ar _ %. meet Au P Rj 7 | g : 3 wy Yay fi SUB] UAL Bt Y Ty N pana LIFE 4 APR IN THE ee STUDIES IN THE EPISTLES BY Rev. J. H. JOWETT, c.u., vo. BIBLE HOUSE THE CHRISTIAN HERALD NEW YORK COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY GRORGE H. DORAN COMPANY LIFE IN THE HEIGHTS PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA CONTENTS PAGE I BELIEVING IS SEEING : : t ‘ ee II PRAYER ANSWERED, BUT! ; aha aenaa OREN EE III LET US HAVE PEACE . : : : H 1s a7 IV THE TREASURES OF DARKNESS . ) : Suk sao V TALKING AND WALKING . Wide ‘ Cinta 41) ‘AN EMANCIPATED: SOUT) (oy « dicey igs deueut) caaheO VII HIDDEN BUT NOT SEPARATE. : : panes 19 vt THE WINNING SPIRIT. ; , ; Cd ees Pee) POSSESSIVE: BATTED esi widuiia aah) eesaee gee ok ited X THE ARISTOCRACY OF PASSIONATE SOULS . 46 XI THE ARMOUR OF LIGHT . ; 4 , or 49 XII UNTO THE LORD : ; : A é A IN Pe XIII THE ARRESTING WITNESS OF HOPE... hye ROD XIV ORGANS OF HUMANITY . ; ‘ : ayy 0 XV HARD-HEADED . : ‘ , 4 ns oy yg Oo XVI MORE MAN! . ; ; , , , . 66 vi XXXVI CONTENTS © THE TRANSMISSION OF BLESSINGS ° EARTHEN VESSELS . : . . SIGHT AND INSIGHT . ° ° ° THE INCLUSIVE SACRIFICE . . ° THE KINDLING MINISTRY OF ZEAL . THE LORDLY GRACE OF GIVING . . COUNTERFEIT VIRTUE . . ° THE UNSPEAKABLE SECRET ° : THE THORN THAT REMAINED . ° THE TREASURES OF DARKNESS . . THE MYSTIC CONTROL OF THE JOURNEY . THE SCHOOL OF GENTLENESS CRUCIFIED BY NEGLECT ° ° ° THE UNTRAVERSED CONTINENTS WHICH IS HIS BODY . ° . ° THE MIDDLE WALL THE GREAT COMPANION AND HIS HOUSE INCAPABLE OF FEELING THE WATCHFUL USE OF OPPORTUNITY VOCAL THERAPY . : ° . . PAGH 102 105 108 113 116 120 124 130 134 136 LVI CONTENTS FAKING ONE’S STAND sietins THE GRACE OF READINESS. .. BENHFICENT RESISTANCES yay hee THE CONTAGION OF HEALTH . .. THE RESOURCES OF A GREAT APOSTLE NOT SCARED! . THE CAPACITY FOR SYMPATHY ENERGETIC CHARACTER . . le REPUDIATED ESTATES j DRAWING A CROSS. . THE DISTANT SCENE AND THE NEXT STEP THE TEST OF TENDENCY. . .. . THE PATRIOTISM OF THE SOUL. . THE KNIGHTS OF THE RED CROSS .. THE WITNESS OF DIFFICULT ENTERPRISE A GARDEN IN THEGLOOM. .. THE PLACE OF UNVEILING THE POWER OF DARKNESS. . . . SHADOW AND SUBSTANCE. . . . LIFE IN THE HEIGHTS . . ° : CONTENTS UNLEARNING THINGS . : . ; THE INDWELLING WORD. : ; SPIRITUAL DISTINCTION ; THE GIFT OF SPIRITUAL DISCERNMENT WIND AND SAIL . k ; ; : THE PATTERN INTHE MOUNT .. OUR VOICE fiers DEATH. , GOD’S ENJOYMENT OF HIS CHILDREN . THE GREAT VENTURES . : : : PUTTING OUT ANTAGONISTIC FIRES . WITNESSES WHO GIVE EVIDENCE . : THE LORD’S CHASTENING ROAD-MAKERS e ° ° ° e 263 LIFE IN THE HEIGHTS I BELIEVING IS SEEING ‘‘He staggered not... through unbelief.’’ Rom. iv. 20. THE divine promise had been given. ‘There could be no doubt about that. But there were no external helps to make the soul cer- tain of its fulfilment. The promise had no friends in the outer circumstances. The face of everything frowned upon it. Com- mon experience was against it. Common sense was against it. And yet Abraham ‘‘staggered not’’! He steadied himself on the promise. His soul nested in the divine purpose. He dwelt in the secret place of the Most High. By faith he companioned with friendly realities when every hard and glaring event appeared to be his foe. For faith is a finer sense even than common sense. Common sense, when it is despoiled of faith, is a very local and deceitful sight. But seeing is believing! Nothing of the 11 12 LIFE IN THE HEIGHTS kind. Believing is the only true seeing! ‘¢Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see... 2’ ‘‘He endured as seeing Him who is invisible.”’ And we, too, have to trudge over roads where circumstances just shriek against our creeds. We have heard the divine word, but the ‘‘not likely’’ stares upon us on every side. And common sense is very aggressive, and it rears itself against the promise of our God. And the gathered wisdom of the world obtrudes itself against the hidden wisdom of the Lord. Our material setting is unfriendly. Carnal forces are ironical in their easy triumph. And we begin to look foolish in our simple faith. And, God help us! sometimes we begin to feel foolish, and we are tempted to make obeisance to the kingdom of the apparent, and to bow down and worship it. Never was there greater need of deep- living men and women who will confront the proud and massed ‘‘unlikelies’’ with the spoken promise of our God. Never was the need more urgent that we should confirm ourselves in the promise amid the uncom- fortable irony of circumstances, and the BELIEVING IS SEEING 13 loud and blatant taunt of our foes. We must wear the word of the Lord like an ath- lete’s belt! ‘‘Having your loins girt about with truth!’’ These are the men and women who remain victors on the field at the end of the long and bloody day. At the begin- ning of day theirs is the faith which gives substance to things hoped for; at the end of the day the things hoped for have become their eternal possession. II PRAYER ANSWERED, BUT! ‘‘Making request that . . . I might come unto you.’’ Rom. i. 10. THe Apostle Paul had a great longing to visit Rome. He coveted the privilege of preaching the Gospel in the metropolis of the world. From Rome the story of grace might be radiated along the great highways to the ends of the earth. ‘‘After that I must visit Rome.’’ ‘‘I am ready to preach the Gospel to you that are in Rome also!’’ And so he prayed that his burning desire might be granted. And his prayer was an- swered, but in such a startlingly unexpected way. ‘‘When we came to Rome the cen- turion delivered the prisoners,’’ and Paul was among them! He hoped to enter the Imperial city an ambassador in glorious freedom; he entered it in bonds. And so the prayer was answered, but it was answered in a very surprising way. 14 PRAYER ANSWERED, BUT! 15 The Apostle arrived in Rome, but such an arrival had never entered into his dreams. He was a prisoner in bonds, but the word of God was not bound; and I suppose that if Paul had never been taken to Rome we should never have had the epistles of the eaptivity. The Epistle to the Philippians, with all its mellow maturity of spiritual fruits, was born in bondage. And Colos- sians, with its glorious proclamation of the sole headship and mediatorship of Jesus Christ, was born in the same gloomy servi- tude. And what rare treasures there are in these and other letters, which we might never have known had the inspired writer always been free! ‘‘In my distress Thou hast en- larged me.’’ The experience of the Psalmist was surely the experience of the Apostle, and we enjoy the splendid fruit of his enlarge- ment. Paul entered Rome in bonds, but in his bondage he sent forth letters which have enriched the world with infinite blessedness. So that God may answer our prayers, but the answer may come in a quite extraordi- nary way. We get where we desire to be, but by God’s own path. It might seem as though it would have been better for every- 16 LIFE IN THE HEIGHTS body if Paul had been in Rome and also been perfectly free. Yes, but I am not so sure that we should have had those immortal let- ters. What a life Paul would have lived had he been free to do whatever he pleased, and to go wherever he liked! It is notorious that when a man is made a bishop his days become so crowded that it is a rare thing for him to produce his greatest books! And who knows but that if this great Apostle had had more temporary freedom we might have had less permanent fruit. Sometimes the Lord permits our seclusion in order that we may do a larger work. His merciful sight has long range, and that is why our im- mediate circumstances are often so contra- dictory to our aspiration and prayer. The Lord looks beyond the temporary bondage to the ultimate freedom. ‘‘The bud may have a bitter taste, But sweet will be the flower.’’ Tit LET US HAVE PEACE ‘Therefore, being justified by faith, let us have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.’’ Rom. v. 1. T'HIs initial word ‘‘therefore’’ sends us back to the earlier part of the apostle’s letter. We cannot leap into the course of the letter at any place we please and disregard every other part of the journey. We must accom- pany the apostle the whole length of the road. It is of the first importance that we not only arrive at the right places, but that we arrive there by the right approach. The approach is an essential factor in the mys- tery of revelation. There 1s a way of ap- proaching Jerusalem which lays it out be- fore you in fascinating perspective and pro- portion. There are poems whose worth is only betrayed by the right approach. There are two or three poems of Francis Thomp- son which only begin to live as you come upon them through certain queer, dingy 17 18 LIFE IN THE HEIGHTS windings in his life. But it is probable that this sort of reasoning applies to everything, and that for everything there is ‘‘a way’’ of understanding. What, then, is the approach suggested by this retrospective word ‘‘therefore’’? Let us look back over the road already trav- ersed. It began in a grim, dismal, depres- sing waste of sin, a waste from which there was no way out. Itis almost Dantean in the completeness of its bondage and misery. Everybody has lost his righteousness, and everybody has lost his power to recapture it. Many devices are tried, and many, many at- tempts are made to escape, but all struggles are ineffective. The spiritual landscape re- vealed in the early part of this letter is as black and gloomy as Dartmoor round about Princetown Gaol. And there is no way of escape. In this horrible bondage every man is a prisoner for life. No way out! No, not until God Himself made a way, a new and a living way. The infinite Love met our deep necessity, and across the waste a path appears which brightens more and more even into perfect day. In the atoning love and grace of Jesus LET US HAVE PEACE 19 Christ the prisoners of despair become the children of eternal hope. Through the mys- tery of a Cross everybody can recover his crown. In a death whose mystery no one ean explore we find the springs of a new life. And so completely does the divine grace meet our necessity that we may not only leave the imprisoning desert, we can also drop our bonds and our chains. The of- fered freedom is not only one of status, it is also one of strength and provision. It is more than an amnesty, more than a decree of emancipation. It is an endowment and a bequest. It is the liberty of health. It is the freedom of harmony. ‘Heaven comes down our souls to greet, And glory crowns the mercy seat.’’ And so this letter begins in clouds and dark- ness, but the black skies are rent at the end of the fourth chapter, and the blue heavens appear and the Kingdom of Heaven is opened to all believers. And it is just here that we come up to that word ‘‘Therefore.’’ ‘‘Therefore, seeing we are justified by faith, let us have peace with 20 LIFE IN THE HEIGHTS God through our Lord Jesus Christ.’’ It is not an assertion that we have peace. It is an appeal to take it. An amnesty is offered ; take it! Free pardon is proclaimed; take it! But can any one’ be so foolish as to see a wonderful deliverance of this kind and not accept it? Can we see the great possibility and not translate it into glad experience? Yes, that is the strange suggestion. Peace is offered, a peace which passeth understand- ing, but men won’t have it. Men will even trudge up to the very Cross with their crush- ing burdens upon their backs, and then they turn away as though nothing had happened there, and they go on carrying their burdens with them. It is the one amazing mystery of human folly. Here is an appointed place where the heavy-laden pilgrim can lay down his load and find rest and peace. But no! He turns again to the dismal wilderness and to his bonds and imprisonment. We should surely have expected that when Canaan is offered. to men and women they would fly from the desert. We should surely have assumed that when peace is spread before us we should fling ourselves down into it, as into a sweet flowering meadow, and we LET US HAVE PEACE 21 should steep our weary souls in the restoring and reconciling grace of God. What, then, shall we say to these things? Well, let us go over the road again which leads up to this great appealing word. Let us go over it very slowly. Let us stay with things long enough to feel them. Let us linger at the thirty-second verse of the first chapter, and at the fourth verse of the sec- ond chapter, and at the twentieth and twen- ty-third verses of the third chapter. Let us make a stop at every one of these places, changing all the plural numbers into the singular number, until we have read our- selves into a full understanding of the sa- ered word. And then more than anywhere else let us stay long at the twenty-fifth verse of the third chapter: ‘‘ Jesus Christ, Whom God has sent forth to be a propitiation for our sins.’’ Let everybody find himself in that all-enclosing word ‘‘our.’’ Let us kneel at the Cross, and let us stay there until vital feelings begin to stir in the numb heart, and it is as though the winter is over and gone. And for a second counsel let this be given; let us steadily look away from self to Christ. Here is a passage from one of Keble’s let- 22 LIFE IN THE HEIGHTS ters which I think is pregnant with sound spiritual advice: ‘‘I hold it to be a selfish and dangerous sort of thing for people to be always turning their eyes inward. Please not to let your own faults or anything un- comfortable be often uppermost. It is not natural it should be so in those for whom Christ died.’’ No, it is not natural. The only natural thing is that we should be so fascinated and enraptured by the grace of Christ that faults and discomforts and fears and our sins will all be swallowed up in His glory. And therefore let us believingly and confidently accept His peace. Let us joy- fully forget a heap of our own things! Let us joyfully remember the things that are in Christ! And in a joyful and enkindling hope let us go along our road in blessedness and peace. IV THE TREASURES OF DARKNESS © ‘‘Tribulation worketh patience; and patience, ex- perience ; and experience, hope.’’—Rom. v. 3, 4. Wo would have imagined that hope would be the child of tribulation? But, then, who would have dreamed that the beautiful yel- low pond-lily would have been born and nourished in its bed of slimy ooze? Who would have thought that from coal-tar we could extract colours whose brilliance would make Solomon’s glory seem dim? Nay, who would have thought that from this same coal-tar, with its oppressive smell, we should derive some of our most delicate and exqui- site perfumes? In coal-tar we can find the beauties of the dawn and the scent of the new-mown hay! And in tribulation we can find the strong grace of patience and the radiant grace of hope. There is no dark experience from which we cannot obtain the stuff of noble charac- 23 24 LIFE IN THE HEIGHTS ter. We can make the apparently un- friendly circumstance pay homage to our souls. ‘‘The clouds ye so much dread are big with blessing.’? Everything is not mis- fortune because it comes to us with a frown. A gracious gift can come to us in a gay and tinted envelope, but it can also come to us in an envelope with a black border. And therefore it is part of the ministry of be- lievers in Christ Jesus to show to the world what benediction may hide in dark things. We are to be fine experts in growing lilies of peace in most unlikely places, and in de- riving lovelier tints for the affections in the gloomy experiences of disappointment and apparent defeat. We are to make manifest that ‘‘the things which happened unto us turned out rather to be the furtherance of the Gospel.”’ Now graces, like diamonds resting on dark velvet, shine most resplendently against a foil of gloomy experience. It is so with peace in the midst of tribulation, it is so with hope in the time of general fainting, it is ‘so with the joy of the Lord in the dark and cloudy day. When the noisome thing brings forth perfume, the scent is felt to be THE TREASURES OF DARKNESS 25 of a superlative kind. In Christ Jesus we are made competent to give this witness be- fore the world. It is the promise of His word: ‘‘All things work together for good to them that love God.’’ Yes, even the dark things become the ground-bed of everlasting flowers. ‘‘Tribulation worketh patience and patience hope.”’ Vv TALKING AND WALKING ‘Walk in newness of life.’’—Rom. vi. 4. Prruaps I can best express the purpose of this meditation by reminding my readers of the fable of the young bear who was puz- zled to know how to walk. ‘‘Shall I,’’ said he to the old she-bear, ‘‘shall I move my right paw first or my left, or my two front paws together, or the two hind ones, or all four at once, or how?’’ ‘‘Leave off think- ing and walk,’’ grunted the old bear. There are some people who will talk religious dif- ficulties day and night. They want to know how to pray. They wonder how they are to love their neighbour. They are very keen to learn how to trust God. And they are full of eagerness as to how to help their fellow- men. And there are other talkers who are concerned about rank and priority in the scale of duties. Are they to do this first or the other? Should contemplation or . 26 TALKING AND WALKING 27 action be the first interest, or should the two move together? I think talkers of these kinds, and perhaps of many other sorts, were in the Apostolic Church, for the Apostle Paul puts such startling emphasis on the necessity of walking. He seems to say to his readers, and to say it again and again, ‘Stop talking and begin walking! How are you to do things? Justdo them! Step out and get them done.’’ Let me recall some of the ways in which this counsel is given. Here is one. ‘‘Walk in love.’’ It is so easy to talk about love. I think it is still easier to sing about it. And it makes us feel quite earnest when we in- quire about it, and ask what love would do along this road or on that road. And the Apostle’s answer to much of this talking is that we just begin walking. ‘‘Walk in love.’’ Set out and do it, and do not spend in needless questioning the strength which ought to be used in chivalrous service. Just begin to love, and like the anxious young bear you will find that all your difficulties about how to do it are immediately over. Here is another piece of Apostolic coun- sel: ‘‘Walk in truth.’’ Perhaps some of 28 LIFE IN THE HEIGHTS these early disciples were more inclined to be theologians than saints. For theology can be divorced from piety. We can be eagerly interested in a theory and only very indiffer- ently concerned about the life. Theology may become a sort of moral opiate, and it can put some very precious faculties into a deep sleep. The only escape from this peril is to make our theology walk. We ought to see our great Christian doctrines walking about incarnated in the common life of the streets. The truth of the atoning love of our Saviour ought to walk through our ordi- nary affairs in the reconciled lives of ordi- nary people. The truth of justification by faith should be recognised by its fine stature and by its free swinging stride in the forum and the market place. The truth of God’s forgiveness should not be merely enshrined in a fellowship of words. It ought to be embodied in forgiving men and women who are moving in the ways of the world, and who bear the seal of God’s grace on their foreheads. We are to walk in truth, and in our walk the truth will have its finest witness. It is by walking that most of our theoret- TALKING AND WALKING 29 ical difficulties are to be solved. Walking settles a heap of questions. ‘‘It came to pass that, as he was going he received his sight.’”’? We walk away from a crowd of needless embarrassments which always trou- ble the folk who are everlastingly waiting to know how to do things and never get them done. Itis the life which is the light of men. VI AN EMANCIPATED SOUL ‘‘The glorious liberty of the children of God.”’ Rom. viii. 21. THERE is a precious bell in Philadelphia which is guarded with most jealous custody. It is the bell of Liberty. It is gloriously linked with the birthday of a national life. It tolled the glad and momentous tidings when a nation achieved its independence and breathed the air of freedom. If any one will turn to the life and letters of the Apostle Paul, and read and listen with dili- gent care, he will hear another bell of liberty ringing out the glad tidings that a man has been born again, and that he has breathed the wonderful air of spiritual freedom. I don’t think you will travel very far in his life, or in his letters, without hearing the great bell of liberty sounding forth the blessed news of emancipation. Here are a few samples of what I call the bell-music | 30 AN EMANCIPATED SOUL 31 in the Apostle’s witness: ‘‘Our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus;’’ ‘‘The lib- erty wherewith Christ hath made us free;”’ ‘Ve have been called unto liberty;’’ ‘‘The Lord’s freeman;’’ ‘‘H'ree from the law;’’ ‘‘Wree from sin;’’ ‘This liberty of yours.”’ In this way does the music keep breaking out in Paul’s speech and letters, the great bell-note which signalises the attainment of spiritual freedom and independence, ‘‘the glorious liberty of the children of God.”’ Now this sense of joy in a new-found freedom breathes in all his utterance. Paul is like a man who has strangely emerged from constraints and limitations of which he was scarcely conscious—certainly not fully conscious until he has passed beyond them. I have a friend who has never been rapturously appreciative of natural scenery. When others have been revelling on some marvellous panorama of colour, or tracing some luring horizon-line, he has remained strangely quiet and unmoved. But now the rapture has come to him, and he thrills to nature’s glory. What has happened? By an apparent chance, and to his staggering surprise, he learned that his eyes were defec- 32 LIFE IN THE HEIGHTS tive, and that he was not seeing the world at all as it was seen by his friends. He thought he had perfect sight, and he was partially blind! The oculist gave him new sight, and he discovered a new world. ‘‘Thou knowest not that thou art blind!’’ That had been Paul’s condition as he jour- neyed to Damascus. Blind indeed! He boasted of his sight! And then Somebody came and touched him, and he found new eyes, and new sight, and a new world. And his consequent joy and freedom of move- ment were almost like a dream. But there were deeper elements in his liberty even than these. He passed from blindness to sight, but there was a second transition which really explains the first. He passed from law to grace, which is like a child going from the school-house to his home. Watch a child when school is out and home is in sight! And Paul was like that. And now I think of it, that was his own illustration of the transition. ‘‘The law,’’ he says, ‘‘was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ.’’ He passed from the sphere of statute, and curb, and restraint, and ferule, and prison, Into the warm, sunny, genial intimacies of home. AN EMANCIPATED SOUL 33 And oh, the freedom of it! He had been a pupil in a hard school, and now he revelled in the glory of the liberty of the children of God. He had lived in the repressive compound of law ; now he roamed in the open country of grace. His soul became ‘‘spor- tive as the fawn which, wild with glee, across the lawn and up the mountain springs.”’ But there was another transition, and in which order it comes—whether before or after, or with the others, it does not really matter—but the Apostle passed from sin to holiness. Sin had held him as if it were a corpse which he was foreed to carry upon his back. ‘*‘Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?’’ He could not shake it off. And then, by the wonderful grace of God, the corpse was removed, and it was buried in some unfathomable sea known only to the heart and wisdom of God. And then Paul discovered that he was no longer wedded to death, but to life, and to life that was sweet, and pure, and radiant as a. bride. ‘‘Where sin abounded grace did much more abound.’’ And oh, the freedom of it! Guilt gone, sin gone, and in their place a holy life as lovely as a summer’s 34 LIFE IN THE HEIGHTS morn. Paul’s sense of freedom was the secret of his terrific vitality. In all these wonderful transitions an energy was re- leased, which drove the torpor out of his powers, and all his faculties became like wide-awake sentinels standing at their posts. Everything about Paul pulses with life. He challenges grim difficulties with the happy air of aman going toa wedding. He under- takes vast enterprises which leave other men gasping for breath. Paul was tremendous in his vitality, and he was vital because he was free. And because he was so vital he was glori- ously vitalising. We can go to him for refreshment, and we can always find it. His thought is like wine. His word is filled with the life which he borrowed from the Lord. He is gloriously free and vital, and com- munion with him is an inspiration. Vil HIDDEN BUT NOT SEPARATE ‘‘Thou didst hide Thy face.’’—Ps. xxx. 7. ‘* Who shall separate us from the love of Christ ?’’ Rom. viii. 35. THERE can be a hiding while there is no alienation. The face may be hidden, but there is no withdrawal of the Presence. There may be mist, and cloud, and darkness, but the Lord has not gone away. Events may be perplexing, but His love abides. Our understanding may faint while the heart continues her sacred communion. The light may tarry, the Life is here! There is no one so blind as the one who claims to see everything clearly. Who has not met the trifler to whom everything is plain? He has the key to every lock, the answer to every riddle! And this is the knowledge that ‘‘puffeth up.’”’ It is a very dry and unperceptive thing. It lacks the softening moisture of humility and rever- 35 36 LIFE IN THE HEIGHTS ence and awe. It wants the liquid humour without which the eye can have no vision. God hides His face! It may be that there are some things that would never come to any life or stature if it were not for the influ- ence of the darkening cloud. There are many ferns which would never unroll their beauty if it were not for the damp, cooling ministry of the shade. Who can grow ferns in the dry light of the garish day? And there are precious ferns in the realm of the soul which would never appear in strength and loveliness were it not for the hiding of the Face. There is patience, and meekness, and humility, and modesty, and there are the fine delicate ferns we eall reticence and reserve. What is character like if these are wanting? And it may be that if there were no ‘‘hiding,’’ no shadow, no cloud, these most precious virtues and graces might never adorn the soul; or, if they did, they would be so feeble as to immediately wither away ‘‘when heat cometh.’’ But when He hideth His face the twilight that falls upon us is the shadow of the Almighty. But let us say it once again, when the face is hidden the love is near. Nothing can take ‘ HIDDEN BUT NOT SEPARATE 37 that away, not even our sin. And love never sleeps. Love never faileth. She never drops out of the ranks while stronger troops march on. She never faints, and she is always in ministry, working out her own gracious pur- pose night and day. Is the face hidden in our own day? The Love is here: nay, infi- nitely better, the Lover is here! 'T'o believe it, even while we are in the shadow, is to grow in heaven’s gracious mist, to grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Vit THE WINNING SPIRIT ‘‘We are more than conquerors through Him.’’ Rom. viii. 37. Tis word of the Apostle expresses the vic- torious mood in which victory was achieved. The early believers in the Lord Jesus won the victory in their hearts before they won it on the field. In Christ Jesus they antic- ipated triumph, and their anticipations made the triumph possible. And this mood is one of the secrets of victory in every king- dom. Is there any record of an army win- ning a battle when the soldiers entered the conflict believing they would fail? Such a gloomy lack of confidence would breed a dis- mal progeny of wants, and the army would be sapped of its vital resources before the battle began. Our biggest inspirations blow from the gates of the morning! Let those gates be closed, and the soul will be deprived of the mystic oxygen which is absolutely 38 THE WINNING SPIRIT 39 essential to her life and strength. There is to me a very real significance, and therefore something of spiritual direction, in the words of the prophet which tell me that the glory of the Lord entered the temple by the gateway ‘‘which looked towards the east.’ He entered by the door which looked to- wards the new dawnings, the new revela- tions, the door of expectancy and hope! ‘‘Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and the King of Glory shall come in!’’ Our eager confidences become the highway of the Lord. And so it is that, in a very real degree, we can ascertain the nature of our coming victories or defeats by examining the char- acter of our expectations. We may regard all our unbeliefs as the ministers and pre- cursors of disaster. Whenever did unbelief go into battle singing a song of praise? When did unbelief hammer the strongholds of iniquity with blows which shook its walls into dust? When did unbelief stride out into the second mile with the fine deter- mination to make the second mile the justi- fication of the first? Itis only the assurance of victory which works miracles of this kind, and it works them every day. In the spir- 40 LIFE IN THE HEIGHTS itual realm a healthy confidence not only sees a highway stretching through coming days, and brightening ever more and more unto perfect day, but it makes that highway the road on which there come the marvellous reinforcements of the spirit, which trans- form all antagonisms into opportunities of glorious achievements. And surely this victorious mood is needed to-day. Our tasks are tremendous. To lose confidence is to lose everything. The devil always wins when he breaks our assurance. To be sure in Christ Jesus is the beginning of victory. Nay, it is victory! ‘‘This is the victory which overcometh the world, even our faith.’? 1D.¢ POSSESSIVE FAITH ‘