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 ^il-^ITUAL CLiNIQUE 
 
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 /VRTIiUR T. PIERSON 
 
 BV 
 
 4501 
 .P54 
 
tihvavy of trhe trheolo^icd ^eminar^ 
 
 PRINCETON . NEW JERSEY 
 
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 FROM THE LIBRARY OF THE 
 
 REVEREND CHARLES ROSENBURY ERDMAN 
 D.D., LL.D. 
 
 BV 4501 .P54 
 
 Pierson. Arthur T. 1837- 
 
 1911 . 
 A spiritual clinique 
 
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ASPIRITUALCLINIQUE 
 
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 A SFlRITUAti- 
 C LI N I QU E 
 
 FOUR BIBLE READINGS 
 GIVEN AT KESWICK IN igoj 
 
 / 
 
 BY \/ 
 
 Dr. a. T. Pierson 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE MAKING OF A SKRMON," "GOD'S LIVING 
 
 ORACLES," "THE BIBLE AND SPIRITUAL CRITICISM," 
 
 "THE BIBLE AND SPIRITUAL LIFE, " "THE LIFE 
 
 OF GEORGE MULLER," ETC., ETC. 
 
 New York 
 GOSPEL PUBLISHING HOUSE 
 
 /J. J. BASS, Manager 
 
 54 WEST 22nd STREET 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Unsubdued Sin - - - - i 
 
 Unanswered Prayer - - - 23 
 
 Persistent Darkness - - - - 47 
 
 Habitual Unbelief - - - 72: 
 
A Prefatory Word. 
 
 THOSE upon whom falls the somewhat 
 unenviable responsibility of teaching 
 on the Keswick platform and at 
 similar gatherings, frequently come into 
 contact with persons who have been for 
 years much oppressed and troubled with 
 some chronic form of spiritual ailment. 
 The ordinary teaching in Conventions does 
 not always reach those serious cases of 
 spiritual disease. They have to be dealt 
 with individually, sometimes with very 
 specific treatment. I have personally come 
 into such frequent contact with this class 
 of cases, that it occurred to me, and I 
 believe was laid upon me by the Holy Spirit, 
 to conduct during four consecutive morning 
 meetings at the Keswick of 1907, a kind of 
 spiritual clinique, selecting four of the most 
 desperate sorts of spiritual difficulty, and 
 seeking to show how the Master Physician, 
 in the Word of God, treats these chronic 
 ailments. This booklet is the outcome of 
 this endeavour in His Name, skilfully to 
 
Viii A PREFATORY WORD 
 
 diagnose and deal with these spiritual 
 diseases. 
 
 The four selected ailments are : unsub- 
 dued sin; unanswered prayer; persistent 
 DARKNESS ; and habitual unbelief. All the 
 brethren who have anj'thing to do with Con- 
 vention teaching will agree that these are 
 some of the most desperate kinds of diffi- 
 culty we have to deal with, and we are 
 perpetually coming into contact with them. 
 
 Somewhat as a physician puts before his 
 class a series of representative cases of 
 disease, and seeks to show how, according 
 to the highest authorities they must be 
 dealt with, I desire to indicate the symptoms 
 of each disease and how they should be met 
 by the application of the Divine remedy. 
 
 By way of justification of this method, I 
 may call attention to the fact that in the 
 Word of God we have indications that the 
 Lord Jesus looked upon all sin as a desperate 
 and deadly disease, to be dealt with as such. 
 
 In Jer, viii. 22, the prophet represents God 
 as asking : "Is there no balm in Gilead; 
 is there no physician there? Why, then, is 
 not the health of the daughter of my people 
 recovered?" In Matthew ix. 6, 12, 13, a 
 most memorable passage in the New Testa- 
 ment, our Lord referring probably to this 
 
A PREFATORY WORD ix 
 
 passage in Jeremiah, says, "That ye may 
 know that the Son of Man hath power on 
 earth to forgive sins (then saith He to the 
 sick of the palsy), Arise, take up thy bed, 
 and go unto thine house." 
 
 Here He teaches that His prime purpose 
 in healing all manner of disease and sick- 
 ness among the people, and restoring the 
 dead to life, was not simply .to do mighty 
 works, such as became Him, as the Son of 
 God, or even to vindicate or authenticate 
 His claim to the Messiahship, but rather to 
 illustrate and demonstrate that He could 
 deal with all spiritual difficulties, by dealing 
 with those physical ailments which were 
 types of the spiritual. 
 
 This opens up a vast field of thought. 
 There are somewhat over thirty distinct 
 cases of healing narrated in the Gospel 
 narratives, no two being exactly alike, but all 
 having differentiating features. Together 
 they cover the whole range of physical ail- 
 ments, and illustrate, therefore, the whole 
 department of spiritual difficulty. The Lord 
 Jesus thus shows Himself perfectly com- 
 petent to deal with all spiritual troubles by 
 thus healing all physical ills. 
 
 In the 12th verse of that same ninth 
 chapter, He interprets His own language. 
 
A PREFATORY WORD 
 
 "They that be whole need not a physician, 
 but they that are sick." "The righteous'* 
 are the wJiole, " sinners " are the sick. 
 Thus He is Himself our authority for regard- 
 ing all forms of spiritual ills as diseases, and 
 looking to Him as the great soul Physician 
 for their relief and cure. 
 
I. 
 Unsubdued Sin 
 
 FIRST, we seek]a remedy for the disease 
 of UNSUBDUED SIN. The 7th chapter of 
 Romans is a kind of universal 
 biography. I have no question that it 
 describes the experience of the regenerate 
 believer. No unbeliever can say some of the 
 things said in that chapter, and it is a stage 
 of the believer's experience. In the 6th 
 chapter he is represented as taking Christ 
 as his Saviour, and as being identified with 
 Him in His crucifixion, death, burial, and 
 resurrection ; in the 8th chapter, as being 
 identified with the Holy Spirit as the in- 
 dwelling and victorious power of his life. 
 But in the 7th chapter, the Spirit is not 
 mentioned ; while in the 8th, He is nearly 
 thirty times referred to, so that we are in 
 the atmosphere of the Spirit when we pass 
 into that chapter. 
 
 B 
 
2 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 This language is peculiar, but very descrip- 
 tive : " I am carnal, sold under sin. For that 
 which I do I allow not ; for what I would 
 that do I not; but what I hate that I do. If, 
 then, I do that which I would not, I consent 
 unto the law that it is good. Now, then, it 
 is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth 
 in me. For I know that in me — that is, in 
 my flesh — dwelleth no good thing : for to will 
 is present with me ; but how to perform that 
 which is good I find not. For the good that 
 I would I do not, but the evil which I would 
 not, that I do. Now, if I do that I would 
 not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that 
 dwelleth in me. I find, then, a law that when 
 I would do good, evil is present with me. For 
 I delight in the law of God after the inward 
 man. But I see another law in my members, 
 warring against the law of my mind, and 
 bringing me into captivity to the law of sin 
 which is in my members. O wretched man 
 that I am ! who shall deliver me from the 
 body of this death ? " Now he gets a glimpse 
 of deliverance : " I thank God through Jesus 
 Christ our Lord ; " and in the second verse of 
 the 8th chapter, the solution is fully declared : 
 •' For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ 
 Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin 
 and death." He does not get freedom till 
 
UNSUBDUED SIN 3 
 
 he gets knowledge of, and reception of, the 
 full power of the Spirit of God. 
 
 What a description this is of the believer's 
 experience in the stage to which we have 
 referred! It seems as though the disease of 
 sin were so desperate that, as a physician 
 might say, it has invaded even the psychic 
 centres of our being, paralysing the mind and 
 heart and conscience and will with its terrific 
 power. See the contradictions here ! What 
 a group of paradoxes ! The law of God, 
 instead of an inspiration to obedience, an 
 incentive to disobedience ! Mr. Moody told 
 how, when he went to sleep in a room, and 
 saw a card on the wall, " Don't turn me 
 round till morning," he got up, and turned it 
 round. The prohibition prompting to dis- 
 obedience ! Then, while there is a spiritual 
 approval of the law of God, there is a carnal 
 slavery to the law of sin. While the will 
 consents in purpose, it is powerless in per- 
 formance. There is the law of the mind, the 
 true ego or self; and the law of the members 
 the false ego or self; the spirit is in sympathy 
 with life and holiness, but the flesh in 
 sympathy with disobedience and death. The 
 love of good on the one hand, and the 
 hatred of evil on the other, but the good 
 undone and the evil done. And so there 
 
4 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 is a double service — the law of God on the 
 one side served with the mind, and the law 
 of sin on the other served with the flesh. 
 Such are the paradox es in this passage ; but, 
 the vital point is, that the Apostle recognises 
 this conflict as abnormal, and utters a cry of 
 despair, with a shout of anticipated victory. 
 You have got to the cry of despair ; the 
 Lord would have you get to the shout of 
 anticipated victory. 
 
 First of all, be sure you come to the great 
 Physician. The devil also claims to be a 
 physician, but he is only a quack. His 
 methods are abnormal ; they are palliative 
 but not curative. When he sees you have 
 a deadly disease, instead of applying the 
 knife and cutting out the cancer, he applies 
 a poultice. When you are under the control 
 of some awful spiritual malady, he gives 
 narcotics, or sedatives, or intoxicants ; he 
 puts you to sleep, or absorbs you in a life of 
 giddy, pleasurable excitement, that you may 
 forget your malady. He never can cure. You 
 may spend all your living upon him, and you 
 will only grow worse, and never any better. 
 
 A second caution to be taken into account, 
 at the very beginning, is that of our Lord 
 when He says : " Enter not into temptation." 
 Mark the words, as though temptation were 
 
UNSUBDUED SIN 5 
 
 a territory over which the devil has full sway, 
 and out of which you are sedulously to keep. 
 Stay out of the devil's ground. There is the 
 devil's ground, and there is the Lord's 
 ground. In the Book of Ruth, Elimelech — 
 whose name means "My God is King" — 
 because of a famine in Judea forsook that 
 land and went off into the forbidden land of 
 Moab. That was the devil's territory, and 
 the judgment of God took him away. 
 Naomi and her two sons, Mahlon and Chilion, 
 were left, and the sons took them wives of 
 the daughters of Moab — a second act of 
 disobedience ; and down came the judgment 
 of God on Mahlon and Chilion, and they 
 died also. Then Naomi, the miserable back- 
 slider, made up her mind to go back to where 
 she came from, and so she returned to 
 Judea, and blessing returned also to her. 
 If you are in the land of Moab and married to 
 the daughters of Moab, you would better get 
 out altogether, or you may get out the wrong 
 way by judgments. Go back to where you 
 came from, back from the devil's land to the 
 territory where God rules; get out of dis- 
 honest business, out of ensnaring worldly 
 pleasure, out of the power of vicious habit — 
 get out of the devil's territory, and as far as 
 possible from the devil himself. 
 
6 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 The Lord uses very drastic and decisive 
 measures in dealing with sin. Keeping to 
 the figure of the physician, He reminds us, 
 in His methods, of those of the skilful 
 physician and surgeon, which I take to be 
 at least four. We may call them, simply for 
 the sake of discrimination, first, the destruc- 
 tive^ as when the physician uses the scalpel, 
 the lancet, the cautery, to destroy something 
 that is deadly, like a cancer or a tumour; 
 secondly, the purgative, as where cathartics 
 or emetics are used to cleanse the system of 
 something that is unhealthy in its influence ; 
 or ample ablutions, as in a bath. The third 
 method may be called corrective, or counter- 
 active, as where an antidote is used, as in the 
 case of a poison, or a counter inflammation 
 to correct some form of irritation. The 
 fourth method is nutritive, where tonics, 
 stimulants and appropriate food are used to 
 build up the strength of the patient. Some 
 of these methods are intended to deal with 
 that which is deadly, and expel it ; others to 
 deal with that which is living and vitalising, 
 to strengthen and nourish it ; to introduce 
 and incorporate what is nutritious. 
 
 Our Lord's methods may be illustrated by 
 these four modes of treatment, followed by 
 skilful physicians and surgeons. 
 
UNSUBDUED SIN 7 
 
 First, the destnictive. When will we be 
 done fooling WMth sin ? There is nothing 
 more appalling about sin than the fact that it 
 tempts even saints to trifle with the deadly 
 thing. Our Lord leaves us no sort of doubt 
 as to His opinion of sin, and as to His 
 method of dealing with all known trans- 
 gression against the law of God. He uses 
 two great words : Repent^ Forsake I Re- 
 pentance is not a mere feeling. It is 
 primarily a radical and executive act of the 
 soul — the negative side, of which faith is the 
 positive side. In the Epistle to the Hebrews 
 are three expressions, short pregnant, with 
 great meaning : " Lay aside," " Lay hold," 
 " Hold fast ; " and they cover the whole 
 territory of our experience. Laying aside is 
 repentance, laying hold is faith, and holding 
 fast is perseverance. Observe, that laying 
 aside and laying hold are essentially the same 
 act in different aspects. If I have my hands 
 full, and you offer me something that I desire, 
 I can only take it by dropping what I have 
 in hand. You can take eternal life only by 
 dropping what you have, laying aside what 
 you are holding, and laying hold of that 
 which is proffered. The one phase of this 
 complex act is repentance; and the other, 
 faith. But repentance is a great executive 
 
8 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 act; it implies a change of attitude — turning 
 your back upon that to which you turned 
 your face, and turning your face to that upon 
 which you turned your back. Repentance is 
 thus a radical and revolutionary change of 
 attitude. 
 
 Our Lord leaves no doubt of our duty as 
 to all known sin. Matthew v. 29, 30 : " If 
 thy right eye make thee to offend pluck it 
 out, and cast it from thee. . . If thy 
 right hand make thee to offend, cut it off, 
 and cast it from thee ; for it is profitable 
 for thee that one of thy members should 
 perish, and not that the whole body should 
 be cast into hell." Cut it off, cast it from 
 thee ; pluck it out, cast it from thee. Surely 
 that allows no trifling with sin. If anything 
 causes you to offend against God, be done 
 with it for ever, and never even parley with it 
 again ! There is one kind of sinless perfec- 
 tion in which every Keswick teacher believes 
 — the sinless perfection of instantaneously 
 and for ever reno^mcing every known sin. There 
 is no present danger of being sinlessly perfect. 
 You may put that risk from you as so re- 
 mote that it need not at this present time 
 occupy attention. But there is risk as to 
 known sin ; it is atrocious to go on in a 
 course known to be offensive to God, ancl 
 
UNSUBDUED SIN 9 
 
 allow what is terribly deadly in its influence 
 even upon the child of God. There is no 
 mistake in the attitude of our Lord. He 
 says : " Sin no more ; " and He would not 
 say that if He did not mean it. " Sin shall 
 not have dominion over you ; for ye are not 
 under the law, but under grace." This does 
 not mean two different dispensations ; but 
 that while the law commands, it does not 
 enable ; and, while grace does not abate the 
 command, it adds enabling power. The sin, 
 therefore, which dominated you, when you 
 knew nothing but law, shall no longer 
 dominate you, now that you know something 
 of grace. How plain is that language in 
 Romans and Colossians : " If ye live after 
 the flesh, ye shall die, but if ye, through the 
 Spirit, do mortify "—make dead — "the deeds 
 of the body, ye shall live." " Mortify, there- 
 fore, your members which are upon the 
 earth." There is no question about what 
 this teaches, and one of the greatest advances 
 in holiness is made by every man and woman, 
 who, seeing this truth, in the strength of God, 
 immediately and for ever renounces every- 
 thing known, or suspected to be, wrong ; for 
 even in a matter of doubt God is to have 
 the advantage, and not yourself. 
 
 U. The second of otir l^ord's methods of 
 
lo A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 dealing we have c^Ued, purgative ; that which 
 tends to remove out of our internal or 
 external life, what is harmful in its influence 
 upon our spiritual being. The Psalmist prays 
 in the 51st Psalm : " Purge me w^ith hyssop, 
 and I shall be clean ; wash me, and I shall be 
 whiter than snow ; cleanse me thoroughly 
 from my sin" — as though God might wash 
 him or pass through him a cleansing agent. 
 Paul writes, in 2 Cor. vii. 1 : " Having, there- 
 fore, these promises, dearly beloved, let us 
 cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the 
 flesh and spirit." Filthiness of the flesh is 
 outward ; filthiness of the spirit is inward. 
 " Let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness 
 of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in 
 the fear of God," 
 
 Does Paul preach perfect holiness ? 
 These are words of the inspired Apostle, and 
 we fall back on Scripture, quite willing to 
 stand with Paul, because Paul stood wuth 
 God. 
 
 Surely such words can mean nothing less 
 than that, if you see something in your 
 outward life or inward life, contrary to God, 
 it is to be put away. In other words, there 
 is to be absolutely no trifling with teniptatioii. 
 Whatever there is in the conduct or 
 character, in the manners, or the disposition, 
 
UNSUBDUED SIN n 
 
 opposed to God, every child of God should 
 set his face deliberately and absolutely 
 against it ; looking, not to himself for 
 strength, but to God. It is an awful thing 
 to trifle with any form of sin. 
 
 There are seven steps in every life of evil, 
 that are as plain as they can be. The first 
 is trifling or parleying with temptation ; 
 the second, yielding to it ; the third, 
 habitually yielding to it; the fourth, yielding 
 yourself up to its power; the fifth, being 
 given up by God to it ; the sixth, be- 
 coming a procurer of the devil and a tempter 
 to others ; and the seventh is hell. And hell 
 may begin in this world. Those seven steps 
 are indisputable. One may deny the Bible, 
 but he cannot live in this world without 
 knowing that these are the steps leading 
 downwards— trifling with sin, yielding to sin, 
 habitually yielding to sin, abandonment on 
 one's own part, and on the part of God, to 
 sin ; becoming a tempter to others, and then 
 landing in hell. There must be no concession 
 to sin, no compromise with sin. Gladstone 
 said that for parents to yield to the whims 
 and caprices of disobedient children was of 
 the nature of " depraved accommodations." 
 We are guilty of many such depraved ac- 
 commodations, People say in politics : " If 
 
12 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 you cannot get a whole loaf, take half 
 and be content." God never says : ** If you 
 cannot have entire holiness, be content with 
 half holiness." No such compromise is en- 
 couraged in the politics of God. You are 
 not to be content with anything but absolute 
 conformity to His will. 
 
 III. Third our Lord uses corrective or 
 counteractive measures, like the use of 
 antidotes for poisons, or remedial correctives 
 for abnormal and morbid conditions. In 
 Gal. v., the Apostle tells us, "the flesh 
 lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit 
 against the flesh." We generally connect 
 the word " lust " with something that is 
 basely wicked ; but it does not necessarily 
 mean anything more than an overmastering 
 desire. When such overmastering desire 
 subdues other desires that should be highest 
 and controlling, it is wicked lust ; when it is 
 an overmastering desire that subdues those 
 that should be lower, it is Divine lust. The 
 lusts of the flesh come up from below and 
 drag the higher self down ; but the lusts of 
 the Spirit come down from above and lift the 
 lower man up. There is a great deal of 
 difference between these two. A balloon is 
 a very common object in these days. You see 
 it lying on the ground with all its apparatus, 
 
UNSUBDUED SIN 13 
 
 and requiring a great deal of strength to 
 carry it. But, when the silken envelope is 
 inflated with an ethereal gas, it is difficult 
 to hold it down. Gravitation is not eradi- 
 cated, but counteracted. There is a levita- 
 tion that counterbalances gravitation. When 
 you get away from the gravitating power 
 of sin, and under the control of the levitating 
 power of the Spirit, the gravitating power 
 of sin does not hold you down. Or, as the 
 Rev. Evan H. Hopkins says, the iron, which 
 is cold, black, and hard, while in the furnace 
 is no longer cold, nor black, nor hard ; 
 though the tendency to coldness, blackness, 
 and hardness remains, as you find, if you take 
 it out of the furnace. As long as you are 
 practically in Christ Jesus, the power of sin 
 is counteracted ; but, so far as you neglect 
 Him and lose contact with Him, the power 
 of sin reasserts itself. There is great ex- 
 pulsive, as well as expansive, power in a 
 new affection, as the old story of Thomas 
 Chalmers reminds us. It was a great thing 
 to give a horse " something to think of until 
 he got past that v^hite stone," and you need 
 something better to think of till you get past 
 the white stone of temptation — to be 
 occupied with God, and His Word, and the 
 thoughts of His dear Son, and the hope of 
 
14 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 your final inheritance. These are counter- 
 acting influences to the power of the world, 
 the flesh, and the devil. 
 
 IV. The next method of our Lord is the 
 nutritive, tonics and stimulants — that which 
 really nourishes and strengthens the vital 
 principle being introduced into the system 
 for the sake of such invigoration. The Lord 
 very graciously does not leave us to negative 
 processes. He does not simply say, " Cut 
 off that which is sinful" ; or "Cleanse your- 
 self from that which is inwardly or outwardly 
 evil"; "Counteract that which is evil by 
 something which is good." But He seeks 
 also to strengthen and build up all that is 
 truly godly and vitalising and energising, 
 in the power of His Spirit. We all 
 know there are two processes in the human 
 body, the secretive and the excretive — one is 
 the casting out of that which is deadly ; the 
 other, the introducing of that which is living 
 and vitalising. Our skin, for instance, has 
 singular facilities for perspiration. You can 
 put your thumb over thousands of pores in 
 the skin, all of which it is necessary to keep 
 open, if you are to drain the system of im- 
 purities, which in that way pass out in 
 insensible perspiration. This excretive pro- 
 cess is going on all the time, as in the 
 
UNSUBDUED SIN 15 
 
 respiration of air and the expiration of 
 carbonic acid. But there is somethinsj else 
 going on also. The lungs are perpetually 
 inspiring oxygen to make up for the waste 
 that takes place in the blood. We must not 
 forget this side of holy living — the nutritive, 
 — that which stimulates, vitalises, and 
 energises the soul and the spirit. This is 
 the great positive method of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ— life imparted by the Spirit, fed, 
 nourished, strengthened. 
 
 Let us refer briefly to four great methods 
 by which God builds up spiritual life ; for 
 all that has been mentioned already; will be 
 of little use if we do not enter heartily and 
 devoutly and prayerfully into the methods 
 by which God proposes to cultivate in us 
 positive holiness. The first is His own 
 precious Word, the second is private prayer, 
 the third is habitual work for souls, and the 
 fourth is habitual dwelling in the Holy Ghost. 
 We may compare these to four things 
 necessary to our body— The Word of God, 
 to the food ; prayer, to the atmosphere ; 
 work, to exercise ; and the Spirit to the vital 
 principle itself— thus they can be easily 
 remembered and grasped. 
 
 There is absolutely no advance in holy 
 living for any man or woman that neglects 
 
i6 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 the Word of God. In fact, nothing is more 
 necessary to the sustaining and strengthen- 
 ing of the vital principle in us than a diligent 
 and habitual feeding upon the Scriptures, 
 *' Thy Word have I hid in my heart, that 
 I might not sin against Thee." " Thy words 
 were found, and I did eat them " : and " Thy 
 word was unto me the joy and rejoicing 
 of mine heart.'' " I have esteemed the 
 words of His mouth more than my necessary 
 food." What testimonies these are, even 
 from the Old Testament Scriptures ! The 
 Word of God you can afford to meditate on. 
 Lord Bacon says there are some books that 
 are to be tasted, a few that are to be chewed 
 and digested ; and the Word of God is food 
 that it does not do to taste — you must chew, 
 digest, and assimilate it for your wants. 
 As you roll it over and over, as a sweet 
 morsel under your tongue, it will get to 
 be sweeter and sweeter, and more and 
 more prepared for this process of spiritual 
 assimilation, A mere superficial reading 
 does comparatively little good ; but to find 
 out what it means, to enter into the spirit of 
 it — the letter killeth, the spirit giveth life 
 — to compare Scripture with Scripture, to 
 pray much over it, to get illumination from 
 the Spirit upon it ; and, above all, to embody 
 
UNSUBDUED SIN i? 
 
 it in life and praci ice— this is making the 
 Word of God a part of yourself; like the 
 tree, taking the water out of the river, chang- 
 ing it into sap, and changing the sap into leaf, 
 bud. blossom, and fruit, according to the 1st 
 Psalm. Do not neglect the Word of God. 
 
 One-half of us spend more time over the 
 daily newspapers than we do over the Holy 
 Scriptures. It is appalling how some disciples 
 glue themselves to a newspaper, and read 
 even its advertisements ; and yet have not 
 time for their Bibles ! How can there be 
 any spiritual progress while the very nutri- 
 ment of the soul is neglected ! 
 
 The second great help is private prayer. 
 In the 6th chapter of Matthew, through its 
 opening verses, our Lord begins with the 
 plural, but quickly passes into the singular. 
 The second personal pronoun in the singu- 
 lar number occurs in the first twenty or 
 thirty verses thirty times, in the 6th 
 verse alone eight times, and twice more 
 concealed in the verbs. "But 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." No other verse in the Scriptures 
 has the second personal pronoun singular 
 
 G 
 
i8 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 in it— thou, thy, thee— eight times. Why? 
 Because the first necessity of living in 
 communion with God is habitually to get 
 alone with Him. You should cultivate "the 
 practice of the presence of God " ; you should 
 come to realise the facts of the unseen world, 
 and the unseen God, until they become as 
 much a verity as anything in the visible 
 world ; the eternal becoming as real as 
 the temporal. That is the only way to meet 
 the temptations and trials of life — the only 
 way to be consciously encompassed with God 
 when you go forth from your closet into the 
 activities of life. 
 
 Nothing else will take the place of private 
 prayer. No social or family prayer, or joint 
 prayer between husband and wife, will 
 answer instead of the individual prayer, 
 when you shut out everybody, even the 
 friend of your bosom, and shut out all sights 
 and sounds that you may know God, and 
 that He may speak to you, as He will never 
 speak to you except when alone with Him; 
 and it is infinitely more important that you 
 should hear Him speak to you than that you 
 should speak to Him. 
 
 The third need is work for God — to absorb 
 yourself in somebody else. Suppose a man, 
 a victim of drunkenness, reformed, regener- 
 
UNSUBDUED SIN 19 
 
 ated, delivered from the domination of the 
 old habit. What is the best way to keep 
 free, in addition to the Word of God and 
 prayer ? Let him interest himself in reform- 
 ing other drunkards, lifting up those that are 
 fallen ; let him absorb himself in an unselfish 
 purpose, forgetting even his own temptations 
 in those of others, his own weakness in the 
 weaknesses of others, and he will find that 
 ♦' whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the 
 same shall he receive of the Lord, whether 
 he be bond or free. And there is no respect 
 of persons." Whatever you impart to any- 
 one, you get back into your own soul, not 
 only by the natural law of reciprocation, 
 but by direct administration of grace to 
 your own needy spirit. 
 
 Last of all, abiding in the atmosphere of the 
 Holy Ghost. Here is the greatest secret of 
 all. The best illustration of spiritual things 
 I have ever seen is in the modern triumphs in 
 electrical magnetism — what scientists call the 
 '« electrical field." Captain King, at Willets 
 Point, N.Y., found an old gun, a large 
 piece of ordnance 16 feet long. Being an 
 experimenter in magnetism and electricity, 
 he undertook to see how powerful a magnet 
 he could make of that old gun. According 
 to the principles of electro-magnetism, you 
 
20 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 increase the power with every additional coil 
 of wire ; and so he got ten miles of wire 
 and wrapped it round the body of this 
 cannon, and then magnetised the whole 
 with a powerful battery. What was the 
 surprise of all about him, to see solid balls 
 of iron which weighed 200 lbs. leap up 
 into the mouth of that cannon without a 
 human hand touching them, and pieces of 
 iron scattered about attached themselves to 
 that powerful magnet. Within the electrical 
 field the electrician will take a heap of iron 
 wedges and spikes, and place them one 
 upon another in architectural form and 
 symmetry. No matter what their weight, 
 they will stay where and as he arranges 
 them. But, withdraw the electrical power, 
 and his symmetrical architectural forms fall 
 into a chaotic mass ! 
 
 The Holy Spirit constitutes in the child 
 of God a kind of Divine electrical field, and 
 while abiding in the Holy Spirit, and subject 
 to His influence and power, what is absolutely 
 impossible, without the Spirit, becomes not 
 only possible, but easy and natural, under 
 His control. What would tumble into an 
 indiscriminate mass of chaos without Him, 
 assumes forms of beauty. Affections which 
 would go out to the world, directed by Him, 
 
UNSUBDUED SIN 21 
 
 move Godward: purposes that would be 
 controlled by the lust of the flesh, the 
 lust of the eye and the pride of life, are 
 transformed into Divine choices ; ambition 
 becomes aspiration, things carnal are dis- 
 placed by things spiritual. But get out of 
 that spiritual field; introduce or allow in 
 your life, voluntarily or carelessly, things 
 that are overmastering, that come from the 
 world, the flesh and the devil, and chaos 
 takes place even in the life of the believer. 
 If, in an address, one attempts to exploit 
 himself, he loses spiritual power. A speaker 
 must not even stop to think of popular 
 applause, or how he is commending himself 
 to the multitude, and forget that the only 
 thing of importance is how far he is ap- 
 proved of God; otherwise he will instan- 
 taneously lose power. It is like stepping off 
 the insulating stool and coming into contact 
 with the earth, so that the electric fluid 
 passes away from you into the ground. You 
 have to be insulated, separate from the 
 world, if you are to be filled with God ; and 
 only while the separation is maintained can 
 the filling be maintained. 
 
 God Himself entreats you to stop 
 instantaneously, and for ever, all trifling 
 with sin, and with the world, all concession 
 
22 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 to the flesh, and compromise with the devil. 
 Be out-and-out for God, for holiness, for 
 the Word of God, for closet prayer, for 
 devotion to souls, for surrender to the 
 Divine Spirit ! 
 
 \. 
 
II. 
 Unanswered Prayer 
 
 THE question put into the mouth of the 
 unbeliever by Job, is perfectly legiti- 
 mate and reverent if properly asked : 
 «What profit should we have if we pray 
 unto Him?" I was somewhat appalled — 
 and that really suggested this chapter— by 
 receiving from a prominent Christian man 
 a letter in which he confesses that he has 
 given up praying. He went so far as to say 
 that God had utterly failed him at the mercy- 
 seat. The letter was signed by the writer's 
 name, and he cast himself upon me in 
 sympathy, asking me to approach God in his 
 behalf. It set me anew inquiring: '* What 
 profit shall we have if we pray unto Him? " 
 and, "What is the cause of unanswered 
 prayer ? " This question I pray that I may 
 in some measure answer, purely upon the 
 lines of Bible teaching. 
 
 23 
 
24 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 For the sake of brevity and unity I 
 confine myself to suggestions from the 
 Epistle of James. That Epistle, in its five 
 chapters, has more direct teaching upon the 
 causes of failure in prayer than any other 
 single book in the New Testament. It has 
 three references to prayer — in the first 
 chapter, the fourth, and the fifth. 
 
 In the first chapter we have a hint of two 
 causes of the lack of power in prayer — the 
 lack of faith and the lack of patience. In 
 the fourth chapter two causes additional — 
 selfishness in motive, and worldly alliance. In 
 the fifth chapter we have likewise two causes 
 of failure, found in the lack of importunity, 
 and in not maintaining the level of faith in 
 waiting for answers. This is very compre- 
 hensive, but all we can do is to outline the 
 subject as presented in this Epistle. Let us 
 be intensely busy at business questions. 
 These are no theoretical matters that we 
 meditate upon, but the intensest business 
 that the child of God can set himself to 
 understand ; for the secret of prevailing power 
 in prayer lies at the bottom of everything 
 else in the Christian life. There is no sub- 
 dued sin without it, no relief from darkness 
 without it, no relief from the sin and crime 
 of unbelief without it. 
 
UNANSWERED PRAYER 25 
 
 Three great facts confront us at the 
 beginning. The multitude of God's promises; 
 the unequivocal universality of His promises ; 
 and the undeniable fact that the majority of 
 prayers are not answered. 
 
 The multitude of the promises is over- 
 whelming. There are nearly three thousand 
 promises in the Psalms, and the Bible has 
 more than thirty thousand in it. If you add 
 all the indirect promises, there are nearly 
 double that number. The largest number 
 of those promises are addressed to the 
 praying soul. 
 
 As to the universality of the promises, 
 there are seven universal terms in the Bible — 
 "whosoever," " whatsoever," "wheresoever," 
 '♦ whensoever," " any," " all," " every." All 
 these universal terms are applied to prayer. 
 It is marvellous that, with these promises 
 facing us in the Word, and the universal 
 terms in which they are couched, we should 
 be obliged to confront that third and awful 
 fact — that the majority of prayers have no 
 perceptible answer — that the cases of 
 answered prayer are the exception and not 
 the rule. 1 cannot say what I do not believe, 
 and I candidly believe this statement is true. 
 
 There have been various ways of trying to 
 account for this. Some have said that the 
 
26 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 promises to the prayerful are addressed, 
 especially in the New Testament, to the 
 apostles and disciples of that day. " If two 
 of you shall agree " — you, apostles ; " This 
 confidence have we in Him " — we, apostles. 
 This theory is mischievous! You can take 
 the power out of the whole Bible by limiting 
 its application in that fashion. 
 
 The second way to account for it has been 
 that prayer is of the order of the super- 
 natural, and hence belongs to the age of 
 miracles; and the age of miracles is past. 
 Very convenient for unbelief and disappointed 
 suppliants, who know nothing of the secrets 
 of prevailing prayer ! 
 
 The third cause suggested is that the 
 Church of God has run into a period of 
 apostasy, and the Holy Ghost has withdrawn, 
 and it is a time of God's silence. 
 
 But over against all these paltry, insignifi- 
 cant, and, in some respects, God-insulting 
 philosophies and excuses, stands the patent 
 fact — some people pray and get answers. 
 Miiller, of Bristol, raised the great monu- 
 ment of two generations past to a prayer- 
 hearing God, and that monument still stands, 
 and is not worn away by an acid atmosphere 
 either. It is as bright and strong and glow- 
 ing as ever. People said when Mialler died : 
 
UNANSWERED PRAYER 27 
 
 " Very few people know Mr. Wright " ; and 
 when Mr. Wright died, '• Nobody knows Mr. 
 Bergin." But, blessed be God, some people 
 know God, and the work is going on just the 
 same as ever, and some of the most marvel- 
 lous interpositions of God have come since 
 Mr. Muller and Mr. Wright died. The last 
 report shows the same prayer-hearing God 
 watching over a larger number of orphans 
 than have been in that great group of orphan 
 houses for ten, twelve, or fifteen years 
 past. And they are doing what nobody else 
 ever did — advertising for more orphans — not 
 for more funds, but for more children to take 
 care of in the name of the living God. 
 
 Look at the teaching of the Holy Spirit 
 through the Apostle James. Sixteen words 
 in that fourth chapter, are, in my opinion, the 
 greatest words ever written in rebuke to 
 prayerless souls. " Ye have not because ye ask 
 not. Ye ask and receive not because ye ask 
 amiss.'' Write those sixteen words in burning 
 capitals, and let us look at them. 
 
 I have already referred to the fact of how 
 little prayer there is ; it is awful and appall- 
 ing. Three things face us in the destitution 
 of prayer : first, the insignificant time given 
 to prayer ; second, the narrow range of sup- 
 plications; and, third, the little heart that 
 
28 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 enters into them. "Ye have not because 
 ye ask not." 
 
 But let us look at asking amiss. In the 
 first chapter are two difficulties in the line 
 of profitless prayer to which, first, reference 
 is made : " Let him ask in faith, nothing 
 wavering. For he that wavereth is like a 
 wave of the sea, driven with the wind and 
 tossed. For let not that man think that he 
 shall receive anything of the Lord. A double- 
 souled man is in all his ways unstable." 
 Here are the two difficulties— a lack of faith, 
 and a lack of patience. 
 
 Lack of faith is virtually making God a liar. 
 Let us look at the fact exactly as it is. If 
 God promises to the praying soul, in unequivo- 
 cal terms and in a multitude of forms, abso- 
 lutely sure answers, then to doubt God's 
 promises is to make Him a liar; and no 
 blessing can come to any man that impugns 
 the veracity of God. But the faith must be 
 a patient faith that knows how to wait. 
 Here is one of the most remarkable similes 
 in Scripture — "The man that wavereth is 
 like "—not the wave of the sea, but (Gr.) " the 
 surge of the sea," the foam on the top of 
 the wave, " driven with the wind, and tossed." 
 At the seashore when the wind is blowing, 
 you see two motions — one to-and-fro, that 
 
UNANSWERED PRAYER 29 
 
 you call " fluctuation " ; one up-and-down, that 
 you call ** undulation." The Apostle James 
 refers to both motions. " Driven with the 
 wind" is fluctuation; "tossed" is undula- 
 tion. The peculiarity of a wave is that it 
 cannot stay anywhere ; wherever it gets it 
 falls back. If it gets ahead it recedes, and 
 we call it a receding wave ; if it gets up it 
 goes down, and we call it a falling wave ; and 
 a double-souled man is exactly like it — mere 
 foam, for foam is most easily moved up and 
 down, and to and fro, of anything about the 
 water. 
 
 The difficulty is that, if a man who has 
 no proper faith is propelled ahead, back he 
 goes to his other and former standards. 
 Or if he is lifted up in ecstasy and exalta- 
 tion, he cannot stay there, down he goes ; 
 he is in the trough of the sea five minutes 
 afterw^ards, just like the surge of the sea, 
 fluctuating and undulating, with no power 
 to hold on. There can be no prevailing 
 prayer without this power to hold on. 
 Hundreds go and commit a thing to 
 God one minute, and take it back the 
 next. They are afraid that God cannot take 
 care of it for any length of time ; they must 
 give God their aid. When God revealed to 
 Abraham that in his old age, when 
 
30 A SPIRITUAL CLTNTQUE 
 
 Sarah was past bearing, they should have a 
 son of promise born to them, we are told in 
 Gen. XV. 6 *' He believed in the Lord, and 
 He counted it to him for righteousness." A 
 great triumph ! But look in the beginning of 
 the sixteenth chapter, and see how long the 
 triumph lasted. Abraham made an iniquitous 
 connection with Hagar, an Egyptian maid, 
 and that child born to him was one of the 
 greatest curses that ever came on the earth. 
 Why could not he have left it sublimely 
 where faith committed it, to the miracle- 
 working God ? Even the father of the faith- 
 ful failed at the crisis. In the crisis of David's 
 kingdom, when Ahithophel was counsellor, 
 and he and other conspirators went over to 
 the side of Absalom in the rebellion, David 
 had no man to cope wiih Ahithophel, and 
 he prayed: "O Lord, I pray Thee, turn the 
 counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness." Why 
 did not he leave it there ? Read on. As 
 David was going up he met Hushai, the 
 Archite, and said : " You pretend to be a 
 traitor, arid go over to Absalom's side, and 
 make believe you are faithful to him, and 
 watch and see what Ahithophel says, that 
 thoji mayest turn for me the counsel 
 of Ahithophel into foolishness." That 
 is the trouble with us, that we commit a 
 
UNANSWERED PRAYER 31 
 
 thing to God in a sublime act of faith one 
 moment, and the next moment we take it out 
 of God's hand, and put it in man's hand, or 
 try ourselves to take care of it — just like the 
 surge of the sea, up and down, to and fro, 
 never staying anywhere. 
 
 In that fourth chapter we see two other 
 obstacles put before us. " Ye ask and receive 
 not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may 
 consume it upon your lusts." Lusts there do 
 not necessarily mean vicious, sensual, abomin- 
 able desires, but simply the carnal desires of 
 self-indulgence, as when a man asks for money 
 because he wants the gratification money 
 brings ; or for pleasures of the appetite, 
 because he wants his stomach to be satisfied 
 and gratified ; or for rewards of ambition, 
 because he wants to get on and hold the 
 sceptre of influence over men. How many 
 things we forfeit because they are asked for 
 in a wrong spirit, because self is at the 
 bottom, instead of God being the object in all. 
 You can even ask for spiritual blessings, for 
 the anointing of the Spirit, because you 
 want to have all eyes turned upon you as an 
 anointed man or woman, in order that some- 
 body may say : ** See how holy that man or 
 woman is," or " What remarkable power goes 
 with this. or that person!" You never get 
 
32 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 the anointing when it is sought in that way. 
 Let us observe that, if God gave us some 
 things that we asked for, they would be a 
 great curse to us, and not a blessing. Remem- 
 ber Kibroth-hattaavah in the 11th chapter of 
 Numbers. *' The graves of those that lusted." 
 The people, complaining and murmuring, 
 said : '* We are tired of this disgusting manna : 
 give us flesh to eat." God said : " I will give 
 you flesh, and you shall eat it till it come out 
 at your nostrils;" and "ere the flesh was 
 chewed, the wrath of the Lord came and slew 
 the fattest of them." They got fat in the 
 body, but lean in soul. He gave them 
 their request, but sent leanness into their 
 souls. Do you want that God should send 
 leanness into your soul in sending fatness to 
 your body, feeding your carnal and starving 
 your spiritual nature ? If that is not what 
 you want, be careful that you do not ask 
 from selfish, lustful motives. Agrippina, 
 the mother of Nero, asked of her gods 
 that they would set her son upon the 
 throne ; and the first thing he did when set 
 upon the throne was to plan the death of his 
 own mother. Hezekiah, when told that 
 he should die and not live, turned his 
 face to the wall, and began reciting 
 his good deeds before the Lord, and 
 
UNANSWERED PRAYER 33 
 
 pleaded for life, and the Lord spared him 
 fifteen years. But they were years of disgrace. 
 He stripped the gold from the doors of the 
 temple of the Lord and gave it to the enemies 
 of God, and he lived long enough to beget 
 Manasseh, who was the greatest curse that 
 Judah ever had. He was the Ahab of Judah i 
 and the afflictions and captivity of Judah 
 were mainly owing to the sins of Manasseh. 
 How much better if Hezekiah had died when 
 the Lord gave him notice — better for him, 
 for Judah, and for the whole world! Look 
 out for selfishness of motive in your praying. 
 That is one reason why God keeps you wait- 
 ing until He refines away your carnality, and 
 gets you up on the high spiritual level in 
 which you can pray in the Holy Ghost. 
 
 " Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know 
 ye not that the friendship of the world 
 is enmity with God ? Whosoever, therefore, 
 will be a friend of the world is the enemy of 
 God." Think of a woman, married to an 
 honourable, upright, and holy man, walking 
 through the streets in broad daylight, arm in 
 arm with one that is attempting to 
 supplant him, and then going to her husband 
 for any special favour ! When God sees 
 you walking arm in arm with the world that 
 crucified Jesus, and identified with the world 
 
 o 
 
34 A SPIPJTUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 before men, how can He hear your prayer ? 
 Your prayers are an insult. All alliance with 
 the world implies the predominance of the 
 carnal, and the carnal can never pray accept- 
 ably. All power in prayer depends on a vision 
 of the Eternal, on Communion with the 
 Eternal, on the atmosphere of the Eternal, 
 and, if you are engrossed and absorbed 
 in the temporal, how can you breathe the 
 atmosphere, or have a vision of the Eternal ; 
 how can you lay hold upon the powers of the 
 age to come ? There is no difficulty in 
 accounting for failure in ten thousand cases, 
 because the prayers are those of essentially 
 worldly people, who know almost nothing 
 of coming into real touch with the Eternal 
 Spirit of God. 
 
 In the last chapter, additional lessons are 
 taught with regard to the secrets of prevailing 
 power in prayer and of the lack of it. *' Elijah 
 was a man of like passions as we are." Thank 
 God for that ! He got under a juniper tree, 
 as you and I have often done ; he complained 
 and murmured, as we have often done ; was 
 unbelieving, as we have often been. But 
 that was not the case when he really got into 
 touch with God. Though " a man of like 
 passions as we are," ''he prayed praying." 
 It is sublime in the original— not " earnestly," 
 
UNANSWERED TRAYER 35 
 
 but "he prayed In prayer." He kept on 
 praying. " He prayed earnestly that it might 
 not rain," and for three and a-half years — 
 they might have had showers and dews, but 
 no searching rain — it rained not. " And he 
 prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and 
 the earth brought forth her fruit." 
 
 What is the lesson here ? You must heep 
 praying. Come up on the top of Carmel, and 
 see that remarkable parable of faith and sight. 
 It was not the descent of the fire that now 
 was necessary, but the descent of the flood ; 
 and the man that can command the fire can 
 command the flood by the same means and 
 methods. We are told, that he bowed him- 
 self to the ground with his face between his 
 knees — that is, shutting out all sights and 
 sounds. He was putting himself in a posi- 
 tion where, beneath his mantle, he could 
 neither see nor hear what was going forward. 
 He said to his servant : *' Go and take an 
 observation." He went, and came back, and 
 said— how sublimely brief! one word — 
 ''Nothing !" What do we do under such circum- 
 stances ? We say : It's just as I expected 1" 
 and we give up praying. Did Elijah ? No 
 he said: "Go again." His servant again 
 came back, and said: "Nothing I" "Go 
 again." " Nothing 1" " Go again." "Nothing!" 
 
36 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 By and by he came back, and said : " There 
 is a little cloud like a man's hand." 
 A man's hand had been raised in sup- 
 plication, and had left its shadow on the 
 heavens, and presently down came the rain ; 
 and Ahab had not time to get back to the 
 gate of Samaria with all his fast steeds. 
 
 That is a parable of Faith and sight — 
 faith shutting itself up with God; sight 
 taking observations, and seeing nothing; 
 faith going right on, and " praying in prayer," 
 with utterly hopeless reports from sight. Do 
 you know how to pray that way, how to pray 
 prevailingly ? Let sight give as discouraging 
 reports as it may, but pay no attention to 
 these. The living God is still in the heavens, 
 and He hath done whatsoever He hath 
 pleased. Even to delay is a part of His 
 goodness. 
 
 Look still further. Elijah kept on the 
 height of the mountain till he got the answer 
 to his prayer. Do you know what it is to 
 maintain the high plane and level of faith till 
 the answer comes ? What great mistakes 
 are made 1 When the Lord lifts us up to a 
 high level of faith and expectancy, we offer 
 prayer on that level ; but we hasten to get 
 down to the carnal level, as if we supposed 
 that answers could be given to the prayer of 
 
UNANSWERED PRAYER 37 
 
 faith on any other than the plane of faith ! 
 I have iiad no idea impressed on my mind 
 from the Word of God in connection with 
 prevaiHng prayer more inspiring and rebuking 
 than this : That answers to the prayer of faith 
 can only be received and recognised on the 
 plane of faith. Get up into the heavenly 
 levels to talk with God ; He is not coming 
 down to the carnal level to talk with you ; 
 He wants you to stay there till He has given 
 you His answer. Hence the typical signifi- 
 cance of Elijah staying up on the mountain, 
 sight, over and over again, taking obser- 
 vations until the answer of God had come. 
 It is a great thing to keep praying, and 
 in a frame of holy expectation till the 
 blessing comes. 
 
 It pays to stay there w^aiting on God. 
 Monica, the mother of Augustine, besought 
 God for many years that Augustine might 
 not go to Rome, because Rome was then, 
 as now, the centre of all the iniquity of the 
 Continent. Augustine was a profligate, 
 and she felt that his going to Rome would 
 ensure his rapid ruin, and she besought 
 God not to let him go. He did go to 
 Rome. Did she give up ? Not at all. She 
 said: " If the Lord does not grant me what 
 I ask, He will grant me something better.' 
 
38 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 His going to Rome was the means of his 
 coming into contact with Ambrose, of Milan, 
 and that was the means of his becoming con- 
 verted, and afterwards a great leader and de- 
 fender of the faith, one of the fathers of the 
 early Church. So that God, in refusing the 
 literal request of Monica, fulfilled her heart's 
 great desire. 
 
 What a great blessing my late friend, Dr. 
 Moon, of Brighton, has been — the pro- 
 jector of the great Moon System to help 
 the blind to read the Word of God, the 
 best of its kind ever devised. When 
 twenty-three years of age, he was struck with 
 total blindness. He besought God, when the 
 symptoms were coming on, that He would 
 deliver him from this calamity. He was an 
 educated, cultivated man, at the beginn- 
 ing of his true service of God and man. But 
 the blindness continued. What did he do ? 
 It is one of the sublime things in history. 
 He looked up to God,, and said : " My 
 heavenly Father, I thank Thee for the 
 talent of blindness. May I so invest that 
 talent that at the coming of the Lord Jesus 
 He may receive His own v/ith usury." Is not 
 that sublimely, and ecstatically heavenly ? 
 The Lord soon taught him that He had 
 permitted the blindness that he might 
 
UNANSWERED PRAYER 39 
 
 minister to the millions of blind people 
 in the world ; and Dr. Moon used his inven- 
 tive faculties and devised this system, con- 
 taining only a very few characters in com- 
 bination. According to recent accounts that 
 system has been utilised in nearly live 
 hundred languages and dialects. So that, 
 when this man went to heaven a few years 
 ago, he must have found thousands who 
 had gone to heaven through reading the 
 raised characters by which he made it pos- 
 sible to commune with the Word of God. 
 By taking blindness as a talent from God, 
 and using it for God, he accomplished far 
 more for God and man than he ever could 
 have done if he had followed out the devices 
 and desires of his own heart. 
 
 The love of God quite as often withholds as 
 grants. Hence the necessity of trusting God 
 to do His own way. He always gives what 
 we ask, or something better. He consults 
 our wants, not our wishes, like a wise and 
 loving Father. His delays are not denials. 
 Delay may discipline faith, teach us patience, 
 and fit us for blessing. Moreover, there 
 are blessed indirect answers to prayer. 
 Prayer is answered most emphatically when 
 God keeps j^ou praying, when God keeps 
 you in a tender state, when He leads you to 
 
46 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 trust Him absolutely in the absence of all 
 outward signs of answer. The sublimest 
 triumph of prayer is to trust God absolutely 
 when you do not get any sensible answ^er 
 whatever. There is no other triumph of 
 prayer so great as that. We should all like 
 to live by faith and sight together ; but some- 
 how they are incompatible. 
 
 May I sum up what I conceive to be the 
 teachings of the Word of God, by what I call 
 the twelve levels of prayer and answer. 
 The first four levels are the levels of vain 
 praying ; the next four, the levels of prevail- 
 ing prayer^ and the next four the levels of 
 Divine answer. 
 
 Down at the very bottom is the level of 
 known sin. " If I regard iniquity in my 
 heart, the Lord will not hear me." When sin 
 is enthroned and enshrined in the heart, 
 prayers are worse than vain. The second 
 level is selfishness, when you are asking for 
 self-indulgence, self-gratification, something 
 terminating upon yourself, not the glory of 
 God. The third level is the level of form. 
 •'This people draweth nigh to Me with their 
 lips, but their heart is far from Me." God 
 does not care a farthing for prayers which 
 have no heart in them. The mere externals 
 of worship. He says, ** I cannot away with ; 
 
UNANSWERED PRAYER 41 
 
 it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting " — or, 
 as it ought to read : ** I cannot away with 
 iniquity and the solemn meeting " — " I cannot 
 have the two go together." The fourth level 
 of vain praying is the level of unbelief, where 
 there is no expectation of receiving, no faith 
 in God as the Giver. 
 
 Above those levels we rise to those of 
 prevailing prayer, and the lowest is that of 
 spiritual desire. You want something, and 
 it is right that you should, and you ask 
 simply from the impulse of a strong yearning. 
 Perfectly right ! " Ask and ye shall receive, 
 seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be 
 opened unto you." A higher level is that 
 where you appreciate the Fatherhood of God 
 and your relation as His child, and set up a 
 child's claim to a Father's blessing. The 
 desire is emphasised by your conscious rela- 
 tion to God as His child. The third level is 
 that where you appreciate your position as 
 a disciple in Christ, and claim in the name 
 of Jesus Christ what you dare not claim in 
 your own name. You have felt desire, you 
 have added to it a consciousness of filial rela- 
 tion ; and, to that, the consciousness of the 
 disciple's relation, unknown except as we 
 touch the fourteenth chapter of John— the 
 first time that Christ ever spoke about pray- 
 
42 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 ing in His name, and between the fourteenth 
 and sixteenth chapters seven times repeated. 
 He said, in the sixteenth chapter: *' Hitherto 
 have ye asked nothing in My name." Up to 
 that time no Old Testament saint or New 
 Testament saint had ever prayed in His name. 
 The fourth level iswhere the Holy Spirit work- 
 ing in you, unhindered, groans after God. 
 This is the highest level of prayer, indicated 
 in Rom. viii., where we are told that the 
 Spirit Himself groans within us unutterably. 
 No words w^ill express it, but God hears and 
 cares far more for that than for any words, 
 however well framed. 
 
 We come now to the levels of answer. The 
 lowest is where you get what you ask in the 
 way that you ask, like Eliezer, who made 
 the specific request that the maiden who 
 should give the camels drink might be the 
 one appointed for Isaac; and, while he was 
 praying, Rebekah came and did what he 
 asked ; and he does not seem to have been 
 surprised, which is a delightful feature. He 
 did not say: "It is a wonderful answer!" 
 Rather let us wonder that God should not do 
 what we ask, or as we ask. 
 
 The next level of prayer is where the answer 
 does not come at the time, or in the way, 
 perhaps, that we expect, or is both delayed 
 
UNANSWERED PRAYER 43 
 
 and disguised. In the case of Elijah on 
 Mount Carmel it was delayed. The most 
 marked instance in the New Testament 
 is the Syrophenician woman. She was 
 under the ban of the curse ; she did not 
 belong even to the " lost sheep of the house 
 of Israel;" she had not a promise to take 
 hold of. " He answered her not a word." 
 Then, when He did speak, He refused, and 
 reproached her with the only, apparently 
 reproachful term He ever used. But look at 
 the logic and wit of her importunity ! She 
 said : " You call me a little dog, and make 
 that a reason why I should not have the 
 children's bread. I make that a reason why 
 I should have it, for the little dogs under the 
 table do get the crumbs " — the only time that 
 the Lord Jesus was refuted and confuted out 
 of His own mouth. Of course, He had to 
 give her the blessing. She made His argu- 
 ment against it a reason for it, and it is a 
 most remarkable case. He seems to have 
 gone all the way from the lake of Galilee 
 to the shores of the Mediterranean, and 
 back, just for the sake of that woman, for 
 there is no record of any other act performed 
 on the way to and fro. He went to meet 
 this woman whom He treated with silence, 
 and then with refusal, and apparent 
 
44 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 reproach ; but He gave her what she asked, 
 and it is not irreverent to say He could not 
 help it. 
 
 Notice, again, that sometimes the answer is 
 denied, and here is yet a higher level. But 
 compensation comes with the denial, just as 
 in the instances of Monica and Dr. Moon. 
 Paul (2 Cor. xii.) prayed about what is de- 
 scribed as a " thorn," but Paul would not 
 have made such a fuss over a thorn : it was a 
 " stake in the flesh," and he prayed to God 
 that it might be taken out of the way. 
 Probably he thought it was affecting his use- 
 fulness to men. The Lord distinctly denied 
 the request, but more than made up for the 
 denial with overwhelming grace ; and said : 
 " My strength is made perfect in weak- 
 ness ; " not merely, " Your weakness shall be 
 made an opportunity for the display of My 
 strength," but, more than all, the only way 
 to make God's strength perfect is for us to 
 get into a perfect condition of destitution of 
 soul. 
 
 The last and highest of all the levels of 
 answer is where the answer is not only de- 
 layed, not only disguised, not only apparently 
 denied for a time, but after your praying, 
 God seems to preserve an absolute and 
 obstinate silence. No answer comes, you 
 
UNANSWERED TRAYER 45 
 
 live and, perhaps, die, and never get an 
 answer; but you have not a doubt of the 
 prayer-hearing God. I asked Mr. Muller a 
 short time before he died if he had asked any- 
 thing of God that had not been granted, and 
 he told me he had prayed sixty-two years, 
 three months, five days, two hours — with 
 his mathematical precision — for two men 
 to be converted, neither of whom was con- 
 verted, and there were no signs of it. 
 I said : " Do you expect God to convert 
 them ? " " Certainly. Do you suppose that 
 God would put upon His child for sixty-two 
 years the burden of two souls if He had no 
 purpose of their salvation ? I shall meet them 
 in heaven certainly." Shortly afterwards he 
 died, and I was preaching in his pulpit, in 
 Bristol, and referred to this occurrence. As 
 I was going out a lady said : " One of those 
 men was my uncle, and he was converted, 
 and died a few weeks ago." 
 
 I have read of a most godly man who spent 
 forty years in one church, and agonised in 
 prayer for worldly people in his congrega- 
 tion, who resisted all his efforts to bring them 
 to Christ. He not only prayed for them, and 
 preached the Gospel to them, but lived before 
 them in a remarkable way. A saintly man, 
 moving up and down in the community with 
 
46 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 the fragrance of God upon him. But he died 
 without the sight ; there was not a man of 
 them all brought to Christ during his minis- 
 try. But when he died, and his body lay in 
 the coffin, and the funeral service was being 
 held, those men were brought to Christ in 
 the presence of that dead body— a remark- 
 able instance of God answering prayer in a 
 wonderful way, after it was impossible for the 
 suppliant soul to see on earth the triumphs of 
 prayer. 
 
 Our sight is good for nothing. Some- 
 times it is too far sight, sometimes it is too 
 near sight, but never accurate. Let God 
 judge for you. Bring your cause and com- 
 mit it to Him, leave it in His hand, go away 
 from the throne of grace with absolute repose 
 in the fidelity of a prayer-hearing God. Do 
 not let unbelieving disciples, and that father 
 of liars, the Devil, rob you of your confidence 
 that God is true. Believe Him, trust Him, 
 reckon upon Him, rest in Him; and if you 
 do not see the answer, believe that He will 
 show you the answer, though it may be after 
 many days. 
 
III. 
 Persistent Darkness 
 
 PERSISTENT Darkness is one of the 
 most malignant and desperate of 
 spiritual diseases. An astronomical 
 figure runs through the Word of God, 
 which is very helpful in the understanding 
 of this and kindred themes. For example, 
 Psa. Ixxxiv. 11:" The Lord God is a 5««." 
 Three words are conspicuous in John's 
 Gospel and his First Epistle— Life, Light, 
 and Love. The sun represents in the 
 physical sphere light, heat, life. God, as a 
 Sun, in the spiritual sphere, likewise repre- 
 sents life, which is the sum of all being ; 
 light, the sum of all intellectual excellence ; 
 and love, the sum of all moral and spiritual 
 excellence ; therefore, to abide in God, as a 
 Sun, is to abide in life, and light, and love ; 
 and to turn our back upon God, and to be 
 without God, is to abide in darkness, death, 
 
 47 
 
48 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 and hate. This explains the substance both 
 of the Gospel and of the First Epistle of 
 John. This figure of speech illustrates many 
 points that I shall make. 
 
 On the whole, the most suggestive text in 
 Scripture, on this subject of darkness, is 
 Isa. L. 10, 11. There is nothing else just like 
 it in the Word of God. 
 
 "Who is among you that feareth the Lord, 
 that obeyeth the voice of His servant, that 
 walketh in darkness, and hath no light ? 
 Let him trust in the name of the Lord, and 
 stay upon his God. Behold, all ye that 
 kindle a fire, that compass yourselves about 
 with sparks : walk in the light of your fire, 
 and in the sparks that ye have kindled. 
 This shall ye have of Mine hand ; ye shall lie 
 down in sorrow." 
 
 Here are represented two classes of people, 
 both in darkness. The first class fear 
 Jehovah, and obey the voice of His servant, 
 and yet they walk in darkness, so deep that 
 they have no light. The other class walk in 
 darkness, but neither fear Jehovah, nor obey 
 the voice of His servant. 
 
 The former class are exhorted to trust in 
 the name of Jehovah and to stay upon their 
 God— the same terms used in the song 
 of salvation in Isa. xxvi. 3, 4 : "Thou wilt 
 
PERSISTENT DARKNESS 49 
 
 keep him in perfect peace whose mind is 
 stayed on Thee, because he trusteth in Thee." 
 Then, in the next verse, we find the tripHcate 
 use of the name Jehovah, the only case, I 
 believe, in the Bible : " Trust ye in Jehovah 
 for ever: for in Jehovah, Jehovah is the 
 Rock of Ages." The same words are used 
 here again by Isaiah : " Let him trust in the 
 name of Jehovah, and stay upon his God." 
 
 The other class are warned that, to attempt 
 to relieve their darkness by their own 
 philosophies and vain endeavours is simply 
 to compass themselves about with the 
 sparks of a fire that they have themselves 
 kindled \ and the ultimate event is that they 
 lie down in sorrow, their darkness deepen- 
 ing into final and everlasting despair. You 
 might as well try to make up for lack of sun- 
 light by kindling a bonfire, which presently 
 goes out, and leaves you in midnight dark- 
 ness. Only the sun will serve the purpose of 
 any soul that wants enlightenment. 
 
 It is very noticeable, in this same passage, 
 that there is not one word of comfort for 
 any disobedient soul. "Is there any among 
 you that feareth Jehovah and obeyeth the 
 voice of His servant " ? He is bidden to 
 trust and hold on to God, and wait for the 
 light. But there is not one word in the 
 
50 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 whole Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, to 
 bring comfort to any who continue dis- 
 obedient. Whether such disobedient soul is 
 unregenerate, or regenerate, it makes little 
 difference — there is no word of comfort for 
 him. If darkness comes from disobedience, 
 it will continue as long as disobedience 
 continues. We may as well understand 
 that. If there is anything for which 
 " Keswick " has stood for more than 
 thirty years, it is for the necessity of obedi- 
 ence in order to light, in order to blessing. 
 Not one of the teachers on this platform has 
 ever winked at disobedience in any form, or 
 given any soul any hope or comfort while 
 continuing in disobedience. And it is taught 
 here consistently that obedience must be a 
 studious obedience, an obedience that looks 
 at little as well as at great commands, and 
 renounces even doubtful things, since God 
 must have the advantage of doubts, and not 
 we ourselves, if we would walk in light. 
 
 The most terrible metaphor perhaps in the 
 Holy Scriptures is the astronomical one in 
 Jude 13: "Wandering stars, to whom is 
 reserved the blackness of darkness for ever," 
 That is the more striking, because, when 
 Jude wrote, certain astronomical facts 
 were not known. It was not known, for 
 
PERSISTENT DARKNESS 51 
 
 instance, what would be the effect if a star 
 broke away from its centripetal force and 
 gave way to the centrifugal. But we know 
 now that such a star would dash off into 
 space, going farther and farther from its 
 original centre, and sweeping faster and faster 
 into the depths and infinitudes of space. 
 Such a wandering star would get into deeper 
 and more absolute midnight, farther away 
 from the source of both light and heat, until 
 it became one great crystal of ice, plunging 
 into the infinitudes of space in the darkness 
 of a sunless and starless midnight. This is 
 the Spirit's way of expressing the final 
 result of persistent and wailful disobedience 
 to God. There is absolutely no hope for 
 any disobedient soul ; and persistent dis- 
 obedience means an increase of darkness, 
 a loss of light, and love, and life for ever- 
 more. 
 
 Let us understand this, that, whether one 
 is a child of God or not, disobedience is deadly ^ 
 it tends unto death; to the decay of all 
 spiritual affections, convictions, sensibilities, 
 and choices. Whether you are a child of God 
 or not, at once stop your disobedience, turn 
 at once your back upon everything sinful or 
 doubtful, if you want to walk in light. 
 
 Disobedience must extend not only to 
 
52 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 things purely Divine, but to things human. 
 Wherever God has ordained authority, 
 that authority must be obeyed. Marital 
 authority — the wife must submit herself to 
 her husband as unto the Lord. Parental 
 Authority— the child must obey his parents. 
 Ecclesiastical Authority — in the Church there 
 must be an obedience to the powers that 
 are ordained of God. And so in the State ; 
 there must be submission to all constituted 
 rulers. There can be no relief or release 
 from darkness while there is disobedience. 
 I have known a wife, after years of gloom, 
 to come at once into light by a proper wifely 
 submission to her husband. I have known 
 a child to come out of years of darkness 
 by going to a parent that had been disobeyed, 
 confessing and forsaking a long course of 
 disobedience, and coming under parental 
 authority. God only knows how many are 
 in darkness because they are rebelling against 
 His order, whatever that may be, in things 
 purely Divine, or in things human but subject 
 to Divine ordinance and direction. 
 
 But, supposing there is the fear of 
 Jehovah, and obedience to the voice of His 
 servant ; supposing there is obedience to all 
 constituted authority, both in heaven and on 
 earth — conscientious, studious, habitual 
 
PERSISTENT DARKNESS 53 
 
 obedience, may there not still be darkness? 
 This text concedes it. 
 
 Let us look at the remedy for such gloom. 
 
 First, physical disease may have something 
 to do with spiritual darkness. The body, 
 soul and spirit are so intimately connected 
 that we cannot quite say where the influence 
 of one or another begins and ends, because 
 the influencesof body and spirit are reciprocal. 
 We are learning this more and more through 
 increased, careful, microscopical examin- 
 ations of the body in our day. There is such 
 a thing as a holy care of the body, in cleanli- 
 ness ; in careful, abstemious, and prudent diet, 
 neither eating what is injurious, nor more 
 than is healthful. There is much sin, com- 
 mitted against God at our tables, and no 
 wonder if clouds come over the spirit when 
 the liver is pouring black bile into the 
 stomach ; and when the whole circulatory, 
 respiratory and perspiratory system is, in a 
 large degree, rendered morbid by habits of 
 what, no doubt, God considers positive sin. 
 For instance, in Asaph's 77th Psalm, we read 
 about his running sore in the night, and his 
 insomnia, and complaining against God, and 
 vain attempt to get hold of God. In the middle 
 of the Psalm he says : " This is my infirm- 
 ity "; in other words, •'! am a fool j God is not 
 
54 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 at fault — it is myself." We see, in Job's great 
 trial, how when his afflictions came upon 
 him, he lost sight of God in a measure, and 
 began to complain and murmur against Him 
 partly as a result of his physical condition. 
 
 There may be also mental disease — 
 melancholia is a form of virtual insanity, and 
 often largely the fruit of mere wilfulness. 
 The great majority of cases of insanity ,betray 
 such abnormal self-will that nobody can say 
 whether wilfulness does not tend to insanity. 
 If, therefore, the will were thoroughly given 
 up to God, surrendered, so far as self-indul- 
 gence is concerned and the determination to 
 have one's own way, many cases of insanity 
 might become impossible, especially to the 
 child of God. It is important that we 
 should learn to get and keep a healthy 
 physical and mental tone ; and nothing will 
 help it like absolute obedience to almighty 
 God in things physical and spiritual. 
 
 Delusion may sometimes cause darkness, 
 leaving one to the control of notions that are 
 false to God's truth. It is always possible 
 for a believer to run into that snare. One 
 of the chief arraignments of the Roman 
 Catholic System is that it tends to becloud 
 human souls with superstitious errors. It 
 puts the priest between the soul and God in 
 
PERSISTENT DARKNESS 55 
 
 baptism, preventing the child from being 
 incorporated into the church, according to 
 papal notions. It puts the priest between 
 the child and the knowledge of God, in His 
 Word, and makes him the interpreter of 
 truth. It puts the priest between the child 
 and the reception of the body of Christ, so- 
 called, in the Mass. It puts the priest 
 between forgiveness of sins and the soul in 
 Confession ; between the soul and the Holy 
 Spirit, in Confirmation ; between the believer 
 and the right to preach and minister, in 
 Ordination. And it carries this interposition 
 even to the last hour, in Extreme Unction, 
 putting the priest between the soul and 
 heaven ; yes, even after death, in prayers for 
 the dead, it puts the priest between the soul 
 and actual entrance into eternal joys. No 
 wonder that people of Roman Catholic com- 
 munions are immersed in deep darkness. 
 They are the subjects of the greatest delusion 
 that this world has ever seen under the name 
 of religion, when the Devil, with his master- 
 piece of strategy, insists upon the interposition 
 of man between the human soul and Almighty 
 God in every conceivable relation of life. 
 
 Legalism is often, in our Protestant 
 churches, taught and preached ; so that 
 awakened souls, instead! of looking away 
 
56 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 from their works to the accomplished and 
 finished work of Jesus — and even believers, 
 after they have found salvation in renouncing 
 their own works — expect to find justification, 
 sanctification, and acceptance with God, 
 through something that they themselves 
 have done. The consequence is that all 
 such get into darkness, because they con- 
 tinue to *' come to the mount that might 
 be touched, and that burned with fire ; 
 unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest, 
 and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice 
 of words ; which voice they had heard 
 intreated that the word should not be spoken 
 to them any more. . . . And so terrible 
 was the sight that " even " Moses said, 
 I exceedingly fear and quake." How can 
 a soul ever find peace, lingering under the 
 brow of Sinai ? Do you not know that Sion 
 is the only place of security and serenity ? 
 And if you, having found your way to Cal- 
 vary, go back to linger under the shadows 
 of Sinai, you cannot blame God for your 
 darkness. There is nothing but darkness 
 to be expected there. 
 
 Again, people get the delusion that all 
 suffering is a judgment from God. They 
 know not how to make the distinction 
 between hereditary evil, coming down from 
 
PERSISTENT DARKNESS 57 
 
 generations before them, or punitive judg- 
 ments, iind the purely disciplinary and 
 educative suffering, designed to develop 
 faith, patience, and holiness. Many have 
 no idea of these things, and when suffering 
 overtakes them, they say they do not 
 know what they have done that God should 
 visit them with judgment. " Like as a father 
 chasteneth his children, so the Lord chas- 
 teneth them that fear Him ; " "Whom the 
 Lord loveth He correcteth, even as a father 
 the son in whom he delighteth," so that the 
 absence of such correction is a sign of the 
 bastard, and not the son, and, instead of 
 such correction being a token of judgment, it 
 is a token of love. If you interpret God's 
 chastisements as judgments and curses, you 
 must get into darkness. 
 
 A morbid habit of introspection wmU 
 account for a vast amount of darkness in 
 the children of God— for ever looking within 
 instead of without, at themselves instead 
 of at Christ. In only two instances in the 
 New Testament are we taught to examine 
 ourselves, and it is for a specific purpose, in 
 both cases. There is no authority in the 
 Word of God for this morbid habit of intro- 
 spection which is at the" bottom of nine- 
 tenths of the cases of persistent darkness 
 
58 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 that I have met in the course of my 
 ministry. I have received a letter from a 
 woman — I have had plenty from men as 
 well, but the majority of such letters come 
 from women. Woman is more religious in 
 her nature than man, and for that very 
 reason, if she becomes morbidly introspec- 
 tive she is apt to get into more desperate 
 darkness than a man. This letter states 
 that the writer has absolutely abandoned all 
 hope that she is a child of God, or an heir of 
 heaven. She thinks she has committed the 
 unpardonable sin, while every line of her 
 letter shows she has not. The tenderness 
 of conscience, the anxiety to be the Lord's, 
 the desire to undo the past of her life — such 
 frames of mind are inconsistent with having 
 committed the unpardonable sin. The con- 
 viction that one has committed such sin is 
 almost an inevitable result of persistent 
 self-scrutiny. There are two results, either 
 of which may come from this subjective 
 process : one is despair, because you see 
 nothing good in yourself; the other is self- 
 complacency, because you think you do see 
 something good in yourself. In the first case 
 you will reach hopelessness ; in the other, 
 what is even worse, self-gratulation. 
 
 While referring to this sin against the 
 
PERSISTENT DARKNl:SS 59 
 
 Holy Ghost let it be added — for I have no 
 doubt there are many who may read these 
 words who are fearful lest they have com- 
 mitted that very sin — that it is specifically des- 
 cribed in the New Testament, so that we may 
 recognise it. It is not so much an act as 
 a state in which an act becomes possible. 
 Again, it implies such moral blindness and 
 hardness as probably precludes the con- 
 sciousness of having committed such a sin. 
 Then, still further, it is possible to cultivate 
 a morbid sensibility of conscience that makes 
 you like a man that is flayed, with every 
 nerve exposed to irritating influences. 
 Excessive self-scrutiny simply strips off what 
 was intended to protect you against abnormal 
 sensitiveness, and then you wonder at the 
 acute and agonising sensitiveness that makes 
 you think you are everything you ought not 
 to be, and have never known anything of 
 God. 
 
 Dr. A. J. Gordon had a desperate case of 
 this kind in his congregation. He went to 
 see a woman on her dying bed, and began 
 to console her. Regarding such cases, he 
 said, " I never attempt to assure any man or 
 woman who is in that state : I dare not, I 
 leave that to God." As he tried to comfort 
 this woman, she said ; " It's no use ; I know 
 
6o A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 that years ago I committed the unpardonable 
 sin. But when I am gone, people will say : 
 It's strange that God should send that woman 
 to hell who has been living an upright, con- 
 sistent life, and was known as one who gave 
 away a great deal to the poor. Now," said 
 she, *' do not you ever allow God to be 
 impugned, or anybody to insinuate that He 
 is not a holy, just, pitiful, and loving God.*' In 
 her unsparing condemnation of herself she 
 was specially zealous to justify God. 
 
 An unrenewed disposition will also bring 
 darkness. Let us recur to our astronomical 
 figure. In science you may separate the light 
 ray from the heat ray, so that while you 
 obstruct the one you get the other. You can- 
 not do that in the spiritual life. If you obstruct 
 the ray of love, you lose the ray of light ; and 
 so John says in his First Epistle : '* He that 
 hateth his brother is in darkness, and walketh 
 in darkness, and knoweth not whither he 
 goeth." So far as you discourage the love 
 of God from possessing you and exercising 
 itself through your life, you obstruct the light 
 of God from bathing and illuminating you. 
 Therefore, so long as an envious, uncharit- 
 able, impatient, resentful temper is exercised, 
 or allowed within you, toward even your 
 bitterest enemy, or vilest traducer, you shut 
 
PERSISTENT DARKLESS 6i 
 
 out the light of God in shutting out His 
 love ; for so long and so far as you are a 
 stranger to His love, you are a stranger to 
 His light. It is most important to under- 
 stand that, in order to have true peace, there 
 must be renewed and sanctified temper. We 
 must not indulge an unholy or unlovely 
 disposition. Many of those who teach on 
 the Keswick platform have know^n men or 
 women to step out into a new life of peace 
 and love, instantaneously, upon renouncing 
 some long-cherished resentment. 
 
 Let us look a little further into the effect 
 of an unholy disposition. By the micro- 
 scopic examination of the blood w-e can tell 
 whether malignant tempers have been in- 
 fluencing a patient. This is a wonderful 
 discovery of the last few years. We can 
 trace the influence of malignant temper and 
 disposition upon the very structure of the 
 human body ; it leaves its mark. Any 
 indulgence of that which is wrong, in spirit, 
 thus leaves its impress even upon the body. If 
 this be so with regard to the physical, what 
 must be the effect on the subtler spiritual 
 nature ? 
 
 It was a favourite saying of Bancroft, the 
 historian, who was a vigorous old man at 
 ninety, that the secret of a long life is in 
 
62 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 never losing one's temper. The remark was 
 simply a concrete way of expressing the 
 hygienic value of amiability — a principle 
 which, until lately, has scarcely been con- 
 sidered in the training of children. Hitherto 
 we have regarded fretfulness, melancholy, 
 and bad temper as the natural concomitants 
 of illness. But modern science shows that 
 these mental moods have actual power to 
 produce disease. No doubt in most cases 
 imperfect bodily conditions are the cause of 
 irritable and depressed feelings, yet sometimes 
 the reverse is true, and a better knowledge of 
 physiological laws would show them to be 
 effect rather than cause. The fact that dis- 
 contented and gloomy people are never in 
 good health is an argument in favour of the 
 theory that continual indulgence in unhappy 
 thoughts acts as a poison and creates some 
 form of disease. 
 
 Darkness may sometimes be due to Divine 
 discipline. There can be little doubt that 
 sometimes God allows for a time a pall of 
 darkness to come on a human soul for a 
 purpose, just as in the case of Job, or 
 Jonah. John Wesley, beautiful Christian as 
 he was, passed for hours into a " horror of 
 darkness," at one time, and when he came 
 out of it he began to sing : — 
 
PERSISTENT DARKNESS • 63 
 
 ** I the chief of sinners am, 
 But Jesus died for me" 
 
 C. H. Spurgeon had his times of darkness, 
 and, after one of them, he said : " I am 
 living on four words, and I am going to die on 
 them— 'Jesus died for me.' " And the late 
 Bishop of Durham, it is said, in his declin- 
 ing days, had a period of despondency, and 
 sought from his chaplain some words of com 
 fort and consolation such as he had often 
 ministered to others, God may permit such 
 discipline for the strengthening of faith, and 
 educating of patience, leading you to look to 
 Him in supplication and trustful waiting, 
 when there are less external signs of His 
 favour and blessing. 
 
 Sometimes, darkness may be the effect 
 even of a vision of God. A young woman 
 said to me lately: "After your address on 
 having a vision of God, I got into darkness 
 and distress. I have humbled myself, as you 
 showed me I ought, but I cannot lift myself 
 up." ''No," said I," let God Hft you up; 
 you are told to humble yourself in the sight 
 of the Lord, and He will lift you up." 
 " But am I to endure this distress of mind, 
 and sorrow, and suffering, and humiliation 
 until God pleases to raise me ? " " Yes, only 
 be careful that you follow Scriptural direc- 
 
64 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 tions. Look to Him, stay yourself upon 
 Him, trust in Him ; do not ' kindle your own 
 fire, nor compass yourself about with sparks.' 
 God may have some purpose in allowing this 
 delay before He gives you true uplift and 
 exaltation." 
 
 I have no question that sometimes spiritual 
 darkness is the result of diabolical agency, 
 How solemn are Christ's words in Luke xxii. 
 53 : " This is your hour and the power of 
 darkness." How solemn is that record by 
 John: " It was night" — night in more senses 
 than one — the darkest of human history when 
 the midnight of Gethsemane and Calvary 
 enshrouded the Lord Jesus Christ. There is 
 no question — some of us have known some- 
 what of it in our own life — that when you 
 are trying to live nearest to God, a diabolical 
 assault may encompass you for a time with 
 the power of darkness. It is remarkable 
 that, in that sixth chapter of Ephesians — one 
 of the two Epistles in the New Testament 
 that lift us to the higliest Alpine summit of 
 Christian privilege — there is a more solemn 
 warning against the devil than in any other 
 part of the Word of God. The fact is, when- 
 ever one is in the heavenlies he is sure to 
 meet the Devil. As long as you are down in 
 the earthlies, under the control of the flesh, 
 
PERSISTENT DARKNESS 65 
 
 he will probably let you alone, because his 
 subordinate agents are taking care of you 
 already. But, when you rise above the power 
 of the world and the flesh, look out ! The 
 general-in-chief will not allow you to escape 
 his power without turning all his force 
 against you. Do not be surprised if you 
 have diabolical assaults at the very time when 
 you have been lifted into the highest spiritual 
 ecstasy. What are those "fiery darts " of 
 Eph. vi. ? Of course, the reference is to the 
 darts and arrows sent into the midst of the 
 enemy, and especially his fleet, to set every- 
 thing on fire that they touched. And what 
 are " the fiery darts of the devil " but the 
 blasphemous and obscene suggestions that 
 he seeks to lodge in our minds. We do not 
 know where they come from, and we abhor 
 them when they find their way there. They 
 are from the devil's bow. Always remember 
 that you are not responsible for the presence 
 of unholy suggestions, but only for the 
 cherishing of them. You are not responsible 
 for the foul birds that come to your window ; 
 but you are responsible whenever you allow 
 Satan's fowls of the air to find a nest within 
 you. You cannot prevent bad people from 
 ringing your door bell, but you need not 
 admit them into your house. Catherine of 
 
66 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 Siena, in the Middle Ages, used to have re- 
 markable dialogues with the Lord. After days 
 of intense diabolical contest, when she came 
 out of it, she said : " O Lord, how couldst 
 Thou forsake me and leave me to the devil's 
 power ?" " But I did not forsake thee, Cathe- 
 rine." " How could I have had all these vile 
 thoughts ? " *' But, Catherine, did you wel- 
 come those thoughts ? " " Thou knowest 
 that I abhorred them, and cast them from 
 my soul as vile." " That was because I was 
 with thee in that awful conflict. Hence those 
 suggestions of the devil were infinitely ab- 
 horrent to thy nature." So you are not 
 responsible for diabolical suggestions, but 
 only for the degree to which they find 
 welcome in your soul. 
 
 Let me now add some suggestions as to 
 how relief may be found, in addition to those 
 already made incidentally. 
 
 In the first place, turn to the truth 
 that Almighty God has revealed in Holy 
 Scripture, Do not go to human books ; go 
 to the Divine Book. Immerse yourself in 
 the Holy Scriptures. Let the light of God 
 correct your errors, superstitions, delusions, 
 and false notions. Sir Edward Peary in his 
 Polar explorations thought he was going ten 
 miles a day on his sledges toward the North 
 
PERSISTENT DARKNESS 67 
 
 Pole ; but he discovered that the icefloe on 
 which he was sledging was itself distinctly 
 moving twelve miles southward every day ; 
 so that he was actually going two miles back- 
 ward instead of ten miles forward ; and he 
 found out that fact by look'uig at the sky. 
 When Livingstone, in the heart of Africa, 
 was persuaded that his guides were either 
 ignorant of the direction in which they were 
 going, or else deceiving him, he studied 
 his compass, and found out his latitude and 
 longitude without their help. It is a great 
 thing to keep your eye upward ; to cease to 
 look at human standards, traditions and 
 modes of doing things, seeking human help, 
 and compassing yourself about with sparks ; 
 and keep your eyes fixed on the stars ; for, 
 somehow or other, nothing under the 
 stars goes exactly right. The best watch 
 sometimes is fast or slow. Nothing under 
 heaven is accurate. But, blessed be God, 
 the celestial clock has not varied one thou- 
 sandth part of a second for the last thousand 
 years. The sun and north star always appear 
 where they ought to be. If you get celestial 
 signs by which to guide yourselves, you will 
 come out of many errors, due to human 
 teaching and perverse traditions, which make 
 the Word of God of none effect. Seek com- 
 
68 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 fort first of all, in the Word of God, and the 
 Spirit of God and the place of secret prayer. 
 " Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet, and a 
 light unto my path." 
 
 A great physician in America had an inter- 
 view with a patient who was subject to 
 peculiar nervous prostration. He said ; 
 " Madam, I want you to go home and devoutly 
 study your Bible an hour a day ;" and he bowed 
 her out without further ceremony. She said 
 to herself : " After all, this prescription does 
 not cost me anything. Suppose I try it." 
 She went home, and held communion 
 with God for an hour a day, and at the end 
 of a month she was entirely cured. Then 
 she went back to her doctor, and said : " I 
 was angry with you, doctor." *' Yes," he re- 
 marked, " I supposed you would be ; " and 
 taking down his own Bible from the shelf, he 
 said : " Do you see this ? I read it before 
 every operation, and go to work in the light 
 of God's Word. I read it before visiting my 
 patients, and it is the only thing that keeps 
 me, in the strain of my profession, from 
 darkness and despair. I knew that you 
 needed it, and that it was the only remedy 
 that would meet your case." 
 
 In conclusion, remember the text we 
 started with : " Trust in the name of the 
 
PERSISTENT DARKNESS 69 
 
 Lord, and stay j^ourself upon your God." 
 Remember Hudson Taylor's words: "The 
 devil may fence us round, but he cannot roof 
 us in, he cannot prevent us looking up." 
 Those are beautiful words in Psalm xxxiv. 5 
 (R.V.): "They looked unto Him and were 
 radiatit.'^ Notice again the astronomical 
 figure. You set your face to the sun, and 
 the sun lights up and illumines your features; 
 and you look unto God as your Sun, and 
 you become radiant. Leave yourself in 
 God's hand. Never seek any consolation that 
 is not found in God, for if you find any other 
 you are the worse for it — it is false conso- 
 lation. Triumph in God, notwithstanding 
 your darkness. I have spoken of the great 
 stratagem of the devil in turning our minds 
 introspectively upon our own spiritual state 
 to involve us in despair. Thousands of 
 people, true believers, in the Christian 
 Church, are in the snare of the devil's dark- 
 ness. He robs them of their testimony by 
 discouraging their hearts, and stops them in 
 holy service to other souls by persuading them 
 that they are probably without ground of 
 hope themselves. If there are any master 
 tricks of the devil, they are found, first, in pre- 
 venting people from coming to Christ at all ; 
 ^nd, if he cannot do that, in making them of 
 
70 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 no use practically after they have come. I 
 feel like saying to every child of God : For- 
 get your darkness, and go to work for some- 
 body else. Look at those words in Isa. Iviii. : 
 " If thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, 
 and satisfy the afflicted soul ; then shall thy 
 light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as 
 the noonday ; and the Lord shall guide thee 
 continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, 
 and make fat thy bones ; and thou shalt be 
 like a watered garden, and like a spring of 
 water, \vhose waters fail not." Our Lord 
 Jesus Christ said: "He that followeth Me 
 shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the 
 light of life." What is it to follow Christ ? 
 Not simply to obey Him, but to do as He 
 did. How did He do ? Was there ever seen 
 on earth a life of such self-abnegation as 
 His ? It could not be said of Him : ** He 
 saved Himself; others He cannot save." 
 His great thought was to save others. When 
 you forget your own salvation in absorption 
 in the salvation of others, it is not unlikely 
 that you will pass out of your darkness into 
 the light of life. 
 
 A young man in college had fallen into this 
 snare of the devil. A time of revival came, 
 and the chaplain wanted him to go and visit 
 other students. " I cannot do it ; I have no 
 
PERSISTENT DARKNESS 71 
 
 hope for myself !" " How did you get into that 
 condition?" " By grieving and neglecting 
 the Spirit." " But you do not want other 
 students to do that ?" " No !" Then suppos- 
 ing you go and warn them not to grieve the 
 Spirit?" He went, first of all to a pro- 
 fligate in the college, and said : " Why do 
 not you turn to Christ ?" " There is no hope 
 for me " was the reply. " Look at the life 
 I've been living, I've been such an awful 
 sinner ! " " Well, but Christ is perfectly 
 able to save the chief of sinners. Do not you 
 see it ? / see it myself \ " And out of his own 
 darkness he came. Forget yourself, try to 
 make some poor sinner see that there is no 
 unpardonable sin, except sin unrepented of 
 and as you try to guide poor sinning souls 
 to Calvary, you will find that Calvary's blood 
 is sufficient for you. 
 
 My last word is an exhortation, that you 
 should triumph in God, and thus defeat the 
 devil. The question is whether he or God 
 shall have the victory. Be determined that 
 he shall not triumph, but that God shall. 
 Forget your feelings, your states, your past 
 life of sin, forget everything except that 
 Christ came into this world to seek and 
 save that which was lost. Then triumph 
 ip God in the darkness, and despite 
 
72 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 the darkness, defying even the darkness itself, 
 because " the true light shineth.'^ Get out 
 into the light by ignoring the darkness. 
 Obey God, cherish a holy disposition, look 
 after the health of your body and soul, take 
 the Word of God as your guide, take the 
 Spirit of God as your controlling power. 
 Then, encompassed in the armour of God, 
 defy Satan to do his worst. Stand aside, 
 let Christ and Satan fight out your battle. 
 You are quite incompetent to conquer. But 
 there is the Overcomer and in that Over- 
 comer you yourself may overcome. 
 
IV. 
 
 Habitual Unbelief. 
 
 WE have deslgnedlj' left to the last the 
 sin, foll3^ and crime of unbelief, 
 partly because this great sin lies at 
 the basis of every other, partly because 
 it is the one sin that damns the soul, 
 and partly because its removal means the 
 relief of all other forms of spiritual difficulty. 
 If there were no unbelief, there would be no 
 unsubdued sin, no unanswered prayer, and 
 no persistent darkness. And yet the majority 
 of people rank unbelief among the venial 
 rather than the mortal sins ; they apologise 
 for it as at least a very trifling form of 
 offence against God, and some even think of 
 it as in some sense rather attractive because 
 it implies humility of soul, the sense of one's 
 own unworthiness. Many cannot claim God's 
 promises because of such self-abasement. 
 Qne of the master snares of the devil is to 
 
 73 
 
74 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 inspire a mock humility in the place of a true 
 humility. For while it is presumption to 
 believe when God has not spoken, or to hope 
 when He has not given us ground for hope, 
 it is equally presumption not to believe when 
 He has spoken, and not to hope when He 
 gives a promise. 
 
 First of all the key-text of this whole sub- 
 ject is Heb. iii. 12, "Take heed, brethren, 
 lest there be in any of you an evil heart of 
 unbelief, in departing from the living God." 
 The word unbelief carries quite a different 
 sense from disbelief. Disbelief is properly 
 a denial of truth ; belief is the acceptance 
 of truth ; unbelief is the failure to lay 
 hold upon truth. One who does not at all 
 disbelieve, may be in everything unbelieving. 
 I am quite aware that the word disbelieve is 
 not found in either Testament, and that the 
 word unbelief as translated is often, in the 
 Original, the equivalent of disbelief. But in 
 the majority of cases unbelief does not carry 
 the idea of denial of truths and in at least one 
 passage the distinction is manifestly drawn — 
 1 Tim. v. 8 — where the Apostle says of a 
 certain offender against God that " he hath 
 denied the faith, and is worse than an 
 infidel," which is not a clear translation, for 
 the fir^t word is emphatic, and the second is 
 
HABITUAL UNBELIEF 75 
 
 a weaker word. It might be translated, 
 " hath denied the faith and is worse than an 
 unbeliever," that is, he is a disbeliever, and 
 has practically said, " It is not so." He has 
 affirmed the thing not to be true ; therefore 
 he is worse than one that does not deny that 
 it is true, but fails to make it available to 
 himself. A very important distinction. Three 
 different men may have one offer of blessing. 
 One does not believe there is anything in it, 
 that there is any real blessing offered. He 
 is a disbeliever. Another believes that there 
 is a blessing offered, but does not accept it 
 for himself. He is an unbeliever. The third 
 believes that there is a blessing offered, and 
 he is bound to have it. That is a believer. 
 You are to judge which you are. 
 
 There are two very strongly contrasted 
 facts. The first is, as has been intimated 
 that man makes so little of the sin and crime 
 of unbelief; and the second is, that God 
 makes so much of it. It is one instance of the 
 striking difference between God's judgment 
 and man's judgment of things. The only way 
 to show this is to examine the main passages 
 of Scripture in which unbelief is brought to 
 our attention, consecutivel}^ from Genesis to 
 Revelation. Turn, first of all, to Exodus xvii. 
 The people have come out of Egypt and hgy^ 
 
76 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 arrived at the wilderness of Sin — a typical 
 place for an exhibition of the crime of un- 
 belief — and they pitch in Rephidim. There 
 is no water to drink, and now the people 
 chide with Moses, and complain and murmur 
 against the Lord, and even find fault with 
 having been brought out of Egypt to die in 
 the wilderness with thirst. You remember 
 how the Lord interposes to supply them with 
 water from the smitten rock. Here is the 
 remarkable verse, the 7th — the key to all that 
 follows in the Bible — " And he called the name 
 of the place Massah," which means temptation^ 
 " and Meribah," which means provocation or, 
 better still, exasperation, '• because of the 
 chiding of the children of Israel, and because 
 they tempted the Lord." Notice, what was 
 the temptation ? The temptation was that 
 God should forsake His people. What was 
 the provocation ? It was that God should 
 destroy His people. Keep these two thoughts 
 before you: the unbelief tempted God, on 
 the one side, entirely to withdraw from His 
 people, and, on the other side, finally to 
 destroy them. What a terrific sin and crime 
 unbelief must be when it tempts God and 
 provokes God to such an extreme as that ! 
 
 Notice, also, for it is most important : In 
 what did this particular crim§ of unbelief. 
 
HABITUAL UNBELIEF 77 
 
 on this occasion, consist ? They provoked 
 and tempted the Lord, saying, " Is the Lord 
 among us, or not?" That was as much as 
 saying, *' Is the Lord dead, or is He Hving ? 
 He has promised to go with us from Egypt 
 to Canaan ; is He true to His word ? or is 
 He a liar? is He an immutable God ? or is 
 He a changeable God ? " At one time, 
 when a great anti-slavery orator in America, 
 in the crisis of affairs, was finding fault with 
 God for allowing slavery to be continued in 
 America so long, a poor old coloured slave 
 rose in the meeting and said, ** Mr. Douglas, 
 answer me this question : Do you think that 
 God is dead ? " A singular rebuke from a poor, 
 ignorant coloured woman. She was enduring 
 slavery with the confidence that God was 
 not dead and that a time of retribution and 
 deliverance would come. And here the 
 children of Israel, just brought out of Egypt, 
 with a strong hand and mighty arm, with 
 tremendous judgments on the Egyptians, and 
 deliverances for themselves, no more than 
 got to Rephidim than they said, " Is the 
 Lord among us or not ? " 
 
 Notice, also, the provocation ? This was 
 a want of water; and two of the greatest 
 miracles already performed on their behalf 
 had been miracles with water. When they 
 
78 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 went over the Red Sea, God piled up the 
 waters as a wall, and then He let down the 
 wall on the pursuing Egyptians. And when 
 His people came to Marah, where the 
 water was bitter and they could not drink, 
 He showed them a tree which, being 
 dipped in the waters, turned them to sweet, 
 refreshing draughts. Yet they forgot all 
 about His deliverances. When they come 
 to the third trouble about water, all the 
 memory of the previous dealings of God was 
 cast into oblivion and they said, '' Is the 
 Lord among us or not ? " 
 
 Turn now to Num. xiv. There we are 
 just at the crisis of affairs. The people have 
 come to Kadesh-Barnea, so far on the borders 
 of the land of promise that to this day we 
 are not quite sure whether it was not inside 
 the limits of the land. God had brought 
 them out to bring them in. They were not at 
 the starting-point now ; they were rather at 
 the goal ; and, if they had been believing, they 
 might have entered at once into possession 
 of that land, and saved themselves the other 
 thirty-nine years of journey in the wilderness, 
 and leaving their own carcases by the wilder- 
 ness way. They sent spies into the land, and 
 the spies all came back and told the same 
 story, that it was an attractive land flowing 
 
HABITUAL UNBELIEF 79 
 
 with milk and honey, where the giant Anakim 
 dwelt, with their walled cities and chariots of 
 iron. It is sometimes said that ten spies 
 brought a false report, and two spies a true 
 report. That is a mistake. They all brought 
 the same report, so far as the land was con- 
 cerned ; but that in which Caleb and Joshua 
 differed from the other spies was this : they 
 besought the people in faith to go up and 
 possess the land, to take sides with God and 
 defy those foes ; and the other ten admitted 
 the fertility of the land, but advised them not 
 to attempt to cope with the giants. And be- 
 cause Caleb and Joshua had not only set an 
 example of belief in God, but urged all others 
 to believe, the people were going to stone 
 them to death and would have done so, but 
 for the Voice that spoke out of the Pillar of 
 Cloud. Look at what unbelief can do. Not 
 only did it prompt the people to rebel against 
 God, and refuse His promised possession, and 
 halt on the very borders of the land, to which 
 He had brought them with such wonderful 
 interposition ; but it made them ready to stone 
 those that urged them to the career and con- 
 duct of faith. A most marvellous exhibition ! 
 Now see what God says : " Because all 
 those men which have seen My glory, and 
 My miracles which I did in Egypt and in the 
 
So A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 wilderness, have tempted Me now these ten 
 times, and have not hearkened to My voice ; 
 surely they shall not see the land which I 
 sware unto their fathers, neither shall any of 
 them that provoked Me see it ; but My 
 servant Caleb, because he had another spirit 
 with him, and hath followed Me fully, him will 
 I bring into the land, whereunto he went." 
 
 Not only did his seed possess the land, but 
 the inheritance of Caleb was the very strong- 
 hold of the Anakim ; and when he was past 
 eighty years of age, he still retained his origi- 
 nal and pristine youthful vigour to drive out 
 those Anakim and take possession of their 
 fortress. Most remarkable ! But every 
 other man that came out of Egypt, of an age 
 bearing arms, but these two, fell in the wilder- 
 ness, so that the entire wilderness way was 
 lined with a double row of graves, from Sinai 
 to the Jordan. If you will calculate the 
 number of deaths in the wilderness, you will 
 see that they would be sufficient to line that 
 way on both sides with corpses ; and all be- 
 cause of the sin and folly, insult and outrage 
 of unbelief. The *' ten times " is not simply 
 a chance number used by way of complete- 
 ness. This is the tenth occasion on which 
 the people had tempted and provoked God — 
 at the Red Sea in fear of the foe ; at Marah 
 
HABITUAL UNBELIEF 8i 
 
 as to the bitter water ; in the wilderness o 
 Sin as to food ; in the gathering of manna on 
 the Sabbath — which they were forbidden to 
 do — because they did not believe in the pro- 
 vidence of God ; at Rephidim in their com- 
 plaint of the lack of water ; at Sinai in set- 
 ting up a calf as a kind of visible object of 
 worship ; in the cursing by the son of Shelo- 
 mith, recorded in Lev. xxlv. ; in their lusting 
 for flesh at Kibroth-hattaavah (the grave of 
 lust) ; in the report of Aaron and Miriam 
 against Moses ; and in the panic at Kadesh- 
 Barnea. 
 
 Turn now to Isa. vii. 9. It is only a sen- 
 tence, but it belongs to the history of this 
 tremendous crime of unbelief. Isaiah is 
 bidden to say to Ahaz, on behalf of God, " If 
 ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be 
 established." One hundred and thirty years 
 after this, Jehosophat said this to Judah and 
 the inhabitants of Jerusalem at a crisis of 
 peril ; only that he used the positive form 
 instead of the negative. He said, " Believe, 
 and ye shall be established"; Isaiah had 
 said, "If ye will not believe, surely ye shall 
 not be established." Whenever God sets a 
 particular text in the Bible in a peculiar and 
 unique form of rhythm or rhyme, or a play 
 upon words, or something of that kind, He 
 
82 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 means that it shall stand out conspicuous. 
 This verse is not translatable from the 
 Hebrew; it has a rhythm and a rhyme about 
 it that cannot be easily reproduced. I have 
 tried to reproduce it, but with very little 
 success, in this little couplet : 
 
 " If in God ye do not confide, 
 Surely in power ye shall not abide." 
 
 That comes near to it. Or 
 
 *' Surely, if ye will not believe 
 Neither blessing shall ye receive." 
 
 There is som.ething very striking in the 
 Hebrew of this passage that shows God 
 means it shall stand out in this prophecy of 
 Isaiah as a permanent lesson to His Church, 
 that an unbelieving soul forfeits blessing, and 
 makes confirmation in holiness, and a further 
 knowledge and enjoyment of God's presence, 
 impossible. 
 
 Let us go back to Psa. Ixxviii. This psalm 
 is called Asaph's parable ; that is to say it 
 treats the entire history, from Egypt to 
 Canaan, as a parable designed to teach a 
 great lesson. The whole of that career is 
 reviewed, and the main emphasis of this 
 entire psalm is on this temptation, this pro- 
 vocation, this forgetfulness of God, this not 
 believing God, this not remembering God, 
 
HABITUAL UNBELIEF 83 
 
 which constitute such atrocious treatment of 
 Him. You will find, for instance, four times 
 in this psalm, "They provoked the Most 
 High " ; three times, " They tempted Him " ; 
 once, "They grieved Him''; and over and 
 over again such expressions occur as these : 
 "They believed not God," "They trusted not 
 in His salvation," "They tempted and pro- 
 voked the Most High God," " They provoked 
 Him to anger with their high places, and 
 moved Him to jealousy with their graven 
 images." Read the psalm, and interpret in 
 the light of this parable the whole story that 
 occupies Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and 
 Deuteronomy — four books of the Old Testa- 
 ment given to this amazing exhibition of 
 persistent and habitual unbelief toward God, 
 until, under Joshua, they entered into the 
 land of promise, still to repeat their crime 
 and sin of unbelief, until they were finally 
 rejected. Notice in the heart of the psalm 
 that most significant expression (v. 44) "Yea, 
 they turned back, and tempted God, and 
 limited the Holy One of Israel.'' You say 
 " There can be no limitation of Omnipotence." 
 Surely there can be. There are two spheres 
 of power — one the physical, and the other 
 the moral. In the physical sphere nothing 
 is needed but energy. But in the moral 
 
84 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 sphere everything depends upon co-operation. 
 God can do anything in the physical sphere 
 that lies within the bounds of physical power, 
 because He has omnipotent energy. But 
 God, in the moral sphere, can do nothing 
 that is not consistent with the co-operation 
 of His moral subjects.* We must look at 
 this; it is most important. If I go along 
 the etreet and see a man lying in the gutter, 
 dead drunk, I can by purely physical energy 
 lift him up and carry him home. But I 
 cannot, by physical energy, make that 
 drunkard a sober man, a total abstainer. 
 There has to come in moral suasion and 
 persuasion, the influence of moral force ; 
 there must be co-operation. And so Fenelon 
 used to say — and it is a philosophic saying — 
 '* In matters of morals, force is a mistake. 
 Force can never persuade. The only thing 
 that force can do is to compel, and that 
 makes hypocrites." It is a remarkable say- 
 ing, and I pray you, remember it. In the 
 moral sphere of power there must always 
 be co-operation : God scorns to treat 
 human beings as machines. He never made 
 an intelligent being that had not power to 
 sin if he chose ; otherwise obedience would 
 
 • A coloured preacher thus explained election : " Breddren. de 
 Lord, He vote fur ye, and de Debbil, he vote agin ye, and when you 
 vote wid de Lord, dat's election." 
 
HABITUAL UNBELIEF 85 
 
 be mechanical, artificial, compulsory. The 
 very fact that sin has entered the universe, 
 in the angelic and human realms, shows that 
 both angels and men were made in the image 
 of God, with the capacity for independent 
 moral action. It is a tremendous thought 
 that even God Himself cannot control my 
 moral frame, or constrain my moral choice. 
 He cannot prevent me from defying Him 
 and denying Him. He would not exercise 
 His power in such directions, if He could, 
 and He could not if He would. Is it not an 
 awful fact that there are some matters in 
 which we may limit God ? and in so far as 
 we limit Him, we limit ourselves. "Jesus 
 could do no mighty works in Nazareth," 
 where He was brought up, " because of their 
 unbelief." Until you can get out of your 
 way the mountain of unbelief in your own 
 soul, you cannot remove the mountain of un- 
 belief in others who reject your xMaster. You 
 have got to get tiie unbelief out of your own 
 soul first, and then you can do mighty works 
 for God. 
 
 Turn to Luke i. Here is recorded one of 
 the most strikim^j cases of unbelief in the 
 whole New Testament. It belongs in the 
 historic line of thought and study on unbelief. 
 Zacharias was a remarkable man — one of the 
 
86 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 few of whom it is written that he was 
 *' righteous before God, walking in all the 
 commandments and ordinances of the Lord 
 blameless." He is wearing the very robes of 
 a priest ; he is before the altar of incense, 
 which stood for prayer and supplication, and 
 acceptable offering and worship. Right 
 there in the administration of the duties of 
 his course, in the peculiar and consecrated 
 garments of his priestly office, while engaged 
 in the solemn service of the offering up of 
 incense, God sends to him His own glorious 
 angel, not only to tell him that his prayer is 
 heard, and that Elizabeth shall bear a son, 
 but to make unmistakable His message by 
 giving him in the three verses that follow, an 
 outline of the entire career of John the Bap- 
 tist. And yet, Zacharias, the priest, the 
 praying man, in the office of his course, not- 
 withstanding his righteousness and blame- 
 lessness before God, has the arrogance and 
 impudence to ask, " Whereby shall I know 
 this ? " as if there were needed any confirm- 
 atory sign of God's emphatic promise when 
 announced to him under these circumstances. 
 Then there came upon him a typical judg- 
 ment. He was, no doubt, from that moment 
 a deaf-mute — not only speechless, but deaf, 
 for you will observe, in the next chapter, 
 
Habitual uxbelief 87 
 
 how they did not speak to him, but com- 
 municated with him through a writing-tablet ; 
 which shows that he was a deaf-mute, stone 
 deaf and absolutely unable to speak even in 
 a whisper. What does that suggest? That 
 unbelief shuts your ear to God, and shuts 
 your mouth to men. The prevalence of un- 
 belief on your part may make you deaf to 
 further communication from God, and 
 absolutely worthless in your testimony to 
 men — a paralysis of your hearing, and a 
 paralysis of your tongue. There are scores 
 of disciples to-day who cannot hear plainly 
 what God speaks, because of a habitual 
 unbelief, and their testimony also has been 
 wrecked. They have nothing to say ; they 
 cannot witness, " God has done this for me," 
 because they have not put Him to the test ; 
 they have no testimony for their sorrowing 
 and distressed fellow human beings, because 
 of their own position of unbelief before God. 
 Turn to Heb. iii. 7 — iv. 11. This whole 
 section of this Epistle is a New Testament 
 review, a parable of that same desert journey 
 treated in Psa. Ixxviii. Never study that 
 story in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and 
 Deuteronomy, without putting over alongside 
 of it this remarkable passage in Hebrews. 
 God has given us here an inspired explana- 
 
§8 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 tion, interpretation, and application of the 
 whole story of the Israelites in the desert. 
 Here again we meet these two awful words 
 referred to already in Exodus xvii. , temptation 
 and provocation, over and over again. " Some, 
 when they had heard, did provoke "; *' Take 
 heed, lest there be in any of you an evil heart 
 of unbelief, in departing from the living 
 God'*; ''To-day, if ye will hear His voice, 
 harden not your hearts, as in the provoca- 
 tion," Study the whole passage, and see 
 how we are taught here, that all those men 
 who left their carcases in the wilderness fell 
 simply through unbelief; and you may leave 
 your carcases in the vvilderness if you do not 
 give up the crime and sin of your unbelief. 
 It does not say that you will be finally lost. 
 You may get into heaven as by a back door ; 
 hilt your present rest in this life, for which, I 
 believe, Canaan stands — spiritual liberty and 
 fertility, constant communion with God, 
 abiding in His presence, victory over the 
 enemy — all these things, together with ** the 
 peace of God that passeth all understanding," 
 you may permanently forfeit, so far as your 
 present life is concerned, simply by the 
 crime of unbelief. 
 
 Turn to Heb. vi. 6 : " Seeing they crucify 
 to themselves the Son of God afresh, and 
 
HABITUAL UNBELIEF 89 
 
 put Him to an open shame." Compare 
 Heb. X. 29 : " Who hath trodden under foot 
 the Son of God, and hath counted the blood 
 of the covenant, wherewith He was sancti- 
 fied, an unholy thing, and hath done despite 
 unto the Spirit of grace." Both of these 
 passages are essentially an arraignment of 
 unbelief, in that highest form of crime of 
 which unbelief is capable. This demands 
 most careful attention, lest we fail to realize 
 the awful criminality of unbelief. 
 
 There are three things that unbelief makes 
 void. First, it makes void the Word of God. 
 It were as well that God had not spoken to 
 you and emphasised His promises by such 
 universal terms and such repetitious forms 
 of statement, if you do not believe His 
 promises and take and appropriate them as 
 the basis of your faith and life. This is just 
 as plain as it can be. Of what use are all 
 the thousands of years of preparation of this 
 Bible, if God's Word does not become to you 
 personally the basis of your whole trust and 
 conduct ! 
 
 Then unbelief also makes void the sacrifice 
 of Jesus Christ. God gave His only Son a 
 sacrifice for the world, He gave all He had, 
 He gave at infinite cost, for an infinite 
 ransom was paid. If you reject Jesus Christ, 
 
90 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 or fail to make Him your Saviour, it is for 
 you as though God had not given Christ, and 
 Christ had not died. This stupendous sacri- 
 fice on the part of God youare virtually fling- 
 ing away as nothing. We can never appre- 
 ciate the tremendous guilt of unbelief if we 
 do not see that thus it crucifies the Son of 
 God afresh. That is to say, it is as though 
 you crucified Him for nothing, and put Him 
 to an open shame without any reward for 
 His sufferings ; and, instead of sprinkling the 
 blood on each side of the door-post, and 
 above the head, as your protection, you are 
 pouring it out on the threshold and trampling 
 it under foot ; instead of taking shelter under 
 it, you are treating it with contempt. What 
 an arraignment of unbelief. 
 
 More than this, you are doing despite to the 
 Spirit of grace. There was a probation oilaw, 
 God said to Adam, "This do and thou shalt 
 live." But Adam failed in his probation of 
 law, and the chance of such probation for ever 
 passed away from the human race. There 
 can never be a second probation of law, for 
 law must always regard you as a transgressor. 
 God therefore gave a new probation of grace. 
 He put His Son before you on the Cross and 
 said, "You have only to believe in Him, and 
 your sins shall not be mentioned to you." 
 
HABITUAL UNBELIEF :)i 
 
 And so He pretermits j^our offences. Rom. 
 HL 25 (marg). What is pretermission ? It 
 is more than remission. Pretermission is 
 passing by, through Divine forebarance. You 
 siiij God passes your sin by. You sin again, 
 and in ten thousand forms. He passes them 
 all by, He puts them behind His back, for the 
 time, to see how you are going to deal with 
 His Son. This is your probation of grace. If 
 you accept His Son, He never returns to those 
 sins ; they are swallowed up in oblivion by 
 virtue of the atoning blood. But, if you reject 
 His Son, He is compelled, as governmental 
 Judge, to take up everyone of those sins that 
 He has pretermitted for the time being, and 
 deal w^ith them in legal justice, giving every 
 transgression its just recompense of reward; 
 and ending up by dealing with you for that 
 greatest of sins, the rejection of Christ, 
 with the offer of pardon — the rejection of the 
 Atonement. 
 
 And so, unbelief not only crucifies the Son 
 of God afresh, and puts Him to an open 
 shame, trampling under foot the blood that 
 should have been put on the door-posts on 
 each side, and over head ; but it makes the 
 dispensation of grace by the Holy Ghost 
 absolutely void, nay, worse than void; for 
 the grace that, instead of saying, " This do 
 
92 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 and thou shalt live," says, " This believe, and 
 thou shalt live," goes for nothing, and worse 
 than nothing, only adding to the condemna- 
 tion of the transgressor. It needs the 
 tongue of an angel to do justice to this 
 theme. But it is an awful fact that men 
 consider unbelief a trifling sin against God, 
 while it is the one damning sin, the one sin 
 that, if persisted in, has no forgiveness, 
 because it forfeits forgiveness and rejects the 
 Atonement. 
 
 We are now prepared to understand why, 
 in Rev. xxi. 8, w^e find, in that fearful cata- 
 logue of sin and crime against God, unbelief 
 put alongside of the most flagrant iniquity : 
 " But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the 
 abominable, and murderers, and whore- 
 mongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and 
 all liars, shall have their part in the lake 
 which burneth with fire and brimstone : 
 which is the second death." Observe, and 
 do not forget it ! — the same condemnation 
 that awaits the abominable— the murderers, 
 the whoremongers, the sorcerers, the idola- 
 ters, is reserved also for the unbeUeving 
 Do not ever think of unbelief as a trivial sin 
 when God puts it in such an awful category 
 of crime. 
 
 Let us review this terrible indictment 
 
HABITUAL UNBELIEF 9^ 
 
 and argument. Unbelief limits the power of 
 God, and limits the power of man ; unbelief 
 paralyses testimony, and makes us deaf 
 to the voice of God ; unbelief is a per- 
 manent forfeiture of blessing, as when Esau 
 bartered his birthright for a mess of pottage, 
 and could not get back what he had sold, at 
 any price whatever. You may lose your 
 life's opportunities and privileges, and even 
 God cannot give them back ; for He cannot 
 restore the lost hour, the wasted year, the 
 mis-spent life. What unbelief has forfeited, 
 no power can give back. He may restore the 
 years that the palmer-worm, the locust, the 
 canker-worm, and the caterpillar have des- 
 troyed, by an extra-abundant harvest to the 
 famished land ; but He can never give such 
 compensating abundance to the famished life 
 of an unbelieving soul. If you have lost your 
 time of sowing, you cannot make up for it in 
 your time of reaping ; if you have lost your 
 chance of confiding and trusting, you cannot 
 make up for it in the repentance of a dying 
 bed. God gives life, with all its capacities, 
 talents, opportunities and privileges, for 
 service. If it is investedfor self, it can never 
 be got back to invest for God ; if it is lost 
 through unbelief, it can never be got back by 
 a final act of faith. 
 
94 A SPIRITUAL CLINIQUE 
 
 The question is, What are you going to 
 do with your life ? Unbelief virtually makes 
 void the Word of God, the Sacrifice of Christ, 
 and the dispensation and work of the Holy 
 Ghost ; and therefore unbelief is represented 
 in the Bible, as the one and only thing that 
 exasperates God. That is not too strong 
 a word with which to translate the original. 
 Exasperation means to rub into roughness. 
 The original is a remarkable word, which 
 can hardly be translated by any other term. 
 The idea is that the very grace of God is 
 perverted into opposition and roughness by 
 an unbelieving soul ; that even infinite 
 forbearance has a limit, and this limit is 
 reached in unbelief. God is not so much 
 exasperated by the transgression of every 
 command of the Decalogue, as He is by the 
 one form of sin found in the rejection of His 
 promises in the Word, of His sacrifice in His 
 Son, and of His pleading and tenderness in 
 His Spirit. 
 
 There is but one thing to do with unbelief, 
 for ever abandon it ! Whatever else you do, 
 solemnly covenant with God that you will 
 believe His Word, trust His Son, yield to 
 His Spirit ; that you will step out upon His 
 promises, and dare to venture something for 
 His sake, without regard to feeling ; and with 
 
HABITUAL UNBELIEF 95 
 
 single-hearted resting upon His immutable 
 Word. The French translation of Hebrews 
 X. 23, is — " He who hath made a promise can 
 keep His promise:' To do that is faith ! Do 
 not look at surroundings, do not ask for signs 
 or wait for further evidence, but walk right 
 out on the Divine promise — trust it abso- 
 lutely, for the subduing of sin, for the answer- 
 ing of prayer, for the dispersion of darkness ; 
 and the triumph of faith will also be the 
 victory over sin, the triumph of prayer, the 
 emergence of the soul out of darkness into 
 the conscious light of God ! 
 

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