow that the coincident voices of Christ and humanity are always wise. Suppose we consider the first view, namely that the child is the devil’s child. No man could get a hearing for a moment in championing such a theory. The other theory is that every child belongs to God, was born God’s child, before he can belong to that wicked one and arrive at such unworthy notoriety. Across the path of every child thrusts out the jutting crag -- "for of such is the kingdom of heaven." In the light of Jesus’ authoritative and conclusive saying, we must frame our theories of the child as related to God; and the child as related to God is the measure of the child’s relation to the Christian Church. "Jesus Christ, by the grace of God, tasted death for every man," is the statement of universal redemption. In that sunlight we may walk swiftly and safely. There are no heathen children born into this world, all the babes born into this world are Christians. The world is born Christian. Every soul born among men is a saved soul. I consider this the greatest thought which has ever crossed the path of my thinking. It is sublime, heartening, illuminating. Children are born in heathen lands, but they are not heathen; they are Christians. There are only heathen men and women. There are sinners in the world, but there are no persons born sinners. Hear the Christ: "For of such is the kingdom of God." This is said of all babies. There is every sort of difference between being born "sinful" and being born "sinner." Everybody is born "sinful" "as the sparks fly upward," but to sinfulness there attaches no guilt. We are not responsible for a bent. To "sinnerness"* there attaches guilt. "Sinfulness" and "sinnerness" are radically different terms. We are born sinful: we make ourselves sinners. To doubt that the babe dying is safely housed in Heaven would be strange atheism. "The streets of the city are full of boys and girls" is the laughter-laden description of the City of God given long since by a prophet who saw things as they were. You cannot listen for the heavenly song and not hear children singing. Children are born in the kingdom of Christ. This the preacher must not fall to know, and this the preacher must never forget, and if children belong to the kingdom of God, they belong to the Church of God, and have the right and privileges of the Church. "Forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 59: 03.09. CHAPTER 09. THE PREACHER'S DIFFICULTIES ======================================================================== Chapter 9. The Preacher’s Difficulties "Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed." James wrote that line, and we can get much comfort from it. The Apostle who walked with our Lord and sat under His ministry associates himself and the church with the old prophet of a previous dispensation, in human infirmities. Ministers of today are much like ministers of previous days-just as weak, but no weaker; just as good, but no better. Say not the former days were better than these, for thou sayest not wisely-neither say the difficulties were greater. We today contend against the same allurements, same unbelief, "same worldliness, same forgetfulness of God, same tendencies to vanity, self-confidence, levity, moroseness, presumption, discouragement, envy, anger, resentment, duplicity, hardness of heart, uncharitableness," that have been found in all the past. Just as many false brethren, with the perils attendant, just as much care connected with the churches, just as many heart burnings and jealousies. The third chapter of Romans, ninth to the eighteenth verses, contains an indictment of human nature that is just as applicable to humanity today as when it was written. All the culture and education the world furnishes has not altered the carnal mind which is still enmity against God, and it is still true, "they that are in the flesh, and walk after the flesh, cannot please God." And all of these things are insistent in their opposition to godliness and impel the preacher to constant watchfulness and earnest prayer for the supply of the Spirit. The world and the worldly church are not in love with holiness, with Bible salvation, or with full Gospel preachers. The preacher determined to go with God will find all Hell arranged against him, and in alliance with these worldly preachers, and worldly church-members. The more loyal he is to God, and the more faithful he is to his calling, the more he will be opposed. "Marvel not if the world hate you, it hated me before it hated you," Jesus said to His disciples. "Pick out the officers," is a rule with the devil when assailing the Church. Paul was "in labors more abundant," and as a consequence he was a shining mark for the fiery darts of the wicked one. A messenger of Satan was sent to buffet him that he might not be exalted above measure. One of the preacher’s difficulties lies in his temptation to be critical of his brethren in the ministry. Too often he "damns by faint praise." "It was a good sermon, but -- " If one cannot find something in a brother preacher to appreciate, let him not depreciate. Dr. Quayle says, "Depreciation is a shallow man’s gift." "Of all the follies which wise men commit, not one is more folly mad than that view which supposes that by how much some brother minister is praised, by that much one’s self is dispraised, or that by how much a brother minister is held in slight esteem, by so much the greater esteem will come to one’s self. The facts of experience give the lie to all such meanness as this." He is a small man who depreciates his brother. "We know we have passed from death unto life because we love the brethren" applies to preachers as well as laymen, and "love makes one appreciative." "To rejoice in another’s success is both worthy a preacher’s manliness and a good schooling for the heart." "Appreciation may be acquired, and blessed is the preacher who acquires it." Another difficulty besetting the preacher is the temptation to boast of his own labors and the results, and it is all the more dangerous because of the numerous examples. There are few John Hatfields in the matter of writing reports. May his tribe increase and God be glorified thereby! We have grown weary of reports that told of "the greatest meeting the city ever saw." "Nothing like it in the remembrance of the oldest member." "The glory rolled and rolled, wave after wave of glory." "The whole country stirred for miles around." We call this temptation a difficulty because it is such a difficult matter for some to overcome it, but grace is free and we are prayerful and hopeful. While the minister of the Gospel, called of God to preach, is "to speak as one that has authority," let him not play the part of boss. There are political bosses, and financial bosses, and family bosses, but the church boss is worse than all combined. "I am among you as the serving one" was the language and life of Him who left the glory that He had with the Father, to take upon Himself our nature and He should be our Example, and Exemplar. Authority, and especially spiritual authority, has been found to be a dangerous possession, and yet it belongs to the ministry. "Let no man despise thy youth," wrote Paul to a young minister. To another he wrote, "Those things speak, and exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee." Popes are not needed anywhere; much less, then, in the Holiness Movement. Clothed with a little brief authority, men strut for their hour, puffed by love of place and the flatteries of place-seeking men and wily women. Paul, hard-headed old logician that he was, saw the danger, and said, "Put not a novice into the ministry, lest being puffed up with pride, he fall into the condemnation of the devil." Men who are called good, and are good, have often been puffed up when they ought to have been humbled in the dust. There never comes a time when a minister should fall "to walk softly before the Lord." The man in the pulpit should have convictions of his own, born of study of the Word, guidance of the Spirit, and communion with God, yet he should always be the pastor, the brother, the friend, the counselor, but never the boss. Another difficulty in the ministry is discouragement, and of all the lean, blue demons Hell ever launched against the ministry, this is one of the meanest. The man of God has a right to look for results, but oftentimes he will find prejudice, ignorance, and indifference, to which are added pleasure-seeking and worldly prosperity, confronting him like a wall of adamant. We say worldly prosperity for the worldling of this hour is prosperity mad, and the great revivals of the past have often been in times of adversity. Men will act as though they cared nothing for these things, church-members will be full of carnality and averse to prayer and fasting, waiting before God in a devotional spirit. Good people around will be disheartened by the indifference and formality and say effort is useless. Then is the time for the preacher to encourage himself in the Lord"; to cry out and shout, for great is the Holy One of Israel in the midst of Zion. While looking at his surroundings, he may be tempted to say, "Who is sufficient for these things?" Let him "look up," until he learns "our sufficiency is of God." A valley of dry bones may be soon teeming with Spirit-born men and women, living witnesses to the power of God. Our God is faithful, and the man called to preach will have a measure of success that will make God glad and Heaven rejoice over souls won by the power of the Gospel. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 60: 03.10. CHAPTER 10. THE PREACHER'S REWARD ======================================================================== Chapter 10. The Preacher’s Reward There is a present reward to every man of God called to preach, and that is a consciousness of the privilege of preaching the Gospel. "The tongue’s holiest mission is to proclaim the Christ." Standing as an ambassador of the King of kings, between God and men, knowing he has a message and burning in soul until it is delivered, angels, if capable of envy, might envy him. He is not only a preacher, he is a witness: "that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you." "What we have felt and seen With confidence we felt, And publish to the sons of men, The signs infallible." Having "tested, and tried it, and proved it, he knows God’s promise is true," and "knowing that he knows," he treads like a giant and proclaims boldly his God-given truths. "The preacher is the man Christ left to say His words to men. He is to say the thing Christ would say if he were here." Is this not a privilege? Carnegie gave ten million dollars for a Peace Foundation, and already there is a host of applicants who want to go hither and thither proclaiming disarmament among the nations, peace on earth, and war no more. JESUS left an unfinished work, and trusted men and women called of God, to push the battle. "GO YE" is the command, and with it comes the enabling, aye, more, the very presence of the Commander. The person realizing this will realize a present reward. He will be so in earnest his message will have him. He will know as did that man from the wilderness, "I am the Voice," a voice from Heaven. "As though God did beseech you by us, we beseech you in Christ’s stead." Privilege? Aye, the greatest human beings could have, to stand in His stead, give His message, persuading men to be reconciled unto God. Following in the footsteps of the Man of Galilee, seeking to save the lost, and preaching that which prophets failed to apprehend, and angels desired to look into; I pity the man who does not know this is the greatest privilege Heaven could bestow. The men who talk of their "sacrifices" and "what they gave up to enter the ministry," advertise their ignorance of the preacher’s present reward, and their unfitness for this work. If "it is more blessed to give than to receive" -- and no man who has the Spirit of Christ questions this-then it is a privilege to HELP those around us. If the woman rejoiced over the lost piece of money found, if the shepherd rejoiced over the lost sheep brought back to the fold, if the father rejoiced, was merry and glad, because the prodigal came back home, then we ought to esteem it a privilege to help the lost ones back to God, and rejoice in the privilege of finding them for Jesus’ sake. I think I had a foretaste of that which gladdens the heart of Jesus, once, as I stood by a death bed. Esther Nichols was passing away, leaving for home. Disease had done its work in emaciating the form, and sapping the strength, but the mind was clear as ever. The end was not far off, as she turned her great, black eyes toward me and said, "Oh, you have helped me so often." My heart was filled with gratitude to God and my eyes with tears, that I had had the privilege of being helpful to one of God’s chosen ones. THE END ======================================================================== CHAPTER 61: 04.00. TRUTHS THAT TRANSFIGURE ======================================================================== TRUTHS THAT TRANSFIGURE Faith Tonics by George Kulp (1927) CONTENTS Foreward Chapter 1 - Citizenship in Heaven Chapter 2 - The Discipline of Suffering Chapter 3 - The Program of Jesus Chapter 4 - Have You the Vision? Chapter 5 - The Saints’ Attendants Chapter 6 - It is Written Chapter 7 - There is Corn in Egypt Chapter 8 - The Life Abundant Chapter 9 - The Triumphal Procession Chapter 10 - The Only Remedy For Sin Chapter 11 - How Readest Thou? Chapter 12 - Apostolic Practices Chapter 13 - The Cross of Christ Chapter 14 - The Optimism of Faith Chapter 15 - Sons of God ======================================================================== CHAPTER 62: 04.000. FORWARD ======================================================================== Foreward A layman of experience and interest in Christian work wrote me a letter in which he said, "Brother Kulp you have a number of books of sermons that are for preachers and sinners. Why not give us some of your sermons to the saints? I will take two hundred copies and dispose of them if you will." A minister, one of the most successful pastors in the Holiness ranks in Ohio, said that if I would have them printed, he would take one hundred copies. I also have received numerous requests for a book of my poems which have been published in the last ten years in the Revivalist. In answer to the call, which I believe is in the Divine approval, I herewith, by the grace of the Publishers of God’s Revivalist, send forth these sermons with an eye that is single to the glory of God. May His blessing rest on every reader of these messages and may such derive comfort and blessing is the humble prayer of Your Brother and Servant in Christ, George B. Kulp. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 63: 04.01. CHAPTER 01. CITIZENSHIP IN HEAVEN ======================================================================== Chapter 1 CITIZENSHIP IN HEAVEN Php 3:20 -- "Our citizenship is in heaven." Ephesians 2:19 -- "Fellow citizens with the saints." A little man, so we are told, stands in the presence of the representatives of the greatest political power on earth at that time. He is afflicted in his body; his friends are absent; they have stripped him for the lash, when he asserts himself, and asks, "Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman, and he uncondemned?" When the Centurion hears this he goes to the Chief Captain, and says, "This man is a Roman; better be careful what you do." At once the Captain is much interested and he goes to the prisoner and asks him, "Art thou a Roman?" And I can see that little man straighten himself up, and, looking his questioner in the eye, he replies, "I am." The Captain says, "With a great price obtained I this freedom." But the prisoner shouts it out, "I was free born," and as a freeman he goes forth after receiving due apologies. An Englishman was taken captive by Theodore of Abyssinia, and after a few months’ imprisonment he managed in some way to get word to England that he was detained a prisoner in the Capitol of Abyssinia, by Theodore the King. Immediately the British Empire was at work -- a work that meant business. Ships were summoned, an army was at once gathered, and under the command of Lord Wollesly they set out for Abyssinia. Arriving in due time, they marched towards the Capital and demanded the surrender at once of the captive Englishman, and he was freed, because he was a citizen of England. An Austrian came to the United States. In due time he took out his papers and became a full-fledged American citizen. After some years he went back to Austria, and was apprehended by the authorities, and put into prison for evading military duty. He pleaded that he owed none; that he was an American citizen. He got word to the American Consul that he was detained, and the Consul demanded that he be set at liberty. When the Austrian Government was aware the Consul had taken the case in hand, it sent the prisoner on board an Austrian man-of-war in the harbor. The American Consul at once sent word to Captain Ingraham, commanding an American sloop of war in the harbor, that an American citizen was unlawfully detained, in spite of his demand, and was on the Austrian man-of-war in the harbor. Captain Ingraham at once cleared his decks for action, and sent word to the Commander of the Austrian man-of-war, "Put that American on my decks by one o’clock, or I will blow you out of the water." At one o’clock he was there, all because he was an American citizen; because he could say, "I am an American." But here is something greater by far: Here is a man who is held by the powers that be; he is in durance vile; a prisoner in the Roman prison, but he knows that freedom is not far of’. He is writing to the Church, he looks down through the ages; he takes in all the children of God in all the years to come. He yokes himself up with them all. He looks beyond prisons, and earthly powers, beyond shipwrecks to which he had been no stranger, and stripes, and he says, aye, I think he stopped and praised God for awhile, as he wrote it, "our citizenship is in heaven." And that is not all. It is not mere emotion, a mere stirring of the feelings, but it stays with him. He is writing to the Ephesian Church, and he says it again, "We are fellow citizens with the saints" -- saints of all ages. That takes us in you and me down here in the Twentieth Century -- "our citizenship is in heaven," We are "fellow citizens with the saints." I like to read after Paul. There is a place where he talks about the commonwealth of Israel. He says that once we "were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world. But now, in Christ Jesus, ye who sometime were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For He is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us ... and came and preached peace to you which were afar off. For through Him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father. Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone ... in whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God through the Spirit." This Commonwealth to which Paul and you and I belong, is no fancy picture. It is real, as real as the place where you live. It has territory, the Universe. It has a Capital, a King, Chief Magistrate, Citizens, and future destiny. Let me call your attention to the territory. It takes in all the universe as God Himself knows it. It is all ours. As citizens it belongs to us. I can prove it by the Word, and so can you if you will take time to look it up. When I was a boy I lived in Philadelphia, my native city. Once a year my father would take me to Trenton, N. J., for a visit with his folks who lived there. It was the event of my boyhood days -- to go on the boat up the Delaware River, on the steamer Edwin Forrest, to Trenton. I would talk about it before I started, and for weeks after I got back. It was a big thing to that boy. Since then I have been from the Atlantic to the Pacific States, I have traveled and preached from the plains of Texas to the snows of Ontario. And the United States looks small to me. My vision has so enlarged. I am told that it is twenty-five thousand miles around the earth, and I take it for granted it is so, but it is too small for me. I am headed, as a citizen of heaven, for bigger things. Some of these days I am going to travel as fast as light can travel, one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles a second, and I am going to explore the territory of our God; for it is all yours and mine. I am going to Saturn and Jupiter; take a small journey to Uranus, then along the Milky Way to the Pleiades; go all the millions and millions of miles through space, and look on the works of Him who made all things by His Word. "He spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast." I am going to listen to the music of the spheres, for the planets "go singing as they shine, the hand that made us is divine. "Wheresoever in His rich creation Sweet music breathes, in wave or bird or soul, ’Tis but the faint and far reverberation Of that great tune to which the planets roll." By the good grace of God some day then, in the eternal day of God in which we will live, I am going to explore the City of our God, the Capital City of the Universe. I was in Washington, the Capital of the United States. Having some time on my hands, I took a ride in a sight-seeing auto, With a guide who told us all about the various places as we passed them. He said, "This is the Capitol Building. It took so many years to build it, cost so much money. The Senate and the House of Representatives do business, make laws for you and me to keep. This is the White House where the President lives. When he is in Washington, the flag is always over the building. When he is absent, the flag is lowered. When Congress is in session, the flag is always over the Capitol. Now we are in the Dupont Circle. There is more wealth represented here than in any place on the globe. Here, we are now looking at the home of the late President Woodrow Wilson. Yonder is the Smithsonian Institute. That tall shaft is the Washington Monument, and there is the old Ford Theater where Abraham Lincoln Was assassinated. Just across the street is the house in which he died." And then I remember, to prove that Washington was the richest place in all the world, he said, "Why, the leaves on the trees all have greenbacks, and the birds all have bills, and even the horses have checks." Then we went over to Arlington, the city of the dead, where lie many boys who laid down their lives during the Civil war. There I saw the grave and monument of my old commanders, Philip Sheridan and General Wright. But one of these days when the saints are all home, I am going to have an angel, one of those appointed to minister to the heirs of salvation, take me through the City and point out to me all the places of interest. I expect to ride along the boulevards of the City and have him tell me, "There is the mansion of Abraham, the man who took God at His Word and asked no questions. There is the home of Daniel, who slept all night though lions growled, and enemies were wishing for his death. Yonder is the home. of the Hebrew children, the boys who would not bow the knee to the golden image. That tall home there is where John Wesley lives, though he is seldom home, as he still keeps on the go, looking around and talking to the redeemed he won for God, and talking over the victories God gave them through grace down there where you once lived. In that row over there that is so resplendent with the glory of God is where the martyrs live, and yonder is the home of Calvin, not far from where John Knox, that great man of prayer, lives." And then I expect he will take me to the home of some saint I never heard tell of down here, and he will tell me as I look on the beautiful Home in which they now live, "Their names were never in the papers; the folks did not know much about them. They never wrote reports, but God knew them. They were doing His will so quietly, and so effectively. They lived in basements and on back streets, down there, but God had them always in mind, and up here all heaven knows them. When they came the angels were looking for them and sang their welcome home." I expect to find a wonderful City there. The Lamb is the light of the place. He is the temple. There are no graveyards on the hillsides. The river of life flows through the City, and the tree of life is easy of access to all the saints. Their employment is doing the will of God even as do the angels. The Head of the Commonwealth is God. He is King of kings and Lord of lords. He has all the qualifications that are necessary for a King. Washington was the Father of his country worthy of much honor, but he was an aristocrat, the richest man of his day. Lincoln was the typical American. He was the grandest Man that ever filled the chair at Washington. He was wise, patient, humble, had the vision as no other man of his day had, but something he lacked. Woodrow Wilson was a great president. He had the courage of his convictions. Men failed to understand him, but he kept right on. And today we are seeing that he was right, but he lacked some things. But our God, the Head of the Government, is lacking in nothing. He is omniscient, He sees all things, knows all things; His eyes are ever upon His children. He is omnipresent, ever with them, right alongside, when He is needed. He discerns all needs and supplies all necessities. He is omnipotent, has all power, and it is at the disposal of His children as they look to Him. He said once, "All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth." And He said to His children, "Ye shall have power above all the power of the enemy." His infinite goodness desires only the happiness of His elect, and His boundless love is ever manifested. The government is administered by the Son, and He has all the qualifications needed. He is Divine and Human: He is both God and Man, He is the God-Man, He is the Man Job prayed for when he cried, "Oh, for a daysman who may lay hands upon us both." Jesus Christ in His Deity laid hold of ’God, in His Humanity He laid bold of man and made them at-one. He is the Mediator, and "ever lives above for us to intercede, His all redeeming love, His precious blood to plead, His blood atoned for all the race, and sprinkles now the throne of grace." The Holy Spirit is the Agent. He represents the Father and the Son; makes us to know our rights; bears witness to our citizenship; acquaints us with our privileges; tells us that the handwriting of ordinances that was against us is now taken out of the way. There is peace through the blood. Minding Him we have victory; and all that are spiritually-minded mind Him. Citizens are all holy beings. Without holiness it is impossible to please Him, and without holiness no man shall see the Lord. Patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs, and all who have repented of their sins, and have accepted of Jesus Christ as their Savior from all sin. Here, character is the basis of citizenship -- not rank, not money, not birth, not reputation, but character -- what you ARE in His sight. The Government is a theocracy. God is the King and this is God’s ideal of Government. When Israel demanded a king and Samuel went down on his face and wept, God said to him, "Getup from off thy face. They have not rejected thee, but they have rejected ME." We talk about making the world safe for democracy, and boast of our republican form of government, but God’s plan as shown in His dealings with His chosen people was a theocracy. He will be King, or nothing; He will be all, or not at all. The Psalmist said, "Thou art My Sun, my Shield, My exceeding great Reward." To whom we yield ourselves servants to obey, his servants we are. The Government is a government of law, and this law we find recorded in His Word. Dr. Elliott tells me of a five foot bookshelf that is the thing that should be in every home. With all due respect to the late President of Harvard, I beg leave to say that long before he thought of his books which he commended so highly, God gave us sixty-six books, all of them only two inches, and they are ahead of anything and all the books the doctor ever commended to the American people. Obey the law and live. Disobey and die! Aye, Jesus summed it up in the Scripture, "Thou shalt Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." And then just before He ’went up to be at home forever He gave a new commandment, "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another, as I have loved you." This is the commandment, this is the law, just love. He left us an Example that we should walk in His footsteps, and love as He loved, even unto death. The mutual relationship is worthy of our notice: The citizens are all one in Christ. Under the Dispensation of the Holy Ghost there is neither male nor female, neither bond nor free, but ye are all one in Christ Jesus -- not Jew, not Gentile, but just one. This does away with the color line, the bread line; there will be none when the church lives the Book. There will be no distinctions such as man makes now. "One army of the living God before His throne we bow, Part of the host have crossed the flood, and part are crossing now." George Whitefield, while preaching, one time, in Philadelphia, cried aloud, ."Gabriel, have you any Methodists in heaven?" And back comes the answer, "None." "Any Presbyterians in heaven?" "None." "Any Baptists in heaven?" "None." "Gabriel, who have you there?" "All who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." Baptists in hell, Methodists in hell, Presbyterians in hell, but no sectarian lines in heaven -- all one in Christ Jesus. Perfect freedom in that city. Each one does exactly as he pleases, and pleases only to do the will of the king. His folks here are the same, peculiar, unworldly, seeking only to know the will of God and to do it. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 64: 04.02. CHAPTER 02. THE DISCIPLINE OF SUFFERING ======================================================================== Chapter 2 THE DISCIPLINE OF SUFFERING John 17:19 -- "For their sakes." Know a blue-eyed, curly-headed little fellow, about two years of age, who can talk quite glibly, and if you will tell him to do something he will at once say, "Why?" If you tell him you are going down to the city he will say, "Why?" If you propose to do something, he will say, "Why?" His mother and some other folks have gotten so accustomed to hearing that boy say Why, that when they see him at the window they naturally think, "Why?" He stands as an interrogation point, and that is the way we stand before many of the dealings of God with us. There are some things which we would most intensely like to know. There are some things we seek to understand and, standing before them, we ask, "Why?" And God leaves us to the teachings of the past, and to the blessed Holy Spirit, to draw the inferences, and learn the lesson, and get the discipline. And I say to you, there is a discipline in suffering. When the ground is broken up by the plow, and the harrow is run over it, then the farmer goes along with a big heavy roller, and crushes it still further, and then the drag goes over it again. Suppose the ground should ask the question, Why? All it has to do is to wait and, bye and bye, the seed that is sown in that crushed, powdered ground will spring up. The rain will fall upon it; the sunshine will nourish it, and there will be waving fields of grain. And beyond that there will be the threshing, then the granary, then the flour mill, then the white bread on the fable, then the men and women growing from the sustenance derived from it. Wait awhile, and you can get the answer. Angelo went into a quarry, and saw an immense block of marble. He had it removed to his studio. He took the hammer, and the chisel, and began to shape it, here and there; he kept on working year after year, and after awhile, we find an answer to the Why? There was an angel in the stone, but it took the discipline of the hammer and the chisel to bring it out. Some years ago I was at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and by the courtesy of a friend I was admitted to the Steel Works. I remember the process by which those cannon, and the armour for the battleships was turned off. First, the ore is taken out of the ground, and there it lays, a big pile on the ground. Then they take it over to the furnace, and it comes out pig-iron in fiery molten matter. Then they take it to the Bessemer and, after the fiery testings, it comes out in ingots of steel. Then the ingot is put under a former, and an immense hammer weighing tons is dropped on it and it is beaten into half its former size. But it is of finer fiber and is ready to become armour for battleships, and when placed there, we know WHY the testings and fiery trials. We get the answer by waiting. So we stand before the mysteries of life and ask ourselves the question, Why? Listen there is a discipline in suffering. Please remember when you take your Bible and read it, the "Son of God was made perfect through sufferings." It declares here in the Word, that here, in this world, He "learned obedience by the things which he suffered." Only as I stand before the Word of God can I understand the mysteries that come into our lives. Reason fails me; rationalism, explains nothing to the satisfaction of my soul. But I look back over the past, and I see the Second Person in the Godhead -- the Jehovah -- step out of the Council chambers of eternity and declare, "Lo, I come ... to do thy will, O God." As I see Him, I remember that the evangelical prophet had said, "His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace." Love was the explanation of it all. Wait a moment! Let us go back and look at a picture in the Old Testament, away back in the early ages of the race. I see an old man about to die. He was surrounded by idolaters, and his righteous soul was vexed by their idolatrous practices. He has one boy -- the seed of the promises. He calls his old and faithful servant to his side, and tells him to put his hand under his thigh, and makes him swear that he will not take a wife for his son from the daughters of the land, but that he will go back to his own country and take a wife for him from his own kindred. The servant promises him concerning the matter, and departs, with . camels and presents of gold and silver, for the far country. He trusts God and commits the end of his coming to Him. A girl comes out with her water pot on her head, and he makes known his errand. She invites him to her father’s house. She has never seen the man, but God has sent that man. And while he was on the way, God was talking to that girl, hundreds of miles away, and preparing her for the message, so when the question was asked her, "’Wilt thou go with this man?" she says, "I will go." And love was the explanation of it all. Down in the city of Philadelphia a woman lay dying. Her husband was a drunkard. He seldom came home without being under the influence of liquor. As the wife lay there dying, the daughter stood by her side. The mother said, "Mary, never leave your father; be faithful to him. I do believe the day will come when God will save him." The mother died; the father kept on with his cups. When he would come home with the filth and mire on him, Mary was true to her promise to her mother. She would wash him and place him in bed; she loved and cared for him. He would say to her sometimes, when he had sober hours, "Mary, how can you do this?" And the answer invariably was, "Father, because I love you." For years she stayed and ministered to that drunken father, until at last he yielded to the ministrations of love and, led by the Holy Spirit to the God of his sainted wife, he was saved. But that daughter went down to death, her health wrecked by her devotion to her father. She was a most devoted Christian character, made "perfect through sufferings." Love was the explanation. Down in the South, there was a man in prison. He was guilty of using money belonging to the banks with which he was connected. He was arrested, tried, found guilty, and sentenced to the penitentiary. He had once owned millions of dollars, lived in palatial style, moved in the first circles of society, but now he is sent off to prison. But, hear it, there was one person who never forsook him, and that was the wife of his younger manhood. She went from one influential person to another, trying to secure for him’ a pardon. While others turned against him, she stayed by. He was in prison, clad in the striped garments of a convict, but she never failed him. At last she secured the pardon, and he was a free man. Love explained it all. So, I can give a reason for all the mysteries connected with the atonement. I can tell you why the Son of God left Heaven, I can tell you’ why He suffered. It was because He loved you and me. He did it all for our sakes. Let us examine the life of Christ. I see Him stand in the carpenter shop; I see Him down at Nazareth, subject to His parents. I see Him pushing the plane, driving the nail; I see Him handling the saw. I see Him with hands that are callused and rough, and I want to know the explanation. He was the Son of God. The tallest archangels bowed in His presence. He left it all -- all the glory He had with the Father -- and came and worked in a carpenter shop. The explanation is: for our sakes. He loved us so. Thirty years . in subjection to His parents; thirty years down there in the carpenter shop, getting disciplined for future service. Thirty years to get ready for three years of service that ends on the Cross. Why? According to the Word it was for our sakes. I see Him as He goes to the Jordan; I see Him in the wilderness, forty days and forty nights in the wilderness to be tested and tried. The first Adam was placed in a garden, midst perfect surroundings, with but one law, that of perfect obedience. He sold out. The second Adam we find not in perfect surroundings, not in a garden, but in a wilderness, on a mountain top, the roaring of the lion, the growling of the wolf, the enemy to test and tempt; and He bore it all, and came forth more than conqueror, for our sakes, to be an example unto us. Spurgeon says the devil does not have to take us up to a high mountain and show us all the kingdoms of the world; all he has to do with us is to take us to our back doorsteps, and many will not withstand the temptation. God help us to get the lesson here for us! Back of His purity, back of His integrity, back of His Christhood, was the discipline of suffering. A great many would serve God, if they could go to Heaven on flowery beds of ease with the applause of the multitude. God wants some folks who will reproduce Jesus Christ in the Twentieth, Century. God wants some folks who will hold still in the furnace. God wants some folks who will hold still in the lions’ den, and exemplify His Son. We are to reproduce Him. I want you to get the thought that everything that Jesus met in His life we will meet in ours, and He is our example in order to teach us that we are to learn obedience through suffering. Another thought right here: He was rejected of men. He came to His own, and His own received Him not. His own brethren did not believe on Him. One evening at George Street Mission there was a woman at the altar, and all at once she stopped praying and said, "Well, if I do get sanctified, no one will have any confidence in me." God bless you! We want the will of God whether anyone has confidence in us or not. That is not the question. The one supreme question is, "Will we go with God?" For our sakes the Son of God came into the world. For our sakes He was rejected of men. For our sakes He withstood that awful testing in the wilderness. His own brethren did not believe on Him but for our sakes He kept right on. Tradition reads that Jesus was at the carpenter shop one day, and the sun was shining through the window. He stood there with His arms outstretched, and Mary His mother, looking upon the wall beyond Him saw the shadow of the cross. And, shuddering at the thought, she quietly kept it in her heart. The shadow of the cross was on His pathway from the cradle to Calvary. Jesus says in the Word, "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me." Everything that Jesus met you will meet, if you are going with Him. The carnal mind crucified Jesus, and it will crucify you. This world is no friend to Him, and it is none to you. He said, "If the world hate you, ye know that it hated Me before it hated you." Thank God, we do not have to seek the friendship with the world. I like that hymn: "Friendship with Jesus, Felowship Divine. And I surely like that interpretation of the Psalmist which says (read the margin) "the friendship of the Lord is with them that fear him." Why? Because I am traveling the way that He took, and what He met, you and I are to meet. The world, the flesh, and the devil, the gods that the worldling meets and worships, are no friends to grace; and, through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the fellowship of the Spirit, and the love of God shed abroad in our hearts, we are now more than conquerors. Let us go a little farther and note the discipline of His everyday life. Now, mark you, Jesus as a Man needed the discipline that came through suffering. God’s Word says "He learned obedience by the things which He suffered." He was made "perfect through sufferings." It behooved Him to be made in all points like His brethren, that He might know how to succor us when we are tempted. He did not go outside the Word of God. He did not go outside the will of God. The enemy said, "Turn these stones into bread." And He said, "It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." He would not make bread to satisfy His own hunger. He could have done it. But when five thousand people were hungry, He made bread enough to satisfy them all. He never could have done it, if He had made bread for Himself. He knew the pangs of hunger; they came to Him on the mount where He was tested, and He knew how to sympathize with hungry folks. He would make no bread for Himself, but He would for others. ???of prayer. As a man He needed to pray, but He never forgot His mission in His own needs. He went up into that mountain to pray, and stayed there all night long. But out there on the Sea of Galilee, rowing mightily to get to land, were the disciples, and the winds were all contrary. Jesus had been up there in the mountain praying, getting ready for tomorrow" sorrow and battle, but He knew all about the little craft on the stormy sea, and the gloom around them.. And He came walking on the sea, stepped on the little bark, and said, "Peace be still." He needed to spend all night in prayer, but He never forgot the disciples in that storm. And in the midst of the storms that come to us, day by day, remember that Jesus is at the right hand of the Father praying for us. Again and again He has come to our little bark and said, "Peace be still." Do you know anything about it? I see Him again, in the hinder part of the ship, and He is asleep. As a man He needed to sleep. For your sake, down there sleeping. But while He is there getting His needed rest as a man, the prince of the power of the air is busy, and the waters of the sea are storm swept. The disciples are alarmed and cry out, "Master, carest thou not that we perish?" To be sure He cares! And He rose up and rebuked the storm, and again said, "Peace be still," and there was a great calm. The Christ was indeed on board, and there never yet was a storm that He could not still. There never was a devil let loose that He could not defeat. Hallelujah! The discipline of suffering will be such a blessing to you that you will thank God for storm’s. There is nothing like water for making a rainbow. We have been through some storms that we would almost be willing to go through again to see how our God can quiet storms. Why did He go through that storm on Galilee? For us, for our sakes, to teach us that all we have to do when storms come is just to let HIM manage them. He has never failed. He has dried our tears, filled our mouths with laughter, and spread a table for us in the presence of our enemies. I am glad that He taught us there is a discipline in suffering. I am glad that He went through it for us, for our sakes. Love brought Him down our poor souls to redeem. Do you know what will take us through? Love for Him. Another thought here. In the garden He sweat great drops of blood. I often think of Him going to the garden with Peter, James and John. They went part of the way, and then sat down, and were soon asleep. But He went a stone’s throw farther than all the rest. There all alone I see Him before the Father. I see the cup pressed to His lips. I see Him drink the very dregs, and I hear Him say, "All right, Father, even as thou wilt." He is suffering now in agony of soul, and HE did it all for us, for our sakes. "Yes, Father, I separated myself, I left the courts of Heaven, I left the worship of the angels, I left the music of the choirs of the skies, I left the atmosphere of the city, and came down here, taking on myself their nature, for their sakes. Father, the birds we made have nests, and the foxes have holes, but I have nothing but love, Love." He goes down into the garden, and bears your burden and mine. He does it for us. Say, was that all? No; the angels came and ministered unto Him. When did the angels come before? Back there on the mountain, amid the growling of the beasts, after He had resisted the enemy, the angels came. When did they come to Him in the garden? After He had sweat great drops of blood. When will they come to us? When we have stood, when we have had the discipline of suffering. Oh, just to have Him come when other folks leave you, when people sneer, when the iron is driven into your soul, when your heart is heavy, When your cheeks are wet with tears, when the darkness settles down upon you -- to have Him come and minister unto you. He will come. Angels ministered to Him, but He will come Himself and minister unto you. Do you know, my beloved ones, what it means to have Him. come when other folks have left, to have Him whisper to you that you are not alone and never will be, for He has come to stay. Shall we go up to a hill lone and gray, in a land far away, and look on the three crosses? You and I are interested in that middle cross. You remember that when He was twelve years old that He said to His mother, "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?" His whole life was a journey to the cross. I see Him struggling up that hill beneath a cross. I see Him nailed thereon. I hear Him cry, "It is finished." The race is run. The battles are fought. He bows His head and gives up the ghost. We go down to His tomb, but the angels say, "He is not here: for he is risen. Hallelujah! There are many folks who do not understand us, but you can afford to be misunderstood. God will vindicate you. Some folks say that you will not be vindicated in this life. Well, you and I know of one man God did vindicate. There was Job. He lost everything but His trust in God. His three friends came to him and said, "Job, if you had not done something you would never have been in this plight. All this has come on you because you are a sinner. But Job held on, took another step out in the dark, and shouted so loud and long that it still reverberates along the centuries, "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh I shall see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another." "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." But after awhile God said to those three wise men, "You did not talk of me as my friend Job did. Now you had better get him to pray for you, that your sins may be forgiven." That was vindication. And more than that, Job had twice as much religion as he had before, and twice as many cattle. Do you want twice as much as you had before? Are you willing to go the way that Job did to get it? Are you willing to be ostracized, have betrayal, rejection? Some folks would say because Job was sick that he was backslidden. But Job knew better, and, best of all, God knew. We learn obedience by the things we suffer. What return have you made? How do you manifest your love? I like that hymn: "I gave my life for thee, My precious blood I shed, That thou might’st ransomed be, And quickened from the dead. I gave my life for thee, What hast thou given for Me?" What has your love led you to do? Has it led you to sacrifice for God? Do you wonder that you have been called upon to suffer? It is discipline that is necessary for you. You will get through it, bye and bye; God will not let you there one moment longer than it takes Him to see Himself in you. Some one is watching you, and it may be that for their sakes you are permitted to be tested. Do you want Bible for that? "We are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men." We are surrounded by an innumerable company of witnesses, who are watching us. Remember, that if you suffer with Him, you shall reign with Him also. Down in a hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, there stood an old man and his wife. On a cot lies their only son, dying a soldier’s death. When that boy came into their lives they said, "Now we have a boy of our own." And as he grew in years they would say, "He will be the prop of our old age," and the mother would stoop down and kiss him. Then the war came. He enlisted, was wounded in action, and came down to death’s door. They wired for the parents, and when they came they saw he was soon to pass over. As they stood there, the old father said, "Mother, take my hand and say it with me, ’The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away.’" The mother accompanied him that far, and her voice quivered and stopped. The old man grasped the hand a little tighter, and said, "Come, mother, say it with me." She took another look at the boy and said, "Father, I will. ’The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’" Grace triumphed. Oh, there is a discipline in suffering, but glory to the Name of Christ; He will call us through no darker rooms than He went through before. A boy was carrying a lot of boxes, and someone thought he had too large a load, and said to him, "Is not that load too heavy for a boy like you?" But the little fellow said, "My Father knows how much I can carry." He knows how much you can carry, and He will take the heaviest end of it. If we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him. "Bye and bye when the morning comes, When all the saints of God are gathered home, We will tell the story how we overcome, And we’ll understand it better bye and bye." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 65: 04.03. CHAPTER 03. THE PROGRAM OF JESUS ======================================================================== Chapter 3 THE PROGRAM OF JESUS Matthew 19:22 -- "He went away sorrowful" He went away sorrowful." To live twenty, thirty, forty, or fifty years of life and miss the thought of God is my idea of total failure. The Psalmist said, "What is man that thou art mindful of him? Thou hast made him lower than the angels for a little While." And there never was a human being created but to start from the very inception of that life -- and I go back farther than that, from the very foundation of the world -- God had a plan for that life; there was the thought of God for that whole life. I am not much given to visions, not much given to impressions, but in the Word of God we get the vision of Jesus and we can get the program of our lives. We can and may know the thought of God for us. Jesus said, "The Spirit shall take the things of God and show them unto you, He shall guide you into all truth." In the very beginning of this discourse I want to bring before your mind two men, each of whom had a vision of Jesus, each of whom met the Lord, and He gave to each the program for their lives. One was honest; one was sincere. He was on his way to Damascus when he met the Lord, and the Lord threw him to the ground, and said, "Why persecutest thou me?" He said, "Who art thou Lord?" And the Lord answered. "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest." He was led inside the city, and God said to a man who lived near enough to Him to hear Him talk: "I want you to go and call on this man I have met just a few miles out of the city and (mark you) I have showed him how great things he must suffer for my name’s sake." At the very beginning of his Christian life, the Lord meets him with a program for his future. Now, beloved, in that program were apostleship, ambassadorship, stones, stripes, perils among false brethren, among lions, in prisons, and, at the last, to give up his life just as the Master gave it. Amen, Lord! Prisons, Amen! Shipwrecks, Amen! Stripes, Amen! Perils among false brethren, Ostracism, Amen! Death, Amen! I believe he took in the whole program and, voluntarily, this man abandoned himself to all the will of God. Let me tell you of another man, one who came running to Jesus. He was a hungry man looking for the Master, with a question upon his lips the answer to which meant all the thought of God to him, and for him, "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" And from the lips of Him who spake as man never spake came this answer: "Go sell that which thou hast and come follow Me and thou shalt have treasure in heaven." He looks at the program, just as the other man did. He saw it clearly. As he got it from the lips of Jesus, so this man gets the program of his life from Jesus. He had propounded a question that was pregnant with eternal issues, but he stands there and fails to meet the conditions, and went away sorrowful, failing to take the program that divine wisdom, that the infinite God, marked out for him. God has a program for you and me. God gives us His thought in His Word, and just as much as it meant to those two men it means to us today. It means obedience; it means separation; it means abandonment, and it also means reward. The program of Jesus Christ means life, not only from the cradle to the grave, but it reaches out through eternity, as long as God shall live. I am glad for such a program. I am glad for the will of God made known to us. I am glad for the whole Bible made known to us. I believe it from beginning to end as the Word of God. I am glad for the MAN of Calvary who got down on His knees in the garden and drained the whole cup, who prayed, "Father, not my will but thine be done." He made it possible for us to take the whole program. There is a program in this world for your life and mine. This man of our text "went away." What did that mean? Away from Jesus, away from God’s thought, away from the program ordained from the foundation of the world for him, away into the night, away into the darkness, away to misery, away to death. One of the saddest things in the Word to me is the record made after Judas betrayed Jesus and went away -- "it was night." Oh, the darkness of the soul that turns down the program of God, and goes away, Away! Never mind if the enemy says, "There are the prisons, there are the stones, there are the stripes, there are the perils among false brethren; there is the ostracism; there is the death, the block, the axe. If is it God’s will for you, take it, and count it a privilege to take it and keep step with God Almighty Every step you have a battle you shall have the victory, and for every victory there is reward, a crown of eternal life. The old devil told the truth for once when he said Job did not serve God for naught. Thank God, we do not serve Him for naught. We have the peace that passeth understanding; and today we are marching forward not on corduroy roads (every old soldier will understand this), not on sinking sands, not on slippery pathways, but on a rock of adamantine -- the Word of God -- marching forward with the sweep of conquest, looking forward to the eternal day. Oh, thank God for the privilege of having a part in the program, for the privilege of suffering with Him, of getting into the dark places Thank God for the privilege of knowing that whether you suffer, or bear, or are in the dark, you are foreordained to victory! There is a program for every child of God. On the surface of our text we see free moral agency. He went away. He might have stayed with Jesus as the other man did. He might have stayed and listened as did others of the disciples. He might have had the privilege of walking with God. He was at the crucial period of his career. He had come to the parting of the ways. One way leads up, and up, and ever up, an ever-ascending plane, and the other down, and down, into the darkness that is eternal. But he chose deliberately to go away. You are a sovereign. You came from the hand and heart and brain of God, a king, clothed with kingly powers. You are sent out to step like a conqueror. You are sent out to have the victory over the flesh, the world, and the devil. These are the gods of the worldling, but in the conflict every day you may enlarge your caliber, make your fiber stronger. You are sent out every day to increase in size mentally, morally, and spiritually, though the path leads through blazing, red-hot plowshares, and devils howling on every side. You are sent out to walk in the footsteps of Jesus ’Christ. You are sent out not only to be a conqueror, but more than a conqueror. You are sent out that you might have the privilege of waving a palm, and decking your crown with stars, putting it down at the feet of Jesus, that you might have the privilege of putting stars in His crown and making it radiant throughout eternal ages. Hear it young man, young woman! You can go away; you can go away into the darkness like the man of our text; you can enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; but, if you do, it is to crucify the Son of God afresh and to grieve the Holy Spirit. We are living in the midst of eternal verities. We are dealing with moral certainties. We are either believing on Christ, are either following and walking with Jesus, or we are going away from Him. We are accepting the program or we are rejecting it. This young man turned his back on Jesus, refused to walk in the light, and said, "No" to God. He said, "Go thy way for this time," and it proved to be for all time, for we never hear of him again. My friend, if you are weak, if you are defeated, it is because you have said "No" to God, rejecting His program for your life. It is because you knew the price and refused to pay it. He might have paid the price. He might have abandoned himself to God, and let other things go. He might have said, "Thy will for me." Beloved, what you are doing? How about the program of Jesus for you? Paul wrote to a young man and said, "Fulfil thy ministry." Have you fulfilled up to date God’s program for you? Either you are either doing it, or you are grieving the heart of God. You are either doing it, or you are adding to the burden of Jesus. You have the thought of God for you, and you know what He is asking you to do. Are you doing it? Stop, look, listen! It is important that you should obey God. You have not the peace, the joy, the victory, in your soul. You are missing God’s program for you. No matter what may occur; you can be a victor. Yoked up with God, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, you can defeat all the powers that hell and the devil can array against you. He that is for you is more than all that can be against you. Stop your trembling and get to believing God. Faith is the victory. God bless you, look up! God’s people are a conquering people when they measure up to God’s thought for them. I remember there was a time when God came to me and talked to me and I said, "Lord, you do not seem to be leading anybody else that way; you are not asking anyone else to walk that way." Thank God, I never, any more, question Divine leadings; it is enough for me to know that it is God. I never hesitate any more. I am saying Amen! Whether He ever asks any other man in the universe to do what he asks of me, I am accepting the whole program. Uncomplainingly? Banish the Word! I am accepting it joyfully. All I want to know is, is it His will? But I am afraid of the programs of men. I do not like to go to conventions where men have put me on the program. I like committees that pray and ask Divine direction as to meetings and preachers. I sometimes question the wisdom of men, but I like the program of God. God puts it before every man. It will come to each one. I dare you, I challenge you. Ask God, "What wilt thou have me do?" Mean it from your heart, and in due time you will hear from Him. Jesus was walking along one day and He saw a man sitting at the receipt of custom, and all that He said to that man was just two words, "Follow Me." And he arose, left all, and followed Jesus in the way. Customs, good-bye; Roman office, good-bye;. shekels, good-bye. That is what it means -- separation. Go every step of the way. I was honest. I joined the Masons when I was a young man. I had not been converted very long when they made me a preacher that is, they gave me a license to do the work to which God called me. I knew before I was saved that if ever I got religion, I would have to preach. I did not know the secret of that until many years after I had been preaching, and then, one day, my mother told me that before I was born my parents had given me, their first baby, to God for the ministry. After I was made a Mason they made me Chaplain of the Lodge, and one day a good Christian friend of mine said to me, "You cannot utter the name of Jesus in a Masonic Lodge." I said to myself, "I’ll show you better than that." So the next Lodge night, when I as chaplain dismissed the lodge I used the Apostolic benediction: "May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, abide with you now and forever. Amen." I had no sooner got through than the Senior Warden, who was in the East that night in the absence of the Master, said to me, "Kulp, keep your Jesus to yourself." I at once told him that when it came to a question of choice between Masonry and my religion, Masonry could go. That fellow was wrong and I was right. I had a perfect right to keep a good conscience, but I was only a youngster and it meant something for me. But ’God helped me. He will help anyone who will go all the way with Him, even though it leads outside the orders to which so many ministers belong. No one says to me, "You do not know what you are talking about." I know, and they know it. God says that separation is the price of victory. Brother, the price of victory is separation. If you are going with God, He will test you before you go very far. He will allow you to be tested. Obedience, then separation. "You say you will follow Me?" "Yes, Lord. Customs, good-bye; World good-bye, Fashions good-bye, world’s politics good-bye." O beloved, if you are going with God, you will come clear out of Egypt. Go with the people of God; pay any price, and you will have victory no matter where you live, no matter what people say; you will have victory, for it is the heritage of those who go with God. If you have not victory, there is a reason. You are not meeting the thought of God for you. I declare unto you, that you may have all the salvation that you want; you may be a temple of the Holy Ghost; you may have communion with God all the time. He will walk with you and dwell in you. I went into a brother’s room and he brought out a record. He gave me a piece called "Old Time Religion." Then he played "God be with you till we meet again." And I said, "Give me that Old-time Religion again; I like that. I am not seeking something new. I am standing in the way, and inquiring for the old paths, and have rest for my soul. I want you to know that I am tremendously, completely, abundantly satisfied." But "how about young men who are In the glow of health?" I am in the glow of health; I stand as straight as any of you, and I can walk as fast. I am in the glow of health and salvation suits me abundantly. I like the program and am measuring up to it. If you choose the world, you may have it, but it means away from Jesus. You may go with the world or you may go with Jesus, but you cannot go with both at the same time. Please bear that in mind. The program of Jesus means separation from the world, and separation unto God. Are you so separated this very hour? He went away sorrowful, for he was very rich. He had his eyes on the things of this world, he had his eyes on position, he had his eyes on popularity. The devil is a master painter, and he can make the world look very attractive to you; but, if you go that way, you will miss the thought of the Christ. A man who is called of God to preach the Gospel does not need anything else but fellowship with the Triune God through the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. Now, do not misinterpret me. You say, "Brother Kulp, what do you mean?" I mean that you do not have to join a lodge to get along, that you do not have to sacrifice your political convictions to get along Onetime a committee was looking for a preacher and they asked some preachers about a man named Kulp. Well, those preachers said a lot of good things about him -- he could do this and that, and the other, but--. Did you ever do anything of that kind? Did you ever say a lot of nice things about some brother, and then look down your nose and say, But? What do you suppose the but was? It was this "But he is a third-party prohibitionist." My, oh my! Was not that awful in a preacher? I had voted a third-party prohibition ticket for thirty years and would do the same thing over again. If you are in the program of Jesus you will not have to seek human assistance. You do not have to lean on the arm of flesh. It is vain to put your trust in princes, or bishops, or general superintendents. You take the program of God, and everything that He offers you means a promise goes with it that He will see you through. God help the men and women who are standing around waiting’ for a job. If you are in God’s program He has work for you as long as you are able to do it, and then at the end, He will give you your last appointment where all the brethren are true, and the Church is eternally triumphant. O beloved, it means so much as to whether we go with God or not. If we abandon ourselves to Jesus, He gives us the Holy Ghost. If any man has not the Spirit of Jesus he is none of His. If you abandon yourself to Him, He will take control. Your wife will not be in control. The bishop will not be in control. Your friends are not in control. The Holy Ghost is. They that are after the Spirit, mind the things of the Spirit. When you have Him, you are just as sweet at home as you are when you are away from home, and in company. You are just as nice to your wife when you are all alone as you are when there are folks around. You are as good in the dark as you are in the light. You are walking abandoned to the Holy Ghost and you have the best company that there is in the world. There was a young girl stepped off a ferry boat and a young dude stepped up to her and said, "Miss, may I have your company?" She said, "No, Sir." Not satisfied with this rebuff, he asked her again, and she said, "No, Sir; I have company." "May I ask who your company is? I seen one." And she said, "God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost." "Too good company for me," he said, and then left her. God bless you, we are never left alone, and never lonely when we are with Him. I have heard folks say that they feel just as good when they do not feel good as when they do feel good, and just as happy when they do not feel happy as when they do feel happy. Do you know what I mean? Out in Kansas a cyclone came along, and wrecked houses and barns and everything in its path. Picked up trees, and everything generally was badly wrecked. It picked up a cradle in which was a baby asleep, and it carried cradle, baby and all, over the fields for half a mile and set it down gently, and the baby never awoke. What was the reason? The cradle was in the center of the cyclone, and in the center there is a calm. Oh, get into the center of His will and be at rest! The devil may start up a tempest; he may set the Galilean sea to rocking and roaring; but he ought to know by this time that He who rides upon the storm can say "Peace be still," and there will be a great calm. Oh, thank God, when He says "Peace," there is calm, and rest! If we are in God’s program we have His mind and we are at rest; we are humble. Self-effacement does not hurt us. We can sit in a congregation as well as on a platform, and we can enjoy the sermon just as much. If we have the mind of Jesus we are humble. Our Master was obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross. One day a brother went into an auction store. The auctioneer was selling a painting. He was standing behind it, almost out of sight, and telling the merits of the picture and the reputation of the artist. The brother got a lesson from this. I want to hold Jesus forth so He will be seen. Brother, are you living so much like Jesus that folks think of Jesus when they see you? That does away with lightness; that does away with trifling. Oh, it means so much to walk with Jesus, and this is God’s program for us. When Paul got into the program of Jesus, it was a great thing to look down the years and see what there was awaiting him, and say, "Yes, Jesus! Yes, Jesus!" In the time of Bloody Mary, there were three men condemned to the fire. To make it worse the executioner came to them and said to the first martyr, "You will burn Monday." To the second one he said, "You will burn Tuesday." To the third one he said, "You will burn Wednesday." When Monday came the first one went out to the stake with head, hands and heart uplifted, and he was praising the Lord. But the man who was to be burnt on Wednesday said, "Oh, I can’t burn! I can’t burn!" Tuesday came, and the second one was led out to the stake, and he went praising God and shouted when they started the fires. But the one who was to burn Wednesday kept saying, "Oh, I can’t burn! I can’t burn!" But when Wednesday came he came out from his cell shouting, "I can burn! I can burn!" And he passed away in a chariot of fire, shouting the praises of One who never will leave us alone. I heard Bishop Foss say as he told this, "I do not think he ever felt the fire." Beloved, do not be afraid of the whole program. He who walked with the three in the furnace is still the same, and ever mindful of His own. He will be with you everywhere you ought to be, to the admiration of the angels and the astonishment of hell. Do not talk about the days gone by. Our God is the same, and His Word is good everywhere. You do not have to have someone else’s experience; you can have one as good as anyone, in any age, if you will mind God. We not only get under Christ’s burdens when we are in His program, but we joy in His joy. If you are a preacher, you can shout because some other brother is having a big revival. When you see another brother in honor preferred. you can rejoice because God has such men. You will not think that you are the whole thing; you will know God has some folks. It may be seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal. You will rejoice in anything that makes God glad. Some of the old theologians say that the rich man who lifted up his eyes in hell was this young man who went away sorrowful. I do not know, but we do know that he never was worth reporting afterward. We never hear tell of him. The other man went away to shipwrecks. He was on the bosom of the Mediterranean fourteen days and nights; no light, all storm and darkness. It was night when some One stood by him and said, "Fear not, Paul; I will not only save thee, but I have given to thee all them’ that sail with thee." The one went out into the darkness and was heard of no more. The other sat in jail with bleeding back. He and his companion began to sing and God did hear and said to an angel, "Go down there and shake that old jail where Paul and Silas are singing and let my servants come forth." Again we find this old man coming forth from a prison -- old, not because of years, but made old by the hardships he had been through. He is covered with the slime and mire of the Mamertine jail, but he walks along the Appian Way with the tread and the air of a conqueror. He has fought a good fight. He has finished the course. He has kept the faith. There is a stir among the angels above and the choir-lofts of Heaven are emptied as they hasten to the battlements of the Celestial City to welcome home this man who kept God’s program, for they have heard that Paul is coming Home today. Glory be to Heaven’s King! Which way are you going? You can take the program, if you will. Lord, I will go. If it means to sell my farm, I will go. If it means give up all my plans for the future, I will do it. Thy will for me. Smash every plan. Let all my ambitions lie in ashes at my feet. Amen! I will not only sing, "Where He leads I’ll follow," but I am now following even to the end. Some folks are like a man in one of my meetings where God had called me. He came and said to me, "If I were to die tonight, I would go to hell. I am a member of the church, but I have no power at the family altar. We go through the motions, but no fire falls." Beloved, have you a family altar? Are you living where fire falls from heaven on your souls when you pray? Are you so completely in the will of God that you would not be more so if you moved an inch either way? No chafing there, nothing irksome there. But with the Psalmist you can say, "I delight to do thy will, O God." Get God’s program for you and live in the victory. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 66: 04.04. CHAPTER 04. HAVE YOU THE VISION? ======================================================================== Chapter 4 HAVE YOU THE VISION? Isaiah 6:1 -- "I saw the Lord." In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord, sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory. And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke. Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts. Then flew one of the seraphim unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar: And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin is purged. Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me. Isaiah 6:1-8. I believe, firmly, that every soul really converted gets a vision of God, that is brought about by the Holy Spirit, for every really converted person is regenerated -- born of the Spirit. I admit that man can see God in nature. The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth His handiwork. Every planet has been running on schedule time ever since worlds rolled from the fingers of Omnipotence -- never one for one moment a second behind time. I think that it was General Mitchell who said, ’The undevout astronomer is mad." And he further said, "If at any time any planet should be one half a minute behind time consternation would be found in all the observatories because men would fear that the arms of the Infinite had, grown weary." You can see God in nature. We have the seasons, and the day, and the night in accordance with the divine plan. We can see God not only in nature, we can see God in history: "His footsteps down the centuries beat one eternal rhyme." It may be only here and there that you can see His imprints, but we know that God is moving. Nations have their judgments in this world. Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people. God has been calling the nations to account. The historian has yet to record the history of any nation that has been true to God. God’s own chosen people went away from Him and served other gods, built groves on every mountain top, worshipped idols before whom they bowed, forgetting the living God. They had their judgment, they had their captivity, and at last they were so lost that men today speak of them as "the lost tribes," and the rest of them are scattered and peeled, and dwelling as strangers in the midst of almost every nation that has a name. You can see God in nature; you can see God in history; you can see God in His providences. Every need of man has been supplied; God has made provision for us. God made wool on the back of the sheep, so that you and I may be clothed; God put enough wood in the forests and enough stones in the ground so that you and I might have homes, every family a dwelling place. He placed the oil so that we could have light and heat; He placed the coal that we might be comfortable with heat and stand the ravages of the zero weather. God placed the gold and silver, that you and I might have the wherewithal to purchase the things that are necessary to our welfare. The providences of God made provision for every son and daughter of Adam. Men have cornered oil. A few men own the coal mines, and the gold mines. Five thousand people in the United States own the great majority of the wealth, but it is all contrary to the will of God. God said that the earth was His, and He made provision in His providences for you and me, and you can read it as you would read . the pages of history. I do not wonder that God has said in His Word, "Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. "How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God?" You can see God not only in nature, in history, and in His providences, but you can see God in His Word. I believe that an unsaved man with ordinary common sense, and intelligence, can see God in His Word. It gives us the mind of God, gives us the thought of God; shows us the heart of God. I get my ideas of my Christ from the Word. I do not have to read Sheldon in order to find out what God would do; I take down that old Bible and find what He did do, and I know lie is the same, yesterday and forever. If a blind man were lying by the roadside, and Christ passed by, and that blind beggar should cry after Him, I know that my Christ would stop and help him, though on His way to make another world. I know the heart of God by the teaching of that Book. We can see God in nature, in history, in providences, in the Word, and we can see God in Christ. Now we are getting a revelation of the character of God. You cannot find forgiveness in nature; nature NEVER forgives. It took the incarnation of love to teach us that God would forgive. Philip said, "Show us the Father, and it sufficeth us." And Jesus said (I imagine His heart was almost breaking. He had been with them three years, and such a question as that from those who had walked with Him, and seen His miracles), "Sayest thou unto me, Show us the Father? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father also." God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. God commendeth His love toward us that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. Every person needs to get a vision of God. You can never be what God wants you to be until you have seen the King. You can never get the thought that God wants to fill you with until you get a vision of Himself, and He withholds it from no man. You are never equipped for service, never effective for service, until you have had the vision. You will never be in God’s hands, plastic and passive, until you have had the vision. Men have talked about the first heaven and the second heaven, and the third heaven to which the Apostle was lifted, but it took a man who had a vision to get a better thought of God. He lay down by the side of an old oak, pillowed his head on a stone, and had the sands of Arabia for his couch, had the blue sky for his covering; but while he slept he saw a ladder, the topmost round hard by the throne of Infinite love, and the lowest round where he could put his foot on it, am he saw the angels ascending and descending upon it. And when he awoke in the morning, the man knew as he never had known before that heaven was not very far off. Say, beloved, that ladder was a type of Jesus Christ, and He brings heaven not only near man, but puts it inside of him. Listen, beloved, men are only effective for service as they get the vision. God wanted a man and He showed him a bush on fire. This man had a staff in his hands; he was attending to his flocks. God never gives visions to lazy folks. This man said, "I will go and see what this means;" and, when he came near, God spoke and said, "Moses (God knows our names) take thy shoes from off thy feet, for the ground whereon thou standest is holy ground." And then He gave him the message, "I want you to go and talk for Me." You have to get the vision of the King before you can talk effectively. Step down through the centuries! See Elijah discouraged! There are good people who get discouraged. This man had been on the mountain top; this man had brought fire from heaven; then again had unsealed the fountains of the skies, as before he had sealed them. This man became discouraged, but God does not forget discouraged folks. Some folks will not hunt them up, but God does, and I am glad that He did. And He finds him where? Hidden away in a cave. Yesterday he bids defiance to eight hundred false prophets; yesterday he commands the skies, and the fire falls; but today he is off, hid In a cave, and God hunts him up. "Elijah, what is the matter? What doest thou here?" "Well, Lord, there is not anybody else but me; the rest of Thy people have gone off after idols. No one is left but me." Did you ever get where you thought you were the only one left, your church the only church in all the land? It is wonderful how God will waken such folks up. "Elijah, i have seven thousand that have not bowed the knee to Baal." This man now gets the vision. A discouraged man, but God says to him, "You have been true; you have been faithful; you have met much opposition. Come, anoint that man to be king of Israel, then take a journey through the land of Israel and the chariots of fire shall come rumbling along the ridges of the worlds and I will have them stop and bring you home." Oh, thank God, He will send the chariots of fire to the one who gets discouraged and who wants to be true. Glory be to heaven’s King, He never forgets us! Our hearts may be breaking; our friends may fail us; and our own brethren may misunderstand us, but God knows, and He will never forget us. Paul had the vision, and he never got over it, and I want my hearers to know that the soul that has had the vision will never get over it. There was a man who was sent to a barren rocky isle, a banished prisoner. He was banished to an island where Rome sent her thugs and anarchists, and her felons, but this man was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day, and he heard a voice behind him and it called him by name, "John." Oh, a few years before that was the sweetest voice in all the world to him. He had been thrilled by it again and again; but there came a time when he saw his Lord defying gravitation and going up to where out of sight the angelic escort met Him and sang, "Be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in. He never thought that he would hear that voice again on earth, but let me tell you, when you are banished, when you are far off from your folks, when you are all alone, the Christ of the Mediatorial throne, will walk the same land where you walk, and He will say, "John," oh, so tenderly. And John turned and saw his Lord. I am so glad that God gave him that revelation; I have been feeding on it ever since I found out about it. With the vision of God comes the abasement of self. I have seen folks at the altar again and again, and they never get anywhere. Why? Because they are not willing to die to themselves. Along with the vision of God comes the death of self. Oh, here it is, right in this vision, "I am undone ... I am a man of unclean lips." Not only Isaiah, "What is your name?" "My name’s Jacob." Oh, names in those days meant something. What is your name? Jacob. What does that mean? Supplanter, Deceiver. Oh, this fellow is coming down, -- I deceived my old father, i deceived my brother, I deceived my father-in-law. He is getting somewhere. That is the trouble; they do not like to make the confession, do not like to acknowledge even to God how mean they are, but He knows all about them. Brother, i never knew how mean I was until God let the light on me. Ah, when the vision comes you will feel the self-abasement, -- "I am the chief of sinners, I am less than the least of all saints." I wish people would get today where Jacob did. when he got his name changed, -- make the confession and hold on. I remember when I would hear the old-fashioned Methodists sing: "Come, O thou traveler unknown, Whom still I hold but cannot see; My company before is gone, And I am left alone with Thee; With Thee all night I mean to stay, And wrestle till the break of day." I have heard that Jacob limped always after the wrestling. And if folks today would get the experience, wrestling till victory came, they never would be the same. Folks would know them by their walk. Self-abasement comes after you get the vision. Paul had ancestry, -- Hebrew of the Hebrews -- but after the vision, he was less than the least of all God’s people. When a person gets the vision, and the victory, he feels so unworthy that he never would force himself into a position where he ought not to be. Will you please get that? And this also, that God will get you where He wants you, no matter how small you feel. Amen! He got this man there. Isaiah saw Him on the throne, and the Triune God is on the throne today. I am as confident of victory for the cause of Christ as I am that I am alive. Now I want you to get it, that after the confession came the fire, and not before it. "I am a man of unclean lips; I am undone." He saw himself as God saw him, after the ’confession. Say, beloved, have you the fire? If not, Why? I remember once in a meeting where I was, a brother came to the altar and he prayed "O God, I have been secretary of the Y. M. C. A. for a number of years." I can see him yet as he knelt there and uttered those words. He never got anywhere. That was not a confession, that was a boast, and boasting never gets one anywhere. One never gets the fire until they go to the bottom, and confess "My name is Jacob," "I am a man of unclean lips; I am undone," "Lord, I am no good, I cannot talk. There is Aaron, he is a talker, but I am slow of speech. Send Aaron, Lord" -- send somebody else. God will show you your heart and you will shrink, but when your heart is cleansed, God will give you fire. It takes a clean heart to be a hot heart. We have hot heads today, but what God wants us to have and what the world needs today is men with hot hearts. Here a live coal from off the altar touches his lips -- "thy iniquity is forgiven," -- only after he made the confession. God help us now to see it! After the fire, cheerful obedience. He heard God say, "Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?" And he said, "Here am I, Lord; send me." He did not ask where. See? Some time ago a church wrote me and asked me to send them a pastor. Please recommend us a man. You know men you know our church; you know the kind of a man that we need. So I wrote them, "There is Bro. _____, a bright young man, has a capable wife, a good preacher; write him." I also wrote and told him it was "a good church, good people, etc.," and he wrote that Beard, "How much salary do you pay? Have you a parsonage? Have you stoves, furniture? What is the prospect of support?" They wrote him that they did not want him. Do you wonder? Oh, after you have made the confession, and received the fire, you will not ask where. It will be, "Here I am; anywhere you say go, I will go." I heard a young girl at the altar, and she was boohooing at a great rate. I asked, "What is the matter?" She said through her tears, "Oh, God wants me in Africa." I said, "Well, if you know what God wants, and where He wants you, what is the good of crying? Go." . I heard a young woman in Kansas praying at the altar, and her prayer was, "O God, why don’t you call some girl to Africa whose mother does not need her as my mother needs me?" I heard a man testify once that when he was seeking the blessing God said, "Africa," and he said, "No." But he wanted the blessing, and he said, "Yes, Lord, Africa." He has never heard God say, "Africa," once since. I believe if it had been God who was saying "Africa," He would have sent him there. The devil can say Africa, too. God bless you, when you get the vision and the fire you will be glad to labor anywhere that He calls you, and do it cheerfully. It was after the fiery furnace that God promoted the Hebrew children. It was after the lions’ den that Daniel was promoted in the confidence of the king. The great need today is a vision of God -- Not as a third blessing, -- it comes to every one who wants to go with God. It is not to be sought. Just live where God wants you to live, and He will attend to the rest. I know a young woman who received the fire, and for two whole years God let her wash dishes, sweep the kitchen, make. bread, and then when she had proved her consecration, and lived up to it -- "kitchen," if God said kitchen -- then He said, "Now go and preach my Word," and whenever that young woman does preach God blesses her, and often gives her souls. There is a world perishing, -- a hundred thousand souls going to eternity without God every day, a world perishing, a church indifferent, and the devil wise to do evil. You know what the churches are doing today. I just read in the "Methodist," of which Dr. Munhall is the editor, that the leading denomination in the United States is credited with but a fraction of one half of one per cent increase. Property to the value of four hundred and fifty million, a payroll of thirty-two million a year, over one million members, and only one half of one per cent increase according to their own statistics. The churches today are preaching the gospel of do, do, do, running to social service, and neglecting the salvation of souls. Everything today is along the line of humanitarian effort and social lines. The world will never be won for God that way; it is not His way. "Go preach the Gospel saith the Lord." The call is for men and women who are abandoned to His will and who are responding, "Here am I; send me." Read the text again, "In the year that King Uzziah died." He knew when he got the blessing. He knew when the live coal touched his lips. Beloved, has the fire fallen on you? Have you received the Holy Ghost since ye believed? Have you been so cleansed that you are a habitation of God through the Spirit? Well, Preacher, I do not feel. It does not come by feeling. We are not going by feeling. The first term applied to the followers of Jesus Christ was "Believers," and we are the children of Abraham, and he believed God. He was the Father of the faithful, and the first time the word believe is mentioned in the Bible it is in connection with his name. He believed God and it counted. God counts faith. He does today. Lord, increase our faith! ======================================================================== CHAPTER 67: 04.05. CHAPTER 05. THE SAINTS' ATTENDANTS ======================================================================== Chapter 5 THE SAINTS’ ATTENDANTS Psalms 23:6 -- "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life." Wonderful poem dictated by the Holy Spirit! I do not wonder at the praise lavished upon it by a brother who today is in the presence of the King. I linger on his words while my heart is stirred by their aptness and beauty. He says, "One of the things that we never get tired of is this Shepherd Psalm. More people read that poem than any poem ever written. More people know that poem than any poem that was ever written. Dr. McClure was not the first man, nor the last that, dying, limped his way through the poem of the Shepherd’s Psalm. People have read that Psalm or repeated it with the rain of many tears dashing in their faces; people have loved that poem and have repeated it with the wildest winds of trouble that ever blew, blowing upon them; people have put that poem under their tired heads for a sleeping pillow; people have leaned on that poem for a staff better than alpen stock when they climbed the wicked winter mountains; people have had that poem when their way was dark and arduous. Oh, hearts, this is God’s own pastoral! Some long since poet, he of the harp and the shepherd’s voice, and the shining eyes and bounding steps, he saw it and felt it, and then did like all poets do -- said the thing he saw and felt, and that is the "Shepherd Psalm." And now, hearken, O child of God, the man who gave us the beautiful description of this Psalm one time after this said, "I am the saddest man in the world." The winds were blowing on his face as he went down to the valley, but thank God, this man, too gentle and Christ like to harm others, felt the blows that sin in others bring; but he had the attendance of God’s own goodness and mercy, until the gates opened and he saw the glory of which he had often spake, and realized the blessedness of being in the presence of the Bishop and Shepherd of his soul. Out yonder by the side of the brook, whose waters refresh him, I see a man of God; and the birds of the air by divine appointment wait upon him. Ravens are his servants, bringing him food from afar. Morning and evening the Providence of God sets his table, and God’s winged messengers place on it bread and meat. Again I see him lying under a juniper tree sleeping as only a worn and weary man, discouraged, can sleep, when an angel touches him and says, "Arise and eat," and before him was a cake, broken on the coals, and a cruse of water. First the birds of the air, then the angels from heaven, but all caring for one man of God. Out yonder near a city in Samaria, I see another man; his enemies are closing fast around him. There are legions of them, all intent upon His destruction, and to human eyes that destruction is certain and sure. But when God opens the eyes of that man’s servant he sees above the head of his enemies on all hilltops round about, horses of fire and chariots of fire, a part of God’s celestial army, an advance guard from the skies to help, aye, to deliver one man of God. In fact, that is the designation of this man. He is not known by the string of letters after his name, but friends and enemies know him as "the man of God." The schools do not confer this title; it comes first from the skies when God looks down and says of a converted, redeemed soul, "He is mine." Thank God, all may be known as such who will meet the conditions. Yonder in the jail, yes, in the inner prison, in Jerusalem, I see a sleeping apostle, at Easter time. Herod intends to behead him to please the Jews. Man proposes but God disposes, and in the darkness of the night an angel arouses him from his slumbers, leads him out of the cell, out of the prison, out through the gates of the city and bids him go on his way. Man is immortal till his work is done, and evidently God has more for this man to do. But two of these men are prophets, and the other one is an apostle; they are eminent men of God, but will God care for His children, His followers today as He did then? Have we any such evidences as will show a divine interest in man, now, as we see in these instances in the past? Is there present care, present deliverance, present attendance, for God’s children now? Aye, to be sure there is. The visits of the ravens to the prophet by the side of the brook, of the angel to the sleeping man under the juniper tree, are only expressions of God’s goodness given for our encouragement, object lessons from the past, lessons from the King’s kindergarten of days gone by. Some time ago a friend said to a good old saint who was on the western slope, "How are you today?" And the reply was, "I am resting in God’s easy chair." "Oh, tell me where is that?" "Romans 8:28: All things work together for good to them that love God. Php 4:19: My God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory through Christ Jesus my Lord." Fine piece of furniture to add to your belongings and it is free. Oh, yes, today we have, as children of God attendants every day who wait upon us. Many professing Christians today are like Moses: they pray "Show me thy glory," when it is the last thing they are fit to see. God answered that prayer, but not as Moses asked. He just put him in a cleft of the rock, and made His goodness pass before him, and eighteen hundred years afterward when he was unencumbered with a body, he showed him on the summit of Mount Tabor, His glory; and when Peter, James and John, in the body, saw the same glory, they were so overcome that they knew not what they said. God knew what was best for Moses, so He passed before him in the cleft of the rock, and proclaimed, "The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering and abundant in goodness and truth keeping mercy for thousands." But today far beyond the privilege that Moses enjoyed we are hid in the rock that was cleft on Calvary, and not for one day, but for three hundred and sixty-five days in every year, the goodness and mercy of the Lord passes before us. The Christians of the Twentieth Century are living on the tallest mount of the ages, nearer God in point of privilege than any age in the past. Go back to that time when just one man was privileged to see these things and tell the multitude? Go back to that time when Israel followed the cloud by day and the fire by night? Go back to that day when three men only go up in the Mount with Jesus? Nay, nay, nay; I prefer this blessed, Holy Ghost dispensation when every man can commune with God and when goodness and the mercy of God are to be seen every day. "Oh," someone says, "I wish I could see them!" Open your eyes, yes, the eyes of your soul. There is an old proverb, "Seeing is believing." I want to give you something better that is founded on God’s Word. Get it, will you; let it burn into your very soul, "Believing is seeing. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the proof of things not seen. Blessed are they who having not seen with their mortal eyes yet have believed. Faith and trust are the eyes of the soul. Use them and be glad. You will see far down the future, and say with the sweet singer of Israel, "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life." Some folks testify, "Goodness and mercy have followed me all the days of my life." I am glad of that. No doubt it is true, but it I s the privilege of you and every child of God to say, "shall follow me all the days of my life." The meaning and the experience are like this: they shall be my attendants -- God’s goodness and mercy -- all the way. Let us examine this privilege. Goodness supplies all our need, is the treasurer of God’s storehouse. Do not talk today about ravens to feed a man, angels to do his baking and cooking, the heavens to drop manna right on the pathway six days out of seven. Why, the believer today has as a constant attendant the goodness of God, goodness that in the years gone by has been feeding, warming, clothing, enriching, redeeming the millions of God’s children. Why, I am ashamed that I haven’t trusted more. Just to think for one moment! When the world’s oppressed millions of God’s own children needed a land in which they could grow to the stature of free men, goodness gave then, a continent; when the wood was giving out, and the timber was growing scant, goodness uncovered the coal mines that man might be warmed and cheered; when the great monsters of the deep decreased, and as humanity increased and homes were multiplied, that these homes might be illuminated, goodness uncovered the reservoirs of oil, and we have it in wonderful supply. Goodness is love in action, and goodness waits on man. Believe it? Aye, I can and do believe anything that magnifies the goodness of God. Ever since Christ was lifted up on Calvary’s cross that man might be raised to a throne, I have been a believer in the text: Goodness shall attend me all the days of my life. Some time ago I saw an engraving. It represented several scenes in the life of man, as the artist saw them. First a little child -- standing on life’s pathway. The path ran near a precipice, but between the child and the danger was a guardian angel. In another scene was a youth embarked on the stormy waters of life. Here and there were the rocks, but the angel still guided the boat and the youth was safe. There was still another scene. It was of an old man drawing very near to the eternal shore, peaceful, serene and triumphant, and still the angel pilot was there. When Admiral Farragut was dying in Chicago, at a hotel, he wanted his pastor, or some man of God, to pray with him, and his wife sent for the preacher. A servant in the hotel who was a Romanist sent for the priest and the priest came in a hurry. It would have been" sent all over the world that in his dying hours the hero of Mobile Bay had called for a priest. The priest approached the bedside and began with the services of the church, but the Admiral shook his head, again and again. His wife, seeing something was wrong, drew near and asked what was the matter, and the dying Admiral said, "I want my own pilot. I want my own pilot." Thank God, we can have, clear down to the end, goodness and mercy until faith is lost in sight, and we look on the King in His beauty and are inhabitants of the land that is now afar off. Oh, it is true, "The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him." They say in England that if a man walks, he is poor; if he sometimes calls a hack, he is better off; if he has a footman, he is rich; and if he has two footmen he has a great inheritance. Judging by that every child of God has a great inheritance, for two of God’s servants goodness and mercy are always with him. Paul wrote to Timothy of an inexhaustible supply in Christ Jesus, for who can measure the riches of the grace of God as manifested in the gift of His Son to be our Savior? Think of it! goodness by your side all the time, in his hand the key to a never-failing storehouse. and in your possession the promise, "Every need shall be supplied!" Ask largely that your joy may be filled. Some one who evidently knew puts the Christian’s privilege in verse: "I have a never-failing bank, A more than golden store; No earthly hank is half so rich How then can I be poor! ’Tis when my stock is spent and gone, And I’m not worth a groat, I’m glad to hasten to my bank, And beg a little note. Sometimes my banker smiling says, ’Why don’t you oftener come! And when you draw a little note, Why not a larger sum! Why live so niggardly and poor? My bank contains a plenty. Why come and take a one-pound note? When you might have a twenty. Nay, twenty thousand ten times told Is but a trifling sum, To what my Father has laid up For me in God’s own Son. Sure then my Banker is so rich I have no need to borrow. But live upon my notes today, And draw again tomorrow." But we must not pass by mercy for mercy does not pass us by. Mercy blots out all our sins. I remember when I went to the altar a poor penitent sinner, and the burden of my prayer was, "Lord, have mercy on me!" Mercy is the first thing a sinner, conscious of his guilt, applies for. At the battle of Bull Run a wounded soldier as he laid on the field cried, "God have mercy on my soul!" It seemed to be contagious; for here and there among the wounded, the cry was taken up, "Have mercy on me, O ’God." The Psalmist declares, "Thou art plenteous in mercy O God." But who counts the mercies? Who recognizes mercy as an attendant upon the believer? And yet we are the recipients of continual mercy. A benevolent person gave Rowland Hill a hundred pound note to dispense to a poor minister. It was too much to send all at once, so Mr. Hill put a five-pound note in a letter and also these words, "There is more to follow." In a few days he sent another letter, same amount and same words, and so until the hundred pounds were all sent. So God sends us one mercy after another and with every blessing comes the promise, "More to .follow." "I forgive your sins, but there is more to follow. I adopt you into my family, but there is more to follow. I sanctify you, but there is more to follow. I make you more than conqueror, in the very hour of death, but there is more to follow. I receive you unto myself in heaven, but there is more to follow." "When we’ve been there ten thousand years, Bright shining as the sun; We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise Than when we first begun." Still always more to follow. Mercy and goodness not only follow us here, but they assure us of a home hereafter. I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. The Psalmist said, "I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord than to dwell in the tents of wickedness. A day in thy courts is better than a thousand." God’s worst, smallest, is better than the devil’s best. Better have the lowest place in God’s economy of grace than to sit on the devil’s throne. Any place in God’s Church is better than we deserve. When the poor prodigal made up his mind to come back to his father’s house, he was so mindful of his unworthiness that he determined to ask, "Make me as one of thy hired servants, for I am not worthy to be called thy son." Paul speaking of this great privilege says, "But God who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he has loved us, Even when we were dead in trespasses and sins, hath quickened us together with Christ and hath raised us up together and made us to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." Beloved, are you sitting together in heavenly places in Christ? Are you singing as your present experience: "I am dwelling on the mountain, Where I ever would abide; For I’ve tasted life’s pure water And my soul is satisfied. There’s no thirsting for life’s pleasures, Nor adornment rich and gay, For I’ve found a richer treasure, One that fadeth not away." "Oh, the blessed privilege of the children of God, sitting in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, dwelling in the House of the Lord! An old saint said one time, "Why, I live there." We do not have to wait until we die to sit there, to live there.’ ’Tis heaven below, my Redeemer to know." "NOW are we the sons of God." To the Christian this world is just the ante room to .heaven, and death is just the corridor to the more beautiful part of the Father’s house. Bye and bye we shall go through it, and with the mortal changed to immortality, with this earthy changed to the heavenly, with eye undimmed, seeing no longer through a glass darkly, but face to face "Knowing as we are known, How shall I love that Word, And oft repeat before the throne Forever with the Lord!" And that forever means, Home forever, trials all past, death and the grave past, inside the city of our God and Home forever, cruel partings past, our loved ones with us for ever. "No chilling winds nor poisonous breath, Shall reach that healthful shore; . Sickness and sighing, pain and death, Are felt and feared no more." I have imagined a Christian dying; no, not dying, that is a misnomer. I have imagined the homegoing of the Christian. Friends are weeping all around. Heart strings are snapping. Farewells are being said. Every breath is watched as the last, but I see that pilgrim step out of the house of clay, and mount upwards to the city of our God. I hear him as he shouts, "Old body farewell, earth farewell," and as the songs of the redeemed fall on his ear, with goodness and mercy his constant attendants still by his side, he enters in through the gates into the city of our God. And all the angels strike their harps of gold, and all the prophets shout, and all the redeemed sing, as our Christ rises from His throne to greet his last trophy from earth and says to him in tones that thrill the Church triumphant, and makes all the bells of heaven ring for joy, "Enter thou into the joys of thy Lord and sit down on His throne." "Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing, My great Redeemer’s praise, The glories of my God and king, The Triumphs of His grace. Angels assist our mighty joys, Strike all your harps of gold, But when you raise your highest notes, His love can ne’er be told." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 68: 04.06. CHAPTER 06. IT IS WRITTEN ======================================================================== Chapter 6 IT IS WRITTEN Romans 10:15 -- "It is written." I have very little regard for that method of using the Bible that will permit one to open it at random, put the finger on the verse, and then take it as a message from God. It lacks common sense. One might as well go in a drug store, shut your eyes and reach out your hand and place it on a bottle, and then take it as a remedy from God, and expect to get well. God says in the Word, "Search the Scriptures ... for they are they which testify for Me." The disciples at Berea were more noble than those at Thessalonica, because they searched the Word as to whether these things were so. A knowledge of the Word can be obtained only by a faithful, systematic study of the Book. Suppose you lived in that age and state of the world in which human nature is found unenlightened by the revelation made in the Word. Just fancy yourself back there in the darkness of heathenism; the paths of virtue and safety obscured; your Maker hidden from your view; your origin, your future, your destination, unknown; the way to the tomb, your inevitable course, haunted with specters of doubt and dismay; your heart turning hither and thither, asking for light and direction, but finding only darkness and uncertainty. In the midst of this gloom, suppose the heavens opened and there descended to you a messenger bringing to you a book which informed you of your origin and destiny, which revealed to you the true God, and told you that He loved you, -- a book which made the path of every virtuous excellence plain before you, and disclosed to you a title, an eternal title to immortality. With what transportation you would receive it! The book which he gives you, you would press to your lips, hold to your heart, you would drop on it tears of excessive joy. As the messenger returns to the skies, you would follow him with benedictions until he vanished from your view, and the precious volume you would carry to your home with joy and exultation. You would call in your friends, your neighbors, all your loved ones, and you would tell them of the gift God had sent to you; and were the wealth of the world offered to you in exchange for it, you would clasp it to your heart and declare it to be above all price. Take away the Scriptures and what is your condition but that of unenlightened nature? Think of the inspiration of the Scriptures, and their important contents; and what is their value less than if brought to you immediately and directly from the skies? All the Scriptures are of God, and to you is the Word of this salvation sent. Yet who today regards them at their value? For the love and kindness of God in giving us the Word, no gratitude is too much, nor too excessive. But because we have always been in the enjoyment of it, its light and comfort are familiar to our minds; we be hold it as we do the sun in the heavens, unmindful of the majesty and benignity of its Author, and almost unconscious of the importance of its beams. When one thinks of the inspiration of the Scriptures, of their completeness, and of their end and uses, unless you are ungrateful to your Maker and unjust to yourselves, you would be like the Psalmist, -- as glad of God’s Word as one that findeth great spoils. Hear him as he says, "Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against Thee." Oh, how men professing to be called of God do miss it when they resort to hymn books, and literature, to get a text or a subject, when they are to preach! Preaching is not a profession, -- it is a calling, and men are to preach for eternal results. This morning, while in prayer at the family altar, I asked God, when I was no longer a blessing, to take me out of the world and home to heaven. The ministry is to preach the Word, and win souls; and the preacher who does not do it, no matter how many letters are with his name in his weekly advertisements and bulletins, he is missing the teaching of the Word, and the call of God; and had better go to judgment from a land of darkness, than from a pulpit where he has been a miserable failure before God, the angels and the host of the redeemed. Would to God that every preacher would feel with Paul the burden of the ministry, and the value of souls, and could get a vision of the eternal results that follow! All men need this Book in life; they need it in the dying hour. They need the Christ it tells of, the One whom; men are to preach, if they meet the thought of God. A Southern Christian woman was dying, and in her delirium she imagined that she was riding in her carriage with her faithful servant in the carriage seat. "Is David driving?" she asked. "There is no danger if David is driving." "No, no, Missus," replied the weeping Negro at her side, "Poor Dave can’t drive now, de Lord has hold on de lines." And he spoke the truth for all ages. The Lord of life holds the lines, and guides the saints through the gate of death into the Paradise of God. Rabelais, when dying, said, "I am going to meet the great Perhaps." Poor fellow, when the child of God comes to the end, taught by the Word, he exclaims with the dying Horace Bushnell, "Well, now we are all going home together, and I say the Lord be with you -- and in grace -- and peace -- and love -- and that is the way I have come along home." Thank God for a faith built on the Word -- thank God for the word, "It is written." The exhortations of the Spirit are here for our admonition, exhortation, and instruction in righteousness. "He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches," -- and that is just as appropriate to the church and the world today as it was when first uttered. Jesus is not only the Savior of men, but He is the great Example; not example merely, and yet His life is teaching us the way to God, heaven, and victory. When He was assailed in the wilderness He was well equipped for the conflict. He was acquainted with the Jewish Scriptures, the Old Testament, that you and I have today; and to each suggestion of the tempter He never offered an argument, -- He merely replied with a portion of the Word of God. He was able to say at once to the enemy, "It is written," because He knew what was written. He knew what was in the Word, and by it He repelled effectively every assault of Satan. When Paul wanted to enforce an argument he would write, "For the Scripture saith," and to the old prophets, "Thus saith the Lord," was the rock from which they could not be moved. Paul writes to his son in the Gospel, "Give thyself to reading," knowing well that no one was equipped for the Christian life unless acquainted with the Word. During the late war, and also over in the Philippines, some of our men were armed with the old Springfield rifle, while others had the Krag Jorgensen. The Springfield was effective at half a mile while the Krag Jorgensen was effective at a mile or two miles. The Spaniards were armed with the Mowzer, and had a decided advantage over our men who were armed with Springfields. Our Government, knowing this, made a decided effort to arm all our soldiers with the K. J. rifle. They wanted them at their best and able to contend with any foe. The Bible is the best weapon for the Christian. It is an arsenal full of weapons. It has the Sword of the Spirit, -- the weapon that Jesus used in the wilderness, the dynamite of the Holy Ghost; and it is the duty of every child of God to be well acquainted with the Word. It fits him for any battlefield, any enemy that hell may inspire. It comforts in every hour of trial, and strengthens in moments of weakness. When we have such a book at our command, I do not wonder that the late Oswald Chambers said, "It is a crime to be weak." It enables the believer to say in the confidence born of the Word, when hell assails; "Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy; for though I fall yet shall I rise again." The Word of God was the weapon of Jesus Christ. He might have called on His Father for a legion of angels, and they would have been given to Him but, instead, for your encouragement and mine, He used the Word. It was the weapon of the Apostles. They preached Jesus. The great Apostle to the Gentiles said, "For I am determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ and Him crucified, to the Greeks foolishness and to the Jews a stumbling block, but to them which are saved Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." Such were the victories they achieved that their enemies said, "These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also." An illiterate man who was called of God to preach one time went among his fellows and used this for a text, and his divisions were something like this, "The world is wrong side up. It needs to be turned upside down. Third. We are the fellows to do it." God blessed him? Of course He did. He takes the weak things to confound the mighty. There was a man whom some folks said did not have good sense, but he was impressed that since God had saved him he ought to work for God and get others saved. A lawyer attended the same church to which this man belonged. The pastor was very desirous of saving the lawyer and winning him for the church, so he prepared a sermon to meet the lawyer’s case. One night he preached this sermon when the lawyer was present. Shortly after, the lawyer gave his heart to God and joined the church. The pastor felt that his sermon under God had done the work. But get the truth now, and see how God works: The brother who had not much sense went to the lawyer in meeting one night. He was interested in his salvation. The pastor saw him and wished he would stay away from the lawyer, for he knew he would drive him away. The brother said to the lawyer, "Don’t you want to go to heaven?" "No," was the reply. "Then go to hell," was the rejoinder, and the brother left him. The lawyer was asked by the pastor, "What part of my sermon was it that convinced you?" "Oh," said the lawyer, "It was not your sermon. I could have answered every part of that, every point you made. It was that dunderhead who came to me and asked me if I wanted to go to heaven, and I told him, ’No.’ He told me, ’Then go to hell.’ And I got to thinking, ’That is where I am going, if I do not repent.’ And I began to pray and asked God to save me. That is why I am here." God can bless any small effort even of the weakest when it is for His glory. He does do it. I have heard many sermons as unctionless as a last year’s bird’s nest, fine, some folks called them; and then I have heard others that were apparently without point, but God blessed them and souls were saved. Preach the Word. It holds good today, and is owned of God. There are promises in the Word of God for every condition of life, and an acquaintance with them inspires the soul with confidence. Peter says, "Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises; that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature." And that man called of God to preach the Word says, "Beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God." Let us use them, avail ourselves of them. Do you know what is here for you already provided? Is it not a wonderful provision of God that you can turn at any time to the Word and find there something that will defeat the enemy? When David was without a sword they told him there was none except the sword of Goliath; and, as he remembered how he had hewed off the head of the giant when he was but a stripling he said, "Give me that, there is none like it." So there are no weapons for you, my brethren, like these that have been proved and tried in the days gone by. When tried, ask the Holy Ghost to guide you in the selection, and then use it to the glory of God. By so doing you are in the Scriptural, Apostolic Holy Ghost line, and you will always find that victory is sure and yours. The Lord did it three times in the wilderness. The enemy charged on Him three times, but He received each assault on the point of the Sword, and the devil was glad to retreat. IT IS WRITTEN, it is written, it is written; you need no other; follow the example of the. Lord, and with Him have the victory. Look, here is a weapon for a storm -- tossed soul -- one who has taken his mind and his trust off the Lord. Look at him. He wakes in the morning and thinks of his cares; thinks of his troubles; dwells on them; regale’s his friends with them; takes them to work with him; brings them home with him, and goes to bed with them. You have met him; you know him. Troubles assail him on every side, -- a whole phalanx of cares -- but there is a weapon in the Word of God that will put them all to flight. Use it. It is written, "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee; because he trusteth in thee." Here is another, "Casting all your care upon Him; for He careth for you." Peter walked bravely on the waters until he looked on the waves, then he began to sink. Look to Jesus, and walk anywhere the providences of God call you. But here is another person. Cares? No. Sickness? No, never was sick a day in his life. But the devil assails him; casts his fiery darts at him day after day. The enemy comes in like a flood; temptations are sore; intense smell of the pit. What is there in the Word of God for such a time? Listen, "When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him," and the margin reads, "and put him to flight." Claim that at once. God still lives and the promise is true, true for you. Claim it and sing, "Should earth against my soul engage, And fiery darts be hurled, Then I can smile at Satan’s rage And face a frowning world. Let cares like a wild deluge come; Let storms of sorrow fall; So I but safely reach my home, My God, my heaven, my all." You may have the victory by taking the Word. Simple? To be sure it is; but so many want another way, forgetting that God works by simple processes, that He may bring to naught the wisdom of the mighty. If some folks had been at Jericho they would have rejected rams’ horns, and the marching six days, and, on the seventh day, marching seven times, and then worst of all, "shouting." They would have said, "No shouting, please." They would have silver trumpets, and dress parades, -- but God’s way brought the victory. The heroes, of whom we have an account in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, put to flight the armies of the aliens by faith in God’s Word. Cares, and trials, and afflictions, and temptations, and demons, stand in mortal dread of "it is written." O church of the living God, O ye men and women, ordained before the foundations of the world were laid to be holy and victorious, use the Word, and put to flight all that opposes. Oh, that the prophets of the land were sounding forth that which is written, instead of sermonettes on agnosticism, and evolution, and the state of affairs in Europe. "Go preach my Gospel," saith the Lord. "Bid the whole world my grace receive. He shall be saved who trusts my Word. He shall be damned who won’t believe." Prepare yourself beforehand for time and eternity, for life and for death. Listen to this: "Perfect love casteth out fear;" all fear; fear of men and devils; fear of judgment. I surely am an admirer of Paul, -- he would walk in every path that God opened up to him. The Holy Ghost testified to him that bonds and afflictions awaited him in every city. Friends implored him with prayers and tears not to go. They dreaded the power of Rome, but lions and perils and demons and threatened death, all failed to stop him. He declared, "I am not only ready to be bound at Rome; I am ready to die for the Lord Jesus’ sake also." Fear casts a shadow, -- brings gloom and dread into the heart; but just as when you open the shutters, and let in the sunlight, you drive out all the darkness, so the love of God perfected in the heart, drives out all fear and timidity, and makes the weakest one to say, "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." With a full assurance of the value of the Word you can look adversity, and afflictions, and cross purposes, all in the face, and in advance shout the victory, saying, "I know whom I have believed;" and He has it written in the Word, "All things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose." "None of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself." You can bunch them all and say, "I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come ... shall be able to separate me from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus my Lord." For it is written, "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee." Look at Joseph in his dying hour: He gathers his brethren and kinsmen around him and in dependence on the Word of God he says, "God will surely visit you, as He swore unto Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence." He believed God’s Word, and I have thought, as I read the last verse in the Book of Genesis, "And Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old; and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt," that unburied coffin was standing evidence of their dependence on the Word: He will visit us as He said, and we shall go up out of this land. Victory and freedom are certain because, "It is written." Do you know what that WORD meant? Let me illustrate. Here is an acorn, a bushel of them. What do you see? "Oh," you say, "acorns, just acorns." Why, bless you, beloved, I see oak trees, and timber and bridges and ships and navies and conquests and victories, all right there in those acorns. So in that promise I see Red Seas crossed, rivers divided, walled cities taken, enemies defeated, Israel in Canaan, -- complete victories. So in "it is written" I see victory for every child of God over everything that may arise, -- victory in the midst of the darkness; victory when friends do not know what to make of you; victory when death comes into the home; victory, till in the very presence of death you may shout defiance to the grim monster and say: "Knowest thou not when my Master died, Thy sting was lost in His wounded side; And the gates of steel and the bars of brass Gave way that the King of kings might pass?" "It is written," "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though after my skin worms shall destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God; whom I shall see for myself, and mine eves shall behold, and not another." Amen! ======================================================================== CHAPTER 69: 04.07. CHAPTER 07. THERE IS CORN IN EGYPT ======================================================================== Chapter 7 THERE IS CORN IN EGYPT Genesis 42:12 -- "There is corn in Egypt." Genesis is the book of beginnings. Many streams from which the saints of all ages have quenched their thirst have their source in these chapters. Man may turn from these lessons taught here and say to us who revere the whole Book, that we are "under the law," yet when I remember that this Old Testament was the Scriptures of Jesus which He advised the people of His day to search, declaring at the same time, "they are they which testify of Me," I conclude, for one, that I will stay by the whole Book. Genesis is the authentic basis of the Bible. Before I enter its portals to scan the treasures it contains, I am overwhelmed by the statement the Divine mind first makes to man, "In the beginning God." Remember, in this, no matter what great mysteries are revealed to my untutored mind, nor how massive the truths I meet, God is the explanation of all these. What He does not see fit to reveal to me now I shall know hereafter. But there are more facts left on record than I can comprehend. I learn that in all ages God has had a people, and, wherever He has had a people, there the providences of God were engaged in their behalf. The man who slept on the mountain top all alone said he "had God for his next door neighbor;" but as I step quickly along the history of man, passing from century to century, scanning the footprints of the race, I find also the footsteps of God Himself, always working good to man. And I am firmly convinced "His footsteps down the centuries beat one eternal rhyme." If man fails in the garden under the most perfect conditions, I find that God gives him another opportunity and brightens the clouds that lower over him with a precious glowing promise: ’The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head." If I find man unrepentant and wicked until God in His wrath lets loose the reservoirs of the skies, and the fountains of the great deep are broken up until the waters, rising mountain high, sweep a race beneath their waves, thank God, I also find those very same waters bearing on their breast an ark of salvation that assures the coming of a mighty Deliverer who shall destroy all the works of the devil. In the loins of the occupant of that ark is the seed of the Comer (so the Jews call the Messiah), the Christ of Calvary. In the Book of Genesis I learn unmistakably this great comforting truth, you cannot thwart God. Shadows may come, but back of the shadows is God, keeping watch above His own. The clouds we so much dread are big with mercies. Man may say God is on the side of big battalions, but this book declares He is on the side of truth. "The eternal years of God are hers." Oh the calmness of the eternal God! He takes a man out of the midst of idolaters, transplants him into a strange land, puts him in to a deep sleep, so he will be still, and then holds converse with him. "Know of a surety thy seed shall be as the stars of the heavens for multitude, and they shall be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them, and they shall afflict them four hundred years, but that nation will judge and they shall come out with great substance." The promises of God are for the people of God. The promise made to Abraham is renewed to his son, and the same Providence cares for and watches over him. To his son’s son, God again says, "Thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of." And right here I see in this man’s history the story of your life and mine. God has outlined the plan for us, made it known to us in His Word, and by His Spirit, and yet we forget the Word; and, when trials come, when clouds cast their shadows, when God in love is exercising His parental right to strip us, we say, "All these things are against us." We sing with tears on our cheeks, aye, and mean it when we sing: "The soul that on Jesus doth lean for repose He’ll never, no never forsake to its foes; That soul though all hell should endeavor to shake, He’ll never, no never, no never forsake." And then within six hours or less we forget the promises of God and, distrusting His providences, let the great enemy of God and our souls get us on the run. Read carefully the context and get the lesson God would teach us. I see here the child of the promise in the midst of famine -- the land once so bountiful now blasted and withered, as if by the curse of God -- a child of God, an heir of the promise, surrounded by his children, and his children’s children, all heirs of the same promise, and all threatened by the same famine. A mark of God’s displeasure? Nay, a mark of His providential care. That famine is a hint from God to Jacob to move out of his nest; it is an assurance, if he but knew it, that the God of Abraham and Isaac is on the throne, and that His eyes are upon His people. We are so short-sighted that a little stress of circumstances makes us forget promises, forget the Promiser, and go to bemoaning our fate, forgetting that the "love of God is broader than the measure of man’s mind, and the love of the eternal is most wonderfully kind." That famine means that the Almighty God is moving along the lines of His thought for His people, to get them where He wants them. He is pointing them to the fulfillment of His promises made to Abraham: "Thy seed shall be strangers in a strange land that is not theirs." It means that He is robbing them of sustenance, depriving them of corn; it means He wants to put them where there is corn in abundance. He cannot fail, He will not forget. To the child of promise "All things work together for good" -- all things temporal and spiritual. A man in Nebraska sowed sugar beet, and felt good over the prospect of an excellent crop. But one morning he went to his fields and the frost had nipped them badly. Discouraged, he went away to another farm that he owned, saying, "What a failure; what a disappointment!" Some weeks after, having occasion to return that way, he saw the finest crop of growing sugar beets, he had ever looked upon. The frost had only pruned the plants; the roots had struck down deeper and stronger, and he reaped bountifully from that field. When God sends a frost to nip your plans, when your prospects are blasted, hold still; God wants you to take a better grip, a firmer hold upon Himself. Paul on horseback surrounded by Roman soldiers, Paul on ship and wrecked, in charge of a Roman centurion, is more than the prisoner of Rome; he is the prisoner of the Lord Jesus Christ, who must testify for his Lord and Master at Rome, and he is on the way to greater triumphs, escorted by the cavalry of the greatest world power of the age. I hear him as he gives a trumpet blast from his Gospel trumpet, after looking over the entire field: "Who shall separate us from the love of God? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? ... Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors, through Him that loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." I am here reminded of a dying soldier boy left to perish, and no loved ones near. The chaplain came that way and found him, and, kneeling by the dying boy, he asked him of his faith, to what did he belong. "Belong?" asked the dying boy, not getting the import of the question. "Yes," said the chaplain, "of what persuasion are you?" "Oh," said the boy, not far from the glory to come, "same as Paul: I am persuaded that neither life nor death shall separate me from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus my Lord." And he responded to the last roll call, and went up to see God. This famine is a blessing to Jacob, if he would only look up, and it is the road to greater blessings, to promises fulfilled, to mighty displays of God’s power. It is the road to divided seas, enemies overthrown, angels’ food, smitten rocks, to the possession of wells already dug, cities already built, a land in which there is no scarceness of bread, that flows with milk and honey. But what trouble God does have with us to get us there! Their need was great, sure. The famine did pinch, sure. But let me say right here that God does always anticipate our needs. He is never surprised. There are no accidents with God. He is not shortsighted; He knows the end from the beginning. A gentleman visited an asylum of deaf and dumb children and, examining them, he wrote this question, "Does God reason?" One of the children wrote underneath immediately this answer, "God knows and sees every thing. Reason implies doubt and uncertainty, therefore, God does not have to reason." Aye, God knows . every need, every sigh, every heartache. God knew all about the famine, and made provision for it seven years before it came. . Down in Egypt, the richest bottom land in all the world had been producing bountifully, and the Egyptians had been storing it up for the heirs of the promise. I know the Egyptians had some, too, but that is God’s way of doing. He blesses His own people so abundantly, that much of it runs over to bless other folks. There was corn in Egypt, God had not forgotten and, better yet, He had His man in charge of the corn. And more yet, His man was a friend of the famine stricken. God had not only prepared an abundance of corn, but He had been preparing the way to get the heirs of the promise to the corn. Jacob shall have corn, but God will have His way to get him there. Look at him, surrounded by his children, among them two upon whom he dotes, around whom his heartstrings seem to twine. The father’s love for Joseph breeds envy in the hearts of the brethren, and they conspire to get rid of the dreamer. A dreamer sure enough he is, but his dreams are of God. In his youth God gave him intuitions of coming greatness. In his dreams of the night he saw the sun, moon and eleven stars make obeisance to him. He saw his own sheaf, standing upright in the field while eleven sheaves bowed to his sheaf. The world, aye, and the church, crucifies men who have visions from God. It sends a John Bunyan to jail while it keeps a cruel and God-defying Jeffries on the bench. And this dreamer was no exception. In his way to the future, to which God had called him to be the redeemer and preserver of his brethren, there was the pit, the dungeon, the slavery and the exile. His own brethren sell him to the Ishmaelites, take his coat of many colors, dip it in blood, and say to Jacob, "Know thou if this be thy son’s coat?" And Jacob, mourning his son as dead, refused to be comforted, and said, "I will go down to the grave unto my son, mourning." Then his father wept for him. Did God permit it? Yes. Already His providence is at work for Jacob, and he is to learn the lesson, that the man who will live for God shall find that all things are his servants. Sorrows are not meant to disfigure tis; they are to transfigure. The folks who go through fiery furnaces, heated seven times hotter than they are wont to be heated; are on the way to promotion. Lions’ dens and jails are stepping stones for saints. Crosses are wings by which they pass over mountains, and get within whispering distance of the throne. This sorrow is a stepping stone out of famine to plenty. Job had twice as much after his trial as he had before it. Don’t let the devil frighten you by magnifying trials. Where he puts up a scarecrow depend upon it there is corn, go ahead, and find it, and find the devil’s scarecrows are harmless things. My Bible says, "Many shall be purified, and made white and tried." Trials are an evidence of your sonship. By suffering with Jesus God is getting you ready to reign with Him. When famine comes He will tell you where the corn is; when trials come, grace will be nigh al hand. God is able to make all grace abound toward you that ye always having all sufficiency in all things may abound to every good work. There is an old adage, "Troubles never come singly." How we do remember such sayings of the world, proverbs born of their sorrows and unbelief! forgetting that God’s Word assures us that there are two messengers of God that accompany every child of God. Listen to the sweet singer of Israel: "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life." No wonder he adds, "And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever." Trials are apt to double up, but, remember this, "When the tale of brick is doubled, Moses comes." Famine grows sore upon them, and death threatens, for Jacob says "Go down into Egypt that we may live and not die." And when they go in obedience to his command, and return with sufficient for awhile, they are told not to return unless they bring Benjamin, the son of Jacob’s right hand. And very soon it is a question of life and death again, but then the Governor who has all the corn of Egypt at his command says: "No, Benjamin, no corn. Jacob, you want life; you want corn; you must let your Benjamin go." "What? Joseph is gone! Simeon is gone! Must Benjamin go, too? Will yet take him away also?" How like us today. God wants to bless us, to enrich us, to feed us, on the very same terms, but we hold on to our Benjamin though we sing, "The dearest idol I have known, Whate’er that idol be Help me to tear it from Thy throne, And worship only Thee." When God instituted the Church in the family of Abraham, He taught us a lesson we are so slow to learn. We admire the man who left everything else at the foot of the mountain, and went up with his Isaac, and deliberately bound him, and put him on the altar, but there are few Isaacs surrendered today. The church at large holds on to the dollars, the Mammon it worships, gives to build million-dollar churches, while it recalls missionaries from the fields, saying, "We have not the money." It burns incense to nets, while forgetting the world at large, dying and without hope. God help us, ministry and people, to practice what we preach! God says in His Word that there are great returns for giving up the best we have. "For iron I will give you brass, for brass I will give you silver, for silver I will give you gold." A man once said he got back more than he shoveled out, for God had the largest shovel. ’Tis true, as many of God’s folks have found out. A lady of wealth being well saved took off her pearls and diamonds and, selling them, with the proceeds she built a Rescue Home. For months she visited it, taking great interest in the inmates. In a few years a precious soul saved through the instrumentality of the home was on her deathbed. She wanted to see the founder of the home, and when she came, in gratitude she told how the Lord saved her through the home, and admitting that if it had not been for the Home she would have been lost. As she bent over to kiss the lady’s hand, the tears fell on the fingers where the diamonds were once worn. And as the lady looked at them, in gratitude to God she said, "My diamonds have come back again." Surely God gives us back again that which we have given Him. How loath we are to surrender the dearest! He says, "I want your boy for Africa, I want your girl for India." "O Lord, anything but that." "I want your property. I want to transmute your gold into jewels for my crown. I want to send the Gospel abroad. I want others to hear that there is corn in Egypt. Give Me your money." God wants our dearest and best, and we must surrender or starve our souls. I see old Jacob standing at the door of his tent: "Joseph is gone, Simeon is gone, and now Benjamin! I am bereft indeed!" But was he? How we do misinterpret God’s dealings. Down yonder Joseph is Governor of all Egypt, and all the corn is in his hands, at his disposal, and his heart is longing for Jacob. Down yonder Simeon is boarding at Joseph’s expense, and the land of Goshen, the garden spot of Egypt, awaits the whole family. Jacob, cheer up! "We scan His works in vain. God is His own interpreter, and He will make it plain." A lady was working on a piece of tapestry when her pastor came in and, seeing the wrong side of it, he said, "What a strange piece of work! No figure! The whole thing is askew." "Oh," she said, "you are looking on the wrong side of it. There is another side." When Joseph, and Simeon, and Benjamin are all gone, when the last surrender is made, then trust a little, and you will soon see the wagons coming, -- wagons that Joseph will send for you; for Joseph is alive and he will come with them. He is riding in the second chariot and holds the key to all the grain. Soon you shall eat at his table, feel his embraces, and know his kisses on your lips. Do we get the lesson? Do we find this Scripture profitable? Must God tear away our nest before we will try our wings? "He builds too low who builds beneath the skies." Our treasures are in heaven. This is not our abiding place. God wants us to move on and up. Our affections must be set on things above, where our Joseph sits at the right hand of the Father. All power is given him in heaven and on earth. Trust His Word! He says, "I am with you always;" "I am coming again to receive you unto myself, that where I am there ye may be also, I go to prepare a place for you." Jacob started for the corn and on his way met the chariot, and Joseph and a great company of Joseph’s friends. We are on the way, and, at any moment, our Joseph is apt to come, in His chariot riding along the edge of the clouds and with Him a great company. He will receive us to Himself. We will sup with Him. Sorrow and saints will be divorced forever. "Then let our songs abound; let every tear be dry. We are marching through Immanuel’s land to fairer worlds on high." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 70: 04.08. CHAPTER 08. THE LIFE ABUNDANT ======================================================================== Chapter 8 THE LIFE ABUNDANT John 10:10 -- "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." There is a wonderful fullness in the Word of God, and oftentimes, as we read, our hearts are touched by the abundant promises, and the provision made for the human race, if they will but accept of it. If we do not see this provision when we read we should take the advice of the Spirit to the church of the Laodiceans, and anoint our eyes with eyesalve that we may see. This to my mind is what David wanted when he prayed for some of God’s eyesalve, "Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law." And when God anoints man’s eyes, when HE opens them, then we see the truth revealed in the light of God. The veil is not on the Word, but on the heart, yet the Spirit will take away the veil, and the Bible, the Word of God, teems with wonders. It is a wonderland; it not only relates miracles, but it assures believers that greater works than these that I do shall ye do also because I go to my Father. Walk with Jesus through the Word, and let Him open the understanding, by the Holy Spirit, and, as the disciples on the way to Emmaus felt their hearts glowing within them with the new spiritual life, so will our hearts burn within us by the way. Beloved, we do not need any new revelation; we just need to search and study and love the Word, the revelation that we now have, and God will wonderfully open up the whole Californias, and Sierra Nevadas, and Golcondas and Klondikes of spiritual wealth unto each one of us. The Bible is the best seller on the bookstands today, but we need more knowledge of the Book that lies unopened on our center tables. Jesus said, "Search the Scriptures; they are they which testify of Me: in them ye have eternal life." Oh, God has mines that very few love to explore; they go after the ashes of the world; they put money into pockets that have holes; they starve their souls on the world’s dainties while they might be rich. Listen to what God says in the Word, "I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment that thou mayest be clothed." Buy it, buy it, buy it! The wise man said, "Buy the truth, and sell it not." Nowhere else can we find the abundant life but through Him who is the Life. The prayer of the heart should be as Adelaide Proctor has so well expressed: "I do not ask O Lord That life should be a pleasant road; I do not ask that thou shouldst take from me Aught of its load; I do not ask that flowers should ever spring Beneath my feet; I know too well the poison and the sting Of things too sweet. For one thing, Lord, dear Lord, I plead: Lend me aright, Though strength should falter, and though heart should bleed, Through peace to light." The Word makes known to us the way in the very word of Jesus who was Himself the Life,the Truth, the Way. He knew that man did not have the life abundant. He knew the misery of a soul in hell, and the joy of a soul in heaven. He knows the meanness of a life left unto itself and, because He knew, He pitied us in our lost estate, and, pitying us when there was no man to help, He brought life to us. And redemption was an assured fact from that very moment for every soul who would accept of the Way as He laid it down. The soul must rise above transitory things and soar into the environment of things spiritual if it would meet the thought of God for all men. God is now waiting to come into every heart, to take full possession, to give life, and life more abundant, but we are so slow to see. A woman very busy one time entered her room as the twilight shades were falling. She went directly to her desk, turned on the gas, and began to write. Page after page she wrote; five minutes she worked, ten, then half an hour. The solitude became oppressive. She wheeled her chair around and, with a shock of joyful surprise, looked squarely into the face of her dearest friend lying on the lounge by her side. "Why, I didn’t know you were here! .Why didn’t you speak?" "Because you were so busy you didn’t speak to me." So it is with God. The Holy Ghost, the representative of the Father’ and the Son, is here all the time, but we are so busy, so taken up with other things, so engrossed with temporal and material things, we fail to listen, to recognize His presence. We can never be alive to the Infinite unless we get the life which so abundantly awaits us, aye, is proffered us on every page of the Word of God; for all these things were written that ye might believe and believing might have life through His Name. Someone may now say; "I thought grace was free!" So it is. Water is free, but you must drink it or you will die. Air is free, but you must inhale it or you will die. Grace is free, truth is free, salvation is free, and abundant, but you must accept of it, and accept of it on God’s own terms. Here is God’s own air, take it in, breathe it; fill your lungs with it, and live. If you close your lungs against it, your blood will stagnate and you will die. If you close your heart to the truth of God, you will die of spiritual stagnation. Open all the channels, pay the price, empty your hands, purify your hearts, and just let -- let -- let the Holy Ghost have His way, and you will know the power of this wonderful salvation. Yes, I love this fullness of this wonderful Word; I love it because it is the fullness of God, and it is for you and for me. Praise the Lord! I take a telescope and look up to the heavens and I see stars, stars innumerable. The telescope does not put them there, but it enables me to see them. These wonderful truths are in the Word, in this blessed old Bible, but we do not see them oftentimes because our affections and prejudices and pride and distorted judgment prevent. But just let the Holy Spirit come in, give Him full possession, and He will reveal their beauty and power unto us. Some years ago I was reading after that now sainted man of God, Rev. R. V. Lawrence of the New Jersey Conference, a man who knew what the abundant life meant, and I recall partly an illustration he once used. He told of an Irish boy who was away from home, and so homesick that every day he would go down to the water’s edge and look toward home. One day a gentleman who was at the shore took with him a telescope and looked across the waters with so much pleasure that he did not fail to express aloud. The boy heard him, and also expressed a desire to take a look towards home any way, not expecting to see the cabin by the water side over there. The gentleman gratified the boy, and when the lad looked across the waters and saw everything brought right alongside, he began, "There it is! There is the cabin, there are the pigs, and the boys, and there is mother sitting by the door, and there is the green grass! Oh, I feel as though I was home again!" Then turning to the gentleman, that boy who didn’t have a penny in his pocket said, "Say, Mister, what will you take for this?" I do not wonder he wanted to buy it. But here is a Book from God Himself. It is the Word of God, and I put it to my eyes and by faith I see, the unseen to mortal eyes. Yonder is my home, my portion fair. Yonder are the mansions of the blessed. Yes, yonder are the loved ones who wait our coming. Yonder my Lord awaits our arrival and, as the soul of the believer catches the inspiration and fire, he sings, "I am thinking of home, yes of home, sweet home, And my spirit doth long to be In that far better land where the saints ever sing Of the glory of God, my Redeemer and King, And salvation so full and so free." Oh, the richness of the Word of God! Oh, the blessedness of the faith that brings salvation nigh! It takes the very best that language can give to express, aye, we fail to express it; language is too poor to tell what one feels as waves of glory roll over the heart that just simply believes God, and takes Him at His Word. Listen, as my heart goes out in the Word, Where sin abounded, grace doth abound. That it? Nay, "grace doth much more abound." Hallelujah! Niagaras of grace! Oh do hear it! Oh do believe it, and get blessed! God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all things, may abound in every good work. Is that it? No! No! "That ye always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work." Men, women, brethren and sisters, here is something of which you can have enough. A woman who was always poor, and never had enough of anything, one time went down to the ocean, and as she watched the waves coming in, one after another, and no cessation, she stood in open-eyed wonder, and said, "Thank God, here is something of which you can have enough!" You may have, and you can have, all the salvation you want. And, beloved, let me say it kinds, you have all you want, for grace abounds. By the grace of God, Jesus Christ tasted death for every man. God is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we can ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us; and again, "We are more than conquerors. through Him that hath loved us." Oh, do not say that you will be satisfied just to get into heaven; God wants you to be more than conqueror, to have an abundant entrance. Get the full import of the text, "I am come that ye might have life and that ye might have it more abundantly." O ye little ones in Zion, ye who are weak because of unbelief, ye who have been wounded in the conflict, God wants you to be strong in Him, to have life, to have abundant life. He can and will heal every wound that sin hath made. If you did fall down, do not lie there. Get up, call on God, give Him a chance to show His abounding grace, and He will gladly do it, and the angels will have a time of rejoicing over another brand plucked from the burning. I want to bring to you this thought: Life is the Gift of God. Natural life is the gift of God. "God breathed into man’s body the breath of life and man became a living soul." When the Master stood before the grave of Lazarus, and spake to him saying, "Lazarus come forth," it is said that many of the Jews believed on Him. Why? Because they knew that none but God could impart life. Spiritual life is the gift of God. Do you accept of it? The Apostle says "Eternal life is the gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord." And this morning, this very hour, it is your privilege to take God’s gift and to know that you know you are one of God’s live men. Life is the work of the Spirit. He is called the Spirit of Life. Jesus never spoke of the Spirit as "it". He did not regard the Spirit as an influence. I was preaching one time and in the course of the sermon I said I would not hold union services with any people who denied the Deity of Jesus Christ or the personality of the Holy Ghost. Immediately a person in the congregation asked me, "Can you give me a Scripture that proves the personality of the Holy Spirit?" Of course I did at once. "The Spirit said, Separate unto me Saul and Barnabas for the work whereunto I have called them," "The Comforter when He is come will guide you into all truth," "He will take the things of God and show them unto you," "He will guide you into all truth." He is a person. Never speak of Him as "it" or "itself." It is wrong to do so. Spell "Spirit" with a capital, and honor the Holy Ghost, for the Holy Ghost IS the Eternal Spirit, as we were taught in those days when children in the Sunday School had catechisms in their hands instead of lesson leaves that deny the Deity of Jesus and the efficacy of the blood. I want to bring before you another thought with this text: Life more abundantly is a term of comparison, is a contrast with life that preceded it. It is comparing spiritual things with spiritual, life more abundantly. This is one of God’s great inspiring truths. Believing this we can stand before valleys of dry bones and say, "These can all live," before a mighty chief of sinners, a very Saul of Tarsus, aye, in the very presence of spiritual indifference and wickedness in high places, and claim victory for our God. When God was on a mission to destroy, He would not do it until He talked to Abraham, for He said, "I know Him." And this man, because he believed God, was called the Friend of God. But there is something better than that for the believer today. Yonder goes Moses up to the Mount, and on its summit God comes down to meet with him, and for forty days God talks with Moses. I think those forty days were but as a few minutes to Moses he was so engrossed with communion with God, that he lost all thought of time, and when he came down his face shone with the glory of another world. But for the believer today, there is something better than that. "The Law came by Moses but Grace and Truth came by Jesus Christ." There was something helpful to a penitent sinner when the Urim and Thummim flashed on the breastplate of the high priest, and he knew that he was accepted of God. It was a blessed thing when the High Priest, after the sprinkling of the mercy seat with blood, would come out and with uplifted hands would pronounce the benediction on the multitude, and every man could go to his home a justified and forgiven man; but through Christ we have something better than that: "Jesus our great High Priest, Hath full atonement made . Ye weary spirits rest, Ye mournful souls he glad! The year of jubilee hath come, Return ye ransomed sinners home." Yonder on the side of old Mount Tabor I see Elijah at prayer; before him an altar, and on the altar a sacrifice, around him Israel and the prophets of Baal. I hear him pray. Listen! Did you ever hear such a prayer? He prays for fire -- fire from heaven, "O thou Lord God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel, and that I am thy servant, and that I have done all these things at thy Word." And the fire comes -- fire from heaven, and it consumes the sacrifice. But we as the children of God today have something better than that. Fire, not for Israel’s altars alone, but for every child of God, for every heart; in every church, for all time. Listen to the voice of one crying in the wilderness: "There standeth one among you the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose. He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire." The Baptizer with fire has come at last, and He says, "I am come not only that ye might have life, but that ye might have it more abundantly." If I had my choice to go back to Mt. Tabor where fire from heaven fell upon the altar, or back to Pentecost where the Holy Ghost as in cloven tongues of fire came upon each of them, I would say "Pentecost," every time. And we do not have to go back to either, for here and now we have the very same Jesus that was at Pentecost, and just as ready to give the fire, when we are as ready to receive the Holy Ghost as they were on that day. The Baptism of the Holy Ghost, the fullness of the Spirit, this is the Life Abundant. The Spirit and the Life go together. You cannot separate them. A Spirit-filled soul is a live soul. Listen! "The words I speak unto you they are Spirit and they are Life." To be spiritually minded is life. The Spirit is life because of righteousness. The letter killeth but the Spirit giveth life. The Spirit shall be in you a well of water springing up to everlasting life. The fullness of the Spirit is the privilege of every believer. This means life enough to help someone else. When Jesus was in the Mount of Transfiguration, there were nine disciples down on the plains, and a boy grievously vexed with a devil was brought to them, and they could not cast him out. But read of them after Pentecost. Read Acts 5:11 : "There came a multitude from the cities round about Jerusalem, bringing sick folks and those which were vexed with unclean spirits, and they were healed every one." They had power from on high. They had the abundant life. I do not read of very many conversions through the labors of the disciples before Pentecost, but, after that, three thousand were converted in one day, and after that five thousand, and everywhere they went "the Word of God mightily grew and prevailed." When Thomas Harrison was young he wanted to do something for God. He had a passion for work for God. He went to the book stores and bought the Life of John Fletcher, and Carvosso, and Bramwell, and he studied books. He did everything but take the gift. But one day he got desperate. He said, "I’ll have this cleansing, this fullness or I’ll die. I’ll put away all these books, and this afternoon shall be all knee work." And he gave his knees a talking to, and said, "You might just as well come down, for I am not going to get up until I get the victory, until God gives me the Holy Ghost." And he went to praying, when there flashed through his soul there was a better way than long and hard struggling with God for a human soul -- just take God at His Word, believe that He meant exactly what He said, that life, the fullness of the Spirit was the gift of God. And in just three minutes he was on His feet shouting aloud, "Glory to God, I’ve got it." God is no respecter of persons. If you want it, meet the conditions, believe God, and take it. Take it now. God sanctifies by the Holy Spirit. To them that believe on His Name all things are possible. This Life means life under all circumstances, life when your feet are growing cold, when your loved ones fade out from your vision, for it is life eternal. Pardon me for calling your attention to the hero of Pilgrim’s Progress. He had the victory when he came down to the banks of the river, and he said, "I feel the bottom and it is good." Old Mr. Standfast, also one of the characters portrayed in this choicest piece of literature it has ever been my privilege to read, came down to the river. Hear him shouting, "This river has been a terror to many, yea, the thoughts of it has often frightened me, but now, methinks I stand easy, for my feet are fixed upon that upon which the feet of the priests that bare the ark of the covenant stood while Israel passed over this Jordan. The waters are indeed to the palate bitter and to the stomach cold, yet the thought of what I am going to and of the conduct that waits for me on the other side, lie as a glowing coal to my heart. I see myself now at the end of my journey. My toilsome days are ended. I am going now to see that Head that was crowned with thorns, and that face that was spit upon for me. I have formerly lived by hearsay and faith, but now I go where I shall live by sight, and shall be with Him in whose company I delight myself. I have loved to hear my Lord spoken of, and wherever I have seen the print of His shoe in the earth there have I coveted to set my foot, too. His name has been to me as a civet box, yea, sweeter than all perfumes. His voice to me has been most sweet, and His countenance have I more desired than the light of the sun. His Word did I gather for my food, and for antidotes against my faintings. He has held me and I have kept me from mine iniquities, yea, my steps has He strengthened in the way." And his last words were: "Take me, for I come unto Thee," and the angels and the trumpeters of the skies sang his welcome home to the city where cometh no night, where the inhabitants never Say, I am sick, and where the people are forgiven their iniquity. Home, forever at Home. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 71: 04.09. CHAPTER 09. THE TRIUMPHAL PROCESSION ======================================================================== Chapter 9 THE TRIUMPHAL PROCESSION 2 Corinthians 2:14-16 -- "Thanks be unto God, who always leadeth us in triumph and maketh manifest through us the savor of his knowledge in every place. For we are a sweet savor of Christ unto God, in them that are being saved, and in them that are perishing, to the one a savor of death unto death, and to the other a savor of life unto life." Paul was a student and a scholar. He was acquainted with the history of the nations around him, the most prominent, the most powerful, the most intellectual. He could quote from their poets; he was acquainted with their laws; he knew their history and customs. He had in mind, when he uttered the words of our text, a triumphal Roman procession and entrance. Rome would send forth her armies against those who dared to question her power, her authority, her rights of conquest. They would go out along the Appian Way; they would go by the thousands and tens of thousands, and never give up until the object which they desired to attain had been accomplished. They would never give up until they had achieved victory. They may have been gone for months, for years; they may have been defeated again and again; their enemies may have been numerous, but Rome was only satisfied with one thing, and that was victory. After they had been gone for months or for years, and victory had been gained, they would come back, and the army would camp outside of the city; then the Roman Senate, grave and reverend seigniors, would vote them a triumphal entrance. The city would be decorated in holiday attire; seats would be erected for the Senators and other authorities of the government; the city would be decorated with laurel and pine, and the private homes of the citizens would bear evidence of the gratitude of the occupants towards the soldiers. On the day of the entrance, the Roman soldiers would march down through the city; the gates would be thrown open, and the army would come marching. in. The parade would be led by a large band of musicians furnished by Rome. They would be followed by young men leading animals peculiar to the country that had been conquered. These were decorated with the laurel and with the pine. The horns of the animals that were to be sacrificed would be gilded with gold. After them would come the spoils on floats, the best things the conquered countries could produce. Then after them would come a chariot, a magnificent affair decorated with silver and gold drawn by pure white horses and they would be covered with garlands. In that chariot would be seated the conquering general, on his head a crown of laurel, which afterward would be replaced by a crown of gold, and in his hand a scepter meaning victory. Then after him would come the prisoners, the common soldiers and the priests. These priests would be swinging golden censers, and in the censers would be fire, upon which was thrown incense, making a sweet savor among the prisoners, a savor of life unto life with some, and of death unto death, for others, while others would by decree of the conqueror be set free. Then after them would come the soldiers of the conquering army. These soldiers carried with them laurel and pine and also trophies of victory. As they marched along the streets by the stands which had been erected, on which sat the citizens of Rome and the Senators, these latter would proclaim the victories which had been won, and the countries which had been conquered and the battles that had been fought. They would march along until they came to the triumphal arch. Here the soldiers would take to one side the prisoners that had been condemned to death. After they had reached the Capitol Hill, the crowns would be awarded, and the day would be over. Paul had this in view. He had no idea that we were called to defeat. No man who knows God is ever truly defeated. If a child of God fails, it is because he has not availed himself of the capital which God has provided, because he does not realize the sufficiency of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul never forgot who he was. In writing to some he called himself "a prisoner of the Lord Jesus Christ," and in writing to others he called himself "the slave of the Lord Jesus Christ." He never failed to tell that he belonged to Jesus, and to witness for Him was his delight. As the Psalmist could say a thousand years before him, "The Lord is My God," so Paul could say, "The Lord is MY strength; I can do all things through Christ strengthening me. He would stand before even his enemies and say, "The life which I now live I live by the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ who loved me and gave Himself for me;" "My life is hid with Christ in God." He remembered his relation to Jesus and, because he did, he endured hardness as a good soldier of the Lord. He had the victory when he was shipwrecked on the deep; he had the victory when facing a howling mob at Ephesus, or in whatever place of peril he might be. He never lost sight of the fact that he belonged to God. He was not marching on to victory, He marched IN victory. Difficulties might gather round him; darkness might settle down upon him, swords might be lifted up against him, but on these he could read, "No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper." Lions might be on every side and roar, but he had the victory. A roar hurts nobody. I remember going into battle once and the bullets hissed as they passed. and the Major said, "Never mind them, boys, they are by you when you hear them." Oh, it is true, it is possible to live in victory down here right in the midst of the battle. There can be no victories without battles. Hear it, get ready to shout over it, God’s Word declares it: Christ is leading us to triumph. Through this old world, Christ is leading a triumphal procession, and He makes them always to triumph in Him. I like to think about it; there are men and women in the procession who were picked up out of the highest society, some from the lowest. They have all been in the mire and the clay, but as you look at them, you cannot see any mire and clay on them; you cannot see the pit from which they have been dug. They have been washed white. I like to look at them, Paul says, "I am God’s branded man," I look back over the procession, and see an Abel who had the testimony that God was pleased with him. I see a Noah of whom God said that he was perfect in his day and generation. I see an Abraham who left folks and home and went out not knowing where he was going, but he had confidence in the Guide. I see a David who valued his relation to God more than he did his crown, I see a Matthew who sat at the seat of customs, a woman out of whom went a legion of devils. I see folks who were gathered up from all sides. There is John Bunyan, the swearing tinker; Newton, the pirate slave stealer; Jerry McCauley, the river pirate; men whom God picked up from an awful life of sin and used in the salvation of souls. These are all alike, for they have all been saved through the blood of Jesus Christ, and sing the same song, "Unto Him that loved us and washed us in His most precious blood, unto Him be glory and honor and power and dominion for ever and ever." To be in that triumphal procession is to triumph with Christ. His victories are ours and our victories are His. Some years ago, Admiral Dewey waited for the dispatch that would tell him war had been declared between this country and Spain. Soon the tidings came, and Dewey sailed around Correggio, went to Manila Bay, engaged the Spanish fleet, and the news came back of the glorious victory in Manila Bay. What did we say? We said, "It was our victory." What did we do? We brought out our flags, put them up, and said, "It is our victory." I love to look at the conflict which Jesus had with the enemy in the wilderness where He defeated the devil and defeated him for you and me; and at the victory He gained on the cross when He conquered death, and to say He conquered death for you and me. He went down into the grave; He burst the bands asunder, and arose gloriously triumphant. He conquered the grave for you and for me. I look back at that scene when on Olivet He lifted His hands in blessings on His disciples, then ascended to where the angelic hosts of God sang Him welcome home. He led captivity captive, and His victory was ours because He conquered, you and I shall conquer. Because He lives, we also shall live. In this army we are all conquering generals. In the armies here, there are more privates than generals by far, but there are no privates in God’s army. We are all KINGS and Priests. There used to be a time when there was a priest here and a priest there, but, bless your hearts, ever since Jesus went up into the Holy of Holies, and sprinkled His blood to make atonement, all the redeemed are kings and priests unto our God, and all bound toward a triumphal entrance. Today I stand my feet on the promises of God, and expect, anticipate, victory. There is no such thing as defeat to the triumphal army of our God. "I will say to the north, Give up; and to the south, Keep not back; bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth." "They shall come from the north and the south, and sit down in the kingdom of God." The devil is a defeated devil. He is a conquered foe, and from every temptation, God will open a way of escape. Praise the Lord! If I am glad for anything it is that as a child of God He hath illuminated me for victory as He has every child of God. Study God’s plan; live up to it, and shout the victory in advance. It is a bad thing to under-rate your enemy, but it is a good thing to know who you are fighting with. The Prince of Orange went out to fight Catholic Europe -- just little Holland. The prime minister said, Your grace, as you are going to fight Europe i would like to ask you, have you made any alliances?" And the Prince replied, "Before I entered this war, I made an alliance, not with the kings of earth, but with the King of heaven and He never lost a battle." When Judah went out to battle one day, before the battle was begun, the pious King set the Praisers in array that they might be all ready to praise God for the victory that He was going to give, and of which the king was assured. Sure, why not? Has not God said, "This is the victory even our Faith?" God picks out a man here and there to be a leader. Joshua led the hosts of Israel. One morning he got up early and walked out to see the city he was going to attack, to view the situation, look at their weakest point, and he saw a man with a drawn sword in his hand. He went to him and said, "Who art thou? Art thou for us or for our enemies?" And the man spoke and said, "Nay; but as captain of the Lord’s hosts am I come." Joshua takes off his shoes, and falls down on his face before him and gets the plan of the battle according to God’s order. The Lord said, "Joshua, I have given Jericho into thy hand. You are to march around the city once a day for six days, and on the seventh day march around seven times; then the priests will blow the old rams’ horns, and the people will shout." (I am glad there is divine authority for shouting.) On the seventh day they followed the plan; the priests blew, the people shouted, the walls went down, and the saints of God marched in. How? By staying by God’s plan. God has nominated us for victory. The Lord said to Paul, "I will show thee the great things thou must suffer for my name’s sake." You remember when Saul was outside the city of Damascus, and a light shone above the brightness of the noon-day’s sun, and he cried, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" Do you see that man out there, that man with the stripes on His back? Paul, that is you. Do you see that man with his feet in stocks, and his hand manacled? Paul that is you. Do you see that man in the midst of a howling mob? That is you. Do you see that place way out there in the sea, and the ship going to pieces? Do you see that fellow standing on the deck in the midst of all this? That is you. Do you see that man with his head on the block and the axe all ready for work? That is you. Will you be true? And Paul says, "By the grace of God, I will." But Paul, there is another side to it. "When you are in prison, I will be there with you; when you are in the storm, I will be there, too, and my angels will bring you messages from me. They may sit down on you, but I will stand by you. Paul will you be true?" "By the grace of God, I will." Beloved, God’s plan for you is to lead you always in triumph, and to make manifest through you the knowledge of Christ in all places. What does He mean by this? It is just this: God is going to use you to save other folks. I went the other day to see a dying man. He had been very wicked, and did not know how to trust in Jesus. I tell you what he did turn to in his extremity. I heard him utter the Masonic cry of distress. God have mercy on the man who has nothing, better than that when he faces the grim monster, for he surely is a lost man! I stood there at his bedside and told him what God had done for me, how God saved me, and that I knew it as well as I knew my own name, and of the joy that came as a result of believing in Jesus. God wants us to encourage other folks by telling them how we were saved by taking God’s way, to tell them how we became temples of the Holy Ghost by believing in Jesus, and how he gives us victory and when they hear of real victory they want it, and are encouraged in the warfare. God bless you, He maketh us to be a blessing to other folks. We are to be a sweet savor unto Christ whether other folks hear or not, whether they are saved or not, whether it is acceptable to them or not. It is acceptable to God, and the man who preaches it, is acceptable with Him. I used to think a sermon was not a success unless the altar was lined, but now I know it is a success whether they come or not. It is my business as a minister of the Gospel, to preach it; the results belong to God. After I preach, when I go to bed, I say, "Lord I did my best." Whether they come or not, the responsibility is with them. They are free moral agents; they accept or they can reject. I sometimes think that God is going to reward us for the people who ought to come as well as for those who do come. Our labor is owned of God if our eye is single to His glory. If you want to please people, you can do it. There was a time when I stood before an audience on the lecture platform and people laughed one minute and cried the next and the reporter would tell in the papers how they were affected by the lecture: they laughed and cried. There was no God in it. I had to quit the lecture platform, or be damned. I was an intense prohibitionist and one night, a Sunday night too, I preached a sermon on Prohibition. When I went home God asked me, "If there had been a sinner there who wanted to be saved was there anything said tonight that would help him?" I quit preaching sermons of that kind, and preached to win folks for God. I was preaching at a church for three weeks one time, and I was most beautifully entertained in the home of a rich farmer. A number of people were saved in that meeting, but this man though under deep conviction went through that meeting without being saved. It was the last Sunday night, and the last meeting was over. My host took the lamp, (there were no electric lights in that country) and he said, "Mr. Kulp I will show you to your room." I said, "No Sir; please put that light down; I have something I want to ask you. A number of people have been saved in this meeting. You have been there every night, and tonight you are still unsaved. I must ask you a question. Is there any thing I could have done that would have won you for God that I have left undone?" He stood there dumbfounded, like a guilty sinner, and at last he said, "Say Elder, if I am lost, it is not your fault. You have done all you could do." I said, "Good night. I am going to bed." And he showed me to my room. Brother, it is worth more than any thing else to be assured of faithfulness to souls, just to know that God is pleased with you. The Psalmist was conscious of his integrity before God. We as ministers of the Gospel are not seeking the plaudits of worms of the dust. The victory is eternal and continuous. It will not always be battles, bye and bye it will be peace, eternal peace. By and by there will be rest. I can imagine those soldiers of Rome coming back and waiting outside of the City for that triumphal entrance. Tomorrow they are going to the Capitol Hill and get their crowns. Say, beloved, God bless you! The time is coming when the last enemy will have been overcome, the last battle will have been fought, the last grave will have been dug, and when the saints of God of all ages shall march in through the gates of the Celestial City, and Jesus Christ the Captain of our salvation, will stand by the great white throne of the Eternal God, while God Himself will arise to give us welcome, and all the angel choirs of heaven will sing our welcome home. Home at last! Thank God, there is a triumphal entrance for the saints! No matter what may be the difficulties in the way, God will take you through. Go if you go barefooted, and lions be on both sides of the way, go if you have to go between flashing swords. No weapon formed against you shall prosper. Go on, and one day you shall see the King in His beauty, and when I get there if He will only let me kiss His feet, I shall be satisfied through all eternity. Christ makes us always to triumph -- to triumph over circumstances, over darkness, over enemies, over every thing that can rear its head against us, -- maketh us always to triumph. Beloved, are you farther along this year than you were last? I am not asking you if you are shouting happy. I am simply asking you, are you in the procession? I know some folks who never shout. I have in my church a little woman in whom I have as much confidence as I have in M. G. Standley, and she never shouts. But I know when she is getting blessed. Her face will get red and her eyes will fill with tears, but I never heard her say "Hallelujah" in all my life, and I was her pastor fifteen years and more. Shouting is good, but oh, there is something way beyond it. Are you in the procession? How many have victory, not twenty years ago, nor twelve, nor five, but NOW? "Brother Kulp, you do not know anything about my trials." Jesus does. Jesus knows all about my trials, Hallelujah! Sister Cowman tells me that over in Japan they have no word for, Glory to GOD, so they say Hallelujah! What word have you got? A brother tells me that he has quiet hallelujahs down in his soul. Have you? Are you conscious of the presence of God with you and in you? I am not talking about when you joined the church, nor when you were baptized, nor when you were blessed last. I am talking about Bible salvation, triumphing in Christ. It is Christ in you the hope of glory. It is just as much your privilege and mine to triumph as it was Paul’s. When I was preaching down in Kentucky, an old colored woman would get blessed and shout, and when I was coming away that dear old Auntie came to me and said, "Say, you are my preacher." And I was too. If I can please God and please His people I am glad of it. One time the Governor of a province in China was taking the Emperor out to see his soldiers. The Governor ’was drawing money from the Emperor for ten thousand soldiers, when he had only five thousand, so he took brooms and dressed them up in soldier clothes. The Emperor reviewed them from a distance. There were only five thousand real soldiers, the rest were broomsticks. Beloved, are you broomsticks or soldiers? Are you real or just professional, just a member of the church? O beloved, it will pay you to get in the procession. His triumph will be your triumph, and the victory will be an eternal victory for you. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 72: 04.10. CHAPTER 10. THE ONLY REMEDY FOR SIN ======================================================================== Chapter 10 THE ONLY REMEDY FOR SIN Psalms 103:12 -- "As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us." Two facts in the text do not require any effort to prove: Man is a sinner, and salvation has been provided. But our text teaches that sin sticks, stays by you. You can move from the North to the South; you can move from the East to the West. You may go to distant lands, but your sin goes along with you. You may change your name; you may surround yourself with other circumstances; you may move away thousands of miles from where you have sinned, and yet your sin remains with you. You may reform; you may turn over a new leaf; you may begin to lead what you call a different life, and still your record is exactly the same. You may be haunted by your conscience, you may be convicted by the Holy Spirit; you may drink that which for awhile may bring you forgetfulness: but when you awake from your drunk, awake from your stupor, you will find that your sin will remain with you. The world provides no way for the removal of sin. Sin stays by a man, sin sticks close to a man, sin stays in his memory. Just a few years ago, in one of our States, we had a man who was the Quartermaster, and who had charge of the clothing of the militia. He robbed the State of something like twenty thousand dollars. It was discovered, and he left the State and went to New Orleans. He took passage on a boat that was going to South Africa with a load of mules for the British army during the war with the Boers, but that man carried his sin with him. Everywhere he went he could say with the Psalmist, "My sin is ever before me." There he was, away from friends, away from the American authorities; no one knew, but he was having a perfect hell of it because he carried with him the consciousness of his sins. He took passage on a boat, came back to the State where he had committed sin, gave himself up, and he said, "I only had peace when I determined to return and give myself up, and take the penalty of violated law." Twelve years ago, in the State of Michigan, a woman was found murdered. They arrested a man, convicted him on circumstantial evidence, and for twelve years he has been in the State Penitentiary. But listen! he was an innocent man. Within the last three months a man went out to the grave where the murdered woman lies buried, stood over her grave, took out a revolver, pulled the trigger, blew out his brains, and sent himself into eternity. When that man killed himself above the grave of that woman he confessed himself the murderer. Why did he kill himself? Why did he go to the grave of his victim? He wanted to make some kind of reparation. Five years had gone by, ten years had gone by, twelve years had gone by, but sin sticks. Sin stays in the conscience, stays in the memory; sin stays on the record of Almighty God; and the memory of that man’s sin drove him to suicide; and Daniel Webster, one of the greatest legal minds America ever knew, once said, "suicide is confession." Some time ago in Michigan, a man had insured his barn for a large amount and he wanted money. In the dead hour of the night he set fire to it and it burned to the ground. He collected the insurance, and no one suspected anything. But God knew, and he knew, and that was enough. In the course of time, there was a revival in that neighborhood, and this man went to the altar; and while he was trying to pray, God said, "How about that barn?" He confessed out, went to the insurance company, paid back what lie had received, and God forgave him. But get the truth: confession did not save him; restitution did not save him; these things do not wash away sin; it takes the blood to do that, the shed blood of the Christ of Calvary. Here is a woman down at the altar. She is screaming and crying to God for mercy. Oh, how she pleads; how she begs! What is the matter? Years ago, way back there, she had sinned. Her husband was a home man, and she was a wife that wanted the theater, the moving picture show, and she went with another man. It was years ago, but the sin sticks. She pleads, oh, so earnestly, and gets nowhere. At the close of the meeting she came to this preacher and asked what she should do. She had sinned; must she tell her husband? I did not say so; I just said, "Mind God." The next night she came to the altar and prayed through. She had minded God, and was at peace. Wait a moment. I want you to see that sin sticks, stays with you. Here is a child, a beautiful child. Her hair is curly, and the mother winds it about her finger while the husband, admiring it, looks on. The father takes the little girl on his knees, hugs her, kisses her, and calls her "his own darling child." Watch the wife; she grows pale, as she looks at the husband. Five years roll along, then ten go by; and the father and husband delights himself in that daughter, growing more and more lovely every day. Every time the husband goes near that daughter, and caresses her, the wife goes from the room and draws her hand across her heart and cries, "O God! O God! shall I tell him, must I tell him?" The child grows to womanhood, and the woman carries her sin with her. She wants to get right with God, and so one day she takes him aside and says, "Husband, that child is not yours; you are not the father of that girl. O God, have mercy on me!" Sin sticks, curses, and will eventually damn the soul unless the sinner takes God’s way. An official member of the church was walking along one day, and a member of the church came to him and said, "Here is five dollars on the pastor’s salary." He put it in his pocket and kept it. He went along year after year, but was not right with God. Oh, how many backslidden church members and church officials there are! I just read that there are four million church members in one denomination, and the official paper of that church had a communication that said that not half of them gave anything to missions or church benevolences. The professed church today is the greatest hindrance to the advance of the cause of Christ. This man wanted to get right with God, but he had stolen money in his pocket. When will the church do as they did in the days of the Apostles -- select men who are full of faith and the Holy Ghost -- not take men because they are sociable, good mixers, or fine fellows? God said to this man, "Pay back that five dollars." He made out a check, sent the interest along with it, and then God saved him. I was in a meeting some time ago, and a man, after hearing a sermon along this line, sat down and wrote a letter to a railroad official and said, "I rode on your line thirty years ago (sin sticks) and did not pay my fare. I enclose a check for the amount, and ask you to forgive me." That man got an answer back from the company and also got a blessing from heaven that sent him shouting through the Church, and to his pastor. God never forgets the sin that is unconfessed. Some time ago I went to a lawyer’s office, and there on his desk I saw a bottle containing ink eraser, and the directions were, "Take this fluid and apply it to the writing. Do not rub it; do not put a blotter on it -- just apply it and leave it alone, and every vestige of ink will disappear." Man has a chemical by which he can erase anything that he may write, but hell never invented nor discovered anything that will blot out sin from the Book of God’s remembrance; but thank God, in the laboratory of the skies it has been recorded, "The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth from all sin." Hallelujah! You cannot get rid of sin. You may destroy the books, but you cannot get rid of sin that way. God said to Jeremiah, "Get a stenographer. I am going to tell you what you shall dictate to him. Baruch comes at once with his note book, and Jeremiah with one ear toward the skies, looked to the stenographer, and began to say to him, "Write, Thus saith the Lord, Israel shall be destroyed. She shall be carried off into captivity. I will give her for a prey to the king of Babylon." Baruch read it to the princes. They said, "Sit down and read it in our ears." Then they said, "Tell us, how didst thou write all these words?" Baruch answered them, "He spake all these words unto me with his mouth, and I wrote them with ink in the book." Then they said, "Do not say anything about it. Go and hide, and we will show them to the king." Jehudi reads them to the king, and then takes a penknife and cuts the leaves and burns them; but you cannot get rid of the Word that way. The Word of God is an anvil that has worn out many a hammer, and will wear out all the hammers the modernists and the enemies of God’s Word, can use. God said to Jeremiah, "Take another book and write in it all the former words, that were in the first book which the king hath burned." Jeremiah dictated the very same words from the Lord, and added thereunto many like words. Say, listen! When you reject God’s message, because it comes red-hot from the throne, God will give a hotter one. You cannot get rid of the Word of God by fire, or knife. You cannot destroy the message that God sends you. Listen to the Psalmist, "Remember not the sins of my youth." He is the sweet singer of Israel; he is Israel’s king; he is sitting on a throne; but back there are the sins of his boyhood days. Do you remember the sins of your youth? Do you remember the sins of your young manhood and young womanhood? Some of you folks shudder when you think of the sins you used to commit, and you ought to shudder. God Almighty has the record. As you have advanced in age, you have grown harder and harder. You have rejected Jesus Christ, and God Himself has the record. But hear it, -- sin may be removed. As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our sins -- my sins -- from me. Who said it? David. He knew what he was talking about, the man after God’s own heart. Hear David as he shouts it, "Bless the Lord, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases." I see a man who has breathed out threatenings and slaughter; I see him bringing men and women bound to Jerusalem; I see him standing by while the first martyr is being stoned to death; but as this man, persecutor and murderer, is on his way to Damascus, he sees a great light, and falls from his horse and hears a voice saying, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" He asks God to have mercy on him, and afterwards he writes, "This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief." Sin may be removed, but it takes God to do it. There is no church, nor minister, nor priest, who can remove sin. "As far as the East is from the West, so far hath He removed our transgressions from us." We cannot do it. The world by wisdom knew not God. Job found out two thousand years before Calvary that a man could not cleanse himself. He said, "If I wash myself with snow water and make my hands ever so clean; yet are they not clean." The world by wisdom knew not God, but thank God, what the world could never find God made known to us. "God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Here is the man who pillowed his head on the bosom of Jesus; who walked with him in loving fellowship for three years; and I ask him, "John, I want you to tell us how much God loves us?" He dips his pen in ink and brings out his parchment and writes, "God So loved the world." Hallelujah! Hallelujah! God So loved the world. Say, I want to measure the depth of the love of God? and I exhaust all the twine in all the rope factories of the world, and I begin to let it down, and down, and when I get to the end I call on God to give me more twine; and when I have exhausted all the resources of earth, I can never find the depths of the love of God. God So loved us! Wait. How did He do it? A soldier was captured by the Sepoys. An officer came with two handcuffs and began to put them on the prisoners, wounded though they were. Here is a man dying, and they are going to put them on him. The soldier said, "Sir, you would not disgrace humanity by putting handcuffs on a dying man, would you?" He replied, "I must put them on some one. If I go back with any I will have to give an account of why I take them back. There are just enough to go around. What am I to do?" And the soldier said, "Put two pair on me," and they did so. Jesus died in our stead. The law said, "Cut him down." Jesus said, "Let Me die in his place. Let Me go to Calvary." God so loved that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. He removes our sins, takes them all away. The Scripture idea is the separation of the sinner from his sins, not the remission of the penalty. I see the High Priest as he stands before the multitude. The scapegoat is brought out to him. He puts his hands on the scapegoat and confesses the sins of Israel and then a proper man takes that goat and leads it away to a land of forgetfulness, and with it goes the sins of Israel. Today we put our hands by faith on Jesus Christ, and He bears our sins, and carries them all away -- "as far as the East is from the West, so far hath He removed." How far is the East from the West? I want you to follow Halley’s comet, moving at thirty-seven thousand miles an hour. Put a bit in its mouth and a saddle on its back, and start towards the East at thirty-seven thousand miles an hour, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, ten years in a decade, ten decades in a century, and ten centuries in every millennium, and when you have ridden on your fiery steed millennium after millennium you are still going East. How about the West? If you should go at the speed of a flash of lightning for a million years, toward the West, after you have gone a million years at one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles a second, you would not have yet reached the West, and thank God, "as far as East is from the West, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us." I am glad I have a mighty Savior, one who can deliver from sin, one who can remove all sin, and make us white as snow. I am glad that God is so much interested in every sinner. If you will meet the conditions, He will remove every sin. The devil has never once had the cheek to tell me that God did not save me many years ago; and I can point him to the very spot where I knew and felt my sins forgiven. He will wipe out every stain that sin has made. I believe in the power of Divine Grace to reach anybody who wants Bible salvation -- that wants to find Bible salvation. God bless you, beloved, I want you to know that if you want to go with God there are some folks that are headed that way and who know that they know. There is a woman I want to see when I get to heaven, and that is Mary Magdalene. I want to see the woman who was the last at the Cross and the first at the sepulchre, the woman to whom was given a commission to preach the risen Christ. I want to see the woman who loved Him so because she was much forgiven. A woman phoned me one day, asking, "Mr. Kulp, would you go and pray with a bad woman?" "Sure I would." "Would you go and pray with a very bad woman?" "Yes, why not?" "Will you come and pray with the Madame of a sporting house who is dying?" ’Certainly." "How soon can you come?" I said, "Wait a moment." I turned to my wife and I said, "Wife, there is a woman dying, the keeper of a bad house down on Jackson street. How soon can we go?" She said, "As soon as we eat dinner," and the dinner was ready then. I said to the woman who called me, "I will be there right after dinner and it is all ready now." After the meal we started off, wife and I, and when we got to the place, I tied my horse to the hitching post, helped my wife out of the buggy, and started towards the door of the place. Going, I passed a Doctor who knew me well and spoke to me. He saw where I was going, and my wife said that he turned his head to watch me. But when you have your wife along you can go everywhere, or anywhere that you ought to go. We went right up to the second floor. I knocked at the door, and a woman came. We went in, and I took a seat. They went to the dying Madame and said, "The preacher is here. Will you see him?" "Yes." I went in, and prayed with her, and the heavens seemed as brass. I pointed her to Jesus. My wife said to her, "Sister, did you ever hear of Jesus?" "Oh, yes." Yes, she had, and we left her with Him. Hear it! I want you to get the thought born out of the great loving heart of God, that whosoever will, may. This Gospel will save the poor and will save the miserable rich, as well, for they need God and are less likely to find Him. The world today has a hold on the rich, as on no others. But I want you to know it, -- He saves to the uttermost all them that will come. "There is a fountain filled with blood, Drawn from Immanuel’s veins, And sinners, plunged beneath that flood, Lose all their guilty stains." "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." I want to tell you that every one that is out of Christ needs this salvation. The rich and the poor, the moral and the immoral, the old and the young, all need Jesus, and they may have God by complying with conditions, and meeting God on His terms. How is it with you? Are your sins under the Blood? There is no such thing as a dead past. That is the figment of a disordered brain, whether it was the poet’s who sent it out or of the folks who preach it. Sin unrepented of will accompany you to the deathbed, and to the judgment, and will meet you there unless you are saved through the blood of Jesus. Do you want to know the truth of this text? Are you desirous of getting rid of the past? You may know that you are a child of God, that your name is written in the Lamb’s Book of life, and you may know that you know. How may you? Just let God have His way. Unconditional surrender and faith in God will bring victory. A soldier was dying in a hospital, and he was afraid to die. "Repent," said the chaplain. "Oh, I do not know what to do." "Surrender," said the chaplain a gain, and the poor fellow, just a few hours from eternity, threw up both his hands and said, "Lord, I surrender unconditionally," and God took him. I was talking, one time, or rather, I was letting Bishop Taylor do the talking, and he was telling of a man in Africa who was dying and they sent for him to come and pray with the dying black. But when he got there the man was dead. Bishop Taylor asked, "Men, what was he saying when he died?" And they told him that he was saying right along, "Oh, Mishwa, I am your man; take me, Mishwa, take me, I am your man." And I’ll never forget the words of the Bishop, "If Jesus did not take him, He is not the man I think He is." "As far as the East is from the West, so far will He remove our transgressions from us." Thank God for the Book that tells us that He will save all them that call upon Him. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 73: 04.11. CHAPTER 11. HOW READEST THOU? ======================================================================== Chapter 11 HOW READEST THOU? Luke 10:26 -- "How readest thou?" Some time ago a multimillionaire died and left a will disposing of the property that he had once possessed; for it is still true that of all the things in this world that you may own, you can take nothing with you when you leave. Many persons were anxious to know whether they had been remembered in the will, and even the newspapers were asking the question, "How did he dispose of his vast accumulations?" There are not many of us here who are expecting to receive very much if any rich man should die and leave his goods; but there is one thing to encourage us, and that is, we have been remembered in the will of God. The old Bible that you and I revere so much is divided into two parts, the Old Testament and the New, and the word Testament means the last will, and here we have the last revelation of God’s will for us. The Apostle said that a will was no good without the death of the testator. Jesus died to make this will good, and on the ground of the Blood of Jesus, we can claim the fulfillment of everything there is in the Book that concerns our present or eternal welfare. During the time of Graham of Claverhouse in Scotland, when the Covenanters were being persecuted and haled to prison and some of them to death, and when the places where they met were being uncovered and destroyed, a young woman was on the way to a meeting when one of Claverhouse’s men overtook her. He brutally inquired where she was going, and she replied that a friend of hers had died and she was on the way to hear his will read. He wished her hick and said that he hoped so fair a lass was well remembered. She went on her way to the meeting to hear the Word of God expounded, and to know more of the Will that Jesus left on record for her. If you will read the Word very carefully, you will find that in former days God spake through the prophets, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son; and the Apostle says, "To you is the Word of this salvation sent," and there is nothing in it but what God means for our good. In this Book God is dealing with eternal verities, teaching us of our relation to Him, of a heaven that we may gain or a hell that we may shun, and if we want to know the will of God concerning us, all that we have to do is to search the Word. Here it is recorded, "The entrance of thy Word giveth light." This book introduces us to God. The study of the Gospels introduces us to a Person. They deal with the personality of Jesus. The Gospels are not a biography of Jesus; we just have a glimpse of Him as a baby, and then for twelve years we know nothing of His history until He comes up to the temple, and then for eighteen years more the Word is quiet, silent, not a word until He begins His ministry. We are introduced to a Person who came to tell us about heaven, about hell. If He were living today and preaching, there are folks who would say He was a "hell-fire preacher," for it is certain that the most tremendous facts about the future came to us through the Words of Jesus found in the Gospels and Revelation. He came to show us the heart of God. All that we know, or the most we know about heaven, we have from the lips of Jesus. "I go to prepare a place for you ... that where I am, there ye may be also." All that is taught us of heaven in Revelation only confirms the truth, and that from the lips of Jesus came nearly all we know about heaven. It is called the Revelation of John, but he was only the stenographer, who took down the words that Jesus gave him. And I am glad to read and believe all that he says, whether I understand it or not. "Blessed are they that DO His commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city." I love to read the Book of Revelation. I remember what the old Scotchman said, ""When you read the Book of Revelation, go canny." When I read, "Blessed is he that readeth the Book" my soul takes fire, and I am glad as I walk up and down this old sin-cursed earth, and see the marks of the serpent all over it -- sin and suffering and disease -- I am glad there is a land where the inhabitants never say, "I am sick," and where the people are forgiven their iniquities. I one day sat by a little cot not three feet long, and on that cot was a little child who was gradually dying. The mother sat there too crushed to shed a single tear. There was no relief along that line. As I saw that mother looking’ down at the little one, I was so glad that Jesus told us of a home where all these things had passed away forever. Oh, I am so glad there is a city where crepe never hangs on the door; where funeral processions never pass along the streets; where families are never separated; where they live in the presence of God; where they not only enjoy eternal health, but have eternal wealth as well. God bless you, beloved, I am glad to tell you that we are drawing nearer the city. Don’t come around and talk about growing old, -- we are not growing old, we are growing young. We are drinking from the fountain of youth, what Ponce De Leon looked for in the land of flowers. We have found it in a Holy Land, where the stricken side of the Son of God sent forth water and blood; and, having plunged in the Fountain, we have risen to all the Life of the eternal God. Bless your dear hearts, we have only just begun to live! What man gets down here is only a start in life. When the sun is burned to a cinder, when the stars have grown cold, we will live on, doing the will of God forever and forever. "When we’ve been there ten thousand years Bright shining as the sun, We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise Than when we first begun." I am glad that we are headed that way, and we must give God all the glory. He came to show us God. He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." Now, that is true. The text says, "How readest thou?" This word has a personal relation to us, -- whosoever. That takes in every son and daughter of Adam. If we had our names in, there might have been some folks who bear the same name that we do, but whosoever means you, and me. "Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved." That means you. "Whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive." That means, all the things that you need to pray about, you shall have an answer. Jesus came a long way to show us God. Now, someone says, "Look here, preacher, don’t you believe in the omnipresence of God?" To be sure I do, but I still insist upon it that Jesus came a long way to show us God. Tell me, can you. brother, the distance from the pure and holy God, the infinite One, to the man who was born in sin and conceived in iniquity, the man who transgressed the law of God, the man who by his own transgressions had widened the distance between him and God? The tallest archangel at the throne of God could never measure, but Jesus traveled the whole distance, and put Himself alongside our humanity, and took our nature on Himself. "The Word was made flesh," says the Apostle," (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father) full of grace and truth." "In Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." God will send a man a long way to help an honest inquirer. God may send you a long way to get the blessing, and He may send someone who knows Him a long way to help you. I see a Holiness evangelist in the midst of a great meeting. They are having a wonderful time, and there is great joy because of the work that God hath wrought. Then God said to that evangelist, "Philip, get out of here. I want you somewhere else." Philip never said, "Why, Lord, I am having a great time there, and it will not do to leave these people now." Nothing of the kind. "I want you down at Gaza, a desert way. Go now." And Philip says, "All right, Lord." I do not know that he even took time to say good-bye, or to thank the folks who had entertained him. When he got there, he stood by the roadside and saw a man coming along in a chariot. He stepped up alongside of him and said, ’Understandest thou what thou readest?" And the man replied, "How can I, except some man should guide me?" And right here God’s man, whom He had sent a long way to help, got up in the chariot, and preached Jesus to him till he had the victory. I see another man way off there. He is fasting and praying and giving of his substance to God’s cause; bringing up his children in the fear of the Lord, and wanting to know more about God. God sent an angel to him with a message like this, "You send over to Joppa to the house of one Simon a tanner, and there you will find Simon, whose surname is Peter, and he will tell you words whereby thou and thy house shall be saved." In the meantime God was getting the evangelist ready. He was hungry, and waited about two hours after dinner time, for his meal, . and he fell into a trance, and saw a sheet let down from heaven filled with all manner of fourfooted Beasts. God said to him, "Rise, Peter; kill, and eat." He said, "Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean." And God said, "What I have cleansed that call not thou common or unclean." Just then, when God had got this man ready, there was a knock heard at the door, and the question, "Is there a man here named Simon Peter? There is a man Cornelius calling for him. He saw an angel who told him to send over here and you would come." And because of the vision Peter goes with them. God sent him a two days’ journey to help an honest inquirer. If you are here, an honest inquirer, then we are here to help you to God; for this is His meeting. Jesus asks this question in the text: "How readest thou?" Here is a lawyer who asks, "Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" And Jesus referred him to the law and said, "How readest thou?" "I read in this wise, ’Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.’" And Jesus said, "This do, and thou shalt live." What is Jesus teaching him? "Put God first." Put God first in your life -- in your social life, in your married life, in your politics. I take up my Bible and read in the very first verse, "In the beginning God." I take up the ten commandments and read, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." I turn to the Lord’s Prayer, and read, "Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come." God first. And, my brother, you will never hear from heaven as you may do; you will never be what God wants you to be; you will never witness for Him as He wants you to do, until you put God first. Are you doing it? "How readest thou?" First, you may know that you are saved from sin. Some time ago a preacher came into the church where I was preaching and I saw him sitting in the congregation. Out of courtesy I asked him to come up and take a seat with me, and make the opening prayer. He prayed, and all the time he was praying I was revolting against his prayer, for I did not believe it. The one subject of his prayer was this, "O Lord, save people from hell." I do not believe that Jesus came to save folks from hell. Bible salvation is not a mere fire escape, -- Jesus came to save people from sin. "Thou shalt call his name Jesus; for He shall save His people from their sins." "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." It is sin that sends people to hell -- not Adam’s sin -- your own sin, that which you did most deliberately commit. The only thing in all the world that you need to fear is your own act where you are outside the will of God. Jesus came to save people from sin in this life. Here and now you may know your sins forgiven. The Christ of God, hallelujah! The Christ of God which bringeth salvation, hallelujah! The Christ of God which bringeth salvation hath appeared unto all men, unto all men, black and white and yellow -- China and India and Japan -- hath appeared teaching. Teaching what? Teaching us that denying all ungodliness we are to live soberly, righteously, godly. After you die? No, sir, in this present world, looking for the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ, who loved us and gave Himself for us, that He might purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. Saved from sin in this life. Are you? You may know it. Do you? How readest thou? If I have any ambition I get it out of this life, the life that is hid with Christ in God. I have the Book to prove to me that it is the privilege of every child of God to live saved from all sin down here now. I would not have the angel Gabriel to come and tell me that I am saved. I have heard from headquarters. The Spirit bears witness with my spirit that I am a child of God. Do not go by impressions, nor by your feelings. Do you know you are saved? When the wind is the coldest, when the devil is howling, when there is misunderstanding, when friends forget you and do things you cannot understand, then do you still know that you are saved? That is worth more than all the rest. How readest thou? "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." How readest thou? Is this So? Do you know it? "If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: and He is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." Is this so? Do you know it? "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him. return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon." The plaster is wider than the wound. "Where sin did abound, grace shall much more abound." Is that so? Do you know it? But I have been a professor so long, for so many years. "Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?" But the King will say, "I never knew you." How readest thou? Have you received the Holy Ghost? Are you a temple of the Holy Ghost? Are you called to be a saint? Do you recognize your high calling? What is a saint? What is a sanctified person? A person who is set apart, who is separate, holy, through the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, cleansed by the precious blood of Jesus. Bible for that? "Ye shall receive power, the Holy Ghost coming upon you." "Ye shall have power, above all the power of the evil one. Ye shall be witnesses unto me in Jerusalem, and in Judea, and in Samaria, and unto your own home town, right where you live." How readest thou? "The Father and I will come and take up our abode with you, and we will be in you." Oh, His yoke is easy and His burden is light. I never get up and say, "I am having such a hard time." He saves to the uttermost all them that come unto Him. I am proving in my own experience that His Word is true. There are times when plus one, plus one, is one, to them who know the secret; and there is a time when every child of God knows that he knows, and that is when he trusts God, takes Him at His Word, and lives his faith. You are remembered in the will. Amanda Smith once said, "I will have all there is in the will or break it." So may you. You are, if you are a child of God, living every day on the riches of His grace, and you are a living proof that He saves to the uttermost. Are you ready for His appearing? Would sudden death be sudden glory? I remember many years ago when E. I. D. Pepper, and John Thomson were in a meeting in the Centenary M. E. Church in Philadelphia, that they would put as a test, "Would sudden death be sudden glory?" Some folks did not like it, and I heard them discuss it; but it is intensely Scriptural. I call your attention to the time when dear old Dr. Godbey was told by the doctor that he was near the end, and he shouted, "In thirty minutes I shall see Jesus!" Was that too much? "This same Jesus, which is taken from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven." "Beloved, now are we the sons of God; and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, 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." Are you ready for His coming, living for that day, that hour? "For in such an hour as ye think not the Son of Man cometh." It is not a question of what is going on around you; it is a question of what is going on inside of you. Are you ready now? Seeing that He is coming back again, what manner of persons ought we to be in all holy conversation and godliness. Without holiness no man shall see the Lord. Are you practicing the Word? Have your wife and children confidence in you? Do you shout when the grocer and the landlord are around? "If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin." "If any man is willing to do my will, he shall know the doctrine," prove in his own experience that my Word is spirit and life. Beloved, are you doing all the ò will of God as it is made known to you by the Word and the Spirit? "Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you." This is a sanctified life. Are you singing today? "Not a cloud doth arise to darken my skies, Nor to hide for one moment my Lord from my eyes." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 74: 04.12. CHAPTER 12. APOSTOLIC PRACTICES ======================================================================== Chapter 12 APOSTOLIC PRACTICES Acts 4:20 -- "Things seen and heard." We are not indulging in theories; we have not followed cunningly devised fables; we have no pretty word pictures, baseless as the fabric of a vision; but as the old-fashioned Methodists used to sing, "What we have felt and seen With confidence we tell; And publish to the sons of men, The signs infallible." The weary, disheartened, discouraged prophet sat alone. The temporal power was against him. Men and women opposed him. His life was sought for, as the partridge upon the mountain. When John heard that Jesus was doing many mighty works, he called to him two of his disciples and sent them to Him with this inquiry, "Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?" And Jesus said, "Go and tell John the things which ye do see and hear; the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the Gospel preached unto them." It was a direct answer to them. It bore more than the words could have borne to the heart of the discouraged man, -- the Christ had really come. A Christian is one who reproduces the life of Christ, and that only is Christianity which produces the work of Christ. You do not alter a thing, or the nature of it, because you put a label on it. Christianity must prove itself. It must prove by its works that it is of God. The Church itself must prove its right to exist, and it does it only as it manifests the spirit of Christ, and reproduces His works. Men are asking that the Church today do as it did in the days of the Apostles. We need what they had, we want what they had; that when the critic and the opposer shall find fault with the work we are doing, they will not be able to do it successfully, because the man stands in our midst who has been blessed, aye, and lifted up, a new creature in Christ Jesus. I have a very firm conviction that any preacher, any church, any denomination that comes to the end of the year and then makes a report like this, "We have held our own," causes hell to have a jubilee. The orders are, "Forward, March." We are never to camp twice in the same place, get so far along each day that you can never see the ashes of your last camp fire. I believe what Gerald Massey wrote: "It is weary waiting day by day, And still the tide flows onward; We build like coral grave on grave, And raise a path that’s sunward. We are beaten back in many a fray, But newer strength we borrow; And where our vanguard camps today Our rear shall march tomorrow." We have no business standing still. We need, we must have, trophies every day to prove that we belong to Christ. The people are crying out, "Oh, for the days of the Fathers." Hear God’s Word, "Say not that the former days were better than these, for thou inquirest not wisely concerning this." Today as ever in the past, faith is the victory. That is true, or God is not. Today we ought to be better able to take the journey that Abraham took. Nineteen centuries this side of Calvary, we ought to be better able to take our Isaacs by the hand, march three days away from our loved ones, from our position, from friends, not knowing where we are going, only knowing that we are obeying God; and when we come to the foot of the mount dismiss everything else, everybody else, and take our Isaac, build our own altar, raise the knife and obey God. Why? Because God gave His only Son, and the promise to us is, "If God spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?" His example counts. Your test is Africa. You may never see Africa. Your test is India. You may never see India. God asked for Isaac; and, when Abraham was willing to give what God asked for, he got his Isaac back. It was a test of his faith. As well as Elijah did, we ought to be able to do. By faith we are to go to some Tabor, bury our face in our hands, look out over the sea, ask God for rain, and then look out for it seven times, and the very fact that we are looking, shows that we are believing God. When you do not see anything else but a cloud as big as a man s hand, get up and hurry off home for fear you will be caught in the rain. Faith is .the victory today. We get up into the upper room, shut ourselves in with God, and shut everything else out, and stay, and stay, and stay, until God manifests Himself and things begin to shake, and our enemies have to acknowledge that God is with us of a truth. You may be lashed, your back furrowed, your friends, so-called, turn their backs on you, and still you can have the victory. We are living in prosperous times, spiritually, if we choose to make them so; and all the devils in hell or out of it, cannot interfere and rob you of your individual prosperity, because Jesus said, "Greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world." Praise His name! You can have the victory when everything around you is going to pieces. You can look around you, see a rocking earth, the moon turned to blood, and the heavens rolling together as a scroll, and know that you are secure, because your feet are on the Rock. God’s Word says, "He that doeth these things shall never be moved." You have no right to show your back to the enemy. God has provided armor for everywhere but for the back. He knew that you did not have to turn your back to the devil, -- you are foreordained to be a conqueror. The church is crying, "Oh, for Pentecostal power! Oh, for Apostolic scenes!" Back to God’s Word! Back to the promise made to Joel and through him to us, and verified in the day of Pentecost! Back to believing God and cutting loose from the world! Back to the old mourners’ bench! And there will be added unto the church every day, such as shall be saved. God still answers the prayer of the penitent sinner. I heard Dr. Godbey say that down South the colored people sing: "When I was a mourner just like you, I prayed, and I prayed, till I got through." Thank God, there is such a thing today as praying through. God is faithful, Jesus is pleading, the Holy Ghost is on the scene all the time. and we can have everything that there is for us in the grace of God. I like Acts 2:1-47. There I can find out what the promises are upon which they relied, to get down the glory and the fire. When I was put of God in the ministry, I wanted to know all I could about how to win souls. I always had a passion for souls. I bought books that would tell what other ministers did who won souls. I had in my library, Peck, Newell and Hervey, and wherever I saw anything that would help me I would get it. But one day I said, "I am going to read the Acts of the Apostles and see what these men did to win. What did they do on the day of Pentecost?" I read it on my knees, I prayed, I found out, and to this day I never go to a meeting but what I absolutely expect to find God true and that He will bless His Word, and His preacher, and give results. I was much helped in my early ministry by a minister named N. B. Durell, of the Philadelphia Conference. He was the pastor, at the time, of the Fitzwater St. M. E. Church, in Philadelphia. I was preaching for him one night, and in the midst of the sermon I stopped and said, "I wish you people would pray," and then I went on. After the sermon Brother Durell said to me, "Brother George, always remember, that whether you see it or not. the Holy Ghost is always faithful and is working." That has been a blessing to me ever since, and I have remembered it. Indeed, I have. God blessed it, and I have told it to other young men and it has blessed them. Read what those men did: "And when they prayed" -- when they prayed; when they prayed, and held on. No matter what people did, they could not stop them from praying. If they put them in prison, they prayed; if they lashed them, they prayed; if they separated them from their friends, they still prayed. Everywhere they went they prayed. The devil cannot make anything so hard you cannot pray through. I have been surprised at the actions of preachers at camp meetings. When the altar call is made, first one goes out, then another goes out, or they stand around the fringe and visit while the battle for souls is going on, and the heavens are bending, and hell opposing. When a Colonel brought up his regiment and asked General Heinzelman where he should go in, the General said, "Go in anywhere; there is good fighting all along the line." There is a chance to win souls all along the line. Get ii) and work with God, and for God. If you cannot do anything else, PRAY. Pray! It is always in order to pray. "When they prayed the place was shaken." Hear it. "Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." "How shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher, and how shall one preach except he be sent?" The preaching of the Gospel and the call to preach are joined together with the salvation of souls. They prayed and prayed until the place was shaken. Persecution did not drive them home, nor make them seek an easy place. Persecution drove them to prayer. I like to read about Hezekiah. When they sent him a letter, he spread it before the Lord. What did you do with the letter you received? Did it drive you to prayer? Hezekiah was one of God’s wise men. He went to God with the letter and he prayed. He did not SAY prayers, he prayed, and God did answer. I go to my telephone and take down the receiver and say, "Please give me 4275 W," and I wait. Again I Say, "4275 W." No reply. I say, "Central, please get them for me if you can. It is important." Central calls them again by a loud ring. No reply. I hang up the receiver. Did I telephone? Not a bit of it! You never telephone unless you get the party at the other end, and you never pray unless you get the party at the other end. "When thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." Some folks pray only when they get into trouble. If you would pray more, you would keep out of trouble. Get the thought of God from the Word; not from some book, but from the Word. It is the thought of God, and all you need. It is the one infallible Book of faith and practice. Shaken? Yes, jails and jailers. Did you ever pray until the place was so full of the presence of God that you were awe-struck? When in banishment, they prayed. Why, God bless you, there was a man one time swallowed by a whale, and he prayed, and prayed, until the place where he stayed was shaken, and he got out. God answered prayer. There is a wonderful power in prayer, faithful, believing prayer. We expect battles. I do not think much of mere home guards. The real soldier hunts the firing line; he expects to fight. They were all filled with the Holy Ghost. They relied on the promises, they put in their checks and got them cashed. That is very simple, is. it not? I like to go to God and say, "Now, Lord, this is where you said it. This is your Word." Moses did that. He said, "Thou sayest." Bless God. Say, my brother, God does not disappoint me any these days; I take Him at His Word. They were all filled. They got something. I never seek hilarious times, I am not seeking a big noise. There is no power in noise, and often after so much noise there is an awful sense of barrenness; but I am asking God for results that will honor the Holy Ghost, and make heaven glad. Some time ago I was in a meeting in Kansas and a Methodist preacher came to the altar. Before he came he said, "I once had the Holy Ghost, but I have lost the experience." He got what he came for, and the church would not have him and asked for his removal at the next conference. They moved him, and God made him a better place, and then in the next year God took him to an appointment in heaven where they all believe in the Holy Ghost. Results like that are better than noise. You may have results if you pay the price This was promised in the Book of Joel, and when the Holy Ghost came, Peter said, "This is that," and preachers and laymen received "that" -- the Holy Ghost. He is for you and as many as the Lord our God shall call. When there is failure today the church adds more machinery, another organization, more societies. There is no substitute for the Holy Ghost. Education will not do; diplomas will not do; money will not do. Tarry -- until. Mrs. Van Cott was in a meeting, one time, and there was not the move on the meeting that she wanted to see. So after breakfast she went upstairs to her room. But before going she said to her hostess, "Do not call me for lunch, nor for dinner; do not call me at all; if you want to retire during the night, do not call me." She went to her knees and prayed, "Oh, God, I am here until this hardness is dispelled, until this opposition breaks." It had not broken at dinner time, nor at supper time, and she kept on praying; but she finally came down with a face shining, for God had given her the assurance that victory would come . and it did. The secret of victory is apostolic practice, prayer, faith, staying on your knees until -- Kneeology, rather than so much theology. When we are abandoned unto God’s plans, He will take care of us. The Apostles were not only abandoned unto God, and filled with the Holy Ghost -- they were witnesses. They spake the Word of God; they had messages from God. I never like anyone to come to me and ask, "Will you preach?" When they say, "You will preach at such a time," that is all right. I say, Amen! We are going to have all over this country a lot of people who will have Billy Sunday’s methods, who will not have his messages. The God who never made two blades of grass alike never made two men alike; but God will give each man HIS message, and He will do it every time. The Apostles had a message, and it was God’s Word. They were courageous witnesses and they spake boldly -- there was no uncertain sound. There are three characters in the Word of God that I especially like. One is Elijah. He came right out of the wilderness, out from the forests of Gilead, and walked right into the presence of the King, and, looking him right in the face, he said, "As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word." I like that kind of a man. I like John the Baptist. He stood before Herod and said, "You are living with another man’s wife." I like Paul. They said he was a little fellow. His enemies said his speech was contemptible and his presence weak, but he can be chained to a soldier on that side, and a soldier on this side, and never tremble, but the people he talked to did the trembling. Such a man never apologizes for the truth; he lets God take care of it, and He always does. They had great power in witnessing and great grace. They had favor with the people. One reason why holiness is so unpopular in some places is because of the unwise methods of some preachers. These men of the apostolic age had favor with the people. Now you say, "Brother Kulp, you are contradicting your own words." I know they were lashed; I know they were stoned; but I know they had a hearing, and some folks got saved. We need more preachers who are courteous, who, while they preach a whole Gospel, they do it in the spirit of Jesus. Again, these men had fervent charity. The poor among them did not lack for anything. They parted with possessions, put it in one common fund, and took care of the poor in the church. No, I do not say that was for all time. It was for the occasion when they had come up to Jerusalem on a special occasion. They had fervent charity, because they had the Holy Ghost. When one gets the Holy Ghost he will be generous with his own money. It is so easy to say what the other man ought to do with his money, but this means the personal use of your own money. In my home my wife is my bookkeeper, and every dollar that comes in, no matter where it comes from, goes down in the book, and there is a column for the tithe and then the freewill offerings come from the balance. God first, Hallelujah! I am practicing what I preach, and am having a good time preaching the Word. Separation. They were in the upper room. When you go with God you are cutting loose from everything else and everybody else. It is God first all the time. God answers when you are separated. Stay in the upper room until you hear from heaven. I think that now some folks are saying, "Brother Kulp, all those things you are talking of are from the Book of Acts." Have you ever thought that the BOOK of Acts has no ending? There are two books in the Bible that have no end. One is the Book of Acts, and the other is the Book of James. The reason Why? I will tell you. God intended that the Book of James should continue in the practice of the Church. If you do get sick, practice the Book of James. John Wesley said that for the first three centuries the only materia medica the Church had was the Book of James. But when the Church and State were united under Constantine, and the Church was rich and courted by the world, then they departed from Apostolic practice, and precepts, and the power of God left them; and all the wealth of the church, and all the fine churches erected, have never brought back the power the Fathers possessed. The Book of Acts never closed because God expected them to go on. Today, to meet the emergency, we get together and adopt resolutions; but God in the Word tells us that it is Acts on the part of the Church that will meet the occasion -- acts such as are recorded in the fifth Gospel. We need apostolic courage today. Brother Hems, an old Bible School boy, was preaching a straight Gospel in a Western town. He had offended some of the would-be bosses in the town and twenty-seven of them marched up the aisle one night and the leader said to him, "There are four trains on the Union Pacific through this town every day, and we do not care which you take, but you must leave." And that boy, now with God in heaven, shouted out, "Meeting here tomorrow night, at seven o’clock." Did God own him? I dedicated a holiness church in that town the very next year. Praise God, the more God’s people are afflicted, the more they grow and are multiplied. O beloved, when you have the Holy Ghost, the only intense desire you have is to be just where He wants you. If you are in the midst of a big revival, and He tells you to pack up and go to the desert, you are willing to go. And, going, you find that He has made no mistake; there is a man who wants to know, and you have the privilege of winning him, and then you are caught up by the Holy Ghost, and put down at your next appointment all ready for work. Thank God, He is the same yesterday, today and forever. Amen! ======================================================================== CHAPTER 75: 04.13. CHAPTER 13. THE CROSS OF CHRIST ======================================================================== Chapter 13 THE CROSS OF CHRIST Galatians 6:14 -- "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ" Christianity without the cross of Christ is a misnomer. Christianity without Christ is a farce. The symbol of Christianity is the cross. Men recognize this in various ways -- some by putting the cross on church steeples, others by wearing it on a watch chain. Strange to relate, there was a fashion that sprang out of the devotion to the cross. The Moorish Mohammedans wore smooth faces. They were bitter in their attacks upon Christians, and often when the Christians gathered for defense, they were unable to recognize each other. To make the distinction between the Moor and the Christian, the Christian men wore a mustache, and an imperial right on the chin, and that mustache and imperial was in the form of a cross, and when the Moorish Mohammedan began his attack, the men who wore the sign of the cross distinguished each other by it, and gathered for defense. I want to call your attention to the distinctive, definite phraseology of the text: "The cross of The Lord Jesus Christ." There have been other crosses. The Lord told Peter the kind of death that he should die, being carried whither he would not, and the time came when he faced the cross; but deeming himself as being unworthy of dying as did his Lord, he asked them to crucify him with the head downward. I look back to that cross. It is not any more to us than the cross of a martyr. I admire his unflinching courage; I admire his fortitude, but that is not the cross to which the text refers. Crosses have been quite common. The Jew in his blindness said, as he demanded the death of Christ, "Let His blood be on our heads." Whatsoever a man sows, that will he reap. They sowed one cross but they challenged Omnipotence. When Titus gathered the legions of Rome around Jerusalem the city fell, and Titus could not find wood enough to make the crosses on which to nail the Jews. They sowed a cross. They reaped crosses. There is another cross. There is a penitent thief hanging on it, and he prays, "Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy Kingdom." It took a stretch of faith, surely that did. Yonder he hangs as a criminal. Yonder he hangs, dying the death of a malefactor. But somehow or other, this poor dying penitent sinner sees the God-man and he cries, "Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom." And he got the answer, "Today thou shalt be with me in Paradise." I am interested in that cross. It tells me of a man plucked as a brand from the burning, to shine radiantly with burning luster in the crown of the Christ who is dying by his side. But I do not want you to get your eyes on that cross. The text says, "The cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." I do not wonder the poet sings: "When I survey the wondrous cross On which the Prince of glory died, My richest gain I count but loss, And pour contempt on all my pride. See from His head, His hands, His feet, Sorrow and love flow mingled down! Did e’er such love and sorrow meet, Or thorns compose so rich a crown!" Aye, he may well ask it. I want to call your attention to the middle cross. Men glory in their wealth, but wealth takes wings to itself and flies away. You can never take wealth with you into the world beyond. Men glory in fame; men glory in learning. This man of my text with this firm determination had the learning; this man was of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, a member of the Sanhedrin. He had been fourteen years at the feet of Gamaliel. He puts the learning, puts all the past behind him, puts away ancestry and everything else, and says -- mark you he was a Jew, -- "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." In the cross of Christ, to the Jew a stumbling block, to the Greek foolishness, but to the man that believes it, "the power of God unto salvation." Men need to get a vision of the Cross. Oh, there are many things that are crowding it upon us! The world allures. When a man once gets a vision of the cross, everything else will pale into utter insignificance. A vision of the Cross, . and all your horizon will be filled. All else will shrink in the presence of the Cross of Christ. I do not wonder at that sanctified old tinker, John Bunyan, making his Pilgrim say, when he gets to the cross and stands looking thereon as his burden rolls off his back and down into the sepulchre, "Blest cross! blest sepulchre! Yea, rather blessed be, The Man that hung thereon and died for me!" Say, beloved, it is a wonderful thing to get a vision of the cross. Men are after gold; they are after the honors of the world, after the things that perish. Give my soul a vision of the Christ above all this old world can offer. "Oh, the cross has wondrous glory!" Here everything else fades. The martyred McKinley lay dying in Buffalo, and they say that in the last hour he quoted, "Nearer, my God, to Thee, Nearer to Thee, E’en though it be a cross That raiseth me; Still all my song shall be Nearer, my God, to Thee." Not your Unitarian idea of that hymn, -- McKinley saw more than what the Unitarian sees; he saw the God-Man. Did you ever think of it? Jesus Christ was God manifest in the flesh. As McKinley lay there, with his own body lacerated with the bullet of the assassin, and with an experience born back at an old-fashioned Methodist altar, he had the vision of the Christ. "E’en though it he a cross That raiseth me." Garfield, another martyred Christian President, was dying the victim of the assassin’s bullet. They took him from Washington to Long Branch, and in a cottage there he lay dying. The Surgeon General of the United States is there doing all that is possible for the dying man. Out in an adjoining room is his wife, whom he familiarly calls "Crete," and she begins to sing. He says, "Barnes, push the door open a little wider. Isn’t that glorious? That is Crete singing!" And what was she singing? "Guide me, O thou great Jehovah, Pilgrim through this barren land; I am weak, but thou art mighty; Hold me by Thy powerful hand; When I tread the verge of Jordan, Bid my anxious fears subside; Bear me through the swelling current; Land me safe on Canaan’s side; Songs of praises I will ever give to Thee." Oh, thank God, when you have a vision of the Cross you can face death, knowing that you are held in the hollow of His hands. To the child of God the cross of Jesus is an inspiration. Here go the troops of Napoleon, Europe’s chief butcher. The engineers told him there was no way across the Alps, and he said, "There shall be no Alps." He expressed a determination that no matter what it cost, he would scale the Alps, get to the other side, and down into sunny Italy he would carry the Lily of France. He made his boast good. He marches up the mountain side; he gets near the summit, and an avalanche starts. it comes rolling down the mountain side and, striking a little drummer boy, sends him hurling downwards. The little fellow holds on to his drum, until he stops at the ledge of rocks. The soldiers are marching by and they see what has happened. The little fellow has a heart cry, and he expresses it with his drum beat. Many a time has he beat that "relief call" for others; now he beats it for himself, but nobody comes. The hearts of the soldiers are touched, but they dare not move out of the ranks without orders from Napoleon, and he leaves the little fellow to die. What is one life to a man who sacrificed thousands of lives to gratify his ambition! Then the little fellow beats the death march, and it is his own death march. He knows that he is left to die. You and I were marching along life’s pathway, and an avalanche of sin came tumbling down the mountain side, and rolled us down to where no human arm. could reach us. But the Christ of Calvary, the Christ of the Cross, He saw and "O amazing love, He flew to our relief." "With pitying eyes, the Prince of Peace Beheld our helpless grief; He saw, and O amazing love, He ran to our relief; Down from the shining courts above With joyful haste lie sped, Entered the grave in mortal flesh, And dwelt among the dead." He drew us with the cords of a man. In our need He reached down -- until He reached us in our lost condition, and lifted us back and made us at one with God. This cross is to me an inspiration, for it tells me that the Christ who died thereon died in my stead, and in yours. Archimedes said -- wondrous old philosopher that he was, he knew the power of the lever -- he said, "If I had a fulcrum I could lift the earth to heaven." What .Archimedes longed to do, Jesus did. His lever was the love of God; the fulcrum was yonder hill called Golgotha; and there in His own humanity He pressed down on the lever until He raised our earth, till men born of this sin-cursed earth can sing a higher song than angels ever sang, for they have been lifted up on a plane above that which angels ever knew. They have felt not the creative power alone, but the redeeming power of the love of God. I am believing in the cross of Christ. I am believing in the Cross because it reveals the love of God. The poet sings, "Love divine, all love excelling." The cross shows us the heart of God. I heard a good thing this morning of a young man who exchanged his mother’s heart for his desires, and as he cut out her heart and was running away with it, he stumbled and fell, and the heart of the mother said, "Son, did you hurt yourself?" That was a mother’s heart; but here is the heart of God. I have said it again and again; that parable that the men who divided the Bible into chapters, and put a title above the pages, and called it the "Parable of the Prodigal Son," I do not believe that Jesus ever taught it with that idea; I believe it was to show us, not the depths to which the prodigal went, but to show us the heart of the Father. It was the Father who was looking out for the prodigal; it was the thought of the Father’s house that drew him back home. it was the Father, who stood looking for the boy to come back. It was the Father who ran to meet him. It was the Father who so smothered him with kisses that he could not get out his confession. It was the Father who had the robe and the ring and the shoes, and it was the Father who ordered the feast. It was the Father who said, "This, my son, was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found." That parable shows us the heart of God. The heart is the seat of the affections and out of the heart comes love. I can read the thought of God in the starry heavens; I can read the wisdom of God in the passage of the planets; but it takes Calvary to show the heart of God, the love of God. What we need to see and know is one who has a heart of love. I believe in the wisdom of God, the power of God. What we want is to know the love that He commended when He gave His Son to die in our stead. How can we glory in the Cross? Because Jesus bore it for me and for you. In our place condemned He stood, bought our pardon with His blood. Hear that crowd at the Cross. "Give us Barabbas?" "No!" "Well, what has this man done? I have examined Him and I find no fault in Him,. I will set Him free." "No, no; give us Barabbas!" And Barabbas was given to the rabble, while Jesus goes to the cross. Yonder He hangs. The blood is running down over His face, over His hands, His feet. But here comes a man up the road, and he walks deliberately up the hill and stands before the sufferer. It is Barabbas. "Stranger, I do not know who you are nor from whence you came, but there is one thing I do know, you are dying in my stead." You and I can get our eyes on that cross, and there is one thing that we do know -- and if we do not know it, God help us to get the knowledge -- He died for us; He died in our stead. That cross is an inspiration to every child of God because it tells of the spirit of sacrifice. Here are the old signers of the Declaration of Independence. They are coming up and putting their names to that document and they say, "Every man who puts his name here knows he is risking his life." But every man there puts down his name. One wit among them said, "We’ll all have to hang together or we will hang separately." They risked their lives when they signed that paper. Jesus did more than this. He came, knowing that He would die. He always had the shadow of the cross on Him; it fell on His very cradle; it followed Him all through life. He steadfastly set His face toward Jerusalem. He said, "I am going up to be delivered into the hands of the chief priests and the scribes, and to die." Men could not apprehend this, nor the angels. There is a celebrated painting called "The Angel of the Cross." The Christ has been taken down. The body lies over there in Joseph’s tomb. Here is a crown of thorns lying on the ground, and there is a nail that has been drawn from His hand. There is the bloody thing lying on the ground, and the angel picks it up, but does not understand it. He picks a thorn out of that crown of thorns. He presses it against his thumb. He cannot understand it. Angels desired to look into it. It was only desire and it never was satisfied. But you and I stand at the very same cross . we look up into the very same face, and we say, "He died for me! He died for me!" I do not wonder that the man who met the Christ on the Damascus Road said, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ." How can we glory in the Cross? The love of Christ constraineth. He loved us and gave Himself for us. When you get the spirit of sacrifice that impelled the Christ toward the cross (He dipped His fingers in His own blood and wrote, God So loved the world) ; when you get that touch of love that urged Him to the Cross, constraining you to go out after others, and to die if need be for others, then you get the spirit that will stand you good until angels wrap their white wings around you and take you up to your Father’s house; and that is the very spirit we need, and must have, if ever we reach the world that needs to see Jesus in us. When the love of Christ constraineth in this manner, then you have something that will last throughout eternity. The Cross was a symbol of sympathy, and sympathy meant something. The root meaning of that word "sympathy" is "to suffer with," and Jesus suffered with. He gave Himself; He knew that His coming meant death for Himself. q hey have a sample of the sculptor’s art in Westminster Abbey -- the Princess Alice. Her little boy was dying of diphtheria. The physician said, "Do not kiss that little fellow; to do so would be fatal." The boy was rolling with delirium, and the mother came near and put her hand on the fevered brow. Her hands were so cold; the chill was creeping near her heart as she watched that darling boy dying. When the cold hand touched that brow it seemed for the moment that the fever was rebuked, and the eyes of the little one looked on the mother’s face. He said, "Mamma, kiss me," and she stooped down and kissed him, holding him in her arms of love. But she took the disease and died. Gladstone went into the House of Parliament and told the story of Princess Alice’s death. He said, "The doctors said she must not kiss the child; it meant death for her; but that cry from the heart of that boy touched the mother’s heart." And Gladstone said, "Where is the mother that would not have died?" But hear this: Jesus Christ came and He knew He would die. He knew He must go to the cross, and He went deliberately. Oh, men and women, for whom Jesus died, you who are bearing the name of Jesus, never shun the cross. I believe what that Scotch saint Rutherford said, "There was nobody to get under it but Him." When He hung thereon others left Him; two or three were near, three Marys, but His disciples stood afar off. But Rutherford said, "When a cross comes to us, He always comes along with it," and he says, "the heavier end for me." There never was a cross came to you but He came with it. "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." Now another thought before I close, and that is this: I glory in the cross because I can live in its shadow and be safe. It is a symbol of salvation. Thy sins, which are many, are all forgiven thee. In the shadow of that cross the promise comes, "Today shalt thou be with Me in Paradise." Look at that blood. "The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin." Go away back into Exodus. Read it: "The soul that sinneth it shalt die." "The wages of sin is death." Here is a bill of charges against the whole race. It was a custom in Eastern countries when one was indebted, that when the bill was discharged the creditor would take the bill of indebtedness which he held and nail it over the door of the residence of the debtor. The bill would be receipted and, being placed over the door, it meant that the debtor was free. The handwriting was against us. Sinai’s rolling, thundering, rumbling tones, declared "the soul that sinneth it shall die." "The wages of sin is death." It was the handwriting of the law that was against us; but when they nailed the Christ to the Cross, on His hand were the ordinances that were against us, and they drove the nails through His hand and ever since, beloved, we have been free because He paid the price. He took them out of the way, nailing them to the cross in His own blood. I glory in the cross because it reaches back to Eden, goes way back to the very gates of Paradise, goes back to Paradise lost, comes down by Sinai, comes down by Golgotha, on beyond Joseph’s tomb, away down to the end of the race, until we come to Paradise regained. It covers all our sorest needs. Oh, when I see some precious souls, how they are burdened, how they cry, saying, "I have sinned against God and God has given me up," I feel like saying, "Get in the shadow of the Cross. There is deliverance, there is safety under the blood." Away back in old Egypt God said, "When I see the blood, I will pass over you;" and today, under the shadow of the Cross of Christ, there is a Man who is a shelter from the storm, a shadow from the heat, and men dwell there in perfect safety. I thank God for the cross of Jesus Christ by which I am crucified unto the world and the world is crucified unto me. Have you taken refuge there? Are you hiding behind the cross? Hell has no centimeter guns that can pierce your hiding place. Nothing can reach you through the blood. Has the devil got you discouraged? Are you crying for help? There is a Helper near at hand, and He came by way of the Cross. One sight of the cross and your soul will be at perfect liberty. Rutherford says, "There have been thousands of heads pillowed on the bosom of Jesus, but there is always room for you." Will you get the thought -- there is room for you? "His arms the whole creation reach, So bounteous is the store, Enough for each, enough for all, Enough for evermore." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 76: 04.14. CHAPTER 14. THE OPTIMISM OF FAITH ======================================================================== Chapter 14 THE OPTIMISM OF FAITH Genesis 15:16 -- "In the fourth generation they shall come hither again." The man whose eyes are open hath said: he hath said, which heard the words of God, which saw the vision of the Almighty. -- Numbers 24:3-4 Here was a man who could not get away from delivering the message that God would have him to give. He loved the wages of unrighteousness, but he was facing a situation that God controlled, and God gave him something which gladdens our hearts today. Contrary to the circumstances that followed this man, the man who gets his vision from God and whose eyes are open, will be the man who will prosper. History proves it; the past proves it; the Word of God proves it, and man’s present experiences, uniting with the Word of God and with the history of the past, prove it to be true. Columbus sailed westward, week after week -- home, friends, kings and land left behind -- but he had a vision. Others begged him. to turn back, but he cried, "Sail on." Again they gathered round him, threatened mutiny, but he said, "Give me twenty-four hours more and then if we do not see land we will turn back." This man saw something that they failed to see. They might have seen it on the bosom of the ocean where the branches of trees were floating, and in the air where the birds were flying. He knew the land was not very far off. He was observant; his eyes were open and he cried, "Sail on!" And they reached the land. A boy sat by the hearth in his mother’s home. His mother lifted the teakettle over the fire and bye and bye it began to boil. The steam rushed out of the spout, and the lid of the kettle began to dance up and down. The boy watched it, and learned that there was an expansive power in steam, and out of his observation came the steam engine. A man saw two pieces of metal lying crosswise on the floor. Some one had thrown the leg of a frog across the two pieces of metal, and he saw the frog’s leg twitch. The man’s eyes were open, and the result was the battery that was named after him -- Galvani. Sir R. Brown wanted to know how to swing a bridge across the Niagara River two hundred and fifty feet above the rapids. One day he was out walking and he saw a spider’s web attached to a branch and the other end was attached to another branch. His eyes were open, and there he saw and did learn the principle on which he built the Suspension bridge on which you go over the Niagara today. Newton was lying on the ground and saw an apple fall from a tree. Apples had been falling ever since man knew what apples were. What is there in that? But this man’s eyes were open, and he said to himself, "Why did not that apple fall upwards instead of down to the ground?" And he discovered gravitation, because his eyes were open. If there are any people on top of ground who ought to keep their eyes open it is the children of God. We see farther than others. We have the vision of the unseen. We stand in the midst of the darkness where the thunders are rolling, when the face of black clouds are illuminated by the flashes of lightning; and we know that on the other side the sun is shining and the clouds and storm will soon pass away. We stand on the temporal side of the unseen and we know that beyond it God lives, and His eyes are upon the righteous and His ears are open to their cry. We are in touch with the Omnipotent. We are facing eternity and, because our eyes are open, we march with a swing of victory in our souls, and shout over things the world cannot understand. Faith makes a man an optimist. The man who believes God cannot be discouraged. He hears the Master talking to him and, as he listens to Him, there comes the comforting words, "I am with thee even to the end." Now, the devil can launch his brigades and his divisions and his legions, but this man sees the other side and shouts the victory. With Mrs. Browning we say, "Speak to me my Savior, low and sweet, From out the hallelujahs sweet and low; Lest I should faint and fall and miss Thee so." O beloved, He will speak to you; He will speak to you if you are united to Him by faith in His Word. He will speak to you and give you lessons, and give you words, and He will give you visions and make you a victor, and the world cannot understand it. Here stands the man Abraham with whom our first text is connected. He has no child of his own, and he is the multimillionaire of the East. To whom shall all this wealth go? To his steward? God says to him, "Abraham, thy seed shall possess the land. They may be carried into a strange land, but in four hundred years, in the fourth generation, they shall come hither." Hear it! Jesus said, "Abraham saw my day and was glad." If Abraham could stand there and believe God -- no child, no seed -- but could look down and see the Holy Land inhabited by his seed and they as innumerable as the sand on the seashore, by the naked word of God -- what ought we to do, nineteen centuries this side of Calvary, nineteen centuries this side of Pentecost? Our faith ought to be enkindled until a blaze of Gospel glory would sweep this old earth and the isles of the sea, until heaven and earth and hell knew there are some folks who are really believing God and are acting as though they were. Man had God’s own Word. Years roll on. Here is Isaac; here are the twelve patriarchs; here are their descendants, here they are down in Egypt. They are multiplied, increasing and mighty. Egypt’s noblemen are afraid. A king arises who knows not Joseph. The task master is set over them, the lash in his hand. They are to make bricks and to make them without straw. They are to rise with the morning light and work until the sun goes down; but hear it, they have the promise, "that in the fourth generation God will bring them out, hither to their own land." Taskmaster, lay on the lash; kill all the babies; but though you rise in the majesty of your strength and scorn these slaves, they have the promise of {he covenant-keeping God, and every time the sun goes down Israel may say, "We are getting nearer the time when we will walk out." Every time they put their feet down they put them on the promises of God, and when they go out they go rich with the spoil of the Egyptians, and richer yet with the promise of the land that flows with milk and honey. The God who promised that He would take you through, no matter what may befall, is the same today, He will see you through until your soul shall be gladdened one day in the city where the sun never goes down. If I had my choice, I would rather he the son of a poor Christian man, rich with the promises of God, than to be the son of any millionaire on earth who did not know God. I would rather lean on God’s Word than on any man’ s money. They had their eyes open on God’s Word. "In the fourth generation they shall come hither." Just before Joseph died, he said, "Do not bury me here in this land, for God will visit thee, and we shall move out to the land He hath promised." And they embalmed his body, and laid him aside. I can imagine that every time an Israelite saw the embalmed body he said, "We are going out." Say, if dead dried bones can encourage folks, then bless God, I am encouraged by the Word of the living God. Hallelujah. I have the best of the Israelite; I am looking to the Son of the living God. My eyes are open and they are fixed on Him. The head of a Bible School went out one day and his enemies got after him (the devil does not like Bible Schools), but he did not tremble any. One of his students who was with him trembled, and the Head of the School pitied him and he prayed, "Lord, open the eyes of this young man." And his eyes were opened and he saw that the hilltops all around were covered with horsemen of fire and chariots of fire. Some folks could not get their eyes open, except to see the Syrians, the chariots of the enemy; but the man who has his eyes open is so enraptured by the vision that he will not see anything but victory. Are your eyes open? . Anoint thine eyes with eye salve that thou mayest see. Some folks are so narrow in their vision that one man can fill their horizon; but when you get your feet on the promises, and your soul filled with the Holy Ghost, you get a horizon so big that nobody can fill it but the Son of God; and He will fill it, and He does fill it. Hallelujah! There never was a man so big and apparently so necessary to the church of the living God but when that person is taken away God has some one to fill his place. I am very much in sympathy with the woman who went to the funeral of a man who had been a splendid character, and as the minister was descanting upon the merits of the departed, he said, "We never shall see his like again." And a pious old sister said, "Thank God, that is a lie." God will always have someone who has the vision, and who believes His Word and lives it. You may have the Spirit of Jesus. Some people have Jesus with them and they worry, but they need not. "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee." I have read of some folks who had Jesus with them in the past. One day He was preaching one of those wonderful discourses of His, when the people stayed so long and were so far from home and had nothing to eat, and they grew hungry and weary. Jesus had compassion on them, and said to one of His students, "Give ye them to eat." They said, "Master, how shall WE feed so many?" That was their mistake -- they left Jesus out. "What have you?" "Why, Lord, there is a little boy here who has a few loaves and two fishes, but what are they among so many? That boy has been here before and he knew you would preach long, so he brought his lunch; he was so determined he would stay and hear to the end." And Jesus said, "Bring that boy to me." And the little fellow handed over all he had to Jesus -- not a whimper, either; he was glad to do it, -- and oh, how it did multiply and grow in those dear hands until five thousand were fed besides the women and the children! I really think there must have been about fifteen or twenty thousand there, for where you find one man at church today you will find three women. Oh, do keep your eyes on Jesus! There was a woman one time who scraped the bottom of the flour barrel. She wondered and said, "This is the last. Elijah will have to go and board somewhere else." But every time she scraped the bottom of the barrel, God heard it, and the flour increased, and the old prophet stayed there two years and a half. The men, the women, the boys and girls, who are in touch with God can stay where they ought to be until God opens other doors and says, "go." Some time ago I got down on my marrow bones and asked God to make all my plans and, Glory to God, He does it! Glory to God! How my soul is blessed as I sit at this typewriter and take off these sermons, when i remember how God has opened doors too many for me to enter! When God redeems a man and gives him the Holy Ghost, He will plan for him, and all the devils in hell or out of it cannot smash those plans until God’s purpose is accomplished. All things work together, not will work, but "work" now, for good to them that love God. I have a Quaker friend, a preacher brother, with whom I delight to work in a meeting. He never writes a report; he never publishes a slate; but all the time he is busy, going to every point of the compass, as God opens the way. And he gets blessed, and is a blessing to others. Praise the Lord! My God shall supply all your needs. Do you believe that? I do. Some one says, "Till I get in a storm." That reminds me of an old lady who was telling of a time when her horse ran away, and how frightful it was. She was asked if she trusted in God. She said she did until the harness broke, then she held on like a beaver. "Paul, all the angels of heaven leaned over the battlements of the skies as you testified in Jerusalem, and I heard every word that you said." "As thou hast testified of me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness also at Rome." His enemies sought to kill him but I think Paul was much encouraged and said, "They cannot do it. I have an appointment to witness at Rome." He starts out under guard, and is on a vessel fourteen days and nights and in the midst of Euroclydon. The masts go by the board, and they throw over some of the cargo, and undergird the ship with ropes. I hear the sailors say, "We are going to the bottom; we never were in a storm like this before." But Paul says, "I have an appointment from God to go to Rome, and we shall all get to land. You had better eat something, for you have been some time without meat." I see him again. They are through the surf, and there is rain. They gather chips to make a fire. Paul is that kind of a preacher, that he will not let others do all the work; he gathers some wood, too, and a snake comes out, and bites him on the arm. The heathen say, "This fellow is a murderer, who has escaped the sea, but vengeance will not let him live;" but Paul is due in Rome and he shakes the viper off and feels no harm. When God gives you a through ticket to Rome, He will see that you get there. I do not know where God wants you, but I do know this, He will get you there if you are faithful to Him. Do not doubt God’s Word. Here is the Word to which you may anchor. They could not kill Jesus; they tried to, but they failed until "the hour" had come. lie surrendered His right to live. They killed all the children under two years in His native town, but God saw to it that the Son was safe. Why? He had an appointment to the CROSS. His parents take Him down into Egypt until all that sought His life were dead; then He comes back, and in due time -- God’s time -- He takes up His ministry. They would stone Him, but He passes through them, on His way to the appointment on the Hill. It may be that you have an appointment to a cross, but remember, on the other side of that cross there is a crown. I like that hymn, "He’s taking me through, however I’m tried; His tender care is never denied." If you will go with Him, He will open your eyes and you will have the plan to work to, and God to work with you. God gives present victory to all those who will trust and believe and obey. The Epistle to the Philippians was written under circumstances which to some, perhaps to many, it would have been hard to write as did Paul. Only three miles from the headsman’s block, but it is joy unspeakable and full of glory. Do you know where John got that wonderful revelation that is the last’ of the record that God gives to men? Out there on the Isle of Patmos to which he had been banished by the cruel edict of Rome’s emperor. There Jesus talks to him, and he sees things no other ever saw before, but that you and I shall see if we are faithful. John Bunyan wrote Pilgrim’s Progress in Bedford Jail. He was there twelve years. He might have gone out a free man if he would have given his promise not to preach any more, but this he would not do. He had a blind daughter who would visit him in his loneliness. The jailer said to him one day, "You may go and see your wife," and Bunyan went home. After a little he said, "Wife, God tells me to go back to jail. I do not know why, but I am going." And when he got back the jailer said, "Why did you come back?" He replied, "God told me to." Soon after he got back the town authorities came to see if the jailer was faithful. When they were gone, the jailer said to Bunyan, "You can come and go whenever you want to. I know you are all right, and you know better than I do." Beloved, if God wants you ill jail, you are out of place outside of it. If God wants you in the way that leads to the cross, you are wrong anywhere else. Do you know where Rutherford was when be wrote those precious letters that you find today in "The Garden of Spices?" He was in jail; and when he wrote his letters to his friends, he would head them not from the jail, but from "God’s Palace in Aberdeen." He declared at one time that the stones in the walls glistened like sapphires because of God’s presence. "Prisons will palaces prove, If Jesus will dwell with us there." One day a smart little boy -- and you know there is nothing so smart as a little boy, unless it is a little girl -- said to his sister, "Can you spell water with three letters?" Of course she could not. Then he spelled it for her, i-c-e. When one gets where he can see God, he will find that every promise in the Bible is spelled v-i-c-t-o-r-y, -- victory over sin, over the world, the flesh, and the devil. "Oh, Brother Kulp, I have tried everything and I am defeated." Quit "trying everything," and believe God. Faith is the victory. There was a meeting held some time ago, and a lady belonging to the M. E. Church South came to the altar, and got the blessing, and acted as though she did. Her sister was also seeking the blessing, and she went to her and said, "Get to where you can do nothing else, and let God do the rest." God did it. When Israel came to the Red Sea, there were mountains on either side, and Pharaoh’s army in the rear. They said, "What shall we do? We are all dead men." Moses said, "Stand still, and see the salvation of God; for the Egyptians whom ye see this day, ye shall see no more forever." Stand still and let God work. He is working now. Trust Him and know for yourself. I heard them sing, "Jesus is a Friend of mine," and when they sang that my heart almost broke, for I remembered the time when I was not His, though He was still my Friend, and I wounded Him many a time. But He is a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother, and I know it now. I want to ask you, How many have a vision of God? How many accept of His Word, are getting promises cashed? You know beyond the shadow of a doubt that you are the Lord’s, and the Holy Ghost abides, you being a temple of the King? We often sing, "I walk and I talk with the King." Is that your own precious experience now? ======================================================================== CHAPTER 77: 04.15. CHAPTER 15. SONS OF GOD ======================================================================== Chapter 15 SONS OF GOD 1 John 3:2 -- "Now are we the sons of God." When Jesus was initiated into the priesthood " there came a voice from heaven saying, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." If we read the third chapter of Luke, where the genealogy of Jesus is recorded, we find it begins, "And Jesus Himself began to be about thirty years of age," the age at which the priesthood began with the Jews; and then it goes Or] back over a long list until we read, "Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God." Again, we read in the Word that when God created the worlds and spake them into existence, the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy. I am not surprised that Jesus, the sinless One, He who knew no sin, virgin born, conceived of the Holy Ghost, that He should be called the Son of God. It does not surprise me that Adam who was made in the image of God, the man whom God looked upon and pronounced perfect, that he should be called the son of God. I can appreciate it without surprise when I read that the angels who kept their estate, who stood out their probation, are called the sons of God; but that we, born in sin and conceived in iniquity, sinners by actual transgression, that we should be called the sons of God surprises me, and I can join in the song, "O ’twas love, ’twas wondrous love, The love of God to me, That brought my Savior from above, To die on Calvary." Some time ago a man of God was preaching in a Southern City, and in his sermon he said, "If you are the worst man that ever lived, God will save you if you give Him a chance." In the congregation was a man who was looked upon by the church as the worst man in the community. All had given him up. He was the terror of professing Christians. They avoided him because of his wicked tongue, and his hatred of everything good. But one morning that man heard the preacher make that statement. He rose up, went up the aisle, looked the preacher in the face, and said to him, "Preacher, do you say, and do you believe it. that God will save the worst man in the world?" The preacher said to him, "I pledge you my word as a Christian man, that if you will get down on your knees and ask God to save you for Jesus’ sake, He will do it, and you will know that you are saved." Down on his knees he went, and in the presence of that great audience made up of many who knew him as such a wicked man, he cried at the top of his voice, "O God, I am the wickedest man in all the world! Save me, for Jesus’ sake! Save me, O God, for Jesus’ sake!" The audience was breathless and sympathizing and praying. In a little while that man heard from heaven; God saved him, and he praised God and shouted until all heard and knew that a change had been wrought. So the wickedest man in town was saved, and he lived his salvation and became a power for righteousness. Once he was a rebel, an alien, now, "a son of God." If you go to Boston, they ask, "How much does he know?" If you go to New York, they ask, "How much is he worth?" If you go to Philadelphia, they ask, "Who were his ancestors?" But here my text declares, "now are we the sons of God." Once we were sinners, with no hope, no help in ourselves, outcasts, but now are we the sons of God. It is a present experience, not a theory, but a consciousness of God in the heart, so that we say with the Apostle, "For to me to live is Christ," "The life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me" -- a child of God, if a child then an heir, heir of God and joint heir with Jesus Christ. That is enough to keep me shouting for a week. now, in this dispensation of the Holy Ghost, we are the sons of God. Good-bye, ancestry, good-bye Hebrew of the Hebrews, good-bye tribe of Benjamin, I am now a son of God, adopted into the family, and have the witness of the Holy Spirit. No wonder the poet sings, "How happy every child of grace Who knows his sins forgiven! ’This earth,’ he cries, ’is not my place, I seek my place in heaven, A country far from mortal sight, Yet oh, by faith I see, The land of rest, the saints’ delight, A heaven prepared for me.’" Have you, my hearer, this witness? Can you prove your seed? When Ezra led the Jews back to Jerusalem, there were some who could not prove their seed. They had come by the way of adultery with the world. There had been intermarriages, and the children could not talk the language, so they were put to one side until the matter could be looked into. Can you prove your seed? Do you know when you were adopted into the family? Do you know when, and where? I had an elect lady in my church one time, . and as she and wife and I were riding together one day she said to me, "Oh, Brother Kulp, you do annoy me so with your preaching." I asked, "Why, sister, how do I annoy you?" "Well," she replied, "you preach that unless you know when you were converted, and where you were converted, you never were. Now I do not know the time when I did not love God, I always have." She had been trained by a godly mother, and never knew the blight of sin as many do. I have met one other like her. Baxter, the author of The Saints’ Rest, has left on record that back beyond where memory runs he gave his heart to God. Dr. Wentworth, an old Methodist divine, left it on record that he was saved in remote childhood, and had no recollection of time and place. We believe him, and yet I am quite confident that nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand know the time and place. "There is a spot to me more dear, Than native vale or mountain; A spot for which affection’s tear Flows grateful from its fountain. ’Tis not where kindred souls abound, Tho that is almost heaven; But where I first my Savior found, And knew my sins forgiven." Sons of God have all the characteristics of Jesus. First, they are born of the Spirit. So was Jesus. The angel said to the virgin, "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God." Listen to the words of Jesus, "Except ye be born of the Spirit, ye cannot enter into the Kingdom of God." Ye must be born again -- born from above. You and I may not understand it. "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: So is every one that is born of the Spirit." They are not of the world, even as Jesus was not of the world. Do you remember the prayer of Jesus for the disciples and for us? "I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world." Pay attention to that. How much was He of the world? The Book says, "Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God." The greatest hindrance to the cause of Christ today is that the world and the church are yoked up together. The supper room takes the place of the upper room. When a church is built nowadays it is built with a kitchen and ranges, and pans, and dining rooms, with the view of courting the folks whose god is their belly. The church is astray on this line today because the ministry at large is catering to the appetite of the crowd instead of to their spiritual needs. I was in a church some time ago where the choir was composed of young folks who were dressed in the styles of the world, -- short dresses, high heels, low necks, bare arms, and they called themselves, "Holiness." Good Lord, deliver us from that kind! It will pave hell six feet deep with professors. The good Lord did remove that pastor and his wife who were catering to the passions of the world, and I have since held a revival there when the altars were stained with penitential tears, and members of the church and sinners wept their way to God. No wonder they have curtains before the choir lofts today; they have to have them for decency’s sake. I know a lady who enjoys the blessing of Holiness seven days in the week. She is the wife of a man who is the owner of a large department store, and when he buys his goods he will see a dress that he thinks his wife would look well in, so he takes it home and gives it to her. She looks at it, puts it on, and then takes some dress goods and makes something that will cover up the open space in front. Her husband calls the improvement "Holiness curtains." I have been in churches where I thought a few holiness curtains would be a blessing. "Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord and I will be your God and ye shall be my people." This is still in the Book. For fear some may wonder where this is, I will say it is in Second Corinthians, sixth chapter, 17th and 18th verses. Amen! Jesus was anointed of the Spirit. So is every child of God. He never received the Baptism. of the Holy Spirit; He did not need it. After the Jordan scene where He was initiated into the priesthood, He went to the synagogue, and took the book out of the hand of the minister and, opening at the prophet Esaias, he read, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor; He hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And He began to say unto them, This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears. Every child of God has the anointing of the Spirit, for every work to which God calls him, and without this he is a failure. John leaves on record in his Epistle, "Ye have an unction from the Holy One -- ye have the divine anointing." One may have Pentecost, and have that once for all; but the anointing, the unction, is the absolute necessity of every minister, every worker, every child of God. "As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." "If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His." You may say that will unChristianize some folks. It is God’s Word, and the great need of the church today is the Spirit of Christ. It kills selfishness. It means abandonment to God and it means the possession of the victory to which we as the sons of God are called, and which the world needs to see us have. Jesus came to save and serve. So do the sons of God. Proof of this? "As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world." The one object of the church is to save; the one work of the ministry is -- not to serve tables, to be financial agents -- but to save; not to be ecclesiastical bosses, but to serve. Jesus said, "I am among you as the serving One." Jesus "must needs go through Samaria," that He might save and serve just one sin-sick soul. On the cross before He gave up His life, He handed a passport signed in His own blood to a poor dying thief, saying, "Today thou shalt be with me in Paradise." Take the Word and read the last thing He has to say to the believer, "The Spirit and the Bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come." This is the last exhortation of Jesus to the individual believer, and there is nothing in which the individual member of the church is more remiss. Personal workers are scarce. How many can you count in the church where you belong? "Let Him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins." Does this mean your pastor, your class leader? No; it means you. Jesus was loved of the Father. So are we as the sons of God. God so loved that He gave. Jesus loved the Church and . gave Himself for it. He first loved us. The Father went after the prodigal while he was yet a great way off. Love sent Him. He loved that Prodigal. "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you." Is the world saying today, "See how these Christians love one another?" Are there many giving away the second coat or going the second mile? Yes, there are sons of God. Listen. If we suffer with Him. Jesus was called to suffer. So are we as the sons of God. Listen. IF we suffer with Him we shall reign with Him. Paul was His branded man, bearing about with him the marks of the Lord Jesus. Jesus said to Ananias, "I will show him what great things he must suffer for my name’s sake." Called to suffer? Yes, appointed thereto. Called to stand abuse and say nothing back; called to suffer misrepresentation; to go to prison and, by the grace of God, to sing Psalms in prison until the others shall hear, and heaven shall hear, and earth quake, and chains fall off, and revivals begin, -- suffer, not for wrong doing, but for Jesus’ sake. Jesus was received up into glory. So shall we be some day. Moses prayed, "Show me thy glory." God answered that prayer, centuries afterward, on the Mount of Transfiguration. Hear it: "Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me shall be where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me." His glory! The glory that came to a Caesar, to a Napoleon, to the Field of the Cloth of Gold, all fades away; but you and I are to see His glory, the glory that made the angels hide their faces behind their wings, the glory that was so overwhelming that when Moses came down from the Mount his face shone, reflecting the glory of the Father; fadeless glory, eternal glory, not seen through a glass darkly, but face to face. When the three saw it in the Mount they were dazed, and knew not what they said; but up yonder we shall see His glory, with vision undimmed, and, walking in the light of an endless day, we shall go from glory to glory, and revel in the light and shine of the countenance of the Triune God forever. "We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is," Praise God. Like Wesley? NO. Knox? No Asbury? No Fox? No But we shall be like Hun, like our Lord and Savior while countless ages roll. Oh, the glory that is to be revealed in us through Him in that day! Once He was the man of the marred visage, once He was the man of the thorn-crowned brow, once He showed the marks of the nails and the spear print, but now He is the Christ of the Mediatorial throne, with Him is all the glory of the Father, and we shall be like Him. Like Him, and where He is. Bishop Quayle one time said, "Christ is staying at home now;" and we are to be at Home with Him. If His presence disperses the gloom here and makes all within us rejoice, what will it do when we are there! Hold on, O soul of thine, a little longer, and then where He is, that will be glory for thee. Your privilege and mine! Hear it again: "But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name." Faith is the victory. It is your privilege to have this blessed relationship now. You may have the home awaiting you, a home where the garnishing has been done by the Architect of the universe, with all manner of precious stones, jasper and chalcedony, and jacinth, and emerald, and the streets are gold like transparent glass and the gates are solitary pearl. The foundations are all rapture, and the place is praises that are eternal. * * * * * * * * * * THE END ======================================================================== CHAPTER 78: S. A VOICE FROM ETERNITY ======================================================================== A Voice From Eternity "And in Hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his linger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame." Luke 16:23-24 Some time ago, in driving along the road, I Saw a Sign that read like this: Stop! Look! Listen! It meant that there was danger in going heedlessly along the road, paying no attention to the warnings given. In deciding a case, when a man sued a railroad Company for damages, a judge in Pennsylvania said: "The complainant could not recover damages, if he failed to stop, look and listen." God, in His Word, throws out the flag of danger, and warns men of the sin in heedlessly going toward Eternity, paying no attention to the Word, the Spirit, and the Providences of God. In this chapter we have an awful warning from the lips of Him who spake as man never spake; from Him who never uttered a useless nor a trifling word. In our text we have the cry of a damned soul; a voice from Hell. The cry of a man who had been favored with privileges, blessed with opportunities, and who, in spite of all that God could do, in spite of Moses and the prophets, had passed out of life to wake up in an eternal Hell. Damned? Yes. In Hell? Yes. On the authority of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Savior of the world, aye God Himself. You say you do not believe in a Hell. Do you believe in a Heaven? Yes. On what authority? What other book in all the world tells you of Heaven aside from the Word of God? What scholar, scientist, philosopher, ever discovered there is a Heaven? Name him, if you can -- tell us the work in which he first made it known to the world. You depend upon this old Bible for your knowledge of Heaven -- aye, for all your knowledge of Heaven -- and the same Book says there is a Hell -- "in Hell he lifted up his eyes." If it is false in one case, it is false in all; if it is true in one case, it is true in all. God cannot lie. This Book is His Word, and in this Word I read: "The wicked shall be turned INTO HELL with all the nations that forget God." "Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." "He that believeth not SHALL BE DAMNED." Not that this is God’s choice for man. "He hath not appointed us unto wrath, but unto salvation." He exhorts men: "Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, for He will have mercy, and unto our God for He will abundantly pardon." "I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, but would rather that all men should turn unto Me and live." "Turn ye, turn ye, for why will ye die?" "Repent ye, and believe the Gospel." Again and again God warns you, and yet you are doing just what this lost soul did. You are neglecting the Word of God. That man had Moses and the prophets, but he heard not them. God says to you Stop! He calls to you by His Word, His Spirit, His Providences. He holds up before you the awful examples of those who perished in their sins, and waked up in Hell in torment, and asks you to Look! He sends the Holy Spirit to talk to you, and Spirit-filled men to preach to you, and asks you again and again to Listen, and yet you heed not! Some day you will want God’s Word; some day you will ask for a message from it. I knew of a man in Philadelphia, who, after years in a life of sin, came down to his death bed. He had neglected the Word; grieved the Spirit; and was facing Eternity! He asked that his mother’s Bible he brought. It had been neglected those years. He wanted his sister to read the book to him. Only one Bible would do -- his mother’s. He would not let them take it off his bed. He would reach out and put his hand on the book, as though there was some virtue in the very touch of its lids. "Hannah," he would say, "read to me out of mother’s Bible," -- and thus he died. "He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be cut off, and that without remedy." This text teaches us that death ends all opportunities. All men’s chances end in this life. God crowds it with blood-bought privileges, but death ends them all. I was preaching in the Methodist Church in Steelton, Pa., when, at the altar call, a woman came forward crying: "O God, give me another chance." This was a confession that she had had previous chances, and had murdered them. It was a begging cry; a heart-broken plea for just one more chance. God gave it to her and mercifully saved her. I attended the funeral of a young man about twenty-one years of age. While working in a saw-mill, he had by an accident been hurried into Eternity. As they lowered the body into the grave, the mother of the young man cried out in her anguish: "O God, why did you not give my boy a chance?" That young man was of age. Life had been filled with light and opportunities. He went, suddenly hurried into Eternity where there are no calls to the unsaved; no Gospel; no mourner’s bench; no pleading of the Spirit. Why do men shrink from death? Because of the pain of dying? Nay. I have gone into battle with men cheering and yelling at the top of their voices, not knowing but that at any moment the fatal bullet might strike, or the shell tear them in pieces, and yet on they went, not fearing death. What men dread is what comes after death. They know hope ends here and mercy ends here. When man crosses the line, he leaves all hope of salvation, all mercy for the impenitent, behind. When Grant made the attack upon Petersburg, I was lying with Co. F. of the 95th Pennsylvania Regiment, on the ground by the station on the road that ran to City Point. They were bringing the wounded in ambulances to the station, and there they waited until the cars came to take them away. I was very tired, but I could not sleep. A soul was going into Eternity unprepared. In one of the ambulances was a young man wounded unto death, a bullet in his spine. His constant cry was: "O God, have mercy on my soul! O God, have mercy on my soul!" That agonizing cry penetrated far out into the darkness of the night, and drove sleep from our eyes. "O God, have mercy on my soul!" Afraid of the mere act, the pain of dying? -- no, no, that soldier boy had gone into battle fearlessly -- it was what came after death. O brother, friend, I plead with you do not presume upon the mercy of God. Your eleventh hour went by long ago. The men hired at the eleventh hour were idle because "no man hath hired us." It was their first opportunity and they accepted it. Your first opportunity has gone forever. Death ends all successful praying. It is a hopeless task, praying in Eternity. This man lifted up his eyes in Hell and prayed -- but he prayed in vain -- "have mercy upon me;" "a drop of water to cool this parched tongue," but there was neither water nor mercy. Prayer is for time -- for this life. Men in Eternity may pray: "Rocks and mountains, fall upon us," but there is no answer. They will seek death, but death will flee from them. I knew a young man, Harry B_____, who, when exhorted by his mother to seek God, replied: "All I want is five minutes in which to say, ’God have mercy upon me.’" A few months after that I was sent for to pray with Harry, who was dying. He was propped up in bed unable to breathe when lying down. His wife and sister were on either side fanning him. I said: "Harry, you sent for me. I am here. Shall I pray?" He nodded assent. I knelt in prayer, prayed in a very low tone, and had not prayed one minute when I heard him say in a very labored manner: "Tell George not to pray too long." His physical agony was so great that he could not endure a word spoken above a whisper. He had five minutes in which to say: "God have mercy upon me," but not the strength to say it. Life is the time to get prayer answered. If you will not pray now, there is a time coming when you will -- and it may be too late. Look at this young man covenanting with some friends that they would never ask any one to pray for them. They were in a revival service and seeing many others rise for prayer. They, spurred on by the devil, made the covenant. But the scene changes. Years have gone by. Death has laid his hand on one of the number; he asks for some one to pray for him -- the very thing he had covenanted with others he would not do. An evangelist of some note for power in prayer is sent for. She enters the room and she hears the dying man cry:-- "Pray! Oh, pray! Pray!" She kneels by the bedside, she is indeed gifted in prayer, but, on this occasion, the heavens are brass; her prayers rise no higher than her head. She realizes that God is not pleased and rises from her knees. Still the dying man cries: Pray -- pray -- pray," and the mother says: "Oh, do pray -- do not leave us -- pray once more." Again she essayed to pray, but there was no unction, no liberty, no prayer. She left that home unable to pray. The last words she heard were those of the dying man, as he cried: "pray -- pray -- pray!" He was fast sinking, the voice but a whisper, and as he was passing away, loved ones bent over him to hear his last words; they were these: "Pray -- pray -- pray!" There is a time to pray, a time when God answers, a time when He will be found. And there is a time when He mocks, and when fear cometh. The condition of the lost is fixed to all eternity. There is no talk in this chapter of a second probation. A great gulf is fixed. Destiny is fixed. No chance for Heaven after death; they that would pass from hence cannot. Here and now is the place and time to prepare. Probation means opportunity, trial, testing, and death closes probation. As the tree falls, so must it lie. No wonder that this lost soul said, "I am tormented in this flame." The very knowledge that hope has gone -- mercy gone -- would breed a despair that would torment eternally. "Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire," implies eternal torment. Passing through York, Pa., on the train, I saw on a board fence these words: "O Eternity, how long art thou!" When Peary went to the land of eternal snows, knowing the length of the nights, he took with him games, books, theatricals, to enable the men to withstand the long, long night of one hundred and twenty-one times twenty-four hours. When the night began, it was endurable; men read the books, played the games, were interested by the theatricals, but soon they were restless. Oh, this long, long night! Thirty times twenty-four hours of darkness went by and they wondered, "Would the night never end?" -- but it was only beginning. Again the books, the games and the theatricals, until all palled upon their hands. Sixty times twenty-four hours of darkness! Men went up on deck, looked out as though they, with straining eyes and longing hearts, would induce the day to come, but the darkness only intensifies. Ninety times twenty-four hours of darkness -- and the hospital is filled; men’s minds reel and totter, as they try to withstand the new experience. Officers inquire of surgeons: "Doctor, why is this?" and the only answer is: "It is this long, long night." One hundred and twenty times twenty-four hours of darkness. Men climb to the masthead looking for the day -- and at last, athwart the eastern sky the god of day throws his golden gleams, telling the weary, heartsick men that "the long, long night is past." But listen -- Hell is one eternal night. No star to penetrate its worse than Egyptian darkness; a night without a star -- a night which no day shall ever follow -- no sun arise to disperse its gloom. The lost soul may long for light, but light never comes. Soul cries to soul: "How long? How long?" and devils damned, in Hellish glee answer: "Forever and forever!" The "pendulum of Eternity’s horologe over the gates of darkness vibrates through all eons and says ’Forever and forever! Forever and forever! Forever and forever!’ Its sounding bell strikes off the centuries, the ages, the cycles. The appalling monotony of its pendulum, going -- going -- going -- repeating still: ’Forever and forever! Forever and forever! Forever and forever!" O Eternity, God has wound up thy clock and it will never run down, and its tickings and beatings are heard by all the lost ’Forever and forever! Forever and forever!’" No end to the suffering; no end to the pain; dying and yet never dead; praying for death, seeking for death, but death fleeing from them; shut up in the bottomless pit with death, and yet unable to die! I was called to see a dying sinner. His friends said: "Mr. Kulp, he don’t want to see you, but we want you to go." He was suffering intensely with a cancer consuming his vitals. As it ate its way deeper and deeper, causing the most excruciating agony, he said: "They won’t let me have a knife, or I would soon end this." To him, in the midst of that awful agony, suicide seemed to offer relief, but listen! there is no such thing as suicide in Hell. Its death is an eternal dying. Lost souls know this life is the time to repent. "If one went unto them from the dead, they would repent." When it is too late he agrees with the Word of God, "Now is the accepted time; Now is the day of salvation." If lost souls could send messengers with messages to their kinfolk in this world, the burden would be that of the Word: "Repent now and believe the Gospel." They recognize the fact when it is too late that repentance is necessary to keep a soul out of Hell. "Lest they also come to this place of torment." Hell is repentance too late. God’s Word teaches men in this life, from Genesis to Revelation, "Repent." The Holy Spirit urges, "Repent." Jesus preached, "Repent." On the Day of Pentecost the message was, "Repent, and be ye converted." Almost the last message in the Word contains this sentence: "I gave her space to repent and she repented not." The very lost in Hell would urge the necessity of repentance upon the unbelieving, procrastinating, God-defying, Christ-rejecting sinners of today. I was invited to visit an insane asylum and, in company with my friend, I went. I walked the first and second floors and saw patients who were recovering, some who were perfectly harmless, and in whom it would be difficult to detect any mental disorder. Then we went on to an upper floor, into "the disturbed ward" of the asylum. We were admitted after the doctor unlocked the door, and entering, the door was again locked. Such a sight was there! Men with high cheek bones, sunken eyes, disheveled hair, long fingers, bony hands. They came near us, put out their hands to touch us, peered into our faces. When the time came to pass out, I was glad. I was never in the disturbed ward of an insane asylum before and I will never go again. But, friends, Hell is the disturbed ward of the Universe. Devils damned, the false prophet, the beast, all drunkards, murderers, liars, adulterers, dogs, sorcerers, whoremongers, idolaters and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie, have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone forever and ever, and that intensified as the cycles roll on, by the panorama of the past rolling before them -- mercies, opportunities, family circles, altars, Gospel sermons, revival services, mourners’ benches, praying friends, an open Bible, the Spirit’s pleadings, an interceding Christ-all neglected, all rejected, all gone by, and gone never to return! "Appointed unto salvation," "but, ye would not." God called, ye refused. God stretched out His arm, but ye paid no regard. Sinai warned -- its thunders rolled -- ye would not hear. Now the weeping, now the wailing, now the gnashing of teeth, now the death that never, never dies! "While God invites how blest the day, How sweet the Gospel’s solemn sound; Come, sinner, haste -- oh, haste away, While yet a pardoning God is found." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 79: S. ACCORDING TO WORKS ======================================================================== According to Works by George Kulp "The Lord shall reward the doer of evil according to his wickedness" (2 Samuel 3:39). "Treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath" (Romans 2:5). If we thought more on eternal verities, we would behave ourselves better. If we would remember God, many persons would be troubled. If we would take God at His Word, that we shall be judged according to the deeds done in the body, we would be more careful about our doing. The Empress of Austria saw her Cabinet fearful, her troops defeated, her generals disheartened, and France robbing her of one of her fairest provinces. She realized the injustice of the thing, and said to the French commander: "My lord, God does not settle every Saturday night, but God always settles." That is eminently true. We ought to have it burnt in on our memory, on our conscience, God always settles. The Old Testament and the New agree, He will reward the doer of evil according to his wickedness. "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." We may be dealing with men, we may be dealing with finite creatures, we may be for awhile creatures of time; but eternity is before us, and we will settle with God according to the records we have made. God is pressing it home upon us. We are forgetful. We are light. We are trifling. We are jesting. We are satisfied with the name on the church record. We are satisfied with going to church and to meeting once on Sunday -- if it does not rain. We are satisfied with a pretension, a profession, with a fireless experience. But, listen to this: It means much to live. People talk about it being a solemn thing to die. To die is easy. It is a solemn thing to live. We are living for eternity. The finest epigram in the English language was written by Doddridge: "Live while you live, the epicure would say, Enjoy the pleasures of the passing day; Live while you live, the sacred preacher cries, And give to God each moment as it flies. Lord, in my view let both united be, I live in pleasure when I live for Thee." It is a wonderful thing to remember that we are living for God. The apostle said, "For me to live is Christ; for me to die is gain." But let us get it home to ourselves. We do not have to look back to a sentiment, to a truth uttered nineteen centuries ago. How are we living? What impress are we making upon the world around us? What are we doing to help Jesus Christ? It is an old proverb, "God loves to be helped," and I want to say it reverently, God cannot do without us. Down at Ocean Grove, General Grant, my old commander, was on the platform, in that great big tabernacle, and it was crowded with thousands of people. A man who had been a private soldier in the old Army of the Potomac in Colonel Perry’s old New York regiment, now a Methodist preacher (Its officers were most all Methodist preachers and its privates Methodists), introduced Grant, and when he introduced him, he said, "We could not have done without him, and he could not have done without us." That was true. Now, I want to say it reverently, God, in accordance with His plan of salvation and the economy of grace, cannot do without us. He says, "Lo, I am with you. Go ye," and when a man who was gloriously saved, clothed and in his right mind, out from among tombstones, came when Jesus was about to depart, and said, "I want to go with Thee," Jesus said to him, "Go to thy home and tell them what great things God hath done for thee." What are you telling? What are you doing? There are some people that never shout anywhere else than at the "Mount of Blessings." Some people never do any shouting at home. Some people never shout before the grocer, and the baker, and the shoemaker. How are you living at home? I was thinking this afternoon when our brother was giving his exhortation, when men dropped down here on their knees, if the men and women in this congregation who profess to be saved and sanctified, who say they have received the baptism with the Holy Ghost, would have their Pentecost, if they were on their knees before God in prayer as much as they are talking around on this camp ground, this place would be awful with the Divine Presence. There is a great big difference between the gift of gab and the gift of grace. It does not require much self-denial on the part of some people, to stand around and talk, and talk, and talk. What we need on this camp ground is to pray, pray, pray! Then we are going to see something done here that will satisfy the heart of Jesus Christ. Do not tell me about the hardness of men’s hearts. I know it is harder today -- it seems so to me -- to get men and women to God; but one thing I do know -- the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth. I know that God hears and answers prayer, and I know this, that whether you are in the church or out of the church, just as sure as God lives, before every man and woman within the sound of my voice tonight, before every boy and girl who has arrived at the age of accountability, there is an eternal heaven, with all its joys, with all its blessedness, with all the glory that the Son had with the Father before the world was, or there is an eternal, salty, fiery, billowy hell, and it depends upon men’s actions here. Jesus Christ told us about a church member who "lifted up his eyes in hell." Church membership is no guarantee of salvation. "The Lord shall reward the doer of evil according to his wickedness." It was a hard thing to get away from the United States Government during the last war. They had secret service men in business offices; they had them in shops; they had them on the street; they had them wherever men congregated, and men not knowing that notice had been taken of what they said, found the heavy hand of the government laid upon them and they were summoned before the Department of Justice. The government was watching, and very few men escaped with their treason against the government. But if men could not get away from the government, how are you going to get away from God? General Mitchell, that Christian astronomer, sat in his observatory and turned his telescope down across the country, and seven miles away he saw boys in an orchard, shaking apples off the trees and robbing the orchard. They knew nothing of it, but that man’s eye was upon them. But, listen! There never was a sin you ever committed, whether in the light or dark, whether at home or a thousand miles from home, there was never a sin hid away in your bosom that you ever committed that you would not have your wife, your sister, your mother to know, but God was gazing on the whole thing, and unless you confess and repent, and get right with God, He will uncover that thing at the Judgment Seat of Christ. Oh, we go to campmeeting, and we go to our churches, and we go Sabbath after Sabbath, and go in and out like the door on its hinges, and then we think no responsibility, no decision, no action called for. Listen! If you have got a spark of old-time Bible salvation, it will put a go in you, and make you interested in the salvation of souls. One of my prayers is, O God, help me to see in everybody someone for whom Jesus died! And yet they are dying all around us, they are slipping through the fingers of the church by thousands into a devil’s hell, and there is very little effort being made to save them. We have periodic spasms that last about ten days, and then for the balance of the year we devote ourselves to monkey shows and church socials, and lectures, and entertainments, and let people go to hell, while Jesus Christ is on the throne praying. I repeat what Brother Hatfield said this afternoon, Lord, wake us up! We are going to campmeeting and enjoying ourselves ten days in the year, and going back home and lying on our oars, and letting the world go to hell. God knows. God sees. I am glad to preach sermons that make people uncomfortable, that drive people to their knees. I am glad to preach sermons that drive men and women to confession. That old Book is gloriously true. It is awfully true. It is tremendously true. It is eternally true. "The wages of sin is death." Oh, you would not think so. You would think sin was a joke. You cannot get ten ungodly men together one hour in a fishing party or a hunting party, but before the hour is past someone will have something to say that is smutty or unclean, and thinks it is smart; but God makes a record of it. You never uttered a sentence with a double meaning, you never thought an unclean thing, but God Almighty had the record. You never did a mean thing, but God Almighty took note of it, and He will call you to judgment. You do not have to drink. You do not have to smoke. You do not have to chew, and I think it is as much of a sin to chew as it is to drink. Any man that violates the law of God in his own body, sins against God. Oh, I got along beautifully in some meetings for six or eight days. Some fellows said, "That is fine preaching." "That is good preaching." They would sit on the front seat, and shout and shout, and about the ninth day God would put something on me about tobacco, and then they closed up just like a clam. They were members of the church, had their names on the church record. Whenever a man gets real Bible salvation, it will change the color of his spit, and the Lord will reward the doer of evil in his own body. If I live until the 23d day of next month, I will be seventy-four years old. I have not got an ache or a pain. I have not got an organ of my body that I know I have from any ill feeling. When I came to this country I was as sound in my body as any baby that was born since Abel. I was the first baby of an old-fashioned Methodist father and mother. Father was converted at sixteen, mother at fifteen. Neither one of them ever went into sin. Father lived to be eighty-one and never backslid. Mother will be ninety-six next November, was converted at fifteen, and never backslid, and when I was coming to this country they did not try to kill me, so I landed safely, with a perfect body -- perfect in limb, perfect in wind, and I never went off into sin, as many have done, for which I thank God and the training of my Christian parents. They watched over me, did not let me out after dark. I do not know that I ever stayed out much after dark, until after I went into the army, and I went into the army just before I was seventeen years of age. They kept me home, and I went to church with them, and sat on the same seat with them. I did not sit on the same seat with mother, because when I was a little fellow and went to church, the men sat on one side, and the women on the other. Men are rewarded for the evil they do to their bodies, as they violate the law of God, and if you have sinned against your own body, either in the marriage relation or your appetites, you will die and go to hell as quickly as the biggest drunkard in America. The Lord shall reward the doer of evil according to his wickedness. Nobody ever did a good deed but what God took note of it. I see an old prophet down here in a pit, and the pit has mire in it, it has water in it, and down there means death, and somebody pities the old prophet, and goes to the king and says, "You leave Jeremiah down there many days and the old prophet will die on your hands. Let me take him out." And the king said, "Go, take him out." And they let down clouts to go under his arms, and let down a rope, and told him to put the rope over the clouts, and then lifted him up out of the dungeon and landed him, and took him over and put him in a chamber and took care of him. By and by, in the evil day, God remembered that man that went to the king in behalf of the prophet, and said, "Tell him the people of the land will go into captivity, but he can go wherever he pleases, have perfect liberty, and the whole land is at his command." Oh, God is very mindful of His laws. God said to His people, "One year in every seven thou shalt leave the land lay at rest." But they were like the people of America are today -- they were prosperity mad -- and for 490 years the land had no rest. But listen! God has got a long memory. By and by those people were carried off into captivity for seventy years, and the land had its rest. Oh, you are dealing with God. You cannot cheat Him. Today the Sabbath, with many people, is a day of pleasure, a day for big dinners, a day for visiting, a day for company. I remember I went on a new charge one time. One of the leading members drove up in front of my house after Sunday morning service, stepped out in front of the house (he had a great big, spanking team of bays and a fine surrey), and he said to the children, "Is Brother Kulp there?" I went to the front door, and this man said, "Brother Kulp, let your George go out with us and spend the afternoon, and we will bring him back when we come to church tonight." I said, "No, sir; I do not allow my children to go visiting on Sunday." If people do not obey the laws of God, they will not obey the laws of man. The man that is not loyal to God is not a good citizen We are introducing the European Sabbath. Tall about the Puritan Sabbath, when they would not make a fire or wash the dishes -- bless God, I would rather have a Puritan Sabbath than a European Sabbath. They produced men. We do not have any statesmen today. We have a lot of politicians, and they have got their ear to the ground to hear the sentiment of the people. They are not leaders, but followers. In those days we had men that stood four-square. We are talking about keeping the Sabbath. There is not much shouting, is there? The Bible says it is a day of rest and worship, not a day for fun and for frolic, and your ministers all over this country that are talking about a liberal Sabbath, and moving picture shows on Sunday, and baseball games on Sunday, belong to the devil. "The Lord shall reward the evil doer (the Sabbath breaker) according to his wickedness." That is the teaching of God’s Word. You are dealing with God’s Word. Listen to what Jesus said: "The words that I speak unto you, they shall judge you in that day." "The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life." You are not dealing with me. I am bringing God’s message. I would not dare to preach anything else but what God gives me, and I preach anything God gives me, no matter where I am, if I have to walk home. Listen to what a man doubting the truth of that Word said: "If I could believe that death is an eternal sleep, I’d be happy; but if there is a life beyond, I am a lost soul, and eternity means hell for me." And that is true -- hell for the man that does wickedly, no matter how moral he is, no matter how high he stands in society. It is hell for the sinner, rich or poor. Oh, we can go down and stand before the congregations in the slums and preach the truth, and lay it on about hell, and about the violation of God’s law, and then when we get uptown in the churches, and get a lot of so-called respectable sinners before us, then we are dealing in nosegays and perfumery and rose water, and they are going to the same hell as the others do. "The Lord shall reward him according to his wickedness." Down in the Shenandoah Valley the commander of a brigade of cavalrymen was riding through the valley. There is a home, and there stands a man in the front yard, and there is a boy not over sixteen years of age. Back there about five miles, two or three Union soldiers were hanging by the neck. The commander of this brigade said, "Mosby’s guerrillas did that. We will settle with those fellows." And he came on until he came to this house, and there stood that man and there stood that boy; not a gun in their hands, no sign of armed resistance, and he commanded his men to shoot that man and boy. He said, "Run, if you can get a chance for your life." And they ran, and he said, "Men, fire!" And the men fired, and that man and that boy went down to death in what I call cold-blooded murder. "The Lord shall reward the evil doer according to his wickedness." That Brigadier General was the idol of his troops, of every cavalryman in the Army of the Potomac, and they would have almost considered it treason to have said then what I am saying now. But listen! That man, after a great many years, went out West, was surrounded by the Indians. His troopers were shot down, and the Indians told how he stood there with his revolvers in hand, fighting to the very last, and at last he went down to death. Listen! listen! listen! God shall reward the doer of evil according to his wickedness. You cannot violate the law of God and escape. There never was a Union or Confederate general, during the Civil War, that began a battle on Sunday, but was defeated. When Admiral Cevera came out of that bay down there on Sunday morning, he thought the Union fleet was at worship. The flag of worship was up, and he came out and provoked the battle, and was defeated. He was fighting against God. My text is true to the individual and to the nation. Now, again . We know we must die. Unless Jesus comes, every saint here will die. Every sinner will die. Are we living as though we thought it? I was standing in the station at St. Mary’s, Ohio, and there was a great big bill poster furnished by the railroad company, and on that poster here is a party in an automobile, and yonder is the railroad, and yonder comes a train, and here are the words on that poster: "Whenever you approach a railroad crossing, always remember you may enter eternity on a moment’s notice." That is true whether you are approaching a railroad crossing or not. No one here has a guarantee for tomorrow. You may die before tomorrow morning. What preparation are you making for it? I preached the other night. "Prepare to meet thy God." What preparation are you making? "Why, Brother Kulp, I am a member of a church." You can die with your name on a church record, and go to hell. I believe in churches. My name is on a church record where I live, and where I was pastor for fifteen and one-half years. I believe in churches and denominations, and anybody that cannot be satisfied nowadays must be pretty hard to suit. But I am not depending upon my church membership to save me. The poet wrote, "All men think all men mortal but themselves." That is a lie. Every man knows that he must die. The seeds of death are in our frame. Seventy heartbeats a minute, going to an eternal heaven or an eternal hell. When Sister Standley was a young girl, she went down to a Mission in Cincinnati that Brother M. W. Knapp was in charge of, and when she was walking out, M. W. Knapp said to her, "You are standing on the brink of hell." Each and every sinner here tonight is standing on the verge of eternity, and on the very brink of an endless hell. The sinner is almost lost and already damned. You say, "I do not believe that." Every sinner is under condemnation, and condemnation means damnation. God says in His Word, if your heart condemns you, God will condemn you. How do you stand in your own heart tonight? John uses the word heart there instead of conscience. How do you stand by your own conscience tonight? I knew a little girl who went visiting with her parents -- a little bit of a thing about three years of age. For some reason her mother and the lady of the house went upstairs, and she took possession downstairs, as a child three years of age thoughtlessly will, and she walked out into the kitchen, and then she walked out into the pantry. The pantry door was open, and she saw some cookies, and that child took two or three of them and came out chewing cookies. The lady of ’the house said, "That’s all right." Let me tell you something. Quite a number of years afterward, when she was a young lady, she went to the altar and wanted to get right with God, and she prayed and prayed, and came to her mother and said, "Mother, do you remember when we went to Mrs. W____’s, when I was a little girl three years old, and I took some cookies out of the cupboard? Do you think I ought to go and tell Mrs. W____?" Oh, she got through all right. She is a preacher today. There is a way through. But listen! You cannot go over your sins and you cannot go under your sins. There is only one way, and that is God’s way -- repent, confess and forsake. Have you done it? You were on the car the other day, and the conductor did not collect your fare. Do you call yourself honest? You are a thief! You rode in the train the other day. You had your girl with you, and she was over six years of age, and you ought to have paid half-fare, and you did not do it, and you thought that you beat the railroad company, and you were that much ahead. You are a thief -- and you will die and go to hell unless you repent. I was preaching out at Salvation Park this way one night about fifteen years ago, and went down off the platform and started over to my tent to get on dry underwear -- I had been perspiring -- and as I went by a woman said to me, "Great God, preacher, what am I to do? That is what I did coming to camp-meeting." She had her children with her, and did not pay half-fare. You do not like this preaching. This is too pointed. You want something that is general. Generalities are the death of prayer and the death of preaching. God did not call me to deal in generalities. He called me to preach the straight Gospel. I was preaching at a certain place; I was laying on the truth, and a man said to another preacher who was sitting behind him, "I wonder if there is any necessity for any such preaching as Brother Kulp gave us tonight?" It was none of his business. I am not a man-made preacher. A man did not call me to preach. If a man had called me to preach I would have run away long ago. I had a call from heaven, and knew God called me to preach. Before the next morning went by this preacher who was sitting behind that man that criticized me, went to him and confessed to sin, and the next morning when I preached, he came to the altar. You need straight preaching. You are settling down in the mire and mud of sin, and you will settle in an eternal hell, unless you repent. I should not wonder tonight but there is some fellow here that holds his head mighty high, and it has not been many years since you sat in a parlor and the young girl you sat with tonight is on the street, wrecked and ruined, and you are running around in somebody else’s parlor, to play the same thing over. A young girl one time walked out of church, and a boy walked up and said, "May I have the pleasure of seeing you home? Will you take my arm?" She said, "No, Sir." The next day his sister came and said to this young lady: "Last night my brother approached you in a very gentlemanly manner, and offered you his arm and asked for the privilege of seeing you home, and you said, ’No, sir.’ Will you please tell me why you refused my brother’s arm?" She said, "Certainly I will tell you. I will not take the arm of any licentious young man." I heard tell of a woman sometime ago, the night before she was married the man that married her looked her in the face and said, "Have you always been a good, true, clean woman?" Listen! If the women that are about to be married, would ask the men that question, and insist upon it, seven-tenths of the men could not answer it truthfully, or would not, rather. I am going by what the doctors say. I have the records. A clean woman has as good a right to a clean man as a clean man has to a clean woman. A man came to me one time and said, "Oh, I want to see you alone." I said, "Come on up in my study." We went up there, and he said, "Oh, what am I going to do? Before I was married, my body was diseased through sin, and I came back to this city and married my present wife, and now we have children, and I am afraid that my sin will tell in their bodies, and I go down to the drug store and buy medicine and take it home to wife, and say, ’Wife, it is springtime; the children ought to have blood medicine.’ She says, ’There is nothing the matter with visited upon the children. Listen! A girl had better, a thousand times over, die an old maid than to yoke up with diseased manhood. I do not think old maids are such awful things, after all I am pretty sure of one thing -- they did not jump at the first chance they had, like some other folks. I want to say another thing. I believe that God Almighty can take a man who has been down in sin and down in the slums, and down in the mire, and forgive his sins, and clean his heart, and in a measure restore his body. Glory to God! "Though ye have lain among the pots, yet shall your wings be as the wings of a dove." Hallelujah! God says so in His Word. I am glad I believe God. I want to get that second text -- "Treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath." Treasuring up stores for eternity. Here is a man with a muck rake. He is after gold. He fails to see the crowd. Here is a man pleasure mad. He is in the theater, the moving picture show. Here is a man at the gaming table. Here is a man with liquor hid away in the cellar and closet. Here is a man -- what is he doing? Gratifying appetite? No; I will tell you what he is doing -- treasuring up wrath. There never was a lie told, there never was an unclean thought, there never was a licentious act, there never was a word spoken that could not be said in the presence of God, but what that person added to the treasures of wrath up yonder. Oh, it is no joke to live. It is no dream to live. We are living for two worlds. Dr. Warren said there are two classes of people -- optimists and eternalists; worldly and other-worldly, and the great majority of people are today optimists, the worldlings. I saw a girl at the altar in one of my last meetings, and she had on a wrist watch, and the thing did not go, and had not gone for months. Worldlings! Oh, you say you don’t believe in those things. Well, I do. That was a clear case of pride. The thing did not go at all, and it was worn for show, and if fashion today said to wear them on your ankles instead of the wrist, the majority of young folks would have them on their ankles. The Lord shall reward the doer of evil according to his works -- like for like. The law of retribution runs all through the Word of God, and runs all through natural law. Jacob deceived his father, and his sons deceived him. The Egyptians killed the male children, and God Almighty killed the eldest son of the Egyptians. Whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap. Haman built a gallows for Mordecai, but was hanged on it himself. Daniel was thrown in the lions’ den by his enemies, but God kept him, and the next day his enemies were thrown in themselves. They put the Hebrew children in the fiery furnace, and those that cast them in were burned by the fire. Whenever you try to make it hot for somebody else, you always get burned yourself. Charles IX. looked down on the pavements where Huguenot blood was running red -- the streets flowing with the blood. How did he die? His pores issuing blood; bloody forms before his eyes; bloody pavements before his eyes. "Whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap." He shall be rewarded according to his wickedness. You cannot get away from your sins, only at the Cross. You remember Pilgrim came through the little wicket gate, and came and stood in front of the Cross, and there he lost his burden. You remember what Bunyan makes him say: "Blest Cross! blest sepulcher! Yea, rather, blessed be the man that hung thereon and died for me!" You can lose your sins at the Cross, but you will have to take God’s way to get there. Here is a man who murdered his master. He left his master’ s body in the house and set fire to the house. He was arrested, tried and convicted. Here is a judge sitting on the bench. He is very, very uneasy. The lawyers notice it, the prosecuting attorney notices it, the counsel for the defense notices it, and now comes the time to sentence the prisoner. The judge breaks down and begins to weep. He went down, took his place in the prisoner’s box, and sat alongside of the prisoner. Listen to what he said: "Twenty years ago I murdered my master. I left his body in a house, and I set fire to the house, and I have been trying my own case and find myself guilty." Twenty years ago a murderer -- a judge now on the bench, but still a murderer. Conscience is faithful. The case reminds him of his sin, and he sits down in the prisoner’s box and acknowledges himself guilty. "Be sure your sin will find you out." "The wages of sin is death." "Treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath." You are dealing with God, and the messengers of God are on your track, and yonder is the judgment seat, and yonder Calvary, and there is the praying, bleeding Christ, and here is the blessed Holy Ghost, and men are sitting under conviction, and people are saying: "I would like to be saved, but, oh, that past life!" Listen! The Blood will cover the past, but you must repent; you must confess, you must forsake. You must go with God, or what? This Book says then, eternal wrath. How is the wrath of God pictured in the Bible? Fire! Fire! Fire! Burn so much surface of the body, and all the doctors in the land cannot restore you; but Jesus Christ says that eternal wrath is eternal fire. "The smoke of their torment ascendeth forever and ever." It is going into eternity, over the dividing line, by the Bible, by a mother’s prayers, by the prayers of the saints, by the entreaties of the Son of God by the pleadings of the Holy Ghost, going over the crucified body of the Son of God, to a billowy, fiery, eternal, salty, dark hell, the abode of the damned, where they chew their lips, bite their tongues; where there is no water, no children, no music. Lost forever and forever and forever lost! Without hope all through eternity. No mourners’ benches, no sermons, no altar calls, no invitations, no mercy offered, no repentance offered, but lost -- lost forever. Not for one thousand years, not for ten thousand years, but lost for all the ages of the future -- lost! lost! lost! As Brother Ed Ferguson said on this platform one time -- lost until the last soul winging its way through eternal space can find somewhere the gravestone of the Almighty God. That means lost, lost, lost, forever! Brother, tonight God calls you, the Spirit is striving with you, Jesus is praying, and here is a blood-bought opportunity. Listen! You will make a decision tonight. I can imagine somebody says, "No, preacher; I will not." Yes, you will. You will decide for God or against Him. If you are saved you will know it as well as you know your own name, and if you do not know you are saved, you are not. "The Spirit beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God." What are you going to do with Jesus tonight? Will you receive Him? Tomorrow is eternity. I was preaching away up in Ontario, near North Bay, where they have the snows until May and June. The first night I preached, a young man said no to God. He went out of the house, the night was dark, and that man climbed over a fence and got down on his knees and said, "O God, if you will spare me until tomorrow night, I will go to that altar." And God spared him, and he did not go to the altar. That man went through one meeting after another. I never knew him to be settled and settled with God, and since I have been down here, Brother Tom Robinson has told me that that man is in eternity. God called him again and again. I was preaching down in George Street Mission, and I made a remark down there like this: "If you ever had a better experience than you have tonight, you are backslidden." God said to a man, "Young man, go to the altar." He did not do it. Five years after that I went up in Canada to preach. I was preaching the first night, and I again made that remark, and I gave the altar call, and a young man stopped me and said, "Five years ago I was in George Street Mission, in Cincinnati, O., and I heard Mr. Kulp say the same thing he said tonight, ’If ever you had a better experience that you have tonight, you are backslidden,’ and God said to me, ’Go to the altar,’ and I did not go, and five years from that time he comes up here and preaches the same truth, and I am going to the altar." God has a message here for somebody tonight, and it may be that young man that is nearest the dead line; that young woman that is nearest eternity; that young girl that mother is praying for; that mother’s son that God has been talking to in these meetings, and tonight God has given you another opportunity. Will you come forward here to the altar? How many persons are there here, you want the prayers of God’s people, you are not ready to meet God, and Jesus says, "Be ye also ready, for in such an hour as ye think not, the Son of man cometh." "Prepare to meet thy God." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 80: S. AFTER THIS ======================================================================== After This by George Kulp "It is appointed unto man once to die, but after this___" (Hebrews 9:27). God’s appointments always come round. When Captain Scott, the intrepid Englishman who went into the Antarctic regions hoping to discover the South Pole, he made all the arrangements for success that human wisdom and forethought could devise; he had relays of provisions left for them on their return, he had engaged a party to come in time to a certain place to meet them. He went south, was bitterly disappointed to find a Scandinavian explorer had been there and left the evidence of his discovery. He started with his companions on the way back, came midst the most terrific storms man had ever encountered, and found that someone had failed him. He laid down to die and before passing away he wrote in his diary, "We did the best we knew, made all the arrangements that experience and wisdom of man could devise, but our appointments have failed." Valiant man, brave heart, must die disappointed because man’ s appointments fail! But God’s never fail! It is not only appointed that man shall die, but after this there is an appointment that all must reach and meet. After life, after the Gospel, after the last sermon has been heard, after the last conviction has been wrought in the heart by the Holy Ghost, after you have attended the last meeting, heard the last prayer, after the sight of your loved ones has faded out from your vision, after the last pressure of the hand, after the last good-bye, after the death damp has been wiped from your brow, after the doctor says, "He is gone." What then? Oh, yes; this does concern you; it is the appointment that God has made for you. Death is on your track -- nearer now than ever before. How old are you? Twenty years? Death has gained twenty years on you. Fifty years old? Death has gained fifty years on you. Does not concern the young so much? Oh, it surely does; there are more young folks die than any others. Half of the race die before they are fifteen years old. The average age of the remainder is thirty-eight years. Only one person in five hundred reaches the age of sixty-five. Your pulse is beating funeral marches to the grave. Hear the poet as he sings the truth that you do not want to hear, you do not like to think about. You may as well acknowledge it, you do not like to hear such sermons as I am preaching; you want bouquets and rosewater; you forget that the man who is called of God to preach the Gospel is called to preach not what you want to hear, but what you ought to hear. The poet was true to human experience: Lo, on a narrow neck of land, ’Twixt two unbounded seas I stand, Secure, insensible. A moment’s time, a moment’s space, Removes me to that heavenly place, Or shuts me up in hell. Death is an enemy. I read the other day one of the maxims of the Duke of Wellington, and it read like this: "Never undervalue your enemy." Death is a monster, the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. God’s Word for it -- and you must meet death. Think of it now, hear the Master say, "Be ye also ready for in such an hour as you think not," you must meet this enemy. "My thoughts on awful subjects roll. Damnation and the dead. What horrors seize a guilty soul, Upon a dying bed." "But O the soul where vengeance reigns, It sinks with groans and endless cries; It rolls amidst the burning flames, In endless woes and agonies. There swallowed up in darkest night Where devils howl and thunders roar, To rage in keen despair and guilt, When thousand thousand years are o’er." Death is an hour of testing. Testing even to saints. Thomas Walsh, one of Wesley’s preachers, was on his death bed and the enemy had pursued him to the very end. He cried to God in agony of soul for deliverance, and He heard and the shadows fled away. But what must it be to the sinner who has failed to make the needed preparation for the hereafter. I was called once to see a man who was in the agonies of death. It was an awful scene, but all the agonies of the body can never atone for the sins of the soul. A woman was dying and she said to the doctor, "I will give you half of what I am worth if you will prolong my life six months." He replied, "Madam, I have medicine to dispense, but I cannot dispense time." But after the six months are gone, what then.? Louis the Fourteenth said when dying, "The thoughts of the past trouble me." A man went to a campmeeting and was wonderfully wrought upon by the Holy Spirit. When approached by one of the workers he said, "I have no time for religion. I am very busy." But he had to take time to die; then he was troubled because at that meeting he had said no to God, and he declared with his dying breath, "God left me that night." But will you please get the thought, the agony of the intense regret at that solemn moment did not atone for the sin in rejecting the call of the Spirit. Dr. Ichabod Spencer tells us in his book, "A Pastor’s Sketches," of a Universalist who on his death bed renounced his Universalism and exhorted his son to follow his mother’s teaching. He said: "Die? I will not. I spurned my mother’s prayers; I was mean to my godly wife, and now hell is my doom forever." His wife exhorted him to pray; Dr. S. pointed him to Jesus; but all of no avail. His past rejections of the Christ seemed to appall his soul, and he died in despair and without any hope or any repentance. But after this -- what then? We all must die because one man sinned, and so death passed upon all men for that all men have sinned; but please remember that judgment is personal. The sinner and the saint will appear in the eternal world just exactly as they were when they left this one. Same person, same character, same record for God to scan. Then man will reap just exactly as he sowed, and just what he sowed. The past determines the future. On the night of the fourteenth of April, eighteen hundred and sixty-five, Abraham Lincoln went to the theater to see a play called "Our American Cousin." He sat in a private box, and while there Wilkes Booth came along the corridor, entered the box and shot the President right behind the right ear. The bullet destroyed the nerves of sensation and the nerve of motion. Mr. Lincoln never knew what struck him. He was carried across the street into a house where he died at eight twenty the next morning. Booth made his escape, jumping from the box to the floor of the stage, his stirrup catching in the flag which draped the box, caused him to fall and sprain his ankle. He made his way out of the rear of the theater, mounted a horse that was ready for him, and went across the long bridge into Virginia. The U. S. Calvary were on his track and they overtook him in a barn in a little village in the rear of Fredericksburg, where he was lying wounded. The orders to the soldiers were not to shoot, as they wanted to take him alive; but a fanatic named Boston Corbett fired from his carbine and the bullet entered right behind the right ear, exactly where Booth’s ball struck Mr. Lincoln, with this difference, only one nerve was destroyed -- the nerve of motion. Booth could not move a limb, but he knew all that was transpiring; he was reaping what he sowed and more than he sowed. He died knowing the way of the transgressor is hard, and the end is harder. After this a judgment for deeds done in the body. Every word, every thought, every secret thing. God sees and knows and hears, and keeps the record. For every abused privilege we shall give an account, and let us remember that unused privileges are abused privileges. What have you done with time? How did you spend it? What use did you make of the Word given to you. Oh, eternity will be an awful eternity to the man who has simply neglected his privileges. I am convinced after a ministry of over forty-five years, that the preachers of today are not making enough of eternal verities. The people have heaped to themselves teachers, because they want their ears tickled. There are very few who are in the same rank with the eloquent Frenchman who said, "When I endeavor to represent eternity, I avail myself of whatever I can conceive most firm and durable. I heap imagination on imagination, conjecture on conjecture. I go from one age to the time of publishing the Gospel, then to the publication of the law, and from the law to the flood, and from the flood to creation. I join this epoch to the present time, and J imagine Adam yet living. Had Adam lived u11 now, and had he lived in misery, had he passed all his time on a rack, or in a fire, what an idea must we form of his condition? At what price would we agree to expose ourselves to miseries so great? What imperial glory would appear glorious were it followed by so much woe; vet this is not eternity -- all this is nothing in comparison with eternity. I go further still. I proceed from imagination to imagination, from supposition to supposition, I take the greatest number of years that can be imagined. I add ages to ages, millions of ages to millions of ages. I form of all these one mixed number, and I stay my imagination. After this I suppose God to create a world like this which we inhabit. I suppose Him creating it by forming one atom after another, and employing in the production of each atom the time fixed in my last calculation. What a numberless sum of ages would the production of such a world in such a manner require? Then I suppose the Creator to arrange these atoms and to pursue the plan of arranging them as of creating them. Finally, I suppose Him to annihilate the whole, observing the same method in the dissolution as in the creation and disposition of the whole. What an immense duration would be consumed -- and yet, this is not eternity -- it is only a point in comparison thereof. Reaping time is coming and it is an eternal reaping! One night passed in a burning fever, or in struggling among the waves of the sea, between life and death, appears of immense length. It seems to the sufferer as if the sun had forgotten its course, and as if all the laws of nature itself were subverted. What then will be the state of these victims to Divine displeasure, who after they shall have passed through the ages we have just described, will be obliged to make this awful reflection, "All this is but an atom of our misery." What will their despair be when they shall be forced to say to themselves, "Again we must revolve through these enormous periods, again we must suffer the privation of celestial happiness, devouring flames again, cruel remorse again, crimes and blasphemies again and again -- for ever and for ever." These chains forever! Oh, the absorbing periods of eternity, accumulated ages upon myriads of ages, these will be the forever of the lost! We must get rid of all contraband goods if we would avoid the agonies of the damned. All sin, all anger, pride, malice, unforgiveness, all slanderous words. I was one time crossing the border, and the porter came to me and said, "Captain, if you do not want to be awakened when the inspectors come through, just open your suitcase and I will look after it and close it up after inspection." I did not fear any inspection, and so did as he told me; but across the aisle there was a man who had something of which he was in doubt about its passing. He had quite a time with the conductor, telling him and asking for information. Well, God will be the Inspector and it becomes us to be careful, for after this there will nothing pass that He hates -- and the only thing that God hates is sin in the heart -- and it will not escape His all-searching eye. The history of the heart will be laid open, and how can men hope to escape when every day he carries around with him the evidence of his fall; for whether he likes to think of it or not, a suit of clothes on the individual is evidence he belongs to a fallen race; for when man was innocent he wore no clothes and did not know he was naked. With sill came shame, and man finally got to a place where sin had wrought such havoc with him that he could not blush. God says so in His Word. Read your Bibles and see. After this, man will be judged for what he did not do. To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin. Knowledge without action is simply good for nothing. Live up to what you know, or it is so much the worse for you. You might have repented and you did not. You did not seek God, you did not mind the Spirit, you did not improve the time, you did not obey God, you did not pray, you did not do good when you knew what good was; and let me say right here, the church of Jesus Christ will be judged by the same rule. To the church that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to that church it is sin. We preach to the world around us and we ignore the truths we preach, forgetting, apparently, that as we measure out to others it will be measured to us. We preach, "If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His," Please apply that to the church today. "If any church have not the Spirit of Christ it is none of His." It works both ways. Every coin has two sides to it, and every truth that we preach we should preach to ourselves first. The church must live the truth it professes; it must back up the pulpit by a life. I am heartily in sympathy with Mr. Spurgeon when he condemns the relation of past sins with the gusto that some folks have. Sin is awful, and no saint of God can look upon the sins of the past with any complacency. Let me give you Mr. Spurgeon’s exact words. You may not like them, but I do, and if you do not, it is evidence you need them. "I must confess that I am shocked with some people I know who glibly rehearse their past lives up to the time of their supposed conversion, and talk of their sins, which they hope have been forgiven them, with a smack of their lips as though there was something fine in having been such an offender. I hate to hear a man speak of his experience in sin as a Greenwich pensioner might talk of Trafalgar and the Nile. The best thing to do with our past sins, if it be forgiven, is to bury it. Yes, and let us bury it as they used to bury suicides, let us drive a stake through it, in horror and contempt, and never set up a monument to its memory. If you ever do tell anything of your youthful wrongdoing, let it be with blushes and tears, with shame and confusion of face, and always speak of it to the honor of the infinite mercy which forgave you. Never let the devil stand behind you and pat you on the back and say, ’You did me a good turn in those days.’ Oh, it is a shameful thing to have sinned, a degrading thing to have lived in sin, and it is not to be wrapped up into a story telling and told out as an exploit, as some do. The old man is crucified with him who boasts of being related to the crucified felon. If any member of your family had been hanged, you would tremble to hear anyone mention the gallows, you would not run about and say, ’Do you know I had a brother hanged at Newgate?’ Your old man of sin is hanged; do not talk about him’, but thank God it is so, and as He blots out the remembrance of it, do you the same, except so far as it makes you humble and grateful." I remember reading once of a man in the Pacific Garden in Chicago, who was in the habit of going over his past life and telling folks how mean he had been, but one night he came to the meeting and told the folks he would never do so again, for he had read in the Word where God said, "I will remember them no more against you," "and," said he, "if God will not mention them, I will not." To him that knoweth to do good to him it is sin. Let us avoid sin in every particular. After this, a life spent in sin, comes the Justice of the Infinite God, and as sure as the Bible is the Word of God, it means punishment for sin, and as the sinner in eternity is always a sinner, it means he is always punished: or, in other words, it is a punishment that is eternal. Men have been known to sneer at this doctrine, everywhere but on a death bed. There they have felt, if conscious at all, it is an awful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Human opinions and human feelings have no bearing on this doctrine. Albert Barnes once wrote some truths that are worth the consideration of every sane person: "The Bible travels on from age to age, bearing the same fearful doctrine, and is unchanged in its warnings and appeals. Some of each generation listen, are admonished, and saved. The rest pass on and die. Human opinions do not alter facts. Human opinion does not remove death beds, and graves and sorrows, nor will it remove and annihilate a world of woe. Facts stand unchanged by the changes of human belief, and fearful events roll on just as though man had expected them. Nine-tenths of all the dead expected not to die at the time when in fact they died, and more than half listen now to no admonition that death will ever come. They who have died had an expectation that they would live many years. But death came. He was not stayed by their belief or unbelief. He came steadily on. Each day he took a stride toward them, step by step he advanced, so that’ they could not evade or retreat until he was near enough to strike, and they fell. And so, though the living will not hear, death comes to them. And so the doom of the sinner rolls on. Each day, each hour, each moment it draws nearer. Whether he believes it or not it makes no difference in the fact -- it comes. It will not recede. In spite of all attempts to reason, or to forget it, the time comes, and at the appointed time the sinner dies. Cavil and ridicule do not affect this. There is no power in a joke to put away fevers or convulsions and groans. The laugh and the song close no grave, and put back none of the sorrows of the second death. The dwellers in Pompeii could not put back the fires of the volcano by derision, nor would the mockery of the inhabitants of Sodom have stayed the sheet of flame that came from heaven. The scoffing sinner dies and is lost just like others. The young man who has learned to cavil and deride religion dies just like others. No cavil has yet changed a fact, none has ever stayed the arrow of death." God’s Word is true, the comforting parts of it are true, and the more terrible passages are equally true. Man dies. God said this would be his portion if he transgressed the command. God appointed the time for man to die, and the very same One has said, AFTER THIS, after death there is a settling time, an award for the deeds done in this life; there is a second death, an eternal separation form God, and good folks and angels, and heaven; and it means a lake of fire, outer darkness, weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth; it means the company of the damned in hell forever, whoremongers, debauchees, lost spirits, angels who fell, the beasts and false prophets, are one and yet never one, for there is no unity in hell. As Dr. Munsey says, "Hell is a world of ugly ruins shrouded in night’s blackest pall, where no one of the damned has a friend, and filled with cursings and strife, and where all ranks and sexes are herded in one promiscuous mob with foulest demons, and where every stinking cave is inhabited with fiends and gnashing ghosts, and on whose black crags the ravens of despair sit and croak, and where God’s eternal justice plies His burning whip and remorse lays on his fiery thongs, the flashes of whips and thongs their only light -- world without end." His thoughts troubled him. . . . (Daniel 5:6). Why should a king be troubled? He was the monarch of the mightiest kingdom in the earth. He was surrounded by fawning courtiers, nobility, an army, and lived in a palace with a treasury at his command. Lords and ladies waited on him. He lived in a city the walls of which were one hundred and fifty feet high. They were so broad that four chariots could drive abreast on their top, and yet this king was troubled. He was strong, physically, in the prime of life, hearty and well -but he was much troubled. Same reason that you should be if you are not. He was doing what you, sinner, are doing today, he was trifling with sacred things. His father had led an army to the Holy Land, sacked the city, robbed the temple, brought the vessels dedicated to sacred uses back to the capitol city, and now midst all the drunken revelry that went with a Babylonian banquet, he commanded the holy vessels to be brought out, and he was about to drink from them when God showed His hand. Did you ever stop to think that there is nothing really secular? All things are sacred, because they have a relation to God and eternity. Whatsoever we do we are to do it as unto the Lord. There is nothing that is trifling. Apeles engaged on a painting was very particular as to all the details of his subject, and one asked him., "Why do you pay so much attention to trifles?" and he answered, "I am painting for eternity." We are living for eternity. There are two classes of people in this world -- atheists and eternalists; this worldy, and the other worldly. When a celebrated sculptor was working on a statue, he paid much attention to the hairs on the head, and some bystander said, "No one will see them," and he said, "Yes, the gods will see them." God sees and knows and notes down all that we do and all that we say, and all that we think, and wherever we go and who we are with, and why we are there; and in due time He will have something to say, and something to do. With this king the time was ripe for God to take part; many years had rolled away, but He remembered and this night He showed His hand. You remember that we sing, "It was the hand of God on the wall," and the poet was right. God wrote His verdict on the wall, Thou art weighed in the balances and found wanting. Weighed in God’s balances. Did you ever think that like the messengers of old to whom the king trusted the gold and silver, that we, too, must "weigh in at Jerusalem?" It will matter then very little what men have thought and said about you, but it will be immensely important what God thinks just then; and please get the thought that I believe the Holy Ghost wants you to have at this time, God will always show His hand, and in the nearing of death and eternity the sinner’s thoughts will always trouble him. A few years ago man stood before the altar to be wedded to a fair girl to whom he pledged faith and loyalty. For years they worked together to acquire a competency, but failed, and were seventy thousand dollars worse off than nothing. But again they faced the world with new and other propositions, and fortune smiled on them; wealth flowed in, and the world was at their feet. He had an office and business and a private secretary, and she a woman, young and beautiful. In process of time the wife was divorced, and it follows she was brokenhearted, for the money she received could not heal the wounds that scarred her heart. The young and fairer woman now became the wife before the law, and with wealth at their command they went where they pleased, gratified every desire, feasted their eyes, and all that allured, but soon the former wife died, and now there came a face, the face of the dead between the things the world offered and this man, and his thoughts troubled him. He went hither and thither, but he saw the face, and carried his thoughts with him. There came a time when God showed His hand, uttered His thunders in this man’s conscience, until one day, to get rid of the thoughts that troubled him, he committed suicide, went into eternity by his own hand -- and he is thinking yet. Man cannot get rid of God. The Psalmist said, "If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the earth, there shall thy hand lead me and thy right hand shall uphold me. If I make my bed in hell thou art there." A manufacturer beginning business promised God while on bended knees in prayer that if He prospered him he would give Him one-tenth of all that he made. The Lord heard and answered him, and money flowed in until that man was giving God five thousand dollars a year, and then the devil of greed whispered, "You are giving too much. Where are there others who are giving as much as you?" And he listened and said to himself, "I can put that in my business and increase my capital." But God who heard his prayer heard him thinking, and saw him acting out his thoughts, and one night that man woke up and his room was all illuminated and looking out of his window he saw that God was withdrawing from the partnership -- just showing His hand, taking out His goods. Oh, do not forget it! You can raise more cotton, you can build more and larger barns, but as sure as you are a foot high God will be reckoned with. He will show His hand. You are making a record for Divine inspection and you cannot blot it out. Pilate wrote above the crucified Christ, "Jesus, the King of the Jews," and the Jewish officers came to him and complained, saying, "Write He said ’I am King of the Jews.’" But Pilate answered, "What I have written I have written." So it is with you, with all of us; our record is indelible, and nothing but the blood of Jesus Christ can ever cancel it. What we have written we have written, and God sees it and will settle with us. It is the yesterdays that trouble the sinner, and the tomorrow Judgment Day. What might have been troubles the sinner. To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin. God said so in the past and says so today. I did not make these facts; He made them and you must face them. It might have been so different with all of us if we had only minded God. The record might have been so different. A Chicago doctor paid attention to another woman than his wife, and led by his lusts ran off to the Pacific Coast with her. His wife went after him, asked him to come back and live as a decent man and husband should do, and she would forgive him. He came, and then, woman-like, the wife paid the fare back to Chicago of the woman who had been with him. In a few years he was running with her again, and the wife secured a divorce, the doctor then marrying his former paramour. For fifteen years they lived together in a Chicago home of wealth and splendor, but one day a pistol shot was heard, the wife ran into the parlor, and there on the velvet carpet laid the doctor. The neighbors ran in and found her wringing her hands and saying, "Oh, he would not forget; he would think!" He could not forget. God would not let him. The past troubled him, his thoughts troubled him and over yonder he is troubled yet. Faces of the dead trouble some folks. A thoughtless husband, fond of stag parties, often went off and left his wife alone in the home. But perhaps you do not know what a stag party is. Well, you ought to know, and I will tell you. It is a party where there are no women, where women are not wanted; and whenever you find anything of that kind, there is some deviltry going on, generally. Men always need the refining presence of the other sex. Place a lot of men together away from home, and their morals degenerate, and as a consequence of degenerated morals there is conversation that is not fit for print. Every old soldier knows this to be true. There is more deviltry going on in the army where there are all men, and results show it, than society ever dreamed of. Put an army in camp near a city and as a consequence the birthrate in that city increases. Statistics in the past have proved it. This man went off on stag parties so often that one time when he returned, his wife said, "Oh, husband, I do wish you would stay home some with me." And the brute said, "What do you want? Haven’t you got a good home? If you want more money, say so, and you can have it." He seemed not to know that four square walls do not make a home. One time he went off to the woods with one of his stag parties, and while he was gone she was taken sick, and in a few days died. Wire could not reach him. Mails could not, so when he came back he looked on a face in a coffin, a face that was to haunt him in all the coming years. Through with stag parties now, when it was too late. Mourns now, stays home now, when it is too late. Oh, no, Mr. Longfellow, you are wrong; there is no "dead past" -- the past is very much alive until there is repentance and it goes under the blood. Places of the dead? Yes, photographed by memory in the indelible of eternity. A woman was left with several children. The bread winner was lying out in yonder graveyard, and she determined she would keep them together, cost what it might. You know that a woman will keep the children together when a man can see no way to do it. This mother kept them, trained them, worked hard to educate them, saw them all married and prospering. The eldest took her home, just as he should have done; no man can neglect his mother and have the blessing of the God of the skies rest upon him After some years she was on her death bed. The children were all there, lovingly watching and ministering to her, "Mother, you have always been a good mother to us." She turned her old gray head towards him, looked him clear through and said, "John, you never said so before." The poor old soul had longed for some words of appreciation, but they had not come. True she had a good home, all that money could buy, but she wanted to hear something, some words that never came, till the end was near. See that face? Yes. Troubled by the memory? Oh, yes. Say, young man, go to see your mother; write her a letter -- say a love letter -- she is your best girl; tell her what her heart longs to hear, and you will feel better. Opportunities gone haunt the sinner, and they come back only in the memory. Just to think, the Man of Calvary, He of the nail-pierced hand, has stood and knocked at the door of your heart. He whom angels worshipped, who had all the glories of heaven as His own, before He came to this world, knocks, again and again at the door of your heart, and says, "If any man will hear my voice, and open unto me I will come in and sup with him and he with Me." And yet men bar Him out, keep him standing there with the dews upon His head, but still pleading to come in, standing there until at last He goes away, driven by neglect and coldness and wickedness, to return no more forever. A woman missed her daughter one night, missed her for six long years, sought her every place, until all the money was gone, and heart still breaking. One night she walked into a police station, saw the chief, told him the story, and the police officer guessed the rest -- and guessed correctly. He said to her, "Go home and bring me your photograph and I will see what I can do." A few hours more and she was there handing a photo to the chief, who looking at it said, "This is not you." And she replied with choking voice, "That is my picture as I was when she went away. If I was to give you my picture as I am now, she would not know it." The chief took the picture down to the red-light district, saw the proprietor of a dance hall where the women of the town were in the habit of going, and told him to hang the picture up on one of the pillars of the room. He did so and it hung there several months. One night he came into the hall about twelve o’clock at night and saw a number of the girls looking down on the floor. He went to them and said, "What is the matter?" And the reply was, "Nellie has fainted." "What made her faint?" "Why, she saw that picture." The man gathered her up in his arms, took her down to his auto, and started with her somewhere, when the cool air restored her to consciousness and she asked, "Where are you taking me?" "I am taking you to your mother. Be still -- I know the whole story. Your mother is waiting for you." They reached the home, the mother was waiting, and soon she was back again in the arms of a mother whose love had never once failed. The sight of that mother’s face won her back to love and home. But oh, the grief of it! Nineteen centuries ago the God of the universe so loved that He allowed His own Son to hang on that middle cross for six mortal hours, nailed there by your sins and mine, and yet men today, sinners, are trampling the blood of Jesus under their feet, are counting it a common thing. Calvary is in the world’s vision today, but men see it not, pass it by. God commended His love, but man today ignores the Christ, and goes on to sin and death. Remembered sins haunt the sinner. Like Banquo’s ghost, they will not down. A few years ago a murder was committed at Blue Island. A man who once boarded with an old resident and his granddaughter who kept house for him, after a year’s absence came back and asked again for the privilege of boarding with them. The old man said, "Just as daughter says." She replied, "He can have his old room." So he took possession. In the course of time he ascertained the old man had some money, which he kept in the mattress on his bed. One night the boarder came downstairs in his stocking feet, went out into the woodshed, got the ax, entered the room, smashed in the head of the man, then killed the granddaughter, and was putting his hand under the mattress to take the money when a dog barked, and thinking the neighbors were aroused, he left hastily and without the money. For a year he went over the West, working here and there, until one day he walked into the police station at Chicago and accosting the desk sergeant he said, "I want to give myself up." "What for?" asked the officer. "For murder," said the culprit. "Where?" was the next question. "At Blue Island, one year ago I murdered an old man and his granddaughter." "What brought you back?" "I will tell you. When I took the old man’s life I was after the money he had in his mattress. I reached my hand out to take it when I heard a dog bark. I left, thinking the neighbors were aroused, and went West, but no matter where I went I could hear that dog bark. I would lie down at night and wake up startled by the barking of the dog. I have come back to get rid of that dog’s bark." Every sinner has a dog on his track. Memory will haunt him; aye, he has a pack of hounds on his track; memory and conscience will never cease to bark, and only by repentance towards God can an evil conscience be purged. There will come to every sinner to trouble him the memory of opportunities that he murdered. Off the coast of Scotland there was a bell buoy, placed there by the government of Great Britain to warn the sailor in times of fog. One day a young man in a sheer spirit of recklessness destroyed the bell buoy and the government never replaced it. The young man became a sailor; after a while was a captain and sailing his vessel off the coast of Scotland he was caught in a dense fog, and his vessel wrecked; his life was lost and some rescued sailors said that he kept crying, "Oh, for the bell buoy," but he had destroyed it years before. Many a sinner when the cold hand of death comes feeling round his heartstrings will cry for the sermon he once sneered at, will long for an altar call and a mourners’ bench, and the prayers of the saints, but they will never come back. A coming judgment haunts the sinner, troubles the sinner. It is not death that men fear. It is what comes after death. Man will meet all his sinful record at the judgment. "Know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee to judgment." And the Christ that men reject today will be the Judge. The person you do not want to see is not the person that injured you, but the one you have injured. And the sinner has injured Jesus, insulted Him, turned Him away. Did you ever read Whittier’s "Skipper Ireton?" He tells of the Skipper of a fishing vessel that went out at the beginning of the season to fish. The skipper getting the first catch of fish and first back to Marblehead, would get the highest prices. Ireton secured his haul of fish and was on the way back when he saw a fishing vessel wrecked, and the crew in the water. As he drew near they begged him to take them on, but he, intent on the gold, passed them by, leaving them to die. His crew told the story, and the women of Marblehead, widows of the sailors he passed by, tarred and feathered him, rode him on a rail. but Whittier makes Ireton to say, "It is not the reproach of the tar and feathers, nor the riding on the rail that stings me, but I see the faces of the men I left to drown, the white hands uplifted, the dying cry for help." So the sinner all through the ages of eternity will see the face of the mother who prayed, the wife who wept, the children who fasted, that he might be saved. He will think of the Christ who died for him, and his thoughts will trouble him, and never, never will there come a time when he will cease to think, to regret, to curse himself and his own folly. But now listen while I tell you that you can get rid of all the sins of the past. Though your sins be as scarlet they shall be whiter than snow; though they be crimson yet shall they be as wool. He is able to save to the uttermost all them that come, and He says, "Him that cometh I will in nowise cast out." Make Jesus your Friend, make Him your Advocate. Let your Elder Brother plead your case. Mr. Moody was one time holding a meeting that was so largely attended the authorities forbade any more being allowed in the building. An usher was stationed at the door to keep folks out. A lady of the town got out of her carriage, walked up to the door as though all she had to do was to ask and she would be admitted, but the usher kindly told her there was no room for her. But I am Mrs. No difference; Mrs. could not get in; the orders were to be obeyed. The Representative in Congress of that District walked up and said, "I am Mr. _____ of this District, and being in the city a few days I thought I would like to hear Mr. Moody," and he presented his card; but it was no use -- no one admitted. Then came the Mayor of the City, and he was sure of admittance; he told who he was, but no, sir, he, too, was denied. Just then came a seedy-looking man up to the usher and he said, "I want to get in and hear Mr. Moody," and he was told it was too late; the building was crowded and no more were to be admitted. But he said, "Yes, I will see him; tell Mr. Moody his brother George is at the door." The usher walked up the aisle, told Mr. Moody, who said, "My brother George at the door? Let him in." And he came in. Mr. Moody had just left his own chair to begin his sermon, and he told George to sit down on his chair. So it will be with you if you make Jesus your Elder Brother. I expect that each saint will have the enemy to object to his entrance to the City of God, into the temple of God, but I am sure the Word teaches that He will say, "Come, ye blessed of my Father," and He will rise from His throne and tell then’ to sit down, for even as He overcame so have they overcome through His blood and the Word of their testimony, and shall sit down with Him on His throne. Old John Burns was the citizen hero of Gettysburg. When the battle was on the Confederates having invaded Pennsylvania, he took his old squirrel rifle and went out on the firing line and pumped lead into the ranks of the enemy until he was wounded. The press of the North lauded the old hero to the skies, called him all the good names they could think of. Abraham Lincoln, the President, heard of Burns and his deed, and sat down and wrote, "Mr. Burns, Gettysburg, Pa., Dear sir: I have heard of your conduct at Gettysburg, and I write to assure you I would be very glad to welcome you to Washington, and in the White House anytime you may be pleased to come. Yours, A. Lincoln." You may be sure John Burns was pleased to go. He got out his best bib and tucker, his old Prince Albert coat, brushed up his old silk hat, and went to Washington. The usher at the White House door met him and asked his name. "I am John Burns, of Gettysburg." "Welcome, sir; we are expecting you." He went in, met Mr. Lincoln, who made him feel at home, and took him to church the next day. As they walked up the aisle they were the observed of all observers The obsequious usher bowed Mr. Lincoln into the pew, but when old John Burns attempted to follow, the usher said, "No, no, old man; you cannot go in there." But Mr. Lincoln reached out his long arm and said, "He is my old man; let him in." And in he went. So I am believing the enemy who is an accuser of all the brethren, of every child of God, will follow clear to the gates of the City, he will accuse of all the sins that ever were committed, all the mistakes that ever were made, will say, "He belongs to me; he has no right in there." But the Christ of Calvary who died to save, and who heard you down at that mourners’ bench, will say, "He is Mine. Let him in." And then with all the blood-washed saved to all eternity, you will go in to go out no more forever, and with the saints of all ages you will be "transported your Lord and your Savior to greet." Thank God for Jesus, thank God for the Blood, thank God for the Holy Spirit, thank God for the Word, which is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth. Praise His Name Forever! ======================================================================== CHAPTER 81: S. BE YE READY ======================================================================== Be Ye Ready by George Kulp "Prepare to meet thy God" (Amos 4:12). I stood on the firing line, when I was a boy, just preparatory to going into battle on a charge, and Charley H____, who, if he is alive yet, lives in South Easton, Pa., stood alongside of me. We knew we were facing the enemy and facing death, and the only preparation that he thought of was this: He said to me, "George, if anything happens to me, you write my folks." That is the only thought he had about it. Inside of the next hour, during the progress of that battle, he might have been sent into eternity, but no thought of the future. We are facing eternity. Death is at our elbow. Just the thickness of our ribs between us and an eternal heaven or an eternal hell, and God is doing His very best in order to get us in harmony with Himself. I have listened to these men preach; I have said to myself, "They are God’s messengers; they have God’s messages, but how many are heeding? How many are minding the Holy Ghost? How many are in harmony with God? How many are ready to meet God on a moment’s notice? How many have the witness of the Spirit, not only to their forgiveness, but to their cleansing? How many realize the sins of the past are under the blood? How many think for one moment that we are dealing with God?" And please remember this, we must do business with God before we can do business for God. One cannot work successfully for God unless one has the consciousness within oneself that oneself is right with God. Have you done business with God? Have you heard from heaven? Are you ready for whatever a day may bring forth? The Old Testament and the New unite: "Prepare to meet thy God." "Be ye also ready; in such an hour as ye think not, the Son of man cometh." "To day, if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts." Men grow harder in a camp-meeting, or they get nearer to God. Resisting the truth brings hardness of heart. You must do business with God. You cannot put God out of your life. There may be jangling voices all around you, but above them all, through them all, in the Word, by the Holy Spirit, in the providences of God, you will hear my text -- "Prepare!" Something more than singing; something more than church membership; something more than profession; something more than campmeeting; something more than a periodical spasm. "Prepare!" Somewhere down the road one block -- one mile -- one month -- one year -- tomorrow, it may be, but somewhere in that immediate future we must do business with God, on conditions, or be lost eternally. I was preaching down in Louisiana, was invited down there by a couple of ladies who were sanctified on these grounds a few years ago -- was preaching in the courthouse, and some of the ladies came to me the next day and said, "Brother Kulp, the people don’t like your proposition." I thought to myself, "Proposition -- proposition -- proposition?" And the Holy Ghost said to me, "What they don’t like is God’s conditions." That is the trouble with people now -- they do not like to meet conditions. But you must, or he eternally damned, eternally lost. I should not wonder that while I am preaching, your life will come up before you. The Holy Ghost will give you a retrospective view of your life, and things you do not want to think of, things you do not like to think of, and things you would gladly hide, the Holy Ghost will bring them before you. You must do business with God, on God’s terms, On God’s conditions. Preparation to meet God implies that very thing. You take the Word and read it carefully, and find here that in the past men have had to deal with God. A world ignored Him, a race united in ignoring Him, but there came a time, not when the patience of God wore out, but there came a time when God was grieved as He looked at man in his sinfulness. And all the sins that they had in that day, all the sins before the Flood, all the sins that were in the cities of the plains, all the adulteries, all the licentiousness, all the bestiality, all the brutality that the carnal nature had before God sent the flood and wiped out a race, before He sent the fires on the cities of the plains, before He gathered the legions of Rome with their eagles, around the city of Jerusalem, this world has today, and sin is just as hateful as it was when God sent the flood and destroyed the antediluvians, or when He sent the fire and destroyed the cities of the plains. Sin is no joke. Sin is no dream. Sin is an awful, terrible reality. A man must meet it, and meet the consequences of it at the day of judgment. You try to put the messages away. Whenever you try to put a message of God away from you, God will not only repeat it, but He will add more to it. I will prove it. Jeremiah called for Baruch, and he said, "I want you to take it down carefully. I have a message from God for these people. Write it down carefully. Don’t miss a word. Listen attentively." And Jeremiah repeated the message that God gave him, and Baruch wrote it down, word for word, and after a while he read it to the nobles of the king, and they said, "Where did you get it?" "Got it from Jeremiah." "Did you take it down from his lips?" "Yes." "Word for word?" "Yes." "Just exactly as he said it?" "Yes." "Well, it means destruction, it means death, it means danger for the king." And they went to the king, and the king said, "I would like to hear it." They sent for Baruch, and Jehudi borrowed from Baruch the message, and took it before the king, opened it and read it, and as he read it he took out his penknife and cut it off and threw it into the fire. Then he read further in the distasteful message. Say, listen! The message that is most distasteful to you, is the very message you need. I read an advertisement of a book the other day. Dr. Agan Beet, of the Wesleyan Methodist Church, in England, was the author of it. The title of the book was, "The Last Things," and in that book he makes this remark, that men today do not dare to preach on hell as John Wesley preached it, and he even went farther, and said in these days they do not even dare to preach as Spurgeon preached fifty years ago. Listen! On this campground we will preach anything God Almighty gives us. We have to preach the truth. Jesus Christ was praying and He said, "Father, sanctify them through Thy truth. Thy Word is truth." And you want the truth, and when you get it you will get the Word, and the Word says, "Prepare to meet thy God." Jehudi took the message, but it was distasteful, and he cut it up, one piece after the other, and threw it into the fire, until the whole message was destroyed. And God said, "Jeremiah, get your stenographer." And he got his stenographer, and God gave him another message. Listen! He not only gave him the whole message, but he "added thereunto many like words." God will not only give you truth that is distasteful, but He will give you truth that will drive you into a corner, that will drive you to surrender, or where your will becomes so hardened you look God in the face and defy the very providences of God and the Holy Ghost who applies the truth. I am not a popular preacher, and I do not want to be. Popularity is a nosegay in the buttonhole of a corpse. I am here to give you God Almighty’s truth. According to that Word nations ignored the messages, and whenever they did, ruin and death followed. And every person in the sound of my voice, I do not care how loud you shout, nor how high you jump, nor what church you belong to, when you are not obedient to the messages that God sends you through the Word, and by the Holy Ghost, you will lose your soul eternally, and die in the church, and go to hell. That is God’s truth. You do not like these sermons; you want to be patted on the back; you want bouquets. You want somebody with one of these sprayers to spray you with perfume, and then you want to go home and say, "Wasn’t that a beautiful sermon?" Over in my room I got down on my knees and told God I wanted His message. What we want is God’s thought for this hour. Now, listen! God must be reckoned with. Oh, it will ring down through the corridor of your being, every truth you ever heard and rejected, throughout the ages of eternity. Do not talk to me about growing old. Man never grows old. The mountains are old. No mountain today is as high as it was years ago. Corrosion is going on, they are going down, lowering. Man never grows old. He was made to live throughout the ages of God, and all down through the eternal ages there will ring through the corridor of your being the text of tonight -- "Prepare to meet thy God." And if you fail to do it, it will be an eternal hell,. midst eternal burnings, midst eternal damnation, because you were such a fool you trampled the blood of Jesus Christ under your feet, and went to hell, knowing you were doing it. You cannot sin and get away with it. Oh, men have tried to put God out of their lives. Listen to a fool. Jesus Christ tells us God said he was a fool. What did he do? Put God out. "I will pull down my barns. I will build greater. I will bestow my goods in a barn. I will say to my soul, ’Soul, eat, drink, be merry. Thou hast much goods laid up for many years" -- in a barn. Many Liberty bonds, many Victory bonds -- so many acres of land -- so much money in the bank -- so much stock. But listen! "But God." Oh, there will come a time when God will step in. There will come a time when God will be heard. There will come a time when God will show His hand. But God said, "Thou fool. This night shall thy soul be required of thee." Oh, beloved, you must take God into account. "Is not this great Babylon that I built? These hanging gardens, these walls, a hundred feet high! These towers on these mighty walls! This river running through the city! Is not this great Babylon that I built?" But God -- God stepped in, as Doctor Godbey told you the other morning. For seven years he went out and grazed with the cattle. "But God!" Oh, I believe that God will put the sins of anyone under the blood. I believe the blood will cover them. But listen! It is an awful thing to have a polluted memory. A young girl was one time betrayed. Her innocence was gone -- a mere child, and when the baby was born she left it under a hedge in the cold, cold weather, and came away and heard the wailing of that baby. Oh, the wailing of that baby! And it stayed there until it died. Godly women looked after her; godly women succored her; godly women helped her; godly women pointed her to Jesus, and she became a Christian and lived on through years, but every once in a while she would tell her bosom friends, "Oh, I can still hear the wail of the baby in the hedge!" Oh, listen! It will be an awful thing in eternity, when there are some spirits that come into your vision, and come before you, and look would-be -- not mothers in the face, and say to them, "Oh, if it had not been for you I might have had a body, I might have lived in that body. I might have glorified God. I might have won souls. But you deprived me of my body." It will be an awful thing to meet those spirits in the other world that you deprived of a body by murdering them before they were born. Oh, it means something to prepare. It means something to get right with God. It means the forsaking of sin. It means the abandonment of and confession of sins. It means getting down on your marrow bones and staying there before God until God searches you through and through. Preparation means forsaking. Preparation means restitution. Preparation means restoration. Preparation means all of that before you can believe God for salvation. Brother Slater said he read in a book that an evangelist went around and each year counted the same folks some other evangelist counted the year before. You know why? Because of lack of straight Gospel preaching. The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation today wherever it is preached and believed; and the great trouble is, there is not faithful dealing with souls down here at the altar. It is a good thing to leave a soul to the Holy Ghost. He will deal with it, and He will deal faithfully. He did with me. I did not have anybody around me when I was seeking. The first night there were a few, but I went home and put the thing through on my knees -- morning, noon and night, and there was not anybody there to talk to me and make it easy for me. The Holy Ghost was making it hard for me. The Holy Ghost was going to the bottom of things. What we need today is to leave people to the Holy Ghost. I am not saying the former days were better than these. I do not believe it. God is the same. The old Bible is the same. The Holy Ghost is the same. Man’s needs are the same, and man needs the truth today just as much as ever he did in the past, and men today need to go through on God’s lines, and meet the conditions that God lays down right here in the Word. "Prepare to meet thy God." You must meet Him, and meet every sin you ever committed, down on your knees at some altar of prayer, or else meet them up yonder at the judgment seat of Christ, where it will be too late to pray. I believe that when I as a sinner came before God in prayer, that He brought up before me every sin I ever committed, down there on my knees, and the devil came and said to me, "Look here, you have been such a bad, wicked boy, Jesus Christ can save everybody else, but He cannot save you." Let me repeat it: You must meet your sins on your knees, and confess out before God, or else you will meet them at the judgment seat of Christ, where it is too late to confess. I was preaching last August. A young girl came there, and she did not think much of this preacher. I was preaching every night and pouring on the truth, just as God gave it to me, and she sat away back the first night she came -- was almost in the rear of the Tabernacle. The next night she came she was four or five seats farther front. The next night she came she was farther up yet, and the next night she was nearer the front, and then one night, about 10 o’clock, that girl came to the altar. I wish you had heard her pray. She prayed until half-past 12 at night, and she prayed through, and that campground was just one scene of glorious revelry when that girl got through. Let me tell you how she prayed. "O God! O God! If you will only forgive me I will never drink any more wine. I will never go to any more skating rinks. I will never go to any more dance halls. I will never run with any more married men. I will never kill any more babies. I will tell my husband all about it, O God, if You will only save me!" That is the kind of confession that she made there on her knees, and about half-past 12 at night, God saved her. You say, "Preacher, why did you preach that way?" I will tell you why. Down there in that town they had water works, a great big reservoir, and they emptied that reservoir one time in order to clean it out, and found fifty babies in it, and the preachers in the town told me of it more than once. We have got to preach straight. It is murder, murder, murder! Not merely taking a knife and driving it home in somebody’s back, but the blood of unborn innocents on their fingers, going into eternity, and bearing evidence of their damnable act to the judgment throne of God. Do you believe God will forgive it? Yes, I do; but it has to be confessed. I was preaching in that Campmeeting, and I had my meals on the ground in the dining hall. I had a beautiful room about a block and a half from the campground. I preached one night, and God helped me. Oh, how God did help me preach, and the next day a man came to me, threw his arms around my neck, and said, "I went home and confessed to my wife last night." He said, "I had confessed to her before, but the way I confessed to her was this: I told her that when I got drunk, before I was married, that I did things a drunken man did." He said, "That is all the confession I made, but after I heard you preach last night, I went home and told my wife all the sins I committed, and she said, ’Husband, I forgive you.’" How much better he felt. About half-past 9 the next morning, in a beautiful automobile, a man with his wife drove up in front of where I was stopping. He came to the door and said, "Mr. Kulp, I want to see you. I heard you preach last night." He said, "There is my wife out there. She wanted to come with me." He said, "Wife, come in. Mr. Kulp is here." And they came into my room and sat down, and he said, "Oh, if I had only heard it preached before! If I had only heard it preached before!" That night, in preaching, I preached this: "Unconfessed sins never go under the blood." And that man heard me preach, and went home and said as he went home, "I will confess to my wife." He was a moneyed man, a business man. He said he was down in the cellar helping to fix some boxes, and his wife came down there and he said, "God sent her down here that I might make the confession." He confessed, and said, "Let’s go see the preacher." And they drove over to see me that morning, and he said, "Preacher, I never sinned against my wife until after our last child was born; but I was in a city, putting up at a hotel, and a woman was stopping at the hotel. They were going to move there, and her husband was back in the town where they were moving from, and she was there. I was standing in front of the post office one day, and she came along and said, ’Are you going down to the hotel?’ I said, ’Yes,’ and I went down to the hotel and roomed on the same floor with her, and she said, ’This is my room.’ And I said, ’That is mine,’ and she came into my room, and I sinned against my wife. If somebody had only preached, ’Unconfessed sins never go under the blood,’ I would never have done it." And there stood his wife, and her heart breaking, and she was weeping. Say, listen! Unconfessed sins never -- never -- never go under the Blood. Here is the text -" Prepare to meet thy God." God is the friend of every repentant sinner. But every sinner who wilfully continues in his sin, runs against the bosses of Jehovah’s buckler, and that Bible says that God is angry with the wicked every day. There is no soft solder about that. There is no sentimentality about that. I am giving you God Almighty’s truth, and I do not care how much money you have, how respectable you are in the society where you move, I do not care what your reputation may be, if there is one single sin between you and God in all your past that is not repented of, and you have not taken God’s way, and met God’s conditions, that sin will sink you into the devil’s hell, though the preacher may preach a beautiful sermon and eulogize you, and pass you into the gates, amidst the acclamations of angels, but you will be damned because of unrepented sins. Do not tell me a man cannot live without sin. A man cannot be saved until he quits sin. A man has to go out of the sinning business. I was preaching not far from here, and a man was at the altar. He said, "Yes, I have got through. There is one thing yet I have got to confess to. I was hurt, and I claimed the benefit of a compensation law, and I have been paid a part of it, but I will not take the rest, for I was not hurt as bad as I let on." You are not dealing with man. You are not dealing with preachers. You are dealing with the Holy Ghost. I should not wonder but you would surprise some folks in your community if you would go around making things right. They would look at you in astonishment. One time I stopped in Indianapolis; just had time to run in and get my dinner, and the dinner was fifty cents, but it did not have cantaloupe on the bill of fare for the fifty cents, and I wanted a piece of cantaloupe, and said to the waiter, "Bring me a piece of cantaloupe." He brought it, and I went up and paid my bill and I got into the car. I said, "There, I did not pay for that cantaloupe!" I said, "The first time I am in Indianapolis, I will pay for that cantaloupe." I was back about a year afterward, and I walked into that restaurant and went up to the clerk, and said, "Is here where you take the money for dinners and suppers?" And he said, "Yes, sir." A policeman sat right there. I said, "Well, I was here about a year ago, and got a fifty-cent dinner and ordered a piece of cantaloupe that did not belong to the dinner," and I said, "here is fifteen cents; I want to pay for it." He looked at me, and the policeman looked at me. I guess he thought I was an innocent just escaped. Oh, I should not wonder a bit but what the grocer and the shoemaker and the tailor, and a few other business men in town might be greatly benefited and highly astonished, if you would get enough religion to go around and straighten up the past. That is what preparation means, and I had to write some letters, and I had to send some money. Oh, beloved, it means something to prepare to meet God. If the Holy Ghost does not back that up, don’t you move; but if the Spirit of God applies that truth, you mind the Holy Ghost. How are we going to meet God? Red-handed? One time a British vessel was after a smuggler, and the captain of the smuggling vessel said, "There comes a British vessel. We will have to throw the cargo overboard." And so they went down in the hold and were throwing it out, and throwing it out, and by and by they came up on deck after having thrown every bit of it out, and they said, "But it floats!" And there was the cargo floating. Say, listen! It floats. You have left a trail behind you, and I want to tell you, all the money you can give in a campmeeting, and all you can unload, never -- never -- never will atone for your sins in the past. It will take the blood of Jesus Christ. Now wait a moment. In some places restitution has gone to seed. You say, "What do you mean, preacher?" I will tell you what I mean. I have heard people get up and testify, and they said, "I could not get right until I made restitution, and I made the restitution, and everything was all right." I do not believe it. Restitution does not save you, and if you could undo every sin you ever committed, if you could restore everything you ever wronged anybody of, it would not save you. It takes repentance toward God, and faith in Jesus Christ. Listen, brother! If you cannot stand this kind of truth, what are you going to do when you meet the God that gave it? Jesus Christ said, "Thy Word is truth." Now, again -- your church membership. I would rather be a sinner outside of the church, than a sinner inside. I think I would have a better chance, that there would be a greater probability of my getting to God, if I was outside of the church, than in. The devil would say, "Now, don’t go back on your profession. Now don’t dishonor your church. Now what will your folks think of you?" It is not what folks think. It is, what does God think? Here is a woman dying. Mrs. Norris, a woman of the same church, came into the bed chamber. The woman looked up and said, "Oh, Mrs. Norris, isn’t this awful, to be forty years in the church, and to die and be lost!" I used to labor some years ago with Doctor Keen. I was with him in a campmeeting up at Bay View, Mich. Listen to what he said just before he died. He said that 75 per cent of the church members that he was called upon to pray with before they died, he had to pray with them that they might be saved. Good Lord help us! How is it with you tonight? May God wake us up here! Preparation. When? Now. "Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation." You may be summoned into the Divine Presence any moment. I knew the president of a bank -- I will not tell you where it was, but I was in his private office one day, and he had been a warm friend of mine for years. I had preached the funeral sermon of his father, who was a good, old-fashioned Methodist, and had real Bible salvation. This president said to me, "Mr. Kulp, there is one thing I hate (he was president of a state bank), at any moment the state inspector can walk into this bank. He can demand of me to furnish all of my books, to furnish all my papers. I will have to show him the whole thing, let him examine it. He can come whenever he pleases, and I have got to pay him ten dollars a day, and," he said, "how I do hate having that inspector, that bank examiner, come around." The Holy Ghost is an Examiner, and while I am preaching He is applying the truth, and tomorrow is eternity, and in that eternity is the great white Judgment Throne, and men are going to be judged for the deeds done in the body. God knows every heart. "Go call thy husband." "Why, I haven’t any husband." You told the truth then. The man you are living with now is not your husband. You have had five. "Who said so?" The Man that is going to be the Judge out yonder. He knows. He knows all about it. There is no secret history He does not know. There is nothing that He does not have on record. During the war the Department of Justice sent for me, and I went over there with a friend of mine. I was introduced to the gentleman, Mr. Smith, and he said to me, "Well, Mr. Kulp, you were out preaching for that pro-German the other night, wasn’t you?" I said, "Pro-German? No, sir; that man is not a pro-German." He called for somebody, and they brought out a pile of papers. He said, "Here we have it. Here is what he said. Here is where he said it. Here are the witnesses. We have got the record here." And that man did not know a single thing about that record -- but they had it. Listen! God Almighty has got your record, and it is your record you are going to face, and preparation to meet God means canceling that record on God’s conditions. What are they? Repent. That means, go out of the sinning business. What are they? Confession. "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us." What are they? Forsake. "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him: and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon." Oh, brother, God has the record. But listen! I want to tell you something tonight. The law, the ordinances, were against us. Jesus Christ took them, and He nailed them to the cross, and He made peace through His blood. But, brother, you will have to meet conditions in order to get the merit of that blood. What are you doing? I was preaching up here at New Richmond, Ohio. After I got through at night, I dismissed the congregation, and a young woman came up and stood before me. She said, "Mr. Kulp, I have only got one thing more to do." "Well," I said, "what is that?" She said, "I lied about somebody. I have got to go and confess it." My! If folks had to confess all the lies they had told, wouldn’t it keep them busy? A Sunday School class one day had a lesson on Ananias and Sapphira, and the teacher said, "Children, why doesn’t God strike people nowadays when they lie?" A little girl held up her hand and said, "Because there would not be anybody alive." God has got the record, and it is always fresh in the memory of God, and in the conscience of the sinner. It takes the blood of Jesus Christ to purge an evil conscience. How is it with you tonight? Are you ready to meet God? What is your salvation good for if you are not ready to meet God on a moment’s notice? Up where I was pastor so long, there are some people who will not come to hear me preach. They say they are made so uncomfortable. I wish they would stop and think. I wish men and women tonight would take a retrospective view of their life, while the Holy Ghost is applying the truth, and while the text comes in thunder tones -- "Prepare to meet thy God." Just take a backward look, and then remember, beloved, remember that the God who came to Adam and said, "Where art thou?" is on your track tonight. Remember that man never hid from God until he sinned, and sin is just as hateful in God’s sight tonight; but remember, "The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin." Remember, "When I see the blood, I will pass over you." Oh, there is hope for you, but you will have to meet God’s conditions. A fellow brought a load of coal to a house, went in and said, "Where do you want this coal?" The lady said, "You will have to go down and unlock the cellar window." The man went down and unlocked the cellar window, and coming back, he saw a fine pair of gloves. Oh, they would be good for a driver! And he took them and put them in his pocket. He unloaded the coal and went away. Twelve years afterward that man yielded himself to God. He hunted up the man who owned the gloves and said, "Say, I have got something to tell you. For twelve years I have never met you but what I have been ashamed of myself." The man said, "What is the matter?" He said, "Twelve years ago I took a load of coal to your house. I went down in your cellar to unlock the cellar window. There was a pair of driving gloves there, and I stole them, and I want to pay for them." Twelve years! Conscience has a long memory -- and God has a longer one; and if our conscience condemns us, God will condemn us, for God is greater than our conscience. Prepare. When? "Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation." Do you know why a great many people do not come here? Because they are unwilling to meet the conditions. A young man was standing right down about there in my church, and I saw the fellow was under conviction. I went to him and said, "God is talking to you. You ought to be a Christian." He said, "Mr. Kulp, if what you preach is true, I will never be a Christian." I said, "What is the matter?" He said, "I have sinned against some people, and injured them, and they do not know that I am the fellow that did it." God knows. M. W. Knapp, when dying, said, "Wake them up! Wake them up! Wake them up!" and the only thing I know that will wake them up is the truth, as it is in Jesus Christ, preached by godly men and backed by the Holy Ghost. Jesus is able to save unto the uttermost all them that come unto God through Him, and save them now -- when you meet conditions -- and then you will be saved on the merit of the blood of Jesus Christ, and not because of your good works. It is 8:58. How many persons are there here tonight ready to meet God at 9 o’clock, in just two minutes? You know whether you are or not. Let me tell you something. My old mother is ninety-six years of age next November. Once in a while she will have a flash of her old self, and when she does, she will sing some old hymn: "Drooping souls, no longer grieve, Heaven is sufficient, If in Christ you do believe, You shall find Him precious. Jesus now is passing by, Calling mourners to Him, He has died for you and me, Now look up and view Him." I can hear her old cracked voice. Then again she will say to me, when she has those moments -- they do come now and then -- "I am all ready whenever the Master sends for me." That never leaves her. Somebody referred to something of that kind the other day, and I thought of mother. Oh, thank God, there are some things we know. You can know if you are ready. Bishop Hughes says never to put a test that is not Scriptural -- and I am not. That is the test that Jesus Christ puts -- "Be ye also ready, for in such an hour as ye think not, the Son of man cometh." Are you ready? ======================================================================== CHAPTER 82: S. CONSCIENCE, THE UMPIRE OF GOD ======================================================================== Conscience, The Umpire Of God "And herein do I always exercise myself to have a conscience void of offense toward God and men." Acts 24:16 The word "conscience" is mentioned thirty times in the New Testament and there are doubtless more than thirty definitions of the word, but, however we may define it, every man and woman in this house tonight knows, whether you acknowledge it or not, the power of conscience. Some time ago a man sent an anonymous communication to the United States Government, saying to the Treasurer: "Enclosed find a sum of money (several thousand dollars) belonging to the Government." The Conscience Fund of the United States Treasury is being enlarged every year and is a standing and constantly increasing testimony to the power of conscience. In England, where they have an income tax, there is a like fund augmenting constantly by the additions received from men who have lied in regard to their incomes, and sworn to the lie. The income tax once laid by the United States was repealed, because one of its results was we were fast becoming a nation of liars, and oftentimes money was returned by men impelled by their conscience to make acknowledgment of money wrongfully withheld. Conscience is a faculty of the soul. Dr. Young says: "It is God in man." Milton speaks of it as "God’s Umpire." Dr. Clarke calls it "the eye of the soul," and Chrysostom says, "It is a special gift from God." We have two words in the English language that are best defined by conscience, and, in view of the judgment seat of Christ, and the future welfare of the soul, it is best for every man to side with a conscience enlightened by the Word of God,. in this definition, because an enlightened conscience always sides with God. These two words are right and wrong, words with which every person here tonight is well acquainted. Let conscience now define them and let every one listen to the definitions. Right, agreement with the will of God as made known in His Word. Agreement with the will of God as made known in his Word. Wrong, disagreement with the will and Word of God, in the daily life. If our conscience condemn us, God is greater than our conscience, and He will also condemn us, but if our conscience condemn us not, neither will God condemn us. There is an old legend that once a magic ring was given to an Oriental monarch. It was of inestimable value, not for the diamonds and pearls that adorned it, but for a magic property that it possessed. It sat easily enough on the finger in ordinary times, but as soon as an evil thought crossed the wearer’s mind, or he designed or committed a bad action, the ring became a monitor, and suddenly contracting it pressed painfully on the wearer’s finger, warning him against sin. Such a monitor every man possesses in the conscience, the voice of God within him. Is it not strange that there are men who would drown the voice of God, hush the very voice of God in the soul, strangle, annihilate conscience if they could? But listen! A man can never get rid of his conscience, he cannot get away from himself, his conscience is a faculty of his soul, a part of his very being. The Czar of Russia ordered that a railroad be built from St. Petersburg to Moscow, and the engineer came to him and asked him to indicate on the map the course he wished the line to take. Without a moment’s hesitation he promptly seized a ruler and drew a perfectly straight line between the two cities, and in accordance with that mandate, the line runs as straight as an arrow between the two cities. In like manner God, the rightful King of human hearts, has drawn a straight line from the soul to Himself, and an enlightened conscience always travels and leads men along God’s straight lines. A good conscience is a consciousness of walking in all things according to the will and Word of God. Just as a man has two eyes and there is only one sight, so the Spirit of God and conscience agree in regard to the moral quality of an action, and together they say: "Do that which is right; Do not do that which you know to be wrong." An enlightened conscience never goes contrary to the Spirit of God. No wonder Daniel Webster said: "A conscience void of offense toward God and man is an inheritance for Eternity." Brother, you may have it, all may have it, and may have it tonight. I want to call your attention to several thoughts further in connection with this subject. First. Conscience is a witness, a living witness, a witness to every act, to every secret thought, and not only a witness but a judge, a recorder, and every time a person commits an act, conscience at once summons the party to the act into court, and accuses or excuses him. And by the side of conscience stand the Spirit of God and the Word of God, and there before Conscience, before the Spirit, before the Word, man must plead immediately, innocent or guilty, "guilty or not guilty." When thus arraigned, the sinner is speechless. Look yonder. A guilty king, surrounded by his court. A banquet is in progress; mirth and worldliness reign supreme. But look! The king turns pale, his knees smite each other, the wine glass falls from his hands. See the hand that is writing on the wall. Read the message God sends that wicked monster: "Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting." If it is not true, what need Belshazzar care though dozens of hands write messages on the wall? But conscience tells him it is true; his conscience and the writing on the wall agree. Yonder on the throne sits the ruler of a Roman province. Before him stands a prisoner, aye, a prisoner chained to his guard. That ruler has nothing to fear from that prisoner, but, as Paul proceeds, and reasons of righteousness and temperance and judgment to come, that ruler trembles, trembles like the meanest criminal that ever stood at his own tribunal, like a benighted traveler when all of a sudden the lightning discloses the awful precipice whose brink he is approaching, like the man under sentence of death, when, in his cell at the midnight hour, he hears the knocking of the hammer erecting the scaffold on which he is to die on the morrow. Why? Because the truth the prisoner preached finds an echo in the conscience as he reasons of righteousness, temperance and judgment to come. Conscience is the self-registering thermometer of the soul and by it this man knows that God condemns him, and in that judgment to come, SURE TO COME, he will awaken unto eternal condemnation. Those who have seen Holman Hunt’s’ picture of "An Awakened Conscience" will not soon forget it. There are only two figures, a man and a woman, sitting in a gaudily furnished room, beside a piano. His fingers are on the instrument, his face, which is reflected in a mirror, is handsome and vacant, evidently that of a man about town, who supposes that the brightest part of creation is to furnish him amusement. A music book on the floor is open at the words, "Oft in the Stilly Night." That tune has struck some chord in his companion’s heart. Her face of horror shows what no language could say: "That tune has told of other days when I was what I am not now." The tune has done what the best rules that were ever devised could not do. It has brought a message from a father’s house by awakening her conscience. Conscience Cannot Be Corrupted. Human tribunals may be, legislators may be, juries have been and may be again. A few weeks ago there was a case in court in Chicago, where a child had been run over by a street car and injured severely. The parents of the child sued for damages. A jury was drawn and the case was tried, and it developed in the trial that, through the scheming of the Company’s agents, the jury, or, three of their number, had been "fixed," and a new trial was ordered by the court. At the second trial ten thousand dollars in damages were awarded. Juries can be corrupted, but Conscience, God’s vicegerent in man, never can. The old Duke of Wellington very much desired a piece of land that adjoined his property and was willing to pay a good price for it. One day his steward came to him and said: "I bought that piece of property you have been wanting, and I got it at quite a bargain." "Did you?" "Yes, I bought it for eight hundred pounds, and it is easily worth fifteen hundred." The old Duke arose in his wrath and turning to his steward said: "Take the owner of the property seven hundred pounds more, and never again tell me that is a bargain which deprives another man a single pound that belongs to him." Conscience cannot be corrupted by dollars and cents; cannot be bribed, nor silenced. Conscience will speak; it is "God’s Umpire," and that man who trembles before the voice of conscience may well dread to meet God, for where conscience condemns, GOD will also condemn. Distance cannot obscure the testimony of conscience. A few years ago an officer of the State of Michigan entered into a deal by which the state was defrauded out of thousands of dollars. The fraud was finally detected, and an aroused public demanded the punishment of the offender. He was well connected, had hitherto borne a spotless reputation, and his friends were moving in many directions in order to save him. In the meantime, dreading an arrest, he went to New Orleans, engaged himself to the agents of the British Government who were buying mules in the South for the use of troops during the Boer War, and shipped with a cargo to Africa; but his conscience gave him no peace. He was thousands of miles from Michigan, the officers knew nothing of his whereabouts, practically he was safe from arrest. But God’s Officer, Conscience, had him under arrest continually. He had no more peace in Africa than he had had in America, and at last he hastened back over the many thousand miles he had traversed, to give himself up -- appease the law, suffer the penalty, and get on the side of his conscience. "The mind that broods o’er guilty woes Is like the scorpion girt by fire In narrowing circle as it glows, The flames around their captive close Till only searched by thousand throes And maddening in her ire, One and sole relief she knows, The sting she nourished for her foes. Whose venom never yet was vain, Gives but one pang, and cures all pain, And darts into her desperate brain. "So do the dark in soul expire, Or live like scorpion girt with fire. So writhes the mind remorse has riven; Unfit for earth, undoomed for Heaven, Darkness above, despair beneath, Around it flame, within it death." The flight of time cannot obscure the testimony of conscience. Years may roll by -- ten, twenty, thirty, forty years gone -- but conscience never forgets; its testimony is the same after the flight of years as it was when the sin was committed. Conscience is the book in which our daily sins are written and time never effaces the record. When Bishop Latimer was before the cruel Bonner, he took especial care in the placing of his words, because he heard the pen writing in the other room and he knew that it was setting down all that he said. So conscience, as a scribe, makes note of all our ways, and that so clearly and evidently that, go where we will, the characters thus written down will appear against us at the Judgment seat of Christ, unless canceled by His own precious blood. During the Crimean War a soldier was fatally wounded. The chaplain could get near to all the men but him; he would always turn his face to the wall, but finally he grew so weak he could not turn and one day the chaplain came in and said to him: "Is there anything I can do for you, my dear fellow?" The man said: "Do you know who I am? I am the worst man in my regiment, the leader in all wickedness and wrong-doing. One time there came to our company a young recruit, a raw country lad, who knew nothing of what we who had been raised in the cities knew. I determined to make that young fellow as bad as myself. I did it. At the last engagement he was at my side and was shot dead just as he was uttering an oath that I had taught him. Can you remove that from my conscience; take that out of my life?" And with this record upon his conscience the man refused to be comforted, or assured of mercy, and died. The agonies of death were upon him, but the agonies of conscience surpassed all these. The sinner’s conscience is the best reflector of the judgment seat, in life and in death. There are no limitations in the court of Conscience. Years make no difference. The brethren of Joseph put him in a pit, sold him to the Ishmaelites, and lied to their father. The years roll on -- ten, twenty years go by -- and one day they are in the presence of the Governor of Egypt. Twenty years may have some relation to the memory of the intellect, but they have no relation to the tormenting memory of conscience. As those men stand there before the ruler, they talk among themselves: "Surely our brother’s blood is upon us." Conscience is doing its work and it unerringly points to the past. They see again the coat of many colors dyed in blood, again that lie told to Jacob lives, they see the boy they sold into slavery, and say: "Verily we are guilty of our brother’s blood." Twenty years is not a veil through which conscience cannot see; neither do they weaken the voice of conscience. A man cannot fly from his conscience; cannot throw it off. He may hide, as did Adam and Eve, but conscience is there, and, Cain-like, he will cry in his agony: "My punishment is greater than I can bear." Rosseau is an old man, but listen to him: "A sin that I committed in my youth still gives me sleepless nights." The chief of police in New York City says: "The best ally of the police is the conscience of the criminal." Webster murdered Parkman, was taken to jail, and confined in a cell. The next morning he begged of the jailer to take him out and transfer him to some other quarters. When asked the reason why, he replied that "All night long the man in the adjoining cell kept crying, ’Thou art a bloody man! Thou art a bloody man!’ " but there were no Occupants of the cells adjoining. He had heard the thunder tones of conscience and could not sleep. When Benjamin Abbott was preaching in New Jersey with a great zeal against sin in its worst forms, in the midst of a discourse he cried out, "For aught I know, there may be a murderer in this congregation." Immediately a stalwart, lusty man started for the door, and when he got there he bawled out, stretching out his arms in agony: "I am a murderer -- fifteen years ago I killed a man." Conscience, God’s vicegerent, was on the side of the preacher and drove that murderer to confession. There was once in Boston an old codfish dealer, a very earnest and sincere man, who lived prayerfully every day. One of the great joys of his life was the hour of family worship. One year two other merchants persuaded him to go into a deal with them by which they could control all the codfish in the market, and greatly increase the price. The plan was succeeding well, when the good man learned that many poor people in Boston were suffering because of the great advance in the price of codfish. It troubled him so that he broke down in trying to pray at the family altar and went straight to the men who had led him into the plot and told them he could not go on with it. Said the old man: "I cannot afford to do anything which interferes with my family prayers, and this morning when I got down to pray there was a mountain of codfish before me high enough to shut out the throne of God; and I could not pray. I tried my best to get around it, or get over it, but every time I started to pray that codfish loomed up between me and my God. I wouldn’t have my family prayers spoiled for all the codfish in the Atlantic Ocean, and I shall have nothing more to do with it, or with any money made out of it." Away down in the engine room of a great steamer, the ponderous driving wheel turns round and round, the mighty shaft moves resistlessly to and fro, and the huge ship plows her way onward through the waves. But suddenly, at the sound of a warning bell, the engineer springs to his lever, the engine is reversed, and the boat comes to a stop. The signal comes from the officer up in the wheel-house and must be obeyed, or disaster cannot be prevented. Conscience within us is like that warning bell. It bids us reverse our course when we are tempted to do wrong. Our safety lies in obedience; in keeping a good conscience. Judas allowed selfishness and greed to deafen his ears to this inner voice, and made shipwreck of his life. Peter, on the other hand, though he, too, grieved his Lord, gave heed to the inward monitor, and recovered himself by an honest and heart-felt repentance. Temptations will come, as we voyage over the sea of life, but if we listen to the voice of God in our conscience, we shall safely make our way through them all and reach at last the haven of eternal rest. The blood of Jesus purges the conscience. The Holy Ghost brings to the penitent sinner intelligence of pardon of all the sins of the soul, and reconciliation through the blood. Then the prayer of the redeemed is expressed by the words of the poet: "Oh, that my tender soul may fly The first abhorred approach of ill; Quick as the apple of an eye, The slightest touch of sin to feel." Let me add right here the following directions to preserve a good conscience -- they are Scriptural and Wesleyan. "Take heed of every sin; count no sin small, and obey every command with all your might. "Consider yourself as living under God’s eye live as in the sensible presence of God. "Be serious and frequent in the examination of your heart and life. "Exercise thyself unto Godliness. Be more diligent in religion than you are in business. "Do not venture on sin because Christ has purchased a pardon; that is a most horrible abuse of Christ. "Be nothing in your own eyes. Consult duty, not events. What advice you would give to another take to yourself. "Do nothing on which you cannot ask God’s blessing. Every action of a Christian that is good is sanctified by the Word of God and prayer. "Think and speak and do what you are persuaded Christ Himself would do in your case, were He on earth. By imitating Christ you become an example to all. Whatever treatment you receive from the world, remember Him and follow His footsteps, who did no sin neither was guile found in His mouth; who, when He was reviled, reviled not again, but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 83: S. CONSECRATION -- ALL OR NONE ======================================================================== Consecration -- All or None "Not a hoof shall be left behind." Exodus 10:26 "All Scripture is profitable for admonition, for exhortation, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto every good work." "Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that through patience and comfort of the Scriptures we might have hope." "These things were written that ye might believe, and believing might have life through His name." "The entrance of God’s Word giveth light." In the chapter from which our text is taken we have a lesson on the danger of compromising. This history is full of instruction by which we may profit, and become more loyal to God. Compromises of principle or truth have always been hurtful to the Church, the nation or the individual. The Jesuits had many apparent victories in the East and reported many converts, but Macaulay, in his history of England, says: "They were fictitious victories," and that the priests had lowered the standard of the Gospel until it was beneath the average level of human nature. Blame, in his "Twenty Years in Congress," teaches this lesson: In 1787, when the Colonies were about to federate, many men in the Convention, who had intense convictions regarding slavery, silenced their convictions and compromised their principles. They permitted the slave trade to continue twenty years; permitted three-fifths of the slaves to be counted in the apportionment of representatives for Congress; and that fugitive slaves should be returned to their owners; but in all their compromises they were selling their principles, and bartering away the God-given rights of other men. Henry Clay, by his persistent efforts, carried the Missouri Compromise through Congress, and afterwards, by his "Omnibus Bill," brought political quiet to the nation for awhile, but they were only putting off the day of judgment for a few years, and not one man’s moral convictions were altered. This nation paid in blood for the temporizing of its founders, and we learned the lesson amid the fire and smoke of the battlefield, while our own kin groaned and died. No Moral Question is never settled until it is settled right. A question a hundredfold greater, and equally as intricate in its solution, faces the nation today. The liquor traffic is the foe of God, the enemy of man, the corrupter of morals, the destroyer of the home, the child of the devil. The Almighty God points out the way in His Word, and by the experience of the past, the only way to the extinction of the traffic is not by temporizing and compromising but by complete and total prohibition of the manufacture and sale of the same. Prohibition is written all over the Word -- there can be no compromise with sin. The Ten Commandments contain the most complete code of laws God ever gave the world, and no compromise is written all over them. From the first utterance to the very last, He thunders "THOU SHALT NOT." Israel was a typical people for all ages. There are lessons to encourage on every page of their history. God determined their deliverance; He heard their cry; and He came down to set them free. "When the tale of brick is doubled, Moses comes," comes in the right time, comes as God’s man for the hour. Oh, when will we learn the lesson that God is never late! "Say not my soul, ’From whence can God relieve my care? Remember that Omnipotence has servants everywhere, His method is sublime, His heart profoundly kind. God never is before His time, and never is behind." "Go say unto Pharaoh, Let My people go" -- not dicker with him; not argue -- give him My message: "Let My people go!" And when Moses stood there in the proud court of the proudest monarch on earth, he was there as ambassador from the Court of Heaven, with a message he was incapable of altering and at the same time remaining true -- "Let My people go!" His strength and courage lay in his loyalty to God. While conscious of this, he was equal to the task. "His strength was as the strength of ten, Because his heart was pure." A disposition to compromise, on the part of ambassadors, robs them of their strength in the pulpit, and leads to compromising and defeat, while loyalty to God, faith in the message, enables one to shout victory in advance. Pharaoh, type of the old arch enemy, met the message after some time with offers of compromise; four distinct offers, to which I now wish to call your attention. The representatives of God and Israel asked that the people might "go a three days’ journey into the desert and sacrifice unto the Lord our God." A bold request, made in a bold manner, as well he might. Not because of mighty battalions back of him, for Israel was an unarmed host of men whose spirit had been broken by years of abject servitude. He knew he was "thrice doubly armed;" his call to the work was clear. That man was a majority. He was well equipped. In what, ask you? Seven mighty weapons. A shepherd’s crook, called a rod, one tremendous name in the Hebrew language, four promises, and a miracle. Moses’ commission rendered him invincible, and he knew God would lead them out. The first compromise that Pharaoh offered" -- Go ye, and sacrifice in the land" -- has been repeated to every new convert since that time. Stay in Egypt and serve God; you need not separate from the world to be a Christian; you need not give up your ungodly companions. Every convert should answer that as did Moses: "Nay, we cannot do that; the Egyptians will stone us. If we offer sacrifices that are pleasing to God, the Egyptians will be displeased; if we offer sacrifices such as Egypt approves, God will be displeased. We cannot please God and Egypt. We cannot get along together. We must separate." You cannot be a Christian without offending the world. The world hates God. You cannot serve God in the devil’s parlors. You cannot be a secret Christian; it is an utter impossibility. To attempt to be a Christian and yet make no profession is dishonoring to Christ and death to all spirituality. The Christ life will manifest itself. During the Centennial Exposition the Swedish Government had a number of wax figures and on them were displayed the uniforms of the different branches of the service -- infantry, cavalry, artillery, signal service and navy. One of the guards thought he would deceive the passers-by, and so he took his stand right among those figures. Some people were deceived, but one close observer, seeing the heaving breast, the distended nostril, and the flashing eye, called to him to "come out of that." Life cannot be hid, neither will it be silent -- it will speak for itself. "Ye are My witnesses," said Jesus. Silent partnerships occur in the business world but in the realm of grace they are unknown. Silence betokens spiritual death. A man who worked in the North Woods in Michigan came home impressed that a lumber camp was a hard place to try to live a Christian life, and when a friend was going up there the next winter, he said to him: "You will have a hard time of it." But the man went, spent the winter working in the camp, and came back, saying he "had no trouble." "You didn’t," said his friend, "didn’t the men annoy you?" "No," was the reply, "they didn’t even suspect I was a Christian." How different that from a young lady who taught school and, though a Christian, did not pray with the pupils. She was seeking a clean heart and for some time she was asked: "Do you pray with the children?" She replied: "No, I do not dare to; they would discharge me if I did, and this is my only means of support." Again in prayer, she was asking God to search her heart thoroughly) and the inward voice said: "Will you own Me before the children; will you pray with them?" "Why, Lord, the directors will discharge me, then what will I do?" But there was no peace, no answer. The struggling still continued, as it always does until we yield ourselves unto God and take His way. "Will you pray with the children?" "Yes, Lord, if it is through the poor-house to Heaven, directors or no directors, I will pray." Then the blessing came. She went to school happy in God, prayed with the children, read the Bible lesson, and had a good time. Then, just as she expected, she was waited upon by a director, who began the subject immediately: "I understand you have introduced a new study." "Not that I know of," she replied. "Well, you read the Bible and pray with the children, do you not?" "Not in school hours; I teach the time demanded and then pray afterwards." "Well," said he, "you must stop that or leave the school. We don’t hire you to teach religion and will not stand it." She did not hesitate a minute; she consecrated to the poor-house, if that was God’s way for her, and she said: "When must I leave?" "You can teach until Saturday night." She taught the remaining days -- prayed with the children, and when Saturday came she prayed with them, as she thought, for the last time, telling them before she began that she must leave because she would pray in school. As she prayed for each one by name, the Lord answered, and soon the children were praying for themselves. One little girl, the daughter of the director, went home and said: "O Pa, you don’t know what a good meeting we had with the teacher tonight after school. She prayed with us and then we prayed for ourselves, and while thinking how much Jesus loves little children, I got so happy, and I am happy now while I am telling you. You don’t know how happy I am, and oh, Papa, He will bless you, too, and make you so happy if you will only pray to Him and think how He loves you. Come, let us kneel down and pray." Conviction had been upon him ever since he had dismissed the teacher, and now, under the exhortation of his own saved little child, the Spirit was still working. Down on his knees he Went and he began to pray. Then in agony of soul he groaned. The child, seeing she had a real hard case on hand and not knowing what to do, said: "Pa, shall I go for the teacher?" But he was not ready for that yet. Again the child prayed, and the director continued praying. The Holy Ghost is always faithful, and the agony deepened in the old director’s soul until he cried out: "Daughter, go for the teacher. Tell her to come pray for me, for I am afraid I am lost." The teacher came; the director confessed his sin in turning her away; the Lord saved him; a revival began, and the teacher, who had been afraid her duty might lead her into the poor-house, found herself in God’s great storehouse of mercy, and goodness, and abundantly blessed for not compromising. The second compromise offered was this: "I will let you go, only you shall not go very far away." Dwell on the borderland. This is where a great many unhappy professors dwell and they are unhappy because they never have gone very far away from the world. God told Abraham to come clear out -- "Get thee out from thy country, and from thy kindred, to a land that I will shew thee." To Israel He said: "Get thee out, unto a good land, a large land, a land flowing with milk and honey." Today the command is: "Come ye out from among them and be ye separate, and I will receive you. A Chinese convert said: "When people come out in our country, they come clear out." Oh, if the devil can only get the young convert to "go not very far away," he knows he will hunger for the fleshpots of Egypt. I admire the old Roman soldiers, who, when they landed on the shores of Albion, though the enemy was drawn up in battle array, waiting for the onset, burned their ships behind them. That meant: "We have come to stay." It meant victory or death; it meant consecration of all to the one idea that brought them that far, the conquest of Britain, and it takes just as complete consecration -- every ship, every bridge burned -- a notification to Heaven, earth and Hell that you have no idea of going back, to get the blessing. If the enemy of souls can only get the Christian to dwell on the border, to take a half-and-half stand, "not to be too fanatical," he will be pleased; and that soul will meet spiritual death, if it stays there. These people who do not go very far away remind me in the "enjoyment of religion," of boys who go to swim. Here is one boy -- he came to swim, and he wants to swim, but first he puts his foot in, then the other foot, then wades out a few feet farther, and stands and shivers. He is in the water, and he is there by choice, but he is miserable, he does not go very far from the shore. But here comes a boy who means business. He runs to the shore, jumps in, enjoys it all at once, gets way out in deep water, and it is splendid. Listen! The Christian life is a hard life until one gets wholly in. Whenever a person begins to inquire, "Is it wrong to dance?" "Why is it wrong to play cards?" "Can’t I go to the theater and yet be a Christian?" "Can’t I go to the ball just to see the masqueraders?" I make up my mind at once that that person has never gone very far away. You cannot lead souls out of the world to Christ unless you get away out yourself. Emerson says: "If you want to lift a man up, you must stand on higher ground." The third offered compromise -- "Go ye that are men, but leave the wives and children behind." Pharaoh knew that if these remained every last man of them would come back; but Moses rejects this at once, "We will go with our young and our old, with our sons and our daughters." Oh, that every follower of Jesus, every servant of God, was as steadfast in resisting the wily enemy, and oh, that every Christian was as determined to take the children along! We ought to claim every member of the family for God and stand true until they are all saved. We cannot compromise in our families to make it easier. I have known wives who have said: "I go to the dance with my husband because I want him to go to the church with me." Aye, and by your compromise you disgrace your religion, you lose your influence over your husband, and you will never regain it until you acknowledge you did wrong. Stand firm, be true to your convictions, make no compromises and you will win. A busy farmer who employed a number of farm hands refused to take the time to have family prayers, because it meant a loss of money. He was paying these men so much a day, and they should be in the field, and to his godly wife, when she suggested the family altar, he said: "I can’t afford it." He went out to the field the next day and when noon came there was no dinner-bell; he lingered at his work until he was sure the time for dinner had gone by, but still no dinner-bell. Then he went up to the house, and there was the wife, . but no preparation for dinner. "Why, wife," said he, "what is the matter? No dinner, and no sign of dinner." "Oh," said she, "we pay these men so much per day, and to take time for eating, taking the men out of the field, means so much. We cannot afford it." He saw the point at once, and said: "Wife, get dinner. We will have family prayers after this," and a family altar went up to glorify God, bless that home, and honor a little woman who would not compromise for gain. Our children belong to God; they are in covenant relations to God; the promise is unto you and your children. It is a violation of the covenant to leave them behind; it is a sin against God to cease to pray for them. Tell the enemy, "There is going to be a feast unto the Lord our God, and we must take our children, our loved ones, along." Children can know God at an early age. "How long have you been a Christian?" asked a lady of a five-year-old, and the answer came direct and prompt, "Ever since I was a little boy." And it was true, for his father said he was converted when two years old, and was the best Christian in the home. My heart was thrilled some time ago when I read of the departure of an old disciple at the age of one hundred and five years, who for one hundred years had served God without a break, having been soundly converted when five years old. God’s promises include our children and He will save them if we are faithful. They may go way off -- may seem hard and careless -- but hold on; God is faithful. An old Christian father accosted his son about his soul, as had been his custom for years. The young man was annoyed and said, petulantly, "Father, I am tired of this. If you ever speak to me again on this subject, I’ll leave home." "Very well, John, I’ll never talk to you again about it, but I promise you I will always pray for you." The young man was a commercial traveler and his duties took him away for months at a time. Returning home after a trip, he one day was passing his father’s room, and heard him praying. He stopped to listen. How the old man prayed! He prayed for grace to be a true witness, for strength for every duty, that he might glorify God until the end should come. Then there was a pause, then a sob, and in broken utterances he said: "And now, Lord, about John," and he poured out such a prayer that it not only reached the throne, it got immediate answer and reached John, too, and soon he was numbered among the saved. Amen! Hallelujah! Our God will answer. Hold on, father; hold on, mother; the answer is on the way. Now for the fourth compromise offered" -- Take them all with you -- fathers, mothers, wives and children -- but leave your flocks and your herds behind." How many today listen to this and because they listen they fail. Give all to God, but the property. Keep your religion and your business separate. But, brethren, listen! The consecration must be complete, before God will sanctify a soul; there must not a hoof be left behind. Covetousness is a thing God despises and hates. The first sin after the entrance to Canaan that God punished with death was covetousness. The first sin in the Church after Pentecost was covetousness, and again God signally punished it with death. The Church costs so much, missionaries cost so much, so many calls for money; but listen to what Jesus says: "I gave My life for thee, My precious blood I shed, That thou might’st ransomed be, And quickened from the dead. I gave My life for thee. What hast thou given for ME?" The Lord loves a hilarious giver. Christ was a magnificent giver. "Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich." "God so loved ... that he gave." An Andersonville prisoner one time said that next to the greatest joy of his life was when in Andersonville he one morning got a whole biscuit, while in danger of starving to death. A listener said: "Next to the greatest joy? May I ask what, then, was your greatest joy?" He replied: "Seeing my bunkmate Bob eating the biggest half of it." There is joy in giving to God, to God’s little ones, to God’s cause; joy in putting money into God’s bank. There is no real heart-satisfying joy without a complete consecration of all to God. Resist the devil when he tempts you to covetousness; tell him not a hoof shall be left behind. It pays to give all to God; it is an judgment to God to trust you. "Amanda," said a friend to Amanda Smith, the colored evangelist, "can you trust God?" "Yes, and God can trust me." Rev. Heydrick was engaged in building a church, doing much of the work with his own hands. All was completed but the sittings, the pews. He went to a lumber dealer, explained the circumstances, secured the lumber on time, and said: "In ninety days I’ll pay you. I believe my Father will send me the money by that time." The dealer had no faith in that way of doing business, but he had faith in the honesty of Mr. Heydrick, and let him have the lumber. The seats were made, the church was dedicated, the ninety days expired, and, strange to say, the money had not come. Mr. Heydrick, as in duty bound, went to see the lumber dealer, and said: "I cannot pay you. I do not understand it. My Father has never failed me before." The dealer smiled, as much as to say, "Just as I expected," but he still had faith in the preacher and continued his credit. Just as Mr. Heydrick was about to go sorrowfully away, the dealer said: "O Mr. Heydrick, I have a letter for you. I met a gentleman down town, and telling him you would be at my office today, he asked me to give you this letter." Mr. Heydrick opened it and found three fifty dollar bills, just the amount needed to pay for the pews. Turning with a smile of triumph, he said to the dealer: "Just as I expected. My Father never disappoints me. Here is your money." O beloved, when we show we trust God, yielding all to Him, He soon shows that He trusts us and never leaves us to be confounded. Give all to God and you get all from God. A complete consecration brings the fire, insures the victory, and honors God. Make no compromises and He will bring you out with a high hand, and into the possession of a land where there is no scarceness. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 84: S. COUNTING THE COST ======================================================================== Counting The Cost "What shall I do that I may inherit eternal life.?" Mark 10:17 Our text is the language of a soul that has everything the world seeks after, but lacks the one thing needful. There is no legitimate need but God has for it a supply. For the eye there is light; for the ear there is sound; for hunger there is bread; for thirst there is water. Men, in their pursuit of satisfaction, are like children. The child is satisfied with the toy of today, but on the morrow will discard it for a new one, and will throw that to one side for a still newer. So men turn from one worldly pleasure to another. Apparently satisfied, they seem pleased for awhile, and then are found in pursuit of something new. All the restlessness around us is but a manifestation of the fact that man is seeking for rest in the places where it cannot be found. Search through the pages of history; read them carefully and learn this lesson -- Man is prone to seek rest everywhere else than where God has provided it. All the world provides is but a failure and men living in purple and luxury have confessed their miserable condition. Tiberius lived in a summer palace outside of Rome. He had everything that an obsequious Senate could provide -- wealth, power, pleasure, luxury -- all his. Every desire gratified; every thought anticipated. One day the Senate wrote him a letter asking "if there was anything they could do that would add to his pleasure, or increase his happiness?" Mark the answer that came back from this spoiled child of fortune: "Conscript Fathers, what to write you, or what not to write you, may all the gods and goddesses destroy me, worse than I feel they daily are destroying me, if I know." Sad comment on the ability of the world to satisfy a soul George Gordon Byron was, as the world goes, well born. His genius was acknowledged -- England read what he wrote and crowned him with laurel in their admiration. He was sought after, wined, dined, and feted, and yet was the most miserable creature on God’s footstool. Pollock in his "Course of Time" has this to say of Lord Byron: "He heard every trump of fame -- drank every cup of joy -- drank early, deeply drank, drank draughts that common millions might have qualified -- then died of thirst, because there was no more to drink." We take issue with that last statement of the poet. He died of thirst, true enough, but it was because he never sought the right source to quench it. Wesley, the poet of Methodism, wrote: "Thou, O Christ, art all I want, More than all In Thee I find; Raise the fallen, cheer the faint, Heal the sick, and lead the blind." Just before his death, which occurred in his thirty-fourth year, Byron, the petted, the admired, the surfeited, wrote these words: "I’m in the sere and yellow leaf, The flowers, the fruits of life are gone, The worn, the canker, and the grief, Are mine alone." He was a genius stranded, wrecked, and ruined because he neglected the provision God made for every man. Captain Gardiner was a wit of London, his company sought after, in his presence care seemed to fade away, the joke leaped lightly to his lips and men envied Gardiner. But see him in the hour of midnight, when he is alone with God and with his conscience. As he sits in the room, a little dog passes through and this careless, envied pet of London society points to it, and says: "I wish I were that dog!" The soul needs something more than chaff to feed upon. Of the man who said: "I will pull down my barns, and I will build greater, and I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods ]aid up for many years; take thine ease -- eat, drink, and be merry," -- of that man God said, "Thou fool!" Fool for thinking a soul could be fed on the contents of a barn. Fool for degrading his soul to the level of a beast. Fool for neglecting the provision Gad had made to satisfy him. Let us look at the picture of our text, drawn by the Divine Artist. Look at the man -- not at some such specimen as modern society turns out, something "tailor-made," whose highest ambition might be to adorn a fashion plate, or dawdle away the time in midnight functions of "society," but a man with aspirations after God, a soul crying out for something that will satisfy. "The soul is the measure of the man." "Where shall we bury you?" asked a friend of Socrates. "Wherever you please, if you can catch me," was the reply. They might have the body, but not the man. Our text is the cry of the man, the soul. "What shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?" The man asking the question came to the right One -- he is in the right Presence. He who spake as man never spake delights to meet such hungry, inquiring souls, and ever points them aright. But will the man pay the price? "If thou wouldst enter into life, keep the commandments. Thou knowest them." Quick as a flash he replies, "Which?" And Jesus said: "Thou shalt do no murder. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness. Honor thy father and thy mother, and, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." And the young man said unto Him: "All these things have I kept from my youth up." He was a model man; let us study him awhile. First, He was young, but he came to Jesus. The majority of the young men of today reject Jesus. It is estimated that forty millions of people in this country never attend church. My authority is "The Sunday School Times," of October, 1908. A few years ago the Young Men’s Christian Association of Battle Creek, Michigan, put a young man at the front of every saloon in the city between the hours of seven and eight in the evening, to count the number of men who entered, and to note especially the young, and they reported the young men far in the majority, giving the actual figures. The cars that on Sundays carry passengers to the resorts, to the baseball games, to the adjoining or neighboring cities, are filled with young men. The average young man of today does not want God. "Salvation is for the aged, the sick, and for women," so they say. But the young man of our text wanted God so earnestly that he came running to Jesus, and kneeled down and presented the one burden of his heart -- a cry for eternal life. He was a moral young man, far ahead of the average young man, American born, of today. Listen! The young German who comes to this country is respectful to his parents, and to the aged. Deference is shown in every move that he makes in their presence. The young Irishman is a model of respect to his parents; it is ingrained in every fiber of his being. But listen to the young American of today, as he speaks of his father as the "old man," or he may condescend to call him "the governor." When he deigns to mention his mother, it is as "the old woman." This young man of our text looked Jesus squarely in the face and said: "This commandment (honor thy father and thy mother) have I kept from my youth up." Where are your young men of today who would not stand condemned in the presence of this man of our text, and yet he confessed: "I need God; I need to be taught; I am not satisfied. What shall I do?" He was a moral young man, clean in his life, clean in his thoughts. "All these have I kept" -- but his morality did not satisfy him. Morality is a good thing, as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. Henry Ward Beecher said: "Morality is oftentimes only another name for decency in sinning." Morality will not give a passport to the skies -- will not save. You may be a good parent, a good neighbor, a good citizen, and yet be lost; be eternally damned. Your outward life may be such that the law can never touch you, the finger never be pointed at you, and yet in your heart be the blackness, the vileness, that will sink you to the lowest Hell. The man of the text was a church member, a ruler in the synagogue, a pillar in the Church, and yet not satisfied. "What must I do to inherit eternal life? My church-membership does not do the business. Lord, show me my need." In one thing he was a type of many church members of the present day -- in his unsatisfied state. The late Dr. Keen said that seventy-five per cent of the church members he has called upon to pray with in their dying hour were unsaved; he had to pray with them that they might get ready. Membership in the church will never save; in fact, an unsaved person in the church is in greater danger and worse off than an unsaved person out of the church. Simon the sorcerer was baptized into the church but his heart was not right in the sight of God, neither had he part nor lot in the Lord’s matter. A few years ago I was in a grove-meeting in Illinois. The Spirit of God worked mightily; men and women were saved; old heart-burnings were canceled; and a Methodist church was built as a result. In calling from house to house I would ask of the spiritual condition of the folks and would be answered, in a number of instances, "Been in the church twenty years" -- "joined the church fifteen years ago." The man of the text was an official member in good standing, and yet not satisfied; no assurance of salvation. What must I do.? What lack I yet? Jesus told him what he had to do -- just as He will tell every honest soul. It will not do for you to say: "I do not know what is the matter." "He that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness." You shall know, if you follow on to know. I have seen people praying earnestly and have felt much encouraged, believing they were going through, when all at once down would go their heads, and they would stop praying. What was the matter -- did they know? Aye, they knew well -- they had "run up against something," and then they scream, and cry, and yell -- all a sign of their resisting and struggling, and they never will get peace until they yield. The Spirit is always faithful -- He does tell us. Listen. "One thing thou lackest." One thing? Will that keep one from eternal life? Jesus said it. ONE THING thou lackest. Well, is the gate as strait, and the way as narrow now as then? Aye, just the same. It costs just as much to get real Bible salvation today as ever in the past. The "one thing" may be very important. Naaman was rich, honorable, next to the king, but he was a leper -- he lacked one thing -- health. Lacking that, he was doomed. Here is a caravan crossing the desert. They have pearls, gold, bread, dates -- they lack only one thing -- water -- but, lacking that, they are doomed. "One thing thou lackest; go sell that which thou hast and give to the poor, and come follow Me, and thou shalt have treasure in Heaven." Now he knows the terms; he knows what it will cost to get eternal life; in plain words he is told -- part with everything that stands between you and life. Will he do it? Will he pay the price? I see him counting the cost. He looks at the things he has. The devil is a master painter; he magnifies our possessions when we are called upon to give them up. They never appeared so great, so valuable, as now. A ruler in the synagogue, a man of reputation among his people, a possessor of wealth -- and now to give it all up, part with it all, SELL out -- to get the prize! And then on the other hand, follow this Man! He says Himself, "Foxes have holes, the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay His head." He came to His own and His own received Him not. The rulers have not believed on Him. Shall I? Shall I give up all -- sell out -- part with all these? The angels of Heaven are looking over the battlements of the Celestial City, interested in the conflict. A soul is about to make a decision for weal or woe -- for life or death, and for all eternity. Look at him, he turns away sorrowful, for he is very rich. No wonder Jesus said: "How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the Kingdom of Heaven"! His affections are set on things of earth, his soul is chained down to material things, he can turn away -- he can break the chain -- but he WILL Not. Right here let us notice; he made a mistake by not considering "and thou shalt have treasure in Heaven." Not that it does not pay now to follow Jesus, to sell out. Real Bible salvation pays NOW -- pays HERE. "Godliness is profitable unto all things, having the promise of the life till at now is, and of that which is to come. An old peddler, well saved, but in close circumstances, sat on a stoop one day, his pack by his side, while a fine-showing, spanking team of bays went by, driven by the leading saloon-keeper of the town. A man who knew the peddler, and who often heard him testify in meetings, said to him at this juncture: "Look there. See that fellow? He rolls in luxury, drives the finest team in town, lives in one of the finest homes. He is a sinner out and out. You are a Christian. You say your Father owns the cattle on a thousand hills. But look at you, and then look at that fellow. Who has the best of it?" The peddler looked at his pack. He knew he was poor in this world’s goods, but, looking up in the face of the questioner, he replied: "When you think of my circumstances, compare Heaven with them. What then?" Aye, he was right. Take in this life and the life to come -- the child of God shall inherit the earth and the "treasures hereafter." "A tent or a cottage, why should be care? They’re building a palace for him over there Tho’ exiled from home, yet still he can sing, All glory to God, I’m the child of a King." Jesus put before the young man the treasures hereafter and they were a part of the reward. "For the joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross, despised the shame," and He would have us like Moses of old, having "respect unto the recompense of the reward." What if man labors here, suffers here, battles here; what if he endures the contradiction of sinners here -- aye, resists even unto blood? In the midst of it all, he can scatter dismay among devils, astonish Hell, cheer the saints, and make Heaven’s welkin ring, as in all his trials he sings aloud: "My rest is in Heaven, my rest is not here. Then why should I murmur at trials severe? Be hushed, my dark spirit, the worst that can come But shortens thy journey and hastens thee home." Amen, and when he cannot enter upon the stirring scenes of life; when owing to age and the infirmities that accompany it, the firing-line is only a precious memory; when he cannot sing, nor testify, nor preach, as in days gone by; when he knows that he is decreasing, while the younger, called of God, are increasing; then, bless God, he can revel in the prospect of his future possessions, and say: "I am thinking of home, of my Father’s House, Where the many bright mansions be, Of the City whose streets are all paved with pure gold, Of its jasper walls, pure and fair to behold, which the righteous alone ever see. "O home, sweet home, sweet home, I am thinking and longing for home. Beyond the pearly gates many loved ones wait For the weary ones who journey home." Thank God, in the Christian’s inheritance there is not only present rest, but there is an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, that fadeth not away. It pays to sell out now -- to part with everything that stands between us and God. An old Scotchman was on his death bed, about to take his departure for the better country -- that is, an heavenly. In his lifetime he had been very generous, giving away much of this world’s goods -- sending on his possessions ahead. His rich, unsaved brother stood by his side and, as he looked at him, he said: "Sandy, what did I always tell you? Your religion has made a pauper of you." "Pauper?" said the dying man, "call me a pauper? My brother, I hove a Kingdom I have not begun on yet." And it’s true. Bless God, we have riches untold here, and an eternal Kingdom hereafter. "Do you get a glimpse of Jesus?" said the friends of a saint just on the border of the other world. "Away with your glimpses! For forty years I’ve had a full look at Him." Why? Because he had sold out, had parted with everything between him and God. "These things are preached that ye might believe and that believing ye might have eternal life through His name." "The gift of God is eternal life." You may have it and have it now, but you must pay the price -- never any more than now; never any less. "Repent ye, and believe the gospel." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 85: S. DOING FOR JESUS ======================================================================== Doing For Jesus "She hath done what she could." Mark 14:8 Near the coast of England, on a reef of rocks out in the sea, stood a lighthouse to warn and guide vessels approaching that dangerous spot. Out there were terrific storms, and that part of the coast was the dread of the mariner. One dark, wild night, a ship with hundreds of passengers struck the reef, only a little distance from the lighthouse, but the mad waves were boiling and dashing so furiously that it hardly seemed possible a boat could live three minutes if an attempt should be made to rescue any of the passengers. To make matters more hopeless, there was only one person with the keeper of the lighthouse, a young girl of eighteen summers. But with her father she launched the boat and pulling the oar opposite her father, they made their way through the surging billows to the wreck, and brought off nine persons to the lighthouse. All the rest were lost, but all through the kingdom that heroic girl was honored. She had done what she could. The text proves to us conclusively that the Lord Jesus approves of doers, desires His people to be doing Christians, to show their Christianity by their lives. True religion is not made up of general notions and abstract opinions, of certain views and feelings, of doctrines and sentiments only. These things are useful but they are not everything. The wheels of the machine must move. The clock must go as well as have a handsome exterior. It matters very little what a man thinks, wishes and feels in religion if he never gets any farther than that. "hat does he do? How does he live? Doing is the only satisfactory proof that a man is a real Christian, that his religion is a real’ work of the Holy Spirit. Jesus laid this down as a test. "By their fruits shall ye know them." We all admit that not only were the heavens created to shew forth the glory of God, but man is to glorify God, and "Herein," Jesus says, "is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit." Doing is the only evidence that will avail a person in the day of judgment. Talking is a very easy thing, profession is a very cheap thing. Hearing is not hard, but in this good old-fashioned Bible there is an exhortation like this, "Be ye doers of the Word and not hearers only." Every one can do something, and what we can do we ought to do, and what we ought to do, we can. Here is an axiomatic truth for every person to whom the path of duty is plain, "I ought to, therefore I can." All may win this encomium of our text, and in the great day of accounts, the great question each must meet is this, "Hast thou done for me what thou could’st?" A few years ago the Czar of Russia went to his long home. He was the ruler of fifty-seven millions of human souls, embracing nine nations of men, a million soldiers drew their breath subject to his despotic will, two millions of square miles of territory were ruled by his word, the guns of massive forts made continents tremble at his edict. Kings and cabinets were perplexed at the cunning of his brain, but when he died, when his soul, disrobed of purple and of crown, went the presence of the Kings of kings, the simple question for him to answer was this, "Hast thou done for Me what thou could’st?" I knew a girl on my last charge named Esther Nichols, quiet, unassuming and gentle. To my mind she was very much like her Lord. She lived in a very plain, bumble home; went in and out of the church without creating much stir. If she was asked to do anything, she did it for Jesus’ sake, quietly and thoroughly, as was the manner of her life. The last Sunday she spent on earth, she sang in the choir, because she was needed, and in a few days afterward she died, and went up to join the choirs of Heaven. When the plain Christian girl entered the other world, the question to the Emperor would be for her also, "Hast thou done for me what thou could’st?" I presume there are many honest hearts in this congregation this morning, and you are asking, "What can I do?" and as a servant of God I want to point out to you some things that all may do. 1. Every one can keep a pure heart, a holy heart. Purity -- wholeness -- is the heritage of every child of God. To every one Jesus says, "Wilt thou be made whole?" and He not only makes whole, or holy and pure, but He has made rich provision for every one of His children that they may keep pure. Listen to this if you doubt it, and tell me if it means what it reads. "The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin." "Be ye holy for I am holy." "Keep thyself pure." "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Do not listen to the suggestion of the devil that that is for you just before you die. Whenever it is done, God must do it, and if He can do it for you at death, He can do it now, and by having it done now you can be more useful, for if you want God to use you, you must he holy. God can use nothing unclean and impure. If you want to be happy, you must be holy. "Ye are the temple of the Holy Ghost." Let the Spirit in, in all His fulness, and you can keep a pure heart, and keep it easily. The man who has a hard time is the one who is half-hearted instead of being whole, or holy-hearted, but, "if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Brother, sister, I want you to understand, it is your privilege to be purified. If Jesus can not save you and keep you from all sin and cleanse you from all unrighteousness, then He is a failure. He came to save His people "from their sins," to save unto the uttermost all them that come unto uttermost salvation. "Oh, bliss of the purified, Bliss of the pure, No wound hath the soul That His blood cannot cure. "No sorrow-bowed head But may sweetly find rest, No tears but may dry them On Jesus’ breast." 2. You can avoid the very appearance of evil. You can so live that your life will be above suspicion. The devil may stir up some one to throw mud at you, but if your heart and life are pare it ’will not stick, it will fall off harmlessly. Some one may lie about you, but it will not stick, it will fall to the ground -- no one will believe it, not even the liar himself. Be careful what you do. If you do not want to be even to be thought a card player, do not have cards in your house. Do not go to the dance to look on, and no one will think you love the dance. Be careful what you do, and what you speak, and where you go. Do not go to the saloon to get a glass of lemonade, -- some one may think you were after liquor. Make your lemonade at home. An old naturalist tells us a dove is so afraid of a hawk that it will be frightened at one of its feathers, so the Christian, knowing that sin separates the soul from God, ought to be frightened at the very appearance of sin. William Stockton was so opposed to the theater that when he would be going up Arch Street, in Philadelphia, and come to the square on which was the Arch Street theater, he would cross the street before he would walk in the shadow of he building. If we go to an extreme in any direction, let it be in the right one. Bismarck, premier of Germany, sold his stock in a French corporation, lest it should bias his judgment in matters of importance between his nation and the French. Do as much for God. Part with the very appearance of evil, and be whole-hearted for God. 3. You can pray a great deal for the unsaved. The secret of all real Pentecostal revivals is prayer. Ten days of prayer and waiting before God preceded the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost, and the conversion of two thousand souls. If you want to see wonders wrought by God, pray and wait before Him. When Jonathan Edwards preached on the text "Their feet shall slide," the people caught hold of the pillars of the church to keep from sliding into Hell. God wonderfully helped the preacher, but many of his people had been up all night on Saturday praying for God’s blessings on him. John Livingstone preached a single sermon in Scotland that brought five hundred souls to Christ, but some of his people had been in prayer all night before. If you want the power of God to come, pray, and wait in humble faith and you certain as that God will come in answer to continual and faithful prayer. A man who had been an atheist was converted and soon after his conversion he made out a list of all his old associates living within the reach of his influence, and for their conversion he determined to labor and pray daily. On his list were one hundred and sixteen names, among them skeptics, drunkards and individuals as little likely to be reached by Christian influence as any in the community. Within two years from this man’s conversion, one hundred of these persons for whom he labored and prayed were converted. You can pray for the unsaved. 4. You can give money to the Church for Jesus. If pocket-books were consecrated to God, the Lord’s treasury would never lack money, and no consecration is complete if the pocket-book is withheld. Some people get nervous when you talk to them about money for God. A Christian man, who earned his money by the sweat of his brow, subscribed five dollars annually for the support of a school in Bombay. His friends said, "How can you afford it, and how can you give so much?" Mark his answer. "I have been for some time wishing to do something for Christ, I cannot preach, neither can I pray in public to anyone’s edification, nor can I talk to people, but I have hands and I can work," and of the money thus obtained, he gave for Jesus. I know a woman who surprises her pastor by the amount she contributes to the cause of Christ, for new churches, for missions, and though she is over sixty years of age, she earns every dollar of it by weaving carpet, that she may have the pleasure of giving. Brethren, if I could get the money for Jesus that the Church people spend for tobacco, ice-cream, candy and ribbons, I would undertake to build all the churches, feed all the Lord’s poor, send out all the missionaries necessary to evangelize the world. We could evangelize the world with money spent for worldliness by the modern Church. 5. Every one can speak a few words to sinners for Jesus. Jesus said to the man out of whom the devils were cast, and who was clothed and in his right mind, "Go to thy home and tell thy friends what great things the Lord hath done for thee." "Let him that heareth say come." "Go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in. Go speak to sinners, tell them something of Jesus’ love, tell them their feet are in the way of death. A woman who had been thirty years in the Church came down to die, and she was in agony. This thought tormented her, "I have been thirty years in the Church and have never spoken to any person about his soul." Do something for the Church. Bring some one to Christ. A young girl fifteen years of age was converted in New Jersey. Her parents and two older sisters were members of the Church, professors of religion, but they did not practice their profession. Suppose I tell you John Smith is a physician, but he does not practice, you would not send for him when any one is sick in your house, you want a practicing physician, and not one out of practice. God wants practicing Christians. This young girl began to work on her parents at home. Her mother was in the habit of buying milk on the Sabbath, she suggested it might be bought on Saturday night, boiled and kept, so there would be no ringing of bells, and no traffic on the Lord’s day The mother yielded and that business closed. They were in the habit of having Sunday dinner, in fact it was the big dinner of the week, it was a day of feasting rather than worship and self-examination. Prayerfully and lovingly she set herself at work. Soon cold dishes took the place of hot. But there was no family altar. She did not know how to approach her father, so she went to her Heavenly Father. He understood her, and God sent the Spirit to the father’s heart, and one Sabbath evening he called his family together, acknowledged his neglect, stated he would now lead them in devotion, and henceforth attend to it. The young daughter’s heart overflowed, a new spiritual life was felt at home. She began to work in her neighborhood, talked to souls and became eminently useful. 6. You can invite sinners to Church. Oftentimes the first sermon they hear influences them to surrender. A man who had been a libertine, a wrecked, abandoned character, one day strolled into a church when he heard the fifth chapter of Genesis read. "Enos lives 205 years, and died. Seth lived 912 years and he died, Methuselah lived 969 pears and he died." The frequent repetition of the words "and he died" struck him so deeply with the thought of death and eternity that, through divine grace, he became a Christian. A gentleman, educated for the bar, was desired by some of his companions, who were with him at a coffee-house, to go and hear John Wesley preach, and then to return and exhibit his nonsense and discourse for their entertainment. He went with that intention, but just as he entered the place Mr. Wesley announced his text, "Prepare to meet thy God." The seriousness of the speaker, and the solemnity, impressed him, and when he returned to his companions, he was asked by his associates if "he had taken off the old Methodist," and he replied, "No, gentleman, but he has taken me off," and from that time had left their company and became a godly man and a Christian. You can speak to the unsaved, visit their homes, tell them of Jesus. "They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever." Advertise Jesus Christ, tell what He has done for you. "What we have felt and seen, With confidence we tell, And publish to the sons of men, The signs infallible." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 86: S. DWELL DEEP ======================================================================== Dwell Deep by George Kulp "Dwell deep -- without care -- alone" (Jeremiah 49:30-31). Jesus knew what we would have to do if we were to dwell deep, and so he told us in a parable of a man who was going to build a house and he digged down deep. He got all the rubbish, and sand and clay out of the way. He also told us that storms were coming and the building we erected would be tested, and it was necessary that we should build on the Rock. All the time we are living we are building -- for all are builders -- and all may see there is a necessity for deep digging. The Christian life is built on Christ. He is the Foundation -- other foundation can no man lay. The poet has well said, "On Christ the solid Rock I stand, All other ground is sinking sand." It means much to go with God. We will find the crowd, the multitude going the other way. "Broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there he that go in thereat." It took a hundred years to make a Stradivarius, but when it was made it was worth twenty-five hundred dollars. It took God and Stradivarius to make one. First, the tree to grow, to grow where the winds and storms would beat on it, where the lightnings and thunders would play around it. These would toughen its fiber, would get it ready for good work some day in the hands of an artist. Then, after all the years, the ax would be applied and it would be cut down, and then placed away till all the moisture was out, and then Stradivarius, with knife and plane. So it is with the Christian life. It means all hell to oppose, the world to hate, the carnal mind to criticize and scoff, to be at times misunderstood, and it is necessary to build, and more necessary to dig down deep. Oh, there are so many superficial, shallow professors these days -- so many gigglers. I went one day into a large furniture house, and the salesman, one of the firm, showed me a piece of furniture that he said was cherry. A nice piece of furniture, and he would sell it to me at a very reasonable figure, considering it was cherry. I bought it, took it home, showed it to wife, and lo and behold, it was cherry -- on the outside. It was a very nice job of veneering; looked like cherry, but it was a very thin piece of cherry glued and pressed tight to a very light wood. There is so much veneering in these days; not worth much when it comes to the testing. Men do not want -- much less seek -- for God’s way. They are like an old farmer who had plenty of money and brought his son to Mr. Garfield to get an education. Mr. Garfield was the president of the college, and he showed the farmer a catalogue, and what would be required of the young man; and he told him, further, that it would take four years or more to finish the course contemplated. The old man said, "I do not want him here four years. I can pay for his education." Mr. Garfield saw the point at once and replied, "It takes a hundred years to grow an oak; you can have a squash in a few months. What do you want your boy to be -- an oak or a squash?" It was ships of oak as well as hearts of oak that made Britain the mistress of the seas for so many years. There are storms coming, dig down deep. You are building for the skies. When you contemplate building high you must go down deep. I was in Philadelphia one day and stopped to look at a foundation they were preparing. It was way down deep, far below the surface. It cost something to put it in, but they counted the cost and said, "It will pay to go down." When they built the St. Louis bridge across the Mississippi River, the engineer who drew the plan said to the contractors, "You must go down till you strike the rock." And the contractors said to the foreman, "You must go down till you strike the rock." And the foreman said to the men, "You must dig down deep till you strike the rock." And they began, they went down day after day, and one day the man said, "We have the rock." They sent a piece of the rock up to the engineers, who after a look said, "No, that is only sandstone; go down till you get the rock." They dug a few days more and said, "Now we have the rock, and again they sent up a piece; but the engineers said, "No, that is not rock yet; that is only a little harder sandstone." And on they went digging down deeper. But one day they heard a great shout coming up from the men. This time they did not send up a piece to be examined. They said, "We have the rock." The engineers shouted back, "How do you know?" Back came more shouting, "We struck fire!" Sure enough, you will know when you have struck the rock you will get fire at the same time. Never stop digging till you get fire. It is promised, "There is one among you . . . He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and fire." Where He is there is fire -- and you will know it, and other folks will know it, too. Have you been down so deep that you have struck the fire. We can never dwell deep, unless we first dig deep. Dwell Deep. A man who had one time gone down until he struck the Rock and consequently was dwelling deep, said, and I think I can hear the shout of victory in the tones, "For me to live is Christ. The life I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loves me and gave himself for me." When we dwell deep we dwell in Him, not in the church alone, not in folks, but in Him. We can and do sing, "He is mine and I am His." We live in the Spirit and the Spirit in us. That means we are led by the Spirit. We walk in the Spirit and do not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. We then move in Christ. All our ambitions, all our desires are in His will. All our activities are in harmony with his plan for us. All our inspirations are from Him. If we want to go to Bithynia, and He says, "No," we say no, too. If we are looking toward Asia and He says, "No," we are as cheerfully obedient as if He had said yes. We not only move in Him, we move for Him. The love of Christ constraineth us. If He says slums, we say slums with all our might. I have never yet been able to understand why folks should weep and moan because God told them to go to the slums. If that is His will, better be in the slums working for Him than in Heaven. If He says Africa, say Amen. I once heard a young woman who had for years had the call of God upon her for Africa, make this remark: "Why doesn’t God call some girl whose mother does not need her at home." Let us stop talking about the sweet will of God while at the same time we are fighting His place for us, anywhere. Carey was in India because God wanted Him there. Taylor was in China because the King pointed there. Melville was called to Africa and the Missionary Board said we have not the money to send you, and he replied, "I must go to Africa if I go as a hand before the mast." That is the spirit that makes the angels rejoice and sets all the bells of heaven ringing. When a soul dwells in Him, all the ambitions are in His will. As Wesley sang, so it is the language of the soul: Take my soul and body’s powers, Take my memory, mind and will; All my goods and all my hours, All I know or think or feel, All I speak and all I do, Take my heart, but make it new. How blest are they who still abide, Close sheltered in Thy bleeding side; Who thence their strength and life derive, And by Thee move, and in Thee live. Dwell without care. Down here, in a world that is full of care? Yes, right here, and it is a lesson it will do us good to learn. The promise made to those who will seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness is, ’?And all these things shall be added unto you." Food, raiment, and the things the Gentiles seek after. We may prove we are Israel indeed. We can carry the goods with us so people will know we are one hundred per cent Israel. There is a law now that makes the manufacturer write on the label the contents of the can, and that it is all it professes to be; and if the can does not contain goods according to the label, then the makers may be prosecuted. In other words, the law says live up to the label. It can he done, it may be done, it should be done, and it must be done, if we ever see the inside of the pearly gates. Patti, that wonderful soprano, once went to a city where she was almost a complete stranger. She called at the post office to get her mail, and there were a great many letters for one Adelina Patti, but she must be identified, and there was no one to do it. Again she applied, but the clerk said, "I am sorry, but you must prove to me that you are Patti." A happy thought struck her, and at once she began to sing a simple little song. The people stood with open-eyed wonder, the clerks came to the windows, all work ceased, and an old clerk cried out, "That is Adelina Patti." Of course she got her mail -- she had proved herself. We must, the world demands it. Jesus said, "Ye are my witnesses." Live without care. Madame Guyon was shut up in a prison, but she was free from care and sang in her cage like a bird: "My Lord, how full of sweet content I pass my years of banishment! Where’er I dwell, I dwell with Thee, In heaven, in earth, or on the sea. To me remains nor place, nor time; My country is in every clime; I can be calm, and free from care On any shore, since God is there." Hear Him from the Word. Casting all your care on Him for He careth for you. My God shall supply all your needs according to the riches of His grace in glory by Christ Jesus. No good thing will He withhold from him that walketh uprightly. If we care for God, we will care for His cause, and He will care for us. Queen Elizabeth once appointed one of her nobles, a man of ability, to a foreign ambassadorship, and he, thinking of his own estates at home, said to the Queen, "Who will look after my interests while I am gone?" and she at once replied, "You look after my affairs abroad and I will care for you and yours." He trusted her and went. Be careful to be careless - that is, without care. I know now you are thinking Gentile thoughts; but it is true and some have proved it to be true. There was a man in the city of Pittsburgh, who was most blessedly saved while working for a railroad company, and he at once went to the superintendent and said, "I cannot work any more on Sunday, so I cannot go out tomorrow." The superintendent asked, "Why can’t you work?" and he said, "I have got religion and I cannot work on the Lord’s Day and keep a clear conscience." "Well," was the response, "you have more religion than is good for you. Go to the office and get your time. We don’t want men who are too good to work on Sunday." He was discharged and went home. His wife met him at the door and he told her, "Wife, I am fired." "What for?" she asked. "Because I will not work on Sunday." She said, "You are a fool. As good men as you work on Sunday and belong to church, too." But he went on his way and would not work. The street corners were filled with men who were out of work. He tried to get a job, but failed. He used up all the money he had in the bank, then used up all the credit he had at the store, the merchant saying, "I know you are honest. I have trusted you until the bill is more than I can afford to carry. I am carrying so many others." And he went home to hear his wife’s taunts again. Then he went upstairs and opened his Bible and in prayer he said to God, "Here is your word, Lord, seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and behold all these things shall be added unto you. Now, Lord, I am out of work because I minded Thee. Please prove Thy Word to me and get me work." And do you know that God did it? In a day or two a knock was heard at the door, and the call boy said, "The superintendent wants to see you." So down to the office he went and the superintendent said, "Have you got a job yet?" "No, sir; I have looked everywhere, but I am still out of work." "Will you work on Sunday?" was the next query, and as quick as the light travels came the answer from the heart of the young man, No, sir; I will not work on Sunday for the railroad or anyone else." The superintendent laughed and said, "Well, I have a job for you. I want you to be conductor on a local passenger. It has no Sunday run, and your wages will be twenty dollars a month more than you had in your old place." We do not have to care. We have all the angels in heaven to minister unto us; we have God looking out for us, and He holds jobs in the hollow of His hand for those who trust Him. He knows all about the future -- you do not. Trust Him and live your trust. He knew that the day would come when there would be a famine in the land of Canaan; he knew that some of the heirs of the promise would be in that land, so He sent a man down there twenty years ahead of the famine to make provision for the heirs. Not only that for seven long years He made the soil in the land of Egypt to bring forth by handsful, and then He had it stored away in granaries so it would keep good for the heirs, and then He made it so the heirs had to get down to the corn, and He gave them Goshen, the richest province in all the kingdom, where they could raise sheep and eat corn and live without care. Have faith in God! The starry dome, The verdant earth, each flowery plain, The babbling brook -- and all combined A Father’s love and power proclaim. And not a sparrow to the ground Can fall without His wise decree In Him shall light and life be found Have faith in God -- He cares for thee! "As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about them that put their trust in Him." Dwell Alone. Get alone with Him. This is the one thing needed. I have had good times in the public worship, good times in the social services, the prayer and testimony meetings. God has blessed me so in preaching that I have actually thought if He blessed me any more I would not be able to endure it in the flesh; but the sweetest times in all my Christian experience have been when I was alone with Him in secret. When thou prayest enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut the door, pray to thy Father which seeth in secret, and He shall reward thee openly. But to lie still in His presence, to let Him talk to you, to just know that it is God who is dealing with you in love, and you are alone with Him. You can tell Him things you would not tell anyone else, and He will tell you things He would not tell anyone else about you. A friend is one who knows all about you and still loves you, and the only one that I know of to whom that will apply is God. He’s a Friend above all others. Oh, how He loves! His is love beyond a brother’s. Oh, how He loves! Earthly friends may fail and leave you. This day kind -- tomorrow grieve you; but this Friend will ne’er deceive you. Oh, how He loves! Take time to be alone with Him. I read some time ago if you have thirty minutes for the closet, take ten minutes to read the Word, ten minutes more to pray, and then Ten Minutes to be still, and let Him talk to you. This will be the sweetest part of the thirty minutes. Jesus often went up to the mountain tops to be alone with the Father. He went to the garden to talk with the Father. He went a stone’s throw farther to be alone with Him, and pour out His heart in cries and tears. He left us an example, and we should follow in His footsteps. We may dwell alone with Him. "When storms of life around me beating, And rough the path that I have trod, Within my closet door retreating, I love to be alone with God. Alone with God, the world forbidden Alone with God, O blest retreat! Alone with God and in Him hidden, To hold with Him communion sweet." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 87: S. ETERNITY ======================================================================== Eternity Eternity. The subject for our consideration, which is suggested by our text, is one in which all are interested. Tomorrow is Eternity. What man gets in this world is only a start in life, a preparation for the eternal beyond. Isaiah 57:15 If I were asked to define time, I would reply, It is limited duration; yet who can comprehend the thousands of years that have elapsed since God breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul? How much ... less then are we unable to comprehend Eternity, unlimited duration! An eloquent son of the South says: "Eternity cannot be defined. Beginningless and endless, it cannot be measured, its past increased, its future diminished. It has no past, it has no future, it has no middle, it has no ends, it has no parts -- an unanalyzable; tremendous unit. It is something which always was, always is and always will be. It is coeval with God. It began when He began, and He had no beginning. It is an unoriginated, beginningless, endless, measureless, imperishable, indescribable, indefinable thing. If asked, What is Eternity? we can only answer: ’Eternity.’ It is older than the world, older than the sun, older than the stars, older than the angels -- as old as God -- yet no older now than when worlds, suns, stars and angels were made, and never will be any older, yet never was any younger." On the walls of a monastery in Canada, where the inmates can see them plainly, are these words: "Nothing is long but Eternity," and towards that Eternity we are all rapidly tending. Whether it shall be an Eternity of happiness or woe, depends upon our improvement or our abuse of time. God always gives light. Before the Deluge He sent Noah, a preacher of righteousness, who faithfully warned the antediluvian world, until God, grieved by their wickedness, repented Him that He had made man and declared His Spirit should no longer strive. Lot preached to ungodly Sodom until his righteous soul was vexed by their unrighteous deeds in continually sinning, until their grievous sins provoked the wrath of God. In the days of Christ, they had greater light, as He preached unto them, saying, "Repent and believe ye the Gospel." When the Spirit came in His fullness on the day of Pentecost, they had yet greater light, but in the twentieth century we have light surpassing all the light of all the ages past, for we have the Word of God, the fullness of the Spirit, the witness of nineteen centuries, and the example of the saints living around us today, and, if we go into Eternity unsaved, the deepest, darkest Hell will be ours, for, in accordance with our light, so has been our responsibility. Some have said: "Oh, if I had only lived in the time of Christ, I would have believed on Him, I would have been His disciple." But Jesus said: "Greater works than these that I do shall ye do, because I go unto My Father." He declared: "John was greater than all the prophets preceding him, yet the least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he." Our light, our obligations, are greater than that of any age in the past, and our damnation will be greater, if we neglect our opportunities. You do not believe it? Listen to the words of Him in whom was hid all the fulness of the Godhead: "Woe unto thee, Chorazin, woe unto thee, Bethsaida, for if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon which have been done in you, they had a great while ago repented, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto Heaven, shalt be thrust down to Hell." Light means knowledge of duty, and in the Word we are taught God’s requirements upon us, and He tells us, "If ye KNOW these things, happy are ye if ye do them. If ye do these things, ye shall never be moved." Again, He, by His Spirit, gives us in the Epistle to the Galatians, a long catalogue of sins, and declares: "They that do such things shall not inherit the Kingdom of God." To every sinner the time is coming when He Will say to him: "Ye knew your duty and ye did it not; depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." This brings us to the subject we would now present -- The Sinner in Eternity. You do not want to think of it. You would put it away from you. Mirabeau, when dying, said: "Give me laudanum, that I may not think of Eternity." "To think when Heaven and earth are fled, And times and seasons o’er; When all that can die, shall be dead; That I shall die no more: Oh, what shall then my portion be, Where Shall I Spend Eternity?" After light, after knowledge, after probation, after the Word, after sermons, after the Spirit’s pleadings, after death, after you have crossed the boundary of time, "Where will you spend Eternity?" A man went to New York to buy goods. The merchant took him out to see the city. They went from one house to another, from one scene of carousal to another, until, half intoxicated, they stood in a palatial saloon before a marble bar and gilded mirror, and were about to take another glass. The merchant said to his visiting friend: "Let us be merry while we may, for when a man is dead, he is dead a long while." "Yes, a long while," thought the visitor, "even through all Eternity." The thought aroused, troubled him -- "through all Eternity" -- and yet sinning against light, against knowledge, against blood-bought privileges, and to be a lost sinner throughout all Eternity! The devils in Hell will be astonished that any soul living in your light, in your knowledge, should come to that place of eternal torment. That you, for whom Christ died, with whom the Spirit plead, should persistently push your way over the crucified Son of God to reach an eternal Hell! The sinners, the lost of past ages, who never had your light, your privileges, never heard such presentations of the Gospel as you have heard, will stand aghast to see you entering the abode of the damned; you with your feet red with the blood you trampled upon, as over prayers, mourners benches, sermons, tears and entreaties of friends, aye, of the very Lamb of God Himself, you hastened to your eternal doom. Every man has in himself all the elements of retributive penalty, and he takes them into Eternity with him. An old colored woman was in the habit of talking to her profligate nephew in regard to his soul, and often told him of God’s wrath upon the sinner and of the fearful doom toward which he was hastening. One day he sneeringly said to her: "Say, auntie, where do they get their brimstone from?" and quickly she replied: "O child, they carry it with them." True enough, every sinner carries with him into Eternity the very elements that make Hell awful. One of Dickens’ characters -- "Monks" by name -- an awful profligate, a violator of the laws of God and man, stood at the entrance to a house, knocking for admission, the rain falling in torrents as he awaited a response. Being detained in the rain, he looked up and said, as he smote his breast: "All the rain that ever has fallen, or ever will fall, cannot put out the fires that I feel burning in here." In his own heart, Hell was then raging, and even the waters of death never could put it out. The sinner takes with him into Eternity his memory -- and this alone will make Hell awful. Abraham said to the rich man: "Son, remember." You may take men out of the body, but still they will remember. My power to remember, to think, to reason, does not depend upon my body; apart from it I can do all these things. Memory is the worm that dieth not. Oh, if man only could forget! If time only would blot out! But there is no such thing as absolute forgetfulness. Here is a father, proud of his only boy. Looking at his own callused hands, he says: "My boy shall never work as I do. I will give him advantages such as I never possessed, no matter what it costs." The boy goes to school, advances from grade to grade, from school at home to college away from home, then from college to the university, and spends years in the law department. In the meantime, the father’s means are depleted, all the cash is gone. He sells off forty acres to keep that boy in college, then forty more to keep him in the university. The son graduates with honor, hangs out his shingle in the adjoining city, but clients come slowly to a young lawyer, and while they are coming he must live. The last forty acres are sold and, as he sends the money to his boy, the wife says: "Why, father, what will you do when we get old?" "Oh, John will take care of us," he replies. The years roll on, the clients come to the young lawyer and with them wealth and fame. A wife comes to his side, a palatial home is furnished, children enter the home and everything is in style and luxury. The father, now an old man, goes to town to see "his boy," but he is uncouth, out of place amid such surroundings, and soon learns he is not wanted, especially, by the fashionable wife and fashionable daughters. He would like them to play and sing some of the old hymns -- "Jerusalem, My Happy Home," and "Jesus, Lover of My Soul" -- but their tastes run to rag-time music and the waltz and march. His visits to John’s grow few and far between, until, as a result of chilly receptions, he stays at home. Home? Is it home to him? The wife is gone, the acres are gone, nothing left but the house, and it takes more than square walls to make a home. Disease comes and lays the father low. Listen to him: "I want to see John." The family physician knows the whole history; he has been with them many years, and he sits down and writes: "Judge, your father is very ill and wants to see you. His constant cry is, ’I want to see John.’ Come at once." The judge gets the letter, but there is an entertainment that night, some fashionable function of society, and he cannot, must not, miss that. Again a letter goes: "Come! Your father wants to see you. He cries in his delirium, ’I want John.’ " A telegram follows this: "Your father is dying. Come at once." This arouses him; he gets to the train, and while going back to the old home, conscience speaks. He has had very little time for even his conscience in these latter years. "What if you are too late.?" The station is reached, and the judge gets out, walks up the road, so familiar still, looks at the old farm, the acres sold to make a man of him, thinks of the father’s love, and then, "What if I am too late? What if he is dead?" There is the house and everything so quiet. "Why, father is gone. There is crepe on the door." He enters and is greeted by the doctor. "Judge, your father is gone, and to the very last he cried, ’I want to see John.’ Will you go in and look at him?" No; wait until he is in the casket. The funeral day comes. The judge all alone leans over the casket, and looks at the face, the form, now so cold in death, and thinks, thinks of the sacrifices that father made, of the home and lands he gave up, of his own cruel, thoughtless neglect, of the cry through those weary hours, "I want to see John," and in his agony he groans, "Father, father, speak to me just once. I have come, father," but the lips are forever silent, and the judge turns away heart-broken, and with a picture in his memory he would gladly forget. The services are over; he returns to his home; but all the city’s gaiety, all the luxuries of home, all the business of his busy life, can never blot out that picture. His life is miserable, his heart is heavy. Forget? He cannot forget. Listen! If memory of the past can make this life a burden, what of memory throughout eternity? Here one can repent, but there is no repentance in Hell. The lost can remember the Spirit’s pleading, the Gospel sermons, the revival services, a mother’s prayers, the mourner’s bench, and slighted opportunities, and the remembrance will make even Hell itself tenfold more a Hell. Yonder in an insane asylum, lying on a cot, is a dying sailor, an old sea captain. Hear him moaning: "Port your helm, there is a man drowning; port your helm, there is a man drowning." Twenty years before his sailing vessel left Liverpool for New York in a contest with other vessels, the one arriving first in port to receive $5,000.00 in gold. When a few days out, a storm came up, vessels were wrecked, and as the lookout was scanning the waves, he cried: "A sailor drowning!" Instantly the captain cried to the man at the wheel: "Port your helm, there is a man drowning!" As he obeyed and the vessel swung around off her course, there appeared before the captain that bag of gold, and, in response to his greed, he cried: "Steady on your course. But then turning his eyes toward the sea, he saw the drowning man, and again he cried: "Port your helm, there is a man drowning! The helmsman brought her around again; but that cursed lust for gold made its power felt, and he commanded: Steady on your course!" and left the sailor to drown. But ever in his memory was that scene, a man -- a fellow sailor -- left to drown, until reason tottered from its throne, and he ended his days in an insane asylum, crying with his latest breath: "Port your helm, there is a man drowning !" Forget it? Never! Stop repeating it? Never, until death comes to his release. But there is no death in hell. Men seek death there and it flees from them. Memory makes Hell awful. Man carries with him into Eternity, not only his memory, but also his conscience. Conscience is not that faculty which tells you what is right and what is wrong, but it tells you, "Do not do the thing you believe to be wrong," and Conscience has the power to make a life miserable, to rob of all peace. It will not be bribed, nor cajoled, nor persuaded, nor frightened, nor flattered. It is as uncompromising as God. Conscience was once the vicegerent of God, and even now in its ruin has enough of the godlike about it never to be altogether and always silent. It cannot forget its holy lineage and its functions derived from Deity. "A guilty conscience needs no accuser." Some time ago a woman came to my door and rang the bell. I went to the entrance and saw her in tears, and in such awful agony as one rarely sees in these days. She said: "God sent me over here to make a confession. I have had no rest, and no peace; I must tell you," and then she proceeded with her story. In her youth she was brought up in ignorance, as to morals untaught, and left to her own will. She had been of splendid physique, and handsome in appearance. Early in life she was married, but soon tiring of her companion, and he being untrue, she was divorced. Another man appeared upon the scene, and she was betrayed. A child was born out of wedlock. As she told this part of her life, her agony of soul was indescribable. She said: "Oh, I must tell it! God gives me no peace till I confess! I did not want that babe, and I put my fingers around its little neck and I strangled it to death. O God, have mercy on me!" I said: "My sister, do not tell that to another living soul. You have now confessed it, and that is all that God requires. Come out in the sitting-room and wife and I will pray with you." We knelt in prayer, and she also prayed, and such a prayer one seldom hears; such groans, and confessions to God, and pleading! God heard and answered, and she went from our home a saved woman. But listen! Conscience drove her to confession; and confession and prayer, and faith in Jesus’ blood, brought her peace. But confession in Hell is confession too late. If Conscience makes one so miserable in this life, what will it do throughout eternity? In preaching in a certain church some time ago, I made this statement: "If ever you were on the train with a child over six years of age, for whom you should have paid full fare, and you did not pay it, even though the conductor did not ask for it, you robbed the company and you will never get right with God until you make it right." Within ten days a lady came to me and said: "O Mr. Kulp, I want to talk with you. Ten years ago I was on the train riding from Battle Creek to Albion, and had L____ with me. She sat on my lap. She was over six years of age, and the conductor never said anything and I did not pay. Now, what shall I do? I don’t feel right about it." I said: "Go buy a ticket and pay the company." She did so, and was relieved of condemnation. But what made that woman uncomfortable, even though ten years had gone by? Just Conscience alone, and that same Conscience, when the soul is separated from the body, can and will make Hell awful when and where there is no chance to restore, no opportunity to get right. "My son, I am sick today. Go down to the market-place, and open the bookstand for me. Today is Saturday, the best day in all the week for sales." Samuel heard, but did not go. He disobeyed the sick father and incurred the condemnation which always comes to the disobedient. Fifty years afterward down in the old market-place one might have seen a strange sight. An old man, well dressed, hair streaked with gray, one of the best known men in all England, standing uncovered for one long hour in the merciless pelting rain, standing right where the old bookstand used to be. Who was it? Samuel Johnson, author and philosopher, trying to make atonement for the disobedience of fifty years before, trying to quiet the Conscience that lashed him through all these years. The adulation of literary friends, the commendation of critics whose favors others sought after, could not give him rest. Conscience would be heard, much to his discomfort. Hugo gives an excellent representation of the power of Conscience. Jean Valjean stole a few loaves of bread to satisfy the hunger of his sister’s starving children. He was apprehended and sent to jail. In a little while he escaped, only to be re-arrested and sent to the galleys, as a criminal, in having broke jail. From the galleys, after the lapse of a few years, he again escaped, and meeting a godly priest, he was influenced toward a better life, became a good man, prospered in business, owned a number of manufactories, was elected mayor of the city and stood among the first in society. One day he read in the paper that Jean Valjean, the escaped galley convict, had been recaptured, and would again be resentenced, and returned to the old life. Monsieur Madeline (for such was the assumed name of the real Valjean) read the story again and again -- read with bated breath -- as Conscience said: "You must not let an innocent man suffer." He retired for the night, but not to sleep. Would he let another wrongfully suffer for him? But it meant much to give himself up -- to cut loose from wealth and friends and position. Would he do it? Nothing less would satisfy Conscience, and it was clamorous. Toward morning he said, "I will do it," and, Conscience satisfied, he turned over and went to sleep. The week following saw him in the court-room, facing the judges, who obsequiously arose and bowed as he entered. "Gentlemen," said he, "have you here one Jean Valjean?" "Yes, an escaped convict." "You are mistaken." "Oh, no an old pal recognizes him and appears against him." "Let me see him." The witness appears and the real Valjean says: "Did you know Jean Valjean?" "Yes, sir; worked by his side in the galleys." "Had a scar on his arm?" "Yes, sir." "Is that it?" drawing up the sleeve and showing the scar. "Yes, you are Jean Valjean." And the real Valjean took his place in the prisoner’s box. Such is the power of Conscience, sovereign in its imperious demands until satisfied, but in Eternity there is no purging of an evil conscience through the blood of Jesus; no getting right with an accusing conscience. "But I do not believe in Hell, and punishment, and an Eternity of suffering." What you believe never will alter the facts of God’s Word. The time is coming when your conscience will get the best of your creed. Herod did not believe in a future, neither in soul nor spirit. He was a Sadducee. When the daughter of Herodias danced before him and pleased him, he said: "Ask what you will and it shall be given you, even the half of my kingdom," and she asked and received the head of John the Baptist. Some time afterward the courtiers, in Herod’s presence, were talking of One who opened the eyes of the blind, unstopped deaf ears, and even raised the dead. Herod heard them and, as his cheeks paled and his knees smote each other, he said: "It is John whom I beheaded." His conscience got the best of his creed. He professed disbelief in soul or spirit or future, but an aroused, alarmed conscience forces from this stricken, evil king an acknowledgment of a truth that he, in his calmer moments, denied. An enlightened conscience always sides with God. Man takes with him into Eternity his Reason, and Memory, Conscience and Reason make Hell awful. Reason approves of the penalty. "I was warned, I knew the truth, the Spirit was faithful, the Word was preached, but I rejected all that God did to save me, and I am justly condemned." The man without the wedding garment was speechless, because he was guilty and knew it. A garment had been provided, he might have arrayed himself; he despised the provision, and was justly punished, having invited his own doom. Now man can get into harmony with God. Now the blood of Christ can purge an evil conscience. Now "There is a fountain filled with blood, Drawn from Immanuel’s veins; And sinners plunged beneath that flood, Lose all their guilty stains" Eternity implies not only an eternal Heaven, but also an eternal Hell. And listen! fellow-travelers to the bar of God, the darkness of Hell is one eternal night. Years roll upon years, ages upon ages, lost souls, horror-stricken by the blackness of darkness, cry out in their agony, "Will the night never end? Will this darkness last forever?" -- And from the dark caverns of the precincts of the damned comes back the answer, "Forever." No star of hope ever lights up this night, no ray of light ever penetrates the abode of the lost; it is night that day never follows; it is night without a morning; one long, black, eternal night -- "no sun or star to chase away its eternal vapors." "The best Hell the sinner is promised is a world of ruins shrouded in night’s blackest pall, where no one of the damned has a friend, where all ranks and sexes are herded in one promiscuous mob, with foulest demons; where every stinking cave is inhabited with fiends and gnashing, ghosts, and on whose black crags the ravens of despair sit and croak; where God’s eternal Justice plies his burning whip and Remorse lays on with his fiery thongs, the flashes of whip and thongs their only light, world without end! Where will you spend ETERNITY? ======================================================================== CHAPTER 88: S. GATHER NOT MY SOUL WITH SINNERS ======================================================================== Gather Not My Soul with Sinners by George Kulp "Gather not my soul with sinners." (Psalms 26:9.) When one preaches, and the stenographer is taking down every word that is uttered, one ought to be very careful what one says; and when we remember that God hears, God takes note, God makes record of every word that we utter, we ought to be careful, for we will have to meet it at the Judgment Seat of Christ. We ought to be very careful what we think; we ought to be very careful how we hear; we ought to remember that Jesus once said to the messengers that He sent out, "He that heareth you, heareth me; and he that rejecteth you, rejecteth me; and he that rejecteth me, rejecteth him that sent me." I want to bring you a message from God, from His own Word. The infidel denies the Christian revelation; the agnostic stands with the future before him, and says, "We do not know"; but the man who believes the Word of God -- and every man and woman ought to pay attention to it -- learns this lesson, gets this great truth, that out in the beyond there is an eternal future. We look backward, and there is duration that never began; we look forward, and there is duration that never will end. In that future there are rewards. The Word of God teaches it. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus, when He had taken His place in front of that multitude, opened His mouth, and taught them, saying -- listen to it! "He that heareth my words, and doeth them, I will liken him to a man who built his house upon the rock; and the winds blew, and the floods came, and the rains descended and beat upon that house: and it fell not; for it was founded upon a rock. But he that heareth my sayings, and doeth them not, I will liken him to a man which built his house upon the sand: the floods came, the winds blew, the rains descended and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it." ETERNAL DESTINY FIXED BY PRESENT ACTIONS Your future throughout eternity will be the logical consequence of your actions here. Jesus Christ teaches us in this Word: "Behold, I come quickly, and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be." The beggar died and was carried by the angels to a place of rest; the rich man died and in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torment. There is a hereafter. There is a future, and every man in that future will reap just exactly as he sows. Listen to the Apostle: "For me to live is Christ; to die is gain." "Having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better." This Book says Abraham, Aaron, Moses, were gathered unto their fathers. Not where they were buried; back yonder beyond the Euphrates lay their ancestors. It meant something more than that -- gathered where they were over yonder! Job says, "The rich man shall die, but not be gathered." Listen to my text: "Gather not my soul with sinners." What does that imply? That over yonder sinners will be gathered together. They will be associated together. They will go to one place. Judas killed himself, and went to his own place -- the place that he had fitted himself for. Men get what is coming to them. God is eternally just, and what you sow in this life, just as sure as that old Bible is true, you will reap hereafter. HELL, THE SLUM OF THE UNIVERSE "Separate me from the sinners; gather me not with the sinners." What does that imply? Listen to it! HELL! Hell is the slum of the universe. I have been down at George Street Mission before the saints down there prayed away and out so many of the saloons, when it was as evil as the gutters of Hell. The "Red Light" district is everything that is vile, everything that is foul, everything that is unclean. Hell is the slum of the universe; devils, angels that kept not their first estate, which were cast down from the presence of God, to be reserved in chains of darkness unto the judgment of the great day -- angels fallen, demons, dark spirits, the damned of all ages, all the unclean, all the foul, all the filthy, all the sorcerers, all the whoremongers, all the adulterers, all the liars, all the incestuous -- everything that God hates gathered out of the universe of God, cornered up in Hell, with a door that never opens outward, with God Almighty writing "ETERNITY" across the bar -- shut in there forever. And as I hear their groans, as I hear the cries of the lost, as I hear the shouts of devils, as I hear the damned weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth, as I hear the cries of remorse, and despair, and anguish, and know it is eternal, I join with the Psalmist and pray, "O Lord, gather not my soul with sinners." Listen, men and women! There are only two places; there is an eternal Heaven, and there is an eternal Hell, and every soul in the sound of my voice tonight, every person here is headed toward an eternal Heaven or an eternal Hell, and if tonight your heart should stop beating, if tonight you should cease to breathe, you would go to the place you are fitted for. Not that God did not love you; not that Christ did not die for you; not that the Holy Ghost did not strive with you; not that saints did not pray for you; not that you never heard the truth of God: but, because "ye could not" -- because "ye would not." Going toward eternity seventy heart beats a minute -- going to an eternal Heaven or an eternal Hell. "Gather not my soul with sinners." UNDER THE CURSE OF GOD Now, again. Hell is not only the slum of the universe, but those that are there live under the curse of Almighty God. I want you to get it. "God is angry with the wicked every day." A penitent sinner can make the heavens bend -- and God will incline His ear. God stepped all the way from the council chambers of the Eternal, down to where at Bethlehem’s plains He robed Himself in mortal flesh in order to save man. God smiles upon us here. The sun shines and the rain falls on the just and on the unjust. The winds blow, the sun shines, the grain waves for them, the cheek of the fruit is colored by the sun and wind for their benefit. They have Calvary, they have Olivet, they have the Mediatorial Throne, they have the pleading Holy Spirit, they have the minister, they have the Word of God. Some of them have a mother’s prayers. But listen! In eternity God never smiles on the sinner -- God never, never) never smiles on the sinner! The wrath of God rests upon the lost forever and ever and ever, and every unsaved man and woman here tonight, every praying mother’s son who is unsaved, every girl who is going into eternity over a mother’s prayers, over a father’s prayers, over the blood of Jesus Christ, over the strivings of the Holy Ghost -- say, beloved, listen! In Hell you will lift up your eyes, being in torment, with the wrath of God upon you, and to last throughout all eternity. And as I think of it, and as I pray over it, and as I weep over it, I say, "O God, gather not my soul with sinners." Another thought. To aggravate all the terrors and all the horrors of Hell, falling upon one’s ear is only one sound, that of blasphemy, swearing The lost curse each other; they curse God; they curse Jesus; they curse the Holy Ghost; they curse themselves; they curse their lost opportunities; they bite their lips; they chew their tongues; they gnash their teeth; they walk on the red-hot pavements of an eternal hell, and they cry, I’m lost, I’m lost) I’m LOST!! The only music they ever hear is the groans of the damned. The only water they ever drink is the tears of the lost. The only prayers they ever offer are never, never, never answered. O God, "gather not my soul with sinners!" Who are the damned? The people who did what you are doing, sinner; rejecting Jesus Christ, grieving the Holy Ghost, going into eternity with your feet speckled, spotted, red with the atoning blood of Jesus Christ, that you despised and trampled upon. And then, memory aggravates all the horrors of the damned. Men will remember, "I might have been saved; Christ died for me, the Spirit of God pled with me, mother prayed for me, men of God preached to me, friends exhorted me to give my heart to God; but I would not, I would not!" Say, listen, sinner! How will you ever stand it? THE UNCEASING GROANS OF HELL Up in the hospital in our city there is a long corridor, and on each side of the corridor are rooms; in each one of these rooms a patient, some undergoing operations, some of them facing death. Here at one room is a glass partition. On the other side of the partition there lies a woman. She is going to die. The doctors say they cannot help her. Oh, how she groans with pain, with the suffering, with the heartaches. On this side of the partitions there are other patients. They say, "Please shut that door. I cannot stand that woman’ s groans. Oh, for God’s sake, please shut that door." That woman died during the night. One of the patients said, "I don’t hear her groan. Where is she?" Oh, her groans are silenced at last! She died last night. But when you have been ten million years in Hell, and the groans of the lost and the damned have fallen upon your ears, they will never cease, and you never, never never can get used to it. There will never come a time when they can say to you, "Those groans are silenced," for in Hell they never die. May God wake us up. We are facing eternity, facing an eternal Heaven or an eternal Hell. Jesus appealed to men’s memories. Listen to what He says at the Judgment Seat: "I was sick, and ye visited me not; I was in prison, and ye came not unto me; I was hungry, and ye gave me no meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink." Listen! In eternity, when you stand at the Judgment Seat of Christ, God will appeal to your memory. The books of remembrance will be opened, and God will say, "I sent you a man of God. He gave you a Gospel sermon, and you rejected. I gave My Son to die for you, and you crucified Him afresh. I sent the Holy Ghost, and you said, ’Go Thy way; when I want You, I will call for You.’ " Oh, the horrors! the horrors that will aggravate a lost soul when it remembers how it trampled the blood of Jesus Christ under foot, and rejected Blood-bought opportunities! "Son, remember, thou in thy lifetime hadst thy good things." You had campmeetings, you had Bibles, you had conviction, you had example, you had Blood-bought, Providential opportunities, and "you would not." Oh, the horrors of the damned! Oh, the agonies of the lost! "I am damned, I am lost, and it is my fault." O God, I pray, gather not the souls of this congregation with the souls of sinners! I do not wonder the Psalmist prayed that way. "Gather not my soul with sinners." THEY NEVER SLEEP IN HELL Again, here you can drown your memory with drink. There are no saloons in Hell. You can get drunk here. You can drink over bars legalized by the help of church members who voted for license for fear their taxes would be raised. But listen! You cannot get drunk in Hell! You can have so much business here, and so devote yourself to business you will forget other things, you will forget important things. They don’t do any business in Hell. Here is the place to do business. God says, "Occupy till I come." The root meaning of that word, "occupy" is, "do business." Do business; do it for God; do it for eternity; do it for your own soul. But in Hell they do not do any business. All they do is to weep and wail, and gnash their teeth, and bite their lips, and shed tears, and regret the past, and roll and revel in remorse and despair. But they never do business in Hell. You can sin all day, you can violate the laws of God, you can take the name of God in vain, you can chew tobacco, you can drink whisky, and then you can lie down at night and sleep, and forget it all; but, beloved, they never sleep in Hell. It is dark -- it is dark all the time, it is worse than Egyptian darkness, it is darkness that the soul feels; but no matter how dark it is, they cannot sleep. The liquid waves of eternal fire dash against the walls that confine the damned, and keep on roaring throughout eternity. The wicked, the lost, never, never, never sleep in Hell. Look at this fellow sitting down here. He is thinking. Oh, he is thinking! He says, "My thoughts will drive me to distraction. I am so distracted by my thoughts I cannot do business. My wife knows there is something the matter with me. The children know there is something the matter with ’Daddy.’ My thoughts will drive me to distraction." One day he goes down to the hardware store and buys an automatic revolver. He goes home, goes into his room, pulls out his revolver (I am giving you an actual fact), he goes into his room where his wife is sleeping, shoots her through the forehead, and then he puts the revolver to his own brain -- in order to keep from thinking. He falls dead, his soul goes out into eternity -- and he is thinking yet. "Gather not my soul with sinners!" All eternity in which to think! Reaping what they sowed. ETERNAL DOOM Now, another thought: The sinner in Hell knows his doom is eternal, fixed. I visited the State Penitentiary at Trenton, N. J. I went there with a friend of mine who at one time was employed in the Institution. We walked along the corridor and came to where a door was shut, but there was a small opening. He said to me, "George, look in here," and he tapped and a man inside opened a little door not much larger than my hand. I looked in, and saw a man there about forty-five or fifty years of age. After I came away, Mr.. said to me, "George, he is in there for life. In a moment of passion he took a knife and killed a boy who tantalized and angered him." But listen! In there the man has some hope. The Governor may relent, friends may intercede, they may say, "He has been there long enough." But, listen! In Hell the sinner knows his doom is eternally fixed, never can be changed, never any hope -- never, never, NEVER can hope that he will die and the thing end. A woman lay dying with a cancer. She said, "Oh! Oh! Oh! Let me die! Oh! Oh! Husband, kill me! kill me! kill me! I cannot stand it!" That husband went to a doctor. He said, "Doctor, I want to ask you a question. In God’s name, is there any hope for her?" "No, sir; she is going to die." "Doctor, in God’s name, go over there and give her something that will shorten her sufferings, give her something that will help her out of the body." He went over there. He injected something into her arm. He said, "In two or three hours she will be over all her sufferings." And in two hours all was over. But when amid waves of liquid fire that roar and dash themselves against the precincts that confine the damned, there will never, never, never come a time when anyone can come that way and cause your sufferings to cease. You will groan, you will cry, you will pray, you will agonize, you will suffer, you will be remorseful, you will be filled with despair, regret; but there will never, never, never come a time when it will cease, until God Almighty Himself dies -and He will never die. "Gather" -- O God! -- "GATHER NOT MY SOUL WITH SINNERS!" WHICH WAY ARE YOU HEADED? Which way are you headed tonight? Seventy heart beats a minute, going toward an eternal Hell or an eternal Heaven. A few more heart beats, you will go across the line. A few more heart beats, and probation will end. A few more heart beats, mercy will be dethroned. A few more heart beats, no more sermons. A few more heart beats, no mourners’ benches. A few more heart beats, no altar calls. A few more heart beats, God Almighty Himself will shut the door and you will be shut out for ever and ever and ever. O God, help this dying congregation tonight, facing eternity! When the Titanic went down there were sixteen hundred people on board, and the lifeboats could not take them. The stern began to sink lower and lower, and lower in the water. The people ran up toward the bow and got up to the farther end. Still she went down, lower, and lower, and lower, and the lifeboats pulled away for fear of the suction. Those who were near said that when that vessel took the last surge and went down, from sixteen hundred souls went up one awful wail of despair, and they said, "I never want to hear the like of that again." They only heard it for five minutes -- they only heard it, perhaps, for three minutes; but in Hell they hear the like through all eternity -- the cry that is going up from the lost, the cry of anguish and despair that is going up from the lost, and going up forever and forever. Now, again. We say no change, no respite in Hell, no let up -- a living death. Now wait a moment. After you have had everything that the world offers -- if the devil himself could give you the kingdoms of this world, and you had them all, if you had them all, if you had bought all its pleasures, gratified every passion, if you had satiated every appetite, and then should go down and make your bed with the devils damned in Hell, I want to ask you a question, What shall it profit? God in His mercy sent some angels, and said, "Go down to Sodom and get Lot out of there." And they went down, and Lot was too slow for them. An angel took hold of one arm, and another angel of the other arm, and said, "Haste thee, get out for your life. I cannot do anything while you are here." Why couldn’t he? Because off there Abraham was praying. "Get out of here; escape for thy life!" And then the fire descended. The wrath of God is hovering over a world that crucified His Son. God in His mercy sends the Holy Ghost, and He sends the Word of God, and the Word on one side, and the Holy Ghost on the other, are saying, "ESCAPE FOR THY LIFE!" ======================================================================== CHAPTER 89: S. GOD'S PLAN ======================================================================== God’s Plan "In due time." Romans 5:6 A few months ago I was engaged for a camp-meeting on the Pacific coast, and began to inquire concerning routes, fares and time. I secured a Railroad Guide and examined it carefully. I saw that trains were scheduled to leave at a certain hour, arrive at a certain hour, and the whole plan had been very thoroughly thought out, and all that human wisdom could devise had been done to make the time-table perfect and to secure the comfort and rapid transit of the traveler. But down at the foot of one page I read these words: "We do not guarantee the arrival or departure of trains at times stated." In other words: "When we have done all that human wisdom and skill can do to perfect a plan, we do not dare to guarantee it. Our plans may fail." But I bring before you this morning a plan that never fails -- never has, and never will. You may comply with all the conditions that man may ask, and yet have no real assurance that you will go through; comply with the conditions in "God’s Plan" and you will never, never fail. God has a universal plan, and from its very inception that plan has been working -- no failures, no defeats, but a steady moving forward towards the final victory. God’s law is written everywhere, and that law is manifestation of His will. Law everywhere is of God, whether it is. written in the spiritual or in the material world, in the law as given in the Word, or written upon the fleshly tablets of the heart, or written in Nature. Men -- hypercritically -- may talk of the lack of agreement between science and the Bible, but they are only publishing their own ignorance, they fail to read them aright. Law, being of God, never contradicts itself, nor its Author. The laws of Nature are as surely of God as the laws in the spiritual world; the laws written in the rocks are as much of God as the laws in the Decalogue. There are no contradictions in God, and none in His truth, no matter where that truth may be revealed. Get the truth and you get harmony everywhere. A miracle is not a contradiction of some law of Nature; it is only contrary to Nature as you know it. The scientist who, twenty-six hundred years ago, from the summit of the pyramids of old Egypt, gathered truth from the starry heavens as he scanned the sky, found truths that are true today. The Chaldean who, from the towers of great Babylon, groped after the truth and placed on record the result of his observations, is corroborated today by the scientist who reads the heavens aright. What is true once is eternally true in every kingdom established of God. Law is God’s thought, and if finite man fails to comprehend it, it does not argue contradiction anywhere, but only man’s littleness. "My ways are not as your ways, nor My thoughts as your thoughts, for as the heavens are high above the earth, so are My ways above your ways, and My thoughts above your thoughts, saith the Lord God." "There are no accidents" with God. His plans never fail. Clouds and darkness are round about him, and we may fail, and we do fail to read the manipulations of God aright, yea, men fail to read His revealed Word aright; but His plans never fail -- never have in the past, do not now, and never will in the future. God had a plan for this old world. It is very small comparatively when we consider the worlds that roll through space, and we know not whether any other world is inhabited, much less do we know that it ever sinned; but this we do know, sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men for that all have sinned." According to the Word, when man was created he was a perfect man, in perfect harmony with God, dwelling in a world in which everything was perfect. All Nature praised God. . Man and all that God made were in perfect harmony with Him. The leader of a mighty orchestra, standing before the musicians, was urging them by gesture and baton to perfect time and harmony. One member of the band, thinking his small instrument would not be missed, ceased to play, when instantly the leader motioned for silence. His trained, sensitive ear, detected the absence of that small instrument, without which there could be no harmony. So when God created man, the universe went rolling God’s way; the music of the spheres was one constant song of praise. Everything that had breath praised the Lord, and the first man, looking heavenward, could well say: "The stars go singing as they shine, ’The hand that made us is Divine.’" But there came one awful hour when the eternal God missed one note of praise, the harmony was broken, discord entered, for man had sinned. Did God know man would sin.? Yes, God knows all things, "His eyes behold, His eyelids try the children of men," but at the very threshold of his fall, God meets him with a plan -- a plan that had been arranged and provided in the eternal counsels of the Godhead. Before the morning stars sang together, or ever the sons of God shouted for joy; aye, before an angel’s wing had ever fanned the viewless ether, the Fellow of Jehovah, the Son of God, declared: "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God; a body hast thou prepared Me." The Word declares: "Abraham saw the day of Jesus Christ and was glad," but He who could say, "Before Abraham was I am," saw down through the gloom, through the gray dawn of the world’ s morning, saw God’s plan for the redemption of the race, saw the manger, Gethsemane, Pilate’s judgment hall, and Calvary, and steadfastly, from the beginning, set His face toward the final victory. Aye, God not only had a plan, but He announces the plan. We make our plans and are so fearful, have so little confidence in them, that we fear to speak of them, or, if we do, we speak of them with bated breath. We devote hours and days to perfecting our plans, and then we refuse to guarantee them, refuse to say they will surely work, but God’s plan works, and He announces the plan. While man was weeping, sorrowing, hiding himself from the face of his Maker, conscious of his sin; while Hell was holding jubilee over a race ruined, God came to Eden and announced: "The Seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head." In that promise there was the assurance of final victory. Here one can stand and see the overthrow of the devil’s kingdom. The Seed of the woman shall see the travail of His soul and he satisfied. Already in that promise "the kingdoms of the earth are the kingdoms of our Lord and His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever." But some one says: "When man sinned so that he grieved God until He repented Him that He made man, was not the plan defeated? Did the plan work when the antediluvian world was drowned and the ungodly were destroyed by a flood?" Aye, to be sure it did. You cannot defeat God. On the bosom of the waters I see an ark floating; in that ark, built by the command of an all-wise Being, there are eight persons, among them the progenitor of the Seed of the woman. God keeps watch and ward above His own, and that ark, a type of the coming Christ, is a sign to three worlds, Heaven, Earth and Hell, that the plan is working. But there is Israel in the wilderness. God brought them out of Egypt with a high hand and an outstretched arm. They are rebellious and ungrateful. In His wrath God swears they shall not enter into His rest. For many years their course of wanderings is marked by the graves of those who have fallen by the way because of their disobedience. Does the plan work now? To be sure! In that ark carried through all their devious ways; in that tabernacle sheltering that altar, upon which lies the slain lamb, and down the sides of which flows the dripping blood; in that priest standing before the altar, I see the plan working, and I know the time of redemption draweth nigh. "But look again, Mr. Preacher; you are too optimistic. Look at Israel in Canaan; they have forgotten God; they have erected groves on every hill; they have idols innumerable. The temple is neglected, the fires on the altar have gone out, no incense rises, no censers are swung, no songs of praise arise; how about the plan now?" Bless God, it is working. Faith in the promise of God makes an optimist of every believer, and enables him to pierce the gloom and get the vision. From amidst idolatrous kings, idolatrous rites and idolatrous priests I see the old evangelical prophet coming forth and standing on some mountain peak of prophecy; he looks down through the gloom of centuries and sees one like unto the Son of God moving on with a conquering stride, treading His enemies beneath His feet, and, hailing Him, as his heart beats high with hope, he cries: "Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah, this that is glorious in His apparel, traveling in the greatness of His strength?" Listen, if you doubt God’s plan; listen, if you have had your eyes fixed on man s failures; listen, and never doubt again. Hear the Seed of the woman as He answers: "I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save." "Wherefore art thou red in Thy apparel, and Thy garments like him that treadeth the wine fat?" "I have trodden the wine press alone, and of the people there was none with Me, for I will tread them in My anger, and trample them in My fury, and their blood shall be sprinkled upon My garments, and I will stain my raiment. For the day of vengeance is in My heart, and the year of my redeemed has come." Yes, bless God, the plan is working. When there were four hundred years in which there was no message from the throne, no vision from the King, no prophet with a burden, faith still held on to the last word given: "I will send my messenger before His face, and unto them that look for Him shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in His wings." Thank God, some few people held on to the promise and were looking for Him. Down in Jerusalem was a peculiar old man. Every morning I see him going along the street that leads to the temple. His gray flocks float in the wind as he hurries along to see if his Lord has come. Men say, "Simeon. you have one foot in the grave; the end is near," but he knows better, for it has been revealed to him that he shall not die until he has seen "the Lord’s Christ." I see him going into the temple. How he peers into the faces of the babes held in loving arms; how he watches day by day! But one day, led by the Spirit, he goes to the temple and finds the long-looked-for babe, and taking Him in his arms he says, "Now, Lord, lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation." "And there was one Anna, a prophetess, who sewed God day and night, with fastings and prayers; she gave thanks likewise unto the Lord, and spake of Him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem." In the far off East were three wise men who had read the prophecies of the coming Messiah, and, seeing His star in the sky, they followed, until they reached the land of the Book, when, inquiring, "Where is He that is born King of the Jews." they were directed to Bethlehem of Judea, the star going before them, leading into the presence of Him for whom they had been seeking. In due time Christ came -- came to die! In Gethsemane He bows beneath the weight of the world’s sin; He drinks the bitter cup to the dregs. He bears His own cross up the rugged sides of Calvary, is nailed thereon by cruel hands, hangs between Heaven and earth for six mortal hours, then, crying, "It is finished," He bows His head and dies. But it is part of the plan. No defeat here; he only stoops to conquer. As Samson came forth from Gaza carrying the gates upon his shoulders, when his enemies thought surely they had him in their power, so from the sepulchre where they laid Him, while Hell’s denizens held high jubilee over the Second Adam’s defeat, our Christ came forth leading captivity captive, for in the plan that God had made it had been inwrought, "He shall not be holden of death; His body shall not see corruption." "The gates of steel and the bars of brass, Gave way that the King of kings might pass." Wondering disciples stand on the sides of Mt. Olivet as their Lord ascends, and stay gazing after the heavens have received Him out of their sight, and then return with great joy unto Jerusalem. Are they ready now to go and preach to tell the world the glad story, how He conquered death and rose again? Nay; but to wait -- according to the plan -- to wait for the promise of the Father, and in consonance with the plan, while they are waiting -- with one accord, in one place -- "suddenly there came a sound from Heaven, as of a rushing, mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance; and when the people were all amazed and were in doubt saying What meaneth this?" Peter stands up and tells them THIS IS PART OF THE PLAN -- "this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel . I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and shall dream dreams, and on My handmaidens and on My servants will I pour out My Spirit, and it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved." Brother, sister, God has a plan for every life -- for yours, for mine, not one left out. There are no accidents with God. "ALL things work together for good to them that love God." Trials are a part of your life as God planned it; trials which try your faith are more precious than gold that perisheth -- not the faith is more precious, but the trials of your faith. Bedford jail was a part of God’s plan for John Bunyan for twelve long years, but out of that trial of his faith came "Pilgrim’s Progress" to bless the world; honey out of the lion to nourish travelers along life’s pathway. The jail of Aberdeen was a part of God’s plan for the sainted Rutherford, and His presence made the stones in that prison cell to shine like jasper until this prisoner for Jesus’ sake could date his letters from "Christ’s Palace in Aberdeen." That thorn in the flesh from which Paul asked deliverance was the means of his hearing that promise, "My grace is sufficient for thee," and realizing this in after years, he could write, "For God is able to make all grace abound toward you) that ye always having all sufficiency in all things may abound unto every good work." A gentleman was taken one day to see what grace could do under trials of affliction. He entered a room in which was a cot, and upon it lay a bed-ridden saint of God -- so crippled and deformed by rheumatism that she could only move one hand, by which she could pass victuals and drink to her mouth. The visitor was quite a singer, and as he stood by the bedside the patient asked him to sing. "Sing? What would you like me to sing?" "Sing ’There is sunshine in my soul today.’ " Sunshine in the midst of trials, and both a part of God’s plan. Is your life clouded by temptations; does the enemy come in like a flood? Brother, it is a part of the plan. He will open a way to escape, and He will not suffer you to be tempted above that which you are able. You may be tempted amid wilderness surroundings, but if true to God, the angels shall come and minister unto you, and, in the power of the Spirit, you shall go forth to reap for the Master. If afflictions come, take them as a part of the plan, for all things work together for good to them that trust Him. When you mind God and face everything that comes, saying, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him," you are on the way to doubling your riches, as did Job of old. The reason so many people are poor is because they do not accept of His plan for their lives. Living as in His presence, accepting cheerfully of His coming, this, too, is a part of the plan. Remember, the lowest state of Christian experience that will please God, satisfy yourself, keep you out of Hell and take you to Heaven, is a constant readiness for the instant coming of Jesus. Listen, "Be ye also ready, for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh." He is almost due. The times are ripe for His coming. The world needs Him, the elect are looking for Him, the prayer of the Church of God is "Thy kingdom come," and "He that shall come, will come, and will not tarry." Are you now ready for His coming? Nothing more to do? Living in His will? Adorned for the coming of the Lord? Can you say, "wen so, Lord Jesus) come quickly"? Amen and amen! ======================================================================== CHAPTER 90: S. HAVING NO HOPE ======================================================================== Having No Hope by George Kulp "Having no hope" (Ephesians 2:12). There only two classes of people in this audience -- the righteous and the wicked; the saved and the unsaved; the converted and the unconverted. We find the two classes in the church. You will find them in our campmeetings. You will find them in our Conventions. To which class do you belong? The converted, or the unconverted? The saved, or the unsaved? The righteous, or the wicked? You belong to one or the other. Do you remember when you were converted? Do you know where you were converted? Are you living the life of a righteous man? Are you living the life of a saved woman? I am not talking to you about your membership in the church; I am not talking about the years gone by, when you put your name upon a church record. Are you saved tonight? Have you a family altar in your home? Have you a place of secret prayer? Are you in the habit of feeding your soul on the Word of God? It is a very easy matter to get located here. The Holy Spirit is absolutely faithful. God is true. The Word of God is the sword of the Spirit. Where do you belong tonight? If before I get through preaching, if before the midnight hour should strike, you were to be called into eternity with your present experience, where would you land? What would be your eternal destiny? Listen! For the saved, for the righteous, for the new creature in Christ Jesus -- an eternal Heaven; for the unsaved, in the church and out -- an eternal Hell. Listen to this! My Bible declares positively that the state of the wicked is one of appalling horror. No hope! "Having no hope," and I think just now somebody is saying, "Ah, preacher, that does not mean me; I hope to go to heaven." I want to ask you, "Are you saved." If you are unsaved you have no hope. Any man who is not in Christ Jesus, and Christ Jesus in him, has no hope. I know what you mean, you mean you have a desire. There is a vast difference between a desire and a hope, and I believe that old Bible; I believe it from Genesis to Revelation; I believe every line that there is in it. I believe the Scriptures are profitable for instruction of the saved, and the unsaved, and that Bible declares most emphatically in my text, that the sinner has no hope. What hope has an unrepentant man? Can you tell me? What have you that is lasting? What have you that is permanent? What have you that is inspiring? Nothing, nothing whatever. Have you wealth? You cannot take it with you. Have you acres? You cannot take them with you. Have you reputation? You cannot take it with you. The only thing that a man can take with him into eternity is his character -- just what God and your wife know you to be. Beloved, the unsaved man, the unsaved woman in this congregation, has no hope in this life. Decay is written on everything. The pulse is beating funeral marches to the grave; the heart, seventy heartbeats a minute toward eternity -- without any hope, without any Christ, without any salvation, going forward to eternal damnation -- not because Christ did not die, not because it is not true that by the grace of God Jesus Christ tasted death for every man, but because every unsaved man, every unsaved woman in this congregation is going forward to eternity, tramp! tramp! tramp! over the crucified body of the Son of God, over a mother’s prayers, over the pleadings of the Holy Ghost, over the prayers of Jesus Christ -- going forward to a devil’s hell, not because salvation has not been provided, but because ye would not." And the man who resists and grieves the Holy Ghost, the man who crucifies the Son of God afresh, the man who rejects the truth of God, the man who sits in the pew and steels and hardens his heart against the Word of God and holds it aloof from him, and says, "I will not," that man lives without hope, is without hope in this life, and -- listen to this! -- is without hope in the life to come. An eternal existence, and nothing to sweeten it! The life in the world, now a thing of the past -- the soul in eternity to live forever! Exist forever! Think forever! Remember forever! And nothing in all that eternal existence to sweeten one moment of that eternity. "Son, remember!" Remember what? Back there you had the Word of God. Back there you had the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament. Back there you had gracious providences. Back there you had the Spirit of God striving with you. Remember! Here is a young man who came to Jesus, but now he is lost, and in hell he lifted up his eyes, and he begins to think of his past. Nothing in all that past to sweeten that existence. "I went to Jesus; I believed Him to be the Son of God; I believed He could answer the query of my soul, satisfy my hunger -- I went to Him and said, ’Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" And He made known to me the conditions. He said, ’Go, and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and come, follow me, and thou shalt have treasures in heaven.’ Yes, I remember, but I said, ’No.’ I looked at my possessions, the things of this life, my position. and I said. ’No,’ and I damned my own soul." Here is another soul in eternity; once had houses; once had farms; once had barns . once had acres; once was rich; the earth was bringing forth plentifully. Listen to him in eternity: "I look back there, and I said to my soul: ’Soul, take thine ease; thou hast much goods laid up for many years; eat, drink, and be merry.’ God said, ’Thou fool, this night shall thy soul be required of thee.’ The goods are back there in a barn, but my soul is poverty stricken. I am lost, and I am lost forever. I was a fool in time, and I will be a fool for all eternity." Oh, the awful thought -- without hope in this life, and without hope in eternity! To go from a campmeeting like this, to go from a home where you had a mother’s prayers, where you had a father’s prayers, where you had a family altar. Somebody preaching on this platform since this campmeeting began, said they had a good, old-fashioned Methodist home. That is the kind I had. I never knew a time in my father’s house when they did not pray; I never knew a time they did not have a family altar. There never was a time that this boy could not go home and go to the foot of the stairs and hear somebody upstairs praying. Thank God for my father’s prayers! Thank God for my father’s life! The preacher in whose meetings I went to the altar thought it was his sermon that moved me; he thought I was one of his converts. No, sir; the thing that won me for God was my father’s prayers. God answered my father’s prayers. But think of it! a young man can live in a home where there is a praying father, where there is a praying mother, can listen to the truth of God, can pass that truth by, can be convicted by the Spirit and resist those convictions, can come to a meeting like this and get Gospel truth, backed by the Holy Ghost, and still resist, then lie down and die and wake up in eternity lost forever, no hope here, no hope in the dying hour; and you wake up in eternity, and look back and think, "Father prayed for me. Mother prayed for me. I was surrounded by Gospel influences. I knew the old Bible was true -- father and mother lived it. Christ died for me. I was under conviction again and again. The Spirit of God pled with me. But I am lost." No hope in this life, and no hope in the future. Nothing in the past, nothing in the present, nothing in the future. What is it? Everlasting torment. See that man die. He has no hope. He is coming down to a deathbed. Come, let us go, let us stand alongside of him. If you would stand alongside of as many deathbeds as this preacher has stood by, you would believe when you saw the dying sinner and heard him pray, that there was a need of salvation now. Wait a moment! You say, "Oh, yes; I had some friends who died unsaved, and they never said a word. They died quietly; they manifested no fear." Do you know the reason why? Because the doctor drugged them before they died. If the doctors did not drug the dying sinner, you could not stay in their room. They would scream, they would yell, they would beg, they would pray. A man one time -- he and I were friends together, had been soldiers, knew each other well -- told me about his wife dying. He said, "’George, Lou died so beautifully. She never said a word, had no fear whatever." She died a sinner, she died drugged and without hope. No hope in this life, no hope in eternity! I do not wonder that preacher this morning got down over this altar, got down on his knees, and said, "I am not clear, and I want to be satisfied." It is an awful thing to live unsatisfied. Ah! you may be in the church, you may be baptized, you may have partaken of the sacrament, you may have your name on the church record, you may die and some preacher stand up and tell what an exemplary church member you have been, but unless you have been born of the Spirit, unless you have an increasing experience -- the path of the just shineth brighter and brighter -- unless you have more salvation tonight than you have had in all your life, to die in your condition would be to go to hell. There is no hope for the unrepentant sinner, Oh, the old Bible says so; I am sticking to the Book. "Having no hope, and without God." A Christless life; a Christless deathbed; a Christless shroud; a Christless casket; Christless at the bar of God; Christless throughout eternity. "Having no hope." Went by the family altar. Went by the old Bible. Went by a mother’s prayers. Went by Sinai, as it rolled and thundered, and pealed, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." Went by Calvary, with its cross reeking, dripping with Divine blood. Went by it -- what for? To go to hell because you loved sin better than you loved God. Say, beloved, just as sure as God is on the throne, just as sure as that old Book is true, every unsaved man, every unrepentant man in this congregation tonight is without hope. You have got to be separated from sin, you have got to give up sin. You live in the church, you have your name on the church record, going along just as hopeless as the unrepentant sinner outside; for there is no difference between an unrepentant sinner in the church and one outside. Listen to this. I was riding in the cars; I think it was up at Ashland, and I read a notice of an insurance company. It went like this: "If people today could read the death notices in the paper week after next, they would take out life insurance." Oh, if some men and women in this congregation could read the death notices three months hence -- six months hence -- you would run to this altar. Listen! Death is on your track. The seeds of death are already sown in your frame. You are staggering toward eternity under a weight of sin that would sink you throughout eternal ages, ever down and down and down, the darkness growing darker and darker throughout eternity. Because provision was not made? No! No! No! Christ "by the grace of God tasted death for every man." Every sinner is invited. "Whosoever will, let him come." "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." You say, "Yes, Preacher, I know that." Yes, you know it, and you are trampling it under your feet, trampling on the promise of God that you might be partaker of the Divine nature, and you are going forward to a devil’s hell -- not because you may not be saved, but because you will not yield yourself unto God. The sin of the men and women in this congregation is not your drunkenness; it is not your thieving; it is not your lying; it is not murdering your unborn children, or running around with neck and shoulders bare, exciting the lust of men in street cars; but listen to this: Your sin is rejection of Jesus Christ; it is unbelief. "The Spirit, when He is come, shall convince the world of sin, because they believe not on me." If you believed God’s Word you would be at this altar. "Having no hope." The unrepentant sinner has no hope. Now, again. You are condemned already -- you who are out of Christ. You say, "Oh, no; we are not condemned until we get to the judgment." That is a lie of the devil. I believe the Bible. Listen to this: "If our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts, and knoweth all things." You are condemned already. The only thing that keeps you out of hell is the mercy of God. "Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil." That is God’s Word. Young man, you were here at this campmeeting last year. God has spared you. You are harder tonight than you were last year -- farther away from God. You have been heaping up darkness and tribulation, and anguish against the day of wrath. Are you ready to accept of the conditions? Listen! "Without hope." Knell of eternal despair! I drove one day by a funeral into a graveyard. Just as soon as the hearse entered the yard, the sexton saw them coming, and he began to ring a bell. Oh, so dolefully did it ring out! It meant another person passed out of time into eternity. I have this thought. The deep, dark, doleful bells of damnation are ringing all the time. Hell is as jubilant as hell can be every time a sinner goes by Calvary. Every time a sinner, with feet speckled red with the atoning blood of Jesus Christ, enters the confines of the damned, again the bells ring out, deep, doleful, dark, and the ravens of despair perched all over the rugged peaks of an eternal hell, cry out, "No hope! No hope!" Without hope back there upon earth, without hope on a deathbed, without hope in hell, and without hope forever. Write it on the sinner’s coffin -- "No hope!" Write it on his grave -- "No hope!" Write it on his tombstone -- "No hope!" Write it on the clouds of God Almighty’s justice -- "No hope!" Write it on the judgment bar of God -- "No hope!" Then listen to the chorus of the voices ringing throughout the caverns of eternal damnation -- it is one thing over and over again -- "No hope! No hope! No hope! No hope! No hope!" Oh, beloved, it is an awful thing to crucify the Son of God, it is an awful thing to grieve the Holy Ghost. I do not wonder, Brother Compton, you say, "Mind the Spirit." I do not wonder you say, "Mind God." So many people are not minding God. You are rejecting the truth, resisting the Spirit, you are cursing your own selves, wrapping your arms around the pillars of the temple and bringing it down upon your own head -- and then an eternal hell, "having no hope." Did you ever read the other part of the verse? -- "and without God in the world." No hope in hell, no promise of relief, no ray of light, no gleam of a coming day, none whatever; increasing, intense darkness. No hope in hell forever, no expectation in hell, no change in hell, only for the worse; fires hotter, darkness more intense. Last Wednesday, up in Battle Creek, I went through a cyclone. The wind had been blowing, with some little rain, and cold. The cloud came from the southeast, assumed a funnel shape, and started over toward Battle Creek; it began to roar, and four hundred thousand dollars’ worth of property was destroyed in just a few minutes. When it was over people came rushing out of the houses. Some houses were lifted off the foundations, others crushed down in the cellars. There were live wires, telegraph poles and trees in the street. But listen! It only lasted three minutes. A French woman came running up the street. She said, "One time somebody told me, ’If you never prayed before, go down and look at the ocean when it is angry, then you will pray; but,’ she said, ’if you never prayed before, just get in a cyclone, and you will pray.’" My wife heard her, and said, "I began praying long ago, glory to God, but I prayed through!" Listen! That dark cloud only lasted three minutes; but in hell the cyclone of God Almighty’s wrath lasts throughout eternity -- roaring, swirling, shrieking winds of hell, and the soul that rejected Jesus Christ, there under the wrath of the omnipotent God forever and ever. I am talking to dying men and women; I am talking to people who are making a profession of religion. You may have your names on the church record, but you have not an experimental knowledge of salvation. If you should die tonight, you would go to hell. The sinner in the church has no more hope than sinners outside of it. I am talking about unrepentant sinners. God help us to tell the truth. Do not resist it. Hug up close to the truth. Listen! Darkness, misery, suffering -- forever! Remorse. Abandoned of God. Here God even in the unrepentant sinner’s pathway lets the sun shine on him, lets the rain fall on him, lets the ground bring forth for him, lets the stars shine for him, and the moon shed its pale, silvery light upon him, warns him by the example of godly people. He may hedge him in for a while by a mother’s prayers; he is not yet abandoned o God. If the angels of God could weep, they would look over the battlements of God and weep over that young man that is going to hell over the blood of Jesus Christ. But at last death comes, and the man is abandoned of God. What an awful thing! Without God in this world, and then abandoned of God throughout all eternity, and shut up with devils, and with whoremongers, and drunkards, and everything vile and unclean -- not because God would not save you, but because you would not let Him save you. "God hath not appointed us unto wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ." One time a boy nineteen years of age, died in a penitentiary, and the chaplain went to him and said, "Young man, where do your folks live? Mother living?" "Yes, sir." "Does your mother know where you are?" "No, sir; but, chaplain, when I am gone, I would like her to know I am dead, but don’t tell her where I died. Don’t tell mother where I died." He died in the penitentiary and did not want mother to know. Think of it! Not that mother who went down to death’s door for you, not that mother who watched over your early years when your tottering footsteps would have taken you into danger -- not that mother, but the Christ that left the glory that He had with the Father, the Christ before whom angels bow, and cry, "Holy, holy, holy art Thou," the Christ that took upon Himself our nature, came down to this old earth and made the land holy because He went there, went up to Calvary and suffered and died on the cross, then down into the grave, and snatched the scepter from the cruel monster, and went up from Mount Olivet and sits on the Mediatorial Throne, and is praying for you -- that Christ knows your sinful rejection, knows your rebellion, knows you are the author of your own damnation; and that Christ tonight puts this campmeeting, these sermons, across your pathway in order that you may be saved. Brother, do not preach to me, "It is a solemn thing to die." God bless you! it is a solemn thing to live! To live lightly, triflingly, frivolously, carelessly, saying, "No," to God, rejecting the truth of God, grieving the Holy Spirit; God tugging at your heartstrings, putting you under conviction, surrounding you with the prayers of loved ones, giving you Gospel sermons, giving you altar call upon altar call, and yet to go into eternity saying "No" to God. No hope! The unrepentant sinner has no hope. Here is the Word of God for it. "Having no hope, and without God in the world." A reign of despair; despair in the midst of awful surroundings. I read the other day about the men in the trenches. It said the British and the French were in the trenches, and for three days they were pouring fire on the trenches of the Germans. For one whole year they had been building mines, and then for three days they threw a curtain of fire, shell after shell, on the trenches of the Germans. At the battle of Gettysburg both sides only threw thirty-three thousand shells in three days, but over there they threw thirty-three thousand shells in three minutes, always throwing on the trenches of the enemies, and men come out from those trenches insane; they lost their reason under that awful fire. But listen! That only lasted three days, but the curtain of fire in hell lasts through eternity. "The smoke of their torment ascendeth forever and forever!" Who says so? God Almighty. Eternal remorse! Eternal suffering! There is a man in our city whose wife was dying of a cancer. She was crying, "Husband, if you love me, kill me! If you love me, kill me! I am suffering. I am going to die anyhow; it is only a question of a few weeks -- husband, if you love me, kill me." That husband went to the doctor. He said, "Doctor, will my wife die?" "Surely, sir." "Doctor, how long?" "Well maybe two weeks. She may die in a week." "Well, doctor, she is crying, ’Kill me,’ she is appealing to me, she is saying, ’If you love me, put me out of my misery.’ Doctor, I want you to come over and give her a drug that will put her to sleep forever." The doctor said, "Do you mean it?" He said, "If you do not do it, I will kill her myself and put her out of her misery." And that doctor went over and gave her the drug and said, "In two hours she will be beyond pain." Listen to this. When the sinner in hell, with all of his awful suffering, seeks death, death flees from him. There is no morphine in hell. You cannot commit suicide in hell. It is an awful thing to die without Christ, having no hope, rejecting Jesus and going to hell over the crucified Son of God, and that is what every unsaved sinner here tonight is doing. Remorse! Separation! Darkness! Dying! Forever and forever! I lived in the city of Philadelphia when I was a boy. Up at Haddington they had a cancer hospital, and men would come out of there with their jaws tied up -- cancer doing its work; with an eye tied up -- cancer doing its work; with their body swathed. Listen! They were hopeless. There was no hope. On their countenances was written, "No hope, no hope." Just a little while, and then death. On the countenances of the lost in hell is written in black letters of despair, "No hope; no hope!" On the walls of hell the only mottoes they have read, "No hope; no hope!" The fiery billows of an eternal hell that wrap themselves around the naked soul of an impenitent sinner, they roar, "No hope!" and the wail of the damned, as they gnash their teeth and bite their lips, and chew their tongues, and curse the people that told them the truth, and the people that did not live right before them, their one cry is, No hope; no hope!" Brother, what are you going to do? I repeat what Brother Compton said, "Mind God." "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon." I was out in Idaho, and I preached one night to a very attentive congregation, and about the first or second night of the meeting a great big stalwart fellow sat in the seats and listened to me -the leading man of the community -- as fine a specimen of humanity, physically, as I ever saw in all my life. I gave my altar call, and this great big fellow came up and put his foot upon a chair and said, "I want to say something to you. Do you think there is any hope for me?" I said, "Yes, there is hope for you." He said, "You don’t know what a sinner I have been" -- and he had been a sinner; was a man of means, a gambler and a drunkard, but he wanted God, and he said, "You don’t know what a sinner I have been." I told him how Jesus could save to the uttermost, told him to get down, and I got down and prayed for him, and that fellow came through. Listen to this; I want to tell you tonight, "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon." Is there any hope? Yes, for a repentant sinner. Yes, for the man that will forsake sin. Yes, for the man that will mind God tonight, there is hope. Calvary appeals, Pentecost appeals, the passing funeral procession appeals, the tornadoes and the cyclones and the wars in Europe all appeal. Death is on our track. It will not be much longer till some of us will enter eternity. Have you got right with God? Have you availed yourself of the blood of Jesus Christ? Oh, it is an awful thing. "Having no hope, and without God." But tonight God says, "Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation." Now, twelve minutes of nine. How many of you people are ready for heaven in two minutes? Oh, I was so glad in that cyclone I was saved. When the thing went by I said, "Come on," to my mother and wife; "we’ll have a prayermeeting," and we got down on our knees right off and had a prayermeeting and thanked God for taking care of us. Oh, it is a blessed thing to know you are saved. Do you know it? Are you ready for heaven on a moment’s notice? Have you been converted? Have you the witness of the Spirit? Do you know that you are a new creature in Christ Jesus? Are your sins under the blood? Are you indwelt tonight by the Holy Ghost? There is no hope without Jesus Christ. "Lord, I believe were sinners more Than sands upon the ocean shore, Thou hast for all atonement made, For all a ransom Thou hast paid." But, brother, you must accept of Jesus Christ as your Savior. Without that you have no hope, and tomorrow is eternity. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 91: S. HELL A PLACE AND A STATE ======================================================================== Hell a Place and a State by George Kulp "In hell he lifted up his eyes." (Luke 16:23.) One time I was asked to go to see a man who was dying -- an old man about eighty years of age. He did not want to see me, and I went there with the understanding that he did not want to see a preacher. I talked to him about preparation for the future, and he made this remark to me, "I had nothing to do with my coming here, and I have nothing to do with my going away, and as to whether there is any hereafter, I do not know." He said, "Nobody ever came back" -- but there was where he was wrong. Somebody has come back. They were burying a man in the land where the old prophet Elisha was buried. They were carrying his corpse out when a number of raiders made their appearance, and these people were frightened and instead of putting the body in the grave allotted to it, they put it down in the grave where it touched Elisha’s bones, and immediately the corpse was brought to life. He came back, but we have no record that he told us anything about where he had been. I do not believe that a soul ever loses consciousness. I think it steps out of this life into the life to come; this body fails, but the life that has come to the soul never fails. Lazarus was four days in the other world. Jesus Christ stood in front of his sepulcher and called him forth, and he came, and he sat at the table with Jesus and ate with Him, and the people came to see the man who had been raised from the dead; but we have not a record of a single word that he ever said about the world beyond. Dorcas died; they sent for the Apostle and he came, and the women stood around showing the garments that she had made and were weeping, and the Apostle called her back to life; but not a single word is given -- not a single utterance about the life beyond. Paul preached so long one night that a fellow who was sitting in the window went to sleep and fell out of the window, and they picked him up dead, and God through Paul restored him to life, but the man never told a word about the land to which he had been. Why? Because eternal verities are not to be proved by human testimony. There is a reason. "Neither will they believe though one was raised from the dead." And they did not. All of our knowledge comes from the Word of God. I believe in the whole Gospel, a whole Christ, a whole heaven, and a whole hell. If there is no hell, there is no heaven. All that you know about heaven you get from that Word; all that you know about hell you get from that Book. Jesus Christ was the most gentle man that ever walked this earth, but he told the most terrible truths in regard to the fact of hell -- he told us so that we might avoid it. It is not a threat; it is a warning. You take your Bibles and you read, "Hell hath enlarged herself." And again, "It is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched." Who said so? Jesus. "And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched." "And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire: where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched." Jesus Christ knew what He was talking about. Listen to my text, Jesus’ words: "In hell he lifted up his eyes." Who was he? A church member. George Whitefield was preaching one time in Philadelphia in his inimitable manner, and he said, "Gabriel, are there any Methodists in heaven?" "No." "Any Presbyterians in heaven?" "No." "Any Baptists in heaven?" "No." And he might have said, "Any Holiness people in heaven?" "No." "Well, who have you there?" "All those who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." "Any Methodists in hell?" "Yes." "Any Presbyterians in hell?" "Yes." "Any Baptists in hell?" "Yes." "Any Holiness people in hell?" "Yes." Your church membership will not save you; your profession will not save you; your mere testimony will not save you. The Bible says, "They were saved by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony," but the blood comes first. That is the teaching of God’s Word. This man was a church member. Listen! I am not asking your pardon for saying so, I am not apologizing for the truth, I do not believe that half the people who make a profession of Jesus Christ have ever been saved, and I do not believe that half of the people who profess to having been sanctified have received the blessing. Why? "By their fruits ye shall know them." I labored with Dr. Keen a few years ago, and he has put it on record that 75 per cent of the church members that he prayed with when they were dying, he had to pray that they might be ready. Church members! This man was a church member. "In hell he lifted up his eyes." He had the Bible; had the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament; he had the Scriptures to which Jesus referred when He said, "Search the Scriptures, they are they which testify of me." These thirty-nine books testify of Jesus. This man had these books -- had them in his home. He was an orthodox Jew; he was a member of the church, but he died without any hope, just as many a church member has died. It takes more than your name on the church record, it takes more than sprinkling a few drops of water on you or going in the river; it takes more than partaking of the sacraments to make a man a Christian. You can support the preacher, you can give your money to the church, you can make a profession, you can have a button in your buttonhole labeled, "Holiness unto the Lord," and die and go to hell. Bible Salvation is a life -- just as good on Monday as it is on Sunday; just as good in the middle of winter time as it is in Campmeeting season. Just as good when you are 1,000 miles away from campmeeting and the folks that know you -- just as life-giving, just as soul-sustaining, just as heaven-inspiring -- as it is when you are surrounded by the saints. I enjoy Christian fellowship; I enjoy the songs of Zion. Sometimes I hardly know whether I am in the body or out of it when some saint of God gets hold in prayer and the skies begin to open and the glory flows; but God bless you! your salvation or mine does not depend on the number of Christians there are around us; it depends on our personal relation to God. This man was a church member of good standing, but Jesus Christ, moving in the power of the Spirit, giving heaven-born truths into the world, Jesus Christ says, this man died and "in hell he lifted up his eyes." Church member! Orthodox, good standing! We know something of hell. In hell they see; they know heaven is afar off, and they know it is not for them. There is a legend, Tantalus ever standing with a fountain of water rising right up to his lips. He is thirsty, and oh, if he could only have a drink! if he could but have a drink! He bends his body forward to take a drink of the water, and it recedes, and when he straightens up the water rises right up to his lips. Thirsty! Days, weeks, months without water! Moves forward again to take a drink and the water recedes, rises again and the water rises right to his lips, but the water is not for him. The lost in hell know that over yonder somewhere in God’s great empire, there is a heaven, there is a place where the redeemed gather, where there is no night, where there is no sickness, where there are no tears, and they know it is not for them! Once they might have been saved, once they might have had the peace and joy of the redeemed, but it has gone by forever, and they are eternally lost. They know that in hell. Hell is no joke; hell is not a dream; hell is not an imagination. God tells us in His Word that there is a hell that awaits the man who rejects the truth of God. You do not have to get drunk, do not have to be an adulterer, do not have to be licentious, do not have to be un clean; you can be a good citizen, pay off your debts, live a moral life and die and go to hell simply because you reject Jesus Christ and refuse to walk in the light that God gives you. You can be very respectable and go to hell; you can have the good opinion of your neighbors, and go to hell; you can be a good husband, and go to hell. Listen! God in His Word says to us, "Because there is wrath, beware!" The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of man. It means something to be a Christian; it means something to live for God. Some people think that because they pay their debts and live an outwardly respectable life, that is about all that is required of them. Any honest man will pay his debts; morality is only another name for decency in sinning, and it has never saved anybody yet. The young man said, "All these have I kept from my youth up," yet came to Jesus and said, "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" He knew he did not have it, and he was moral. Oh, it means something to live for God! The lost in hell know the saints are at rest -- know the enjoyment of heaven. There will be many a girl wake up in hell and say, "My mother is over there: she shed tears for me: she exhorted me, she lived for God before me, but I am lost forever." You say, "Look here, preacher; hell is the abode of spirits!" No, not alone; it is the abode of men who have bodies just as you and I have. You say, "You cannot prove it." There is a resurrection of the just and unjust, a reuniting of soul and body; the soul and body will stand before the judgment seat of Jesus Christ, and the Judge will say, "Depart from me ye cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels." Another thing they do in hell -- they feel. This man in hell lifted up his eyes being in torment. He said, "I am tormented." That is a feeling. Tormented! "I might have been saved, but the harvest is past. I had conviction which was wrought by the Holy Ghost; I saw others going to the altar and praying through to victory, but I rejected Jesus, grieved the Holy Ghost, ignored the truth, and now I am lost in hell forever." Man is the author of his own damnation, man is fixing his own destiny by his actions in this life. God says so right here in His Word. Another thing we know they do in hell -- they pray -- and, listen! I want you to get it -- if the doctors did not drug you before you died, you would pray before you went to hell. Nine-tenths of the people who die today die drugged by the doctors, and pass out into eternity unconscious! If you did not give that drug to the sinner before the black demons who are waiting around his bedside began to take hold of him, he would scream and cry to God for mercy. I was with a wounded soldier boy who was waiting for a car to come and take him to the hospital. I had to listen to that dying boy in blue: "O God! O God! O God! Have mercy on my soul!" There were a lot of soldier boys around there, but nobody laughed; there was silence -- he was facing eternity -going out into eternity unsaved. I was nineteen years of age, and I can hear him yet: "O God! O God! O God! Have mercy on my soul!" Oh, if it were not for your drugs they would pray before they go to hell. This man in hell prayed. What for? A drop of water! Did not get it. Prayed for mercy. Did not get it. Mercy is offered here; mercy is all around us; grace has been provided, but when men reject the mercy and refuse the grace, they will wake up in hell and pray for mercy, and plead for grace -- but mercy and grace are refused. This man prayed, but in hell there is no answer. They are hopeless in hell; weeping, gnashing their teeth. biting their lips, chewing their tongues -- hopeless, despairing, curse God, curse Jesus Christ, curse the Holy Ghost, curse the preacher that did not preach the truth, curse the church member who lived alongside of them and did not talk to them about their souls. Hell is a place where hate reigns predominantly and eternally. Hell is the prison house of the damned. I was in a city one time; I wanted my boy to see what sin would do for folks, so I took him into the jail. The little fellow clung to me and held on to my hand, never opened his mouth, just looked up in my face, looked at the jail, looked at the benches in the cells, looked at the cold, bare walls, looked at the prisoners, and he came out with a scared look on his face and never said one word. Hell, the prison house of the damned. No comfort, no joy, no peace, no communion, not even with one another. Curse God, curse each other. Hell is the prison house of the damned! He was a church member, but he was in hell. May one time have had an experience, but he died without God and in hell he lifted up his eyes being in torment. In hell they want to die. Somebody told me one time, "An Englishman is dying over there; you go over and see him. He does not want to see you, but you go over and see him." I went and found that he was dying with a cancer, and every time a pain would strike him he would groan and would say, "I wish I had a knife!" And directly he would say, "Oh, let me have a razor! Oh, if I had a razor I would stop this!" But, listen! no matter how terrible the paroxysms in hell, they never commit suicide. How many suicides in the United States last year? Suicides; but you cannot commit suicide in hell. They want to die in hell -- and cannot. Every man and woman here tonight is facing an eternal heaven or an eternal hell. Which way are you going? Can you stand up and say, "Yes, by the grace of God I am going to heaven; I have the witness of the Spirit that I am a child of God?" If you cannot, God help you! "The words that I speak unto you, they shall judge you in the last day." God says so. I am dealing with God’s truth. I challenge any man in this room or anywhere else to come to my room and point out to me anything that I am preaching that is not the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Cannot repent in hell. The devil says, "There is time enough yet, time enough yet." But, listen! This man said, "Send Lazarus that he may warn my brothers that they may repent." He never says anything about repenting himself -- he knows there is no repentance in hell. Oh, aren’t they sorry in hell? Yes, but that is not repentance. Repentance is a godly sorry for sin. There is no repentance in hell. That old Bible says, "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, for he will have mercy and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon." There is pardon; there is mercy. When? "Now is the accepted time; now is the day of salvation." "By the grace of God Jesus Christ tasted death for every man." "Whosoever will let him come." "Oh, if it is that easy, I can find God any time I want to." No, you cannot do it. There have been people here who have been coming and coming to the altar and are not saved yet; and I knew a girl who sought the Lord for six weeks, and finally she got through, and before the year was over I preached her funeral sermon. If you can be saved anytime, why was not that girl saved at the beginning, will you please tell me? You cannot be saved any time you please. There are conditions to be complied with. Dr. Chaplin was dying, and the agony was so great he said, "Oh, I pity any sinner that has to try to get ready at a time like this." My Bible says, "Now is the accepted time." My Bible says, "Be ye also ready; for in such an hour as ye think not the son of man cometh." Listen! There are no children in hell! Say, you remember when you stood in your parlor and looked down on the sweet little face in the white casket -- the corpse of your child. You will never see it again. Listen, sinner -- you will never see that child again! There are no children in hell. "There angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven." Jesus Christ who tells us there is a heaven and a hell, says of children, "Of such is the kingdom of heaven." Listen, sinner! When you saw the little child in that casket in your parlor you took your last look at that little one you will ever have, for there are no children in hell. There are no homes in hell. Home is where love presides; home is where love reigns. There may be no piano, there may be no velvet carpet, there may be no paintings on the wall, but if there is love there, it is home; but there are no homes in hell, for there is no love in hell. Oh, we know something about hell; we know from this Word. Everyone that enters the eternal world saved through the blood of Jesus Christ have the love of God shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Ghost. Love reigns in heaven -- hate reigns in hell. I saw a foretaste of hell one time. It was on a campground in Indiana. A young man came to the altar, knelt down and pulled out of his pocket a bottle of morphine and handed it to my co-laborer, saying, "Take this; I do not want it any more." Brother L took it and providentially smashed it all to pieces. The next day Brother L saw that young man and he said, "How are you today?" "Not very well," and his nerves were twitching, but he said, "I am not going back to it." He knelt at the altar a second time and we prayed for him, but his nerves were all on fire. Sunday morning, the last day of the Camp, someone came around to our little cottage and said, "That young man is down here wanting morphine." I went down to where he was, and there he lay with his head pillowed on his mother’s shoulder and he said, "I want morphine; I must have morphine." He said, "Brother, go harness up that horse; I will drive thirty miles. I know the doctor will give it to me. Great God, I am in hell! Great God, I want morphine!" His mother said, "Now, Everett, we will pray for you." Somebody said, "Look to Jesus." He said, "Oh, Jesus nothing!" They sent for the doctor and he said, "Doctor, give me a shot in there." Somebody said, "Don’t you give him any; he has smashed his morphine bottle and is trying to break away from it. Don’t you give it to him." He said, "Oh, I am dying; I am in hell, and I have to have it! I have to have it!" I said, "There is a foretaste of hell." Oh, I saw that. But, listen! You cannot get morphine in hell. Oh, that is an example of hell! Make that eternal and multiply it by forever, and you have the agonies of the damned. God help us! Whatever your sin is, you had better repent of it, for it is sin that sends men to hell. Over in Kentucky a member of the church lay on his death bed, and he realized he was dying and said, "I am lost! I am lost! I am lost!" His wife said, "No, husband, you are not lost. Oh, what could the church have done without you? You have been a stand-by to the church all these years. You are not lost." She sends over to get the preacher. He comes. "Husband says he is lost; comfort him." The preacher walks over and the man says, "I am lost! I am lost! I am lost!" The preacher says, "No, brother, you are not lost. You have been the pillar of the church on which it could depend." He walked away and said, "He is delirious." He said, "I am not delirious; you are my pastor; that man there owned the farm next to me when I was farming in the country. There is my wife sitting there. Don’t tell me I am delirious; don’t tell me of my church work. I am lost! I am dying and going to hell, and I am a church member." So was this man, and in hell he lifted up his eyes. Bunyan says, "There is a way to hell from the very gate of heaven." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 92: S. HINDERED PRAYERS ======================================================================== Hindered Prayers "That your prayers be not hindered." 1 Peter 3:7 "Get thee up; Israel hath sinned." Joshua 7:10 The readers of "Pilgrim’s Progress" will call to mind how, when Christian was in Palace Beautiful and they showed him the remarkable objects in the armory, Moses’ rod, the hammer and nail with which Jael smote Sisera, the pitchers, trumpets and lamps with which Gideon put to flight the armies of Midian, the ox goad with which Shamgar slew six hundred men, the sling and stone that David used when he killed Goliath of Gath, all manner of furniture that their Lord had provided for pilgrims -- the Sword of the Spirit, the shield of faith, the helmet of peace, the breastplate of righteousness, and shoes -- would not wear out -- they then gave him a weapon called "All Prayer" that he found very useful in his journey to the Celestial City. In nothing in all that beautiful allegory of the "Pilgrim’s Progress" was rare old John Bunyan more scriptural than in this. Jesus spake unto His disciples a parable with this lesson, that men ought always to pray and not to faint, and in numerous passages of Scripture we are taught the value and importance of prayer. "Ask and ye shall receive, seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you," "Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." "Call upon Me and I will show thee great and mighty things such as thou knowest not of." "In everything let your requests be made known unto God in supplication and in prayer, with thanksgiving." "Whatsoever things ye desire when ye pray, believe that ye receive them and ye shall have them." To further convince us of the value of prayer we have the examples of men, mighty men in prayer, who prayed for any and all needs and received the answer. Hezekiah prayed for lengthened life, and God gave him fifteen more years. Daniel prayed, and the angel was commanded to fly swiftly with the answer. "At the beginning of thy petition the commandment came forth." Solomon prayed for wisdom, Bartimaeus for sight, Paul for grace, and they all received. And we can pray anywhere, in the deep like Jonah, on the housetop like Peter, on the bed like Hezekiah, in the mountain like Jesus, in the wilderness like Hagar, in the street like Jairus, in the cave like David, or on the cross like the dying thief. One can pray at any time: in the morning like David, at noon like Daniel, at midnight like Paul and Silas, and God will hear and answer. Aye, by prayer you can scale the mount of God, and move the arm that moves the world. But answers to prayer are conditional. The prayer must come from a broken and contrite heart, for a broken and contrite heart God will not despise. It must come from a heart that is right, or seeking to get right with God. "PAY THY vows unto the Lord, and call upon Me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee." Pay thy vows FIRST. Many persons pray and receive no answer because they hinder their own prayers; they block God’s way, they tie His hands, they shut up the windows of Heaven by their own acts, hence the Apostle directed in our text that persons shall so live every day in their homes that their prayers be not hindered, and in the text from the Old Testament, God rebukes Joshua for praying while hindrances to the answer were in the way. "Wherefore criest thou unto Me? Get thee up from off thy face. Israel hath sinned." When Jesus came to the sepulchre in which the dead Lazarus lay wrapped in his grave clothes, He came to work the mighty works of God, but He first said to those standing by, "Take ye away the stone," and if we would have God work in our lives, send answers to our prayers, we must take away the stone, we must remove the hindrances in the way. There are individual Christians who, by their little inconsistencies, are hindering their own prayers. There are churches God cannot bless because of the hindrances of worldliness and unbelief and covetousness and selfishness in the way. In this congregation there are mothers praying for their children. there are wives praying for their husbands, there are friends praying for friends, there is a church praying for a revival. May God open our eyes this morning and show us if we are by our lives hindering or helping God to answer our prayers. God gave me this text last Monday morning at my family altar, and it clung to me. I could not shake it off. I looked for other texts and other subjects, but this would stay, and I began to think upon it, and this morning I want to consider the subject the Holy Ghost puts in these Scriptures -- "Hindrances to Prayer." The first one to which I would call your attention is disobedience to God. There is a man praying, and, by the way, he is a mighty man of God, chosen by Divine appointment to lead the hosts of Israel. He knows God. The Captain of the hosts of the Lord appeared unto that man and made known unto him his mission. Oh, how he prays! Listen to him! "O Lord God, wherefore hast Thou at all brought this people over Jordan to deliver us into the hands of the Amorite, and to destroy us? O Lord, what shall I say when Israel turneth their backs before their enemies? For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land shall hear of it, and shall environ us around and cut us off, and what wilt Thou do unto Thy great name?" And the Lord said unto Joshua, "Get thee up. Wherefore criest thou unto Me? Israel hath sinned" -- sinned in this disobedience -- taking of the accursed thing, and then in dissembling before God. Disobedience hinders answers to prayer. Mother, has God wanted you to do anything, perform some duty, run some errand for Him, make some sacrifice, and you said "No"? That "No," that disobedience, may be in the way of the answer to that prayer that has gone up from your heart so often -- "O God, save my son, save my daughter." Wife, you have been praying for your husband so long, and so earnestly. Have you been consistent? Have you honored God in your home, and your church? Have you responded to God’s call? Have you confessed Christ when called upon to do so, at all times, and on all occasions, before husband, so that deep down in his heart he acknowledges the power of your religion over you and in you? Or does your inconsistency hinder the answer to your prayers? My brother, my Christian friend, let me ask you: Are you living in obedience to God? Are you walking in the light of God’s Word? Are you following the leadings of the Holy Spirit? Answer, my brother, as in God’s own presence, in the secret chambers of your soul, and if you cannot say "Yes," consider if your disobedience is in the way of God answering your prayers. The second hindrance is difficulties with the brethren. Now to begin this aright and that you may meet God’s truth in the very beginning, let me call your attention to the words of Jesus, in which He describes this hindrance. Matthew 5:23 : "If thou bringest thy gift to the altar and there rememberest [and what a place the altar is to remember such things!] that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; FIRST be reconciled unto thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift." Do this, or it will be a hindrance to your prayers. I give you this plain, pungent Scripture from the lips of Jesus, that you may see that the man who does not accept of this truth antagonizes God’s own Word; he destroys the lifeboat God sends to save him. What right has any person, by his little private grudge, by his resentment against a brother, even though it was justly aroused, to imperil the prosperity of a church, to hinder the work of God? And how foolish for any one bound for eternity, and needing all the grace of God that he can get on the way, to rob himself of the comforting presence of the Holy Spirit, and to bar Heavens’ door against his own prayers, by his disagreements with his brethren. Let each one see to it that his own case is clear in this regard? A glorious work of grace was in progress in a certain church, but it did not rise to the full tide. Something seemed to be in the way. The pastor knew that there were five men in the church who, although they communed together, yet had heart burnings toward each other, and did not speak as they should. He preached a sermon from the text: "If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Heavenly Father forgive you your trespasses." He went home and prayed earnestly for the Spirit to apply the truth He had inspired. Monday night one came to the altar, then another, and another, till every one of the we alienated brethren was there. After the meeting all shook hands, and the people wept while sinners were made to feel that there is power in the religion of Jesus that can bring men together that way. The third hindrance to which I would call your attention is indulgence is any known sin. Achan knew it was a sin to take the wedge of gold and the Babylonish garment, but he deliberately took them. Ananias and Sapphira knew it was a sin to rob God, but they deliberately planned to do it, and carried out the plan. The man who would have access to God in prayer must renounce every known sin and continue in the renunciation. "As ye have received the Lord Jesus, so walk ye in Him." There can be no such thing as boldness at a throne of grace for that man who indulges in any known sin, or in what he fears may be sin. "Cleanse your hands, ye sinners, and purify your hearts, ye double-minded," is the exhortation of God’s Word; and in regard to doubtful things, the Apostle says, "Whatsoever is not of faith Is SIN." That is, if you are not certain a thing is right, it is wrong for you to indulge in it. Brethren, these may seem trifling things, but if they hinder our prayers, if they starve our soul, if they shut us out of the treasury of Heaven, they are great things and too important to pass by. Oh, how many render themselves useless to the cause of Christ by what they call "little sins;" how many lose communion with God for the sake of indulgence in some secret sin! And right under this head let me say the neglect of duty is the known sin of many that is deliberately indulged in. Men can sin negatively as well as positively. He who neglects to take up his cross and follow Christ will have no confidence to pray, either for himself or others. He cannot escape the conviction that it is his first duty to repent. He who neglects the family altar, the secret place of prayer, the prayer-meeting -- all means of grace that he so much needs -- is hindering his own prayers by his neglect of duty. May God give us eyes to see our duty plainly, and the will to do it. The next hindrance to prayer is laxity of life and conduct; We sit in judgment on others; let us judge ourselves. If we judge ourselves, then shall we not be judged. How inconsistent it is to neglect the means of grace for anything else. What business has any professing Christian to give the preference on prayer-meeting night, to the lodge, or the political meeting, or some social function, the lecture, or the club-room? Sinners, husbands of praying wives and children of praying mothers, see professing Christians at these places and attempt to excuse themselves by their inconsistencies. Some time ago a Christian mother who has been praying for her son for some years told me, while her heart was almost breaking over it, that her son went to the opera house to see a noted actor he knew his mother would not approve of; but he wanted to go, and he went. The next morning he came to his mother and said: "Why, mother, it could not be wrong. I saw Mr. A and Mr. B there, and others who are members of the church. They are good men, are they not?" And she said to me, "Now, Brother Kulp, what could I say to that? What reply could I make? Those men are church members and in good standing." Let me say right here, if there are any persons here who, by such inconsistencies and wrong living, are not only hindering their own prayers, but that mother’s prayers; if at the judgment seat of Christ that son of many prayers should be on the left hand and hear that awful sentence, "Depart from Me, ye cursed," you, my professing brother, had a hand in his damnation. May God help you to repent before it is forever too late. Another hindrance to prayer is this: Lack of unity, or agreement. Jesus says, "If any two of you shall agree on earth as touching any one thing, it shall be done for them of My Father in Heaven." What a promise for the Church of God! What a privilege for believers! If any two of you agree on earth, touching any one thing, it shall be done. On this basis, there ought to be shall be done. On this basis, there ought to be land, two or three persons in each league agreeing upon the same thing, praying for the same persons, by name, at the same time every day. Oh, how communities and churches would be stirred by the power of God, and what a floodtide of salvation would come in answer to prayer. "This is the confidence WE have concerning Him, if WE ask anything according to His will WE know that He heareth us, and if WI: know that He heareth us, WE know WE have the petitions we desire of Him." Another hindrance to prayer is what I am pleased to call "baptized infidelity" -- asking for nothing specific, nothing definite. That cold and sickly sentimentalism which dares not ask confidently for any specific thing is an offense to God. It distrusts the goodness of God at every step and treats His promise as a lie. Elijah asked for rain. He said RAIN when he prayed; he was specific and definite; he held on to God until the cloud began to enlarge in the sky. At another time he prayed for fire and fire came, and consumed the sacrifice and the wood and the stones and the dust and licked up the water in the trench. The disciples met at the home of Mary and prayed for Peter and asked God to take him out of prison where Herod had placed him, and from which place the king expected to bring him forth to death, and God sent His angel to do the very thing they had prayed for, and the chains fell off, doors were opened, and Peter came to that very company and told them, the Lord had brought him out. Another hindrance to prayer, and the last which I shall notice at this time, is withholding from God that which is or should be holy unto Him. Dr. Peck says in the last work which he wrote, and which was published after his death, that he was one time very much impressed by four words uttered in his hearing -- "God cannot bless nothing." If you give nothing to God, do nothing for God, all the prayers you ever offer will be of no avail. If you give less than you ought to, you hinder your own prayers. God cannot bless covetousness, for He has declared in His Word that it is idolatry and hinders prayer. "Let not that man think he shall receive anything of the Lord." Would you see a united church, all hindrances removed, every man obedient? Look at that church in Jerusalem assembled in an upper room, with one accord, no disagreements, all united in prayer, and by faith claiming the fulfillment of the promise. Suddenly the Holy Ghost came upon them, the place was shaken, they spake as the Spirit gave them utterance, three thousand were converted, and daily afterward there were added unto the Church such as should be saved. That was once. Never to be repeated? Read on. A few days afterward Peter and John were arrested and put into prison for preaching Jesus; being examined, they were let go and they returned unto their own company, and rehearsed all that had been done unto them, and then went to prayer. All hindrances being out of the way, God answered, and the place was shaken and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost. God waits to do that every time and everywhere He can get an opportunity -- to the individual, to the Church, to believers everywhere who comply with His conditions, and see that their prayers are not hindered. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 93: S. HOPELESS TO FIGHT AGAINST GOD ======================================================================== Hopeless To Fight Against God "The stars in their courses fought against Sisera." Judges 5:20 On the back of the Book from which my text is taken I find these words -- Holy Bible. Within its pages I read: "Holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." It tells of God who is of purer eyes than to behold evil and cannot look upon iniquity. Before Him Holy angels veil their faces behind their wings, and cry: "Holy, holy, holy, art Thou, Lord God Almighty." He is a jealous God, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, and declaring: "If ye walk contrary to Me, I will walk contrary to you." "Without holiness no man shall see the Lord." When the spotless Son of God took our nature upon Himself and opened His mouth to teach His disciples, He proclaimed in that wonderful sermon, the Magna Charta of the Kingdom of God, this eternal truth, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." From Genesis to Revelation, this Book teaches and shows that God is against the unrepentant. If one is engaged in willful wrong-doing, all the power of the infinite God is against him -- while the reverse is equally true; the soul that desires to go with God has all Heaven on his side. "If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another" -- but if we forsake Him, He also will forsake us. "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, for He will have mercy, and unto our God, for He will abundantly pardon." But, if a man "separateth himself from Me, and setteth up idols in his heart, and putteth the stumblingblock of his iniquity before his face, and cometh to a prophet to inquire of Me, I the Lord will answer him by myself, and I will set my face against that man, and I will make him a sign and a proverb, and I will cut him off from the midst of my people, and he shall know that I am the Lord." Our text teaches that there is no escape for the man whom the justice of God pursues. He may take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the earth; he may make his bed in Hell, but there God will find him out; he may go down to Joppa, and take ship for Tarshish, and he so assured he is getting away that he may go to sleep in the hold, but the messengers of God will overtake him; he may bury his ill-gotten possessions in the ground beneath his tent, but God will uncover them. He may oppress the people of God, but when they cry for deliverance, to Him who delivered their fathers and brought them out with a high hand, He will make the very "stars in their courses" to fight against their oppressors. Sisera was captain of the hosts of Jabin, king of Canaan, who for forty years mightily oppressed Israel. And the children of Israel cried unto the Lord and He answered them, and said: "Go and draw toward Mt. Tabor, and take with thee ten thousand men of the children of Naphtali, and of the children of Zebulon; and I will draw unto thee, to the river Kishon, Sisera the captain of Jabin’s army, with his chariots and his multitudes, and I will deliver him into thine hand. And THE LORD discomfited Sisera, and all his chariots, and all his host." THE LORD DID IT -- defeated, overthrew, caused to perish, these His enemies, so much so that Deborah, in her song of triumph, sings: "They fought from heaven; the stars in their courses fought against Sisera; the river of Kishon swept them away, that ancient river, the river Kishon." This was not the first time that God fought from Heaven for His people. When Gibeon was to be rescued and Joshua defeated the kings of the Amorites, "The Lord cast down great stones from Heaven upon them unto Azekoh, and they died; they were more which died with hailstones than they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword." And when the daylight was departing and darkness would intervene to enable the Amorites to escape, "the sun stood still upon Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon, and there was no day like that before it, or after it, that the Lord hearkened unto the voice of a man, for THE LORD fought for Israel." The Word of God, in which we have God’s thought, God’s mind, God’s will, teaches us that God and law and nature and providence are against sin, and against the unrepentant sinner. Read the Word carefully, study its history. Turn to the sixth chapter of Genesis: "God saw the wickedness of man that it was great in the earth and that every imagination of the thoughts of the heart was only evil continually, and it repented the Lord that He had made man upon the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart, and the Lord said: I will destroy man whom I have created, from the face of the earth, for it repenteth me that I have made him." In Proverbs we read: "The way of the wicked is an abomination unto the Lord." To Israel God said: "Your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid His face from you, so that He will not hear." God is against sin everywhere and in every person. "Whosoever hath sinned against Me, him will I blot out of My book." "His power and His wrath are against ALL THEM that forsake Him." "ALL that do unrighteously are an abomination to God." Israel’s king sinned against God, and, king though he was, God punished him severely, for He "hates ALL works and workers of iniquity." "These six things doth God hate, yea seven are an abomination unto the Lord; a proud look, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, an heart that deviseth evil imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, a false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren." "Because you have forsaken the Lord, He also hath forsaken you." O beloved, you are wondering why God left you? Why there is no power? no unction? God never left a soul yet that wanted Him to stay. Powerless lives, fruitless lives, are a certain result of life in which the grace of God is frustrated, the commands of God violated, and light rejected. God’s LAW is against the sinner. Sin is any transgression of the law of God. Law was violated in Eden, and man was driven forth to die. The antediluvian world gave itself up to eating and drinking, to marrying and giving in marriage. They were created to glorify God, and they worshipped the creature; they minded the flesh and brought the flood upon the world of the ungodly. The cry of Sodom and Gomorrah was great, and their sin was very great, and for this transgression of the law of God, the cities of the plains were destroyed. Uzzah put forth his hand to steady the ark and the Lord slew him, to teach Israel that the law of God could not be violated. Nadab and Abihu swung censers containing strange fire before the Lord which He commanded them not, and there went out fire from before the Lord and devoured them and they died before the Lord. The wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against ALL ungodliness and ALL unrighteousness of men. The law of God never pardons. When man fell the law demanded the enforcement of the penalty, "the soul that sinneth it shall die." Law is unbending and inexorable. It demands satisfaction commensurate with the criminality of the guilt. There never was a law which could have given life, else righteousness would have been by the law. Law cannot pardon -- if it did, it would destroy itself. Jesus satisfies Law -- and through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ man is saved, and through grace alone. Nature is against sin. Violation of the laws of Nature is sin, and the violator pays the penalty. God is the great Lawgiver -- the Author of all law -- no matter whether written in the Word or in Nature; given in Eden, on Sinai, or in man’s constitution. "The wicked shall not live out half their days" is God’s law, proven by history and experience. The drunkard violates the law of God, robs himself of strength, and hurries himself to an early grave. The tobacco user becomes a victim to an appetite as remorseless as the grave, the chains of which grace alone can break. The fact that some old person died in the county-house a hundred years old who had used liquor and tobacco all his life is the exception that proves the rule. Who knows but he might have lived twenty years longer if he had minded God? Men, young men, aye, and women, too, who have given themselves over to lust, thrown the reins on the neck of passion, are crowding the wards of the insane asylums today. Hard-headed business men, who are governed by business rules, not by sentiment, guided by statistics of the past with their lessons, have compiled tables, and a list of questions for the man who seeks life insurance, and they ask the applicant, "Have you used, or do you now use tobacco? Do you use intoxicating liquors? Have you had any of the following diseases?" Why do they ask them? Because they know that every man addicted to drink, tobacco, and fleshly gratifications, shortens his life, lessens his power of resistance against disease, and is a very poor risk. They know that when men violate the laws of Nature, although God may forgive them, Nature never will. Apply to the Government of the United States for a position under the Civil Service Rules, and you are asked the same questions as to drinking Seek employment as engineer or fireman with the great trunk lines of today, and learn that the use of liquor and tobacco disqualifies you, in the opinion of these officials, for any such position. They want men of nerve, who can stand the tests that come to the railroad man, and they know that liquor and tobacco wreck and ruin the nervous system. I want to say right here that while law will not forgive, grace will not only pardon, but bring salvation to every sinner, that will deliver him from the appetite and take it completely away. I know a number of such instances. Let me give you one. I knew an old soldier who had an awful appetite for liquor. He was well aware of its debasing power, and in his sober moments would weep and pray and bemoan his condition. He was posted by his wife, with his own consent, and saloon-keepers were forbidden to sell him liquors. When they would not, the drug stores kept on letting him have the stuff, and every time he received his pension he would go on a spree. I have gone to his home, prayed with him while he recovered from his debauch, heard his avowals never to go on another spree, and knew that, while he was sincere, he immediately broke every vow, finding his own strength far from sufficient for his need. One day I received a phone from his brother: "J____ is on an awful spree, and very sick; please go down and see him." I went, and took with me my wife and the sister of the drinking man, one of the salt of the earth, who had never ceased to pray for him. Arriving at the home, I was ushered into the room where he lay very sick. Hitherto I had been very lenient and full of sympathy for the poor fellow; but this time God led me otherwise. I said: "How are you, Brother B____?" And he replied: "I am a very sick man, and I am going to die." "If you do," I said, "you will go to Hell." He looked at me in surprise, and said: "I have never been in jail." I replied: "You ought to have been. Your wife has been faithful and true and loving. Praying with you and for you; doing all a wife could do to help you. You have been worse than a brute in the way you have treated her." After talking in this strain, I said: "Shall I pray for you?" He very ungraciously consented. I prayed with him and for him, and left the house. Some weeks afterward I met him in the city. He accosted me and referred to my visit to him when sick. He said: "You have had your last chance at me. When you left my house that day I told my wife if I died you were not to preach my funeral sermon. Whenever I go to church, you always preach at me. I’m through." I looked him in the face and said: "God bless you, brother; I love you," and left him. In a couple of months he came to church one night. We were in revival services, and he came to the altar. God blessedly saved him, and the first thing he did was to ask forgiveness for the way he talked to me. He lived for God -- a sober life -- the appetite for liquor taken away. He stands on the street corners and testifies that the Lord forgave his sins and took away his appetite for drink. A bar-tender hearing him talk, said: "That beats the devil," and Brother B____ said: "Yes, it does every time." He was working with his employer, in whose Company he formerly took many a drink. Upon being pressed by him to go to the saloon and "have something," he refused and gave the reason why -- "the Lord has saved me," and, "I don’t want to drink." Being refused again and again, his employer grew angry, and finally said: "B____, I’ll knock the devil out of you." Instantly came the rejoinder: "You can’t do it; the Lord has three months the start of you." Grace has saved him. "The Lion of Judah has broken every chain." The drink appetite has gone forever. Providence is against the sinner. The Providence of God. You do not believe it? Ask God to take care of you in your sin while you are violating His law. You do not dare to. You know you have no claim to the care of God while rejecting Him, and engaging in sin. Some time ago a member of a leading church left home for a distant city in company with his wife. The trains were excursion trains, the fare reduced, and many were going. The last train that could be taken left on Sunday. The brother was warned by his pastor not to take it; that he ought not to travel on the Lord’s day; but for the sake of the reduced fare he went. When they were within a few miles of their destination the rails spread, the train was wrecked, and his wife was so badly injured she died in a few days. A regard for the law of God would have kept them off that Sunday train and have saved a life. Napoleon Bonaparte, that he might have an heir, divorced Josephine, his lawful wife, married the Austrian, had an heir, who died in his youth, and the grandson of Josephine came to the throne. The Providence of God was against the ungodly ambition of the Emperor. "The mills of the gods grind slowly, But they grind exceeding small, Tho’ with patience stands He waiting, With exactness grinds He all." There is no escape for the unrepentant sinner, when God gets after him. Yonder is a city devoted to destruction; everything in it was accursed, but the silver and gold that was to come into the Lord’s treasury. Following God’s plan, Israel soon captures it. Yonder I see a man looking at a Babylonish garment. That should be destroyed, for it is accursed. His eyes fall upon a wedge of gold. That is the Lord’s, and he should not covet what belongs to God. Stealthily he puts them under his garb, lies to his tent, and, unseen by any mortal eye, he buries them in the ground, stamps it well down with his feet, so that none could detect it, and congratulates himself he is safe, and the gold and the garment are his. But listen! Possession does not make you the owner of stolen goods. Israel goes to battle in a few days against Ai, a city so small they do not think it worth while to send up the hosts of Israel and make all the people labor; but three thousand men only go up, and they are defeated! Joshua lies on his face crying unto God, and hears this rebuke from Israel’s God: "Get up from off thy face. Why criest thou unto Me? Israel hath sinned, for they have taken of the accursed thing, and also have stolen from Me, and dissembled also, and they have put it even among their own stuff. Therefore the children of Israel could not stand before their enemies, because they were accursed, neither will I be with you any more except ye destroy the accursed thing from among you. Up, sanctify the people, and say, Sanctify yourself against tomorrow; for thus saith the Lord God of Israel, There’s an accursed thing in the midst of thee, O Israel; thou canst not stand before thine enemies until ye take the accursed thing from among you. In the morning therefore ye shall be brought according to your tribes, and it shall be that the tribe the Lord shall take shall come according to the families thereof, and the family which the Lord shall take shall come by households, and the household which the Lord shall take shall come man by man. Man by man! God is after THE MAN that took the accursed thing, and for him there is no escape. I see Israel early on the morrow called to march before Jehovah. The tribe of Gad marches by; the guilty man is not there. Naphtali marches by; they are all free. Dan, with its hosts of men of war, and thriving Ephraim, and populous Manasseh, all pass in review, and the guilty man is not there. But look! Away back there in yonder tribe I see a man with face like a whited wall; his knees smite each other, he can hardly keep step; conscience makes a coward of him. The head of Judah’s tribe comes in view, and as they march Joshua, divinely inspired, cries, "Halt!" And the thousands of Judah halt; the guilty man is in that tribe. "Forward, march," and onward Judah marches until the family of the Zarhites comes and now every other family in all Israel is free. Then out from this family the Lord takes the household of Zabdi, and every other household in that family is free. And man by man the Lord takes them until Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, is taken, and God says: "Joshua, there is your man," and from his lips comes the confession, "I have indeed sinned against the Lord God. I took a Babylonish garment, and shekels of silver and shekels of gold, and hid them in my tent." O my friend, there is no escape for the unrepentant, guilty sinner. "Hell," cried the wretched Altamont, "welcome, if thou canst hide me from the face of God." But death and Hell will give. up their inmates when God commands, and they will be ushered to the Judgment scene. Christ is the only hiding-place for repentant sinners. There is no other name given under Heaven among men whereby we can be saved. "Could my tears forever flow, Could my zeal no languor know, These for sin could not atone. Thou must save and Thou alone. In my hand no price I bring, Simply to the cross I cling." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 94: S. LYING TO GOD ======================================================================== Lying to God by George Kulp "I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost." (Romans 9:1.) A lie is an intentional violation of the truth, a false statement made knowingly and deliberately for the purposes of deception. It is anything which misleads, deceives or disappoints, anything false, hollow and deceptive. It is to profess to have something which we know we do not possess. Men lie to men, but in the last analysis all lying is unto God. Peter said to Ananias, "Why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost . . . thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God." In fact all sin is sin against God. There are powerless lives all around us; men and women are loud in their profession and yet whose lives in the home, in the community, in the church, are absolutely devoid of any spiritual power, and "there is a reason." We talk glibly about consecration, forgetting that consecration means abandonment unto the Holy Ghost of the whole life of the individual, and all that life means unto the one will of God for all time and all eternity. Martin Wells Knapp said, "Consecration means taking your hands off of that which belongs unto God." And when we consider that all we are and all we have and all our present and all the future is ours only because given us of God, we begin to see what it means to be abandoned unto Him. It means a glad acceptance of all the will of God for ourselves unto the farthest possibility. And now please remember that consecration and power go together. The very moment a soul abandons itself unto God, that very moment the Holy Ghost comes in as the Sanctifier. It is a principle in philosophy that nature abhors a vacuum, and so does grace. God is glad to give the Holy Ghost unto all them that obey Him." He says so in His Word, and all the theories men can invent to cover their lack of experience, cannot displace the truth. This leads to the inquiry, "Why, then, are there so many powerless lives all around us?" Listen to God speaking in the Word, "Ye shall receive power, the Holy Ghost coming upon you." Power to be a living witness for God. Not to shout, though that is good when He puts the shout in us; not to jump, though that is all right when we delight our selves in the Lord, for delighting means in the original, "jumping up and down in the Lord"; but living for God, in harmony with Him, walking with Him, keeping step with Him, in cheerful obedience to all His will, all the time and everywhere. Why, then, are there so many powerless lives? Men are lying to God! Charles G. Finney was the leading evangelist of the nineteenth century, wonderfully owned of God. He was engaged in a meeting at a certain place and church, and a Presbyterian Elder came across the country to the meeting to see him and get advice. This man had been seeking the baptism of the Holy Ghost, but thus far had failed to receive Him. Mr. Finney was being entertained in the home of an elder who had received the Spirit, and the visiting elder was also a guest in the same home. As they sat down at the table for dinner the visiting elder was so full of the desire, that he could not wait, but immediately asked the elder, his host, "How did you receive the Holy Ghost?" And back came the answer, "I stopped lying to God." At once the man rose from the table, went to his room and came back in five minutes, his face all aglow, and said, "I told God I had told Him my last lie, on my knees or off." Oh, that all churches, all men, all women, all who profess the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ would quit lying to God. All churches? Yes. Here is a present unto you this church, to be dedicated to the service and worship of Almighty God." Hear the minister: "We dedicate this church to His service for the reading of the Scriptures, the preaching of the Word of God, the administration of the sacraments, and for all other exercises of religious worship." Go along the street on which that church stands in a few weeks and read the Bulletin Board, "A chicken-pie social, Saturday night, twenty-five cents. All are welcome." That church is a lie before God and the world. It was dedicated to the worship of Almighty God, and here it is used for revellings and banquetings, for guzzling. Revival services held for ten days -- a kind of a periodical spasm, something religious must be done to wipe away the reproach, to make the world overlook the lie. An evangelist must be sent for; there is not enough spiritual life and power in the church to keep a weekly prayer meeting on fire for one night; a revival must be imported, and when the imported revival is over the imported evangelist will quite likely take away with him the imported revival. I have a firm conviction that any church that cannot have a revival without importing an evangelist, the whole outfit ought to go to the altar -- minister and congregation. In my pastorates I used to invite an evangelist to come and help me, because I wanted my people to hear other men, and I wanted to hear them myself, and God blessed in the whole business, and the pastor and people were all ready to back the evangelist up and did not first have to go to the altar to get ready for the revival. Praise the Lord! Men are lying to God. Dr. Keen once said: "Seventy-five per cent of the professing Christians that I am called upon to pray with I have to pray that they be made ready." He was speaking of those with whom he prayed on their death beds. Listen to this man pray. He is sick, very sick, or else he would not have prayed: "O Lord, spare me, raise me up from this bed of sickness and I will serve You all the days of my life." God spares that man’s life, raises him up, and he goes right on living the same old life. What is that man’s life? It is a living lie! A lie unto God. An old sea captain was sitting in a parlor, telling the friends how he had been shipwrecked, was floating on the sea for twenty-four hours, holding on to a floating mast, hoping some vessel might come that way and rescue him. His listeners were spellbound, but one of them had a question he wanted to ask, and so he said, "Captain, may I ask you a question?" "Certainly, sir." "Did you not promise the Lord if He would spare you that you would serve Him?" And quick as a flash came the answer, "None of your business, sir!" But the next day the Captain came around and said, "I beg your pardon, sir; I was very rude yesterday. You touched a sore spot. I did promise God when I was floating out there on the ocean, that I would serve Him -- and I have not done it." That captain’s life was a lie -- a living lie. Do you remember the promise you made the time you were sick? Have you kept the promise? Broken vows and promises made to God stand in the way of your peace and salvation. There are lies to be straightened out, and the time will come when you will remember them and tell God you lied, and ask Him to forgive you. I knew a man who was standing in his parlor, and in front of him was a little white casket, and in it a precious little one God had taken to Himself. By the side of the doctor stood an old friend, a man of God, and the doctor said, "Brother F____, I remember as I stand by this casket the vows I made unto God and did not keep." Oh, he thought of them now, and the lies oppressed his very soul. Well do so many sing, "Broken vows and disappointments thickly strewn along the way." Here is a meeting in progress and souls are at the altar; some are praying very earnestly. Hear this man pray, "O Lord, I give myself unto Thee, soul and body, for time and eternity. I say yes to all thy will. I abandon myself to Thee forever, in the name of Him who died for me, who shed His blood to wash away my sin." I am expecting something to happen. I am ready to shout over that fellow. But nothing happens -- no fire falls. What is the matter? He does not mean it. It is only lip deep. He did not pray from his heart and mean it. In other words. he is lying to God. There must be obedience before there can be faith. The Holy Ghost comes where He is really wanted, and comes suddenly: and where there is His presence, there is power and fire. Hear this man pray, "Lord, I am Thine, Thine forever, to be Thine alone." No fire, and he goes out and flirts with the world, runs with the world’s people, looks like the world. There is an old adage that comes to me just now, and it is this: "You cannot hunt with the hounds and run with the hare." I wish all professing folks would remember that. It would keep them out of lots of bad company. Here is a man and woman come to me to be ’married. I tell them to stand, the gentleman on the right of the lady, and I ask him, "Wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife? Wilt thou love, honor, cherish, and forsaking all others keep thee only unto her so long as you both do live?" And he says, "I will." I then ask the woman, "Wilt thou have this man to be thy wedded husband so long as you both do live? Wilt thou love, honor, cherish, and forsaking all others, keep thee only unto him so long as you do both live?" And she answers, ((I will." And then I pronounce them husband and wife in the name of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder. Now is it so that that man has no right to look at another woman, nor to flirt with another woman? That woman has no right to make eyes at another man, no right to flirt with another man? You say yes;. and so God in His Word says, "Come out from among them and be ye separate." A real consecrated life is a separated life. Old world, good-bye -- and good-bye forever. No Christian can flirt with the world, wear the world’s garb, and keep right with God. I once heard Caughey, the celebrated Irish evangelist, say, "You cannot let the devil be your tailor, nor your milliner, nor your dressmaker." My father and mother were converted in old Green Street Methodist Church, in Trenton, N. J., under the labors of Rev. Charles Pitman, and I have heard them say that at night, after the altar services were closed, one could go all along the altar and pick up the feathers and flowers and jewelry. I was in a meeting in the Holiness Church at Huntington, W. Va. A woman came to the altar with a hat on her head that had on it a big ostrich plume. She came again and again; no one said a word about such things, but one afternoon she put her hand up and pulled off the big feather. When the meeting closed, her daughter picked the feather up and said, "Mamma, here is your feather." The mother said, "I never want to see the thing again." Oh, the Holy Ghost is always faithful, and He works along the same old lines. Here is a church wedding. They have imported an organist of ability, the church is splendidly decorated, the bridesmaids are arrayed in fine linen and purple, the little relative is there carrying a lily in which is a ring. The bridal party walk up the aisle to the peals of the wedding march; the whole thing passes off beautifully, without a hitch. The couple go home, when the following conversation takes place: "John, did you hear how finely the organist played the wedding march?" And John says, "No." "Well, John, you noticed how beautifully the bridesmaids were dressed, did you not?" And he said, "No." "But, John, you must certainly have seen how sweetly the little girl looked as she walked up the aisle carrying the ring?" And again John said, "No." "Well, John, please tell me, what did you see, anyhow?" He said, "I did not see anybody but you." That is the ideal for the Christian who is abandoned unto the Holy Ghost, who has given himself to Jesus. The constant song of his heart is, Since my eyes were fixed on Jesus’, I’ve lost sight of all beside, So enchained my spirit’s vision, Gazing at the Crucified. Jesus and only Jesus can fill the vision of the sanctified soul. God help us all to get the vision. I was in a meeting in Indianapolis; there came a man to the altar, a local preacher; alongside of him was a preacher, also seeking, dressed like a fashion plate. He was seeking the blessing, but before he got very far he found out he needed to get saved, and God did save him, and Sister Sadie Camly of that city, had the privilege afterward of seeing him get the blessing as she prayed for him. But it is the other fellow I want you to see. How he did wriggle and squirm, and squirm and wriggle. He would lie on the altar, first in one position and then in another; and he would groan, and groan again and again, and I finally said to one of the brethren, "What is the matter with that fellow, anyhow?" And they said, "He has got a farm." Now a farm is a good thing to have, especially in these days of high cost of living; but the trouble was putting that farm on the altar. The most tender place about some men is their pocket. To pray, "O Lord, Thou canst have all that I have," and not to put the farm on, is lying to God. I think it is the height of meanness to look God in the face and say, "One tenth Thine and nine tenths mine." I have been in meetings where there was a silence as soon as I began to talk about tithing; but some people begin to get hilarious because they tithed, gave God one tenth, gave Him what was His already; and what if one withheld -- you were a robber and a thief. I hold that no one gives God a single cent who does not give more than a tenth. God says, the tithe is Mine. This is the Word and under the Dispensation of the Holy Ghost all we have is the Lord’s, and making a profession of having the Holy Ghost and yet withholding from God is lying to God. Here is a man who is dead to the world, and those are the kind of people I am looking for. But how can one be dead to the world and yet get over on to the world’s territory, enjoy the world’s people, follow the world’s fashions. Ungodly men and women are today setting the styles for the world, and professing Christians are changing their garbs at the behest of the devil’s fashion makers. Dead to self. That is the last thing to die. The first temptation was an appeal to self. "Thou shalt be as God." And the thing took, and man fell. Few people today are saying, "Blot me out that Israel may live," like that man back there on the mount with God. No wonder God took him up to talk face to face with Him. Let me alone, said the Almighty One, and I will blot Israel out and make of thee a great and mighty nation. That promise would have won a Caesar, or a Napoleon, or an Alexander at once; but this man said, "Blot me out and let Israel live." He was dead to self. No wonder the Holy Ghost records he "was the meekest man on the face of the earth." But here is the truth, the eternal fact -- Self Must Die -- or we will die, and that eternally. The Apostle said, "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. How did you pray last Watch night, do you remember? Was it anything like this: "O Lord, by Thy grace this shall be the best year of my life." "I will walk in all the light that God gives me." Have you done it? Does the Holy Ghost and your own conscience join with you in saying yes? Have you fellowship with Him? Are you cleansed from all sin? You are if you are walking in the light. By their fruits you shall know them. This applies to us as well as to others. If their is no fellowship, there is no cleansing, for the two go together: where there is one there is the other. Have you prayed in the closet, in the secret place, at the family altar? I have seen men who were in the church in good standing, but they had no family altar in their homes. Have you studied the Word of God? Jesus said search the Scriptures. The Holy Ghost said give attendance to reading. Have you? Are you in partnership with God? Do you put God first? The first sentence in the Bible is, "In the beginning God." The first table in the Decalogue puts God first: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." The first sentence in the Lord’s Prayer (commonly so called) is, "Our Father who art in heaven." The whole Book teaches God wants you in partnership with Himself. Write it out so big the whole world can see it, and then display it so three worlds will know it -- God Almighty, The Triune God and John Smith. Obedience to God is the keynote to victory. Emotion is good, but without obedience it is good for nothing. Obedience without emotion, without one single bit of feeling, is pleasing to God. To obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. The Holy Ghost is given unto them who obey Him. In closing, let me call your attention to a victor who would, under any circumstance, keep his vows made to God. You will find him mentioned in the roll call of heroes of whom the world was not worthy, but God found them of sufficient worth to put them in the hall of eternal fame, where angels and men could read their names and deeds, and feel good while doing so. I see him kicked out by his own flesh and blood because they said, "Jephthah, you are the son of a strange woman, and we do not want you around." And out he went. He gathers around him a band of valiant fellows, who perhaps like himself, had been kicked out, and he wins his way, acquires a name for himself and his band. After a while the Ammonites oppress the children of Israel, and they are unable to deliver themselves, and would you believe it, they turn to the man they had kicked out, and they fairly beg him to come and deliver them, but he reminds them that they kicked him out, hated him and expelled him from his father’s house; but still they begged, until at last he said, "If I come and the Lord delivers the children of Ammon into my hand, shall I be the head of Israel?" And they said, "Yes, you shall be the head." Then this man prayed and said, "O God, if thou wilt deliver the children of Ammon into my hands, if thou wilt give the victory to Israel, I will give thee the first thing that cometh forth of mine house." And he meant it. He spoke from his heart, and God knew it and gave him the victory. He went out and led the hosts of Israel to battle and he smote Ammon with a very great slaughter. He returns to his home, the folks come out to meet him with timbrels and dances, they sing praises unto the God of Israel, they mention the name of Jephthah, but look, look toward his home, who is that coming forth from his doors? It is his own daughter. Will he be true? Will he keep his vows. This man who lived more than a thousand years before Calvary? Hear him, "Alas my daughter, thou hast brought me very low and thou art one of them that trouble me, for I have opened my mouth unto the Lord, and I cannot go back." Have you opened your mouth to the Lord and gone back? I say the truth in Christ and lie not, the Holy Ghost and my own conscience being my witnesses; God requires truth in the inward parts and in the inward parts He will make us to know wisdom. Search me, O God and see if there be any wicked way in me. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 95: S. MASTERS OF CIRCUMSTANCES ======================================================================== Masters of Circumstances by George Kulp "Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass." Psalms 37:5. I believe that it is every man’s privilege to be bigger than circumstances. I pity the man who is so weak that he allows circumstances to defeat him. I believe that the man who is yoked up with God -- and any man may be thus yoked -- the devil, or hell, or the world, or circumstances, or all combined, cannot defeat that man. I am confident that God never appointed us to defeat. I believe we were chosen to be holy. To be holy means to be conqueror. "How can two walk together except they be agreed?" The man that walks with God has the best company heaven can afford, and hell trembles in his presence. I am somewhat of the faith of a little boy, who one time knelt at his grandma’s knees to pray, and after he went through the usual prayer that he had been taught, he kept on praying for quite a while; and when he rose from his knees his grandma said, "Child, what made you pray so long?" He said, "Well, you know, grandma, we sing, ’The devil trembles when he sees the weakest saint upon his knees,’ and I thought I would give him a good shaking." I believe that to be true. It is certainly Scriptural that a man who is yoked up with God is bound to be a conqueror -- master of circumstances, master of the situation, and at last when he passes through all the afflictions of this world, and enters through the pearly gates, the angels of heaven will delight to do him honor, because he has been made conqueror through the blood of Jesus Christ. Now, you can dip your brush in the darkest colors that hell can afford; you can paint the darkest picture that human agency can paint, or that a carnal mind or a man deeply agitated in sorrow can possibly paint, and when you have gotten through I want to dip my brush in the colors of Calvary and write over it all, "The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin." I believe that God can, that God will bless the man that walks with him, and He will make him conqueror. Listen to the poet: "I cannot do it alone, The waves run fast and high The fogs close chill around, The lights go out in the sky, But I know in the end we two shall win -- Jesus and I. "Coward and wayward and weak, I change with the changing sky, Today so strong and brave, Tomorrow too weak to fly. But He never gives in -- so we two shall win -- Jesus and I." That makes me master, that makes me conqueror, that assures me that all the way down to the end I shall be more than conqueror through Him that hath loved me. "Well," but you say, "Brother Kulp, are not we sometimes defeated?" Yes, but it is our own fault. Perhaps we did not call in reinforcements quick enough; perhaps we were rather slow in remembering the promises of God. But listen: If you were once defeated, why should you stay defeated? We are in the battle, we are human, we are subject to infirmities, the enemy goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour; but listen to this: There is no need of your trembling; when you are trembling it shows you need the anointed eyes. That old prophet went out one time and the enemies were gathered all around him, and there was a young man with him from the school of the prophets, who seeing the great crowd around him began trembling, and he shook like an aspen leaf. The old prophet said, "Lord, open his eyes!" And when his eyes were opened he saw what the old prophet had seen all the time -- the hilltops were crowded with horses and chariots of fire. He that is for us is greater than all that can be against us. Brother, sister, do not be discouraged! I am here this afternoon to tell you that faith unites a man with Omnipotence and makes him bigger than any circumstances that can be gathered around him. Now, I want to prove it. We will have a class-meeting with a lot of saints together like they used to have. When I was a boy I went to class-meeting with father and mother, and an old leader would come around among them, a man of Christian experience, and he would go to each one separately and say, "Brother, how is your soul today?" And that old saint would get up -- or a young saint, as it may be -- and tell how he was getting along in his soul. He did not talk about the years gone by; did not say God’s Word was true and he believed it, but he just held up one bunch of grapes after another, one bunch of pomegranates after another, and then declared he was in the land and had the fruits. Say, I like the old-fashioned Methodist class-meetings. I believe in class-meetings this afternoon, and we will have one. I am going to ask the mother of Moses to stand up and testify. Listen! This preacher has declared this afternoon that faith in God will make you master of circumstances. Women have been encouraged by your faith in the days gone by, and I want to ask you to give your testimony. "I was a mother and God gave me one of the finest boys that was ever given to a mother. The king of Egypt made a decree that all the children of Israel should be put to death, and I remembered the promise that had been made unto Abraham, and after prayer I made an ark and daubed it with the slime of the river, and then I launched that ark out on the bosom of the Nile." "What! did you put that ark with the child in it out on the river Nile?" "No, no; I launched it out on the promise of God; and there came a day when the daughter of the king came down to the river to bathe, and she saw the ark among the flags, and when she had opened it and saw the weeping baby, she had compassion on it. She decided to keep it and that she would have a Hebrew nurse for it; so they came and called me for that purpose. Thus, by the Providence of God my own baby was restored to me." Faith in God makes us master of circumstances. Well, do you want to hear from Moses? Moses, I want you to testify this afternoon. Will faith in God make a man master of circumstances? And I see Moses, the old lawgiver of Israel, the man who had all the learning of the Egyptians, the man who was reared in Pharaoh’s court -- I see him stand up there and I hear him testify, and he says: "There came a time when I had to choose between a throne and a race of slaves; I had to choose between being the son of Pharaoh’s daughter and casting in my lot with an army of slaves. I looked upon the backs of the slaves, and there were the scars of the task masters; but I remembered the promise that God had made, and I esteemed the reproaches of Christ greater riches than all the treasures of Egypt, and I cast in my lot with the people of God." Did it pay? "Let me tell you; forty days I was shut in with the Infinite and He let me sit in His presence and He talked to me, and at last there came a time when I should die, but I did not die the ordinary death; my soul said good-bye to the body and I went up to be with the redeemed." Hallelujah! Faith in God makes a man master of circumstances. Well, here is a man from Uz; an old white-bearded patriarch -- I want to hear from him. Job, Job, will faith in God make a man master of circumstances? Job can hardly talk for shouting. He gets up and begins to testify: "I have proven the thing to be true all in one day; a messenger came to me and said, ’The oxen were plowing, and the Sabeans fell upon them and took them away; yea, they have slain all the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped to tell thee.’ He had not gotten through speaking when another messenger came and said, ’The fire of God is fallen from heaven, and hath burned up the sheep, and the servants, and consumed them; and I only am escaped to tell thee.’ Before he had finished speaking another messenger came and said, ’The Chaldeans made out three bands, and fell upon the camels, and have carried them away, yea, and slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped to tell thee.’ While he was still speaking there came another and said, ’Thy sons and thy daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house: And, behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped to tell thee’" But, Job, I want to ask you: Does faith in God make a man master of circumstances? What did you do that day? "I lifted my hands and my eyes to heaven and I said, ’Naked came I out of my mother’ s womb, and naked shall I return thither: The Lord gave and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’" Oh, brother, faith in God makes a man master of circumstances! And that is not all. Here is a man I think a great deal of and I want to get him in this class-meeting. Daniel, I want to ask you, will faith in God make a man master of circumstances? And old Daniel gets up and says, "I was in the land of captivity; I was far away from home, my people had hung their harps on the willows, and we very seldom heard the song of rejoicing. When we exhorted them to sing they would say, ’How can I sing the songs of God in this land of captivity?’ Then my enemies went and had an edict passed and said that if a man should pray to the God of heaven he should be cast into the lions’ den; and I kept my windows up and prayed three times a day, and they took me and cast me into the lions’ den, and there I slept all night, but the king passed the night without sleep, and came to the mouth of the lion’s den very early the next morning and said, ’O Daniel, servant of the living God, is thy God whom thou servest continually, able to deliver thee from the lions?’ And I shouted, ’My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions’ mouths, that they have not hurt me.’" Hallelujah! Faith in God makes a man master of circumstances. Say, let us get this little fellow up. He has sore eyes; nothing very attractive about this fellow, but every time he testifies the saints catch fire. Oh, I want you to look at him! Paul, I have made this proposition to this congregation, that faith in God will make a man master of the situation. And I see Paul, who has been many years on the way, has been shipwrecked five times, has had forty stripes save one laid on him, and I want you to be very still now, while Paul testifies. Paul gets up and says: "Forty men took an oath that they would not eat nor drink until they had taken my life -- and, hallelujah! I do not know where they are, but I am here! And I was out on an old ship, and for days the sun and stars and moon were not seen, and every sail was gone, and the sailors had lost all heart and were wanting to put the prisoners to death; and when everything was the darkest I threw my arms around the old mast and said, ’I believe God.’ " Oh, hallelujah! When everything is dark, faith says, "I will make you master of circumstances." Isaac Watts, thou poet of Methodism, will faith in God make a man master of circumstances? Isaac is accustomed to giving his testimony in song: "Thy saints in all this glorious war Shall conquer though they die They see the triumph from afar, By faith they bring it nigh." Charles Wesley also sings his testimony: "Thou, oh Christ art all I want; More than all in Thee I find." Hallelujah! "More than all in thee I find." I know of a preacher who has been in Africa the greater part of his life. Alongside of him has been an educated woman, his wife. They both came out of the finest circles of Christian society. When he was home for a short time someone asked him concerning his going back to Africa, and he said, "Wife and I are going back to our black friends; we are going so far into the interior that we will never see a white face again. We are going to live and die not only for Africa but in Africa, and we are doing ’t for Jesus’ sake." Faith in God made that man master of circumstances. I was at the Springfield camp in Ohio, and on missionary day there was a man there that was asked to talk, and I looked at that fellow and I thought to myself, "Are they going to put that fellow up to talk?" He did not look as though he knew an adverb from a shad, but they put him up and he began to talk, and I wish you had heard him. It was not five minutes until he was rubbing his eyes and was getting blessed, and had everybody else blessed. That fellow came from India and every day on his way he wrote a letter, and after he got here he mailed them all; and in the last letter he wrote he said to his wife, "I have something to tell you that will make your heart laugh: when I come back to India I come back not only to live in India, but to die in India." We can lose sight of big automobiles, big dinners, big churches, friends and hosts of friends, when Jesus Christ fills our vision. Oh, brother, I pity the man whose vision can be filled by a man. I pity the man who cannot see anything else but the Apostolic Holiness Church; I pity the man that cannot see anything else but the Methodist, the Baptist, or the Presbyterian Church. Now, wait; do not misunderstand me. I believe everybody ought to belong to a church and stand by it; but there never was a church that was big enough to fill the vision of a man who has once had a glimpse of Jesus -- I do not believe in glimpses of Him either. An old man who was dying was asked, "Do you get a glimpse of Jesus?" He said, "Away with glimpses! For forty years I have had a full look!" Glory be to God! Glad I have a full look, brother. Oh, glory be to heaven’s King! I want to thank God for my experience this afternoon. Jesus Christ satisfies me abundantly, abundantly, abundantly! Glory be to God forever! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Satisfied in Jesus, and with Jesus, and expect to be satisfied eternally! Expect to keep on growing! My soul is bigger today than it ever was, and I expect to keep on growing through the eternal ages. God is going to give me an increased capacity that will help adapt me. Glory be to God! I cannot tell you what there is before me, but by the grace of God I am going every step of the way to find out. God said to the people of Israel before they got to Canaan, "I will give you a land that flows with milk and honey; I will give you houses you did not build, and I will give you wells you did not dig," and glory be to heaven’s King, I am headed for the land where there is a mansion I did not build, where there is a fountain I did not strike. I am going, I am going to take possession! Hallelujah! I am glad I am in the class-meeting. Hallelujah! Glory be to our God! Let all the people say, Amen! Well, now, wait a moment! Somebody says, "Brother Kulp, that is the experience I want." Well, my text tells you how to get it. "Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass." "Well," somebody says, "I have been to the altar, and I have committed and did not get anything." Brother, you did not commit, and I want to say to you on the line of thought that our dear brother had this morning, you cannot commit without you do certain things before. What are they? First, you have to admit. Admit what? "Lord, I am a sinner -- I am unworthy; Lord, I am the vilest of the vile; Lord, if I had my deserts I would go to hell. I am a sinner, I have sinned against light, I have sinned against knowledge, I have crucified the Son of God." You have to admit. That is the first thing. Admit. Now, follow me, what is the next thing? Submit. "Oh, I do not want to submit." I will tell you that is the trouble with us; we are too stiff, we are too proud, we do not like to submit ourselves unto God. You submit yourself to man. Listen! I buy a railroad ticket, I take that piece of pasteboard, I walk into a car, and I sit down and submit myself to the conductor and the brakeman and the engineer, and the foreman. I submit myself. I do not run the train; I do not try to. The great trouble with people now-a-days is that there are so many who are trying to run the train. I came from Pilot Point, Texas, to Texarkana, and when I got on the train I said to the conductor, "I want to get the Cotton Belt for Memphis." He took my ticket and punched it and said, "All you have to do is to sit still and we will do the rest." And all I have to do now is to commit my way unto the Lord and He will do the rest. I have committed myself and I am riding. Hallelujah! I am riding! A fellow was one time walking on a railroad track, and a station man came along and said, "You have no right to walk on this track." He said, "I have," and he pulled out a railroad ticket. The man said to him, "You are a fool; that is not a ticket to walk -- that is a ticket to ride." A great many people do not seem to understand we have a ticket to ride. No, we will not submit; we want to boss. I want to say this, that whenever a man gets the baptism of the Holy Ghost all the desire to boss is taken out of him. There is a man I respect very highly. My shoes needed blacking. He said, "I will black them for you." I said, "I will black my own shoes." "No, I will black them; I want to get a blessing." Well, you can have your choice, washing the saints feet or blacking their shoes -- I do not care which. Man has to admit, then submit, and then what? Commit. If you have admitted and submitted, then commit. What does that mean? Abandon yourself to God. We have some Holiness people that tell you that consecration is not a condition of sanctification, but I stand here to say it is. They say, "Oh, you folks are consecrating over the old man!" But, God bless you, if anything will put the old man to death and mortify him, it is when you abandon yourself to the Holy Ghost. I declare unto you I have no will of my own now-a-days; I have handed it over to God, and have told Him His will is mine, and I tell yon this afternoon that my experience is, that all I have to know is, what God wants me to do, and I will do it. Commit yourself, abandon yourself unto God. Then what, after you admit, submit and commit? Then God will remit. Did you ever get any remittances? One time there was an old lady bowing in prayer, saying, "I have not a bite of bread nor a bite of meat in the house, but Lord, I am trusting you." And there were some wicked boys heard her and went to the store and got some bread and meat and threw it into the house, and the old lady said, "Oh, God, I thank you for sending me some bread and meat." The boys came in and said, "Oh, Auntie, you need not thank God for that; we are the ones who brought it." "Oh," she said, "God sent it, but the devil brought it." A remittance from heaven. What is our remittance? First, pardon. Has it come this afternoon? Second, purity. I want to ask you, have you received the Holy Ghost? Did you admit, submit, commit and get the remittance? Is this text true? "Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in Him; and He shall bring it to pass?" ======================================================================== CHAPTER 96: S. PRACTICAL REGENERATION ======================================================================== Practical Regeneration by George Kulp "He that committeth sin is of the devil. Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin" (1 John 3:8-9). This text is the definition of a real, sky-blue Gospel conversion. It does not say if you are sanctified you will not commit sin, but if you are really and truly converted you have gone out of the sinning business. There are two terms used in the Gospels by our Lord Himself, and they are synonymous; that is, you can use either of them in the place of the other in a sentence and you will not destroy the sense. In Matthew, the 18th chapter, you will find that Jesus says, "Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter the kingdom of heaven." And in the third chapter of John, he says, "Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God." We are told if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. A person must be born again, converted, become a new creature in Christ Jesus, before he can be a candidate for Pentecost. In other words, there must be a birth before there can be a baptism -- one must become a child before he can be an heir. We cannot live in the Spirit unless we are born of the Spirit. They that are after the Spirit, mind the things of the Spirit. These truths, it seems to me, are axiomatic -- so self-evident they require no argument. One of these texts gives us the signs, the unmistakable fruits of the fact we are born again. Read it -- read them both. Doth not commit sin. He that committeth sin is of the devil. The Book teaches everywhere that whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. To whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are. It is not what people say, nor whether we belong to the church; it is, What does God’s Word say? Not what the preacher thinks of us, but what does the Spirit testify to. When we are really converted the old disposition is gone, the old habits are gone, the old language is gone; we are new creatures, gone out of the sinning business, not only when you are converted, but you had to get out before God would save you. No one can pray in faith who holds on to some sin. Do not tell me that you sin every day. God says he that is converted doth not commit sin. And he that committeth sin is of the devil. As many as are led by the Spirit of God they are the sons of God. If any man has not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His. No one can get located so easily if in any doubt about their relation to Him. Just sit down all alone with your Bible, and then hear what God has to say to you through the Word. Any impression that does not agree with the Word of God is of the devil. Any emotion that does not have the approval of the Word is not of God. You cannot go by your emotions. The Spirit and the Word agree. You never knew of a sinning Christian. I never saw one yet. The very moment a man sins he becomes a sinner. and needs to repent and fly at once to the blood. Repenting is the work of a man who has sinned. Did you ever know an honest thief? Did you ever see a sober drunkard? Did you ever know a truthful liar? You can find all three as soon as you can find a sinning Christian. He that is born of God doth not commit sin. Whosoever committeth sin is of the devil. You do not like this kind of preaching? Of course you do not, but that does not alter the truth, and I did not make this truth. It was God’s own truth before you and I were born, and what is true once is always true. Conversion is a wonderful change. Read the Word and see what the Holy Ghost has to say about it. It is a passing from death to life; it is a new creature; it is passing from darkness to light; it is being taken out of the pit and having one’s feet on the Rock; it is having the heart of flesh instead of a heart of stone; it is being risen with Christ. It is such a wonderful change that everybody knows when and where it took place. I used to preach in my earlier ministry, "If you do not know the very time and the very spot when and where you were converted, then you never were converted. One day a lady and my wife and I were riding along the road when she said, "Brother Kulp, you do annoy me by your preaching." And I asked her, "How do I annoy you?" She said, "You preach that if you do not know when and where you were converted, you never were converted, and I do not know a time that I did not love Jesus." I had no reason to doubt her word. She lived a consistent Christian life and died in the faith; but I still insist upon it, that nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine out every million know when and where they were converted. I can take the devil to the very spot and know the very minute when God came to my soul; and all my sins were forgiven and I had the witness of the Spirit that I was converted, born again, became a new creature in Christ Jesus. I have never doubted it. "He doth not commit sin. Well, let us ask, What is Sin? And you answer, "Any transgression of the law of God." Yes, that is Bible and we all agree to that, and any transgression of the law of God requires the blood. Sins of ignorance require the blood. But are we willing now to take all the Scripture definitions of sin? Let us examine, for we want to be right. Here is one, "Whatsoever is not of faith IS SIN." Is that right? Of course it is right. It has the stamp and seal of the Holy Ghost. Then, it is wrong for me to do a thing of which I have any doubt. In other words, doubtful things are wrong -- are sinful. "Whosoever doubteth is condemned if he eat" will apply all the way along. I knew an old man who came to the altar, who had for years been making a profession, and he was a good man, living in a community where chewing tobacco among the members of the church was nearly as common as eating bread; and I knew if I could get a doubt in that man’s mind in regard to tobacco, then it would be a sin for him to use it, and he would give it up. I told him it was "filthiness of the flesh," and all filthiness would have to be abandoned. He saw it and gave it up; for to him it was sin, the entrance of the Word gave light. "He that hath respect of persons committeth sin." God says so. I have thought this is for preachers especially. I have been told by members of the church where I have been in meetings, "If you could only get that man he would be such an addition t6 the church." What did they mean? Simply this -- he had money, had influence and position in society. God cares no more for a millionaire than a tramp. All souls are precious in His sight. We dare not be respecters of persons. God says it is sin. I visited a dying woman one time, and as she told me her story, I pitied her from the bottom of my heart. She was one of the neglected ones. She told me, "Once I belonged to church. I lived in a little log house; the pastor went right by my house again and again, and went to the big house of Mr. , over on the hill. I was a poor woman, and I rebelled so against that treatment, I backslid." She had been neglected. That pastor -- no, he was not a pastor, for a real pastor would not have done it -- was a respecter of persons, and sinned. God’s Word for it. He that is born of God -- that is, he that is converted -- is a partaker of the Divine nature. Godly means like God. Partaker of the Divine nature means godly. Not, he that is sanctified, but he that is born of God, partakes of the Spirit of God. If any man has not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His. I was visiting once with my wife, and called on a woman who, while in poverty knew God as very few know Him. When we entered she was eating dry bread and drinking water. I revolted at the sight and asked for permission to go and get her something. She was living in a room, all alone; had two boys well able to take care of her, but they had women of fashion for their wives, and not one of the wives wanted this old saint around. She said to me when I wanted to go and get something for her: "Oh, this is all I need; I have plenty." I sat there with my wife talking to her and the sentences that fell from her lips were like strings of pearls. We were talking about being like Jesus. My wife sat there weeping and said to this old saint, "I often wish I were more like Him." And then came the reply which I have told often to the comfort of many saints: "Child, if there is any resemblance, it shows we are in the family." Thank God for that. Partakers of the Divine nature. Sons and daughters of God. "He that buildeth the things which once he destroyed transgresseth the law." Well, then. he sins, for all transgression of the law is sin. It means, if I ever quit a thing because it was morally wrong, then afterward went back to it, then I sinned. Is that right? Seems to me that God says so in this Word. Let us stick to the old Book. I was preaching down in Kentucky, in a grove, where there are a number of professors of holiness who raise tobacco, and I had not been there long before God gave me a message that uncovered the sin and stirred these native tobacco users and growers. One man under deep conviction threw away his pipe and tobacco, and some of the Saints! came to him and asked him, "Did you throw that away because Kulp told you to, or did God?" And soon he went back to his vomit, and sinned. I was at a meeting in Indiana, and there was a man at the altar who was much troubled; he was raising tobacco on shares with another man, and he came to me and asked me what he should do. I told him he could keep his word with the other man, but must get out of the business forever. Some of this same crowd who were there went to him and said, "We have raised tobacco all our lives and it never hurt us." And they hindered that man in his quest after God. God is love, and every one that loveth is born of God. If you are godly, you will love. and love the unlovely, for that is what He does. We cannot carry enmity in our hearts against anyone and keep right with God. We can love people we do not like. How can we? Let me tell you. We like people who are congenial. We love their company; we make friends of them; we esteem them highly. There are other folks who are not congenial. We do not like them, but we must love them and we do. They have souls; Jesus died for them. Perhaps you are not congenial to them, and they may not like you. But the Spirit of Jesus will not allow us to have anything in our hearts against them. I was at a prayer meeting one night where there was a woman who had been seeking God for two years, and she was willing to do anything that He asked -- but one -- and that was, forgive the man who killed her brother. He was insane, and became violently so. They had to send for officers to take him to the Insane Asylum. When they came one of them was afraid of him, and as he was violent, he drew his revolver and shot him, and killed him. Every time that woman came to the altar God would ask her, "Will you forgive the man who killed your brother?" And every time in her heart she said "No," and went away unsaved. But this night, a rainy night -- oh, it pays to go to meeting on rainy nights -- God again asked her, "Will you forgive the man who killed your brother?" And she said, "O God, as I hope for forgiveness from Thee, I do now forgive the man who killed my brother." And she came through. I was preaching at a certain church and saw in the meeting a man who was under deep conviction. I went to him and urged him to be a Christian. He looked at me and said, "Must I forgive everybody in order to be a Christian?" And I said, "Yes, sir." "Then," said he, "I will never be one." I could sympathize with that man, if I dared. His mother was left a widow with small children, and in the hour of midnight a man got into the house and outraged that mother, and now this man, a stalwart-looking fellow, declared, "I will never be a Christian if I must forgive that fellow." Yet the Word tells us Jesus prayed, "Father forgive them," and Stephen prayed, "Lay not this sin to their charge." If we forgive not men their trespasses, neither will our heavenly Father forgive us our trespasses. Forgive as we hope to be forgiven. God is love, and the Book declares, "Every one that loveth is born of God." When a soul is really converted it wants to do something for them who have despitefully used it. Major Baker, of Boston, told me one day that there was a certain man whom he positively did not like. But the next day after he met God he went down the street and he saw this man standing by the side of the curb alongside of a mule, and said he, "My heart so overflowed with love to that man that I actually loved the mule alongside of him." It was said of Fenelon, "If you want to get him to pray for you, just abuse him and he will be sure to do it." No wonder that a noted sinner came from his home saying, "If I stayed a half-hour longer with Fenelon I should be a Christian in spite of myself." "Whosoever is born of God overcometh the world." Conversion makes one an overcomer. I know a little woman who had a hard time getting through to God. She was a "dresser," liked feathers and flowers and jewelry, and she was a long time saying yes to God. She was at the altar -- you see I believe in an altar, an old-fashioned mourners’ bench-and came night after night; but one night she said "Yes" to God -- a yes that covered all the things that He asked for. She stripped for the race. She took off her rings, her ribbons, all her fashions, and in twenty-four hours after she was converted the Lord sanctified her in five minutes. She said she had so much to do to get converted that she had no trouble getting sanctified. She was an overcomer from the beginning. I was in the habit of going to church with my parents when I was a boy, and I always sat with my father. I was not allowed to sit in the back part of the church and misbehave, while my father prayed and sang and shouted up front. They were in a protracted meeting and it was protracted through several weeks, souls being at the altar and praying through. But there was one woman who came night after night, and never seemed to get anywhere. I was always walking with my parents when I went home after the meeting was out at night, and they would stop at the various corners and talk awhile, and say good-bye, and so one night they were discussing this woman who did not get through, and finally one old saint, Aunt Kitty Crumley, said, "Well, she will get through when she takes off that big cameo breastpin." Of course I was all ears just then, and when I went to church after that I was "all eyes." I wanted to see her "get through," and as I did not know what getting through meant, I was quite certain I would learn when she took off the breastpin, for I could see and know that. So I watched her every night, and one night up went her hands and off came the pin, and she went through. Oh, yes, there is something in it. He that is converted overcometh the world. All its fashions, all its customs, all its laws, and are free from sin. Sometime ago a beautiful young lady came to me dressed in the garb that becometh holiness and the house of God, and said, "I want to give you this," and she handed me a string of real pearls -- not the Woolworth kind, but the real things. I gave them to the Bible School to be sold for the Rescue work, or Missions -- just as the Lord led. All unrighteousness is sin. Is this so? God says so in the Word. Well, now, take this truth, will you. It is a most unrighteous thing to owe a man a dollar when you have a dollar in your pocket with which you might pay him. That dollar is not yours. There has been reproach brought on the church because some folks are so loose about paying their debts. I was one time enlarging a church, and asking folks for money. I went to the grocer, supposing that as the church was so near his property that he would consider the improvement and give me a donation. When I asked him he said, "Yes, I will give you the bills I have against the members." To him who knoweth to do good, pay his debts, and doeth it not, to him it is sin. If you are not able to pay, go see your creditor -- do not dodge around the corner; tell him you are embarrassed, and that you will pay as soon as you have an opportunity. If you want people to believe in you, you must show them the goods. By their fruits ye shall know them. John Finch, of Nebraska, said one time, "Every neighborhood ought to have a revival once a year for the sake of the storekeepers." I was in a meeting a few weeks ago and a man and wife agreed to sell their home, and then go back to the old community where they once lived, and pay up all they owed. There will be a surprise when that saved couple go around to see the old creditors and shout while they pay up the old bills. I am believing the merchants will be willing to invest in that kind of an experience, and will believe in the salvation of a man who sells his home that he may pay his old debts. That man and wife can sing now, "It is real, yes, it is real, thank God, I know it is real." A man came to me sometime ago and holding tip a piece of paper he said, "Do you see that?" Of course I saw it, and asked what it was. And he said, "That is a receipt from the Grand Trunk R. R. I rode on the bumpers sometime before I was converted, and the thing troubled me so I wrote to the R. R. Co., and asked them what the fare was from Battle Creek to South Bend. And when I found out I wrote them, sent them the money and told them of the circumstance. They thanked me and sent this receipt." I am thinking just now that the R. R. Cos. would all be glad for a revival all over the land. Real righteousness settles up whenever it can, and all unrighteousness is sin. He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself. He knows whom he hath believed, and knows he is saved from sin. Read it carefully. He was manifested to take away our sins. He shall be called Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins. Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world. If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. By the grace of God Jesus Christ tasted death for every man. The grace of God which bringeth salvation hath appeared unto all men, teaching us that denying all ungodliness, we should live soberly, righteously and godly, in this present world, looking for the gracious appearing of the great God, our Savior Jesus Christ, who loved us and gave Himself for us that He might purify unto Himself a peculiar people. Get it! Did you? In this present world and now, He wants some folks who will illustrate by godly living His power to save unto the uttermost. A man who was seeking earnestly said to a worker, "Give me a promise that I may grasp it." One was quoted and he said, "That is what I want." He believed it and God saved him for Jesus’ sake. Believe it, and live it, and you have hastened the coming of our Lord. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 97: S. PROVISION FOR ROUGH ROADS ======================================================================== Provision For Rough Roads "Thy shoes shall be iron and brass, and as thy days so shall thy strength be." Deuteronomy 33:25 The wise man tells us in Ecclesiastes, "Say not thou what is the cause that the former days were better than these, for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this." We are living in the best days the world ever saw, -- "in an age on ages telling; to be living is sublime." Pisgah’s mountain top was a good place for observation, but pile Hermon on Tabor, and these on our Rockies, and above all these, pile on the Alps, surmount them all with Pisgah, then let the vision be enlarged by divine power, and man will see much further than Pisgah only. God has been piling up the ages for our benefit, and every age, enriched by experience, comes to us with its lessons, day unto day uttering speech, and night unto night shewing knowledge. We stand on higher ground today than any preceding generation. I respect Dr. Arnold of Rugby, who, when he entered his classrooms, always took off his hat to the boys, recognizing the fact that among those boys were the men of the future, who would lift the world nearer to God, and bring out of their manhood such possibilities as the world had never seen, because they were the product not of a generation, but of 6,000 years. This is the best age of all the world. We have in us the sum of all the lives and consciousness of all who preceded us, and our own besides. We are trees which through the roots drink in the virtue of all the soil around us, soil that has been enriched by the buried generation of trees and leaves and flowers, and because of the richness of all the past, which in the goodness of the King of Ages has come to us, because of the grace of God, never so manifest as today, we should glorify Him more than all the generations gone by. Some Methodists says, "Oh, for days like the days of Wesley and Asbury! We will never see the like again." Some Presbyterians say, "Oh, for men like Calvin and Knox and Witherspoon. We will never see such men again." They remind me of the enfeebled, enervated aristocrats of the old world, and their shoddy imitations in this one, who are always pointing to the ruins of old castles, old walls built by the Romans, and saying, "They have no ruins in America." We have a living present, we have boundless possibilities, we have all the follies of the past to warn us, and make us wiser. We have all the wisdom of the past to teach us, and make us more efficient for God. We have all the examples of good men in the past to spur us onward, and inspire greater faith in His Word. We have the Church Triumphant -- never so glorious as today, beckoning us onward, and we know more of God, and more of His truth than ever before. When Kosciusko was going into action for the rights of the oppressed, he cried, "Forwarts, brothers, forwarts," and so today instead of living in the past, and looking at past victories won for God, let us forward, brothers, forward for God and win new victories. During a battle in the Southwest in the late Rebellion, a German officer rode up to Grant and, saluting, said, "General, we captured a battery of the enemy," and Grant said, "All right," and then he was silent. But the officer expected some commendation, and again said, "General, we have captured a rebel battery. What shall we do?" And Grant quietly turned to him and said, "Take another." Victory for God, and another victory, and still another. This is the age when victory is in the very air, and every child of God must go forward. It is said by some that the Church is stronger today, never greater numbers within it, never more aggressive, never in better spirits, or more courageous, -- but there is so much opposition. The pen Of the writer, the power of the press, and the platform are much used to disseminate evil. That is so, but the same powers) multiplied a thousand times, are used by the Church of the living God for spreading the truth. The enemy of souls is busy today, and rampant, I think, because he knows his time is short. The faithful souls that live for God find opposition today, and many of the children of God, because of the greed and selfishness, find themselves oppressed. They look out over the future and they see rough roads ahead, and they know not what awaits them. If they could only always be in the prayer-meeting, or in the class-meeting, or in the Church with the brethren, then they believe they could get along, but, brethren, sisters, if that tried, discouraged one is here, I want to say to you, this age and these surroundings today ought to lift you up nearer to God. All the experiences of God’s children in the past encourages you today. The Word of God has been tried for nearly 6,000 years, and proven to be true, and the child of God knows today that provision has been made for every trial that may come, and he will not have a single experience in the line of duty but that experience will bring with it a blessing. William Cowper drew not on his imagination, but on the history of God’s dealings with His children in the past, when he wrote: His purposes will ripen fast, Unfolding every hour. The bud may have a bitter taste, But sweet will be the flower. Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take, The clouds ye so much dread, Are big with mercy and will break, In blessings on your head. The promise today to every believer is, "Thy shoes shall be iron and brass." Shall be, brother. When you get to the rough road, when your tender feet would be lacerated and would bleed, when the thorns would hinder your progress, and prevent your moving, then, just when you need them, "thy shoes shall be iron and brass," and rough roads shall be surmounted, and thorns will be trodden under foot, and your progress shall not be stopped. Iron shoes for rough roads, and brass shoes for rough roads, provision [or every trial that may come, and when it comes. Three martyrs were awaiting the time of execution during the reign of bloody Mary. To increase their agony they were told they were to be burnt on certain days, one on each. The first day came and one was taken to the stake. The second day came and another one was taken. The remaining one was fearful, and as he looked forward to the coming day he exclaimed, "I can’t burn, I can’t burn," but when they came to lead him out to the stake he shouted exultantly, "I can burn, I can burn," and went to Heaven in a chariot of fire. Provision for needs, for every need, when the need comes. Did you ever consider the wonderful adaptation there is in nature? Mere is a tree growing on the mountain side. Its strong roots dive deep down into the earth, penetrating the crevices of the soil, and grasping the rocks, and there it stands, defying all the blasts of winter. Here is the oak standing alone in the field, its roots strike deep into mother earth, and it is a match for the tempest. But now go into the pine forest, you will find the roots of the pine are spread out near the surface because it is less exposed, and it is shielded by the social life of the forest. Many tropical trees in South American forests are held in place by climbing plants which bind trees together like the rigging of a ship, and there the deep root is not needed. So there is adaptation in God’s spiritual Kingdom. There is provision made for temptations and trials, for everything and anything that may come, -- cloudy days, rough roads, dark nights, temptations, trials, sickness, sorrow, death, but, brother, there is no promise of provision for needs while the needs are in the future. God does not give you all your inheritance at once, but He gives you a checkbook, and He says to you "draw on me, draw whenever you need, draw in temptation, times of trial, need, -- draw on the fulness of the riches of grace in Christ Jesus." Some people, aye, some believers, are forever fretting and they are good people, but they do not trust their Father, they forget the promise. they wonder if they could endure bereavement. They wonder if they would have grace enough to love God if they lost all their property. They ask themselves. "Could I meet death calmly?" You do not want grace for bereavement, or for poverty, or for death, until it comes. I know 2 man, who, while he had a large farm in the state of New Jersey, became insane brooding for fear he would one day be poor, and he went to the insane asylum. If he had only trusted God’s Word, and left the future to God, he need not have brooded one single instant, or had any trouble. I know a lady who has been in bed for years, and one time she wanted a housekeeper and she fretted and worried, and wrote letters, and remembering her husband had been a Mason while living, she even wrote to the Masons asking them to get her a housekeeper, just such an one as she needed. She was very particular. And they all failed to get one for her. One evening while she was fretting, there came to her the thought, "There, I never asked my Father to get me a housekeeper, how thoughtless I am," and then she wept to think she had been so foolish, and she prayed with tears of penitence in her eyes, and asked God to forgive her for being so thoughtless, and then she said, "Father, pick out a housekeeper for me, just the one I ought to have, and if I don’t think she is the right one, Father, make me take her anyhow; I leave it all with thee." The next morning when the son of her washerwoman brought the washing, she said to him, "Tell your mother I want to see her," and that evening the boy’s mother came around and she told her of some things she had she would like to give her, but the dear woman said, "I do not need them. I get along nicely, my boy and I give them to some one that needs them." And they went to talking about something else, and to talking about housekeepers, and all at once the woman said, "Why, -- why couldn’t I take care of you?" You see the Father was already after a housekeeper for her, and had sent her one, but she did not see the Father’s answer, and said, "But you have a boy," and then she also found out that the boy had a dog, and she did not want a dog, but she had prayed, "Father, if I don’t think she is the right one, make me take her," and the Lord was answering, and the woman talked to her, and said she knew she could take care of her, and finally they left it for over night, the decision to be made in the morning, and the good sister did not dare to touch it. She had left it with God, and she said, "If this is the Father’s housekeeper, it must be all right," and the next morning, the Father’s housekeeper, the washerwoman, came, and said, "I can come," and she moved in, and the boy moved in, and the dog came, and that woman proved indeed to be the "Father’s housekeeper," and served up the nicest meals, so clean and so dainty, and the boy is a little gentleman, and even the dog is a treasure, don’t bark once too often, only just when he ought to, and one day, when writing to a lady friend, our sister said, "Our dog is just a treasure." The Masons failed, and the ministers failed, and friends all failed to get her a housekeeper, but when she trusted the Father, He sent her not only a housekeeper, but He gave more than she asked, a good boy and a dog that was a treasure. Brass shoes just in time. Brother, when Israel came to march, there were bitter waters there, and oh, how Israel murmured, but right beside those bitter waters there was a tree growing. but Israel did not know it, -- a tree that would sweeten those bitter waters, and God told Moses about it, and he cut down the tree, put it in the waters and sweetened them, -- that tree was at the right place, and God shewed them in the right time. Israel marched through the wilderness, there were no harvests in the wilderness, no cattle in the wilderness, and Israel began to murmur and cried out against God, and wanted to know "if God had brought them into the wilderness to die; were there no graves in Egypt?" And just then, when all else had failed, God forgiving them their lack of faith, sent them manna, bread from Heaven, sent it for forty years, always enough, never too much, provision for their needs, at just the right time. Yonder is the God-Man in the Garden. The sins of the world are pressing Him down, the cup of bitterness is being pressed to His lips, and He cries out, "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me, yet not as I will, but Thy will be done." And He sweats great drops of blood, so intense is His agony, but now in His hour of sorrow the angels come trooping down, even to Gethsemane, and minister unto Him. Help in the very hour of need. And you shall have it too "Thy shoes shall be iron and brass." You do not know what you will do when the dark hours come? Well, God knows what to do. Trust His Word. Passengers on ocean vessels sometimes see the ocean as on fire, and the light is caused by millions of little animals that are phosphorescent. One time there was a shipwreck, and the life boat was crowded. It required great skill on the part of the seaman to keep the boat just so it would surmount the great waves as they came, and the passengers all wondered and worried about what they would do when the darkness came, but lo, when night came, and they were yet quite a distance from shore, the waters all around them were bright and the waves phosphorescent light to guide them in the hours of night, provision for all their need. There is light for you. God says so. At even time it shall be light. An old painter in water colors was dying, aged ninety-one. He said to them around him, "Bring me my masterpiece, I want to see it," and they brought it. It was a shipwreck. He looked at it a good while and then said, "Bring me my pencils, and lift me up. I must brighten that black cloud. It used to seem right, but I must brighten it up before I go." And when it was done, he died. Today death looks dark to you, but when you get there, as the waves of Jordan parted and the children of Israel went over dryshod, so the waves will part, and you will go over triumphantly. "At even time it shall be light." Light that will dispel all the gloom, the last shadow will flee away before the dawning of the eternal day break, and you will be at home forever. Forever with the Lord, Amen, so let it be Life from the dead is in the word, ’Tis immortality. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 98: S. PURITY AND POWER ======================================================================== Purity and Power by George Kulp "Let thy garments be always white and let thy head lack no ointment" (Ecclesiastes 9:8). Power is lacking in the church today because it has forgotten, or overlooked, or neglected the words of the Book, "Come ye out from among them and be ye separate and I will be your God and ye shall be my people." "If any man will be my disciple let him take up his cross daily and follow me." We are called to separation, and God’s people from the time He called out Abram from the land of the Chaldeans down to the present time are a called-out people. The word He brew means, "the man from the other side." I doubt not this was given to Abram by the folks who knew he had come out. Worldliness today is paralyzing the efforts of the church, and the church is acknowledging it by the desperate efforts it is making to find a substitute for the ways of God. Purity and power are the heritage of the church, and the great lack of the church today. The church is seeking power while ignoring the command, "Be ye holy." Where there is purity, there is power. The Holy Spirit in His fullness comes only to a clean heart. No one can be a temple of the Holy Spirit who has not been made pure through the blood of Jesus. I have seen men down at the altar and going to them I have inquired, "What are you seeking? And the answer has been, "I am seeking power." One can seek power until the day of doom, and never get it. Power must not be the object. Jesus said, "Ye shall receive power, the Holy Ghost coming upon you." First, purity, then power. While the church and the world are yoked up together there is not power to rise above the worldliness that is in the church. The lunch room in the church has taken the place of the class room; the supper room has taken the place of the "upper room." More people can be gotten out to a church social than to a prayer-meeting, and all because there is an effort to please the world, and in so doing the truth of God is ignored. I know of two churches where the church and the moving picture show were yoked up together, and the young people of the League were out on the streets selling tickets for the movie, and the proceeds were divided between the show and the church. Can anyone dare to go to God in prayer and ask His blessing on such an arrangement? Purity first, then power. These are inseparable. Jesus prayed, "Father, I pray not that thou wilt take them out of the world, but that thou wilt keep them from the evil that is in the world." Purity means separation, and separation means power with God and man. I have known preachers and laymen who were prominent in Lodge circles, but I never knew one of them that was active as a soul winner. No one can go through an ante-room where men are smoking and playing cards and telling smutty stories, one night, and the next night go to a prayer meeting or a preaching service and have any power with God. Come ye out -- and it is the only come-out-ism that I know of that the Word calls for. The church in its earlier days was first pure, poor and persecuted. John Wesley dreaded the day when the church would get rich. George Fox dreaded the time when the church would have steepled houses. Today we have both, and if Wesley and Fox were to come back to earth today, it is a question to be considered where could they go to worship. Persecutions spread the fire in Apostolic days -- and in later days, too. In a city in England one day two men were arrested for holding a meeting on the street. As the jail was crowded they could not put them in separate cells, so they were together. Of course they began to pray, and soon were singing like Paul and Silas of olden days, and then they began to shout and the Sheriff said, "Separate those two men." The order was obeyed and one of them was put in a cell with a half drunken man. He began to talk to the fellow about his soul, and soon he had him down on his knees praying. There was a new name written down in heaven, and then there were three of them shouting. The Sheriff happening to come back (I think that God kept him away till the seeker got through), said to the jailer, "Didn’t I tell you to separate those fellows?" "I did," said the jailer. "Well," said the Sheriff, "separate them again." And back came the answer, "If you do they will all get it." Oh, yes; this thing is catching when you find the real thing. Jesus knew what He was talking about when He said, "Ye are my witnesses." The trouble is, we are not hot enough today to spread the fire or to invite the world’s persecutions. It will come if we are true. "Marvel not if the world hate you. It hated me before it hated you." The servant is not above his Lord, and the world today hates godliness. The carnal mind is enmity against God, not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. The church’s business is to denounce sin. Jesus did it. The Apostles did it. The world, the flesh and the devil are the enemies of the church, to be opposed, not courted. The church might as well yoke up with the devil as with the world. I rejoice to see the Catholic Church in Paris and in France, through the voice of their Cardinal, announcing there will be no women allowed to enter the church who are not dressed "from the chin to the shin." Thank God for that. Why has not American Protestantism the grace and backbone to do the same thing? God knows it is needed. The average congregation today is as worldly in its dressing as the theater goers in the city theaters. Joseph Cook, of Boston, once said in one of his lectures, "The church that has the grace and courage to take the whip of cords and drive the money changers out of the temple will take America for Christ when it has two hundred people to the square mile." But where is the church that will do it? When the architect of the church building draws his plans for the church today, he always makes provision for the kitchen, and he does it because he knows the church demands it. But let us get down a little closer. The church is made up of units. The individual is the unit, and to him must come home the truth. God demands holiness of heart, and where there is holiness of life there will be power -- with God and men. God deals with us as individuals. I have never yet seen the church in which all were ready for the call of God to revival work. I have been in the ministry forty-seven years, and in the pastorate thirty-four years and a half, but I have never been foolish enough to wait until the church was all right before I began revival work. Whatsoever any two of you shall agree upon touching any one thing, it shall be done for you. That means a revival anywhere this side of hell if two will agree. God wants it, the church needs it, and the only work of the ministry is to win souls for Christ -- all other things must bend to this. "As the Father has sent me into the world, so have I sent you." "The Son of man came to seek and to save the lost." "Let him know that he which converteth a sinner from the error of his ways saveth a soul from death and hideth a multitude of sins." "The Spirit and the Bride say come, and let him that heareth say come." Oh, there is no evading it, the work of the individual and the church is to win souls for Christ. Heaven is pure, the saints are pure, their robes are clean, and God says without holiness no man shall see the Lord. Blessed are they that do His commandments, for they shall have a right to the tree of life and enter in through the gates into the city. It will not do to say, "Well, there are so few that live up to it." There are some who have the blessing. "Abram walked before God," and had the divine commendation. Enoch walked with God. Noah and Job were perfect men. God says so in the Word. Zechariah and Elizabeth walked in all the ordinances of God blamelessly. The command is, "Be ye perfect," not in your head,, but in your heart. Perfect in your motive, loving God with all the heart. God’s commands are all enabling acts and the devil has never yet been able to get the enabling act stricken out. It is not what you profess that amounts to so much; it is the life you live. Let God see you live the Word, practice the Book, and He will take care of all the rest. Show Him the life. One time there was a woman who died, and before she passed away she said to her little daughter, only eight years old, "Daughter, your papa is poor and you will have to do the best you can. Mamma has taught you how to work, and you must do all you can to keep the little family together." The little girl was a Christian, and did the best she could; she worked till the little hands were callused and then at thirteen she laid down to die. The neighbors gathered around and with tearful eyes watched her slowly going down, and they heard her say, "I will be so ashamed when I see Jesus." One of them said, "Why, darling, will you be ashamed ?" The reply came, "I will not know what to say to Him." And then a neighbor said, "Dear, you will not have to say anything; just show Him your hands." Sure enough, those callused hands would tell the story. So it is the life we must show, and one pure and clean life tells more than all the profession that one may make that is not backed up by the life. God made man perfect, and through the Word of God and the Blood of Jesus, and the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, man is to be made so good and perfect that God can look down at him and be pleased with him. I know man has sinned. I know the power of evil, but I also know the power of grace to deliver and the power of the blood to cleanse from all sin. Do not leave God out of the problem. He can do and will do all we need and all He has promised, if we will simply let Him. Get the text, Let thy garments. etc., Let thy head, etc. Just let God have his way, and He can make you what you ought to be. Did you ever get the illustration that God gave an old holiness evangelist of long ago? The house of Israel, God’s chosen people, had gone far astray, were given up to idolatry and sin, so much so that the prophet might well have thought it was a hopeless case. So God one day said to him, "Prophet, I want you to go down to the potter’s house, stay with him a while, and I will come see you sometime and you may tell me what you see." And the prophet went down to the potter’s house and saw him busily at work on a vessel, and it was indeed beautiful; he applied the wheel to it, he handled it as one who loved his work, and when he saw it was finished he put it up on the mantel and gazed at it as one who was conscious of having done a good work. Then to the astonishment of the old prophet, he went to the refuse heap, and he picked up a vessel that was very much marred, and he handled it so very carefully as though he actually loved it. He placed it on the wheel and pressed it so gently to it, and the prophet watched it to see what would be the outcome; and after a while he took that vessel that was so marred and which had been on the refuse heap and he seemed pleased with it, and he put it on the mantel and lo, it was as beautiful in the potter’s eyes as the other. In a little while the Lord came to see the prophet, gave him a call and said, "Prophet, did you go down to the potter’s house as I told you?" "Yes, Lord, I did." "Well, what did you see there?" And the prophet began and said, "Why, Lord, when I went there he was working on a beautiful vessel and I watched him carefully; he handled it so easily and carefully, and it was a joy to watch him; and when he completed it he placed it upon the mantel and then stood and admired it, and Lord, so did I. But what astonished me the most, Lord, was this: the potter went to the refuse heap and picked up a broken and marred vessel, and he handled it with such care and so lovingly, and he placed it on the wheel and manipulated it, and worked so long with it, and seemed so anxious to make something of it. After a while he took it and placed it up alongside of the other one and Lord, it was beautiful." The Lord said, "Prophet, if the potter can take a broken and marred vessel that was once on the rubbish heap, a castaway, cannot I?" Yes, thank God, He can take broken, marred vessels, marred by sin, and make them all over. The Divine Potter can do it, can take the worst of cases and make new creatures out of them. He has done it, and He will do it every time He gets a chance. Some of us were not very far from the rubbish heap, but He took us and He bore with us and He made us over to be new creatures in Christ Jesus. He took a Saul of Tarsus and changed him into an apostle and a martyr. He took a wharf rat and river pirate like Jerry McCauley and made him all over, and he lived so close to God and did such a good work that when he died in New York City, he had the largest funeral the city had ever seen over any of its citizens. Judges and lawyers, preachers and laymen delighted to honor the man who was such a splendid sample of God’s Divine handiwork. He had been on the rubbish pile, been a castaway, but God took him and made him all over. He took a Valentine Burke, and when he, an old jail bird, could not get a job because he had the marks of sin all over him and nobody wanted him around, he was so homely, when he got down and prayed, "O God, I have sinned so long I have become so homely that no one wants me around, or will hire me for anything. Lord, please make me good-looking." And the Divine Potter who had made him all right inside, did as good a job on the outside, and he was promoted till he was the most trusted and honored man in the Sheriff’s office in St. Louis. I was one time in a meeting and a man rose up and at once made for the altar. As he went one who knew how wicked and crooked the fellow had been said, "If God does anything for that fellow he will have to make him all over." Well, thank God! that is just what He does, and what He proposes to do with each and every one who will come and let Him have His way. The joy bells of heaven rang as never before when it was announced that Manasseh, the most wicked king that ever sat on the throne, was saved, for there is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth. God has made provision for cleansing away all sin. Let thy garments be always white. White, that means purity. There is a fountain opened unto the house of David for sin and uncleanness. Sin defiles, but the blood cleanses from all the defilement that sin has or can make. Never mind if people do throw mud at you, do not try to brush it off; you will only make it worse. If you are as hot as you ought to be it will dry quickly, and you can shake it off. He shall be called Jesus, because He shall save His people from all their sins. Just let Him have His way with thee. Yonder I see a splendid steamer on the St. Lawrence; she is sweeping along majestically and all on board are having a good time; they are going to shoot the Rapids and the farther they get down the river the faster the vessel goes. I see the Captain go to the bow and shading his eyes with his hand I see him looking anxiously toward the shore. Soon a canoe shoots out into the middle of the stream, gets alongside the vessel, and is hauled up -- canoe and all. The pilot takes his place at the wheel, and the Captain and the mate and the crew just all sit down and let that Indian pilot have his way. He is straight as a pine tree, has an eye like an eagle, muscles like steel, and they let him have his way, they abandon themselves to the pilot. Look at the vessel; she is sweeping along through the waters, nearing the Rapids, going faster and faster. But they are all unconcerned; all they have to do is let the pilot have his way, and he knows where the deep waters are, where the dangerous rocks are, and soon they are in peaceful waters, because they ’let him have his way. So with us. All we have to do is to get the Pilot on board, abandon all to him and just let Him have His way, and we can rest knowing that in His hands all is well; and He cannot make any mistakes; He will bring us to the desired haven. I have heard folks pray, "O God, have thy way," and I have thought, "Let Him have His way with thee, and all will be well." Let thy head lack no ointment. Anointing was for two parties -- Kings and Priests, and under the Dispensation of the Holy Ghost in which we live, we all are Kings and Priests) and God will use us if we are kingly in his sight. There are anointings for service, and every time we go to battle we are in need of the anointing oil. Oil is a type of the Holy Spirit and we all admit "without Him we can do nothing." God says, "Tarry ye until ye -- "and we are not ready to go out unless we are endued with power from on high. All the men God has signally used in the days gone by have been men who have tarried, waited before Him. Moody tells us distinctly of the time when he waited for the Holy Ghost. Finney, Purdy, Asbury, and all others who were great men for God in their time were men who had tarried at Jerusalem. If you want to be a soul winner, read the Acts of the Apostles, and see where their power came from. I had in my library a number of books written by men who were soul winners, for all through my ministry I have known the only thing a man can do, the only way to fulfill one’s ministry, is to win souls. But one day it came to me to read the Acts and find out for myself how these men became such soul winners. And I found it out. So may you if you really want to. Priests were anointed for service, and so may you, so must you be, for as I said, in this Dispensation of the Holy Ghost, we are all priests unto God. It is the business of a priest to make intercession for others. Is there a greater need today for anything more than for men who will intercede, who will stay in their closets and pray for a lost world? Men and women who have the gift of the knees are wanted everywhere. Mr. Finney was accompanied by a man who would remain on his knees all the time that he would be preaching -- just in prayer for God’s blessing on the Word. Closet Christians are scarce, but are much needed. How it would encourage the heart of the preacher if he knew some of his people were travailing in prayer while he was in the pulpit. Oh, how the church has forgotten that if we would do business for God we must first do business with God. First, do business with Him. Let thy head lack no ointment. God will empower you, if you will let Him do it. He will anoint you to pray if you really want to pray. And when the anointing comes, when the Spirit of intercession comes on you, then the answer will soon follow. Pay the price. Pray through, and know you have the answer. The Holy Ghost fell on all them that heard the Word. Claim it now, while I am preaching, while you are reading. Stay not out of your inheritance one moment longer. Heaven wants you to have it, earth knows you need it, your own soul cries out for God. Now is the accepted time, now is the day of your salvation’. May God place on us all the spirit of earnest prayer. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 99: S. SPIRITUAL GYMNASTICS ======================================================================== Spiritual Gymnastics "Exercise thyself unto godliness, for godliness is profitable unto all things, having the promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come." 1 Timothy 4:7-8 The author of our text was a spiritual athlete. He was fully determined, by all the means in his power, to be at his very best for God. Others might put themselves in training for laurel crowns that soon would fade, -- he was in training for a crown of eternal life; he indulged in no shadow battles, fighting as one that beateth the air, but made every effort tell for good. He was running a race with his eye fixed on a definite goal. He had journeys to make, trials to bear, testimonies to raise, controversies to conduct, sorrows to assuage, a great and arduous career and, by the grace of God, he put all his force into it, ran his race of duty with ardor, and fought his fight of faith with resolution. He kept his body under by hard work and he endured "as seeing Him who is invisible." The weapons of his warfare were not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of the strongholds of sin and Satan and, as he writes to his young friend Timothy, he advises him to exercise himself unto godliness. The race course, the Corinthian games, the athlete’s struggle profiteth little, but practical godliness is profitable unto all things, for all time and all eternity. The text is an exhortation unto practical godliness; there is nothing the world needs more and there is nothing attended with greater profit. The Apostle on this question of the profit of godliness is in line with his Lord and Master, who said, "Every one that hath forsaken houses or brethren or sisters or father or mother or wife or children for My name’s sake, shall receive a hundred fold and shall inherit everlasting life." There is a profit in godliness to the man who will exercise godliness, practice godliness, let the world see godliness. All that the world knows of practical godliness it has to learn from the lives of Christians. Theoretical godliness will do for the schools, but in every-day life, to be real witnesses for Jesus we must let the world see exhibitions of practical Christianity. But some one may say, "If you practice godliness, you will be persecuted, accounted strange, peculiar, fanatical." Yes, that is so, -- the most godly man that ever walked this earth was crucified, another was stoned to death, aye time fails when we attempt to tell of them of whom the world was not worthy, who were beaten with rods, sawn asunder, torn by wild beasts, butchered to make a Roman holiday, and yet the crucified Christ said godliness is profitable a hundred fold here. The author, Paul the Apostle, says "Godliness is profitable," not will be, -- is now. He writes these words just before he is beheaded by Nero at Rome. He has been stoned and left for dead but he says, "godliness is profitable." He has been scourged and beaten with rods, but he still insists, "godliness is profitable." He is in the Mamertine prison writing to his son in the Gospel before he goes out to die, but he writes after such a life and in view of such a death, "Godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of this life and the life which is to come." What is godliness? Well, it is real, vital, practical, experimental, genuine religion. It is Godlikeness; that is, it, Godlikeness, is profitable. Exercise Godlikeness, be like God. The Godlike man is world proof and devil proof. Jesus was offered all the kingdoms of the world to do wrong, but He said, "Get thee behind me, Satan." The devil tempted Him in the wilderness, but found he had run upon Jehovah’s buckler and recoiled in dire defeat, and the Christian who is godly, like the God-man, like Him will be more than conqueror. He will be a success for time and for eternity. Cyrus Field laid the Atlantic Cable, amassed millions, and died broken-hearted. Vanderbilt gathered one hundred millions in bonds and stocks and cash but died saying, "I am poor and needy." A wealthy lawyer in one of our large cities put up in his room these words, "My life has been a failure." Worldliness, like the world, spells failure, but godliness is profitable for two worlds, for time and eternity. Paul, just before his martyrdom, with the axe and the block in view, writes for the instruction and encouragement of believers in all ages, "Godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come." Let us test this and see. Does the Word of God bear out this assertion of the Apostle? He says, "having the promise." We will begin with the words of Jesus. Listen, young man, young woman, do you want to be a success forever? Jesus says, "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you." What things? The things for which the men of this world are so anxious, food and raiment. Hear the sweet singer of Israel, "I have never seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging bread." "Trust in the Lord and do good (exercise godliness) so shalt thou dwell in the land and verily thou shalt be fed." "The Lord God is a sun and shield, the Lord will give grace and glory, no good tiling will He withhold from them that walk uprightly." And "all things work together for good to those who love God." "I am persuaded that neither life, nor death, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate me from the love of God, which is in Jesus." Yes, Paul, you are right, we have the promise for this life and godliness is profitable now. Profitable for Business. Sometimes men thoughtlessly remark they can not do business and be Christians, as though godliness was inimical to business. Too many business men are like the Duke of Alva. There had been a very marked eclipse of the moon and someone asked him, "Did you see the eclipse?" "No," answered the Duke, "I have so much to do on earth I have no time to look up." The man who has so much business to do or is in such a business that he can not look up to God will be an eternal failure. You must take in this life and the life to come to know if a man is a success. If a man has good health the first ten years of his life and poor health the last fifty years, you would not call him a "well man" because of his first ten years of health, and the man who is wise only for a time, -- who builds barns and houses and amasses money for this world -- and neglects to lay up treasures in Heaven is pronounced by Infinite Wisdom to be a fool, an eternal failure. I do not believe that the world regards godliness as a hindrance to business. A young man went to New York City to purchase goods and staying over Sunday went to church. As he walked up the aisle a gentleman, Robert Lennox, invited him into his pew. The next day he went out and purchased his goods, desiring credit. He was asked for references and gave some of his father’s friends, when the merchant said, "Hold up, didn’t I see you in Robert Lennox’ pew at church yesterday?" "Yes, sir, you did." "Well," said he, "all right, any man that Robert Lennox will invite into his pew I will give credit, buy all the goods you want." Godliness is profitable in business. In my native city there are many Quakers, so many in fact that it is called the Quaker City. The vast majority of them are well-to-do. They are strict, plain, godly and I never knew one that was needy. The Quaker business man has few words, no misrepresentation and personally is a safe man to deal with. Wm. E. Dodge, a godly man of New York City, practiced godliness every day. He was a member of the Union League of that city and withdrew from membership because they sold wine to the members at their banquets. He was a director in three railroad companies and resigned from all three and withdrew his stock because the majority of the Boards voted to run trains on Sundays. Exercising godliness. "Ten per cent and no lies" was the motto of A. T. Stewart of New York. He practiced godliness and prospered. A salesman in his store told a lady customer a piece of calico he sold her was fast colors, would wash, and Stewart overheard him. As soon as the lady had gone he said to the salesman, "What did you misrepresent those goods for? They will not wash. That woman will come back for her money and she ought to have it." And Stewart found godliness profitable for business. If a man is not a Christian in his business he is not a Christian anywhere. A thief cut a hole in a tent, put his head, arm and hand through. Counsel plead the man wasn’t guilty, the man was outside, but the judge instructed the jury that if they found the head, hand and arm guilty they could so declare, -- so they found and head, hand and arm was sentenced to five years in State Prison, -- the rest of the man went along, perforce. Practical godliness gets into the business and runs it. When Jenny Lind was requested to sing on Sunday at the palace of the King of Sweden on a great occasion, she refused. The King called on her and, as her sovereign, commanded her to sing, but she said, "There is a higher King, sir, to whom I owe my allegiance." Exercising Godlikeness. Godliness is profitable to the workingman, and every man can exercise godliness in his work. Even a converted Chinaman understood that and when a lady, who had had a great deal of trouble with domestics, called on him and was asking him questions, "Do you drink whiskey?" "No, I Clistian man." "Do you play cards?" "No, I Clistian man." He was engaged, and proved to be a capable servant. By and by the lady gave a bridge party, with wine accompaniments. The Chinaman did his part acceptably, but the next morning he appeared before his mistress. "I want quit," he said. "Why? What is the matter?" "I Clistian man. I told you so before; no heathen; no workee for ’Melican heathen." Exercising godliness in an humble position. Practical godliness is profitable everywhere, profitable in politics. An infidel can not be elected President of these United States nor to any public office, if it is known. The leading candidates for President are nominal Christians. Robert Ingersoll was a candidate for the nomination for Governor of Illinois but the Sunday school sentiment in the State defeated him. Mr. Ingersoll made a speech in the National Convention for Mr. Blaine and ruined Mr. Blaine’s chances. He made a speech in favor of Judge Gresham some years later and ruined Mr. Gresham’s. This doughty warrior was riding in a train and discanting upon his favorite theme, the follies of the Christian religion, when he asked his opponent, "What did Christianity ever do?" A lady overheard the question and quickly replied, "It prevented Robert Ingersoll from being Governor of Illinois." He was silent for the remainder of his journey and the rebuke, so well deserved, went home. Joseph was a godly man and so necessary to Egypt’s king that he gave him the second place in the kingdom. Daniel’s godliness was the means of placing in his hands the destinies of the Medo-Persian kingdom. The exercise of godliness would clear the political atmosphere, drive out the saloon, exalt the nation and hasten the coming of Jesus. Hypocrites prove that godliness is profitable. Men always counterfeit that which is valuable. You never heard of men counterfeiting a piece of brown paper. It is always a bank note, and when hypocrites imitate godliness they are commending the real thing. Godliness is profitable for the life to come. What else is? Saladin, the mighty Saracen conqueror, on his death bed said to one of his soldiers, "Take my shroud, place it on a spear, carry it through the street and proclaim, . ’This is all that is left of the mighty Saladin.’" Alexander the Great gave orders that at his burial his hands should be exposed to public view that all men might see that the mightiest of men could take nothing with him when called away by death. Some one told Erskine that a certain man dying left one million dollars, and he replied, "That is a poor capital to begin the next world with." Another speaking of a man who had just died, asked, "How much did he leave?" and was told "He left it all." But godliness is profitable "to the life to come." Come, go with me to the room of a dying Christian. Listen to him, "precious, precious, precious Jesus." Here is an old philosopher, he, too, is dying. Years ago a friend interested in him said, "Give yourself to God. I’ll give you my bond for ten thousand dollars to indemnify you if you ever loose anything by it," and now after all the years death has come and the old philosopher dying, says to his friend, "Take your bond. I’ve lost nothing. Salvation is the best investment I ever made." When Joseph Camp was dying in Philadelphia he said to his old-time friend, Joseph Kulp, "Think of it, straight from this bed to glory. How old are you Joseph?" "Eighty years," was the reply. "Oh, you will come soon, not much longer and we will all be home." Profitable for the life to come. This is a good world, many good things here. I have no sympathy with grumblers, but oh! what a grand world hereafter. Sometimes our souls get on fire for Heaven. When the good Lord wonderfully blesses us here, fills these earthen vessels till they run over, we sing, "Oh, what must it be to be there?" In 1879 when the American Board met there were twenty missionaries present and one time during the meeting these twenty men, each in the language in which he was accustomed to labor, sang "Praise God from whom all blessings flow" and a vast amount of enthusiasm was aroused among the people listening to the doxology but oh! how utterly insignificant is such a chorus compared to the mighty anthem that shall be sung by and by when the redeemed millions out of every kindred and tribe and tongue on the whole earth shall sing the new song, "Unto Him who hath redeemed us and washed us from our sins in His own blood." Aye, there will be scenes there that will astonish the angels. It is said that the most thrilling moment in the life of John Howard Payne was the night of December 17, 1850, when Jenny Lind sang the song of which Payne was the author, "Home Sweet Home." Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, General Scott and Payne were there. Jenny Lind sang the "Flute Song" and then the "Bird Song" and then her Greeting to America. All these were applauded to the full capacity of a generous and enthusiastic audience, but when the nightingale answered the encore by turning in the direction of John Howard Payne and giving "Home, Home, sweet, sweet Home" with all the purity, tenderness and simplicity befitting the air and the song the audience was off its feet and arose as one man, shouted as if they were mad and it seemed as though there would be no end to the uproar. What a recognition that was for John Howard Payne. But oh, ye godly men and women, there is another recognition before which even that pales into insignificance. It is in the life to come. The graves give up their dead and the world assembles before Him that sitteth on the throne. Out from the throng of the redeemed the Lord of Life and Glory calls one name. It may be one of the little ones, one of God’s saints who was poor on earth, some one like Hannington martyred in the wilds of Africa, some old slave from southern cabins, some forgotten wife or neglected mother from the almshouse, and as she comes forth the King arises and takes her by the hands and says unto her in the presence of the angels from the eternities, "Ye confessed Me on earth, ye wore My name, carried My cross, suffered for Me, and now in the presence of angels and men I call thee Mine." Then I think the redeemed will cry out: "Angels, assist our mighty joys, Strike all your harps of gold; But when you raise your highest notes, His love can ne’er be told." And the universal verdict from angels and men will then be, "Godliness is profitable unto all things, having the promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 100: S. THE AWFUL VOID ======================================================================== The Awful Void "God is departed from me, and answereth me not." Isaiah 28:15 Some years ago I officiated at the funeral of a man who committed suicide. He took a rope about three feet long, deliberately attached it to a rafter overhead, kicked a block away from beneath his feet, and thus put out the spark of life -- sent himself into eternity. Surely the man is insane who would thus send himself into the presence of God. We have nought but pity for him. But here in our text we have before us a spiritual suicide. A man who once had life, who once was yoked up with God, who once was a branch of the true Vine, but there came a time when he severed himself from God, crossed the line, and was eternally doomed. I want you to consider him and take warning. Watch carefully and ask yourself if he is anything like you. As Sodom and Gomorrah were examples, as we are commanded to remember Lot’s wife, here is an awful example of repeated disobedience, until God would no longer hear nor answer this man, and he was constrained to say: "The Lord hath departed from me and answereth me not." First: This man once had spiritual life; once he abode in the truth, walked in the light, had a good experience, was a member of the Church, and chosen of God to be Israel’s king. He was anointed by Divine direction, the oil had been poured upon him, God gave him another heart, he was a new man and he had new company, "there went with him a band of men whose hearts God had touched." More than that, the Spirit of God came upon him, and he prophesied -- got so full he boiled over, and other people knew he had the Spirit and heard him, so that they said: "Is Saul also among the prophets?" Brother, can you see your own picture here Were you a church member? Were you born again? a new creature? with a new heart? You testified? had good company? But all this in the past tense? There were evidences that he was a good man. He was humble. Humility is one of the Christian graces. Jesus said: "Except ye be converted and become as little children (not childish, but childlike) ye shall in no wise enter the kingdom of. Heaven." Augustine was asked, "Which is the first of the Christian graces?" and he answered, "Humility." "Which is the second?" and again he said, "Humility." "Which is the third?" and still he replied, "Humility." This man was humble. When they sought him to make him king, he avoided the responsibility, did not seek it, "hid himself among the stuff" -- and yet he was a man of real merit. Samuel, pointing to him, said: "See ye him whom the Lord hath chosen? There is none like him among all the people." "He that abaseth himself shall be exalted." If you want to go up, you must first go down. Jesus said: "I am among you as one that serveth." "He that would be great among you let him be your minister," your servant. Brother, have you this grace, this evidence of your sonship? -- or is it, too, in the past tense -- you HAD it? This man was magnanimous. When he was appointed king there were some sons of Belial and they despised him and brought him no presents. But when the time of trial, the day of battle, came, and this man Saul led them out to battle, and behaved kingly, winning the victory ... then the people said: "Who is he that said, Shall Saul not reign over us? Bring him here that we may put him to death, but Saul said, There shall not a man be put to death this day, for today the Lord hath wrought salvation in Israel." He worshipped and praised God. The inspired writer, by direction of the Holy Ghost, says: "They worshipped the Lord, they sacrificed sacrifices of peace offerings before the Lord, and they rejoiced greatly." This reminds one of the disciples who were continually in the temple praising and blessing God. He once surely had an experience, a knowledge of God, and walked in His ways. Yet here we have this man, this member of the church, saying: "God hath departed from me and answereth me not." Oh, how many church members who never hear from Heaven! Only this morning in the service a young matron stood up and said: "I have been in the church since my childhood, but I have been deceived, I never knew God; was never converted." Church membership can never take the place of a living experience. "We do know that we know Him" is the privilege of every child of God. Let us now inquire why God left him? God never leaves until He has to. There is a reason. The Word reveals it. This man repeatedly disobeyed God. He spared the cattle of the Amalekites and Agag their king, failing to learn the lesson, "To obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams." When God moved out an evil spirit moved in. It has been said that Nature abhors a vacuum. God will fill a heart when it is prepared for His presence, but when He goes out, the devil comes in. God moved out never to return. For twenty-three years this man was doomed -- the glow of health on his cheek, the light of life in his eye, the blood coursing through his veins, and yet left, forsaken of God! God would not answer him. He had prayed, but got no response; had consulted Urim and Thummim, but no intimation that God cared. All communication with Heaven was absolutely cut off. Abraham could wait on God until the fire moved between the divided sacrifice, and the answer came; but no answer for this man. Jacob could lie at the foot of the oak and, in his vision, see angels ascending and descending, and awakening could say, "Surely God is in this place;" but no vision for this man. Gideon could put out his fleece as he prayed, and again could test God in the audacity of faith; but no tests induce Heaven to answer this man from whom God has departed. Israel, as the priest consults Urim and Thummim, could know God’s will and be divinely guided; but no guidance for this man, because, not owing to one act of disobedience, but many, he came to the line, crossed it and fixed by his own act his eternal destiny. God gives to every man the power to choose, and the opportunity to decide, here and NOW. Man can choose all the will of God and delight himself in it, and it is a fact that man does as he pleases -- he chooses deliberately between good and evil. "To whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are." "I set before you life and death, good and evil, choose ye." "Choose ye this day whom ye will serve." "If any man WILL, let him come unto Me." "Whosoever WILL, let him come" -- and many other passages from the Word prove that. man makes his own choice; he is a free moral agent fixing his own destiny. Man can reject God so often that He departs from him forever. This man lived, moved, acted, thought, purposed, and yet, for twenty-three years, was doomed and damned. "An exceptional case," you say? Nay, look at these pictures. "O Ephraim, Ephraim, how can I give thee up?" is the cry of God over one who stoned prophets and rejected messages, until the lament ceased and the awful words went forth: "Ephraim is joined to his idols, let him alone." Israel "In their hearts turned back into Egypt, then God turned and gave them up to worship the host of Heaven." "He that being often reproved hardeneth his neck shall suddenly be cut off, and that without remedy." When God departs, man has no longer a Savior. The law of God may be preached, its thunders roll until others shrink under its denunciations, but he remains unmoved. Jesus died and, breaking the bars of the tomb, ascended up on high where He ever liveth to make intercession, but not for the man whom God has left. God gave him up, and there is no need to plead for such as he. He has rejected so often that there remains no more sacrifice for sin -- The Holy Ghost leaves him. The Spirit is called away forever. When He came, His office work was to convince of sin, righteousness and judgment, but this man who is given up of God resisted, grieved and insulted Him so often that there is no more conviction. Hardening his heart, and Pharaoh-like, saying again and again, "tomorrow," at last the Spirit of God took His everlasting flight. How many are grieving the Holy Ghost today, saying: "At a more convenient season I will call for thee go thy way." How many, owing t( repeated acts of disobedience, need to pray: "Stay; thou insulted Spirit, stay, nor take thine everlasting flight." Angels leave such an one. When God leaves they fly away. Once the angel of the Lord encamped around about him, guardian angels attended his footsteps, ministering spirits watched over him, but now even fallen angels pay less attention to him than once they did, they know his doom is sealed, his damnation sure. Church bells ringing out their Gospel invitation, have none for him. "Come, sinners, to the Gospel feast: Let every soul be Jesus’ guest," has no meaning for him. By his repeated acts of disobedience, he compelled God to depart. The pulpit may sound forth its solemn warnings, its exhortations and admonitions, but the seed falls on stony ground -- only to perish. Prayers may ascend for the lost until sinners around may yield and cry for mercy, until the heavens bend and God answers, but no prayers avail for him. Penitents may weep around him -- aye, by his very side -- but he is callused by mercies rejected and sheds not a tear. Converts rejoice and their rejoicings arouse sympathy in many hearts, but none in his. Joy has departed from him forever. Such a man has no sorrow for sin. Sinai, with all its terrors and thunderous denunciations of sin. may rock and roll beneath the presence of God, but he moves on indifferent and unmoved. The Cross of Christ, with arms outstretched, may plead for sinners to return; the blood of the Crucified One in the sinner’s way may stop him in his mad career, but this man, forsaken of God, moves on, trampling the blood under his feet, toward a devil’s Hell. Men called of God, with an unction from the Holy One, may proclaim the Gospel until penitents crowd mourner’s benches, but he is not among them. He is a derelict on the ocean of time. He is like yonder hull lying in the way of ocean liners, forsaken and doomed -- driven from ocean to stream, from stream to ocean, from Arctic waters to Tropic seas; at the mercy of every wind and storm that arises, until some mighty thunderbolt from the skies strikes it and hurls it to the depths below. So on goes this forsaken man, given up of God and angels day after day, until the justice of God smites him and Hell, moving to meet him at his coming, opens wide her portals and he enters "his own place." Doomed by his own acts. Overriding God and Calvary and Law and the Gospel and everything that God and redeemed men could do to save him, Hell is his portion, as the inevitable consequence of his own choice. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 101: S. THE DAMNATION ARMY ======================================================================== The Damnation Army "And the drinking was according to the law." Esther 1:8 "Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink; that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken." Habakkuk 2:15 I purpose taking to you tonight as an ambassador of the Lord Jesus Christ; as a minister of the Christian religion; as a citizen interested in the welfare of all those around me. I claim most emphatically that the position I take during this discussion is the position of the Church of God, and the position of the Church of God should be the attitude of every individual Christian. The only inquiry for a Christian man to make as he enters upon the consideration of the saloon question is this: Where does God Almighty stand? If the Lord Jesus Christ were upon earth in person today, where would He stand? If He was at the polls with a ballot in His hands, with whom would He vote? Find out where the brewers, distillers, saloon-keepers, harlots and drunkards are, and make up your mind that God is on the other side, and there you and I must be, or be condemned. The Church and the saloon occupy positions of open, irreconcilable hostility, and one must go down. And when I remember Jesus Christ said of His Church: "The gates of Hell shall not prevail against it," I am ready to predict that the saloon must go, and it will. There never was a moral reform movement that did not owe its bone and sinew to the Church. The anti-slavery agitation began in the Church and was waged so fiercely that it rent asunder the Methodist and Presbyterian Churches, but the work still went on until it entered the politics of the nation and slavery was put to the sword. The agitation for the suppression of the saloon today comes from men and women trained in the churches, and now is the opportune time when the Church must move forward, must agitate, must thunder the Word of God against the traffic, and she must do it through her ministers in the pulpit and her laymen in the pews. The minister of the Gospel cannot separate his responsibility from his act of suffrage. Called of God, he dare not consult his personal interest or popularity; he must obey his heavenly calling. The stability of human governments depends on their harmony with the divine, and the highest duty of the minister is to lead the people to obedience; to righteousness. Abraham Lincoln said: "God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time." Neither can an honest man. We know where God stands, for in the text He says: "Woe unto him that puttest thy bottle to thy neighbor’s lips, and makest him drunken." The editor of the "Michigan Advocate" tersely puts it when he says: "The struggle of the American home, the school and the Church against the combined power of brewers, brothel and saloon death-trap is but another putting of the declaration of war between Heaven and Hell." We bring the subject before you as we do because we want to save the boys of our cities and arouse you to your responsibility for the liquor traffic in our midst. During a convention in Chicago, one of the delegates met a burly, red-faced resident of the city who had just been patronizing the bar. In the course of conversation this citizen said: "What are you fellows trying to do down at the battery? You are hot on temperance, I see by the papers. Do you think you can make a temperance man of me?" "No," said the delegate, "we evidently couldn’t do much with you, but we are after your boy." The fellow dropped his jocular tone and said seriously, "Well, I guess you have the right of it. If somebody had been after me when I was a boy, I should be a better man today." "But the boys of our city are in no danger," you say. Aren’t they? A few weeks ago Mrs. J. of went into a saloon in that city, read the Bible and prayed. While there she noticed a boy, and when she went out he followed her and said: "Madam, I am ashamed of myself that you found me in such a place. I wouldn’t have my mother know it for the world. I am not in the habit of going into a saloon." Mrs. J____ asked him, "Where do your parents live?" and the answer was, "In _____." Perhaps that boy is the son of some mother here tonight. I want to save the boys from blasted reputations and an eternal ruin. A magician came before his audience, and bringing a young man with him said: "Ladies and gentlemen, I want to Show you my power: by a few passes with my hand I will turn this young man into a beast." Then waving his hand a few times the young man became a beast. The people applauded, but soon some of the more thoughtful became fearful and cried, "Transform him; make him a man again," but the magician answered, "I can’t do it; I can change men into beasts, but I can never restore the man." That magician is the liquor traffic, and that power to transform men into beasts is given to the traffic by the people. Mothers may cry, "Give me my boy again," but he’ll never come -- you may have a sot, a wreck, a shadow, but your pure, clean boy -- never. The subject of this sermon is, The Damnation Army, Its Victims and Its Sponsors. Do you think that too severe? Listen to what some public men have said about the liquor traffic. Lord Chesterfield called saloon-keepers, "Artists in human slaughter." Ruskin said they were "moral assassins." Carlyle spoke of public houses as "seething hells of vice and immorality." Bunyan called drink-selling "an infernal traffic." Wesley declared, "The money received in exchange for drinks is blood money." Robert Hall spoke of drinks as "liquid fire and distilled damnation," while Mr. Walters, of the "London Times," charged it with being "the devil in solution." We mean it, and we repeat it, the saloons of this city are a division of that Damnation Army that is hurrying more people unprepared into eternity than war, pestilence and famine combined. Before looking at the division, let us look at the army. The nation supports 200,000 saloons which absorb three millions of dollars daily, or the total sum of over one thousand millions of dollars each year. Each one of these saloons seduces at least one boy a year (a low estimate) presenting the appalling spectacle of two hundred thousand young men ruined each year, or a million every five years -- a greater destruction than that incurred by the Civil War. It is estimated that each saloon controls at least ten votes, influenced by this national curse, the liquor traffic, and there is not a great political party in the nation today that dares to put itself squarely in array against the enemy. The saloons in many places are political headquarters, schools in which criminals are trained, armories where they equip themselves for the battle against the peace and rights of society, an enemy to all purity, all godliness, all homes. To be seen entering or coming out of a saloon is of itself a suspicious circumstance, and the law so regards it. A judge in one of our courts said to a man who pleaded innocent "You, McCauley, were arrested in a saloon with two thieves. You would have gotten into no trouble had you avoided evil company and objectionable places." If it is not suspicious to be seen in a saloon, why does the saloon provide back doors, screens and frosted windows? -- for the purpose of protecting its customers from the view of their friends who may be passing by? And yet right here in our city (Battle Creek, Michigan) we have one hundred and eighty bars, over which liquid damnation is dealt out, to the detriment of men physically and spiritually, and the ruin of their homes. In Java and Sumatra they have a tree called by the natives "The tree of death." They say its breath will kill birds and even human beings. A traveler one day, chasing a bird of paradise, saw it drop to the ground lifeless, and without apparent cause. He found the bird under the tree which gave forth the peculiar odor described by the natives, and he knew it to be the tree of death. A faint perfume like chloroform came from the flowers, and breathing it he became almost insensible. We have no death tree in our city; if one was to grow near your home you would uproot it to save your boy -- unless you could get a revenue out of it. But we have numerous bars flourishing with your permission; bars to pull down reputations, to destroy homes, to rob women and children of happiness, to take the bloom out of their cheeks, to hasten men Hellward. All this that the owners of these bars may fatten on the griefs and woes of the possessors of depraved appetites, for perhaps you know that a saloon-keeper can get rich if he has twenty regular customers. Of course the list has to be recruited often, for when the old customer gets to be a bum his patronage is no longer profitable, and the boys, your boy, perhaps, will step in as a new recruit. Aye, a big division of the Damnation Army is right here in this city. Not because we cannot get rid of it, but because there are so many professing Christians -- Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Catholics -- who prefer their party prejudices and party victories to siding with God Almighty on election day against the saloon. But we will talk of the responsibility farther on. Let us inquire next as to the victims of the traffic. Read the daily papers; scan their columns and see how many men and women are before the recorder for drunkenness. Said the judge the other day to a victim: "Bill, why don’t you stop this kind of work?" The answer was, "I can’t go by a saloon door; I must go in." The drinking man is not the only victim; the woman who never drinks, the innocent wife, suffers, even though the "drinking is according to law." Read the book of Esther from which the text is taken and learn this fact -- the first divorce on record was caused by drinking "according to law." Licensed drinking produced the first divorce. Twelve thousand women in New York State recently procured divorces from drunken husbands. Three hundred thousand divorces in this country in the last twenty years, and the most of them caused by licensed rum selling, and, in the greater number of instances, the woman is the sufferer. A gentleman in one of the schools was giving a lesson on the human heart. He had sent to the butcher’s for a sheep’s heart, and he allowed the class to see, touch and handle it for themselves. Then he asked the question: "What is the difference between a sheep’s heart and the heart of a man or woman?" One poor, pale looking boy held up his hand to answer. "Well, B____, what difference is there, do you think?" "Why, sir," said he, "a sheep’s heart is the softest, for you can bite a sheep’s heart, but a woman’s heart you break." The secret of the answer? That boy’s mother died of a broken heart, the result of a husband’s brutality and desertion. Here is the will of a frequenter of the saloon as he wrote it: "I leave to society a ruined character, a wretched example, and a memory that will rot. I leave my parents as much sorrow as they can bear. I leave my brothers and sisters as much shame as I could bring on them. I leave my wife a broken heart, a life of shame. I leave to each of my children poverty, ignorance and the remembrance that their father filled a drunkard’s grave." Well might he remember the children, for they, too, are victims. In Kittaning, Pa., they lately closed the saloons and a merchant tells how a woman came to trade. Said she: "I want a pair of shoes for a little girl." "What number?" "Well, she is twelve years old." "But what number did you last buy?" "She never had a pair in her life. You see her father used to drink when we had the saloons, but now they are closed he doesn’t drink any more, and this morning he said to me: ’Mother, I want you to go down town and buy a pair of shoes for Sissy, for she has never had a pair in her life,’ and I thought if I told you her age you would know what size to give me." Think of it! Children of this great republic robbed of shoes that a few idlers may be supported. Oh, the woe! Oh, the degradation that comes to homes through this legalized traffic! In London, lethal chambers exist for the purpose of destroying vagrant dogs, that are quietly poisoned by carbonic acid gas. We need no lethal chambers for destroying men, the state is licensing agents to do the work, and they are doing it most effectively. Let us now consider who are the sponsors of the liquor traffic. Where does the responsibility rest? Some time ago I read an account of a burglary in old Saint Paul’s Church in New York City. The burglar had packed up two bundles containing one thousand dollars’ worth of silk and satin draperies and vestments, and in his search he came across the communion wine. He drank it, and, overpowered by the deep draughts of the rich old wine, he was found in the morning by a policeman and taken to the station too drunk to tell his name. That kind of a church, administering the communion in alcoholic wines, must share the responsibility for the drunkenness of the land. But now let us go into the saloon and see who is responsible for it, and you point to the saloonkeeper and say, "He is sponsor for the saloon; he is responsible for the traffic carried on there." You are mistaken, my friend. Judge Field of the United States Supreme Court has decided that no man has a natural right to sell liquor. He says, "There is no inherent right of the citizen to sell intoxicating liquors by retail. It is not a privilege of a citizen of a State or of the United States." Then it follows that the only right a man can have is a legal right. Who in the name of the high Heaven gives the saloon-keeper the right to scatter death and liquid damnation all over the city, all over the State? Who is responsible for our bars? Abraham Lincoln said in his Gettysburg address, "This is a government of the people, by the people, for the people." We, the people, make the laws that give the saloon-keeper the right, upon payment of a tax, to sell liquor for us. We are in the business. Go into a saloon and ask the proprietor by what right he sells -- he does not claim a moral right, nor a natural right, but he at once points you to two papers; one is from the municipality and tells you that the saloon-keeper has the right to keep the bottle there, and the other is from the United States Government, to witness that he has the right to fill the bottle with the stuff and to sell it or, in other words, this being a government of the people, the man is rum-seller for their sovereign majesties, the people. In this nation the people rule. Let them arise in their might against any unjust law, any iniquity, and they will banish it, but they are so forbearing and longsuffering, especially if the blood money will lay their sidewalks and clean their streets, that they are willing to damn the young men of the city, if they can have the license money in the treasury. Take the barrels of beer and other liquors that come into our city and pile them up, make a pyramid of them, examine them, and on every barrel you will find evidence that "We, the people" are in the business; they are all marked U. S. -- us. I admit that the saloon-keeper is more intimately connected with the business than you are; he is doing your unclean work, but he is no more closely connected with it than the man who owns the property used for a saloon. I would as quickly handle the stuff over the bar as to rent the property to another for saloon purposes. One is just as wicked as the other, and in the day of reckoning with Almighty God, the saloon-keeper and the landlord and the bondsman will stand together equally guilty. Back of the saloon-keeper are the bondsman and the property owner, and back of them are the people who favor license, and also all those who refuse to avail themselves of the law we have by which we could close them if we would. In Van Buren County, Michigan, the saloon is banished under our local option law. When Rhode Island was carried for Prohibition, we thanked God and did some hurrahing, but right here in southern Michigan we have four tiers of counties, a territory twice the size of Rhode Island, from which we could banish liquor by our local option law, Wayne County being the only exception, and yet every political party refuses to avail itself of this law. We have saloons because of the moral cowardice and Prejudices of the better class of citizens. The man or the party who howls for national or state prohibition and yet will not avail himself of county prohibition, when he can have it by the law of the State, is terribly inconsistent, caring more for the party than for banished saloons. Well, is there any hope? Yes, for ’Right’s right. since God is God -- And right the day shall win. To doubt would be disloyalty, To falter would be sin." The time clock of God Almighty is ringing out the hour of high noon. He is speaking to the conscience of the nation. The time has come when the rum power must be destroyed or the nation die. Sin is I reproach unto any people Jehovah calls to righteousness "Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, and seek through the broad places thereof, if ye can find a man," said God to His servant, the prophet. Men are needed today, men with convictions and the courage to express them. When ministers in the pulpit and laymen in the pew stand firmly and unitedly against the saloon, then it will surely be destroyed. When one emperor tried to rival another in building a most splendid coliseum in the second century, he sent for a Greek architect. "Make me a coliseum," said he. "You shall have everything in the way of means, but make me the best in the world. When it is completed we shall have a gala day, and crown you." The coliseum was built. Yonder on his emerald throne sat the emperor, and by his side the Greek architect. The emperor arose and said to the eighty thousand people before him, "We have come to a great day; we have the finest building in the world; we have met to do honor to the Greek architect." Then stooping down, he cried, "Let in the lions; bring in the Christians." Then from his seat arose the Greek and said with a voice that penetrated every part of the building, "Sir, I, too, am a Christian." The maddened multitude hurled him over on the pavement below, where he lay crushed, bleeding, dying. That was sublime courage. He had convictions and declared them in the face of death. Such men and such courage are needed today; men who will stand for God, though they stand alone. Go South, and they will show you the slave pen, and the auction notice of the sale of men and women as slaves. Only a little over forty years have passed since these things. The same period of time more and the legalized saloon will be looked upon as a relic of our barbarism, and men will wonder at our greed for gain that led us to license such a soul-destroying business. Were it not for the enormous foreign immigration, rum would be banished today from the greater part of the land, but, oppose what may, there can be no compromise. The Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, the men and women who are following Him, must follow against all evils, by their prayers, their example, their votes, and when men vote on God’s side, regardless of all else, then right will triumph and the saloon become a thing of the past. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 102: S. THE DAY OF JUDGMENT ======================================================================== The Day Of Judgment "And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened; and another book was opened; which is the book of life, and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and Hell delivered up the dead which were in them; and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and Hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire." Revelation 20:12-15 These words of our text refer to the final Judgment -- the most solemn subject to which our attention can be called-one in which we are all interested -- for "it is appointed unto man once to die, but after that the Judgment." It is important that we should bear this in mind for it is impossible for man to think upon this fact without it having an influence upon his life. In the year 1000 it was generally believed the world would come to an end, and as men entered upon that year they grew solemn, transacted business as though under some great pressure, and retired at night fearful and apprehensive lest they should be awakened by a summons to judgment. As the months rolled on, the solemnity and the horror increased until, toward the close, business ceased, and men awaited the awful hour. When the year passed by and still no summons, they drew a long sigh of relief and passed out from under an awful burden. In the seventeenth century it had been prophesied in England that the world was coming to an end, and among the people of all classes there were many who believed it. Old French novels were thrown to one side, light literature was discarded, people hastened to the book-stores and purchased Bibles and Jeremy Taylor’s book entitled "Holy Living and Dying." Seventeen hundred couples who had been living as man and wife without any marriage ceremony ever having been performed, hurried before the clergy to be lawfully joined in wedlock; they did not want to be found in their adulteries when Jesus should come to them in judgment. This is one of the most interesting subjects revealed in the Word of God -- an event that will terminate the remedial dispensation, when the preacher will no longer proclaim the Gospel, mercy will no longer be offered, the Spirit no longer plead, the Son of God no longer occupy the mediatorial throne, the hours no longer hang heavily on the idler’s hands, but moments be seen in their true value, as the angel of God, with one foot upon the sea and the other upon the land, shall declare "time shall be no longer." To this Judgment scene I desire to call your attention. The believer need not fear The Rock that shelters him now will prove sufficient then, and if, by contemplation of this dread subject, we can persuade the sinner to flee from the wrath to come, we will not have spoken in vain. "He that believeth not is condemned already." For this reason the sinner fears the Judgment. The man under indictment and innocent cares nothing for court day nor judges nor juries; he knows he is innocent; while the guilty man dreads every bit of time that brings near the awful hour. He cannot sing, "No condemnation now I dread;" he is already condemned by his own heart, and, if his own heart condemns him, he knows that God will condemn him, for God is greater than his heart. That this subject DEMANDS your consideration is evident from the words of Jesus: "Watch. for ye know not the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh." "When the Son of man shall come in His glory and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory. And before Him shall be gathered all nations, and He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats." "Seeing that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be, in all holy conversation and godliness?" We are all going to judgment, old and young, rich and poor, learned and unlearned. Some years ago I stood on Sixth Avenue in Philadelphia, opposite the old court-house. The prisoners that day who had been tried and convicted were brought up in the "Black Maria" to receive their sentence. There was the old man grown gray in sin, the young man just a few years in sin, with the boy taking his first step in crime. There was the woman marked by licentiousness and vice, and the young woman just departed from rectitude. The lookers-on were interested, their sympathies were aroused. "God pity that old man, help that boy, sustain that girl’s mother" -- and they needed sympathy. But listen! Here is a race under condemnation, going forward to judgment to receive sentence upon its evil works. We are all going; your family and mine, going before a just Judge. Is it not foolishness to be spending time in eating and drinking, catering to things of time and sense, and neglecting the things that pertain to Eternity? There is scarcely a religious truth, except the being of God, that is more universally accepted, than that of a Judgment after death. On the monuments of old Egypt they had sculptured their belief in this, long before Jesus had uttered those terrible, soul-alarming truths found in Matthew 25:1-46. There was the picture engraved in stone of the traveler from time approaching the river of death. Awaiting his approach was the ferryman who would convey him over. On the other, or Eternity, side were six judges, before whom he and his life record must pass. If he was found to have done more good than evil, he was assigned to the regions of the blest; but if he had done more evil than good, he went to the confines of the lost. But a general Judgment where the proceedings are before an assembled world is taught only by the Word of God, hence to that Word we appeal -- for by it we are assured of the certainty of a general Judgment. "For God shall bring every work into judgment, whether it be good or whether it be evil." "It is appointed unto man once to die, but after this the Judgment." "We must ALL stand before the judgment seat of Christ." "Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thine heart cheer thee in the days of thine youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes; but know thou that for all these things God will bring thee to judgment." That day is spoken of as "the day of the Lord." The Apostle says "the day of the Lord is at hand." This is your day. Today you can do as you please. I say it reverently, God cannot compel you to serve Him. You are a free moral agent. You can reject the Word of God, you can count the blood of the covenant an unholy thing, you can trample it under your feet, you can grieve the Holy Spirit, you can despise the prayers of the interceding Christ, scorn the mourner’s bench, push God, and Church, and friends all to one side in your mad rush Hell-ward, but in that day your probation will end. The messengers of Omnipotence will hale you before the bar of God. They will find you; you may make your bed in Hell, you may take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the earth, but there is no escape. Criminals from justice may flee to some country with which the United States has no extradition treaty, and there, living with birds of a feather, they can spend their ill-gotten gains in riotous living, beyond the reach of Uncle Sam’s long arm. But there is no place in all the Universe but God’s summons will reach the sinner, and hale him to judgment. That day is God’s day and fearfully will it be ushered in. I do not wonder men do not want to think of it, do not like sermons on this line. I remember one time in Philadelphia, while I was yet a lad, there was a fearful hurricane. The wind traveled with great velocity. The sound of it was like the roar of many trains of cars. Houses were unroofed; church steeples blown down; great destruction wrought. A house across the street from where I lived was unroofed, and the roof hurled against the dwelling of our next door neighbor, and as it struck with terrific impact, the son rose up in bed and shouted at the top of his voice: "Mother, is this the day of Judgment?" God, in His own Word, fearfully pictures it. Can you think of it and not tremble? The sun will refuse to shine, while the heavens will be turned into blood, and stars withdrawing their light will cease to shine and fall from the heavens. Man, terror-stricken by the wreck of matter and the crash of worlds, will seek a refuge and none be found. During the last century there was an event known as "the falling of the stars." Down in Kentucky at that time there was a dance in progress at a country hotel. The dining-room had been cleared of tables and chairs, and the old fiddler in one end of the room was swinging his bow and merrily calling off the numbers. The boys and girls were having a good time, as the world goes, when, oppressed by the atmosphere in the room, a young lady went to the door and looking out saw the falling stars, and, affrighted, fell to the floor, crying: "My God, it is the day of Judgment!" Another seeing her fall, went to the door to see the cause, and beholding the falling stars, she, too, fell with the same exclamation: "My God, it is the day of Judgment!" The old fiddler had his curiosity aroused by this time, and walked across the floor, fiddling as he went, until he came to the door, when, seeing the same thing, fiddler and fiddle and bow went down in a heap at the door as he cried out: "My God, it is the day of Judgment!" The same night a slave had stolen a horse from his master, and was making away with it along the road, when the stars began to fall. Thinking it was the day of Judgment, he whipped the horse, and retraced his steps back to the master’s stable, not wanting to be found with stolen goods at such an awful time. But on this great day of the Lord, not in one little corner of God’s domain, but everywhere, the stars will fall from the heavens, showing signs of Nature’s approaching dissolution. Not the heavens alone, but earth also, will reel to and fro like a drunken man, and earthquakes will prevail in all places. God put forth His little finger and touched one part of the Pacific coast, and San Francisco was in ruins, thousands homeless, and hundreds hurried into Eternity. He touched the islands of the sea, and Mt. Pelee blew its head off, while the Island of Martinique quivered under the power of the wrath of an angry God, as the lava and hot mud flowing down the mountain-side swept forty thousand souls into Eternity. But in this great day of the Lord earthquakes will prevail in all places. In Charleston, S. C., during the earthquake men and women rushed into the streets from their homes, and falling on their knees began to pray. How they will pray as the earth reels, and shakes, and quivers, while God summons men to judgment! The islands will flee away and the mountains topple from their bases to destruction. The waves of the sea shall roar and men will stand aghast at the awful work of destruction when God comes to judge. Then amid the wreck of matter the Judge shall come surrounded by myriads of His holy angels, seated upon His throne of glory, while the archangel commissioned by Omnipotence, placing one foot upon the sea and the other upon the dry land, shall declare in trumpet tones: "Time shall be no longer! Arise, ye dead, and come to judgment." Then the sea will give up its dead, death and Hell will be emptied, as all nations, all kindreds, all peoples, all tongues, all the small and all the great, shall stand before Him for judgment. It will be a Universal Judgment. Every son and daughter of Adam’s race will be there that day. Old Xerxes sat on the side of Mt. Athos and saw his Persian host, two millions of men, march by as they went to conquer Greece. Tears flowed from his eyes, and one said: "Sire, why do you weep?" And he replied: "I weep when I think that in a few years all these men of this mighty host will be in the grave." But more solemn and more alarming still the truth, all men will be here at this judgment scene to receive for the deeds done in the body, whether they be good or whether they be evil. Then the die is cast, then the tree must lie even as it has fallen. Too late now to repent! Nothing can be reversed. The lie cannot be undone; the oath cannot be recalled. Judas would fling away his price of blood, saying, "I have betrayed innocent blood," but it is too late! Achan would part with his wedge of gold, his Babylonish garment. Ananias would pay the whole price; but it is too late! Baalam would let go the wages of unrighteousness, and Demas forsake the world; but it is too late! Pilate would now acquit the innocent; but it is too late. Christ is on the throne and he before it. The gambler and his tool, the adulterer and his paramour, the betrayer and the betrayed, the licensed saloon-keeper and the license voter who made his sin legal, the white-washed sepulchre and the moralist who boasted of and relied upon his morality, all will be there for judgment before an impartial Judge. No double standard of virtue here; no law for the rich and another for the poor; no one with a "pull" in this court; but ALL to receive "according to the deeds done in the body." The Ghost of Caesar said to Brutus: "I will meet thee again at Philippi." So men’s sins go before them to judgment and will meet them there. A rum-seller had committed a crime with a young man, a beginner in evil. The youth was taken sick and the illness proved fatal. By his bedside sat his companion in crime, fearful lest the act should be confessed; lest, under the stress of an aroused conscience, he should reveal the crime. When death came, the rum-seller took off the mattress, shook out the pillow, removed the quilts and searched, for fear some scrap of paper had been left that would contain the secret. But listen! Sin may be unrevealed in this life, but that day is a revelation of righteous judgment, and God has said, "Be sure your sin will find you out." Every word; aye, every idle word -- every thought that ever crossed your mind, every deed of our life, will be there to witness against you. Every moment of time wasted, every opportunity murdered, every invitation rejected, will be there. God’s Book of Remembrance will not fail! But oh, awful thought to the sinner, Christ will be the Judge. The despised Galilean will be on the throne. He who hung upon the cross will now be on the judgment seat. Once He said: "Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden." Once He cried: "Him that cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out," but now He commands: "Come to judgment!" Oh, the weeping and the wailing in that hour of the sinner’s woe! Hear him as he cries: "Oh, for an hour of time! Oh, for an offer of mercy! Oh, for one more invitation! Oh, for another prayer-meeting -- for one more Gospel sermon! Time, come back! come back! Lost opportunities, come back! Thou despised, insulted, rejected Holy Spirit, come back once more! Rocks, mountains, fall upon me and hide me from the face of Him that sitteth upon the throne!" Here is a backslider. Once he knew the joys of sins forgiven; once he put his hand to the plow; once he was a witness for Jesus; once he had the testimony of a good conscience that God was pleased with him -- but, in an evil hour, he yielded to temptation, he turned his back upon his Lord, he counted the blood an unholy thing, he did despite unto the Spirit of grace, and now he is face to face with the Lord he misused. Hear him scream in his agony of soul: "Oh, thou blackness of an eternal Hell, if thou hast any place that can hide me from the Son of God, welcome, thy deepest depths!" Here is an unfaithful minister. He filled a pulpit, had an opportunity an angel might covet, faced dying men and women who looked unto him as a very ambassador of God to men, but, for the sake of their gold, for love of their applause, he withheld the message, he failed God. He became a popular preacher, but he awakes in Eternity to find he has lost his soul. He screams, he weeps, he prays, he seeks death, but nothing will nor can avail. There is nought for him but wrath and anguish of soul, and a continual looking forward to eternal wrath. But this is not all -- This day is a day of separation. "Then shall He return," says the prophet, "and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth Him not." "As a shepherd divideth the sheep from the goats, so shall He separate the righteous from the wicked." Separations in this life are hard to bear. Some years ago God gave a precious babe to a Christian mother. She took the child before the Lord and dedicating him, said: "O God, you can have him anywhere, in any field. I dedicate him to Thy service. The babe grew, the boy was of great promise, passed through the schools, gave God his heart, arrived at man’s estate, was called to the Christian ministry, and then called to Africa. But there was one thought that came to him, "How will I ever tell mother? She will be broken-hearted." One day he said to her: "Mother, I have something important to tell you; something I am afraid you do not expect. You say that God’s grace is always sufficient, now you will test it. Mother, I am called to Africa. I feel God wants me there." Weep? That mother weep? Nay, a smile spread over her face, and she said: "My son, God bless you, that is just what I have been expecting. I gave you to God when you were yet a babe for anywhere He wanted you, and I have never taken you back." He went to Africa, and in six months was stricken with the coast fever, and died, leaving this message: "Tell mother Heaven is just as near Africa as Philadelphia," and in that city she waited, watched for the Master’s coming, and did His will. She knew that in a little while He that should come, "would come and would not tarry," and the separation would be but for a little while. But listen! The separations at the Judgment are eternal. The righteous from the wicked: The righteous father from the wicked son; the mother that served Him from the daughter that served Him not. I was in the office of the directors of Girard College in Philadelphia. A mother was there who desired to secure the admission of her fatherless boy into the institution. She had many questions to ask the secretary. "Will he be well clothed?" "Yes, ma’am." "Will he have nutritious food?" "Yes, ma’am." "Will he have a warm bed?" "Yes, ma’am." "Will he have proper companions? Will he be watched over in this regard?" "Yes, ma’am." And then her chin quivered, the tears came and she said: "Can I see him once in awhile?" "Once in three months, ma’am." Her mother-heart took fright. See her boy only once in three months! Separated so long as three months! But listen! The separations of the Judgment are eternal. I was called to preach at the funeral of a young man who had been fatally injured by the kick of a wild horse in Greely, Colorado. The family in Martin, Michigan, had been notified, and a sister of the young man at once went to his bedside. After his decease she came back those many miles bringing with her the remains. At the funeral service when the friends passed by the casket taking their last look at the dead, this sister came, and we will never forget the cry of anguish from that heart as she leaned over that loved one and said, amid her tears, "Oh, Teddy, why can’t I go all the way with you?" But she could go no farther; for awhile they must part -- must be separated. Death separates the righteous from the wicked forever. Tell me, my Lord, must the righteous father he forever separated from his unrighteous boy? The righteous from the wicked. Must the godly mother be separated from the daughter, the child of so many prayers? The righteous from the wicked. But is there no joy at the Judgment? Is it all dark? Yes, there is joy at the right hand of that Judgment throne. In old Rome, after a campaign in which her soldiers had been victorious, they would have a triumphal entrance. These men had been hundreds of miles away from home, for years doing battle, suffering privations, seeing their comrades die by the weapons of the enemy, standing by new-made graves, but at last they had won the final victory and were marching home. Just outside of Rome they would halt while the city prepared to receive them. Every home was decorated, triumphal arches erected, and seats prepared for the Roman senators, while the populace, in holiday attire, flocked to the gates to bid them welcome. Here they come, their general at their head. Laurel crowns and flowers are thrown upon them as they pass by. Music welcomes them home, accompanied by the cheers of the throngs who rejoice that victory was theirs. By the reviewing stand on which the Emperor sits, there is a crier, who calls aloud the feats of arms and the places at which these armies fought. "These are the heroes of Spain -- these fought on the fields of Africa -- these upheld the honor of Rome amid the barbarians of Gaul" -- and thus, while Roman soldiers marched by accompanied by their captives and bearing the proofs of their victory, Rome welcomed her soldiers. ’Twas a great day when a triumphal entrance, decreed by the Senate, came to pass, but there is a triumphal entrance coming to pass before which all others pale into insignificance. "Then shall the King say unto them on His right hand, Come ye blessed of My Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was an hungered and ye gave Me meat; I was thirsty and ye gave Me drink; I was a stranger and ye took Me in; naked and ye clothed Me; I was sick and ye visited Me; in prison and ye came unto Me," and then shall the blessed of the Father march in, with Jesus, the Captain of their salvation, at their head, while angels of God who kept their first estate, will crowd the avenues of the skies to see the hosts of the redeemed, clad in garments white, march in to take possession of their blood-bought inheritance, while all the bells of Heaven will ring for joy. Earth’s sorrows and trials will then fade away; "one moment in glory will make up for all." One scene more. "Then will the King say unto them on His left hand, Depart from Me, ye cursed." Have you ever been in a court-room when a prisoner was sentenced to death? The judge enters, takes his place on the bench, and the prisoner is commanded to stand up. The spectators look on in awe -- a fellow being is about to be condemned to die. "Prisoner at the bar, you have been tried by a jury of your fellowmen; everything has been done by your counsel that could be done in your behalf. Due weight has been given to all the evidence offered in your behalf. You have been found guilty, and it is now my painful duty to pronounce upon you the sentence of the law. You will be returned to the jail, and there confined until such a day as the Governor may select, when you will be hung by the neck until you are dead, dead, dead, and may God have mercy on your soul." As the sentence closes, women faint, strong men grow pale, a half-suppressed sob is heard throughout the court-room. A human being sentenced to die! But in that great day when probation has ended, when judgment has been pronounced, unto that throng who rejected mercy, refused pardon, passed unrepentant into Eternity, the King will say: "Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels, and these shall go away into everlasting punishment" -- away to eternal despair, eternal remorse, to an eternal Hell, to realize eternally what it means to be LOST. Sent by the power of Omnipotence into immeasurable wastes of darkness, blackened with the curse of God. "To be lost in the night -- in Eternity’s night!" ======================================================================== CHAPTER 103: S. THE DEPARTED LORD ======================================================================== The Departed Lord by George Kulp "The Lord was departed from Saul" (1 Samuel 18:12). After preaching a sermon on The Judgment at Steelton, Pa., one night, I gave the altar call, earnestly exhorting the people to yield themselves to God, and before I was through a woman hastened up the aisle and threw herself down at the altar and cried, "O God, give me one more chance." She evidently realized in that meeting at that time the Spirit was dealing with her for the last time. I have a very deep conviction that in every revival series of meetings where the presence of the Spirit is so marked, and He is rejected, there are souls that cross the dead line, and their doom is irreversibly sealed. At Andersonville prison, in Georgia, during the Civil War, there was a Confederate prison in which were confined some twenty thousand Union soldiers. Sherman was making his march to the sea, and every man who could be spared was called upon to resist him and his army, until there were but few to do guard duty at the prison, and there was fear that the prisoners might make a break for liberty. In order to hold them a line was drawn inside the prison, and some yards from the stockade, and the prisoners were informed that any man coming to that line would be instantly shot, and because some men were killed there it was called the dead line. I believe there is a "dead line" in every life. Dr. Alexander well expresses it in these lines: There is a time we know not when, A place we know not where; That marks the destiny of man, For glory or despair; There is a line by us unseen, That crosses every path, The hidden boundry between God’s mercy and His wrath. To pass that limit is to die To die as if by stealth; It does not quench the beaming eye Nor pale the glow of health. The conscience may be still at ease, The spirit light and gay; That which is pleasing still may please, And care be thrust away. O where is this mysterious bourne By which our path is crossed? Beyond which God Himself hath sworn That he who goes is lost. How far may we go on in sin? How long will God forbear? Where does hope end? and where begin The confines of despair? An answer from the skies is sent Ye that from God depart While it is called today, repent, And harden not your heart. My text tells us of a man who had crossed the dead line and he knew it, and he knew why. He had repeatedly disobeyed God and did it willfully. I challenge anyone to put their finger on anything in this man’s life that was immoral or unclean. There is no record of his getting drunk; he did not steal, nor lie, nor run off with some other man’s wife. He did not gamble, nor get rich at other folks’ expense; he simply did what you are doing every day -- he just disobeyed God. I do not ask you to accept of the thought that men cross the dead line and are as surely damned as if they were in hell if I do not prove it by the Word of God. I firmly believe what the articles of religion teach that any doctrine that is not based upon more than one passage of Scriptures we are not required to believe. But give attention to the Word as I quote it. "Ephraim is joined to his idols, -let him alone." "My Spirit shall not always strive with man." "They shall go with their flocks and their herds to seek the Lord but He will not be found of them." Israel in their hearts turned to go back into Egypt, and God turned and gave them up, "Because I have called and ye have refused; I stretched out my hand and no man regarded. Because ye have set at nought all my counsel and would none of my reproof I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh, when your fear cometh as desolation and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind, when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then shall they call upon me but I will not answer . they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me, for that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord. They would none of my counsel, they despised all my reproof." Listen to the words of Jesus: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that stonest the prophets and killest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, but ye would not, behold your house is left unto you desolate." In our text the Holy Ghost makes record of a fact. "The Lord was departed from Saul," and in this message to you I believe God would have me give you facts. I do not come with arguments, but just simple facts that are beyond contradiction, like the text. I want to pile the Blue Mountains on the Alleghenies, on top of these the Rockies, and then the Alps and Apennines, on these the Himalayas, and have you survey them in the light of the eternity to come, and act as an eternity bound soul should act -- and at once. I aim to give you facts, facts, facts that ought to startle you into action at once. I was called to draw up the will of a man who was nearing eternity, and as I did so I saw he was unsaved and little interested in spiritual things. I asked God to help me say the right thing at the right time. I visited him for five weeks and talked and prayed and pointed him to the only remedy for sin, the only Savior for a sinner. As the end drew near I became more and more interested and prayed, "O God, give me something from Thy Word that will help a dying man to find peace." I quoted the most precious passages as the Spirit brought them to me, and he listened to me apparently much interested, but at last he opened his heart and said: "When I was a young man nineteen years of age, I worked in a machine shop in Rhode Island, and was surrounded by ungodly men who sneered at the truth and at everything religious. I had a Christian mother, but went contrary to her teachings and imbibed the heresy of those men, and now when you quote the Word as you have done, what those men said comes up before me." Then God gave me a passage that I did not quote to this dying man, and it was this: "The wicked are driven away in their wickedness. He died without any hope; he had rejected the truth and God left him. I was in a meeting once upon a time and saw a man with the most pitiful expression on his face, showing he was at least interested. I went to him and talked to him of giving his heart to God, and he said to me, "If I could only get back twenty-four years." But you cannot reverse the wheels of time; there is no road to yesterday; that time with its opportunity had gone forever and as far as his life had showed, God had gone with it. Facts you know, not arguments. A merchant who had no time for anything but business, who thought in numbers, dollars, dimes, cents, who saw everything through his ledger and daybook, had a good wife who spent much time praying for him, and at last persuaded him to go to a camp where she was during the meeting. He came the last Sunday night and God, in answer to that woman’s prayers, put him under awful conviction till he trembled, and forced to decision, said No to God. In six weeks time he was taken with his last sickness; friends prayed with him, exhorted him to pray. His wife pled with him, but while demons from the pit gathered round the bed waiting to drag his naked soul down to the home of the damned, he answered all their entreaties by saying, "God left me the last Sunday night at that camp meeting." God was departed from that soul and he knew why. I was in a meeting at a home camp in Kansas and there was a woman who wanted to give her heart to God and come to the camp, but her friends who were opposed to the doctrines of holiness, kept her away. It was her last call and she died in a few days, but her friends could not save her; they had kept her from God, but they could not snatch her from the clutches of death. I was preaching in a church in summer time, and the windows being up a woman in an adjoining house heard the sermon, and heard Sunday after Sunday. God put her under conviction. One Sunday night she came to church and the Holy Ghost was faithful to her, but she went home after saying No to Him. That week she was taken sick, and sat in her rocking chair saying, "I am lost! I am lost!" Some of the folks came to me and told me of her condition, and I sent some Christian ladies to see her and they talked to her of her soul, and of the One who is mighty to save; but all that woman would do was to sit in her chair and rock to the sad refrain, "I am lost! I am lost!" God was departed from her. Facts and more facts. During a meeting in which many young people were giving their hearts to God, a young man was under deep conviction, and it continued till the meeting closed. The last night the pastor went to him and said, "George, give your heart to God tonight; this is the last night of the meeting and the Spirit is striving with you; yield tonight -- yield now." He was very thoughtful, delayed his answer as though thinking. The pastor urged him further, but at last he said, "Not tonight." The meeting closed; he went to his home. The next morning his mother called him, "Come to breakfast, son; we are all ready to sit down." But he did not come. Again the mother went to the stairs and called, "George, get up, come to your breakfast; we are nearly through." He did not come. His younger brother said, "I will bring him." And taking a cane from the corner he ran upstairs, poked George in the side and said, "Get up you lazy bones!" but there was no move; he poked him again and then dropped the cane in fear and ran down stairs saying, "Mother, I poked him twice and he did not move!" The mother, smitten with fear ran upstairs to find that George, who had the night before said no to God, was compelled to go when death called him. He had his last opportunity the night before, and murdered it. A young woman in the state of Pennsylvania, reared by an infidel father who paved her way to hell by teaching her the contents of the Age of Reason, was at last, after her father’s death, brought under the influence of the Gospel by an earnest minister whose services she attended. She gave her heart to God, and for some years lived an humble Christian life. In the course of time the minister was removed by the calendar; a new preacher came; one of a different type, who had been trained under the new regime, with a new "Course of Study," an evolutionist, a higher critic of the destructive type, and in his sermons he gave vent to the things which this young woman had heard her father say, many years ago. How strange it seems that men can and do preach things in orthodox pulpits today, that if they had preached them forty years ago, they would have been expelled. Her faith was weakened; she lost her experience, and soon after died. During her last illness the preacher came to see her. When she told him what his destructive criticism had done for her, and said to him, "You are preaching what my infidel father once said, you are rehashing the things Paine taught, from an orthodox pulpit, I have lost all the faith I ever had. I am going to hell, and you will come after me. I am damned and you did it." During the campmeeting at Beulah Park, Allentown, Pa., an earnest, talented Methodist preacher was a constant attendant and a very helpful hearer. He received the Holy Ghost as his Sanctifier as a result of the sermons he heard at that time. In his earlier years he had been a Methodist preacher, filling a pulpit in a conference, was devoted and true; but his Presiding Elder came quarterly and would preach sermons that tore the Word of God to pieces, assailing the Pentateuch, denying the Prophetical Books, and pursuing the usual course of the higher critic of the day. The young man followed him, and went to the logical conclusion, and out of the pulpit, into Socialism, became a noted Socialist orator, but never found any rest for his soul. He went to an evangelistic service held by Bro. Biederwolf, went to the altar, found the Christ he had rejected, went shouting down the streets, and told all he met of his joy in believing, and was led of God back into the ministry. He is at this very date minding the Holy Ghost, and is headed toward the evangelistic field, preaching a full salvation. Facts, not arguments. A chaplain was visiting a hospital; the surgeons had just made their rounds, and one of them said, "Chaplain, you had better go see that man in cot No. __, he is going to pass in his checks pretty soon, and there is no hope for him." The chaplain was soon by the side of the dying soldier, and accosting him asked, "My boy, how is it?" and received as an answer, "I am done for; going over soon -- no hope." The chaplain said, "Had you not better pray?" and the dying man laughed in his face. "Ask me to pray? You do not know who you are talking to, or you would never do that." Then he unburdened himself. "Let me tell you chaplain. There was a young fellow came into our company, and he was as green as a gum log. He never swore an oath; he did not know one card from another, and as for liquor, he never had tasted it. I made up my mind I would make him one of us, and as bad as myself. And chaplain, that fellow got so he would swear till we old boys would stand back in sheer amazement. The air would be blue with his cuss words. And drink? He would carry more whisky under his belt and walk straighter than any man in our company. You should have seen the boys pony up on payday when the paymaster came round. He could skin us all, had us all euchered, and got half the money there was in the company. And say, chaplain, I taught him all he knew; taught him to drink, swear and gamble. Say, chaplain, in the fight in which I got this wound that will soon end my earthly career, that boy was shot dead at my side. Go call him back; let me undo the wrong I did that boy -- then I’ll pray." No road to yesterday -- no way back to the lost opportunity. God was departed from him and he knew it! Just facts, you know -- not arguments -- something for you to think on, something to make you think, give you pause. Your soul is at stake -- for God’s sake, THINK! A man lay dying in a little Kentucky town. A good member of the church -- but death came. His constant cry was, "I am lost." His wife said to their son, "Go, call the minister." And as he came in response to the call, she met him at the door and said, "Husband is always saying, ’I am lost! I am lost!’ It is just awful to hear him going on so." The preacher went to his side, listened to him, then said, "Oh, no; you are not lost; you have been a pillar in the church. What would we have done without you? You have been a standby for years." But the dying church member kept on saying, "I am lost! I am lost!" The preacher went to the wife and said, "You must not mind what he says -- he is delirious." But the dying man said, as he caught the words, "I am not delirious; you have been pastor so many years; that man at the foot of the bed has been my neighbor and friend for years; that woman was my wife’s girlhood friend. Do not tell me I am delirious. I am lost! lost! LOST!" Lost, and he knew it -- and knew why! The Lord was departed. Sometime ago there was a church that received considerable support from an unsaved man who seemed to be much interested in the young folks of the community in which the church was located. Once there came a minister on the charge who wondered why he was so interested and yet never joined the church, nor gave any evidence of salvation. So he went to the man and asked him, "Why is it that you who so regularly give to the church, yet you never darken our doors, nor attend our meetings, nor make a profession?" The man looked him straight in the eyes, thanked him for the question, and answered: "Years ago, while I was a young man, the Spirit of God strove with me. I was under much conviction -- knew I ought to yield -- but owing to this and that, I said ’NO’ to God. He left me. I am as surely damned as if I were in hell this moment. I shall die just as I have lived. I am a lost and damned man. I give to the church to help the young folks. I do not want them to do as I did. Do all you can for the young; as for me, there is no hope. God has left me." He knew the awful fact, and he knew why! I was in Idaho preaching in a revival service that God owned, where souls were getting through to precious victory. There was a young man in the congregation one night who wanted to come to the altar -- and could not. He had been in the meeting that was held the year before. In that meeting he went to the altar, and an older brother came and took him away. This time he wanted to go to the altar; the brother who took him away the year before, wanted him to go; friends were asking him to go, but he could not -- he was handcuffed to the sheriff. He had committed some crime for which he had been arrested, and was waiting in the meeting for the train to pass through that went to the adjoining town, the county seat. One man at least who could not go to the altar whenever he wanted to. And you cannot get folks to pray with you any old time that you want them to. Sometimes God will not let them pray. Let me give you an instance: Mrs. Williams was a successful evangelist, owned of God in winning souls and much gifted in prayer. She came home one time, very tired after a series of meetings. She had put off her traveling dress, arrayed herself in a loose garment and was seated in her chair, thanking God for an opportunity to rest, when the doorbell rang and she was called to pray with a dying neighbor. She went to the house and entering was taken upstairs to a room where lay a man who was constantly crying, "Pray, oh, pray!" The mother said to Mrs. Williams, "Oh, do pray for him!" And she at once fell on her knees and tried to pray for the young man -- but God shut her up -- and she rose from her attitude, saying, "I cannot pray." The mother said, "Mrs. Williams, you hear his request. Oh, do pray for him!" And thus urged, she knelt again in prayer, but she had hardly begun when God shut her up, and she again said, "I cannot pray." She left the room and the last thing she heard was the distressful cry, "Oh, pray, pray, pray!" He died the next morning just before the dawn of day, and his last whisper was, "Oh, pray, pray, pray." But God would not let his servant, so gifted in prayer, utter one single petition. Why? Let me tell you. Years before he had been in a meeting where many young people were asking for saints to pray for them, and he, with one other, had covenanted to ask for prayer never. But when the cold hand of death was feeling round his heartstrings, then he wanted someone to pray. But God has a long memory, and he would not let anyone pray for him. The Lord was departed from him -- and he knew it. If the lost sinner was in his senses when he died, he would scream in agony of soul as he faces eternity without God. The great majority of people who die, die drugged. Ask any honest doctor, and he will tell you this is a fact. The chamber where the sinner meets his death would be an ante room of hell, were it not for the drug, the quieting medicine that you want given to them to relieve you as you see them suffer. In 1892 a train was rushing on toward the World’s Fair. Men were laughing, talking -- merry in anticipation of the good times they were expecting at the great show, when a head-on collision occurred at Battle Creek, Mich., and twenty-six souls were hurried into eternity. Unexpected? Yes, but no more so than yours may be. At seventy heart-beats a minute you are rushing on towards eternity. At any minute your heart may stop beating, and then Where would you spend eternity? I saw this notice, or rather advertisement in the street car in Huntington, W. Va., one day. Read it: "If some folks could read the death notices that will be in the paper three months from now, they would take out life insurance today." I at once thought, If some folks could read the death notices that will be in the paper three months from now, they would seek God now -- at once. If that man reading this sermon now could read the death notices that will be in the paper three months from now -- yes, one month from now -- he would mind God and seek God now. Are you the one? Lost forever, eternally lost Living in time, but the deadline crossed Lost to God, to hope and grace, Never to see an angel face. Never to know of joy in Heaven, Never to know of sins forgiven, Always to know closed is the door, And hope has fled for evermore. Naught but anguish and terror and pain, Crying for mercy, but ever in vain; The groans of the lost the music of hell, And naught to break the awful spell. Moving to meet thee, hell from beneath, Weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth; Groanings and shriekings and cries of despair, Regrets unavailing, the lost everywhere. Lost forever, ever and more, Closed forever probation’s door; Lake of fire, the second death, Now spent in vain is praying breath. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 104: S. THE PRICE OF VICTORY ======================================================================== The Price Of Victory "And he said, Thus saith the Lord, Make this valley full of ditches. For thus saith the Lord, Ye shall not see wind, neither shall ye see rain; yet that valley shall be filled with water, that ye may drink, both ye, and your cattle, and your beasts. "And this is but a slight thing in the sight of the Lord: He will deliver the Moabites also into your hand. "And ye shall smite every fenced city, and every choice city, and shall fell every good tree, and stop all wells of water, and mar every good piece of land with stones. "And it came to pass." 2 Kings 3:16-20 When Commodore Peary was ill the Arctic regions, pushing his way toward the North Pole, he supposed one day that he had made an advance of ten miles, but, in reality, he had lost two, for while he was advancing, the ice over which he was walking had floated twelve miles toward the south. He discovered his error when he looked up and scanned the heavens. Let us get our eyes off of preachers, off of folks and sur roundings, and fix them on God -- then every soul will ascertain his real relation; each one will be located, and God will be glorified in this service. God commands history to be written that we may know the lessons He has taught in the past, and that we may learn by the experience of others. "These things were written that through patience and comfort of the Scriptures we might have hope, and they’ are profitable for admonition, for exhortation, and for instruction in righteousness." The chapter from which our text is taken has in it a splendid lesson for the perfecting of the saints, that is well worthy of our study. Ahab, the king of Israel, had conquered Moab and ruled them with an iron hand, compelling them to bring yearly tribute of an hundred thousand lambs, and an hundred thousand rams, with the wool. Upon the death of Ahab, Moab rebelled against the king of Israel, and Jehuam, the successor of Ahab, numbered Israel for battle. He also invited Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, to go with him against Moab, who acceded to the request, saying: "My people are as thy people, and my horses as thy horses." Edom also united his forces with these, and these three armies marched, fetching a compass of a seven days’ journey through the wilderness of Edom, and coming to a place where there was no water for the host, nor for the cattle that followed them. Seeing the danger that threatened them, Israel’s king asked: "Has God brought these three kings together to deliver them into the hand of Moab?" But Jehoshaphat, the pious king of Judah, inquired: "Is there not here a prophet of the Lord, that we may inquire of the Lord by him?" And one of the king of Israel’s servants answered: "Here is Elisha, the son of Shaphat, which poured water on the hands of Elijah," and Jehoshaphat said: "He has the blessing; let us consult him," and these three kings in their distress went to inquire of a man who knew God, "How may we gain the victory?" Elisha believed in separation. When he saw the worldly, idolatrous king of Israel, he said: "What have I to do with thee? Get thee to the prophets of thy father, and to the prophets of thy mother. As the Lord liveth, before whom I stand, were it not that I regard the presence of Jehoshaphat, I would not look toward thee." Preachers who truckle to wealth and position, D. D.’s and LL. D.’s, might well learn a lesson from this old prophet whose only title was "a man of God." "Thus saith the Lord," said he, "make this valley full of ditches, for thus saith the Lord, Ye shall not see wind, neither shall ye see rain, yet this valley shall be filled with water that ye may drink, both ye and your cattle and your beasts." We desire, by the help of the Holy Spirit, to call your attention to the lessons in this chapter, for our mutual instruction and encouragement. These kings desired victory, and God gave them the terms in a command: "Make this valley full of ditches." In other words, "If you want the victory, there is something for you to do -- get to digging." God could have slain the Moabites and not used men. He is not scant in His resources, nor confined to one way of working. He could have harnessed the lightnings and as grim messengers of death have sent them on His errands, He could have thundered in the heavens, and, as aforetime, hurled great stones against Moab’s ranks. He could have used the hornets and, as the Turks in after years were defeated by the bees, so Moab could have been hurried to destruction. He could have sent an angel, as He did to the hosts of Assyria when one hundred and eight-five thousand corpses strewed the plain before Jerusalem; but to teach men lessons of trust and dependence, He makes them factors in the work and says: "Make this valley full of ditches. Here are the terms of victory; get to work." God always lays down the terms, and we may know them. "If any man will do My will, he SHALL know of the doctrine." "Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse that there may be meat in Mine house, and prove Me now herewith. saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of Heaven and pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it." Not only spiritual blessings, but temporal blessings also. If you doubt it, listen to what follows: "And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground, neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith the Lord of hosts." My God, help thy people to get on to believing ground where they will live, as a matter of course, the victorious life. I know a sanctified little woman who takes God at His word, and when the caterpillars were destroying the fruit-trees in the yard, she said: "It is written, I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes and he shall not destroy the fruits, and up to her room she went to pray, while her brother went to the door to watch the caterpillars come down out of the tree, and they came, too. MIND GOD and have the victory. A woman of Israel was left with two sons when her husband, "a man of God," died in considerable debt. The creditor was urgently pressing his claims and threatened to sell her boys, which the law permitted him to do. In her extremity she went to the "man of God" and said, "The creditor is come to take unto him my two sons." And the man of God said, "What shall I do for thee; tell me, what hast thou in the house?" And she said, "Thine handmaid hath not anything save a pot of oil." Then he said, "Go borrow vessels not a few, and when thou hast shut too the door pour out of that one vessel, until all are filled." And she obeyed, and obeying, found the way to deliverance, paid the creditor, and lived the remainder of her days, she and her children, on the balance. She complied with the conditions and got results -- as people always do who meet God’s terms. The Church of God was predestined in the counsels of the eternal Godhead to be a victorious Church. Provision has been made for every battlefield on which the saints must engage the powers of darkness. If defeat comes, we cannot lie on our faces, like Joshua of old, and cry unto God; we know God is always true, some one has sinned, failed to meet conditions, failed to obey God. We know the terms of victory. Make the ditches. Why stand ye here idle? Go work. "IF we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin." "They that are after the Spirit MIND THE THINGS OF THE SPIRIT." Mind God and have the victory. God is looking for obedience. The price of success is right here -- "Ye are My disciples if (much virtue in that "if") ye do whatsoever I command you." People are seeking power -- praying for power. Pentecostal power is to be had today at Pentecostal prices; no more, no less. God never alters the terms, neither for peasant nor king, for rich nor poor, preacher nor layman. Pay the price and you always get the goods. A minister, humble and unpretentious, was attending a camp-meeting. All the star preachers, with their star sermons about the starry heavens, etc., had been up to preach, and yet there was no move. The camp-meeting seemed doomed to failure. Some one suggested that this humble "man of God" be put up to preach, as it was a well-known fact that he had a constant revival in his home church. This was agreed to, and he preached with an unction from the Holy One. The people were swayed under his sermon like the trees before the resistless hurricane, and at the altar call they came to the altar and swept into the kingdom. Some of the "stars" went to him afterward and asked for the secret of the marvelous results, and he answered them: "I told God He could give you preachers the popularity, only give me souls." He had paid the price, met the conditions, dug the ditches, and had the results such as many coveted. God wants men and women in the pulpit who will live in His sight and out of sight of men; who will live, not for the praise of men, but for the praise of God. Yonder is a magnificent steamer plowing her way across the Atlantic, making for the eastern shore. On she goes through fair weather and foul, through sunshine and storm. On the bridge the captain walks resplendent in gold lace and gilt buttons, straps on his shoulders, gilt band around his cap. He fills every eye, and when the passengers reach the other side they meet in the first cabin and pass a series of resolutions thanking the captain who so safely brought them across the ocean’s tide. But wait a moment! Down in the hold of that vessel there is a man stripped to the waist, sweat dimming his eyes, coal dust soiling his brow, shoveling coal -- shoveling coal. No one sees him, no one thinks of passing resolutions thanking him, yet they never would have reached the harbor but for him -- doing his duty out of sight. Oh, my brother, my sister, fellow-workers for God and souls, would you be willing, are you willing now, to labor all out of sight, no newspaper mention, no bouquets, no applause, no smiles, no cheers; just laboring on for Him, and the perishing around you -- out of sight for Him until He shall say, "It is enough, come up higher"? Now for the promise. This valley shall be filled with water. When the ditches are all dug -- when you have done your part -- God always does His. I have seen churches assembled in convention asking, "What can be the matter? Why are there no results?" Invariably they have not complied with the conditions; they have either purposely or ignorantly ignored God’s terms. We tell the sinner to obey God. Let the Church take its own medicine -- obey God -- and it will be a victorious Church, a powerful Church, a Church that will hasten the coming of Jesus. God’s Word is a sufficient ground for obedience. Suppose these armies had said: "We are not going to dig until the wind gets into a rainy quarter, until we see the clouds arising;" they would have died miserably. The promise was, "Ye shall not see wind, neither shall ye see rain, yet this valley shall be filled" when ye are through digging. God requires implicit obedience, and no matter about wind, nor rain, nor circumstances, nor sight, nor folks, nor enemies, nor friends, it is always wise to obey God. We can do all God asks us to do. Every command is an enabling act. We remember hearing a dear old brother testifying in Berean Baptist Church in Philadelphia ... "When I was sanctified, people said to me, ’Sanctified, are you? Can walk on the water now, can you?’ And I told them, I can if God wants me to." Blessed trust, and blessed simplicity that says: "I can do all things through Christ strengthening me." When drought had prevailed for forty-two months and the "man of God" wanted water from Heaven, he prayed and water came. When the sacrifice was on the altar and he wanted fire, fire fell for the asking. The God of Israel who gave water from the rock in the wilderness, and spread a table with angel’s food seven days in the week and fifty-two weeks in the year, until the old corn of Canaan was reached, can give everything the Church or the individual needs today, and nothing stands in the way but man’s willful disobedience, hence, the one thought all through this sermon that we wish to impress on our hearts is, "Will we obey God -- comply with conditions; measure up to the terms." Men and women today want the baptism that brings the power. They earnestly desire to be efficient workers, (no mean ambition, by the way) in the vineyard; want stars to lay at His feet, and are praying, seeking, running to the altar. Mind the Holy Ghost, obey God, and whether you are preacher or layman, learned or ignorant, rich or poor, popular or unpopular, you may, yea shall have the victory. "Pastor, call a meeting for next Tuesday night -- there is going to be a revival." "Nonsense," said the pastor, "I see no signs of it." But this woman, like the Syro-Phoenician woman of old, was persistent; she had heard from Heaven after much prayer. "O yes, pastor, God tells me He will meet with us," and, in answer to that woman’ s urgent request, a meeting was called, the pastor saying after calling it, "But no one will come." Tuesday night came, the school-house was packed, and the meeting was scarcely opened when tears and sobs that would no longer be repressed broke out, and that preacher did not preach, of course he did not, for, as the street Arabs say, "he wasn’t in it." He could not understand it. But that woman knew. God was sending the results, heart-breaking conviction and soul hunger, in answer to prayer. She had dug the ditches, and lo, here was the water. People came to the altar and prayed through. Two preachers went to a church in a country district, held a service, sang, prayed, and never had a dryer time in all their experience as ministers, but when the invitation was given, part of the cut-and-dried program, people came to the altar -- they had been waiting until the preachers would get through and get out of the way. The Holy Ghost took charge of that meeting. The preachers did not know what to make of it, were really surprised, but when they returned to the place where they were being entertained they were greeted with the question, "Did they come?" A precious saint, shut in by affliction, unable to get to the house of prayer, had dug the ditches, knew God was faithful, and propounded the question in confidence. He had answered. Consider the next thought, Victory. "And it came to pass." Ditches all dug, terms all complied with, conditions all met -- what then? What do you expect? What have you a right to expect? A young man candidate for the position of engineer in the United States Navy was before the examining board at Annapolis Naval Academy and was asked the question, "Suppose your engine is all right, your pump in good working order, your hose overboard. You start your engine, your pump works, but you get no water. What would you do?" "I would examine my pump." "Yes, but the supposition is that your engine, pump and hose are all right. In such a case what would you do?" "Do? What would I do? I would look overboard to see if the ocean had gone dry." Sure enough, and when you, believer, have met the terms, complied with the conditions, as sure as God lives, there can be nought else but victory. No wind, no rain, but it came to pass. Note here the time. In the morning, when the meat offering was on the altar, it came to pass. How about your altar, brother? Family altar? Altar of secret prayer? No use looking for water, no right to claim victory, no assurance of blessing, until the altars are in working order, and everything on. So-called Christian homes and no family altar, no place of secret prayer! Church altars as fireless as the North Pole! God give us to see that it means much, and costs much, to live in a place where you can constantly claim, and have, the assurance of victory. Water came by the way of Edom. That reminds me that that is the way victory came to us. The old evangelical prophet standing on one of the mountain peaks of prophecy looked down through the gloom and mist of the coming ages and saw One, by whose majestic presence and stride of conquest he was attracted, and in his rapture he cried: "Who is this that cometh from Edom with dyed garments; from Bozrah, this that is glorious in His apparel, traveling in the greatness of His strength?" And back came the answer that set him all aglow with prophetic fire: "I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save. Wherefore art Thou red in Thine apparel, and Thy garments like him that treadeth in the wine fat? I have trodden the winepress alone, and of the people there was none with Me. I looked and there was none to help, and I wondered there was none to uphold." I see Him coming to the deliverance of a race doomed to die -- on to Bethlehem with its manger, over which angels sang, while shepherds bowed in wondering awe. On to the Jordan -- to the wilderness; where the arch enemy learned that the Son of God was on the field, as he ran upon the bosses of Jehovah’s buckler. en to Gethsemane -- to Pilate’s judgment hall -- steadfastly setting His face toward the cross. Yet, as He ever moves onward, He is blessing mankind, plucking brands from the burning, giving health to the diseased, sight to the blind, and at Lazarus’ tomb, teaching Death that He is his Master. Then up the rugged way to Calvary -- to the final conflict with the powers of darkness, -- where, stooping to conquer, He bows His head and dies. But still He moves onward. His coming meant victory, and death shall not stop Him. On through Joseph’s tomb, where "Gates of steel and bars of brass Gave way that the King of kings might pass." On to Galilee to comfort sorrowing disciples, "and Peter." On to Jerusalem to tell us through those words to Thomas, "Blessed are they who having not seen yet have believed." On to Olivet, His last earthly stepping-stone from which He mounts upward to meet the choirs that come trooping earthward to escort Him to His mediatorial throne. And from that throne this morning He says to every believing child of God: "What wilt thou that I shall do unto thee?" Oh, brother, believe God for victory -- present victory -- eternal victory. He shall see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied. Comply with the terms, meet the conditions, dig the ditches, and VICTORY IS SUDDEN. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 105: S. THE SECOND DEATH ======================================================================== The Second Death by George Kulp "This is the Second Death" (Revelation 20:14). Death has been defined as the separation of soul and body. But is not death more than that? If that were all, why should men fear death? Nature is kind to the dying, and has made provision for an easy and almost painless exit from this life. The blood stagnates, a lethargy creeps over the frame, consciousness departs, and all is over. I know there have been those who have cried in agony, and dreaded death, but it is what comes after death the sinner fears. Death implies the separation from loved ones. A young man walked into the office of a railroad magnate and said to him, "I want a train for New York. I want the right of way for a hundred miles ahead. I want switches nailed down for that distance, for I must reach New York in the fast est possible time." The manager said, "Young man, it will cost you something to get that." "I did not ask you what it would cost; I told you what I wanted." "All right, you shall have it." He got it; every switch was nailed down for hundreds of miles ahead of the train; the right of way was given; he arrived in New York in the fastest time ever given to a man; he took the auto in waiting, was whisked to a palatial home in a few minutes, but there was crepe on the door. Death had beat him; a loved one whose one desire was to see the young man had been hurried away by the hand of death. Death and time and tide wait for no man. Tom Johnson was Mayor of Cleveland. He was eminently a self-made man, had made and lost several fortunes. He made the fight for three-cent car fares for the people of the city, but one day he called in wife and children, and said, "I have called you to say the last farewell. I am going to the land of shadows; the doctor tells me there is no hope, and wife, children, good-bye." They came from the room with weeping eyes and breaking hearts. Death, then, is more than the separation of soul and body. It is separation from loved ones. To the Christian it is only a separation for a little while, and then an eternal reunion. When Rev. George W. Bacheldor was dying, he called in his wife, who was the daughter of that stalwart man of God, Dr. D. W. Bartine. As she sat by his side he put his arms around her neck and bade her "good-bye for a little while," saying, "I love you next to Jesus." The second death is an eternal separation from all that is good and true, and pure and holy and happy forever. Death is a separation from home. I was called to preach the funeral sermon of a man in Michigan who had been a very successful farmer. He was a hard worker; he had cleared every acre of that farm on which he lived; planted every tree, made every foot of lawn, sowed every field, and now he was to die. As he laid there he said to some of the neighbors who were in the room, "Boys, lift me up; take me to the window; let me look out on the old farm once more." They carried him to the window. He looked long and lovingly at the barns which he had built, at the orchard he had planted, at the lawn he had made. and then he said, "That will do, carry me back," and lying down again he died. Death, then, is more than separation from the body -- it is a separation from home. Mazarin, the Premier of France. was nearing the end. He called his servants, asked them to take him out to the art gallery of his mansion, and as supported by their arms, he passed along the long gallery, looking at the works of artists and sculptors, admiring them with a critical eye, he was heard to say, "Must I leave you? Can I not take you with me Yes, he and all the rest of us must leave behind all the associations that we have loved. A lady was riding along a country road with her driver when they came to an old church. The shutters hung on one hinge, the cobwebs were over doors and windows, the weeds had grown up in the path, and yet she said to her driver, "I want to go in that old church for a little while." And getting out she went in and stayed for more than half an hour. The driver grew impatient. "What does that woman want in that old church, with all its dust and decay?" and he made up his mind he would ask her when she came out. After she was reseated in the carriage, he ventured to ask, "Madame, will you please tell me what it was that kept you so long in that dusty old church?" "Certainly I will. I am visiting back in this neighborhood where I was reared, after an absence of forty years. I never expect to return. I was converted more than forty years ago in that old church, and I wanted to go in and get down at the altar where I first met Jesus. I forgot you -- forgot the passage of time while I was there. I know you will forgive me for keeping you waiting." That old altar was dear to her heart and she knew she was leaving it for the last time. There is a spot to me more dear Than native vale or mountain, A spot for which affection’s tear Flows grateful from its fountain. ’Tis not where kindred souls are found, Though that is almost heaven; But where I first my Savior found, And knew my sins forgiven. Death is more than separation of soul from the body; it is separation from loved associations. But my text refers to the Second Death. Eternal Death. Death is a monster, an enemy; it is pitiless, cruel; it takes the young, the ambitious, the hopeful. It separates the husband and wife, the mother from the child. I have no liking for that hymn that once was in the Methodist Hymnal, "Ah, lovely appearance of death, thy sight upon earth is so fair." God in His Word says Death is an enemy; but this text means eternal death, unending, never ceasing, dying always and yet never dead. There are three kinds of Death. First, there is physical death, the separation of the soul from the body; then there is spiritual death, the separation of the soul from God; and there is eternal death, the separation of the reunited soul and body from God forever. Have you never been in the room where they were a long time dying? "How is he today?" "Oh, he is nearing the end. The doctor says he will pass out before sundown." Sundown comes and friends ask, "How is he today?" And again comes the answer, "He is almost gone -- cannot live through the night." But the night has gone and again the friends come and ask, "How is he today?" And again the answer, "He is nearly gone -- cannot last till noon." But at last someone inquires and is told, "He is dead." But after ten millions of years have passed away, there will never come a time when it can be said of an immortal soul, "It is dead." Death flees from them; they want to die in hell and cannot; always dying and yet never dead. I do like that word eternal -- when it is yoked up with some words that belong to the vocabulary of the skies, or the Christian. Eternal peace. Eternal joy. Eternal Heaven! But, oh, the horrors when it is yoked up with eternal Death! Oh, think what it means for that husband who is unsaved, who is going straight to a devil’s hell, while his sanctified wife is going straight to a glorious heaven! It means, "Wife, good-bye forever." Eternal Separation! Let us now consider what the Second Death really means. It is separation from God forever. From God, the Source of life and power and love. The soul was made to enjoy God forever; made to walk and talk with Him; made for communion with Him. I have thought that God really enjoyed walking and talking with that first man with whom He would meet and talk in the cool of the garden in the morning. I have thought God missed the morning walks with that good, pure man when he fell. I think that God thought so much of Enoch, that other man who walked with Him, that He took him up to Himself to make the pleasure an eternal one. But think of it! Man made to walk and talk with God, separated from Him forever! One of the blessings of the pure in heart is that they shall see God; but the sinner in hell shall never see God, never talk with God, never have a prayer answered -- it is an eternal separation from Him. It is separation from heaven, angels, friends, saints, forever. Here we have churches, the bells peal forth an invitation every week to all to come to the house of God -- but there are no church bells calling in hell. I rode on a train one time with a man who knew me well, and be said, "I would not live in a town where there were no churches and no schools. I want them for my children. I am not a church member, but I respect the churches for the good work they are doing." Separation from Bibles and Sabbath Schools, and good people forever. Never to hear another prayer in the Spirit, or Spirit inspired, for the Holy Ghost never inspires anyone to pray when it is useless, and it is useless to pray in hell; not even a drop of water in hell, though men cry for water, water, water, to cool their parched tongues. The Second Death is companionship with devils and demons and Satan forever. With the lost in hell forever. Think of it! Made for God and heaven, made to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, and yet shut up in hell to be the companion of the damned of all ages. All the whoremongers, all the adulterers, all the liars, all the drunkards, all the saloonkeepers, all the vile and vicious, all that loveth and maketh a lie, all the unrepentant of all ages, with Neros, the Borgias, the tyrants, the persecutors, the crucifiers of the Son of God, the Judases who betrayed Him, and this forever! After earth, with its Gospel privileges, with its blessed sunlight, with its gracious providences, with its preached Gospel, the wooings of the Holy Spirit, then to be lost in hell forever! This is the Second Death. It is bitter memories forever. Just to think. Once appointed unto salvation. Once an heir to a robe and a crown. For I fully believe that every child that comes into this world is a saved child. As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive. There are no heathen babies. They are all Christian, born under the atonement of Jesus Christ, and no matter where the child dies -- in Africa’s jungles or the arid plains of India -- it goes straight to the presence of God as fast as the white-winged angels can carry it. No matter what the color of its skin, it is a saved child. But to be lost, to reject the light that comes through the atonement of Jesus’ blood, to have to think and think forever, "I might have been saved!" God gave His Son to die for me, gave me the Word, unto me was the Word of salvation sent; His providences were around me, and now they are all gone forever, and I am damned." It is tormenting remorse forever; it is agonizing despair, forever; it is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, forever; it is outer darkness forever. Darkness so far away from the throne of God that the light never reaches it. I saw a picture representing Napoleon at St. Helena. He stands down by the seashore; his arms are folded; he is looking away across the waters towards La Belle France. I imagine he is thinking, "Over yonder I was the loved Emperor of a devoted people; I was on a throne supported by the love of France. An army moved at the command of my Generals. But I, led on by my cursed ambition, was not satisfied. I aimed at a dominion that meant Europe at my feet. I trampled on the bones and blood of my loyal friends to reach the goal -- and here I am, to die with my boots on, to live only as a memory in the days to come." So with the lost in hell. To look out as far as mind can carry them to think, "Once I lived on yonder earth, where I was a free moral agent. I might have been a king and priest unto God. I might have been a co-worker with the Son of God, with high heaven; but I loved sin, I loved the pleasures of the world, I loved to gratify the flesh. I said No to God, and here I am banished forever from God and heaven, and hope. Death would be a relief, but death never comes here; a coffin would be a welcome sight, but coffins are useless in hell. I am lost forever. It is to be wicked, and constantly growing more wicked forever. Want Scripture for that? You shall have it. "Evil men and seducers wax worse and worse." It is to be without any hope or power of repentance forever. Here is a man who sold his birthright and he found no place of repentance forever, though he sought it carefully and with tears. Every sinner has sold his birthright. He was appointed to be saved and would not. Jesus said, "Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life." "Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, for He will have mercy, and unto our God, for He will abundantly pardon." That "Let" implies he may. He can, "if" he will. Every sinner is the author of his damnation. He reaps what he sows. He may cry, as I have heard them cry, "O God, give me one more chance! Give me one more altar call. Let me hear one more sermon!" But it is too late when the line is crossed. The Second Death is the aggravation of all the woes, of all the sorrows, all the pains, all the horrors, all the diseases, all the curse that sin ever produced in the world, shut up in one place, with one class of people forever -- the people who rejected Jesus Christ while on earth and deliberately chose sin, for sin when it is finished bringeth forth Death, and my text declares it is eternal death. I went one time to an insane asylum in the state of Michigan. I went with a man, then a preacher, who once had been a clerk in the institution. We went on the first floor, where the folks they were surely insane, and you soon found it out, but they were perfectly harmless. My friend then asked the doctor, who was our escort, to take us on the third floor where the incurables were, so we went up on the third floor. A door was unlocked. and we were locked into the "Disturbed Ward" with the doctor and the incurably insane. They came around us, hair long and unkempt, finger nails unkept, cheek bones high. eyes sunken in. They reached out their hands, touched us as though we were visitants from some (to them) unknown world. I was glad to get out of there, and I have never wanted to go back since. But hell is the disturbed ward of the universe, for to my mind the most insane thing a man can do is to reject the only salvation that can deliver from sin. When a soul rejects Jesus, he is an incurable, for there is no other name under heaven whereby we can be saved save the name of Jesus. There is no rest nor peace in hell. In the disturbed ward the constant cry is, "I want to go home. I want to go home." So in hell the one cry is for Home, for hell has nothing homelike about it. Love reigns and rules in a home; that is what will make heaven so homey. Put hate reigns in hell. They hate one another. hate God, hate Jesus, hate the Holy Spirit, hate the preachers who withheld the whole truth, hate the professing Christians who failed t3 warn them of the hell that awaited them as the consequence of sin, for as sure as God lives hell is the sequence of a life of sin! The Second Death is to be lost in hell forever. So lost there is no hope. Lost to God, lost to hope, lost to love, lost to peace, lost to friendships, and lost forever! No Savior, no Holy Spirit, no promises, no mercy, no mourners benches, no time. Can you imagine what earth would be without these? Make it as bad as you can, and then it is what hell is forever. And now, let me give you a description of a lost soul from a preacher of the South, a master of language, a man who communed with God, and when he passed out of this life he was on his knees in prayer. He lived in an afflicted body, but it was, nevertheless, a temple of the Holy Ghost, and this man’s mind and soul were filled with the quickening touch and power of the Divine within. Hear his description of a lost soul: "Saints commune with saints, and angels with angels, and they all commune with God; but this soul, sympathetic and social in the very construction of its being, its state changed and not its constitutional nature, is eternally isolated from everything like itself, and plunged into an ocean of darkness interminable to its flagging wing, where no sight nor sound will ever greet its aching sense, and doomed to wander on in the pathless void, while cycles roll and ages go grinding on. See it careering in its bewildered flight. It has crossed its track and recrossed it a thousand times. It is lost, lost beyond the power of finding. It knows it. It feels, but still it flies, now advancing, now regressing. It turns again and lo! a blush of dusky light, a stupendous arch of massive bend, greets its vision. It fain would scale the loftiest turret. it soars, it hovers, but, oh, horror of horrors! temples, gates and towers melt away into darker gloom, and it is left in awful loneliness, hanging in agony, but a speck of quivering terror in untenanted and unilluminated space. Shall it ascend, descend, or move off on a level? There are no ups nor downs or recumbent planes where there is nothing. if ups and downs and planes there are, it may soar up -- up -- up forever, or dip down -down -- down forever, or rush on -- on -- on forever. It is still -- and through all eternity -- A Lost Soul! See it -- yonder, yonder, yonder! It goes that way -- Lost! Lost! Lost! It comes this way, and shrieking Lost -- Lost -- Lost! till our hearts stand still with horror. Scream on and fly on, cursed and ruined spirit; no battlemented walls of jasper will ever meet thy gaze, or furnish a resting place for thy weary pinions. Fly on, lost soul, forever; no angel of mercy will ever cross thy solitary way or overtake thee in thy wanderings. Lost spirits blackened with the curse of thy God. Fly on and repeat in thy despairing cry the chorus of thine own horrible death march. Lost -- lost, where no echoes will ever mock thy misery. Immortal soul, lost in boundless, bottomless, infinite darkness; fly on, thou shalt never find company till the ghost of eternity will greet you over the grave of God, and thou shalt never find rest till thou art able to fold thy wings on the gravestone of thy Maker. And the Judge will say to the angels: Bind Him hand and foot and take him away and cast him into outer darkness. There shall be wee ping and gnashing of teeth (Matthew 22:13).’" ======================================================================== CHAPTER 106: S. THE SPIRIT WITHDRAWN ======================================================================== The Spirit Withdrawn "My Spirit shall not always strive with man." Genesis 6:3 This Book is the Word of God. "Holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." "All Scriptures given of God are profitable for admonition, for exhortation and for instruction in righteousness." "The entrance of Thy Word," says the Psalmist, "giveth light." At Cornell University they had some plants growing all night long under the electric lights, and they found they grew more rapidly than those that had not the light. If we walk in the light, we have fellowship with Him, and constantly the cleansing of the blood. In this text we have a record made by the Holy Spirit of a decision in the mind of God, of a conclusion to which God came in His own mind after a survey of the wickedness of men upon the earth. We have other such records by the Holy Spirit. In the first chapter of Genesis we read: "And God said, Let there be light, and there was light." "And God said, Let there be a firmament in the under of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters." "And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth, and it was so." These all were the determinations in the mind of God -- The records of the Divine fiats of creation. They were not said unto any one. So our text: "And God said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh, yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years." Read carefully, (it was not said to Noah). When God talked to Adam, He called unto him and said: "Where art thou.?" And God said unto Noah -- after the decision recorded above: "The end of all flesh is come before Me, for the earth is filled with violence through them and behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make thee an ark of gopher wood, rooms shalt thou make in the ark and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. and this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above, and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof, with lower, second and third stories shalt thou make it. And behold, I bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh. take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and thou shalt gather it to thee, and it shall be for food for thee and for them -- the cattle, and fowl, and creeping things. Thus did Noah, according to all that God commanded him, so did he." This is the record, let us abide by it; not alter it to suit our theories, nor to save our old sermons. God saw the wickedness of men -- they were flesh, that is, sensual, carnal; they walked after the flesh and not after the Spirit. "Every imagination of the thoughts of their heart was evil and only evil continually, and it repented the Lord that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at the heart, and the Lord said: I will destroy man whom I have created, from the face of the earth, for it repenteth Me that I have made man. And from that very hour the decision was made man was doomed, the Spirit withdrawn; they were left alone of God and, although it was one hundred and twenty years from the end, yet just as surely as God departed from Saul and answered him not, so surely these men were doomed to eternal death; as certainly damned as if they were in Hell. "They did eat, they drank, they married wives and were given in marriage until the day that Noe entered the ark and the flood came and destroyed them all." Noah prepared an ark to the saving of his house. This, from the time that God said, "My Spirit shall not always strive with man". But some old objector, married to his old teachings, says: "Didn’t Noah preach for one hundred and twenty years?" No, God’s Word does not say so; you read that into the Scriptures but not in them. Do not add to the Word -- the Book is closed. He did not preach, because first. God would not command or lead a preacher that belonged to Him to do a useless thing, and it is useless to preach to a generation -- or to a Saul -- when God has given them up. Again, we are assured that he did not preach because God’s Word says that Noah was a just man, and perfect in his generation, and Noah walked with God, and we assert that it is an impossibility for a just and perfect man, who walks with God, to preach for one year to many people and have no converts. The man who excuses a barren, fruitless ministry by the example of Noah preaching one hundred and twenty years and no converts, is perverting the Scriptures and had better go to the altar. A man of God, in the will of God, where God wants him to be, will have converts. Look at this picture. Duncan Mathewson was a Scotch stone-mason. He worked by the day, received good wages, and laid by money that he might go and preach when and where he was led. God directed him to a certain town, and he obeyed and went, having enough money to pay rent for the hall and board himself for three months. Having secured the hall -- no committee to welcome him or to advertise him -- he went on the platform and to an empty house said, "Let us sing," and began singing a soul-stirring hymn. Having had a good time singing, he then said, "Let us pray," and down on his knees he went and prayed until he had made an end of praying. Then, rising, he announced the hymn and said, "Let us sing," and sang it through. Then looking squarely down where the congregation should have been, he said; "You will find our text, chapter, verse." He then began to preach and, as he warmed up, he talked so loud that the boys came in off the street, and, having satisfied their curiosity, they went out and told the people to come hear a crazy man preach, a man preaching to empty benches! He soon had a congregation, and a revival began that ran three months, because he was a man of God, and in the Divine will, and converts were numerous. Away with those followers of a Noah of their own imaginations, comforted by the thought that their imaginary predecessor preached one hundred and twenty years and never a convert! The Noah of the Bible built an ark during those one hundred and twenty years, according to all that God commanded, so did he. Why does God withdraw the Spirit from men? Because He is grieved by their wickedness; because their hearts are set on evil; they plan for it, they seek for it, they revel in it, and God leaves them. Because of repeated acts of disobedience. Noah was a preacher of righteousness, and, until the time God withdrew His Spirit, and put Noah to ark-building, he had preached the Word and the people scorned it. God has left men since that time. Read your Bible carefully. Of all the thousands of adults who left Egypt and started for Canaan, only two entered the land -- Joshua and Caleb. Why did the others perish? Because "God turned and gave them up." "The Lord hath departed from me and answereth me not," said Saul, Israel’s first king -- but why? Let Israel’s history tell the story. One act after another, all full of the crowning sin -- disobedience. "Because the sons of Eli have made themselves vile, and he restrained them not, therefore iniquity shall not be purged from the house of Israel forever," and those sons were doomed; the handwriting was against them. "Ephraim is joined to his idols, let him alone." He has had messengers and prophets and has stoned and killed them, "let him alone." "They shall go with their flocks and their herds to seek the Lord, but shall not find Him, for He hath withdrawn Himself from them." Listen to the words of Jesus: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that stonest the prophets and killest them that are sent unto thee, how often would i have gathered thy children, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, but ye would not; behold, your house is left unto you desolate." How often God has sent you messages, how often He has drawn you by His Spirit, and ye would not. How often have you responded to the invitation with, "I pray thee have me excused." Listen! One time He did excuse men -- "None of those men which were bidden shall taste of My supper." God may excuse you. "He that being often reproved hardeneth his heart, shall suddenly be cut off, and that without remedy. "Old Testament and New Testament," say you? Let me give you some instances from modern times where God has left men to themselves. "There is a time we know not when, A place we know not where, That marks the destiny of men, For glory or despair." Alfred Cookman was the prince of evangelists, a mighty man of God, a preacher of the Word. Lie was preaching in a Methodist Church in New York City, and for several weeks great interest was maintained and many were converted. George Cookman, a brother of Alfred, was living in the city, but had not attended the meeting. Alfred requested the saints to pray while he went and invited George to come to the last meeting. His promise was given, and that night Alfred preached as he seldom had before. Under the influence of the truth a woman, in agony of soul, screamed out at the top of her voice. Alfred stopped and said, "I would give the world, did I but own it, to hear my brother George cry out like that." George was in the gallery listening, though the speaker knew it not. He started to leave the house, but retraced his steps, came back, went to the altar and was saved. A few years afterward Alfred Cookman was called to visit a dying woman. He entered her room and, as he stood by her bedside, she asked him, "Mr. Cookman, do you not know me?" "I do not. madam." "Do you remember preaching in Methodist Church one night some years ago, and a woman screaming out under awful conviction. and you said, ’I would give the world, if I owned it. to hear my brother George cry out like that’?" "Yes, I remember that." "Well, Mr. Cookman, I am that woman. I resisted the Holy Spirit that night and He left me forever, and tonight I am nearing eternity, a lost woman." The Spirit will not always strive. She said "No" once too often. A gentleman was a liberal giver to the Church, helped in every way that money would help; but was unsaved. The minister was attracted to him, and determined to make an effort to win him for Christ. He approached him on the subject of personal salvation, and was told, "It is no use. I help you and I help the Church for the sake of the young. Go after them. Years ago I was strongly convicted of sin. I resisted the Holy Spirit, and He left me. I am as surely damned as if I was in Hell. I shall die just as I am living, without any hope." And so it proved. He continued to help the Church for the sake of the young, lived without any hope, or any fear, and died -- given up of God, convinced all through these years that he was forsaken of the Spirit because of his persistent resistance. Not an Old Testament story; not a New Testament incident; but under the dispensation of the Holy Ghost. My phone rang just a few months ago, and a voice said, "Mr. Kulp, would you go pray with a bad woman?" "To be sure I would." "Would you go pray with a very bad woman?" "Yes." "But this is the madam of a bad house." "I will go." Wife and I went. We entered a room and saw a dying woman upon the bed. She was aroused and informed the preacher had come. She was asked if she would have me pray for her. "Yes, yes." I knelt in prayer and tried to pray, but there was no ear inclined to hear -- the heavens seemed as brass. I rose from my knees. My wife approached the side of the bed and leaning over towards the one so near eternity, with tears in her eyes, and full of sympathy, said: "Sister, did you ever hear tell of Jesus?" "Yes, oh, yes." But that was years ago. The door had been opened, the Spirit plead, Jesus invited, but she said "no" and He left her, never to return. "Oh," said she, "this is awful. This is the hottest place I ever was in; God won’t hear me; they won’t have me," and tearing her hair and screaming in her agony of evil, she died -- no hope here, and none for the hereafter. God left her. Four hundred dollars were found in her trunk; but money will not buy salvation, nor prepare one for eternity. It bought a grave, a funeral casket, a preacher who refused to attend unless he was paid five dollars, but it could buy no entrance to Heaven, no happiness hereafter. The man who tells God to "Go," may awake up to find Mini gone. The soul that prays, "Have me excused," may be excused, and may hear God say, "None of them that were bidden, and refused, shall taste of the feast." Aaron Burr, when nineteen years of age, attended school at Princeton. Dr. Witherspoon was president. There was a revival of intense power, and many students were under conviction, among them young Burr. A godly teacher in the college was interested in him and besought him to give himself to God. He replied, "I am going home for two weeks, and when I return I will settle the matter and give you my answer. In the meantime a very conservative man, lending himself to the devil, said to Burr: "This is all excitement." In two weeks Burr returned to the school, and his friend again besought him to give himself to God. He replied: "I have settled it. I have told Jesus Christ if He would leave me alone, I would leave Him alone." The years rolled on, and Burr went into politics, came within one vote of being elected President of the United States, betrayed his Country, went to Europe, lived a licentious life, afterward returned to this country and was supported by the bounty of a wealthy French widow who was fascinated by his genius. He became acquainted with an Englishman, a local preacher in the Methodist Church, who, like Burr, was an agreeable and brilliant conversationalist. One day the local preacher said, "Mr. Burr, I have a friend I would like to introduce you to," and Burr, in his courtly manner, said, "Sir, if he is anything like you, I would be pleased to meet him." "Would you? I am glad. My Friend is Jesus Christ." Burr’s face turned an ashen color, and his eyes grew dark, as he said, "I settled that sixty-four years ago. I told Jesus Christ if He would leave me alone, I would leave Him alone, AND HE HAS never troubled me since." God will take a sinner at his word. If you "walk contrary to Him He will walk contrary to you." "If you forsake Him, He will forsake you." "Because I have called, and ye have refused, I stretched out My hands and no man regarded, therefore I will laugh at your calamity. I will mock when your fear cometh, when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind, when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then they shall call upon Me, but they shall not find Me. The turning away of the simple shall slay them; the prosperity of fools shall destroy them." "Oh, but," says one, "I do not believe that. I take no stock in any such thing, old wives’ fables, priestcraft; I am an infidel." Are you, indeed? Do you know the best that infidelity can write on a tombstone? Let me tell you. A few years ago I went to Trenton, New Jersey. My father was ill. After watching by his side previous to his departure, I walked out and wended my way to Riverview Cemetery. Here I enjoyed, as I never had before, walking among the narrow resting-places of the clay of the sainted dead, and reading the inscriptions on the tombstones and monuments. Many of the old-fashioned Methodists of old Greene Street Church, (where my father and mother had been converted under the labors of the now sainted Charles Pitman,) rested here. My heart was thrilled, my soul mounted up as I read. Here was one -- "In hopes of a part in the first resurrection." Another: "I shall rise again." And still another: "Rock of Ages, cleft for me; Let me hide myself in thee." But further on, along the low stone wall around one grave I read these words: "Until the day break and the shadows flee away," and I said, "Thank God, there is a daybreak, the dawning of an eternal day." Soon I came to a monument erected above the grave of an infidel. I paused, and read carefully. I wanted to make sure, to see the best that infidelity could do for one of its devotees. Here laid the clay of one who doubtless would have his "unfaith" displayed above his grave. On the brown stone shaft were these words: "Thou Holy Apostle Thomas Paine. In the year of the Republic " [No year of our Lord for him -- he had no Lord.] Then across the base just one word -- the best infidelity could produce for a graveyard -- and that was: "Nevermore." Aye, nevermore! Poe’s "raven of despair" croaked as good as that "nevermore," and infidelity, robing a soul in the blackness of eternal despair, croaks, like the foul spawn of Hell that it is, just one word -- "Nevermore." My God, keep me in the faith of my fathers! ’They cried, "The hour of my departure is at hand. I have fought the fight, I have kept the faith, I have finished my course. Henceforth -- in contrast this with the nevermore of infidelity -- there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all them also which love His appearing." Is this what you want in your dying hour? Would you launch out toward the eternal shore like the infidel -- no Lord, no hope, no faith in the future? Rejecting the Word of God will put you there. "My Spirit shall not always strive with man." He is patient, He is gentle; but you can grieve Him; and you can, by grieving Him by your repeated rejections, come to the place where, like Saul of Israel, you will be constrained to say, "The Lord hath departed from me, and answereth me not." NOW yield yourself unto God. NOW repent of your sins. NOW confess. "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Call upon Him WHILE HE Is NEAR." "Seek Him WHILE HE MAY BE FOUND." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 107: S. THREE WONDERFUL DAYS ======================================================================== Three Wonderful Days by George Kulp "Day of Salvation" (2 Corinthians 6:2). ((Day of Redemption" (Ephesians 4:30). "Day of Judgment" (2 Peter 2:9). The day of salvation is not a period of twenty-four hours; it is not to be measured by time, for it began in a timeless eternity, before time began. It dates from that period when in the council chambers of the Godhead there came one who said, "Lo, I came to do thy will, O God; a body hast Thou prepared me." Before man fell, God knew he would fall and made provision for his salvation. Before the morning stars sang together, or even an angel’s wing had fanned the viewless ether, He had a plan for the deliverance of a lost race. Angels desired to look into it, but could not comprehend the love that provided it. The old poet was right when he said, "the first archangel never saw so much of God before." Angels could not save, none but God could devise a plan that would meet the need. As the Englishman wrote, "He who best the vantage might have taken, found out the remedy." The Son of God, the Fellow of Jehovah, the Second Person in the Trinity, took upon Himself our nature, stooped down to our low estate that we might be redeemed. This salvation is a salvation from sin; not primarily from hell, but from sin. I once saw a minister in my audience, and out of courtesy I asked him to come on the platform and lead in prayer. His whole prayer was that God would save people from hell, and all the time that he was praying I was revolting against it, because I do not believe that Jesus died to save men from hell -but from the sin that sends them to hell. When we talk about sin, we are talking about something that all know about, for all have sinned, and the glad tidings of salvation declare a Savior who came to save from sin in this life here and now. I want to go even farther than that and say on the authority of the Word, man must quit sinning, go out of the sinning business altogether, before God will save him, for sin is the only thing that God hates. It crucified the Son of God, it robs heaven, populates hell, fills prisons, and dance halls, and theaters, and houses of lust, and dishonors the Holy Ghost and the Word. Sin separated the first man from God, and it is the only thing that will or can. Listen to the Word: "Your sins have separated you from Me." Sin burdens the conscience. Some few years ago the Treasurer of the United States received a letter from a conscience-stricken man who had been a quartermaster during the Civil War, and it read something like this: "During the late war I was a quartermaster and I robbed the Government of three thousand dollars. It has been such a burden in my conscience ever since that I herein restore the principal and interest to date." Along with this in the Treasury is one that reads. "Please find enclosed five cents. I used as postage a two-cent stamp that had formerly done service. I want to get right with God, and this has bothered me ever since I committed the sin. It is not the amount, it is the sin. Conscience never sleeps. A boy one time went up to a baker’s wagon and stole some cookies therefrom, and twenty years after that boy wrote a letter acknowledging the sin, and paid for the cookies. I was preaching in Troy, Ohio, and a young man came to me and said, "You only got me in one thing. I have to pay for some watermelons I stole sometime ago." Folks laugh at that as though stealing melons was a joke; but theft will send a soul to hell, whether it is a watermelon or a bank. Sin is sin, and must be repented of. There was a young girl who worked in a food factory as clerk. She stole money time and again and placed it away. After a while she became alarmed and altered her books, and then, fearing the books would be examined, she went down to the office and set fire to the desk, intending to destroy the books, which she did, and the office and the factory. In a few years she was married to an estimable young man and she surprised him with the prodigality with which she spent money and purchased furniture and a piano. He said to her, "Why, where did you get all this money." And she replied, "I worked for it, was saving, and had it in the bank." One month there was a revival came to that town, right down from heaven. It had been prayed down, and that kind of a revival always uncovers sin, and alarms the conscience of the wrongdoer. This young wife got under awful conviction, and one day when her husband came home she said, "I have a confession to make to you, husband. I stole all the money with which I bought the furniture." He stood aghast, looked at her in amazement, and then she said, "That is not all. You remember the fire in the city that destroyed the factory? Well, I went down to the factory one evening, fearing the thefts would be discovered, and I set fire to the books, but the fire spread and the factory was burned down. The papers said it was an incendiary fire, but I did it, I did it! Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?" Let me tell you what they did. They went to the Directors of the Company, and that young husband said, "My wife has a confession to make." She made it and when she was through he said to them, "You can have all the furniture, all the paintings, all the money we have We will do all we can to right the wrong she did; she must get right with God." Oh, how sin burdened that woman’s conscience. Oh, the blasting, blighting, burning influence of sin. I know a man who one day stole a broadax, and while he was seeking pardon God never said one word about that ax, but in the near future after he heard from heaven, God spoke to him one day and said, "Son, you must take back that broadax you stole." And he said, "I will, tonight, Lord." But God said, "Take it back in daylight." And he did. I knew a boy about ten years of age who came to me in one of my meetings and he said, "I have just got one thing more to do." I asked what it was and was told that one day he saw a man pulling some things out of his pocket, pull out also a penknife, which he dropped unknowingly on the ground, and then walked off and left it lying on the ground. This lad picked it up and kept it, but said he, "I must take it back and tell him." And he did and was a satisfied boy after that. In that same meeting a young woman came to me and said, "I want some advice; I am keeping company with a young man who is not a Christian, and I guess I must give him up." I told her that was right. God was not pleased with it. Then she said, "I have a date with him to bring me to church tonight." I said come with your mother; let him go; he will not bother you when you let him know you are going with God. How faithful the Holy Ghost is all the time and everywhere. At Sullivan, Ind., a young man walked into a grocery store and said to the grocer, "Since that fellow has been preaching in this meeting my girl won’t look at me." The Spirit had been applying the truth to the girl’s heart, and she was minding God. Thank His holy name, this salvation, the real thing, will get a man where he will not only not sin, but where he will not want to sin -- the want to will all be taken out. And God does it every time when you are willing He should. Faithful is He who calleth you, who also will do it. Let me now call your attention to this second text -- The Day of Redemption. This is a day the sinner will never see. Redemption is salvation completed. It is deliverance from all the infirmities of the body, from all the ills that flesh is heir to. The Israelites will tell you that from the time that Jacob wrestled with the angel, he limped all the rest of his days. But when the resurrection morning comes, and that body is restored, Jacob will not have his limp any longer. We may suffer in these bodies of ours clear down to the grave, and live to please God, too, but there our sufferings will all end. Trials, temptations, conflict, suffering, will all be a thing of the past. I confess I think a great deal of this body of mine. In it I marched many a weary mile, carrying a Springfield rifle and tramping through the red clay of old Virginia. In this body I one day met Jesus Christ, and heard Him say, "Thy sins which are many are all forgiven thee." In this body, which is a temple of the Holy Ghost, I have had many precious times. Yes, I expect in this very same body, only glorified, to see my Lord. I have no sympathy with that hymn that is sometimes sung, in ecstasy by some folks, "I don’t care where you bury me, my sins are pardoned, I am free." I do care. If Jesus does not come for me, and I should go the way that Jesus went, down through the grave, place this old body away very carefully, for as sure as Jesus rose from the grave, I have the promise, "They that sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him," and one day the clods shall fly above my grave and I shall get up in this same body and meet my Lord in the air. That will be a wonderful day to the saints. One day a pastor was in the poor house visiting an old saint who was on her death bed, and she was smiling, so he asked her, "Why are you smiling ?" and she said, "I was thinking what a change it will be for me, from the almshouse to glory." "Oh, what a wondrous change shall Jesus’ sufferers know, As o’er the fields of bliss they range, incapable of woe." Think of it! From trial to triumph, from the cross to the crown. Paul tells us that the saints in glory are longing for the time when they shall be restored to their bodies, shall have them again. That reminds me that a lieutenant down on the Peninsula lost his good right arm. When he came out from under the influence of the anesthetic he said to the surgeon, "Where is my right arm?" And they told him out in the ditch. "Bring it to me; I want to see it once more." When they brought it in he grasped it with his left hand and said, "Good-bye, old arm; you will never swing another saber, nor pull on another bridle, but good-bye till the morning of the first resurrection, and then I’ll see you again." Do you believe that? Have you a faith like that? If not, then you are three thousand years behind the times, for old Job said as he lay there in his affliction, "I know that my Redeemer liveth and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth, and though after the skin the worms shall destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God." Piety day; then thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just. That day of redemption is a day the sinner shall never see. With him the worst is yet to come. Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap. Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse. This leads us to the third text -- The Day of Judgment. A day that is big with destiny. I saw a picture once -- let me describe it to you. A court room, twelve empty chairs; in these the jury had sat; a lone man on the bench waiting; a prisoner in the box, thoughtful and pensive, leaning his head on his hand; nearby sat a woman, the wife of the prisoner, with several little children standing by, and a babe on her lap. The title of the picture was, "Waiting for the Verdict." He did not know what it would be, but every sinner dying in his sins knows what the verdict will be. The soul that sinneth it shall die. Sentence against an evil work is only delayed, but each and every evil doer knows God is just. Too late at that day to remedy mistakes, to undo wrongs. Carlyle, the old Scotch writer and philosopher, was indeed a very gifted man; a man of genius, a vigorous writer and author. He had a wife who would have shone in any circle, but his wife was overshadowed by his gigantic qualities. He kept her in the shade, and she was little appreciated by him or his friends. The time came when she died, and then he knew what she was. He said one day, "I have lived thirty years with an angel, and did not know it." He loaded up with flowers from the hothouse one day and went out to her grave (some men never give their wives any flowers till after they are dead), and as he dropped them one by one on her grave, he said, "Oh, Jean, Jean, if I only had known.’ But it is too late now, and regrets never undo the past, nor do they bring back opportunities. You know that the most of folks have their little spats when they are first married -I mean after the glamour has worn off. So did a young couple of whom I have heard. The wife followed him to the door as he was going to work and said to him, "Good-bye, John." But he went right on as though he had not heard. Raising her voice she again said "Good-bye, John" But the brute went right on. Calling after him as he was nearly passing out of sight, she repeated, "I said Good-bye, John." And there was no reply. How he did wish as they brought him home shortly before noon that he had said good-bye, just once; but now it was too late -- the little cottage was burned to the ground and she was in the ashes. Regrets avail nothing. So it will be at the Judgment Day. We may long to undo the past, we may pray, but praying time has gone forever. As a man has sowed so shall he reap. He who has said, "Go thy way," will hear, "Depart from me." He who said, "Have me excused," will find he is excused and excused forever. As a man sows so shall he reap. Destiny is fixed forever, and fixed by a man’ s own actions. Here we make character, and what God inspects there is character. We must leave houses and lands and reputation behind us, but we take character with us, and it is the only thing that we can take. Probation ends forever; the last opportunity is gone, and gone forever. When James Pollock was Governor of Pennsylvania a number of years ago, the pardoning power was entirely in the hands of the Governor, not with a commission, as it is now. There was a man who was condemned to die, and the last Friday was near at hand. Governor Pollock was a Christian man and much interested in the spiritual condition of the criminal. One day he went to the Warden of the penitentiary and told him he would like to see the man soon to die, saying at the same time, "Do not tell him who I am; just put me in the cell with him." The Warden called the turnkey, gave him his instructions, and the Governor was ushered into the cell. When the prisoner saw him he said, "Who are you?" "I came to pray with you," said the Governor. "Well, you can get out of here. When I want any sniveling Harrisburg parsons to pray with me, I will send for them." "But, man, you are to die next Friday, and I am interested in your soul. I would like to pray for you." "Get out, I told you. Hallo, turnkey! Come take this preacher out of here." The turnkey came, and Mr. Pollock left without the opportunity to pray with the prisoner. A few days after the turnkey said to the prisoner, "Do you know who that man was that wanted to pray for you?" "No, I do not. I suppose it was some preacher from the city." "No," said the turnkey; "it was Governor Pollock." "Governor Pollock? Why did you not tell me? I would have fallen on my bended knees to him. I would have begged him for a pardon. I would have told him of my wife and little ones. I would have told him that there were extenuating circumstances, that I was not wholly to blame." But the opportunity had gone. If that man had prayed, if he had truly repented, who knows but the Governor might have been moved to pardon him. But too late, too late. Here we may have pardon, here we may pray, here God is always present, here are promises that encourage, here are praying friends, and the very heavens are bending as God inclines Himself to hear the sinner pray; but in that great day praying breath is spent in vain. Do you know, have you learned it from God’s Word, that the men of today are the worst sinners the world ever saw, or the heavens ever looked upon? Not Scriptural? Listen to this: "Woe unto you, Capernaum, woe unto you, Bethesda. It shall be more tolerable in the day of Judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for thee." Why? Because they have sinned against greater light. Hear the Master, He who spake as never man spake, He to whom was given the tongue of the learned. "The people of Nineveh shall rise in judgment and condemn this generation, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, a greater than Jonah is here." We are living in the best age the world has ever seen, the Dispensation of the Holy Ghost. He is doing His best to win men for God and righteousness, and men are doing their utmost to resist Him. I do really believe that the very devils in hell will be astonished because you are lost. You for whom the Son of God died; you to whom all heaven appealed; you for whom a mother. prayed, with whom the Spirit of God pled and strove. Some years ago a man of wealth was the president of a National Bank in Chicago. He owned coal lands in southern Indiana, was part owner of stone quarries, and spent much money to open up a railroad to the mines. One venture he used the bank to advance his own private schemes, violated the law of the nation, and the Government officials were on his track at once. He was arrested, tried, and though defended by counsel of ability and talent, he was found guilty. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court and after one year, during which he restored some millions of dollars, the Supreme Court affirmed the decision of the lower court, and the wires from Washington flashed the news to Chicago that he must go to Leavenworth. The detective at once was by his side; he bade good-bye to wife and children, took the train on the Rock Island, and went to the Federal Prison at Leavenworth. The guards on the walls knew he was coming, the prisoners in the prison knew, somehow or other, that he was coming. And when he was given his number and suit, they whispered to each other is here. The man who had his millions, the man who was president of _____ _____, the man who moved in the highest circles of society. If we had his chances we never would have been found here; we had no high-priced lawyer, we had no friends to appeal our case, or we would not have entered this place of woe. So in hell, when you shall be lost, the very demons will hiss with astonishment that you of all men should be eternally lost. Hear them as they taunt the lost soul. "For us no Savior died, no Holy Spirit ever strove with us, no Gospel of salvation for us. To us no ministers ever came, talking of hope. When we fell, we fell forever. But you -- you trampled the blood of the Son of God under your feet; you came to the torments of the damned over the crucified body of the Christ of Calvary. You invited your own damnation; you paved your own way to this hell home of the forever lost." Is it not so that today men are running against the shields of the Almighty? They insult the Holy Ghost, they invite the wrath of God. Hear the Word, ’Hell from beneath is moved to meet thee at thy coming." The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness. Men today are sinning against light, against the examples of godly living in their own homes, against their own consciences. The Word cries, "Prepare to meet thy God," and they make no preparation. The Son of God says, "Be ye also ready, for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of Man cometh." And there are few getting ready. Men are in love with sin -- sin, the thing that God hates -- they are crucifying the Son of God afresh and putting Him to an open shame, and yet he cries, "How shall I give him up ?" Oh, men and women for whom Christ died, yield yourself to God before it shall be eternally too late, and thou shalt take up the cry, "’The harvest is passed, the summer is ended and I am not saved." And to be not saved is to be eternally lost! ======================================================================== CHAPTER 108: S. THUS SAITH THE LORD ======================================================================== Thus Saith the Lord by George Kulp "I do send thee unto them; and thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God" (Ezekiel 2:4). Every man who is called to preach the Gospel is sent of God. No man has a right in the ministry who is not called into the ministry. Medicine is a profession, the law is a profession, the ministry is a calling. "No man taketh this honor unto himself." I knew I was called to preach before I was saved; I have met other brethren who knew the same. I believe that God calls men and gives them the message and then accompanies the message with the Holy Ghost. In my early days when I was preaching, if I did not see some manifestations in the congregation I would get bothered. One time I stopped right in the middle of a sermon and said to the saints, "I wish you would pray!" When I got through preaching an old-fashioned Methodist preacher who sat on the sofa behind me came to me and said, "George" -- I was a young man then -- "I want to tell you one thing: God is always working, whether you see it or not." And I have never forgotten that. God is always working; the Holy Ghost is absolutely faithful -- we can depend upon Him. All I want to know is that I am God’s man, have His message for the hour, and all the big preachers you can put on the platform behind me do not have any effect on me. "Thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith the Lord." Do not you see in this text, called of God, sent with a message? Sure. It is right on the surface. "Thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith the Lord." There are some things that I do want to know; I am a natural interrogation point; I am continually asking questions. Some things I can only learn of God. Old Squire Jones was sick -- had a stroke of paralysis. The doctor was attending him; he was getting better, but he was very thoughtful. The doctor came to see him and he sat there with his head bowed apparently in deep thought. He said, "Doctor, may I have another attack of this?" "Yes, sir." "And it may prove fatal?" "Yes, sir; but cheer up, Squire, you are a man of splendid constitution. You may not have another attack for years." "But I may have another soon?" "Yes." "And I might go off in that attack?" "Yes; but cheer up, Squire, we all have to pass through the gate sometime." The Squire said, "Doctor, you are a Christian man; I am not. I want to ask you a question: What is there beyond the gate." What is there beyond the gate? I want to know. What is there beyond? Is there a living hereafter? Is there something beyond? This the masterpiece of God. He was made a little lower than the angels; he was crowned with glory and honor, and when God looked on him -- let me say it, will you -- God was proud of His work; and He said, "It is good." Man was made to have dominion. Doctor Watson says that every man has the primeval itch, the desire to boss; and although he fell, that thing stuck to him. If there is anything I despise, it is an ecclesiastical boss. God made me too big to have a Pope over me. I like brethren, but I have no use for popes. I do believe that the grace of God will cleanse a man from the primeval itch. Man had dominion over everything -- the fishes of the sea, the birds of the air, the beasts of the field; he walked and he talked with God; held communion with the Infinite. But he fell -- lost the Divine image. There are some things man did not lose, and one is his immortality. If God had not provided a Savior for the race, man would have lived on forever, eternally lost. Man did not lose his immortality. The Seventh Day Adventists say he did, but we say he did not. And listen! He has in him capabilities, and he has proven his mastery. There is not anything so masterful as a man in the will of God. There are masterful men who are outside the will of God, but I crave them for Jesus. He has mastered the secrets of the earth, has discovered the gold, searched lands and waters for diamonds and pearls, and has annihilated time and distance. When a man used to want to go across continent, he had to take a wagon and go with a wagon train, where there were a number of men went together for safety; and it took weeks and months to go across the prairies and reach the other side. Or he had to go down around Cape Horn and come up on the Pacific. Now, he buys his ticket, sits back in his Pullman car, and in four days lands on the Pacific Coast. He has annihilated distance and he has annihilated time. You can start a night letter at 12 o’clock and it will reach the Atlantic at 8 o’clock, four hours before it started. If that is not annihilating time, I do not know what it is. Man has conquered the air. The Frenchmen and Germans are doing much of their fighting in the air and under the water. I believe the time is coming when air ships will be as common as trains. Now, I want you to look at man: He is master of the earth, master of the sea, master of the air, made in the image of God. Look at him as his strength begins failing. He does not walk with a firm step any longer, goes feeling his way, going slowly down to the grave. I want to ask you a question, Is this man who is made a little lower than the angels -- is this man made to fill a hole in the ground, furnish a banquet for worms? Is that the end of man? I do not believe it. Somehow I feel inside of me a longing for something beyond. But, how am I going to know? Listen! Thus saith the Lord, "These things are written that you might have life." Jesus Christ brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel. I can find here in the Word of God all that I need to know, and I can walk along with a firm step, see death coming down the road and know that I am conqueror. How do I know it? Know it by faith; know it because the Bible says so. I am believing everything in the Bible; everything from Genesis to Revelation. There are a lot of little preachers going about writing things and calling them "New Thought"; but, God bless you! I am staying by the old Book. How do we know things? "Thus saith the Lord." There is a heaven hereafter. How do I know? After Solomon, the wise man, had finished the greatest temple that was ever built, when dedicating it, he spread forth his hands to heaven and said, "Lord God of Israel . . . hearken thou to the supplication of thy servant, and of thy people Israel, and hear thou in heaven, thy dwelling place." Say, heaven is the dwelling place of God. I believe there is a heaven. Jesus Christ said, "In my Father’s house are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you." I believe in a heaven of many mansions. I believe all this Book says in regard to it. God says, "Heaven is my throne." God tells us in this Book all that we need to know about heaven. I sat one time by a little cot, and in it lay a little child about two years old, who was dying of membranous croup. As I watched that little one suffer and the mother standing over it wringing her hands, I was glad to know that there is a heaven where sickness never comes. No sickness there; the saints are all healthy; no poverty there; the saints are all wealthy. God bless you, beloved r I never allow any person to call me a poor preacher. I am not. Not at all! If ever there was a fellow who walked this earth independent, it is this man. I never allow anybody to measure me by the wealth of this world that I possess. Bless God! I am an heir of heaven, a co-heir with Jesus Christ! Sometimes I find a woman who has good sense -- a young woman. One time there was a young woman who lived in a certain community, and there was a man who came into the community and lived there for about a year. It seemed that he was all right, but the people did not know anything about his ancestors. He kept company with this young lady, and finally they were engaged to be married, and someone came around and said, "Say, you do not know where he came from." She said, "No, but I know where he is going." Amen! Say, we are priests, we are kings unto God, gone to heaven where there is no sickness or a reunion of loved ones and no one ever gets old. Thank God! Now, something about the inhabitants. There are some folks I like to see. Would not give a snap of my finger to shake hands with Roosevelt or anybody because of their political standing; but there are some folks I would like to see. I would like to see the man that lay at the rich man’ s gate, and I expect to sometime. I want to see the man who went into the lions’ den and there spent the night without any harm being done him; I want to see the man who took his son and was about ready to offer him as a sacrifice when God came on the scene. Oh, I want to talk to them about their experiences, and I will have plenty of time to do it, too. The sun never sets there. I want to talk with John the Baptist. I am in sympathy with every man that had his head cut off. There would be a lot of preachers have their heads taken off these days if they would stand up and say, "You are living with some other man s wife" -- and we need some people to say it. I do not believe John’s head was in the basket, until his soul was in heaven. Oh, I am proud of our folks; John and Abraham and Brother Moses, and all the rest of them. We have some fine relations you do not know of. I remember in my early days I used to be so proud; I got my grandfather’s record and put it in the Bible, and was so proud of it. Say, I have gotten over that. The man who cannot boast of anything but his ancestors is like a hill of potatoes -- the best of him is under the ground. But we like to talk about our folks -- Hannah, and John and Moses and Daniel and Paul and Timothy, and all the rest of them. Hallelujah Yes, I am proud of my folks! Blood relations of mine. Before the Cross nobody ever went to heaven only in anticipation of the blood; since the Cross they have had the password, "The Blood." Yes, I want to see our folks, and I am headed that way. I used to have a horse, and when I would drive him away from home I could not make that horse trot unless I would whip him, and he would want to stop at every place I ever stopped; but when I would start home that horse would just trot along -- and how he would go! Do you know why he would go so fast? He was going home. Well, God bless you, the older I get the faster I am going toward home, and I am making more fuss over it than I ever did in all my life. A friend of mine a few years ago said, "When Kulp gets older he won’t be so radical." But, bless God, I am getting worse! I have more to shout over. Glory to God! I did not know there was so much ahead. But listen! You will never get heaven up yonder unless you get heaven here. Heaven is a state and heaven is a place, and you have to have heaven, the state, in you before you go to heaven, the place. Have you got it? Is there anything inside of you that would not suit in heaven? Anything inside of you that would be out of harmony in heaven? God help us tonight! This is the place to get things fixed up. Amen! Oh, I believe the Book: "Thou shalt say, thus saith the Lord." What is there beyond? Only two places -heaven and hell. You say, "Brother Kulp, I believe in heaven, but I do not believe in hell." What is your authority for heaven? "Oh," you say, "the Bible." Well, that is my authority for hell. Now, if the Bible is not true in regard to hell, then it may not be true in regard to heaven. If ever you lie to me you have robbed me of my confidence, and I will not believe you for five years, unless you get converted, and if that old Book is not true all the way through, I have no use for it. I believe it is true in every statement it makes; I believe it is true in every statement it makes in regard to heaven, and I believe it is true in every statement it makes in regard to hell, and I can warn the people. There is a hell, and you and I are headed toward an eternal heaven or an eternal hell -- only one step, only the thickness of our ribs between eternal heaven and eternal hell. How do you know it? The Word of God says so. Oh, there are only two classes nowadays. I read a statement the other day that every congregation is made up of the righteous and the wicked. "The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God." "The fearful, the unbelieving, the whoremonger, the sorcerer, everything that believeth and maketh a lie" has an eternal hell awaiting them. Why? Did not Jesus love them? Yes. Did not the Holy Spirit strive with them? Yes. What is the matter? They deliberately rejected Jesus Christ; they deliberately said "No" to God. Listen! You and I have all the salvation we want; if you want any more you can have it. If you are lost, it will be because you would not be saved. Listen to this: "How often would I, but ye would not." "Ye would not come unto me that ye might have life." "If any man is wilting to come unto me, he shall know the doctrine." Remember, you are wicked because you want to be wicked; you are a sinner because you want to be a sinner. One time a little boy coming home from school heard a man upstairs praying at the top of his voice; and when the little boy reached home he said to his mother, "Mother, what does that man pray that way for?" The mother said, "He wants to be good." "Well," the little boy said, "Why don’t he?" Yes, why don’t he? You are as good as you want to be. Oh, I am not saying that men will not grow. "The path of the just shineth brighter and brighter unto the perfect day." "Evil men wax worse and worse." Oh, I get sick and tired of hearing people say to God, "Have your way." Say, brother, you let God have His way with you and He will make you what you ought to be. Do not you get down on your knees and talk about heredity and all that. I know there is a power in heredity, but I know there is a power in the blood of Jesus Christ. I would quit preaching and go out of the business if I did not know that all heaven was back of me. I am sure that when I am preaching there is somebody right here by the side of me. You do not see Him and I do not; but He said, "Lo, I am with you alway." I at one time announced a week ahead of time that I was going to preach on roller skating, as I have no use for it. If I wanted to send a girl to hell I would send her to the roller skating rink, and I would send her as quick as I would to the dance hall. You will find old widows there skating with boys, and old men with young girls. Lust is at the bottom of the whole affair. I made up my mind I was going to preach against that thing, and I announced it, although I knew three fourths of my congregation would be against me. When I got up to preach my knees began to shake. I had selected the hymn: "Let worldly minds the world pursue It has no charms for me Once I enjoyed their pleasures too, But grace has set me free." Before I got through with that verse God struck me, and I would have stood up there and preached if there had been as many devils there as people. That sermon killed the roller skating rink in that place. The son of the proprietor of the skating rink said, "When that man Kulp comes down town I will show him what I will do for him." But he did not do anything. God managed the whole business. There is a hell for those who refuse to walk in the light, and say -- if you are not living up to the light that God gives you, you will die and go to hell just as sure as you are living. You do not have to go out in open sin to be lost. All you have to do is just refuse to walk in the light. "If we walk in the light . . . the blood cleanseth"; but if we refuse to walk in the light, that light becomes darkness. It means an eternal hell. Some people do not like for men to preach on hell; but if you cannot get a prayer through to heaven, if you die tonight, you will drop into hell just as sure as God is on the throne and that old Bible is true. John Bunyan in closing Pilgrim’s Progress said, he saw there was a way to hell from the very gate of heaven. There is a way to hell from the church door, and from the church record. You may have your name on the church books and partake of the sacraments and be baptized, but these things will never save you. You have to repent and forsake and believe, and then you will have the witness of the Spirit that you are a child of God. I was preaching a little over a year ago in a Union Church that belongs to a coal company up at Marytown, W. Va. God wonderfully blest that meeting, but I know this, that every dispensation that God has given will close in judgment, and every revival service that is rejected, those who reject it will be visited in judgment. I made the remark at this meeting, that if people reject God they will die and go to hell and God will visit this place in judgment. I went there again this summer, and I was in a home taking dinner with a family, and I saw the picture of a young man and young lady on the wall, and I said, "Who is that?" And the mother said, "That is my daughter and her sweetheart. He was killed the last Thursday in the year." That young man was in that meeting; the Spirit strove with him, but he said "No" to God. He was in a coal mine and something broke and he was thrown up against the coal overhead, and the top of his head was taken right off, and the blood of the brain spattered the coal overhead. That was Thursday; the coming Sunday he was to have been married. That young man said no to God’s mercy and God followed that mercy with judgment. Oh, there is a hell, and you do not know when you are going there. You do not know who is going there? Oh, yes; all the "fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars shall have their place in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone." Yes, and everybody who says "No" to the Holy Ghost. Everybody who refuses to walk in the light. Tonight if God should take us we would be just what we are here. If we are unsaved now, unsaved then. Asking God to save you on your deathbed is no more effective than getting down on your knees at night and asking God to forgive you for the sins of the day. God help us! We do not only know there is a hell and know what people are going there, but we know what they are doing in hell. My grandson, Brucy, was taken to a hospital, where he could have the best of attention during his illness. There was an operation going on, and he said, "Shut that door! Shut that door!" "What is it?" "Oh, I cannot stand it!" "What?" "The groaning, the groaning." Could not stand the groaning in the next room. By Sunday every room is filled, and beyond the partition was a woman dying and, oh, the agony! Brucy said, "What is that?" "That is a woman dying out there. We have no room for her." But the next morning that sound was not heard any more, and he said, "Where is the woman?" and they said, "She is dead." Say, we know what they are doing in hell; they are groaning and crying and biting their lips, and it is eternal despair; it is eternal darkness. They are cursing each other there, cursing preachers who did not preach straight, cursing the Holy Ghost, cursing themselves, condemning their own selves, condemning each other. You know what they are doing in hell, and they are dying it all the time, and they are getting worse and worse the longer they are there, and when they have been there ten thousand years they cry out. "How long? How long?" And the answer will come back, "Forever, forever, forever!" Men live thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety years, and fall away and die, and then have all eternity to call themselves fools. Do you know tonight that God saves you? Do you hear from heaven? Do you have the witness of the Spirit that you are a child of God? Oh, I get a great deal of encouragement from the devil! When I used to go to church, people would get up and say, "Well, I have had such a battle since last Sunday!" And I would say, "Glory to ’God!" Amen! I know that just so long as I have a battle on hand, there is a victory ahead. Oh, sometimes I go into a meeting and get down to pray, and it seems that every devil is around wanting to get the victory of that meeting, and I begin to shout to myself and say, "There is a victory coming and the devil knows it." Are you having a hard time, as you call it? Oh, do not call it that. The yoke is easy and the burden is light, and if you are a good soldier you will enjoy the fight. Mary Story went to Brother Knapp and said, "Why is it I have such battles?" He said, "Mary Story, have not I heard you pray for God to make you a warrior?" She said, "Yes." "Well, amen! then you must have battles." "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. I was once in a meeting and there was a woman praying and I thought she was going through, and down went her head, and I said, "She struck something," and up went her head, and I said, "She is going through," and then it went down again, and I said, "Well, she has struck something." At the close of the meeting she came up to me and said, "Brother Kulp, I want to ask you a question." And she said, "If a woman has sinned against her husband, does she have to confess it?" I said, "I leave that with you and God. " She came up the next night and said, "Brother Kulp, I confessed to my husband." And after she did this she was not long getting saved. If we do the best we know how. we have fellowship one with another and the blood of Jesus Christ, His son, cleanseth us from all sin. I was preaching up at Asheville, Ky., a short time ago, and a woman said, "Can I see you in the morning?" I said, "Yes." "What time?" I said, "Nine o’clock." But she came at 8:30. When I went in she said, "Brother Kulp, you knocked out all my victory last night." I asked her what was the matter and she told me. I gave her some advice and I wish you could have seen her when she came to that altar that night. She got through, and she walked around there and waved her handkerchief and bobbed her head beautifully. Say -- she was glad her victory was knocked out. The last time I saw Ed Ferguson he stood up and said, "I am ready for heaven in a moment’s notice." In that congregation were scoffers, and they said, "Did you hear what Ed Ferguson said? Said he was ready for heaven in a moment’s notice." That man had the experience and he went to heaven in a few months after that -- without much notice. God Almighty says to you tonight, "Be ye also ready for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 109: S. WRATH REVEALED ======================================================================== Wrath Revealed by George Kulp "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness." (Romans 1:18.) The Bible is the Word of God, not only contains the Word, but is the Word of God. You believe it? Yes? But how many are living as though it is? How many are living the Word? The criticism of the Chinese as they see men from America, supposing that all are Christians, is, "You are not as good as your Book." God speaks to us in this Word. How much attention are you paying to it? If your children disobeyed you as persistently as you have disobeyed God, what would you do to them? Your life is a continual disregard of the claims of God. We call Nero a monster because he murdered his mother; but the sinner is crucifying the Son of God, counting His blood a common thing, and putting Him to an open shame, and repeating it every day, all the time. This Book tells us of heaven -- says that heaven is for the righteous. The pure in heart shall see God. I go to prepare a place for you, my disciples, that where I am there ye (my disciples) shall be also. Do you expect to get to heaven? Do you really mean it? Are you sure that you are not confused, taking a desire for a hope? You know there is a vast difference between a desire and a hope. You no doubt desire a million dollars, but you have no hope of getting it. Let us examine and see upon what your hope is based. The Word says, "Blessed are they that do His commandments; they shall enter in through the gates into the city." The first commandment to all is, Repent. John, the forerunner of Jesus, preached Repent. They took his head off, and I really think that more preachers would have their heads taken off if they would preach repentance. Jesus came and the first thing He preached was repentance, and they criticized Him. The Apostles on the Day of Pentecost preached, "Repent and be ye converted." And only one of them died a natural death. Repentance is not the easy thing that some folks think. It means something to repent. Let me ask you, Have you repented? When did you repent? Do you remember? God says in this Word to us, He that covereth his sins shall not prosper, but he that forsaketh and confesseth shall find mercy. If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. When the Prodigal came to himself he said, "I will arise and go unto my father and I will say unto him I have sinned" -- in other words, I will go unto him and confess. How much confessing did you do? This is one of the commandments, and we cannot evade it. Men do not like to confess. They are like Dr. Juniper, an old colored herb doctor in Baltimore. He was attending a revival service, and being under deep conviction, he went to the altar and prayed earnestly. The folks at the altar were getting through finely, and the old doctor did not know what to make of it that he did not get through; so he said, "O God, I guess you don’t know who I is; I is Dr. Juniper." But the Lord did not pay any more attention to Dr. Juniper than before. And still the others kept praying through. The old doctor really wanted God and was now almost heart broken, and lifting his hands and voice he cried, "O God, I isn’t Dr. Juniper; I is nothing but a poor old sinner." And that very moment he got through. Have you confessed your sins to Him? I was in a meeting in an Ohio town and after the meeting a woman came to me and said, "I have done everything but one. I must go to a woman I lied about and tell her." She seemed to think it was her duty to go and tell the woman, and I did not say her nay. The Word of God says, "Let the sinner forsake his ways and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, for he will find mercy." You expect to get to heaven? Have you forsaken all sin and sinful associations? How much forsaking did you do? Did you leave the card table, the dance, the moving picture show, the theater, the snuff and tobacco)? You see it says, "his ways." Was this one of your filthy ways? A clean case of religion gives a man a clean mouth. It will change the color of his spit. Oh, yes, God demands forsaking on our part. Have you forsaken the old crowd? I remember of a case where a young woman went to a revival meeting accompanied by her escort, and during the meeting she arose, left him and went to the altar. He was so angry lie left her and went home. A real gentleman would have waited. The next day she received a letter in which she was told, "If you are going with those people, you cannot go with me." And that little woman sat down and wrote him one of the sweetest little letters he ever had received, and it said just one thing, "Good-bye." She left all things, associations and associates to go with God. This was very different to a case at Shephardsville, Mich., when a young woman came to the altar. There were a number of young persons at the altar, and they were praying through, too, and she prayed so earnestly that I was ready to shout for the victory that appeared to be in sight. All at once she stopped praying, wiped away her tears and rose up and said, "The Lord shows me that my friend will be saved." I saw it at once and I said to myself, "Tricked by the devil." She was keeping Company with an ungodly man. The Lord told her to give him up. The enemy came and said to her, "Your friend will be saved; that is all right." And she listened to him; the thing suggested was in harmony with her own inclinations, and she was caught with the guile of Satan and missed the experience that God wanted to give her. If any man will be my disciple let him do as did Matthew of old; he arose, left all, folks and everything else, and followed Jesus. It is better to go with God than folks. Abram went with God, but Lot went with Abram. Lot went to Sodom, and lost his wife and some of his children; but Abram walked before God and received the promise of all the land. Be ye holy is a command. This is the will of God even your sanctification. Rejoice evermore, pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God concerning you. If any man will do my will he shall know the doctrine. Do you have the experience? Have you got a hope of heaven? Repented and know you did? Confessed clear through and know you did? Forsaken all sin and all sinful associations, all secret sins and secret places, come out from among them and are separate and clean and you know it. Then to you comes with power the Word of God, "Blessed are they that do His commandments for they shall have a right to the tree of life and enter through the gates into the city." There is a heaven and there is a hell. Believe it? Oh, I do not know so surely about that. Where did you get your knowledge of heaven? From the Word of God? Yes and nowhere else. I know there is a heaven on the authority of God’s Word, and on the same authority I know there is a hell. If thy right arm offend thee, cut it off. It is better to enter into life maimed, than having two arms to be cast into hell fire where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched. Who said that? Jesus did. In hell the rich man lifted up his eyes being in torment. Who said so? Jesus did. Hell from beneath is moved to meet thee at thy coming. God’s Word for it. The wicked shall be turned into hell with all the nations that forget God. Oh, just as surely as you make a map of the universe you write down "heaven," so surely write down hell, for there is one and it will be the eternal home of the sinner who refuses to repent and go with God. There is wrath, and my text tells us of wrath revealed from heaven; the wrath of God against sin and the unrepentant sinner. And I would say here, the Word tells us of wrath to come, not as a threat, but as a warning. Because there is wrath. Beware! Now to our text. Wrath revealed in the Word. Why did God drive out of Eden our first parents? Because they did what you are doing every day -- they sinned against Him. Why did God destroy the Antediluvian world? Because they sinned against Him. Why were the cities of the plains destroyed, and left in ruins by the fires of heaven that God rained down upon them? Because they sinned. Oh, sin is no joke -- no dream. Sin is the thing that God hates, whether in an angel or a man. If the angels who kept not their first estate were cast down to be reserved in chains of darkness unto the judgment of the great day, how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation. Achan took a wedge of gold and a Babylonish garment and was stoned to death by Divine command. God hates sin. Uzzah put out his hand to steady the ark, and God killed him, for he violated the law God gave. The Word of God teaches there is wrath against sin, and this Word came from heaven. Holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. The wrath of God against sin is revealed in conscience. Charles the Ninth of France yielded to the entreaties of his queen mother and signed the paper that meant the death of his Huguenot subjects. He afterward sat in the window and saw them shot down -- men and defenseless women and little children, until the streets of Paris ran red with the blood of the innocents. In a few years he was on his death bed, his very pores ran blood, and before his eyes were the sights he saw on that awful night when he permitted his subjects to be murdered, and he cried, "O doctor, give me something to take away this blood from my eyes." But the doctor could not by any mendicants reach the conscience of the dying king. The wrath of God revealed in conscience against the sins of the past. A woman was dying in Michigan, and as she laid on her bed she kept crying, "Take away those little fingers, they are pinching my face -- they are pinching my face!" What was the matter? The wrath of God in the conscience. She had murdered more children before they were born than she ever brought into the world. The brethren of Joseph saw him coming across the fields and said, "Here comes that dreamer; now we will get even with him." And they planned to put him in the pit, and they did; but seeing some Ishmaelites coming along the road, they sell him to them and down into Egypt he is taken while they go home with a coat dipped in blood to deceive their old father. They were adepts at deception, forgetting "what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive." The years roll along and the whirligig of time brings God’s revenges. There is a famine in the land of Canaan and corn only in Egypt, and these brethren go down there to get some corn and get into trouble, for there is a man there that knows them, though they know him not, and they get together and say one to another, "Verily, we are guilty of our brother’s blood." No one has said a single word about their brother. What is the matter? Simply this, the wrath of God revealed in conscience against the sin of years ago. Belshazzar trembles at a handwriting on the wall -- trembles, though he cannot understand a single word that is written. What is the matter? Just this, conscience condemns him; he knows he is guilty, and that is enough to know. "A guilty conscience makes cowards of us all." The wrath of God is revealed in His providences. Nations have proved this in the past. The Jew was to give the land a rest every seventh year, but led on by their greed, like the profiteers of America today, they robbed the land as these do the citizen who is at their mercy and cannot help himself. And they did this for four hundred and ninety years, apparently forgetting that God can count, and that He is a jealous God. But the time came when He stepped out of the shadows and took notice in a practical manner, for the Babylonians came into the land, and carried them off into captivity and there they had to endure captivity until the land rested seventy years, the number of years in which it had been robbed. You cannot cheat God at all. The land belongs to Him. He says the earth is mine. And when you rob even God’s earth you may expect Him to visit you in wrath. We might take the time and tell you of nations now decadent, decadent because they violated the laws of God and had to pay the price. Rome, Spain, once the mightiest empire on earth, Babylon, Greece, all sinned against Him, and now are paying the price. It is said that no denomination that ever missed its opportunity and went to decay and death, ever was restored, and it is eminently true of nations, when they fall they fall like Lucifer -- never to rise again. The wrath of God is revealed in nature against sin. A sin against one’s own body is a sin against God, for He who wrote the laws on Sinai, who gave us the Decalogue, also gave us the laws that govern our bodies, and to violate the laws of the body is to sin against God. He who does it must pay the price. The hospitals for the insane are filled today with young people who have indulged in secret vices until the mind has become deranged, reason dethroned and they are shut in as a menace to society and a reproach to humanity. There is no escape. God may forgive, but nature never does. The young man who has the cigarette habit is doomed to shorten his life, wreck every nerve, and curse his progeny. A young fellow one day entered the office of a physician and said, "Doctor, I am all in." The doctor said, "I see you are. How many cigarettes do you smoke in a day?" He answered, "About forty." The doctor asked him to bare his arm, and taking a leech from a bottle he put it on the fellow’s arm, and in exactly two minutes it dropped off dead. "Young man, if you think that was an accident, I will put on another." And he proceeded to put on another and in two minutes the same result. "That is the result of your cigarette smoking," said the doctor. And the youngster did not say I will quit at once, but like the slave of habit that he was, he merely said, "I will not smoke so many." There are more women going to the operating tables than there are men, and one reason is they are lying nightly by the side of husbands who are poisoning them gradually by the nicotine in their blood. I once made this statement on a camp. ground where was a man who was a constant user of tobacco. He was talking to his wife earnestly as I passed by and she called me saving, "My husband wants to talk with you." I went to them, and to say he was angry is to put it mildly. He at once began: "I do not see how a man by the use of tobacco can poison his wife." I replied, "I have not the authority with me, but let me have your name and address, and when I return home I will get it and send it to you." I went home and one day entered the office of Dr. Leslie, and I said, "I am called into question because of a statement I made in reference to the use of tobacco." He asked me to be seated and went to his bookcase and took down a book called "Woman the Eternal Sufferer," and turning the leaves over rapidly he called my attention to the chapter and page that revealed the facts. It was written by an eminent Jewish physician on the Pacific Coast I copied it and sent it to my wrathy friend, and the next time I went to that place he came to the altar and quit his tobacco, and today is preaching and practicing a clean Gospel. "Do you see that home we just passed, doctor?" "Yes, I do, and I know the family." "Well, doctor, I think a man with a home like that and a proportionate income could be a happy man." "Well," said the doctor, "that man is poisoning his wife -- killing her by slow degrees. He is a tobacco fiend." The medical man knows that tobacco is an evil that will shorten the days of the man who uses it. Nothing good can be said of the weed, and nothing good comes of using it, and God’s curse is upon the use of it and upon the user. During the Spanish American war, half of the young men who applied for enlistment were rejected on account of the "tobacco heart." No sentiment here, just hard common sense, aided by medical science. Be sure your sin will find you out is true of all sin, whether it is sin against the body or sin against the law as revealed to us in the Word. The wrath of God as seen in the past is terrible. The blasphemers who were slain the night the angel of the Lord passed through the Assyrian ranks knew that he but did the Divine will on them. They knew it when it was too late. The men who sneered at the Missionaries on the island of Martinique knew when too late that God was capable of wrath. Only a few days before they had told these men of God they were not wanted on the island, and must get off. They took a pig and nailed it to a cross and carried it through the streets of the city, and said to the Missionaries, "Here is your Christ." But very soon God rose in the might of His power, shook the island as with an earthquake; Mount Peelee blew its head off and there came out mud and steam, hot water and stones, burning lava and ashes, and forty thousand people were hurried into eternity. They did not want God, and said so, and God showed them that He was through with them until Judgment Day. Out in San Francisco the drunken mobs with their political processions could parade the streets with red fire and blare of bands, cheering and hooting, and nothing be said about it; but when the Salvation Army, and the little bands of Holiness people appeared on the streets, they were told they were disturbing the peace of the city, and must stop, and when they kept right on and sang and prayed and testified, they were told they must stop or go to jail -- and they stopped. But God knew, and sometimes He uses measures that are quite convincing. The city had retired to rest for the night, but He never slumbers, and He just put out His little finger and shook the Pacific Coast, and San Francisco went down in ruins. Then some of them at least wanted God, and they prayed and wept and cried aloud on the streets to God to have mercy. Wrath revealed in nature against Sin and Sinners. There is only one way to avoid wrath, and that is the way that God has appointed. Repent. When God was aroused and sent a prophet to Nineveh to cry, "Forty days and Nineveh shall be destroyed!" the king and the nobles and the people all put on sackcloth and ashes, and God saw their repentance was real, and He heard their cry and spared them. Repent and be ye converted, that your sins may be blotted out. Though they be red like crimson, yet shall they be whiter than snow. Whoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. I believe with Dean Alford, "All man’s salvation is of God, and all of his damnation is of himself." God in Christ has done all that He could do to prevent the consequences of sin. Each man makes his own hell and fixes his own eternal destiny. Man as a free moral agent can do as he pleases. To whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are. It is not in the power of Omnipotence to save a man against his own will. Man can resist all the influences of Divine Love, all the strivings of the Holy Spirit. Peter once said, "As did your fathers so do ye; ye do always resist the Holy Ghost." But there comes an end; an end to probation, and Sin loved and persisted in will send a soul to where it is forever separated from God. Then evil character is fixed beyond the power of change, and wrath forever is wrath against sin. May God keep all who hear these awful truths from the wrath to come. ======================================================================== Source: https://sermonindex.net/books/writings-of-george-kulp/ ========================================================================