In this sermon, the speaker discusses the significance of Jesus washing the disciples' feet. He explains that in biblical times, it was customary for a servant to wash the feet of guests as a sign of hospitality. The speaker emphasizes that this act of service symbolizes humility and the importance of having a meek and quiet heart. He warns against relying solely on literal interpretations of scripture and emphasizes the need for a genuine change of heart and a true transformation in one's life. The speaker also criticizes the idea of simply going through religious rituals without experiencing a true spiritual transformation.

I suppose the first thing that we see here is the true humility of Jesus. Jesus knowing that, and then following that, there are three things that Jesus is said of. He knew that the Father had put all things into his hands. He knew that he had come from God, and he knew that he was going back to God's end, just knowing these things. Obviously, he knew that he had been in the bosom of the Father and had come out. He knew that he was very shortly now to return again to the bosom of the Father, where he had in undisturbed tranquility from the beginning of the beginning, before the beginning was dwelt with the Father. And he knew that because of his death on the cross and resurrection, which were shortly to take place, that all things were to be forever delivered into his hands. Now, knowing this, he laid aside his garment and took a towel and washed the disciples' feet and wiped them with that towel. Now that Jesus Christ our Lord could do one in the light of the other, accent his humility. If he had not known that all things were delivered into his hands, if he had not known that he had come from the Father, if he had not known that he was soon to return to the Father again, he might easily have washed the disciples' feet on his own level without stooping, and there would have been no humility there. But knowing his high and exalted position, both by his being and by his work, he laid aside his garments and washed the disciples' feet. You see, what I'm trying to show you here is that to be low and to act low is not humility. For a native of New Guinea, to act like a native of New Guinea is not humility. A fellow simply acting in keeping with his character. He's doing what comes naturally. He is playing his character with himself. But for a Dutchman raised in Chicago and educated in good schools, to go there and be forced to come down onto the level of a native and to live like a native at least for periods of time, and to come down, that's humility. Humility is not acting low if you are low. It is coming down from conscious heights to a low position. Now, to be high and to stoop low, that is humility. To think little of ourselves is not humility. You see, brethren, it is unbelief to think little of ourselves. To think well of ourselves and then to stoop low for Jesus' sake and for the sake of humanity, that is true humility. There isn't any other kind of humility than this. It was said of our Lord Jesus Christ in Milton's great poem, that glorious form, that light unsufferable, and that far-beaming blaze of majesty, wherewith he was wont to sit at heaven's high council table. All things he laid aside and here with us to be, forsook the courts of everlasting day to take and find with us a house of mortal clay. Now, that was humility. To come down from that far-beaming blaze of majesty, to come down from the final unity of the Godhead, to come down from the insufferable light that no man can approach unto, and to take with us a darksome house of human clay, that is humility. Now, I wish that we might see this, my brethren, and understand it, that humility is not thinking little of yourself. To think little of yourself is to doubt and to be filled with unbelief, because God made you in his image, and outside of sin you have nothing to be ashamed of. And God even said, I have made the hymn a little while lower than the angel. And he was talking about the Son of Man, but he was also talking about the sons of men. And in that day, when the last soul is in, and the last tear is shed, and the last pain is felt, and the last woe is suffered, and the last journey is made, you will find that the redeemed church of God is above the angels, and that the angels of God shall worship him and the angels of God shall be servants of his church. For a Christian, not to know who he is is no indication of humility, it is an indication of ignorance, or unbelief, or both. You and I ought to think well of ourselves. And then, for Christ's sake and humanity's sake, we ought to come down as low as we need to go in order that we might help everybody. The man who thinks he is no good and acts no good is no good. But the person who knows that he is dear to God, and knows that in Jesus Christ he has been exalted to heavenly places and made to sit down with him in those heavenly places, and yet will watch disciples speak, and yet will go to the Capuletans, or that's the correct pronunciation, brother, and will go to the plain people and will serve and take a bowl of soup or a glass of milk to the poor widow who scrubs the floor of the man who is ill and will do that all the time, knowing that he belongs to God, knowing that he is, both by first creation and by the new creation, higher than any being there is, because of that original imprint of the image of God. That's humility. And it's the only kind of humility there is. Go into the certain ghetto sections or certain sections, even in the United States, and you will find conditions about as primitive as it's possible to imagine them. You will find that. And then we talk about them being humble. No, they're not humble. They're dirty. They're not humble. They're simply low down because they have never been inspired to rise. The woman who goes about all day in her bad, dirty feet and with her hair uncombed, as I've seen them, and with streams of deuce, you know, Swedes know what that is, snuff down her chin, she's not a humble soul. And don't you say, oh, she's a poor, humble soul. No, she's nothing of the sort. She's dirty. She thinks little of herself. She doesn't know who she is. She doesn't know she's made in God's image. So that's not an evidence of humility. That is an evidence of lack of common aspiration. But for that woman educated in the school and taught the finer things of life, and then to get converted and to become a mountain worker and to put on an old pair of grimy overalls and ride an old Jeep up the mountain trail and go into that dirty home filled with dogs and lice and mice and children, sit down in the dirt and talk to that woman about her soul, sit down and swallow her gleamish feelings and eat, in that home there is humility. That was conscious descent from where you know you are to where God sends you for the sake of suffering humanity. That's humility. It's time we got over this idea that if a person is cultured and has an education and has lived a better kind of life, that he's high and proud and that she's walked around in her bare feet until they're twice too big and she's dirty and out of shape and disheveled, she's humble. It's all wrong, my brethren. It's bad thinking, bad philosophy, unscriptural. Jesus Christ did not wash the disciples' feet because he didn't know any better. He didn't wash the disciples' feet because he had been a servant and was acting like a servant. He washed the disciples' feet knowing that he had been with God and was going back to God and that the whole universe was in the palm of his hand. Then he deliberately got out his towel and his basin, poured the water, washed the feet and said, I hope you know what I did. Ah, my brethren, that's humility. And I wonder when Milton said that glorious form he laid aside and here with us to be, I wonder if he didn't have in mind John 13 and after supper he laid aside his garments. I think he did. Old John was a great lover of the scriptures, you know. So I think that's where he got it. Now, about Jesus washing the disciples' feet. Now what I plan to say from here on, I'll be as brief as I can and as long as I must. What I plan to say from here on, I want it understood, I want several things understood. I want it understood that what I'm saying is what I believe the Bible teaches, not what I have been taught by the Alliance. What I shall say now is not fed any controversial spirits, because there would be no reason in the world why I should gratuitously raise the question of foot-washing in church. And third, that what I'm going to say now is said with the deepest respect for and appreciation of those churches that teach literal foot-washing. I have been among the Mennonites who practice literal foot-washing, that is, that at a certain service they bear one foot, men on one side of the church and women on the other, and the people go through and they wash each other's feet, or wash each other's foot. Now, the Mennonites do that, and I have preached for the Mennonites, and I have seen them weep at the altar, and I have heard them shout the praise of God while I preach, and I know these Mennonites are good people. And if I were in a city where there was a strong Mennonite church and there wasn't an Alliance church, I'd be most happy to attend a Mennonite church if they'd have me. And I also have the utmost respect for the Dumpers, the German Baptists, who also practice foot-washing. I have utmost respect for the Church of the Brethren, whose hymnbook, incidentally, we use here. I have preached for the Church of the Brethren. My good friend Carlton down here a few blocks, I forget the name of his place, is a sweet, warm Christian brother, and his people sometimes come here to church. And if any of them are here tonight, I want you to understand that I have the utmost respect for and the deepest appreciation of you and the kind of thing you stand for. About a year ago I was out in Pennsylvania and preached there three times in Messiah College at what was called their, I don't know what they called it, we would have called it our council. Nine hundred of them were gathered there, and I preached three times. I told you that before. And the night that I arrived, I was to speak three times the next day. They had their foot-washing service that evening, and they very courteously invited me to sit in on it. But I had been traveling all day and was desperately tired and wanted to be at my best, so I excused myself and said, Brother Hostetter, if you will excuse me and forgive me, I'll go and go to bed. So I'll be at my best. I'll not go to your service. It's quite all right. But if I had been there and they had wanted me to do it, I'd have no hesitation in joining in. So I say this in order to clear myself of striking a sermonic blow at the humblest and loveliest people that I think I have met, the Church of the Brethren and some of the Mennonite folks and some of the Church of God people. Now, having said that, I want to tell you what I believe this teaches here. In the first place, the disciples' feet needed to be washed. They had bathed. The Jews were very clean people, like the Japanese, and they had already bathed, Jesus said so afterward. But they had traveled to the place where the meeting was being held, where they were eating, and there were no paved streets. And the cattle and the goats and the rest traveled around over the little narrow streets with the results that we all might imagine, a dirty, littered street. And it was a dry part of the country, and there were things dried up, mud dried up, and pretty soon they had ground it to pulp. And they had dust there. And they wore sandals, not shoes like we men, but sandals like some of you women. And toeless, soulless, topless, and all the rest. Simply a good excuse, a gesture in the general direction of a shoe, and you'll pay $14 for it, and it doesn't fit you. But that's the kind of thing they wore, sandals. Naturally, when a man had traveled and had wandered his way, as the Evangelist always says, between goats and asses and cows and what have you and people over the dusty road, no matter how he might have bathed before he started, when he arrived, there was a quarter of an inch of dust on his feet. And so when they came to eat, it was common courtesy that a servant came around and washed their feet. Their feet needed to be washed. Now, my brethren, humility never does anything unnecessary, never practices on anybody. And never does anything merely formally and perfunctorily for the sake of getting in your good homework. A lot of humility and a lot of so-called spirituality in the day in which I live, we are simply piling up merit. You say, that's Catholic doctrine. Ah, but we Protestants have it too and don't think we don't. We have so many tracts to give out every day and so many souls to speak about every day and so many everything to do every day, and so we pile up merit. And many an old sinner has had a red-faced, busy, fat, talking personal worker go to work on him for no higher motive than the personal worker had to get his homework in. Now, that's not service and that's not humility and that's not godliness and that's not what Jesus did here. Foot-washing that cleans a foot is a practical service and that could be done anywhere. Foot-washing that does no service is futile and it's simply a waste of time, though it's perfectly harmless. And if they're in everything else, they love God and each other. What's the idea? We wouldn't raise any trouble over that. I'd never split a church over foot-washing. I'd go through with it all right. But the point is, anything that is not done out of necessity and doesn't perform a service is empty gesture. Now, let's look at Jesus and Peter. Peter knew his Master and he knew that his Master was stooping down to be a servant and naturally he objected strenuously. He wasn't an unbeliever objecting to the ordinance of foot-washing, as some of our brethren might have it. Peter had never heard of it except as a common social practice over those dusty, dirty streets, and all he objected to was that Jesus Christ, his Lord and Master, should ever stoop to take the place of a servant. To his objection, our Lord Jesus Christ turned this common thing into a spiritual one, just the way he often did. Remember that in John 4, a woman said to him, he said to a woman, give me the drink, and she said, why do you ask me for water, seeing that you are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman and the two of them are fused with each other? The McCoys and the Hatfields don't get along and why should you ask me for water? And then the Lord began with a glass of water and he went on from that to the water of life and the deep well that was flowing up unto eternal life. And he taught the spirituality of religion and the fact that wells and cities and mountains didn't matter, but he that worshipeth God must worship him in spirit and in truth. Then in the 6th chapter of John, he fed the multitude and when they came around and started talking about it, he turned it around and elevated it and used the common matter of raising bread as an object lesson and raised and elevated their thinking to the high heights of spirituality and said that he that eateth my bread and drinketh my blood and so on, and some left him. They couldn't take the sheer spirituality of it, but he had taken an ordinary thing, water and bread, two things, and had showed them to have inner content. Now in the 13th chapter, we come to the common social custom of washing the feet, having a servant to wash the feet before the meal. And Jesus Christ, our Lord, does the same thing there. He makes the application and he raises it up from the level of the plain foot washing up unto the high spiritual level and says, in effect, I humbled myself to serve you in your need in order that you should learn to humble yourself to help others in their need. And what I do now, thou knowest not, but thou shalt know hereafter. You see, it was deeper and of more spiritual significance than they ever dreamed. Then he said, if you knew these things, happy are ye if you do them. Now, my friends, the great danger here was the danger of literalizing his lessons. And that is the great danger today, the danger of literalizing the lessons. You see, the easiest thing in the world, the easiest way to discharge this 13th chapter of John is to wash somebody's foot. There couldn't be anything easier. We all come to church all fixed up and perfumed up and carefully ivory-soaked. Then we sit down and somebody washes the foot already clean, and then we say, now that's fulfilling the passage. All right, do it. And I say, if I were in your church and I'd go right along, I'd have no objection, nothing wrong with it, it's just all right. But the point is, it is literalizing a spiritual thing, and if you don't look out, you'll take the easy way out. For the easy way out is to wash a clean foot. And I have no doubt that many of those who practice literal foot washing wouldn't stoop to go down to the ghetto and wash a colored man's foot, wouldn't stoop to go to the prison and give the gospel there to some group of forgotten pariahs rejected by society. They discharge the whole weight of this chapter for sitting in church every Sunday evening and washing somebody's clean foot. So miss the lesson altogether. Now I want to talk a little, and that won't be too long I hope, about the error of literalizing spiritual truth. To literalize, of course, means to give a truth its fulfillment in the performance of an external act. The truth is laid down, and it has an external shell like baptism. And then we literalize it by allowing it to be fulfilled in the external act. And thus we escape the force of it in the sharp nails of the cross and death to self and crucifixion of our ego. We escape all that by literally fulfilling a passage in its external application. Institutionalized religion has always done that. They've literalized doctrine. And they have missed the living heart of it by making it external. They've put it on the outside instead of on the inside, forgetting that God lives not on the outside, but on the heart. Against this fatal error of fulfilling the external letter of the law and missing the inner spiritual meaning, against that fatal error the prophets of old times pleaded and thundered and wept. And for it they got thrown into jail and some of them slain. And against that fatal error of literalizing a doctrine and escaping the force of it by so doing, Jesus our Lord himself warned while he was on earth and for it he got crucified and nailed on a cross. And we escape the truth. We escape the deadly and glorious life-giving weight of the cross by literalizing it. Put the cross on your church steeple and you've escaped the weight of the cross, the sharp killing point of the dagger. Put the cross around your neck on a chain and you have escaped all the meaning of the cross by literalizing it, externalizing it, objectifying it, putting it on the outside. Take baptism, for instance. I've heard on the air and I know and have friends who believe that you are born into the kingdom of God by water baptism. They carry out Matthew 28 to the letter, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and behind those curtains is a baptistry, and we believe in it here. But do you know the easiest way in the world, the less painful, the least painful, and the least purifying, and the easiest, is to obey Matthew 28? Go get baptized. Whatever mode they practice in your church, go get baptized. And then you get a certificate. This, the undersigned, this will certify that the undersigned has been duly administered the rite of holy baptism in such and such church, signed Rev. So-and-so. Keep that around when the Lord comes and you'll be all right. The easiest way in the world to escape the force and the power and the sharp point and the weight of the meaning of Scripture is to do the thing on the outside and dust off your hands and say, it is done. Brethren, it's not quite so easy to go to Romans 6. Let's go there a little bit. Romans 6 tells us a few things. Matthew 28 doesn't tell us. I can find it here, but I can't. Shall we then continue in sin that grace may abound, God forbid? Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death. That like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection. Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin. That's not so easy, is it? That's spiritualizing. That's getting at the roots of it. The external practice of it is simply the external practice, but the meaning of it is spiritual. When anybody is put into the water in baptism, if he has not also gone in or does not also follow the Lord into the crucifixion of his old life and the rising in newness of life, then he has simply gotten away in a very ecclesiastical way. That's all. Nothing else has happened. He's a sinner who is dry. Until he went in, he comes out a sinner who is wet. And there is no difference. But oh, how many there are that look back with hope upon the hour they went into the water and were baptized. Now, I say we practice baptism here, but I trust that we do not literalize it to the point where we believe that it has been fulfilled when we have gone into the water. It would be as foolish as for a woman to get married, then go to the door, pull up her wedding ring, say goodbye, honey, and leave her husband for the rest of her life. And then if anybody said, Are you married? She'd say, Sure, look at this. She had the symbol of it, but she didn't have the reality of it. No home, no children, no responsibility, no housework. Some other part of the world. And the man who had given her the ring was way back there. And there she had the symbol of that which had never been consummated. And so it is in spiritual things. To be baptized with water, confirmed, sprinkled, or have anything else done to you without having the spiritual reality is to lose yourself in externalities and never consummate the spiritual meaning at all. And there's the Lord's Supper. Again, we observe the Lord's Supper in this church once a month. But the literal observation or observance of the Lord's Supper costs us absolutely nothing. It costs you nothing to get baptized. They don't even charge you for it in Protestant churches. It costs you nothing, except the inconvenience of getting wet and cleaning up again before you take your place in the audience. It costs nothing to have the Lord's Supper. Anybody can receive the Lord's Supper in its external, literal observance. 1 Corinthians 11, listen to this. This is another matter altogether. It says here, For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation to himself of not discerning the Lord's body. And all the weight of Paul's argument here is that they were doing an external act without knowing what its internal meaning was. And they carried the thing so far that they actually overate and overdrank at the communion table. And he said, You are being judged by God because you do not see the internal meaning of this. You have institutionalized and literalized the Lord's Supper. I never know whether to go away and weep or growl or pray or just how to take it. The idea that tithing is a slick way to make nine-tenths go better than ten-tenths used to. If that's true, sir, then you would be a business fool if you didn't tithe. You don't lose anything by tithing. It's a business investment and you get more back than you put in. Yet that's what I hear. Tithe and your nine-tenths will go further than your ten-tenths did. Well, anybody that wouldn't do that, somebody tell me that if I will if I will give away a dollar and keep nine, I'll have eleven as a result, I'd get rich in twenty-four hours. All you have to do is keep books and juggle your money. No, peeling off one dollar out of every ten and giving it to the church is the easiest possible way to discharge your obligation. That's why I never like to compete with other churches in missionary office. Some Alliance Church I heard of that's having a big offering, one of the members said, we're tired having Park Street Church get that credit. Oh, sister, come down off of that old nag before God lets you and your church down I wasn't this church that said it, but that was quoted to me as having been said by one of these churches that's going to town on missionary giving. No, my brethren, if that's your reason for giving, you're doing the easiest possible thing. A person can give commissions and give to the church and give heavily and never have the cross touch their inner life at all. Never have the nails enter their hands or feet. Never die to themselves. Still have their own way in everything. Many a Christian woman walks up and sticks a little sanctified chin at her husband and makes him peel off of his old tie and brings it to the church. She's had her way and reversed the order of the scriptures which says that the men, she's the head of the house, and she's done God's service, she thinks. In that great day when everything's leveled down, nobody can tuck himself out any. Everybody's reduced to size. There'll be a lot of us weep some tears. I'm glad that the scripture says that there'll be no tears in heaven because God will wipe them all away. John R. Wright claims, I think, that there'll be tears in heaven otherwise they couldn't be wiped away. And for once I'd like to say I agree with the man. That, uh, that, uh, the, the, oh, I agree with him on a lot of things. That's not at all. I come from Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Dutch have a way of saying things backwards. I say that in that day some of us will find that when we decided to give our tie when we decided to take the easy, external way of serving our God. Say, don't you believe in tithing? Oh, I believe in tithing and some more. But I warn you against literalizing it to the point where you fail to see its meaning. Jesus told the fellow who tithed mint and cumin and myrrh and everything else, he said, you did right in it. This you should have done. Here's where you broke down the weightier matters of the law. Mercy and kindness and love. You've forgotten it. And you have institutionalized and literalized the service of God. And you've carefully gone and weighed out your mint and myrrh and anise. And you have gone away feeling that you've done God's service. No, no, said Jesus. Because that is only the external shell of religion. The internal heart of religion is love and faith and kindness and mercy. And you've had none of these. But you're good tithers. And then there's church attendance. There are those who haven't heard from God for 21 years. And they have been in church every Sunday for 22. And you couldn't get them. Usually you'd have them be carried there on a shutter. There's church attendance. And I believe in it myself. I think we ought to go to church regularly. And when I preached this morning on one of the roots of the righteous being regularity, I meant what I said. If you know what you can do, you can literalize church attendance and never get anything from God year in and year out and still always be in your place. Why tread ye my courts, says the Holy Ghost? Why tread ye my courts? To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices and your burnt offerings and the fatter-fed beasts? And when ye come to appear before me, who requires your hand to tread my courts? Bring no more vain oblations and incense, their abominations unto me. And your new moons and sabbaths and calling of assemblies, I can't stand. It's iniquity, even your solemn church service. Your new moons and your Lent and your Fridays and your appointed feasts, my soul hateth. There are trouble unto me, I am weary to bear them. When ye spread forth your hands, I'll hide mine eye. Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes. Cease to do evil, learn to do well. Seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow, and then come and let us reason together, saith the Lord. Lord, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Astutiously, we have ruled out that opening passage. Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings, learn to do well, seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. And a little quartet will stand up and sing in a very sad, soft catterwall, though your sins be as scarlet, though your sins be as scarlet. Nothing is said about washing you, making you clean, putting away the evil of your doings, learning to do well, judging the fatherless, relieving the oppressed. And it's all here together! The Holy Ghost put it here. So you see, friends, the easiest way to do anything is to observe the external observers, or observe the external fulfillment. Then there is simple living. And again, I would say that any of you who have convictions about their simplicity of dress, that is all right. And I think that we've gone too far the other way, and I think you women could stand a lot of good preaching, too. And I think that a lot of these ravings under dark bridges, some of you good Christian women have put it in the heads of these young crazy fellows. Not by anything you said or did, you wouldn't stoop to that, but because you insisted on dressing like Lana Turner. Now, that's just on the side, that wasn't in the sermon. But I say, and I mean that, and don't you get rid of it now by laughing. I mean what I say. Simple living. But you know something? The easiest way, let me read it to you here in the Bible. Likewise, ye wives, if you have been subject unto your own husbands, that is, they may not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of your wives. That's conduct. While they withhold your chaste conversation, couple with fear. Whose adorning? Let it not be that outward adorning of padding of hair and wearing of gold or of putting on of apparel. Period. Now, that's as far as some people go. So, they studiously avoid adorning, outward adorning, padding of their hair, which means braiding. They will not wear gold. They never go quite so far as to rule out putting on of apparel. They put on some kind of apparel. Usually it's not very good looking, but at least it covers up. And then they put a period there. But did you know that's only part of it? That's the external and that's the easy way, sister. The easiest way in the world for you to get rid of the point of this is to go home and decide to lower your skirts four inches and wear nothing but long-sleeved dresses and dress full fashion. Now, if you do that, that's the easiest way to get around this. But what do the rest of us say? Who's adorning? Let it not be the outward adorning, but let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which in the sight of God is of great price. The spiritual side of it is that the heart must be an ornament, that it must be meek and lowly and quiet and holy in the sight of God. So you see, sister, the easiest way for you to fulfill Peter's instruction is to dress a little more modestly. And I wish you would for that matter. But if that's as far as it goes, you haven't had anything happen to you yet. It's a lot easier to wear a long dress than it is to humble yourself and do what your husband tells you to do, because that's what it says here. It's a lot easier to wear long sleeves than it is to have a meek and quiet, humble heart. Keep still instead of talking back. I've gotten in trouble with everybody in Chicago tonight, haven't I? Is there anybody left? I'll fire you up. Not you? All right. And it's true, nevertheless. Now I'm through and I hope for three minutes. The difficulty that lies here has led to two mistakes. It has led to people taking refuge in literal fulfillments and forgetting that everything is given for the heart's sake. It has led, on the other side, to denying the literal meaning of everything altogether and throwing it out. Quakers did. They said, if you want a baptism, out it goes. Baptism is inward. Lord's Supper, out it goes. And there are those in Chicago who say, church attendance? I'll go to the field like it if I don't feel like it'll stay in bed. That is using Christian liberty as a license for the flesh. Both are mistakes. The correct way is to obey the letter of the word, but in doing it, knowing that it's only for society and the outward eye and for uniformity and regularity that it's the external shell, the scaffoldings of the temple, and then not neglect the inward sanctuary. And in your baptism, rise in newness of life to walk in the Spirit. In your Lord's Supper, eat indeed of the Body and Blood of Christ by humility and faith. In your tithing, give more. And then in your humility, say, O Lord, I've given nothing. And accept it as a sacred ministry. Your church attendance, come regularly and all the time to all kinds of weather. Bow your head when you come and say, My God, if you don't open my heart and illuminate my spirit, this will just be a trip to church. Help me to be kind and loving and do well and teach that you do evil and be good to the poor and help the widow in order that this sermon might do me some good. And in your simplicity of living, if you want to live and dress with a modesty becoming you as a Christian woman, don't imagine you've purchased merit by so doing. But say, O God, help me and while my outer adorning is simple, let my inner life be a shining diamond for God. Let the gold and the silver and the platinum and the silk and the beauty of it be in my heart. Well, that means foot-washing back to where we started. And it doesn't try to settle. My own personal convictions are that the Lord has given us two ordinances. The Lord's Supper and water baptism. And that foot-washing was not intended to be an ordinance. But I nevertheless have utter respect for those who believe otherwise. And believe that in their simplicity they do what they believe is right, and if they also have the inner adorning and in their humility do it for Christ's sake, I believe God will honor them. So I do not see it that way. If I believed in it, I'd practice it. And if the church board said, Mr. Tozer, you can't be pastor of this church and teach it, I would say, all right, goodbye, it's been nice to know. I'll go somewhere where I can preach it. But I don't happen to believe that that's literally to be so. I just happen to believe that that was one more of the many simple things that Jesus did. Like the birds and the flowers and kings and builders and all the rest that he used to show for spiritual meaning. But two ordinances stand out. The church of Christ has held them all down the centuries. So two things are necessary, my brethren. Obedience and a deep inner understanding of the Holy Ghost in the heart. Those two things are necessary. Else all our observances mean nothing at all. Institutionalized Christianity grinds people through as they grind them into the urn and put the uniform on them and send them out. It's not so easy, brethren. Bible schools teach how to win souls and through easy lessons. And you get a hard old sinner and take him through Dr. So-and-So's easy way to win a soul. And he comes to him and he's been given the treatment, but he isn't saved. He's just been given the treatment. He goes out thinking he's saved, and he's proud of the fact he's saved, but he's not saved. Nothing's ever happened inside of his heart. There hasn't been a change. He hasn't learned to do well and ceased to do evil. He hasn't learned to help the poor and the fatherless and do good and walk humbly with his God. So his sins have not been washed away. The scarlet iniquities in his heart have not been made white as snow. He has observed the text and missed the inner meaning. Or they take him and put him into the water and bring him out. These folks cry on his neck, say, Oh, I'm so glad you got baptized, but nothing has ever happened in his heart. Let's not avoid the cross by carrying the cross around our necks. Let's let the cross enter where it belongs into our hearts and slay the old man with these deeds. Then we'll know the true meaning of the cross and deeds. And so will all other ordinances. If you go to a church with a worship meeting, go ahead and worship, and don't ever say that I said any smart thing about it or that I oppose it. I don't. I just don't think it's for us now. But, please, if you're practicing, be sure you know what you do. For Jesus said, You don't know now. This is the external thing. You don't know. If that's all there was to it, then you'd know. But you don't know now. But when the Holy Ghost came and God took religion from the outside and put it on the inside, then they knew. And I hope you know. I hope we all know. Oh, God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you're going to be around long, none of us, these young people, without a gray hair, without any evidence of age at all upon them, they won't be around long. Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all its sons away. They fly forgotten as a dream dies at the opening day. The little tribes of flesh and blood with all their cares and fears are carried downward like a flood and lost in the following years. Oh, God, we pray, give us spiritual goodness. Give us insight. Give us prophetic vision. Please help us to see past brick walls and water and beads and fruit and basins and bread. My God! These things all perish with you, isn't it? Help us to see past it all and discern the Lord's body and discern the deep meaning of things. Lord Jesus, they crucified you because thou didst see the deep and the meaning of things and they saw nothing but the shell. Please help us that we may not be on the side of them who crucified you in our sympathies. Help us, rather, to get over on the side of them than understood by midlife that the kingdom of God is within you and that you are the temple of the Holy Ghost which you have of God and that Christ dwelleth in you except to be reprobate and that Christ in you is the hope of glory. Please, Lord, we pray thee, keep us right and help us to be right in all the practical things of life. Help us to be sound and practical and help us also, great God, to pierce through all the outer scaffolding and gaze and gaze and gaze. For there is a kind of fire that burns between the wings of the chariot. O bring, O bring, thy loving Spirit into every troubled breast. Let us all in thee inherit, let us find that second rest. Great God, take away our bent to sinning, our sandal misery. In the faith of this beginning set our hearts at liberty. Now, God, we pray thou would talk to everybody's heart tonight. In this frank and blunt message, we pray that thou would help everybody to understand what is meant that no good person might be offended. If an angry bad man goes away mad, we haven't much care because they walk away from thee white with anger. But we don't want any good person to go away feeling bad, unless, by conviction, the Holy Spirit is trying to teach him the error of his ways. O for Christ's sake we pray that thou would make thy people good people. May it be said of us, every one, if not now, then may it very soon be true of every one of us, he was a good man and full of the Holy Ghost. Grant this, we pray, for Jesus.