OK, 
 
 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 DD012375b33 
 
LIBRARY OP CONGRESS. 
 
 Cha P« Copyright No. 
 
 UNITED SXATES OF AMERICA. 
 
 V 
 
SEv 
 
 OP/, 
 
 I6b9. 
 
COURTESY OF NORTHFIELD ECHOES.' 
 
Hnbrew fll>urra\> Jj?ear Book 
 
 COMPILED BY 
 
 M. J. SHEPPERSON 
 
 ADDRHSS : 
 
 'WATCHWORD AND TRUTH'' 
 Box 5326. Boston, Mass. 
 
The Library 
 of Congress 
 
 T5V M-* iz 
 
 WASHINGTON 
 
 27904 
 
 Copyrighted 1899 
 
 by 
 
 Mary Johnson Shepperson. 
 
 TWO COPIES R£C-tV£0. 
 
 ) 1899 
 
 
To Rev* Andrew Murray, 
 
 one of my first teachers, 
 
 who has shown me the 
 
 value of -prayer 
 
 and 
 
 the blessedness of abiding 
 
 in Christ. 
 
PRAYER. 
 
 Lord teach us how to pray. (Lukeii :i). My soul 
 is silent unto God. (Psalm 62:1). Upon Thee do 
 I wait all the day. (Psalm 25:5). Keep us abiding 
 in Christ (John 15:7), and let His Word dwell in 
 us richly (Col. 3:10)., that we may be perfect and 
 fully assured in all Thy will. (Col. 4:12). Direct our 
 hearts into the patience of Christ. (2 Thess. 3:5). 
 Send us Thy faith and Thy love (Mark 11:23), 
 which is the bond of perfectness. (Col. 3:14). Make 
 us humble that Thou may est exalt us in due time. 
 (1 Peter 5:6). Thou wilt show Thyself strong (2 
 Chron. 16:8-9) in behalf of those whose hearts are 
 perfect before Thee, and we are complete in Him. 
 (Col. 2:10). Hear our prayers for all saints (Rom. 
 8:26, 34; Eph. 4:12) and for the heathen. (Psalm 
 2:8; Heb. 2:10-11). — Amen! 
 
IN TIME OF TROUBLE SAY: 
 
 First — 
 
 He brought me here — it is by His will I am in 
 this strait place ; in that will I rest. 
 
 Next — 
 
 He will keep me in His love, and give me grace 
 in this trial to behave as His child. 
 
 Then — 
 
 He will make the trial a blessing, teaching me the 
 lessons He means me to learn, and working in me 
 the grace He intends for me. 
 
 Last — 
 
 In His good time He can bring me out again, 
 how and when He knows. 
 
 Say — I am here 
 
 i. By God's appointment. 
 
 2. In God's keeping. 
 
 3. Under His training. 
 
 4. For His time. 
 
 Andrew Murray. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 I have been asked to write an introduction to a 
 collection of extracts from my books. I gladly do 
 so, as an acknowledgment of the love that has actu- 
 ated the labor, and to bid the little book Godspeed 
 on its way. When a servant of God knows that he 
 has a message, however defective its delivery be, it 
 is a joy to know that it has reached other hearts, 
 and that it is by them being passed on farther. 
 
 If any one asks me what that message has 
 been, I think I may say honestly that it was nothing 
 but this — that our Lord Jesus is willing to be far 
 more to us than we know. All that we have enjoyed 
 of Him is only a beginning. He is waiting to dis- 
 possess and deliver from the life of Self and self 
 effort, and to let the life, and the light, and the love 
 of God fill us, and be our life in a degree and a 
 power, we have very little idea of. For all that the 
 Lord has allowed me to say, of the possibility of 
 Abiding in Him, of being Like Him, of entering with 
 Him into the Secret of prayer and intercession, into 
 
IO LIFE OF REV. ANDREW MURRAY. 
 
 On his return, he married and resumed work in 
 the Free State for three years, after which he ac- 
 cepted a call to Worcester, in the colony. While 
 there the wave of blessing which commenced in 
 America, and crossed over to Great Britain, visited 
 Africa and began in his congregation. This revival 
 led to his writing those devotional books in Dutch, 
 which being rewritten later on in English, has made 
 his name so widely honored and dearly loved. It 
 was during his ministry here, that he was chosen 
 moderator of his church, which position he retained 
 more than twenty-five years. A vacancy occurring 
 in the Cape Town church, he accepted a call there, 
 where he labored for seven years; but the strain 
 of the Collegiate system and joint pastorate was too 
 great for him, and he finally took a smaller charge 
 at Wellington. His congregation is principally 
 composed of French Huguenots, and here in 1874, 
 inspired by the life of Mary Lyons, he founded the 
 Huguenot seminary for girls. This school has 
 eight hundred pupils, and branch seminaries at 
 Paarl, Free State, Natal. The course includes 
 Kindergarten, Normal Training and College. Many 
 hundreds of these young women are working as 
 Christian teachers, while quite one hundred are, or 
 have been missionaries. Mr. Murray has ever taken 
 an active part in the Home and Foreign missions of 
 his church, and a sense of the need of workers led 
 to his starting a Mission Training College, where 
 
LIFE OF REV. ANDREW MURRAY. II 
 
 young men are trained in mission work and teach- 
 ing, in 1882. He is the President of the Dutch Re- 
 formed Church mission work in Nyassaland, where 
 several of the young men and maidens of Welling- 
 ton are working. 
 
 He is also President of the South African General 
 Mission, formed in 1894. This work is undenomi- 
 national, among Jews, Africans, Hindoos and 
 Europeans, and is under an executive board in South 
 Africa, and a council in England. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 January — Absolute Surrender. The True Vine.. 15 
 
 February — Abide in Christ 35 
 
 March — Like Christ 44 
 
 April — Spirit of Christ 53 
 
 May — With Christ. Ministry of Intercession. . 62 
 
 June — New Life 79 
 
 July — Holy in Christ. Love Made Perfect. Be 
 
 Perfect 88 
 
 August — Deeper Christian Life. Eagle Wings 
 
 [English]. Waiting on God. Within.... 98 
 September — Jesus Himself. Out of His Ful- 
 ness. Master's Indwelling and Spiritual 
 
 Life in U. S. A 109 
 
 October— Why Do You Not Believe? Hu- 
 mility 123 
 
 November — Cross of Christ [in press] . Let Us 
 
 Draw Nigh. Lord's Table 137 
 
 December — Children for Christ. Grace of God 
 
 and Money. Lord, Have Mercy 156 
 
 The Two Covenants 168 
 
 The School of Obedience [English] 176 
 
Hnfcrew flDurra^ U)ear Book* 
 
 JANUARY. 
 
 ABSOLUTE SURRENDER. 
 
 1st. — When you get a promise from God it is 
 worth just as much as a fulfilment. Only honor 
 Him by trusting the promise and obeying Him, and 
 any preparation that you still need, God knows 
 about ; if there is anything that is to be opened up 
 to you, He will do it, if you count upon Him to do 
 it. Do not look to what we say or to what you 
 think and understand. Look to God and expect 
 God to do something. 
 
 The true taking away of sin is this: — If the light 
 comes in the darkness is expelled. It is the pres- 
 ence of Jesus indwelling by the Holy Spirit, that 
 can make us holy. 
 
 The Spirit did all on the day of Pentecost and 
 afterwards. It was the Spirit who gave the bold- 
 ness, the wisdom, the message, the converting 
 power. 
 
1 6 JANUARY. 
 
 2(1. — Let everyone who longs for the blessing of 
 the Spirit take these four little words as steps: — I 
 must be filled, I may be filled, I would be filled, I 
 shall be filled. 
 
 What is obedience? Giving up my will to 
 the will of another. Christ said, "Not my will, but 
 Thine be done." Jesus gave up His life to God. 
 and thereby taught us that the only thing that life 
 is worth living for is to give it back to God even 
 unto death. 
 
 Christ could never have ascended to sit upon the 
 throne, never could have accomplished His work 
 of preparing the Kingdom that He could give to the 
 Father, if He had not begun by giving up Himself, 
 and let God do all. 
 
 3rd. — The throne in heaven is not the throne of 
 the Lamb of God alone; it is the throne of God. 
 and the Lamb. Jesus went to share the throne 
 with the Father, the Father was always the first and 
 Jesus the second. 
 
 There are two spirits on earth, Paul said: "We 
 have received not the spirit of the world, but the 
 Spirit that is of God." That is the great want in 
 every worker — the spirit of the world going out, 
 and the Spirit of God coming in to take possession 
 of the inner life and of the whole being. 
 
JANUARY. 17 
 
 Oh, what fellowship! The Holy Spirit in heaven 
 doing part of the work, man on earth doing the 
 other part. After the ordination of the men upon 
 earth, it is written in God's inspired Word that they 
 were sent forth by the Holy Ghost. 
 
 4th. — Jesus said to Peter: "Deny Thyself," and 
 again "Thou wilt deny me." There is no choice 
 for us, we must either deny self or deny Christ. 
 
 It is when the individual workers are blessed that 
 the work will prosper, and the body be in health 
 and strength. 
 
 Before God took His Son up to heaven, He let 
 Him live here upon earth, that in His life I might 
 have a complete representation of what my God 
 wanted me to be and was willing to make me. 
 
 Absolute surrender! How am I to live that life? 
 The Father points to the beloved Son and says: 
 "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well 
 pleased." Hear Him, follow Him, live like Him, 
 let Christ be the rule of your life. 
 
 Deliverance from the self-life means to be a ves- 
 sel overflowing with love to everybody all the day. 
 
 5th. — If a vessel that ought to be one whole is 
 cracked into many pieces, it cannot be filled. You 
 can take out one part and dip out a little water, but 
 
1 8 JANUARY. 
 
 if you want the vessel full, the vessel must be whole. 
 This is true of Christ's church. If there is one 
 thing we have to pray for it is this: Lord, melt us 
 together into One by the power of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 The will of the creature is nothing but an empty 
 vessel in which the power of God is to be made 
 manifest. 
 
 God does not work by His Spirit as He works 
 by a blind force in nature. He leads His people 
 on as reasonable, intelligent beings, and, therefore, 
 when we have come to the end of self, to the con- 
 viction that though we have been striving to obey 
 the law, we have failed, then He shows us that in 
 the Holy Spirit we have the power of obedience, 
 victory, real holiness. 
 
 6th. — When a question is asked an answer is ex- 
 pected. Alas, how many Christians are content 
 with the question: "O, wretched man that I am! 
 Who shall deliver me from the body of this death ?" 
 Instead of saying: "I thank God through Jesus 
 Christ our Lord," they are forever repeating the 
 question without the answer. 
 
 God has called the Church of Christ to live in the 
 power of the Holy Spirit, and the Church is living 
 for the most part in the power of human flesh, and of 
 will and energy and effort apart from the Spirit of 
 
JANUARY. 19 
 
 God. If the Church will return to acknowledge 
 that the Holy Spirit is her strength and her help, to 
 give up everything and wait upon God to be filled 
 with the Spirit, her days of beauty and gladness will 
 return, and we shall see the glory of God revealed 
 amongst us. 
 
 7th. — I have often been asked by young Chris- 
 tians, "Why is it that I fail so? I did so solemnly 
 vow with my whole heartand did desire to serveGod; 
 why have I failed ?" You are trying to do in your 
 own strength what Christ alone can do in you. You 
 were trusting in yourself or you could not have 
 failed. If you had trusted Christ, He could not 
 fail. 
 
 You cannot work out God's will, but His Holy 
 Spirit can; and until the Church, until believers 
 grasp this and cease trying by human effort to do 
 God's will, and wait upon the Holy Spirit to come 
 with all His omnipotent and enabling power, the 
 Church will never be what God wants her to be, 
 and what God is willing to make of her. 
 
 We find the Christian life so difficult because we 
 seek for God's blessing, while we live in our own 
 will. We make our own plans and choose our own 
 work and then we ask Him to give us His blessing. 
 
 8th. — You may have ten hours' hard work daily, 
 
20 JANUARY. 
 
 during which your brain has to be occupied with 
 temporal things ; God orders it so. But abiding in 
 Jesus is the work of the heart, not of the brain, the 
 heart clinging to and resting in Jesus, a work in 
 which the Holy Spirit links us to Jesus. Deeper 
 down than the brain, deep down in the inner life, 
 you can abide in Christ so that every moment you 
 are free the consciousness will come: Blessed Jesus, 
 I am still in Thee. 
 
 Do not confound work and fruit. There may 
 be a good deal of work for Christians that is not the 
 fruit of the Heavenly Vine. Do not seek for work 
 only. Fruit bearing means the very life and power 
 and spirit and love within the heart of the Son of 
 God — the Heavenly Vine Himself coming into your 
 heart and mine. 
 
 9th. — God hath begotten us to an inheritance 
 incorruptible, reserved in heaven for you, who are 
 kept by the power of God. My God is keeping the 
 inheritance for me, and keeping me for the inheri- 
 tance. The same power, the same love, the same 
 God doing the double work. 
 
 I have a watch borrowed from a friend. I in- 
 jure the watch, the hands are broken, face defaced, 
 some of the wheels and springs spoiled, and I take 
 it back in that condition. My friend would say: 
 
JANUARY. 21 
 
 "I did not want you to keep my watch so that you 
 should bring me back only the shell of the watch. 
 I expected you to keep every part of it." So God 
 does not want to keep us in this general way, so 
 that we shall just get into heaven; but the keeping- 
 power and love of God applies to every particular 
 of our being. 
 
 ioth. — The altar sanctifies the gift; Christ is not 
 only the Priest and the Victim, but the Living 
 Christ is Himself the Altar. All unworthy and all 
 feeble though I be, the altar sanctifies the gift, and 
 in Jesus and resting on Him, my God accepts my 
 feebleness, and I am well pleasing in His sight. 
 
 Do you see yonder clock? If I see that the hands 
 stand still, and point wrong, and that the clock is slow 
 or fast, I say that there is something inside the 
 clock that is wrong. Temper is like the revelation 
 that the clock gives of what is within, is a proof of 
 whether the love of Christ is filling the heart. 
 
 nth. — Does it cost the lamb any trouble to be 
 jentle? No, it is its nature. Why does it cost a 
 wolf no trouble to be cruel and to put its fangs into 
 the poor lamb? Because that is its nature. How 
 can I learn to love? Never, until the Spirit of God 
 fills my heart with God's love. 
 
 There is a difference between the power of the 
 
22 JANUARY. 
 
 Spirit as a gift and the power of the Spirit for the 
 grace of a holy life. A man may often have a 
 measure of the power of the Spirit, but if there be 
 not a large measure of the Spirit as the Spirit of 
 grace and of holiness, the defect will be manifest in 
 his work. 
 
 1 2th. — On the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit 
 came, and Peter was a changed man. When he 
 said to Christ, "Thou never canst suffer," he had 
 not a conception of what it was to pass through 
 death into life. When I hear him say, "If ye be 
 reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye, 
 for the Spirit of God and of glory resteth upon you," 
 that is not the old Peter, but the very Spirit of 
 Christ breathing and speaking within him. 
 
 Suppose that when a painter came into his studio 
 to paint an unfinished picture, the canvas always 
 removed to some other part of the room. Of course 
 the painter could not paint. Suppose the canvas to 
 say: "O, painter, I will be still, come and paint thy 
 beautiful picture." Then the painter would come 
 and do it. Say to God, "Thou art the wondrous 
 artist. I am still. I trust Thy power." God will 
 then work wonders with you. God never works 
 anything but wonders. 
 
 13th. — Your religious life is every day to be a 
 
JANUARY. 23 
 
 proof that God works impossibilities ; your religious 
 life is to be a series of impossibilities made possible 
 and actual by God's Almighty power. I do not want 
 a little of God's power, but I want — with reverence 
 be it said — the whole of God's omnipotence to keep 
 me right and make me live like a Christian. 
 
 Is it not often true that our work comes between 
 us and Jesus? Sad thought that the bearing of 
 fruit should separate the branch from the vine. 
 That must be because we have looked upon our 
 work as something else than the branch bearing 
 fruit. 
 
 I thank God for the interest that He is awakening 
 in foreign missions, in drunkards, in the poor out- 
 cast, but your middle classes, your richer and higher 
 classes, is there no power in your duty to take the 
 gospel to them boldly? 
 
 THE TRUE VINE. 
 
 14th. — All that Christ is and has, He has, not in 
 Himself, but from the Father. Before He ever 
 uses the word, or speaks at all of abiding in Him, 
 or bearing fruit, Christ turns their eyes heavenward 
 to the Father watching over them, and working 
 all in them. The great lack of the Christian life 
 is that, even where we trust Christ, we leave God 
 
24 JANUARY. 
 
 out of the count. Christ came to bring us to God. 
 Christ lived the life of a man exactly as we have to 
 live it. Christ, the Vine, points to God, the Hus- 
 bandman. 
 
 15th. — Think of the vine first: — the branch has 
 but one object for which it exists, one purpose to 
 which it is entirely given up, — to bear the fruit the 
 vine wishes to bring forth. And so the believer has 
 but one reason for his being a Branch — but one rea- 
 son for his existence on earth — that the Heavenly 
 Vine may through him bring forth His fruit. Sec- 
 ond: — the branch is exactly like the vine in every 
 aspect — the same nature, the same life, the same 
 place, the same work. In all this they are insepar- 
 ably one. And so the believer needs to know that 
 he is partaker of the Divine nature, and has the 
 very nature and spirit of Christ in him, and that his 
 one calling is, to yield himself to a perfect con- 
 formity to Christ. Third: — The vine has its stores 
 of life and sap and strength, not for itself, but for the 
 branches. The branches are and have nothing, but 
 what the vine provides and imparts. The branch 
 has but to yield itself and receive. This truth leads 
 to the blessed rest of faith, the true secret of growth 
 and strength: "I can do all things through Christ 
 which strengtheneth me." 
 
 16th. — Ere we begin to think of fruit or branches, 
 
JANUARY. 25 
 
 let us have our heart filled with the faith: as glori- 
 ous as the Vine is the Husbandman. As high and 
 holy as is our calling, so mighty and loving is the 
 God who will work it all. As surely as the Hus- 
 bandman made the Vine what it was to be, will He 
 make each branch what it is to be. Many Christ- 
 ians think their own salvation is the first thing; then 
 temporal life the second; and what is left of time 
 and interest may be devoted to fruit bearing to the 
 saving of men; in most cases, very little time or 
 interest can be found. The one condition of my 
 abiding and growing strong is that I bear the fruit 
 of the Heavenly Vine for dying men to eat and 
 live. 
 
 17th. — As churches and individuals, we are in 
 danger of nothing so much as self-contentment. 
 The secret spirit of Laodicea: We are rich and in- 
 creased in goods, and have need of nothing, — may 
 prevail where not suspected. The Divine warning: 
 Poor and wretched and miserable, finds little re- 
 sponse just where most needed. Let us not rest 
 content with the thought that we are taking an 
 equal share with others in the work, or that men 
 are satisfied with our efforts. Let our only desire 
 be to know whether we are bearing all the fruit 
 Christ is willing to give through us as living 
 Branches, in close and living union with Himself. 
 
 18th. — What a solemn, precious lesson! It is 
 
26 JANUARY. 
 
 not to sin only, that the cleansing of the Husband- 
 man refers. It is to our own religious activity, as 
 it is developed in the very act of bearing fruit. In 
 working for God, our natural gifts of wisdom, or 
 eloquence, or influence, or zeal are ever in danger of 
 being unduly developed, and then trusted in. So, 
 after each season of work, God has to bring us to the 
 end of ourselves, to the consciousness of the help- 
 lessness and the danger of all that is of man, to feel 
 that we are nothing. All that is to be left of us is 
 just enough to receive the power of the life-giving 
 sap of the Holy Spirit. What is of man must be 
 reduced to its very lowest measure. All that is in- 
 consistent with the most entire devotion to Christ's 
 service, must be removed. The more perfect the 
 cleansing and cutting away of all that is of self, the 
 less of surface over which the Holy Spirit is to be 
 spread, so much the more intense can be the con- 
 centration of our whole being, to be entirely at the 
 disposal of the Spirit. 
 
 19th. — Many believers pray and long very earn- 
 estly for the filling of the Spirit and the indwelling 
 of Christ, and wonder that they do not make more 
 progress. The reason is often this, the "I in you" 
 cannot come because the "Abide in Me" is not 
 maintained. "There is one body and one spirit;" 
 before the Spirit can fill, there must be a body pre- 
 pared. The graft must have grown into the stem, 
 
JANUARY. 27 
 
 and be abiding in it before the sap can flow through 
 to bring forth fruit. It is as in lowly obedience we 
 follow Christ, even in external things, denying our- 
 selves, forsaking the world, and even in the body, 
 seeking to be conformable to Him, as we thus seek 
 to abide in Him, that we shall be able to receive 
 and enjoy the "I in you." The work enjoined on 
 us: "Abide in Me," will prepare us for the work 
 undertaken by Him: "I in you." 
 
 The vision of Christ is an irresistible attraction; 
 it draws and holds us like a magnet. Listen ever 
 to the living Christ still speaking to you, and wait- 
 ing to show r you the meaning and power of His 
 word: / am the Vine. So it sometimes comes, 
 that souls who have never been specially occupied 
 with the thought of abiding, are abiding all the 
 time, because they are occupied with Christ. 
 
 20th. — Have you ever noticed the difference in 
 the Christian life between work and fruit? A 
 machine can do work; only life can bear fruit. A 
 law can compel work; only love can spontaneously 
 bring forth fruit. Work implies effort and labor; 
 the essential idea of fruit is, that it is the silent, 
 natural, restful produce of our inner life. The con- 
 nection between work and fruit is, perhaps, best 
 seen in the expression, "fruitful in every good 
 work." (Col. 1. 10.) It is only when good works 
 come as the fruit of the indwelling Spirit that they 
 
28 JANUARY. 
 
 are acceptable to God. Under the compulsion of 
 law and conscience, or the influence of inclination 
 and zeal, men may be most diligent in good works, 
 and yet find that they have but little spiritual re- 
 sult. Their works are man's effort, instead of being 
 the fruit of the Spirit, the restful, natural outcome 
 of the Spirit's operation within us. 
 
 2 1 st. — A deep conviction of the truth of this 
 word, "Except ye abide in Me, ye can do nothing," 
 lies at the very root of a strong spiritual life. As 
 little as I created myself, as little as I could raise 
 a man from the dead, can I give myself the Divine 
 life, maintain or increase it: every motion is the 
 work of God through Christ and His Spirit. As a 
 man believes this, he will take up that position of 
 entire and continual dependence which is the very 
 essence of the life of faith. His whole heart says 
 Amen to the word: You can do nothing. And just 
 because he does so, he can also say: "I can do all 
 things in Christ who strengtheneth me." 
 
 22nd. — We can only fulfil our calling to bear 
 much fruit, by praying much. In Christ are hid all 
 the treasures men around us need; in Him all God's 
 children are blessed with all spiritual blessings ; He 
 is full of grace and truth. But it needs prayer, 
 much prayer, strong believing prayer, to bring 
 these blessings down. We cannot appropriate the 
 
JANUARY. 29 
 
 promise in John xv. 7, without a life given up for 
 men. 
 
 23rd. — There have always been a smaller number 
 of God's people who have sought to serve Him 
 with their whole heart, while the majority have been 
 content with a very small measure of the knowledge 
 of His grace and will. 
 
 And what is the difference between this smaller 
 inner circle and the many who do not seek admis- 
 sion to it? We find it in the words: Much fruit. 
 With many Christians the thought of personal 
 safety, which at their first awakening was a legiti- 
 mate one, remains to the end the one aim of their 
 religion. The idea of service and fruit is always a 
 secondary and very subordinate one. We see in 
 God's Word everywhere these two classes of dis- 
 ciples. Let our desire be nothing less than perfect 
 cleansing, unbroken abiding, closest communion, 
 abundant fruitfulness, — true Branches of the True 
 Vine. 
 
 24th. — Some have told of a wonderful change, 
 by which their life of continual failure and stumbling 
 had been changed into a very blessed experience 
 of being kept and strengthened and made exceed- 
 ing glad. If you asked them how this great bless- 
 ing came to them, many would tell you it was 
 
3<3 JANUARY. 
 
 simply this, that they were led to believe that this 
 abiding in Christ's love was meant to be a reality, 
 and that they were made willing to give up every- 
 thing for it, and then enabled to trust Christ to 
 make it true to them. The feebleness of our Christ- 
 ian life is that we do not take time to believe that 
 this Divine love does really delight in us, and will 
 possess and work all in us. We do not take time to 
 look at the Vine bearing the Branch so entirely, 
 working all in it so completely. We strive to do 
 for ourselves what Christ alone can, what Christ, 
 oh! so lovingly, longs to do for us. 
 
 25th. — Through His will, loved and done, lies 
 the path to His love. A sin of ignorance has still 
 the nature of sin. God will deal with this in due 
 time in the way of searching and humbling, and if 
 we be simple and faithful, give us larger deliverance 
 than we dare expect. Obedience has reference to the 
 positive keeping of the commandments of our 
 Lord, and the performance of His will in everything 
 in which we know it. It is the whole-hearted sur- 
 render in everything to do His will, that gives ac- 
 cess to a life in the abiding enjoyment of His love. 
 It is only through knowing God's will one can 
 know His heart, and only through doing that will 
 one can abide in His love. 
 
 26th. — God's will is the very centre of His 
 
JANUARY. 31 
 
 Divine perfection. As revealed in His command- 
 ments, it opens up the way for the creature to grow 
 into the likeness of the Creator. In accepting and 
 doing His will, I rise into fellowship with Himself. 
 Therefore it was that the Son, when coming into the 
 world spoke: I come to do Thy will, O God! This 
 was the place and this would be the blessedness of 
 the creature. This was what he had lost in the 
 Fall. This was what Christ came to restore. This 
 is what, as the Heavenly Vine, He asks of us and 
 imparts to us, that even as He, by keeping His 
 Father's commandments, abode in His love, we 
 should keep His commandments and abide in His 
 love. 
 
 27th. — The Word is God's pruning knife, sharper 
 than any two-edged sword that pierces even to the 
 dividing asunder of the soul and spirit, and is 
 quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the 
 heart. Only when affliction leads to the Word, 
 does it become a blessing; the lack of this heart- 
 cleansing through the Word is the reason why 
 affliction is so often unsanctified. Jesus says, "Ye 
 are already clean because of the Word I have spoken 
 unto you." It is as the soul gives up its own 
 thoughts and men's thoughts of what is religion, 
 and yields itself heartily, humbly, patiently, to the 
 teaching of the Word by the Spirit, that the 
 Father will do His blessed work of pruning and 
 
32 JANUARY. 
 
 cleansing away all of nature and self that mixes 
 with our work and hinders His Spirit. If any one 
 asks, "How can I be a happy Christian?" our 
 Lord's answer is very simple: "These things," 
 about the Vine and the Branches, "I have spoken to 
 you that My joy may be in you and that your joy 
 may be fulfilled." You cannot have my joy without 
 My life. Abide in Me and let Me abide in you, and 
 My joy will be in you. All healthy life is a thing 
 of joy and beauty ; live undividedly the Branch life ; 
 you will have His joy in full measure. 
 
 28th. — To many Christians the thought of a life 
 wholly abiding in Christ is one of strain and pain- 
 ful effort. The strain and effort only come as long 
 as we do not yield ourselves unreservedly to the 
 life of Christ in us. The very first words of the 
 parable are not yet opened up to them: "I am the 
 true Vine; I undertake all and provide for all; I 
 ask nothing of the Branch but that it yields wholly 
 to Me, and allows Me to do all. I engage to make 
 and keep the Branch all that it ought to be." 
 
 Salvation is nothing but love conquering and 
 entering into us ; we have just as much of salvation 
 as we have of love. Full salvation is perfect love. 
 There is no knowing God but by having the life; 
 the life working in us alone gives the knowledge. 
 And even so, the love; if we would know it, we 
 
JANUARY. 33 
 
 must drink of its living stream, we must have it 
 shed forth by the Holy Spirit in us. 
 
 29th. — As we know His dying love, we shall joy- 
 fully obey its commands, as we obey the commands 
 we shall know the love more fully. The imperative 
 necessity of obedience, doing all that Christ com- 
 mands us, has not the place in our Christian teach- 
 ing and living that Christ meant it to have. We 
 have given a far higher place to privilege than to 
 duty. We have not considered implicit obedience 
 as a condition of true discipleship. The secret 
 thought that it is impossible to do the things He 
 commands us, and that therefore it cannot be ex- 
 pected of us, a subtle and unconscious feeling that 
 sinning is a necessity, has frequently robbed both 
 precepts and promises of their power. Let us take 
 Christ's words as most literally true, and make 
 nothing less the law of our life. "Ye are My friends 
 if ye do the things that I command you." 
 
 30th. — Throughout Scripture this is the great 
 object of the teaching of election. — "Predestinated 
 to be conformed to the image of His Son" (to be 
 Branches in the image and likeness of the Vine.) 
 "Chosen that we should be holy." "Chosen to salva- 
 tion through sanctification of the Spirit." "Elect in 
 sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience." In 
 John xv. 1 6, Christ reveals His two-fold purpose in 
 
34 JANUARY. 
 
 choosing us to be His branches: that we may bear 
 fruit on earth, and have power in prayer in heaven. 
 
 31st. — Are you leaving your mark for eternity on 
 those around you? It is not your preaching or 
 teaching, your strength of will or power to influence 
 that will secure this. All depends on having your 
 life full of God and His power. And that again 
 depends upon your living the truly Branch-like life 
 of abiding — very close and unbroken fellowship 
 with Christ. It is the Branch that abides in Him, 
 that brings forth much fruit, fruit that will abide. 
 It is because we so little live the true Branch life, 
 because we so little lose ourselves in the Vine, 
 abiding in Him entirely, that we feel so little con- 
 strained to much prayer, so little confident that we 
 shall be heard, and so do not know how to use His 
 name as the key of God's storehouse. The power 
 of direct access to the Father for men, the liberty 
 of intercession claiming and receiving blessing for 
 them in faith, is the highest exercise of our union 
 with Christ. Let all who would truly and fully be 
 Branches, give themselves to the work of interces- 
 sion. It is the one great work of Christ, the Vine 
 in heaven, the source of power for all His work. 
 Make it your one great work as Branch: it will be 
 the power of all your work, 
 
FEBRUARY. 
 
 A'BIDE IN CHRIST. 
 
 ist. — If, in our orthodox churches, the living 
 union with Christ, the experience of His daily and 
 hourly presence and keeping, were preached with 
 the same distinction and urgency as His atonement, 
 many would be found to accept with gladness the 
 invitation to such a life, and its influence would be 
 manifest in their experience of the purity and the 
 power, the love and the joy, the fruit-bearing, and 
 all the blessedness which the Saviour connected 
 with the abiding in Him. 
 
 2nd. — We all know the need of time for our meals 
 each day. If we are to live through Jesus, we must 
 thoroughly take in and assimilate that heavenly food 
 the Father has given us in His life. My brother, 
 who would learn to abide in Jesus, take time each 
 day, to put yourself into living contact with the 
 living Jesus, to yield yourself distinctly and con- 
 sciously to His blessed influence ; so will you give 
 Him the opportunity of taking hold of you, of draw- 
 ing vou up and keeping you safe in His almighty 
 life. * 
 
36 FEBRUARY. 
 
 3rd. — Jesus gives rest in Him. The rest of 
 pardon and acceptance the rest in His love. But, 
 we know that all that God bestows needs time to 
 become fully our own; it must be held fast, and 
 appropriated, and assimilated into our inmost being ; 
 without this not even Christ's giving can make it 
 our very own, in full experience and enjoyment. 
 
 4th. — Giving up one's whole life to Him, for Him 
 alone to rule and order it ; taking up His yoke, and 
 submitting to be led and taught, to learn of Him ; 
 abiding in Him, to be and do only what He wills ; 
 — these are the conditions of discipleship without 
 which there can be no thought of maintaining the 
 rest that was bestowed on first coming to Christ. 
 The Christians rest is in Christ, and not of the 
 Christian. He gives it not apart from Himself, and 
 so it is only in having Him that the rest can really 
 be kept and enjoyed. 
 
 5th. — Consecration and faith are the essential ele- 
 ments of the Christian life, the giving up all to Jesus, 
 the receiving all from Jesus. They are implied in 
 each other; they are united in the one word — sur- 
 render. 
 
 6th. — Abiding in Him is not a work that we have 
 to do as the condition for enjoying His salvation, 
 but a consenting to let Him do all for us. 
 
FEBRUARY. 37 
 
 7th. — It was because Paul knew that the Mighty 
 and the Faithful One had grasped him with the 
 glorious purpose of making him one with Himself, 
 that he did his utmost to grasp the glorious prize. 
 
 8th. — Asaprophet, Christ is our wisdom, revealing 
 to us God and His love, with the nature and conditions 
 of the salvation that love has prepared. As a priest, 
 He is our righteousness, restoring us to right rela- 
 tions to God, and securing us His favor and friend- 
 ship. As a king, He is our sanctification, forming 
 and guiding us into the obedience to the Father's 
 holy will. As these three offices work out God's 
 purpose, the grand consummation will be reached, 
 the complete deliverance from sin and all its effects 
 be accomplished, and ransomed humanity regain all 
 that it had ever lost. 
 
 9th. — What we do is only the manifestation of 
 what God is doing in us! but the grace the promise 
 offered is so large, so God-like, so beyond all our 
 thoughts, that we do not take it really to mean what 
 it says. 
 
 ioth. — The believer knows himself to be in the 
 school of God, a teacher who plans the whole course 
 of study for each of His pupils with infinite wisdom, 
 and delights to have them come daily for the les- 
 sons He has to give. All the believer asks is to feel 
 
38 FEBRUARY. 
 
 himself constantly in God's hands, •< nd to follow His 
 guidance, neither lagging behind nor going before. 
 
 nth. — For the sanctifying of our memory, in the 
 service of our spiritual life, God has provided most 
 bountifully; the Holy Spirit is — blessed be God — 
 the memory of the new man. It is as we see what 
 Jesus is, and is to us, that the abiding in Him will 
 become the natural and spontaneous result of our 
 knowlege of Him. 
 
 1 2th. — Each blessed experience we receive as a 
 gift of God, must at once be returned back to Him 
 from whom it came, in praise and love, in self sac- 
 rifice and service; so only can it be restored to us 
 again, fresh and beautiful with the bloom of heaven. 
 
 13th. — Whether we look backward and see the 
 work He has done, or upward and see the reward 
 He has in the Father's love that passeth knowledge, 
 or forward in the continual accessions of joy as sin- 
 ners are brought home, His joy is ours. 
 
 14th. — Our difficulties all arise from the want of 
 the full surrender to a full abiding. Do thou but 
 yield up thyself to Christ thy Lord ; the conquering 
 power of His incoming presence will make it joy 
 to cast out all that before was most precious. "A 
 hundredfold in this life:" this word of the Master 
 
FEBRUARY. 39 
 
 comes true to all who with with whole-hearted faith- 
 fulness, accept His commands to forsake all. 
 
 15th. — The heart occupied with its own plans and 
 efforts for doing God's will, and securing the bless- 
 ing of abiding in Jesus, must fail continually. God 
 can do His work perfectly only when the soul ceases 
 from its work. He will do His work mightily in 
 the soul that honors Him by expecting Him to work 
 both to will and to do. 
 
 16th. — Christ was the revelation of the Father on 
 earth. Believers are the revelation of Christ on 
 earth. They cannot be this unless there be perfect 
 unity, so that the world can know that He loves them 
 and has sent them. But they can be it if Christ 
 loves them with infinite love that gives itself and 
 all it has, and if they abide in that love. 
 
 17th. — The secret of a life of close abiding will 
 be seen to be simply this: As I give myself wholly 
 to Christ, I find the power to take Him wholly for 
 myself ; and as I lose myself and all I have for Him, 
 He takes me wholly for Himself, and gives Himself 
 wholly to me. 
 
 Let a living faith in Christ working in you be the 
 secret spring of all your work. 
 
 1 8th. — The believer who studies this life of Christ 
 as the pattern and the promise of what his may be, 
 
40 FEBRUARY. 
 
 learns to understand how the "Without me ye can 
 do nothing," is but the forerunner of "I can do all 
 things through Christ who strengthened me." We 
 learn to glory in infirmities, to take pleasure in 
 necessities and distresses for Christ's sake; for 
 "When I am weak, then am I strong." 
 
 19th. — In the life of Divine love, the emptying of 
 self and the sacrifice of our will is the surest way to 
 have all we can wish or will. Dependence, subjec- 
 tion, self-sacrifice, are for the Christian as for Christ 
 the blessed path of life. Like as Christ lived 
 through and in the Father, even so the believer, in 
 and through Christ. 
 
 20th. — To him who is really seeking to abide in 
 Christ's love, the commands become no less precious 
 than the promises. As much as the promises they 
 are the revelation of the Divine love, blessed helpers 
 in the path to a closer union with the Lord. 
 
 2 1 st. — No sooner is the doing of God's will to the 
 Christian what Scripture and the Holy Spirit reveal 
 it to be, — the restoration to communion with God 
 and conformity to Him, — than he feels that there 
 is no law more natural or more beautiful than this: 
 Keeping Christ's commandments the way to abide 
 in Christ's love. 
 
 22nd. — The weakest believer may be confident 
 that in asking to be kept from sin, to grow in holi- 
 
FEBRUARY. 41 
 
 ness, to bring forth much fruit, he may count upon 
 these his petitions being fulfilled with Divine power. 
 The power is in Jesus ; Jesus is ours with all His 
 fulness; it is in us His members that the power is 
 to work and to be made manifest. 
 
 23rd. — The promise, "Whatsoever ye ask in my 
 name/' may not be severed from the commandment, 
 "Whatsoever ye do, do all in the name of the Lord 
 Jesus." If the name of Christ is to be wholly at my 
 disposal, I must first put myself wholly at His dis- 
 posal, so that He has full and free command of me. 
 It is the abiding in Christ that gives the right and 
 power to use His name with confidence. 
 
 24th. — We have each day to be faithful for the 
 one short day, and long years and a long life take 
 care of themselves, without the sense of their length 
 or their weight ever being a burden. The single 
 days do indeed make up the whole life, and the 
 value of each single day depends on its influence 
 on the whole. 
 
 25th. — Abiding by faith in Christ our sanctifica- 
 tion is the simple secret of a holy life. The measure 
 of sanctification will depend on the measure of abid- 
 ing in Him ; as the soul learns wholly to abide in 
 Christ, the promise is increasingly fulfilled: "The 
 very God of peace sanctify you wholly." 
 
4^ FEBRUARY. 
 
 26th. — As our communion with Him becomes 
 more intimate and intense, and we let the Holy 
 Spirit reveal Him to us in His heavenly glory, the 
 more we realize how the life in us is the life of One 
 who sits upon the throne of heaven. We feel the 
 power of an endless life working in us. We taste the 
 eternal life. We have the foretaste of the eternal 
 glory. 
 
 27th.- — Not only is what is given up to Christ re- 
 ceived back again to become doubly our own, but 
 the forsaking all is followed by the receiving all. 
 We abide in Christ more fully as we forsake all and 
 follow Him. As I count all things loss for His 
 sake, I am found in HIM. 
 
 28th. — In Him thou seest a thousand times more 
 given thee than thou has lost; seest how God only 
 took from thee that thou mightest have room to 
 take from Him what is so much better. 
 
 When thou seest affliction coming meet it in 
 Christ; when it is come, feel that thou art more in 
 Christ than in it, for He is nearer thee than afflic- 
 tion ever can be; when it is passing, still abide in 
 Him. 
 
 29th. — Our daily life must have for its object the 
 making of an impression favorable to Jesus. When 
 you look at the branch, you see at once the likeness 
 
FEBRUARY. 43 
 
 to the Vine. We must live so that somewhat of the 
 holiness and the gentleness of Jesus may shine out 
 in us. We must live to represent Him. 
 
 Work for Christ has sometimes drawn away from 
 Christ, and taken the place of fellowship with Him. 
 
MARCH. 
 
 LIKE CHRIST. 
 
 ist. — To study the image of God in the Man, 
 Christ Jesus, to yield and set open our inmost being 
 for that image to take possession and live in us, and 
 then to go forth and let the heavenly likeness re- 
 flect itself and shine out in our life among our fellow 
 men, — this is what we have been redeemed for, let 
 this be what we live for. 
 
 2nd. — The reason why we so often do not bless 
 others is that we wish to address them as their supe- 
 riors in grace or gifts, or at least their equals. The 
 love of Christ flowing into you, will flow again from 
 you and make it your greatest joy to follow His ex- 
 ample in washing the feet of others. 
 
 3rd. — The external and bodily is the gate to the 
 inner and spiritual life, He makes the salvation of 
 the soul the first object in His holy ministry of love, 
 at the same time, however, seeking the way to the 
 hearts by the ready service of love in the little and 
 common things of daily life. 
 
MARCH. 45 
 
 4th. — Because my Surety is not some one outside 
 of me, but one in whom I am, and who is in me, 
 therefore it is that I can become like Him. He lives 
 Himself in me. To follow His footsteps is a duty, 
 because it is a possibility, the natural result of the 
 wonderful union between Head and Members. I 
 have to gaze on His example so as to know and fol- 
 low it; and to abide in Him and onen my heart to 
 the blessed workings of His life in me. 
 
 5th. — As surely as Jesus conquered sin and its 
 curse for me, will He conquer it in its power in me. 
 What He began by His death for me, He will per- 
 fect by His life in me. 
 
 6th. — Taking up the cross and following Jesus is 
 nothing less than living every day with our own life 
 and will given up to death. The crucified Christ 
 and the crucified Christian belong to each other. 
 The Christian glories in the cross because it makes 
 him a partner in a death and victory that has 
 already been accomplished, and in which the deliv- 
 erance from the powers of the flesh and of the world 
 has been secured to him. 
 
 7th. — The Lord Jesus has shown us that the best 
 place to practice self-denial is in our ordinary inter- 
 course with men. 
 
 8th. — Who can say whether this is not one of the 
 secrets which eternity will reveal, that sin was per- 
 
46 MARCH. 
 
 mitted because otherwise God's love could never so 
 fully have been revealed? The highest glory of 
 God's love was manifest in the self-sacrifice of 
 Christ. Without entire self-sacrifice we cannot love 
 as Jesus loved. 
 
 9th. — It is only when we sacrifice ourselves to 
 God that there will be the power for an entire self- 
 sacrifice. When faith has first appropriated the 
 promise/Tnasmuch as ye have done it unto the least 
 of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me," I 
 understand the glorious harmony between sacrifice 
 to God and sacrifice for men. 
 
 10th. — The freer the Church is of the spirit and 
 principles of the world, the more influence she will 
 exert in it. The believer sees that the only way to 
 answer to his calling is, as crucified to the world, to 
 withdraw himself from its power, as living in Christ 
 to go into it and bless it. He lives in heaven and 
 walks on earth. 
 
 nth. — The church of Christ in her mission: "Go 
 ye and teach all nations," has the promise, "Lo, I 
 am with you always." The Lord does not demand 
 anything which He does not give the power to per- 
 form. The Lord Jesus will give His people all the 
 preparation they need. 
 
 12th. — Christ's mission is the only reason for our 
 being on earth. Just as with Jesus, our heavenly 
 
MARCH. 47 
 
 mission demands nothing less than entire consecra- 
 tion. 
 
 13th. — The stronger the Christian's faith is in 
 God's everlasting purpose, the more his courage for 
 work will be strengthened ; the more he works and 
 is blessed, the clearer it will become that all is of 
 God. 
 
 14th. — The great object of redemption was to 
 make us and our will free from the power of sin and 
 to lead us again to live and do the will of God. In 
 His life on earth, He showed us what it is to live 
 only for the will of God; in His death and resur- 
 rection He won for us the power to live and do the 
 will of God as He had done. 
 
 15th. — Not herein is sin, that man has a creature 
 will different from the Creator's, but in this that he 
 clings to his own will when it is seen to be contrary 
 to the will of the Creator. Take God's will as one 
 great whole, as the only thing for which you live on 
 earth. 
 
 16th. — God's will only seems hard, as we look at 
 it from a distance and are unwilling to submit to it. 
 How beautiful the will of God makes everything in 
 Nature! The will of God is the will of His love, 
 how can you fear to surrender yourself to it? 
 
 17th. — A hearty obedience to the commandments 
 and a ready obedience to the conscience are the 
 
48 MARCH. 
 
 preparation for that divine teaching of the spirit 
 which will lead thee deeper into the meaning and 
 application of the Word and into a more direct and 
 spiritual insight into God's will with regard to thy- 
 self personally. It is to those who obey Him, God 
 gives the Holy Spirit, through whom the blessed 
 will of God becomes the light that shines ever more 
 brightly on our path! — "If any man will do His 
 will, he shall know." 
 
 1 8th. — A Christlike sense of Sonship will lead to 
 a Christlike obedience. 
 
 19th. — It was the compassionate sympathy of 
 Jesus that attracted so many to Him upon earth; 
 that same compassionate tenderness will still, more 
 than anything, draw souls to you and your Lord. 
 
 20th. — Just in proportion as we live in more or 
 less entire dependence on the Father, will His life 
 plan for us be more or less perfectly w r orked out in 
 our lives. The nearer the believer comes to this 
 entire dependence of the Son, doing nothing but 
 what He sees the Father do, and then to His im- 
 plicit obedience, whatsoever he doeth, doing these 
 in like manner, so much more will the promise be 
 fulfilled in us. The Father showeth him all things 
 that He Himself doeth, and will show him greater 
 works than these. 
 
MARCH. 49 
 
 2 1 st. — The desire for independence was the temp- 
 tation in Paradise, is the temptation in each human 
 heart. It seems hard to be nothing, to know noth- 
 ing, to will nothing. And yet it is so blessed. This 
 dependence brings us into most blessed communion 
 with God, it takes from us all care and responsi- 
 bility. It gives us real power and strength of will, 
 because we know that He works in us to will and to 
 do. It gives us the blessed assurance that our work 
 will succeed, because we have allowed God alone to 
 take charge of it. 
 
 22nd. — Just because Jesus' life was strong and true, 
 it could not bear the loss of direct and constant in- 
 tercourse with the Father, with whom and in whom 
 it had its being, and its blessedness. Even work in 
 the service of God and of love is exhausting; we 
 cannot bless others without power going out from 
 us ; this must be renewed from above. It is from 
 heaven alone that the power to lead a heavenly life 
 on earth can come. 
 
 23rd. — The entire sacrifice of ourselves to God 
 in every prayer of daily life is the only preparation 
 for those single hours of soul-struggle in which we 
 may be called to some special act of the surrender 
 of the will that costs us tears and anguish. But he 
 who has learnt the former, will surely receive 
 strength for the latter. 
 
50 MARCH. 
 
 24th. — When we behold the glory of God in 
 Christ, in the glass of the Holy Scriptures, His glory 
 shines upon us, and into us, and fills us, until it 
 shines out from us again. Beholding Jesus makes 
 us like Him. 
 
 25th. — It is grace we need, and not sin to make 
 and keep us humble. The heaviest laden branches 
 always bow the lowest. The nearer the soul comes 
 to God, the more His majestic Presence makes it 
 feel its littleness. 
 
 26th. — If the believer holds fast what his partici- 
 pation with Christ's death signifies, he has the power 
 to overcome sin. It is not said Sin is dead ; but he, 
 himself is dead to sin and alive to God, and so sin 
 cannot for a single moment, without his consent, 
 have dominion over him. If he sin, it is because he 
 allows it to reign and submits himself to it. 
 
 27th. — How many have been looking most ear- 
 nestly for the full insight into the blessedness of 
 being "dead unto sin and alive unto God," and yet 
 have failed. They have been more occupied with 
 the blessings to be had in Jesus, or with the effort to 
 exercise a strong abiding faith in these blessings as 
 theirs, than with Jesus Himself, in whom both the 
 blessings and the faith that sees them are ours. 
 
 28th. — It is as you bear the image of God here, 
 as you live in the likeness of Jesus, who is the 
 
MARCH. 51 
 
 brightness of His glory, and the express image of 
 His person, that you will be fitted for the glory to 
 come. If we are to bear the image of the heavenly, 
 the Christ in glory, we must first bear the image of 
 the earthly, the Christ in humiliation. 
 
 29th. — To be filled with the Holy Spirit, we must 
 wait on our Lord in faith. His love desires to give 
 us more than we know. You are in the Spirit as 
 your vital air ; the Spirit is in you as your life-breath. 
 It is impossible to say what the Lord Jesus would 
 do for a soul who is truly willing to live as entirely 
 through Him, as He is through the Father. 
 
 30th. — With what care the tenderly sensitive plate 
 of the photographer is prepared to receive the im- 
 pression; with what precaution its relative position 
 to the object to be portrayed is adjusted ; how still 
 and undisturbed it is then held face to face with that 
 object. Having done this, the photographer leaves 
 the light to do its wonderful work; his work is a 
 work of faith. Let us believe in the power of the 
 light of God to transcribe Christ's image on our 
 heart. Let us not seek to do the work the Spirit 
 must do. Let us simply trust Him to do it. Our 
 duty is to seek the prepared heart waiting, longing, 
 praying for the likeness; to take our place face to 
 face with Jesus, gazing, loving, believing that the 
 wonderful vision of that Crucified One is the sure 
 
5 2 MARCH. 
 
 promise of what we can be ; then putting aside all 
 that can distract, in stillness of soul, silent unto 
 God, just to allow the blessed Spirit as the light of 
 God to do the work. 
 
 31st.— Himself for us; us for Himself; an entire 
 exchange ; a perfect union ; a complete identity ; in 
 interest and purpose. Himself for us, as Saviour; 
 us^ for Himself, still as Saviour, like Him and for 
 Him to continue on earth, the work which He 
 began. 
 
APRIL. 
 
 SPIRIT OF CHRIST. 
 
 ist. — Each of us must learn that there is a Ho- 
 liest of All, in that temple, which he himself is ; the 
 secret place of the Most High within us must be- 
 come the central truth in our temple worship. This 
 must be the meaning of our confession: "I believe 
 in the Holy Ghost/' 
 
 2nd. — Love every believer not for the sake of 
 what in him is in sympathy with thee or pleasing to 
 thee, but for the sake of the Spirit of the Father 
 which is in him. 
 
 3rd. — The fuller the Spirit's indwelling and the 
 mightier His working is, the more truly spiritual 
 your being becomes, the more will self sink away, 
 and the Spirit of Christ use you in building up and 
 building together believers into an habitation of 
 God. 
 
 4th. — The trust in gifts and knowledge in 
 soundness of creed and earnestness of work, the 
 satisfaction in forms and services leaves the flesh in 
 full vigor, not crucified with Christ and so the 
 
54 APRIL. 
 
 Spirit is not free to work out true holiness in the 
 Christian or a life in the power of Christ's love. 
 
 5th. — To be a Christian just means to have the 
 Spirit of Christ, to have His love and to have been 
 made by Him a fountain of Love, springing up 
 and flowing out in streams of living water. We 
 know not what the Spirit is meant to be in us, be- 
 cause we have not accepted Him for what the 
 Master gave. 
 
 6th. — It is only where the soul gives the Spirit 
 the precedence it claims, and self is denied to make 
 way for God, that selfishness will be conquered, and 
 love toward our brother flow from love toward God. 
 
 7th. — Not the amount, or the clearness, or the in- 
 terest of the Bible knowledge received will decide 
 the blessing and the power that it brings but the 
 measure of real dependence on the Holy Spirit. 
 
 8th. — It is not the power of intellect, it is not even 
 the earnest desire to know the truth, that fits a man 
 for the Spirit's teaching, it is a life yielded to Him 
 in waiting dependence and full obedience to be made 
 spiritual, that receives the spiritual wisdom and un- 
 derstanding. 
 
 9th. — Believe! it is not enough that the light of 
 Christ shines on you in the Word, the light of the 
 Spirit must shine in you. 
 
APRIL. 55 
 
 i oth. — It is the very work of the Spirit specially 
 to unite Himself with what is material, to lift it up 
 into His own Spirit nature, and so to develop what 
 will be the highest type of perfection — a spiritual 
 body. 
 
 nth. — In the Father, we have the unseen God, 
 the Author of all. In the Son, God revealed and 
 brought nigh. In the Spirit of God we have the 
 Indwelling God; the Power of God dwelling in 
 human body and working in it what the Father and 
 the Son have for us. 
 
 1 2th. — As all the Word of God is given by the 
 Spirit of God, so each word must be interpreted to 
 us by that same Spirit. Not in the Spirit without 
 or with but little of the Word, not in the Word 
 without or with but little of the Spirit, but in the 
 Word and Spirit, both dwelling richly within us and 
 both yielded to in implicit obedience, is our assur- 
 ance of safety in the path of the Spirit's guidance. 
 
 13th. — The Holy Spirit is the Church's power for 
 all her work and her missions, and that power will 
 only act mightily as the number increases of indi- 
 vidual believers, who give themselves to be pos- 
 sessed, to be led, to be used of the Spirit of Christ. 
 
 14th. — When the Holy Spirit convinces us of the 
 sin of the world, His work bears two marks. The 
 
56 APRIL. 
 
 one is the sacrifice of self, in the jealousy for God 
 and His honor, combined with the deep and tender 
 grief for the guilty. The other is a deep, strong 
 faith in the possibility and power of deliverance. 
 
 15th. — God looks upon the world in His holiness, 
 hating its sin with such an infinite hatred, and lov- 
 ing it with such a love, that He gives His Son, and 
 the Son gives His life to destroy sin and set its 
 captives free. 
 
 Not in what we know, but in what we are does 
 the Spirit begin His work. And the teaching of the 
 Spirit begins not in word or thought, but in Power. 
 
 16th. — There is no way of knowing the light but 
 by being in it and using it. There is no way of 
 knowing the Holy Spirit but by possessing Him 
 and being possessed of Him. To have Him in us, 
 doing His work and giving us His fellowship, this 
 is the path the Master opens, when He says: "Ye 
 know Him, for He shall be in you." 
 
 17th. — However little we see or feel, let us be- 
 lieve. The Divine is always first known by believ- 
 ing. As we continue believing, we shall be pre- 
 pared to know and to see. 
 
 Gather together all the Word says of the Spirit. 
 His indwelling and His work, and hide it in your 
 
APRIL. 57 
 
 heart. Be determined to accept of nothing but what 
 the Word teaches, but also to accept heartily of all 
 it teaches. 
 
 1 8th. — God is to be found nowhere but in His 
 will. His will in Christ accepted, and done by us, 
 with the heart in which it is done, is the home of the 
 Holy Spirit. 
 
 Even now, day by day, we are to live in His 
 glory. The Holy Spirit is able to be to us just as 
 much as we are willing to have of Him and of the 
 life of the glorified Lord. 
 
 19th. — Let us come under the hand of our Lord, 
 covered by His hand with only one purpose — to 
 have all our work covered in the hand of our God. 
 There is the secret of life. 
 
 The Holy Ghost never looked for His own glory, 
 never spoke of His own: His only purpose is to glo- 
 rify Christ. It was not obligation but the yearning 
 of His heart, this decrease. 
 
 20th. — Learn to look on Jesus and more and 
 more you will find that Jesus by His look, is taking 
 your wandering look under the direction of the 
 Holy Ghost. By and by it will become the very 
 attitude of your soul and you could do anything 
 more easily than distrust Jesus. 
 
58 APRIL. 
 
 Behind the Valley of Death there is abundance 
 of life, and the moment you give up all things, let- 
 ting yourself go in the arms of Jesus, death will 
 lose its terror. 
 
 2 1 st. — If you want unity in your daily life, don't 
 seek life ; never will you find life if you are seeking 
 for it. Life is only when you have your own life. 
 
 I am too happy not to put every day, every hour 
 in the hands of my Heavenly Father; too happy 
 ever again to take into my hand the threads of my 
 life. 
 
 22nd. — A seed contains life hidden in the most 
 dead, unlikely looking form possible, and this seed, 
 with its hidden life, must itself again be hidden under 
 the earth. So the Kingdom of Heaven comes to us 
 in the seed of the Word. It must be hidden not in 
 the thoughts that we can recognize and watch over, 
 but deeper down, in the mysterious depths of the 
 Spirit. There Christ who is in the unseen Spirit 
 life of the Father, finds the unseen depths of our 
 Spirit life and enters there. He is Himself the Liv- 
 ing Word, the Living Seed, the Spirit is the life of 
 the seed. 
 
 23rd. — It is often only as we suffer in the flesh 
 that the quickening of the Spirit is experienced. 
 All leading claims following, it is easily understood 
 
APRIL. 59 
 
 that to enjoy the leading of the Spirit demands a 
 very teachable, followsome mind. 
 
 Even as beautiful flames on earth are nothing 
 but the wood or coal transformed by the fire into 
 its own light natue, so the fire of God cleanses and 
 beautifies by filling the heart with its own heavenly 
 glory. (Miscellaneous .) 
 
 In all our life process we must be made like unto 
 Him. He received His life from God; He lived it 
 in dependence upon God; He gave up His life to 
 God; He was raised from the dead by God; He 
 lives His life in glory with God. (Miscellaneous). 
 
 24th. — What a blessed solution God gives to all 
 our questions and our difficulties when He says: 
 "My child, Christ has gone through it all for thee!" 
 He has wrought out a new nature that can trust God, 
 and Christ the Living One in heaven will live in 
 thee, and enable thee to live that life of trust. (Mis- 
 cellaneous.) 
 
 25th. — Just as much as Christ was my substitute 
 who died for me, just so much He is my head in 
 Whom and with Whom I die. Just as He lives for 
 me to intercede, He lives in me to carry out and 
 perfect His life. By His death, He proved that He 
 possessed life only to hold it, and to spend it, for 
 God. (Miscellaneous.) 
 
60 APRIL. 
 
 26th. — Ask God to make you willing to believe 
 with your heart that to die with Christ is the only 
 way to live in Him. Jesus lived every day in the 
 prospect of the Cross, and we in the power of His 
 victorious life, being made conformable to His 
 death, must rejoice every day in going down with 
 Him into death. (Miscellaneous.) 
 
 27th. — The acorn died and the tree appeared. In 
 the very grave, where the acorn died, it stood there 
 stretching its roots deeper and deeper into the earth, 
 yet growing higher, stronger, broader, more beau- 
 tiful. All the fruit and all the foliage it owes to 
 that grave in which its roots are cast and kept. 
 Even so, Christ owes everything to His grave, and 
 we too owe everything to the grave of Jesus. Mis- 
 cellaneous.) 
 
 28th. — Christ lost nothing by giving up His life 
 unto the Father. If you want the glory and the life 
 of God to come upon you, it is in the grave of utter 
 helplessness that that life of glory will be born. 
 (Miscellaneous.) 
 
 The secret of being in nothing behind the chief- 
 test Apostles, in nothing behind even Paul himself, 
 is this: "I am nothing!" Why? "Because God 
 hath chosen the things that are not." Why? "That 
 no flesh should glory in His presence, He that glo- 
 rieth, let him glory in the Lord." To be nothing is 
 the only way to let God be all. (Miscellaneous.) 
 
APRIL. 6l 
 
 29th. — Jesus came to deliver man from sin and 
 sickness that He might make known the love of the 
 Father. In His actions, in the teaching of the dis- 
 ciples, in the work of the Holy Spirit, and in the 
 words of the Apostles pardon and healing are always 
 to be found together. To receive healing it is 
 necessary to begin by confession of sin and the pur- 
 pose to live a holy life. This is why those who re- 
 ceive healing receive at the same time new spiritual 
 blessing, feel more closely united to the Lord Jesus, 
 and learn to love and serve Him better. The re- 
 deemed may always cry: "Bless the Lord, O my 
 soul, who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth 
 all thy diseases." Psa. 103:3. (Miscellaneous.) 
 
 30th. — The preaching of the gospel and the heal- 
 ing of the sick are given as evident proof of Christ's 
 mission as the Messiah. Matt. 11:5. Jesus, who 
 took upon Him the soul and body of man, delivers 
 both in equal measure from the consequences of 
 sin. When Christ speaks of sickness it is always as 
 of an evil caused by sin and Satan. He declared that 
 every disciple would have to bear his cross. (Matt. 
 16:24), but He never taught one sick person to re- 
 sign himself to be sick. Sin in the soul and sickness 
 in the body, both bear witness to the power of Satan, 
 and "The Son of Man was manifested that He might 
 destroy the works of the devil." 1 John 3:8, Job 
 2:7, Lu. 13:16, Acts 10:38, Heb. 2:14, Gen. 1:31. 
 (Miscellaneous.) 
 
MAY. 
 
 WITH CHRIST IN THE SCHOOL OF PRAYER. 
 
 ist. — In our blessed Priest-King, Jesus Christ, 
 the kingly power is founded on the priestly, "He is 
 able to save to the uttermost, because He ever liveth 
 to make intercession/' In us, His priests and kings, 
 it is no otherwise. 
 
 As long as we look on prayer chiefly as the means 
 of maintaining our own Christian Kfe, we shall not 
 know fully what it is meant to be. 
 
 Jesus never taught His disciples how to preach, 
 only how to pray. To know how to speak to God 
 is more than knowing how to speak to man. Not 
 power with men, but power with God is the first 
 thing. Do not be thinking of how little you have 
 to bring God, but of how much He wants to give 
 you. 
 
 2nd. — Not on the strong or the fervent feeling 
 with which I pray does the blessing depend, but 
 upon the love and the power of the Father to whom 
 I entrust my needs. 
 
 The knowledge of God's Father-love is the first 
 
MAY. 63 
 
 and simplest but also the last and highest lesson in 
 the school of prayer. The sooner I learn to forget 
 myself in the desire that He may be glorified, the 
 richer will the blessing be that prayer will bring 
 to myself. No one ever loses by what he sacrifices 
 for the Father. 
 
 3rd. — Because the will of God is the glory of 
 heaven, the doing of it is the blessedness of heaven. 
 As the will is done, the kingdom of heaven comes 
 into the heart, and wherever faith has accepted 
 the Father's will. The surrender to, and the prayer 
 for a life of heaven-like obedience, is the spirit of 
 childlike prayer. 
 
 As a child has to prove a sum to be correct, so 
 the proof that we have prayed aright is the answer. 
 In prayer and its answer the interchange of love 
 between the Father and His child takes place. 
 Man's prayer on earth and God's answer in heaven 
 are meant for each other. A life marked by daily 
 answer to prayer is the proof of our spiritual ma- 
 turity. 
 
 4th. — If the child is to know and understand his 
 father; if as he grows up, he is to enter into all his 
 will and plans ; if he is to have his highest joy in the 
 father, and the father in him, he must be of one 
 mind and spirit with him. And so it is impossible 
 to conceive of God bestowing any higher gift on 
 
64 MAY. 
 
 His child than this, His own Spirit. God is what 
 He is through His Spirit ; the Spirit is the very life 
 of God. 
 
 It is when we give ourselves to be a bless- 
 ing that we can especially count on the blessings of 
 God. The righteous man who is the friend of the 
 poor is very specially the friend of God. This gives 
 wonderful liberty in prayer. Every believer is a 
 laborer ; not one of God's children who has not been 
 redeemed for service, and has not his work waiting. 
 
 5th. — As long as in prayer we just pour out our 
 hearts in a multitude of petitions without taking 
 time to see whether every petition is sent with the 
 purpose and expectation of getting an answer, not 
 many will reach the mark. 
 
 It is when in distinct matters we have in faith 
 claimed and received answers, that our more gen- 
 eral prayers will be believing and effectual. 
 
 As we think how all He is and has, how He Him- 
 self is our life, we feel assured that we have but to 
 ask, and He will be delighted to take us up into 
 closer fellowship with Himself, and teach us to pray 
 even as He prays. A life in God's infinite Father- 
 liness and continual answers to prayer are insepa- 
 rable, but the child who only wants to know the 
 love of the Father when he has something to ask, 
 will be disappointed. 
 
MAY. 65 
 
 Faith is nothing but the purpose of the will rest- 
 ing on God's word, and saying: I must have it. To 
 believe truly is to will firmly. 
 
 6th. — Believe that you have received now, while 
 praying, the thing you ask for. It may only be 
 later that you shall see what you believe ; but now, 
 without seeing, you are to believe that it has been 
 given you of the Father in heaven. 
 
 Faith says most confidently, I have received the 
 promise. Patience perseveres in prayer until the 
 gift bestowed in heaven is seen on earth. Believe 
 that ye have received, and ye shall have! 
 
 Between the have received in heaven, and the 
 shall have on earth, believe ; believing praise and 
 prayer is the link. 
 
 7th. — Let faith look to God more than the thing 
 promised: The cure of a feeble faith is alone to 
 be found in the invigoration of our whole spiritual 
 life by intercourse with God. Learn to believe in 
 God, to take hold of God, to let God take possession 
 of thy life, and it will be easy to take hold of the 
 promise. He that knows and trusts God finds it 
 easy to trust the promise too. 
 
 8th. — Men of strong faith are men of much 
 prayer. It is in the dying to self which much 
 prayer implies, in closer union to Jesus, that the 
 
66 MAY. 
 
 spirit of faith will come in power. Faith needs 
 prayer for its full growth. 
 
 It is only in a life of temperance and self-denial 
 that there will be the heart or the strength to pray 
 much. 
 
 Without voluntary separation even from what 
 is lawful, no one will attain power in prayer. 
 
 9th. — Not according to what I try to be when 
 praying, but what I am when not praying, is my 
 prayer dealt with by God. 
 
 Nothing would be more unnatural than that the 
 children of a family should always meet their father 
 separately, but never in the united expression of 
 their desires or their love. It is in the union and 
 fellowship of believers that the Spirit can manifest 
 His full power. 
 
 10th. — Man, in his spiritual nature, is under the 
 law of gradual growth that reigns in all created 
 life. It is only in the path of development that he 
 can reach his divine destiny. The Father alone 
 knows the moment when the soul or the Church is 
 ripened to that fullness of faith in which it can 
 really take and keep the blessing. As a father who 
 longs to have his only child home from school, and 
 vet waits patiently till the time of training is com- 
 pleted, so it is with God and His children: He is 
 
MAY. 67 
 
 the Long-suffering One, and answers speedily. 
 
 nth. — Prayer not only teaches and strengthens 
 to work: work teaches and strengthens to pray. 
 Faith is obedience at home and looking to the 
 Master: obedience is faith going out to do His 
 will. 
 
 As a Christian grows in grace and in knowledge 
 of the Lord Jesus, he is often surprised to find how 
 the words of God grow too, in the new and deeper 
 meaning with which they come to him. 
 
 Just as far as we listen to the voice and language 
 that God speaks, and in the words of God, receive 
 His thoughts, His mind, His life, into our heart, 
 we shall learn to speak in the voice and language 
 that God hears. 
 
 1 2th. — The Old Testament Saints spake in 
 prayer. If the word was a command, they simply 
 did as the Lord had spoken: their life was fel- 
 lowship with God, the interchange of word and 
 thought. What God spoke they heard and did ; 
 what they spoke God heard and did. 
 
 Let us believe that we can know if our prayer be 
 according to God's will. Let us yield our heart to 
 have the.word of the Father dwell richly there. Let 
 us live day by day with the anointing which teach- 
 eth all things, and we shall soon understand how 
 
68 MAY. 
 
 the Father's love longs that the child should know 
 His will, and should, in the confidence that that 
 will includes all that His power and love have 
 promised to do, know too that He hears the petit- 
 ions which we ask of Him. 
 
 13th. — God wills a great deal of blessing to His 
 people, which never comes to them. He wills it 
 most earnestly, but they do not will it, and it can- 
 not come to them. 
 
 Our true aim must not be to work much, but to 
 pray much and then to work enough for the power 
 and blessing obtained in prayer to find its way 
 through us to men. 
 
 Because we do not abide in Christ as He would 
 have us, the Church is so impotent in presence of 
 the infidelity and worldliness and heathendom, in 
 the midst of which the Lord is able to make her 
 more than conqueror. Let us believe that He 
 means what He promises and accept the condemna- 
 tion the confession implies. 
 
 THE MINISTRY OF INTERCESSION. 
 
 14th. — The measure of believing, continued 
 prayer, will be the measure of the Spirit'? working 
 in the Church. Direct, definite, determined prayer, 
 is what we need. The measure of God's giving 
 
MAY. 69 
 
 the Spirit is our asking. He gives as a father to 
 him who asks as a child. 
 
 There is nothing in honest business, when it is 
 kept in its place as entirely subordinate to the 
 kingdom, which must ever be first, that need pre- 
 vent fellowship with God. 
 
 15th. — A much-praying minister will receive an 
 entrance into God's will, he would otherwise know 
 nothing of; will be brought to praying people 
 where he does not expect them ; will receive bless- 
 ing above all he asks or thinks. It is prayer that 
 is the only secret of true Church extension ; that is 
 guided from heaven to find and send forth God- 
 called and God-empowered men. 
 
 The attempt to pray constantly for ourselves, must 
 be a failure ; it is in intercession for others that our 
 faith and love and perseverance will be aroused, and 
 that the power of the Spirit be found, which can fit 
 us for saving men. 
 
 16th. — Intercession is the most perfect form of 
 prayer: it is the prayer Christ ever liveth to pray 
 on His throne. 
 
 It is as love of our profession and work, delight 
 in thoroughness and diligence, sink away in the 
 tender compassion of Christ, that love will compel 
 
70 MAY. 
 
 us to prayer, because we cannot rest in our work 
 if souls are not saved. True love must pray. 
 
 Just as the heaven our natural eye can see, is one 
 great ocean of sunshine, with its light and heat- 
 giving beauty and fruitfulness to earth, Scripture 
 shows us God's true heaven, filled with all spiritual 
 blessings, divine light and love and life, heavenly 
 joy and peace and power, all shining down upon us. 
 
 17th. — If we will but believe in God and His 
 faithfulness, intercession will become to us the very 
 first thing we take refuge in when we seek blessing 
 for others and the very last thing for which we can- 
 not find time. 
 
 Prayer opens the way for God Himself to do His 
 work in us and through us. Let our chief work, as 
 God's messengers, be intercession: in it we secure 
 the presence and pow T er of God to go with us. 
 
 Let us confess before God, our lack of prayer. 
 Let us admit that the lack of faith, of which it is 
 the proof, is the symptom of a life that is not spirit- 
 ual, that is yet all too much under the power of self 
 and the flesh and the world. 
 
 18th. — In all ages men have prayed under a sense 
 that there were difficulties in the heavenly world to 
 overcome. As they pleaded with God, and in that 
 persevering supplication were brought into union 
 
MAY. 71 
 
 with His will, and of faith that could take hold of 
 Him, the hinderances in themselves and in heaven, 
 were together overcome. As God conquered them, 
 they conquered God. As God prevails over us, we 
 prevail with God. 
 
 Faith in a prayer-hearing God, will make a 
 prayer-loving Christian. 
 
 Where our life is right, we shall know how to 
 pray so as to please God, and prayer will secure the 
 answer. 
 
 The man who is ready to risk all for God, can 
 count upon God to do all for him. It is as men live 
 that they pray. It is the life that prays. 
 
 19th. — The more we pray and the more conscious 
 we become of our unfitness to pray in power, the 
 more we shall be urged and helped to press on to- 
 ward the secret of power in prayer — a life abiding in 
 Christ, entirely at His disposal. This marks off the 
 whole-hearted believer from the worldling and 
 worldly Christians around him: he lives consciously 
 hidden in the secret of God's presence. 
 
 When the pressure of work for Christ is allowed 
 to be the excuse for our not finding time to seek and 
 secure His own presence and power in it, as our 
 chief need, it surely proves that there is no right 
 sense of our absolute dependence upon God, no 
 
J 2 MAY. 
 
 true entrance into the heavenly, altogether other- 
 worldly character of our incision and aims, no full 
 surrender to and delight in Jesus Christ Himself. 
 
 20th. — When once we see how there is to be 
 nothing of our own for a single moment, and that 
 it is to be all Christ, moment by moment, and learn 
 to accept it from Him and trust Him for it, the life 
 of Christ becomes the health of our soul. Health 
 is nothing but life in its normal, undisturbed action. 
 Christ gives us health by giving us Himself as our 
 life; so He becomes our strength for our walk. 
 They that wait on the Lord shall walk and not faint, 
 because Christ is now the strength of their life. 
 
 2 1 st. — The more heartily we enter into the mind 
 of our blessed Lord and set ourselves simply just to 
 think about prayer as He thought, the more surely 
 will His words be as living seeds. They will grow 
 and produce in us their fruit, — a life and practice 
 exactly corresponding to the divine truth they con- 
 tain. 
 
 A Christian may often have very earnest desires 
 for spiritual blessings. But alongside of these there 
 are other desires in his daily life, occupying a large 
 place in his interests and affections. The spiritual 
 desires are not all-absorbing. He wonders that his 
 prayer is not heard. It is simply that God wants 
 the whole heart. "The Lord, thy God, is one Lord, 
 
MAY. 73 
 
 therefore thou shalt love the Lord thy God with 
 thy whole heart/' 
 
 22nd. — Prayer is just the breathing of the Spirit 
 in us ; power in prayer comes from the power of the 
 Spirit in us, waited on and trusted in. Failure in 
 prayer comes from feebleness of the Spirit's work 
 in us. To pray aright, the life of the Spirit must be 
 right in us. 
 
 As long as we measure our power for praying 
 aright and perseveringly, by what we feel, or think 
 we can accomplish, we shall be discouraged when 
 we hear of how much we ought to pray. But when 
 we quietly believe that, in the midst of all our con- 
 scious weakness, the Holy Spirit, as a Spirit of 
 Supplication, is dwelling within us, for the very 
 purpose of enabling us to pray in such manner and 
 measure as God would have us, our hearts will be 
 filled with hope. 
 
 23rd. — The Spirit can pray in no other way in us, 
 than as He lives in us. It is only as we give our- 
 selves to the Spirit living and praying in us that 
 the glory of the prayer-hearing God, and the ever- 
 blessed and most effectual mediation of the Son, 
 can be known by us in their power. 
 
 When we realize what time Christ spent in prayer, 
 and how the great events of His life were all con- 
 nected with special prayer, we learn the necessity 
 
74 MAY. 
 
 of absolute dependence on and unceasing direct 
 
 communication with the heavenly world, if we are 
 
 to live a heavenly life, or to exercise heavenly 
 power around us. 
 
 24th. — If any one could have been satisfied with 
 always living and working in the Spirit of prayer, 
 it would have been our Master. But He could not ; 
 He needed to have His supplies replenished by con- 
 tinual and long continued seasons of prayer. 
 
 Christ was what He taught. All His teaching 
 was just the revelation of how He lived, and — praise 
 God — of the life He was to lead in us. 
 
 Even as Christ obtained His right of prevailing 
 intercession by His giving Himself a sacrifice to 
 God for men, and through it receives the blessings 
 He dispenses, so, if we have truly with Christ given 
 ourselves to God for men, we share His right of 
 intercession, and are able to obtain the powers of 
 the heavenly world for them, too. 
 
 25th. — Tell every one who is master of his own 
 time, that he is as the angels, free to tarry before 
 the throne and then go out and minister to the 
 heirs of salvation. 
 
 We are frequently in danger of looking to what 
 God has done and is doing, and to count on that as 
 the pledge that He will at once do more. And all 
 
MAY. 75 
 
 the time it may be true that He is blessing us up 
 to the measure of our faith or self-sacrifice, and can- 
 not give larger measure until there has been a new 
 discovery and confession of what is hindering Him. 
 
 26th. — Men would fain have a revival as the out- 
 growth of their agencies and progress. God's way 
 is the opposite: it is out of death, acknowledged as 
 the desert of sin, confessed as utter helplessness, 
 that He revives. He revives the heart of the con- 
 trite one. 
 
 When earnest, godly workers allow, against their 
 better will, the spiritual to be crowded out by in- 
 cessant occupation and the fatigue it brings, it must 
 be because the spiritual life is not sufficiently strong 
 in them, to bid the lever stand aside till the pres- 
 ence of God in Christ and the power of the Spirit, 
 have been fully secured. 
 
 27th. — It was when the friend at midnight, in 
 answer to his prayer, had received from Another as 
 much as he needed, that he could supply his hungry 
 friend. It was the intercession, going out and im- 
 portuning, that was the difficult work; returning 
 home with his rich supply to impart, was easy, joy- 
 ful work. This is Christ's divine order for all thy 
 work, my brother: First come in utter poverty, 
 every day, and get from God the blessing in inter- 
 cession, go then, rejoicingly to impart it. 
 
76 MAY. 
 
 28th. — Our Lord gave His disciples, on His 
 resurrection day, the Holy Spirit, to enable them 
 to wait for the full outpouring on the day of Pente- 
 cost. It is only in the power of the Spirit already 
 in us, acknowledged and yielded to, that we can 
 pray for His fuller manifestation. Say to the Father, 
 it is the Spirit of His Son in you, is urging you to 
 plead His promise. 
 
 Prayer is not only wishing or asking, but believ- 
 ing and accepting. 
 
 29th. — In the last night Christ asked three 
 things for His disciples : that they might be kept as 
 those who are not of the world ; that they might be 
 sanctified ; that they might be one in love. You can- 
 not do better than pray as Jesus prayed. Ask for 
 God's people that they may be kept separate from 
 the world and its spirit; that they, by the Holy 
 Spirit, may live as those who are not of the world. 
 
 The utterance of our wish gives point to the 
 transaction in which we are engaged with God, and 
 so awakens faith and expectation. Be very definite 
 in your petitions, so as to know what answer you 
 may look for. 
 
 30th. — The future of the church and world de- 
 pends, to an extent we little conceive, on the edu- 
 cation of the day. The church may be seeking to 
 evangelize the heathen and be giving up her own 
 
may. yy 
 
 children to secular and materialistic influences. Pray 
 for schools and colleges, and that the church may 
 realize and fulfil its momentous duty of caring for 
 its children. 
 
 Beware in your prayer, above everything, of 
 limiting God, not only by unbelief, but by fancying 
 that you know what He can do. Expect unex- 
 pected things, above all that we ask or think. Each 
 time that you intercede, be quiet first and worship 
 God in His glory. 
 
 The same censer brings the prayer of the saints 
 before God and casts fire upon the earth. The 
 prayers that go up to heaven, have their share in the 
 history of this earth. 
 
 31st. — Pray for the Jews. Their return to the God 
 of their fathers stands connected, in a way we can- 
 not tell, w T ith wonderful blessing to the church, and 
 with the coming of our Lord Jesus. 
 
 What numbers of Bibles are being circulated. 
 What numbers of sermons on the Bible are being 
 preached. What numbers of Bibles being read in 
 home and school. How little blessing when it 
 comes "in word" only; what Divine blessing and 
 power when it comes "in the Holy Ghost," when it 
 is preached "with the Holy Ghost sent forth from 
 heaven." 
 
78 MAY. 
 
 All the powers of evil seek to hinder us in prayer. 
 Prayer is a conflict with opposing forces. It needs 
 the whole heart and all our strength. May God 
 give us grace to strive in prayer until we prevail. 
 
JUNE. 
 
 THE NEW LIFE. 
 
 ist. — The benefit of meetings for bringing and 
 reading aloud texts on a point previously an- 
 nounced is very great. This practice leads to the 
 searching of God's Word, as even preaching does 
 not. 
 
 2nd. — Read a book to understand the good and 
 then see if you receive benefit from the thoughts 
 expressed. Read to see if it is really in accordance 
 with God's Word. Read to find out the corre- 
 sponding places, not in the Bible, but in your own 
 life. Know if your life has been in harmony with 
 the New Life; direct your life for the future en- 
 tirely according to God's Word. 
 
 3rd. — One verse chosen to meet our needs, read 
 ten times and then laid up in the heart, is better than 
 ten verses read once. Only so much of the Word 
 as I actually receive and inwardly appropriate for 
 myself is food for my soul. 
 
 4th. — With God, speaking and doing always go 
 together: "Shall He say it and not do it?" The 
 
80 JUNE. 
 
 deed follows the word. I hear what God has said. 
 I take time to lodge in my heart the word promised, 
 I await the fulfilment. God promises — I believe — 
 God fulfills: that is the secret of the new life. 
 
 5th. — The Christian has only to believe; God 
 will look to the fulfilling. He thinks that he must 
 have a great power to exercise such a great faith. 
 You must not bring this mighty faith to get the 
 Word fulfilled; the Word brings you this faith. 
 "The Word is living and powerful." "Faith is by 
 the Word." Keep yourselves occupied with the 
 Word and give it time. It will work in you a faith 
 strong and able for anything. 
 
 6th. — If I trust in the Word and in the living 
 God His commandment will work in me desire and 
 power for obedience. When I weigh and hold fast 
 the command, it works the desire and the will to 
 obey; it urges strongly the conviction that I can 
 certainly do what my Father says. The Word, as 
 the command of the living God who loves me, is 
 my power. 
 
 7th. — This is the love of God ; not that He gives 
 us something, but someone — a living person — not 
 one or another blessing, but Him in whom is all life 
 and blessing — Jesus Himself. The whole of salva- 
 tion consists in this: to have, to enjoy Jesus, "He 
 that hath the Son hath life." 
 
>sb:* . 
 
 
 mkm 
 
JUNE. 8l 
 
 8th. — God gives in a wonderful way: from the 
 heart, completely for nothing, to the unworthy. 
 And He gives effectually. What He gives He will 
 really make entirely our possession. To take Jesus 
 and to hold Him fast and use Him when received, 
 is our great work. And that taking is nothing but 
 trusting. He is mine with all that He has. 
 
 9th. — It was in His great love that the Father 
 gave the Son. It was out of love that Jesus gave 
 Himself. The taking, the having of Jesus, is the 
 entrance to a life in the love of God: this is the 
 highest life. Through faith we must press into 
 love, and dwell there. 
 
 10th. — Keep back no single sin. Keep back no 
 single power. To save is to free from sin. Wait 
 not till you enter into temptation, but let your life 
 beforehand be always through Jesus. 
 
 11. — The continued indeterminate confession of 
 sin does more harm than good. It is much better 
 to say to God that you have nothing to confess, 
 than to confess you know not what. 
 
 12th. — The secret of progress in the service of 
 God is a strong yearning to become free from every 
 sin, a hunger and thirst after righteousness. The 
 Spirit of God is named the Holy Spirit because He 
 makes us holy. Being right with God is followed 
 by doing right. 
 
82 JUNE. 
 
 13th. — You must love, although you do not feel 
 the least love. It is not in your feeling, but in 
 faith, that the Spirit in you is the power of your 
 will to work in you all that the Father bids you. 
 Therefore, although you feel absolutely no love to 
 your enemy, say "In faith in the hidden working 
 of the Spirit in my heart, I do love him." 
 
 14th. — The nearer we are to God, the less we are 
 in ourselves, but the stronger we are in Him. The 
 more I see of God, the less I become, the deeper 
 is my confidence in Him. To become lowly, let 
 God fill eye and heart. Where God is all, there is 
 no time or place for man. 
 
 15th. — You often pray and strive against a sin: 
 although this is done with God's help you would be 
 the person who would overcome. No! "the battle 
 is not yours, but God's." Ask only: "What is my 
 Jesus able to do?" What you really trust Him with, 
 He is able to keep. You can trust the power of 
 Jesus, if you know that He is yours if you hold con- 
 verse with Him as your friend. 
 
 16th. — "The Lord must help me to overcome 
 sin:" the expression is altogether outside of the 
 New Testament. The grace of God in the soul does 
 not become a help to us. He will do everything. 
 When you surrender anything to the Lord for keep- 
 ing, take heed that you give it wholly into His 
 
JUNE. 83 
 
 hands ; and that you leave it there. He will carry 
 out your case gloriously. 
 
 17th. — The complaint about weakness is often 
 nothing else than an apology for our idleness. 
 There is power to be obtained in Christ for those 
 who will take the pains to have it. Strength is for 
 work. He who would be strong simply to be pious, 
 will not be so. He who in his weakness begins to 
 work for the Lord, shall become strong. 
 
 18th. — Believing right in opposition to what we 
 see, gives salvation. The unbelief that would see 
 shall not see; the faith that will not see, but has 
 enough in God, shall see the glory of God. Feeling 
 always seeks something in itself; faith keeps itself 
 occupied with what Jesus is. 
 
 19th. — Our work every day and the whole day is 
 to believe. Out of faith come all blessings and 
 powers, also the victory for overcoming. The bless- 
 ing of God includes in it the power of life for multi- 
 plication, for expansion, for communication. In 
 the Scriptures blessing and multiplication go to- 
 gether. Blessing always includes the power to bless 
 others. 
 
 20th. — For missions Jesus left the throne of 
 heaven. The heathen are His inheritance. In 
 heathendom the power of Satan has been estab- 
 
84 JTXNE. 
 
 lished. Jesus must have Himself vindicated as the 
 conqueror. The Lord has made Himself depend- 
 ent upon His body to do His work. It is the work 
 for which the Holy Spirit was given. See this in 
 the leading of the Spirit vouchsafed to Peter and 
 Barnabas and Saul. Missionary work brings bless- 
 ing on the church. It rouses to heroic deeds of 
 faith and self-denial. It has furnished the most 
 glorious instances of the wondrous power of the 
 Lord. In love for missionary work you will learn 
 to cleave to God and the Word ; you will be drawn 
 into prayer 
 
 2 1 st. — Gladness in God is the strongest proof 
 that I have in God what satisfies me. Gladness is 
 the token of the truth and the worth of obedience, 
 showing I have pleasure in the will of God. The 
 light of God's countenance gives the Christian his 
 gladness: in fellowship with his Lord he always 
 will be happy: the love of the Father shines like 
 the sun upon His children. Sin makes dark; un- 
 belief also makes dark, for it turns us from Him, 
 who alone is the light. 
 
 22nd. — Gladness is hindered by ignorance, when 
 we do not understand God and His love and the 
 blessedness of His service; by double-heartedness, 
 when we are not willing to give up everything for 
 Jesus, 
 
JTENTE. 85 
 
 23rd. — Do not seek gladness; in that case you 
 will not find it, because you are seeking feeling. 
 But seek Jesus, follow Jesus, believe in Jesus, and 
 gladness shall be added to you. 
 
 24th. — The will of God is as perfect as He Him- 
 self: let us not be afraid to surrender ourselves to 
 it: no one suffers loss by deeming the will of God 
 unconditionally good. 
 
 The sure confidence of an answer is the secret of 
 powerful praying. For a blessed prayer-meeting 
 there must be love and unity among the suppliants, 
 agreement upon the definite object that is desired; 
 the coming together in the name of Jesus and the 
 consciousness of His presence. According to your 
 conviction of the nearness of God will be the power 
 of your prayer. 
 
 25th. — When the Lord Jesus manifests His great 
 grace to a soul in redeeming it, He desires that the 
 world should see and know it: He would be known 
 and honored as its proprietor. Apart from this 
 public confession surrender is but half-hearted. 
 
 26th. — Conformity to the world can be overcome 
 by nothing but conformity to Jesus. Conformity 
 to the world is strengthened especially by inter- 
 course with it: it is in intercourse with Jesus that we 
 shall adopt His mode of thinking, His disposition, 
 
86 JITNE. 
 
 His manners. This is the spirit of the world: to 
 seek one's self and the visible. The Spirit of Jesus: 
 to live for God and the things that are invisible. 
 
 27th. — Do not use the day of rest only as a day 
 for the public observance of divine worship. In the 
 church you have the ordinances of preaching, united 
 prayer and praise, to keep you occupied. It is es- 
 pecially in private personal intercourse that God 
 can bless and sanctify you. 
 
 28th. — The lessons of the Supper are many. It 
 is a feast of remembrance ; a feast of reconciliation ; 
 a covenant feast; a feast of hope. But all these 
 separate thoughts are only subordinate parts of the 
 principal element: the living Jesus would give Him- 
 self to us in the most inward union. 
 
 29th. — There is but one Hebrew word for "obey- 
 ing voice'' and "hearing voice:" w T hen I learn the 
 will of God, not in the words of a man or a book, 
 but from God Himself, I shall surely believe what 
 is promised and do what is commanded. The Holy 
 Spirit is the voice of God : when we hear the living 
 voice obedience becomes easy. 
 
 30th. — Read the Word with a searching of the 
 Scriptures. The best explanation of the Bible is 
 the Bible itself. Take three or four texts upon a 
 
JITNE. 87 
 
 point and compare them. See wherein they agree 
 and wherein they differ; where they say the same 
 thing or again something else. Let the Word of 
 God be cleared up and confirmed by what He said 
 at another time on the same subject. The sacred 
 writers use this method of instruction with the 
 Scriptures. 
 
JULY. 
 
 HOLY IN CHRIST. 
 
 ist. — The secret of the life of holiness comes to 
 those who seek it not, but only seek Jesus. Let all 
 learn to trust in Jesus and to rejoice in Him even 
 though their experience be not what they would 
 wish. He will make us holy. But whether we 
 have entered the blessed life of faith in Jesus as our 
 sanctification, or are still longing for it from afar, 
 we all need one thing, the simple believing and 
 obedient acceptance of each word that our God has 
 spoken. 
 
 2nd. — "Be ye holy, for I am holy." It is as if 
 God said: — Holiness is my blessedness, and my 
 glory; without this you cannot see Me or enjoy 
 Me. There is nothing higher to be conceived; I 
 invite you to share with Me in it; I invite you to 
 likeness with Myself: "Be ye holy, for I am holy" 
 
 3rd. — Holiness is not something we do or attain, 
 it is the communication of the Divine Life, the in- 
 breathing of the Divine Nature; the power of the 
 Divine Presence resting on us. The Holy One 
 
JULY. 89 
 
 calls us to Himself that He may make ul holy in 
 possessing Himself. It is because the call to holi- 
 ness comes from the God of infinite Power and Love 
 that we may have the confidence: — we can be holy. 
 
 4th. — The nature of light is the same, whether in 
 the sun or in a candle; the nature of holiness re- 
 mains unchanged whether it be God or man in 
 whom it dwells. The more carefully we listen to 
 God's voice and let it sink into our hearts, the more 
 will all human standards fall away and only the 
 words be heard, "Holy, as I am holy/' 
 
 5th. — We are holy in Christ Jesus. Would we 
 but believe, how God's light would shine and fill 
 our hearts with joy and love. Let us fear our own 
 thoughts and crucify our own wisdom. Let us give 
 ourselves up to receive, in the power of the life of 
 God Himself, working in us by the Holy Spirit, 
 that which is deeper and truer than human thought, 
 Christ Himself as our holiness. 
 
 6th. — As the revelation of the Holy One of old 
 was a very slow and gradual one, so let us be content 
 patiently to follow, step by step, the path of the 
 shining light through the Word ; it will shine more 
 and more unto the perfect day. 
 
 7th. — All God's teaching about holiness is com- 
 prised in three great lessons: — First, a revelation, 
 
90 JULY. 
 
 "I am holy;" second, a command, "Be ye holy;" 
 third, a gift, the link between the two, "Ye are holy 
 in Christ." 
 
 8th. — It is the consciousness of God's presence, 
 making and keeping us His very own, that works 
 the true separateness of the world and its spirit 
 from ourselves and our will. It is as this separa- 
 tion is prized and persevered in, that the holiness 
 of God will enter in and take possession. 
 
 9th. — Because God is a spiritual and invisible 
 Being, every revelation of Himself, whether in His 
 work, His Word, or His Son, calls for faith. Faith 
 is to the soul what the senses are to the body; by 
 it alone we enter into communication and contact 
 with God. Faith is that meekness of soul which 
 waits in stillness to hear, to understand, to accept 
 what God says, to receive, to retain, to possess 
 what God gives. By faith we allow God to become 
 our very life. And because holiness is God's 
 highest glory and blessing, it is especially in the life 
 of holiness that we need to live by faith alone. 
 
 10th. — True holiness, God's holiness, in us works 
 itself out in love, in seeking and loving the unholy 
 that they may become holy too. Self-sacrificing 
 love is of the very essence of holiness. 
 
 nth. — The will of God must first live in us, if it is 
 to be done by us. The way for us to have God's 
 
JULY. 91 
 
 power in us, is for ourselves to be in His power. 
 Put yourself into the power of God; let the Holy 
 Spirit dwell within as in His Holy Temple, re- 
 vealing the Holy One on the throne; ruling all. 
 Holiness is essential to effectual service. 
 
 1 2th. — If in our study of the way of holiness 
 there has been awakened in us the desire to accept 
 and adore and stand complete in all the will of God, 
 let us seek to recognize that will in everything that 
 comes on us. The sin of him who vexes us is not 
 God's will. But it is God's will that we should be, 
 in that position of difficulty, to be tried and tested. 
 Such acceptance of the trial turns it into a blessing. 
 It will lead on to an ever clearer abiding in all the 
 will of God all the day. 
 
 13th. — The more deeply we enter by faith into 
 our liberty which we have in Christ, the more joy- 
 fully and confidently we present our members to 
 God as instruments of righteousness. The liberty 
 is not lawlessness, "we are delivered from our ene- 
 mies that we may serve Him in righteousness and 
 holiness all the days of our life." 
 
 14th. — The secret of true holiness is a very direct 
 and personal relation to the Holy One; all the 
 teaching through the Word or men made entirely 
 dependent on and subordinate to the personal teach- 
 ing of the Holy Ghost. 
 
92 JULY. 
 
 15th. — How many weary workers there are 
 mourning the want of power. They have spent 
 their strength more in the outer court of work and 
 service, than in the inner life of fellowship and faith. 
 
 LOVE MADE PERFECT. 
 
 1 6th. — To think that that everlasting God who 
 created heaven and earth should deal with each one 
 of us individually, and that it should please Him to 
 fill us with that everlasting love in which the 
 Father begot the Son and in which the Holy Spirit 
 maintains the fellowship between Father and Son. 
 
 17th. — I must not seek for love, but for God, for 
 love is the very nature of God. It does not say God 
 has love, but God is love, and the love that I need 
 is God Himself coming into my heart. 
 
 When the soul is perfected in love, it has such a 
 sense of that love that it can rest in it for eternity, 
 and though it has as much as it can contain for the 
 time being it can always receive more. 
 
 18th. — If we loved others with the love of God 
 how much more power there would be in our work, 
 how much more intercession, how much we should 
 sacrifice everything, our formality, our habits. We 
 would do work breathed upon by the love of God. 
 
JULY. 93 
 
 19th. — It is only the love of God coming in, that 
 will cast out self; but self must be brought as a 
 criminal to His feet. When God brings a man to 
 see all that there is in Christ and to receive Christ 
 fully, the power of Christ's death can come upon 
 him and he can die to sin, and if he dies to sin, he 
 dies to self. 
 
 20th. — The work of God the Father is to beget 
 God the Son, and that is the work which goes on 
 through eternity. God has nothing for us but Jesus, 
 but He is willing to give this — the living Son, born 
 afresh into us. When the living Christ dwells in 
 us, He will break open the fountain of love within 
 us. 
 
 2 1 st. — Love means giving, and giving all. God 
 gave His Son to me and with Him gave all ; and 
 now, love is — God claiming everything. 
 
 In the light of Christ's love, perfect love means 
 that we give up ourselves to pray and to work for 
 others. 
 
 The love and the faith of Christ's disciples was 
 very defective, yet Christ accepted it as the obedi- 
 ence and the faith of loving hearts. So, if we come to 
 Christ with our feeble beginnings, He will receive 
 our love, and will day by day lead us in the path of 
 perfect love and of perfect obedience. 
 
 Just as we must be separate from the world and 
 
94 JULY. 
 
 joined to Christ in obedience to His Word, so we 
 
 must also be joined to each other. 
 
 BE PERFECT. 
 
 22nd. — A child may be the perfect image of his 
 father. There may be a great difference in power 
 and yet the resemblance may be so striking that 
 everyone notices it; so a child of God, though in- 
 finitely less, may yet bear the image of the Father 
 so markedly that in His creaturely life, he shall be 
 perfect as the Father is in His divine life. 
 
 Man was created simply to show forth God's 
 glory, by allowing God to show how completely 
 He could reveal His likeness and blessedness in 
 man. 
 
 A life that is wholly for God has in all ages been 
 accepted by the Father as the mark of the perfect 
 man. 
 
 23rd. — The work of the child is very defective 
 and yet cause of joy and hope to the father, because 
 he sees in it proof of the child's attachment and 
 obedience, as well as the pledge of what that spirit 
 will do for the child when his intelligence and his 
 strength have been increased. The child has 
 served the father with a perfect heart, though the 
 perfect heart does not at once imply perfect work. 
 
july. 95 
 
 24th. — If we are to have perfect peace and con- 
 fidence we must know that our heart is perfect with 
 God. The consciousness of a perfect heart gives 
 wonderful power in prayer. 
 
 It is just he who knows most of what it is to be 
 perfect in purpose who will pray most to be perfect 
 in practice too. Walking before God will ensure 
 walking in His commandments. 
 
 Faith expects from God what is beyond all ex- 
 pectation. 
 
 25th.— To have God reveal His strength in us, 
 to have Him make us strong for life or work, for 
 doing or for suffering, our heart must be perfect 
 with Him. 
 
 God is Love, who lives not for Himself, but in 
 the energy of an infinite life makes His creatures, 
 as far as they can possibly receive it, partakers of 
 His perfection. 
 
 As little as there can be a ray of the light of day, 
 however dull and clouded it be, but what speaks of 
 the sun, so little can there be any perfection but 
 what is of God. 
 
 26th. — A man may have his heart intent on serv- 
 ing God perfectly, and yet he may be unconscious 
 of how very imperfect his knowledge of God's will 
 
g6 july. 
 
 is. The soul that longs to be perfect in the way, 
 and in deep consciousness of its need of a Divine 
 teaching pleads for it, will not be disappointed. 
 
 27th. — "Let us go on to perfection" means, let 
 us go on to know Christ perfectly, to live entirely 
 by His heavenly life now He is perfected, to follow 
 wholly His earthly life and the path in which He 
 reached perfection. 
 
 There must be harmony between the place of 
 worship and the worshippers. As He has prepared 
 the perfect sanctuary, the Holiest of All, for us, He 
 has prepared us for it, too. 
 
 On our part, the surrender to be made perfect 
 will be the measure of our capacity to apprehend 
 what God has done in Christ. 
 
 28th. — A valuable piece of machinery may be out 
 of order. The owner has spent time and trouble in 
 vain to put it right. The maker comes : it costs him 
 but a moment to remove the hindrance. So the 
 soul that has for years wearied itself in the effort 
 to do God's will, may often in one moment be de- 
 livered from some misapprehension as to what God 
 demands or promises, find itself restored, perfected 
 for every good thing. What was done in a moment 
 becomes the secret of the continuous life, as faith 
 each day claims the God that perfects, to do that 
 which is well-pleasing in His sight. 
 
july. 97 
 
 29th. — Jesus Christ was Himself not perfected in 
 one day: in Him patience had its perfect work. 
 True faith recognizes the need of time and rests in 
 God. 
 
 The weakest point in the character of the Chris- 
 tian is the measure of His nearness to perfection. 
 It is in the little things of daily life that perfection 
 is attained and proved. 
 
 30th. — There is the inward perfection that comes 
 from growth and development, and the perfection 
 which consists in having defects removed and what 
 is lacking supplied. Only the former could be used 
 of the Lord Jesus, not the latter. Both have refer- 
 ence to what God seeks in His children and works 
 in them. 
 
 No one will pray for the perfected heart earnestly, 
 perseveringly, believingly, until he accepts God's 
 Word fully that it is a positive command and an 
 immediate duty to be perfect. 
 
 31st. — The consciousness will soon grow strong 
 of the utter impossibility of attempting obedience 
 in human strength. The faith will grow that the 
 word of command was simply meant to draw the 
 soul to Him w r ho gives what He asks. 
 
 The will of God is the expression of the divine 
 perfection. 
 
AUGUST. 
 
 DEEPER CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 ist. — Peter wanted to walk like Christ that he 
 might get near Christ. He did not say : "Lord, let 
 me walk around the sea here/' but, "Let me come 
 to Thee." When Peter was in the boat, what had 
 he between him and the sea? A couple of planks, 
 but when he stepped out upon the water, what had 
 he between him and the sea? Not a plank, but the 
 word of the Almighty Jesus. 
 
 2nd. — The Christian life compared to Peter walk- 
 ing on the waves : — nothing so difficult and impossi- 
 ble without Christ. Nothing so blessed and safe 
 with Christ. Peter walked back to the boat without 
 sinking again. Christ took him by the hand and 
 helped him, they were very near to each other, and 
 it was the nearness to His Lord that strengthened 
 him. It is possible to be far nearer Christ after 
 failure than before. 
 
 3rd. — How often we trouble about things, and 
 about praying for them, instead of going back to 
 the root of things and saying: "Lord, I only crave 
 
AUGUST. 99 
 
 to be the receptacle of what the will of God means 
 for me; of the power and the gift and the love and 
 the Spirit of God." 
 
 You never can have too strong a will, but the 
 trouble is we do not give that strong will up to 
 God, to make it a vessel in which God can and will 
 pour His Spirit, so as to fit it to do splendid service 
 for Himself. Does not God give us all good gifts 
 to enjoy? But the reality of the enjoyment is in the 
 giving back. 
 
 4th. — Have I not seen a mother give a piece of 
 cake, and the child offers her a piece? How she 
 values the gift: Your God, His Father's heart of 
 love, longs to have you give Him everything. He 
 knows that every gift you bring will bind you 
 closer to Himself, every surrender will open your 
 heart wider to get more of His spiritual gifts. 
 
 When God's Word comes close to you and 
 touches your heart, remember that it is Christ, out 
 of whose mouth goes the two-edged sword. It is 
 Christ in His love coming- to cut away the sin that 
 He may fill your heart w T ith the blessing of God's 
 love. 
 
 5th. — Do not ask: "Can I be kept from sinning, 
 if I keep close to Him?" but ask: "Can I be kept 
 from sinning if He always keeps close to me?" and 
 you see at once how safe it is to trust Him. 
 
100 AUGUST. 
 
 I may point men to Jesus as earnestly as I will, 
 but it will avail little unless I lead them to believe 
 that they must have the Holy Spirit in them to re- 
 veal Christ to them. 
 
 6th. — As our whole life becomes filled with the 
 humbling, solemn subduing presence of God, 
 through the Holy Spirit, we shall walk about among 
 people as men of God ; not as men who vaguely 
 preach about the Book, and what is in the Book, 
 but who preach what they are, and what they have 
 seen of Jesus. 
 
 EAGLE WINGS. 
 
 7th. — When the Holy Spirit comes within us as 
 the fire of God's love for souls there will come to us 
 an intensity and desire too deep for words. Then 
 is the time when the Holy Spirit prays in us with 
 groanings which cannot be uttered. 
 
 Love in the Spirit to each other and to all saints 
 prayer in the name of Jesus ; God to be waited on 
 and trusted — this is a threefold cord which cannot 
 be broken. 
 
 It is not always more w r ork that is needed ; some 
 might with advantage work less ; the main thing is 
 the quality of work that is done. 
 
 8th. — What was to bring conviction that Jesus 
 was the Christ? Love. That is what Christ said. 
 
AUGUST. IOI 
 
 "I pray that they may be one that the world may 
 know that Thou hast sent Me." Not preaching, but 
 love. Preaching is needed, — praise God for what 
 it does! — but love will do more. 
 
 9th. — The Son of God came to earth to prove 
 that the love of God in heaven could stand the trial 
 of life — every enmity, every shame, every suffering, 
 and live through it all. It is your high privilege to 
 have your heart rilled with the heavenly love of 
 Christ Jesus and to carry it to this life. 
 
 10th. — I feel more and more deeply that you may 
 have an earnest Christian, and yet his or her life be 
 far below what God could make it, if he or she 
 would wait for the Holy Spirit to get possession. 
 
 In our prayers continually, and in our life, let 
 this thought be our joy and our strength: How- 
 ever ignorant I feel, and however feeble my words 
 have been, the Spirit prays in me, and God who 
 searches the hearts knows the mind of the Spirit. 
 
 nth. — How does God teach His eaglet children 
 to use their wings? He comes and stirs up their 
 nest, with some tribulation or temptation. Why? 
 Just as the eaglets ready to sink, find the mother 
 coming under them and carrying them, so the ever- 
 lasting arms are stretched out underneath the soul 
 that feels itself ready to perish. As the eaglet 
 
102 AUGUST. 
 
 trusts the mother to carry it, so my God asks me to 
 trust Him that He will bear me. 
 
 1 2th. — The everlasting God fainteth not, neither 
 is weary. He giveth power to the faint and to them 
 that have no might. He increaseth strength. If 
 the everlasting God is never weary, you need never 
 be weary, because your God is your strength. You 
 have no strength but what God gives, and you can 
 have all the strength that God can give. 
 
 Study and love your Bible, but remember it is 
 God who must give the orders, and you will fail if 
 you take them from a book. Love your Bible and 
 fill your heart with it, but let God apply it in your 
 daily life. 
 
 13th. — The great secret of a right waiting upon 
 God is to be brought down to utter impotence. "I 
 can do nothing of myself/' Jesus said that, and He 
 just waited upon God. Would not you like to oc- 
 cupy the very place that Jesus did before the Father 
 and in the Father's heart? Would not you be willing 
 to take that place, and to love every day as a man 
 that has no might but is utterly helpless, and just to 
 wait upon God? 
 
 WAITING ON GOD. 
 
 14th. — We must not only think of our waiting 
 upon God, but also of what is more wonderful still, 
 
AUGUST. IO3 
 
 of God's waiting upon us. If He waits for us then 
 we are more than welcome. 
 
 Who can measure the difference between the 
 great sun and that little blade of grass? Yet the 
 grass has all of the sun it can need or hold. In wait- 
 ing on God His greatness and your littleness suit 
 and meet each other most wonderfully. 
 
 15th. — Christ not only said "Abide in Me," but 
 also "I in you." The Epistles not only speak of us 
 in Christ, but of Christ in us, the highest mystery 
 of redeeming love. As we maintain our place in 
 Christ day by day, God waits to reveal Christ in us. 
 
 16th. — There is such a danger of our being so 
 occupied with the things that are coming more than 
 with Him who is to come. Nothing but humble 
 waiting on God can save us from mistaking intellect- 
 ual study for the true love of Him and His appear- 
 ing. Not when we are most occupied with pro- 
 phetic subjects, but when in humility and love we 
 are clinging close to our Lord and His brethren, are 
 we in the Lord's place. 
 
 17th. — Instead of the tone of condemnation or of 
 despair, wait upon God in behalf of His erring chil- 
 dren. If these fail in doing it, give yourself doubly 
 to it. 
 
104 AUGUST. 
 
 At times, we are impatient with men and circum- 
 stances that hinder us, or with ourselves and our 
 slow progress in the Christian life. If we truly wait 
 upon God, we shall find that it is with Him we are 
 impatient, because He does not, as soon as we 
 could wish, do our bidding. 
 
 1 8th. — The activity of the mind in studying the 
 Word or giving expression to its thoughts in prayer 
 may so engage us that we do not come to the still 
 waiting on the All Glorious One. 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS EXTRACTS. 
 
 19th. — If we seek above everything to be freed 
 from our sin and to have the baptism of the Spirit, 
 that Christ and His will may have the complete 
 mastery in us, if we seek it for the sake of God's 
 holiness that He may be glorified, and Christ be all, 
 our happiness and our usefulness will come of them- 
 selves. 
 
 20th. — In Scripture we have the words of daily 
 life, in themselves without life or power. The mind 
 can study and utter them, but they bring neither 
 help nor blessing. "The letter killeth; the Spirit 
 quickeneth. ,, The fire of the Holy Spirit takes 
 them as its fuel, and makes them the power by 
 which the fire on the altars of our hearts is kept 
 ever burning. 
 
AUGUST. 105 
 
 2 1 st. — It is a terrible mistake to think that when 
 once a man is rilled with the Spirit, persistent study 
 of God's Word and reverent whole-hearted sub- 
 mission to it, is not as much needed as before. 
 "The priest shall burn wood on the altar every 
 morning. ,, 
 
 22nd. — Often Christian liberty is spoken of as 
 freedom from restraint in sacrificing our will, or the 
 enjoyment of the world Its real meaning is the 
 very opposite. True love asks to be free from self 
 and the world to bring its all to God. The truly 
 free spirit asks: "How far am I free to follow 
 Christ to the uttermost?" 
 
 23rd. — Give up yourself to God's perfect love to 
 work out His perfect will. For all He means you 
 to do, He will surely give light and strength. The 
 Throne of the Lamb is surely proof that there is no 
 sure way for us to riches and honor than through 
 His poverty. 
 
 24th. — The soul that in simplicity yields to the 
 leading of her Lord will find that the fellowship of 
 His suffering brings even here the fellowship of 
 His glory. "Though He was rich, yet for your 
 sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty 
 might be rich." 
 
 WITHIN. 
 
 25th. — This is the chief mark and glory of the Son 
 
I06 AUGUST. 
 
 of God: that He lived and died, not for Himself, 
 but for others. It was to do God's will that Christ 
 came from heaven. It is to do God's will in you, 
 that He has entered your heart. Jesus won back 
 for us the life man had been created for, with God 
 dwelling in him, by giving to us His life, the very 
 life He had lived. 
 
 26th. — All the sin of heathendom, all the sin of 
 Christendom is but the outgrowth of the one root — 
 God dethroned, self enthroned, in the heart of man. 
 
 The mark of a Kingdom is the presence of the 
 King. With the Holy Spirit, Chist came down to 
 be with His disciples as really and more nearly, 
 than when in the flesh. The disciples had their 
 Lord with them as consciously as the angels in 
 heaven. His presence made heaven all around and 
 in them. 
 
 27th. — Think of the work Christ's disciples, sim- 
 ple fishermen, dared to undertake and were able 
 to accomplish, — their weapon the despised gospel 
 of the crucified Nazarene. See how the coming of 
 the Kingdom brought a new power from heaven 
 by which feeble men were made mighty through 
 God, and the slaves of Satan were made God's holy 
 children. 
 
 28th. — In the feebleness of the grave Jesus gained 
 
AUGUST. 107 
 
 His throne. We need to die with Him, that is the 
 way to get delivered from Self, the way to receive 
 the heavenly life as a little child and so to enter the 
 Kingdom. The feebleness of Bethlehem and the 
 manger, of Calvary and the grave, were Christ's 
 way into the Kingdom — for us there is no other 
 way. 
 
 29th. — As we seek to humble ourselves and to 
 renounce all wish and all hope of being or doing 
 good of ourselves, as we yield all our human ability 
 and energy to the death in the confession that it is 
 nothing but sinful and worthy of death, God's 
 Spirit will make the power of Christ's death to sin 
 work in us. we shall die with Him, and with Him be 
 raised in newness of life. The new life will be the 
 little child that receives the Kingdom. 
 
 30th. — How little we think that our heart was 
 actually created that God might live there, that He 
 might show forth His life and love there, and that 
 our love and joy might be in Him alone. How little 
 we know that just as naturally as we have the love 
 of parents or of children filling our hearts and 
 making us happy, we can have the living God, for 
 whom the heart was made, dwelling there and fill- 
 ing it with His own blessedness and goodness. 
 
 31st. — "Father, here am I for Thee to give as much 
 in me of Christ's likeness as I can receive." Wait 
 
108 AUGUST. 
 
 to hear Him say, "My child, I give thee as much of 
 Christ as thy heart is open to receive." 
 
 The manna of one day was corrupt when the next 
 day came. I must have every day fresh grace from 
 heaven ; and I obtain it only in direct waiting upon 
 God Himself. 
 
SEPTEMBER. 
 
 JESUS HIMSELF. 
 
 ist. — What is the difference between a dead 
 Christ whom the women went to anoint and a 
 living Christ? A dead Christ I must do everything 
 for, a living Christ does everything for me. 
 
 In proportion as a man has not as a senti- 
 ment or an aspiration, but in reality, the very spirit 
 and presence of Jesus upon him, there comes out 
 from him an unseen, silent influence. That secret 
 influence is the holy presence of Jesus. 
 
 2nd. — It is not your faith that will keep you 
 standing, but it is a living Jesus, met every day in 
 fellowship and worship and love. "J esus > Thou hast 
 told me to believe, to obey, to abide near Thee; is 
 there anything more I need to secure the enjoy- 
 ment of Thine abiding presence ?" "I have re- 
 deemed thee a witness to go out into the world con- 
 fessing Me before men." Work for Him who is 
 worthy ; His blessing and His presence will be found 
 in the work. 
 
 3rd. — You often try hard to trust God and you 
 
IIO SEPTEMBER. 
 
 fail. Why? Because you have not taken time first 
 to see God. How can you trust God fully until you 
 have met Him and known Him? 
 
 When God wanted to send any man upon His 
 service, He first met him and talked with him and 
 cheered him time after time. God appeared to 
 Abraham seven or eight times and gave to him one 
 command after another, and so Abraham learned to 
 obey Him perfectly. God appeared to Joshua and 
 to Gideon and they obeyed. Why are we not ob- 
 edient? Because we have so little of this near inter- 
 course with Jesus. 
 
 4th. — We read, 'The Spirit of the Lord clothed 
 Gideon. " There is in the New Testament an equally 
 wonderful text: 'Tut on the Lord Jesus Christ," 
 that is, clothe yourself with Christ Jesus. That does 
 not only mean by inspiration of righteousness out- 
 side of me, but to clothe myself with the living love 
 of the living Christ. He whom I have to put on is 
 as a garment covering my whole being. 
 
 5th. — There are many Christians who know that 
 they must not only believe in a crucified Christ, but 
 in a living Christ, and they try to grasp it, but it 
 does not bring them a blessing. Why? Because 
 they want to feel it and not to believe it. They want 
 to work for it and with efforts get hold of it, instead 
 of just quietly sinking down and believing: "Christ, 
 
SEPTEMBER. Ill 
 
 the living Jesus, He will do everything for us." 
 
 Just as a living child lives day by day in the arms 
 of its mother, and grows up year by year, under a 
 mother's eye, it is a possibility that you can live 
 every day and hour of your life in fellowship with 
 the Holy Jesus. 
 
 6th. — The great thing in prayer is to feel, that we 
 are putting our supplications into the bosom of 
 omnipotent Love. Before and above everything, 
 let us take time ere we pray, to realize the glory and 
 presence of God. (Miscellaneous). 
 
 "God first" is a motto often misunderstood. God 
 God first may mean "I" second. God is thus first 
 in order, but one of a series of powers. The mean- 
 ing of the words is really God all, everything. 
 
 Christ cannot help coming in where there is a 
 living faith, a full faith. Do let us believe, because 
 "all things are possible to him that believeth." 
 That is God's word. 
 
 7th. — What is to make a difference between 
 Christ's disciples and other people? It is this, to be 
 in fellowship with Jesus, every hour of the day. 
 Christ is able in heaven now to do what He could 
 not do when He was on earth — to keep in the closest 
 fellowship with every believer throughout the whole 
 world. Why was my Lord Jesus taken up to 
 
112 SEPTEMBER. 
 
 heaven away from the life of earth? Because the 
 life of earth is confined to localities, but the life in 
 heaven is a life in which there is no limit, no bound, 
 no locality. Christ was taken up to heaven that in 
 the power of the omnipresent God, He might be 
 able to fill every individual here and be with every 
 individual believer. 
 
 8th. — When we have Jesus with us, and when we 
 go every footstep with the thought that it is Jesus 
 sends us, and is helping us, then there will be 
 brightness in our testimony and it will help other 
 believers to understand, "I see why I have failed. I 
 took the word, the blessing, as I thought the life, 
 but I was without the living Jesus." 
 
 Just as really as Christ was with Peter in the boat, 
 just as Christ sat with John at the table, as really 
 can I have Christ with me — more really, for they 
 had their Christ in the body, He was a man, an in- 
 dividual separate from them, but I may have the 
 glorified Christ in the power of the throne of God, 
 the omnipotent, omnipresent Christ. 
 
 THE MASTER'S INDWELLING. 
 
 9th. — Why did God give the angels or man a self? 
 God gave me the power of self-determination, that 
 I might bring this self every day, and say : "Oh, 
 God, work in it ; I offer it to thee." 
 
SEPTEMBER. II3 
 
 God's Word teaches us that God does not expect 
 a man to live as he ought for one minute, unless the 
 Holy Spirit is in him to enable him to do it. 
 
 Did ever a father or mother think, "For to-day I 
 want my child to love me?" No, they expect the 
 love every day. So God wants His child every 
 moment to have a heart filled with love of the Spirit. 
 
 10th. — Suppose a painter had a piece of canvas 
 on which he desired to work out some beautiful de- 
 sign, it does not belong to him, and any one has a 
 right to take it and to use it for any other purpose ; 
 do you think the painter would bestow much work 
 on that? No. Yet people want Jesus Christ to 
 bestow His trouble upon them in taking away this 
 temper, or that other sin, though in their hearts they 
 have not yielded themselves utterly to His command 
 and His keeping. If you will come and give your 
 whole life into His charge, Christ Jesus is mighty 
 to save ; waits to fill you with His Spirit. 
 
 nth. — Fellowship with the cross of Christ will be 
 an unceasing denial of self, every hour and every 
 moment by the grace of God. 
 
 If I know that God is my God, not through 
 man's teaching, not with my mind or my imagina- 
 tion, but in the living evidence which God gives in 
 my heart, then I know that the divine presence of 
 
114 • SEPTEMBER. 
 
 my God will be so wonderful, and my God Himself 
 so beautiful, so near, that I can live all my days and 
 years a conqueror through Him that loved me. 
 
 12th. — The pointer helps to show the place on 
 the map, it might be of fine gold, but we want to see 
 what the pointer points at. This Bible is nothing 
 but a pointer, pointing to God; and, — may I say it 
 with reverence, — Jesus Christ came to point us, to 
 show us the way. He died, that He might bring 
 us unto God. 
 
 The tree of one hundred years old — when 
 it was planted God did not give it a stock of life by 
 which to carry on its existence. Every year God 
 clothes the tree with its foliage and its fruit, and 
 that is what God is for, to work in us by His mighty 
 operation, without one moment's ceasing. 
 
 13th. — Has God arranged that the light of that 
 sun that will one day be burned up, can come to you 
 unconsciously and shine in you blessedly and 
 mightily ; and is God not willing, or not able, to let 
 His light and His presence so shine through you, 
 that you can walk all the day, with God nearer to 
 you than anything in nature? 
 
 What is religion? Just as much as you have of 
 God working in you. If you want more religion, 
 more strength, more fruitfulness, you must have 
 more of God. 
 
SEPTEMBER. 115 
 
 14th. — Israel passed through two stages: — 
 brought out from Egypt into Canaan. If you would 
 know the difference between the life you have been 
 leading, and the life you now want to lead, look at 
 the wilderness and Canaan. In the wilderness, 
 wandering; in Canaan, perfect rest; in the wilder- 
 ness, want; in Canaan, plenty. In the wilderness, 
 no victory; in Canaan, they went from victory to 
 victory. 
 
 15th. — The Holy Spirit is much spoken of in con- 
 nection with power ; not so much spoken of in con- 
 nection with the graces ; yet these are always more 
 important than the gifts of power — the holiness, the 
 meekness, and the lovingness ; these are the true 
 marks of the Kingdom. 
 
 The word "Lamb" must mean to us not only a 
 sacrifice, the shedding of blood, but the meekness 
 of God, incarnate upon earth, represented in the 
 meekness and gentleness of a little Lamb. 
 
 16th. — It is good to be saved from the sins of 
 stealing, murdering and every other evil ; but a man 
 needs above all to be saved from what is the root of 
 all sin, his self-will and his pride. 
 
 If the windows of your room were closed the sun 
 would be on the outside of the building, streaming 
 against the shutters, but it could not enter. Leave 
 
Il6 SEPTEMBER. 
 
 the windows without shutters, and the light can 
 come in and fill the room. Even so, Jesus and His 
 Light, Jesus and His humility, are around you on 
 every side, longing to enter into your heart. 
 
 17th. — Christians do not know how much they 
 rob Christ of, in reading so much of the literature of 
 the world. They are often so occupied with their 
 newspapers, that the Bible gets a very small place. 
 Bring this noble power of a mind that can think 
 heavenly, eternal, and infinite things and lay it at 
 the feet of Jesus. 
 
 The Church of Christ suffers more to-day, 
 from trusting in intellect, in sagacity, in culture, and 
 in mental refinement, than from almost anything 
 else. The Spirit of the world comes in, and men 
 seek by their wisdom, and by their knowledge, to 
 help the Gospel, and they rob it of its crucifixion 
 mark. 
 
 18th. — I see divine things but cannot reach them ; 
 the self-life is like an invisible plate glass. We are 
 willing, we are striving, and yet we are holding 
 back something; w r e are afraid to give up every- 
 thing to God. 
 
 Your heart is too holy to have it filled with busi- 
 ness ; let the business be in the head and under the 
 feet, but let Christ have the whole heart, and He 
 will keep the whole life. 
 
SEPTEMBER. 117 
 
 The Holy Spirit could pray a hundred fold more 
 in us if we were only conscious of our ignorance, 
 because we would then feel our dependence upon 
 Him. 
 
 19th. — The smith puts his rod of iron into the 
 fire. If he leaves it there but a short time it does 
 not become red hot. If he takes time and leaves the 
 rod in the fire, the whole iron will become red hot 
 with the heat that is in the fire. So if we are to get 
 the fire of God's holiness and love and power we 
 must take more time with God in fellowship. 
 
 Ah, the blessedness of saying, "God and 
 I!" But I find in the Bible a more precious word 
 still, it is, "God and not I," not God first, and I sec- 
 ond ; God is all, and I am nothing. 
 
 SPIRITUAL LIFE. 
 
 20th. — We often speak of the wonderful revela- 
 tion of the Father's heart in His welcome to the 
 prodigal son, but we have a revelation of the 
 Father's love far more wonderful in what He says 
 to the elder son, "Son, thou art ever with me and all 
 that I have is thine." What was the cause of the 
 terrible difference between the heart of the father 
 and the experince of the son? Unbelief. 
 
 If we are to experience a deepening of spiritual 
 life, we want to discover clearly what is the spiritual 
 
Il8 SEPTEMBER. 
 
 life that God would have us live, and to ask 
 whether we are living that life, or if not, what 
 hinders our living it fully. 
 
 2 1 st. — The majority of Christians seem to regard 
 the whole of the Spirit's work as confined to con- 
 viction and conversion; they hardly know that He 
 came to dwell in our hearts, and there reveal God 
 in us. 
 
 Unbelief is the mother of disobedience, and all 
 other sins and shortcomings — my temper, my 
 pride, my unlovingness, my worldliness. Though 
 these differ in nature and form yet they all come 
 from the one root, namely, that we do not believe 
 in the freedom and fulness of the divine gift of the 
 Holy Spirit, to dwell in us and strengthen us, and fill 
 us with the life and grace of God all the day long. 
 
 22nd. — Walk like Christ, and you shall always 
 abide near Christ. The presence of Christ invites 
 you to come and have unbroken fellowship with 
 Him. 
 
 To walk through all the circumstances and temp- 
 tations of life is exactly like [Peter's] walking on 
 the water — you have no solid ground under your 
 feet, but you have the Word of God to rest on. 
 
 I remember the time in my spiritual life, that 
 when I failed my only thought was to reproach 
 
SEPTEMBER. TI9 
 
 and condemn myself. I found it did not do me 
 good; I learn from Peter [walking on the water] 
 that my work is, the very moment I fail, to say 
 "Jesus, Master, help me," and the very moment I 
 say that, Jesus does help me. 
 
 23rd. — A father never sends his child away with 
 the thought that he does not care about his child 
 knowing that he loves him. He longs to have his 
 child believe that he has the light of his father's 
 countenance upon him all the day. If it be so with 
 an earthly father, what think you of God? Does He 
 not want every child of His to know that he is con- 
 stantly living in the light of His countenance? 
 
 Who knows but what, just as Jesus said to the 
 woman of Samaria, Give Me, because He wanted 
 to say, / will give thee, He is asking you this gift to- 
 day to lead you to see what is lacking in your spiri- 
 tual life. — The Cross of Christ. 
 
 24th. — The terrible history of mankind can never 
 be rightly understood till we allow Scripture to 
 teach us that, even as there is a purpose in God 
 which overrules all, so there is, on the other hand, 
 amid what appears nothing but a natural growth 
 and development, an organized system and king- 
 dom that holds rule over men, that keeps them in 
 darkness, and uses them in its war against the king- 
 dom of God's Son. — The Cross of Christ. 
 
120 SEPTEMBER. 
 
 25th. — When Christ came to save men, ere He 
 entered His public ministry, He had first to meet 
 God, and deal with Him. In His baptism He en- 
 tered into fellowship with sinners, and gave Himself 
 to fulfill all righteousness; in the vision of the 
 opened heaven and the descending dove, as in the 
 voice of the Father, He received the seal of the 
 Divine approval. He then had to meet the Temp- 
 ter, through whom Adam had fallen ; only then 
 could He begin His ministry among men. As defi- 
 nitely as Christ in the work of salvation had to deal 
 with God and with man, had He to deal with Satan 
 too. There was no salvation possible, but as Satan's 
 power was acknowledged, and met, and overthrown. 
 — The Cross of Christ. 
 
 26th. — Is it possible that the lack of Christ's pov- 
 erty is the cause of our lack of His riches? Is there 
 not a needs-be that we not only think of the one 
 side, "For your sakes He became poor;" but as 
 much of the other, "For His sake I suffer the loss of 
 all things." — The Poverty of Christ. 
 
 27th. — The poverty of Christ has been to tens of 
 thousands the assurance that He could feel for 
 them ; that even as with Him, earthly need was to be 
 the occasion of heavenly help ; the school for a life 
 of faith; and the experience of God's faithfulness, 
 the path to heavenly riches.— The Poverty of Christ. 
 
SEPTEMBER. 121 
 
 28th. — As it was with the fruit good for food and 
 pleasant to the eye, sin entered the world, so the 
 great power of the world over men is in the cares, 
 and possessions, and enjoyments of this life. Christ 
 came to win the world back to God. He did so, by 
 refusing every temptation to accept its gifts or seek 
 its aid. Of this protest against the worldly spirit, 
 its self-pleasing and its trust in the visible, the pov- 
 erty of Christ was one of the chief elements. — The 
 Poverty of Christ. 
 
 29th. — Christ overcame the world, first, in the 
 temptations by which its prince sought to ensnare 
 Himself, then and through that in its power over 
 us. — The Poverty of Christ. 
 
 In Paul's wonderful life, as in His writings, he 
 proves what weight it gives to the testimony con- 
 cerning eternal things, when the witness can appeal 
 to his own experience of the infinite satisfaction 
 which the unseen riches can give. — The Poverty of 
 Christ. 
 
 30th. — In monastic days, men expected from 
 poverty what only the Spirit of Christ, revealing 
 itself in poverty, could accomplish. Here was the 
 failure. — The Poverty of Christ. 
 
 Christ separated for Himself a band of men, who 
 were to live with Him in closest fellowship, in entire 
 
122 SEPTEMBER. 
 
 conformity to His life, under His immediate train- 
 ing. These three conditions were indispensable for 
 their receiving the Holy Spirit, for being true wit- 
 nesses to Him and the life which He had lived, and 
 would impart to men.— The Poverty of Christ. 
 
OCTOBER. 
 
 WHY DO YOU NOT BELIEVE? 
 
 ist. — After a sermon or a conversation a soul had 
 a little light but speedily again lost it. He did not 
 still keep the promises anew before him, that unbelief 
 might not again obtain the upper hand. 
 
 The question must be continually repeated, "What 
 does God require me to believe?" and in the face of 
 whatever weakness, must the answer be at His feet : 
 "Lord, I believe, I will believe." 
 
 Martha did not yet believe everything, but what 
 she believed that she spoke out before the Lord. 
 She believed in Him as the Son of the Living God ; 
 this was the principal thing and the source of greater 
 faith. She was diligent in prayer, that her faith 
 would be strengthened and become capable of re- 
 ceiving yet more and more. 
 
 2nd. — He, who knows that there is a Spirit to ac- 
 tuate to faith, knows also that man may, with spirit 
 and hope, strive to exercise faith. 
 
 The more fully the soul believes, the more clear 
 becomes the revelation of the Spirit ; the more fully 
 
124 OCTOBER. 
 
 the Spirit works in it, the more does the soul grow 
 in the life of faith and confidence. Thus we may 
 have the Spirit of faith. 
 
 No sooner is faith cultivated in a one-sided fash- 
 ion, without a growing conscientiousness of the 
 casting off of little sins, and the sanctification of the 
 whole heart and walk, then it becomes a work 
 merely of the understanding or the feeling. 
 
 3rd. — We teach our children to utter words which 
 they do not yet fully understand, in the confidence, 
 that the thoughts and feelings expressed in them 
 will be gradually imprinted on their hearts. Idle 
 and sinful words are at the outset uttered care- 
 lessly, become rooted in the heart and bear their 
 own fruits. And what do we not observe in prayer? 
 That the soul uttering "Thy will be done," although 
 the heart does not as yet fully assent, shall at last by 
 the very use of the expression, submit to the casting 
 out of the unwilling disposition. 
 
 4th. — Sincerity is that attitude of the soul, in 
 virtue of which we present ourselves to the Lord 
 just as we are, neither better nor worse. 
 
 The Word has not yet defined how deeply one 
 must feel sin before one may come to Jesus: it has 
 fixed no measure. The first sense of need must 
 bring us to Him. Remaining apart from Jesus is 
 just the way to make the sense of sin less. 
 
OCTOBER. 125 
 
 5th. — Always the closer to the light, the more 
 visible the impurity; the nearer to the Holy One, 
 the stronger the sense of unworthiness ; the more 
 blessed with grace, the deeper the conviction of sin. 
 
 You wound Him in the most tender point when 
 you doubt if His grace is indeed for you, and so 
 drag its greatness and trustworthiness into doubt. 
 
 Just because you fear your own unfaithfulness, 
 you must place your confidence on God's faithful- 
 ness. 
 
 6th — It is not my business to be anxious, and to 
 say how God's Word can be fulfilled. The Lord 
 will see to it. 
 
 If the Lord has given no promises for you, then 
 it cannot be your duty to believe. But, as surely as 
 the Word says, "Believe," is there also a promise 
 which you must believe. 
 
 There is no lost one, so far lost, that Jesus cannot 
 find him and cannot save him. 
 
 7th. — Give yourself to the Lord Jesus just as you 
 are. Not as an offering that is worthy of Him, not 
 as one who is already His friend. No, surrender 
 yourself to Him as one that is dead, whom He has 
 to make alive, as an enemy whom He must forgive. 
 
 With one, it is trial in the physical life ; with 
 another, trial in the family; with another, vexation 
 
126 OCTOBER. 
 
 of soul ; with still more, hidden conflict with sin. 
 But trial there must be ; for so long as the flesh 
 has everything agreeable, the soul will never wholly 
 and with power cleave to the Lord. 
 
 8th. — When the Lord is to lead a soul to great 
 faith, He leaves its prayers unheard. So it was with 
 the Canaanite woman. He answered her not one 
 word, and when He did at length reply to her, the 
 answer was still more unfavorable than His silence. 
 This is always the way. If the answer came imme- 
 diately His gifts would occupy its attention so 
 much, that it would overlook the Lord Himself. It 
 must first stand upon its Lord and what He has 
 provided, without any answer ; He and His word are 
 to suffice for it. 
 
 9th. — The more you simply take the Word, read 
 and read again the message of God, contemplate one 
 after another, the promises with which God has 
 made it sure that the Saviour is for every sinner, 
 the sooner shall you feel constrained to say, "It is 
 true ; God says it ; I must believe it." 
 
 Just as water ever seeks and fills the lowest place, 
 so the moment, God finds the creature abased and 
 empty, His glory and power flow in to exalt and to 
 bless. "He that humbleth himself" — that must be 
 our one care — "shall be exalted," — that is God's 
 
OCTOBER. 127 
 
 care; by His mighty power, and in His great love 
 He will do it. 
 
 10th. — Then believed they His words; they sang 
 His praise: In believing, the soul wholly for- 
 gets itself, and with undivided energy looks to 
 God and hears Him ; in thanksgiving, the soul 
 must be entirely occupied with the adoration 
 of the Godhead, the contemplation of His good- 
 ness, the consideration of His ways. Accord- 
 ingly the more the mind is exercised in this 
 work, and is taken up with the thought of all 
 this, the more shall there be fixed and rooted in it 
 the conviction that the Lord is truly a God on whom 
 it is its duty to rely. If thanksgiving, the express 
 mention of His omnipotence, His love, His faithful- 
 ness, His perfection shall fill the soul, the result 
 cannot but be that the soul shall suffer it to be con- 
 centrated on God. He, that has but a single word 
 of such a God to build upon, has enough. 
 
 nth. — If you are still unconverted, thank Him 
 that you are still not in hell. 
 
 Praising and believing are one. 
 
 There must be a continual repetition of the act of 
 faith, cleaving fast to the word of God, until He 
 bestows the blessing. 
 
 You also shall be born again by the Living Word, 
 and be cleansed from your sin. It does not lie in 
 
128 OCTOBER. 
 
 you, nor even in the Word regarded in itself, but 
 in the faithfulness of God, who has said: "He that 
 believeth shall not be ashamed. " 
 
 Paul always speaks of the works of the law ; 
 James of the works of faith. The works of the law 
 are done of the personal power of man, to fulfill the 
 law of God in order to merit His favor. The works 
 of faith are done for the confirmation and the per- 
 fecting of faith, out of the power which God gives 
 and not to merit anything. 
 
 1 2th. — He who with faithful perseverance con- 
 tinues day by day in the use of the Word, even when 
 he does not at once observe blessing from it, shall 
 experience increase of faith, although unobserved 
 and slow, yet certain and sure. Many are often con- 
 tent in the morning with the general reading of the 
 Word in the household, apart from private medita- 
 tion with prayer. The reading of a chapter once a 
 day is, as a rule, not sufficient. No, let all that truly 
 desire to increase in faith, see to it that they endeavor 
 in the morning hour to gather for the day manna 
 on which to ruminate. He, that goes out in the 
 morning without nutriment, comes home weary in 
 the evening, with but little desire to eat. He, who 
 does not in the morning first lay up the Word in 
 his heart is not to be surprised if the world assumes 
 the first and the chief place in his heart, for he has 
 
OCTOBER. 129 
 
 neglected the only means of being in advance of the 
 world. 
 
 13th. — Readiness and ability for any work is not 
 given before the work, but only through the work, 
 thus only after we begin to work. The child that 
 learns to run, begins before he can readily do it, and 
 learns in the effort. 
 
 God gives commands for which we have previously 
 no power, yet requires obedience with full right; 
 because when we set ourselves towards obedience, 
 strength will be given along with this incipient ac- 
 tivity. 
 
 14th. — Whenever the devil is bent on keeping 
 back anyone from salvation, he has merely to keep 
 him back also from faith. Lu. 8:12. 
 
 The heart cannot at the same time move towards 
 God and away from God, cannot equally desire the 
 Word and sin. 
 
 When one remembers how superficially the Word 
 is read, what little pains is taken to understand the 
 Word, to take into the heart and keep there every 
 day that which should be fitted to strengthen faith, 
 one feels how lightly and easily the Word is taken 
 away ; it costs the devil little trouble. 
 
 15th. — Even the devil knows this: where the 
 Word dwells in the heart, there faith comes, 
 
130 OCTOBER. 
 
 Before that Word, the evil one retreats, as before 
 the "It is written" out of Jesus' mouth: with and by 
 that Word, the Lord God and His Spirit come to 
 the soul. 
 
 The Lord who gives the Word will also give the 
 faith to receive it; He who has given the promise 
 will also bestow the fulfillment. Set yourself to 
 believe, in the joyful confidence: it is given. 
 
 Let every experience of failure, of unbelieving, 
 of insensibility convince you, how unfortunate it 
 would be if you had to believe of yourself, how 
 blessed that vou mav look to God for it. 
 
 HUMILITY. 
 
 1 6th. — Humility is not something which we bring 
 to God, or He bestows, it is simply the sense of 
 entire nothingness, which comes when we see how 
 truly God is all, and in which we make way for God 
 to be all. 
 
 "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the 
 Kingdom of heaven ; blessed are the meek, for they 
 shall inherit the earth." The poor who have noth- 
 ing in themselves, to them the Kingdom comes. 
 The meek, who seek nothing in themselves, theirs 
 the earth shall be. The blessings of heaven and 
 earth are for the lowly. 
 
OCTOBER. I3I 
 
 17th. — Xo outward instructions, not even of 
 Christ Himself; no argument, however convincing; 
 no sense of the beauty of humility, however deep, 
 no personal resolve or effort, however sincere and 
 earnest, can cast out the devil of pride Xothing 
 can avail but this, that the new nature in its divine 
 humility be revealed in power to take the place of 
 the old, to become as truly our very nature as that 
 ever was. 
 
 1 8th. — The only humility that is really ours is not 
 that which we try to show before God in prayer, 
 but that which we carry with us, and carry out in 
 our ordinary conduct. The insignificancies of daily 
 life are the importances and the tests of eternity, 
 because they prove what really is the Spirit that 
 possesses us. It is in our most ungarded moments, 
 that we really show and see what we are. To know 
 the humble man, to know how he behaves, you must 
 follow him in the common course of daily life. 
 
 19th. — The believer is often in danger of aiming 
 at, and rejoicing in the more manly virtues, — bold- 
 ness, joy, contempt of the world, zeal, self-sacrifice 
 — Even the old Stoics practised these, while the 
 deeper, diviner graces, those which Jesus first taught 
 upon earth because He brought them from heaven: 
 those which are more distinctly connected with His 
 cross and the death of self, — poverty of spirit, meek- 
 
132 OCTOBER. 
 
 ness, humility, lowliness, — are scarcely thought of 
 or valued. 
 
 20th. — It is the soul in which God the Creator, as 
 the All of the creature in its nothingness, — God the 
 Redeemer in His grace, as the All of the sinner in 
 his sinfulness, is waited for and trusted and wor- 
 shipped, that will find itself so filled with His pres- 
 ence, that there will be no place for self. "The 
 haughtiness of man shall be brought low, and the 
 Lord alone shall be exalted in that day." 
 
 21st. — Pride makes faith impossible. "How can 
 ye believe who receive glory from one another?" 
 Faith and humility are at root one. We can never 
 have more of true faith than we have of true 
 humility. We may indeed have strong intellectual 
 conviction of the truth but pride makes the living 
 faith which has power with God, an impossibility. 
 
 There are two cases in which Jesus spoke of a 
 great faith. Had not the centurion, at whose faith 
 He marvelled, saying, "I have not found so great 
 faith, no, not in Israel" spoken, "I am not worthy 
 that thou shouldst come under my roof?" Had not 
 the mother to whom He spoke "Woman, great is 
 thy faith" accepted the name of dog and said, "Yea, 
 Lord, yet the dogs eat of the crumbs?" 
 
 22nd. — All God's dealings with man are charac- 
 
OCTOBER. 133 
 
 terized by two stages. Preparation: when command 
 and promisetrainmenfor a higher stage; fulfillment: 
 when faith inherits the promise, and enjoys what it 
 had so often struggled for in vain. God who had 
 been the Beginning, ere man rightly knew Him, 
 or fully understood what His purpose was, is longed 
 for and welcomed as the End, the All in All. 
 
 23rd. — Humility becomes us as creatures, as sin- 
 ners, as saints. The first we see in the heavenly 
 hosts, unfallen man, Jesus as Son of Man. The 
 second appeals to us in our fallen state, and points 
 out the only way through which we can return to 
 our right place as creatures. In the third we have 
 the mystery of grace, which teaches us that as we 
 lose ourselves in the overwhelming greatness of re- 
 deeming love, humility becomes to us the consum- 
 mation of everlasting blessedness and adoration. 
 
 24th. — What is Jesus' incarnation but His heav- 
 enly humility, His emptying Himself and becoming 
 man? What is His life on earth but humility, His 
 taking the form of a servant? What is His atone- 
 ment but humility: — He humbled Himself and 
 became obedient unto death? What is His ascen- 
 sion but humility exalted to the throne and crowned 
 with glory? "He humbled Himself, therefore God 
 highly exalted Him." 
 
134 OCTOBER. 
 
 Only humility leads to perfect death ; only death 
 perfects humility. Humility and death are in their 
 very nature one ; humility is the end ; in death the 
 fruit is ripened to perfection. 
 
 The Christian's life ever bears the twofold mark ; 
 its roots striking in true humility deep into the grave 
 of Jesus, the death to sin and self: its head lifted up 
 in resurrected power to the heaven where Jesus is. 
 
 25th. — We know the law of human nature: acts 
 produce habits, habits produce dispositions, disposi- 
 tions form the will; and, the rightly formed will is 
 character. It is not otherwise in the w r ork of grace. 
 
 It is only in the possession of God that I lose 
 myself. As it is in the height and breadth and glory 
 of the sunshine that the littleness of the mote playing 
 in its beams is seen, even so humility is the taking 
 our place in God's presence to be nothing but a 
 mote dwelling in the sunshine of His love. 
 
 26th. — Let us ask whether we regard a reproof, 
 just or unjust; a reproach from friend or enemy; 
 an injury, or trouble, or difficulty into which others 
 bring us as above all an opportunity of proving how 
 Jesus is all to us, how our own pleasure or honor are 
 nothing. It is indeed blessed, the deep happiness of 
 heaven to be so free from self that whatever is said 
 of us, or done to us, is lost and swallowed up in the 
 thought that Jesus is all. 
 
OCTOBER. I35 
 
 27th. — With the abiding in Christ everything is 
 yielded to the power of His life in us, that it may 
 exercise its sanctifying influence even on ordinary 
 wishes and desires. His Holy Spirit breathes 
 through our whole being; and our desires, as the 
 breathings of the Divine life, are in conformity with 
 the Divine will, and are fulfilled. Abiding in Christ 
 renews and sanctifies the will : We ask what we will 
 and it is given us. — Abide in Christ. 
 
 28th. — The peace of Christ is* not something that 
 He puts into your heart and that you must keep 
 that it may keep you. If the peace of God is to rule 
 in my heart it is because the God of peace Himself 
 is there. Can you separate the light of the sun from 
 the sun? You cannot have the peace of Christ apart 
 from Christ. — Northfield Echoes. 
 
 29th. — In Revelations we read of only two 
 churches in which there was nothing to blame. In 
 each of the others you find the word "repent." 
 There could be no overcoming, and receiving a 
 blessing unless they repented. Let us repent on 
 behalf of the Church of Christ, and God will make 
 us feel how much our own sins are part of the trou- 
 ble. Then God will give His Holy Spirit and will 
 encourage us to feel that He will revive His work. 
 — Northfield Echoes. 
 
 30th. — Every man acts always according to the 
 
I36 OCTOBER. 
 
 idea he has of his state. A king acts like a king if 
 he is conscious of his kingship. So I cannot live the 
 life of a true believer unless I am conscious every 
 day that I am dead in Christ. He died unto sin, I 
 am united with Him, and I am dead to sin. — North- 
 field Echoes. 
 
 31st. — Joseph was sold by his brethren, but he 
 saw God in it and was content. Christ was betrayed 
 by Judas, condemned by Caiaphas and given over 
 to execution by Pilate, but in it all Christ saw God 
 and was content. All that Potiphar had he left in 
 Joseph's hands. He could now do the king's busi- 
 ness with two hands and an undivided heart. Will 
 you leave all in Jesus' hands and so be free to attend 
 to the King's business? Every temptation will 
 bring you a blessing if Jesus has charge of every- 
 thing. — Northfield Echoes. 
 
NOVEMBER. 
 
 THE CROSS OF CHRIST. 
 
 ist. — As each seed bears fruit after its kind and 
 of its very own nature, and the fruit in its turn again 
 becomes a seed, so the Spirit of Christ was the hid- 
 den seed-life of which the cross was the fruit. And 
 the cross again became the seed of which the Spirit 
 is the fruit. And, once again, the Spirit in the be- 
 liever, and the Church as a whole, is the seed, of 
 which the conformity to the cross and the death of 
 Christ is the fruit. It is the great work of the Spirit 
 to fill the world with this blessed seed, everywhere 
 to reproduce the image and the likeness of the cruci- 
 fied Lord, The highest work of the Spirit is to re- 
 veal the cross — the wisdom and the power of God. 
 
 2nd. — It is as the Church proves itself the very 
 body of the Lord Jesus, by showing forth the very 
 same life there was in Him, that His power as Head 
 can freely flow through her. It is as her determina- 
 tion' not to know anything but Jesus Christ and 
 Him crucified is seen in her being crucified with 
 Christ, being crucified to the world, that His resur- 
 rection, joy and power can be manifested in her. 
 
13$ NOVEMBER. 
 
 In the church the world must hear and see Jesus 
 Christ and Him crucified. 
 
 Such intense devotion to the cross and the cruci- 
 fied Lord, as works inward and outward conformity 
 to Him, is the first requisite of the Gospel minister, 
 if Paul is at all to be counted a model for imitation. 
 It was the one secret of his ministry and his power. 
 
 3rd. — The confidence with which the preacher 
 speaks rests not on a message or a book alone — 
 that never alone can enable him to speak as one who 
 knows and witnesses. His commission is a living 
 one — in such measure as the Holy Spirit has re- 
 vealed the cross to him and in him, can he testify 
 in power of what it is and does. The mysteTy of God 
 is, Christ in us, the hope of glory — not a thought, 
 but a life with its knowledge, not that of the mind, 
 but of the renewed spirit. The preacher can speak 
 the mystery with authority, when he knows that the 
 office of God the Holy Spirit is to give the mystery 
 entrance into the heart, however dark. The word of 
 Divine authority and power brings men into God's 
 presence, wakens a sense of want and desire, and 
 inspires faith in an unseen but present deliverance. 
 
 4th. — The cross is the greatest of all mysteries — 
 their sum and centre. In it we see the mystery of 
 God — the Father ordaining, the Son bearing, the 
 Spirit revealing and honoring it. The mystery of 
 
NOVEMBER. I39 
 
 man — his sin, rejecting Christ; his curse, Christ for- 
 saken of God; his worth, God's Son dying for him. 
 The mystery of love — God offering Himself to bear 
 the sin and the suffering of man, and making man 
 one with Himself. The mystery of death and of life 
 — death reigning, death conquered and made the 
 gateway of life-eternal. The mystery of redemption 
 — the cross with its sin and shame made the power 
 that conquers the sinner, and, while it humbles and 
 slays, that wakens his hope and highest enthusiasm. 
 The mystery of God's wisdom casting down reason 
 and filling the heart with the light of God and eter- 
 nity. 
 
 5th. — Just as I cannot by any possibility know 
 the taste or nourishing power of a food, except by 
 partaking of it so there is no way of knowing Christ 
 Jesus and Him crucified, but by receiving Him into 
 my life, and being made partaker of the disposition 
 that animated His life and His cross. Jesus Christ 
 is the revelation of the life of God, as it appears and 
 acts in human nature. In the Holy Spirit, Jesus 
 Christ is come from heaven to live and act in His 
 disciples. We only know Jesus Christ as far as we 
 partake of His nature and life and Spirit. 
 
 Is it any wonder that the preaching of the Gospel 
 is not more effectual when men forget that they are 
 preaching a Divine mystery to those whom the god 
 of this world hath blinded? The darkness of heart 
 
140 NOVEMBER. 
 
 is a supernatural one — the power that can enlighten 
 is not the force of reason or argument, not the per- 
 suasion of culture or appeal, but the supernatural 
 enlightening and quickening of the Holy Spirit. "It 
 is God who hath shined in our hearts, to give the 
 knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus 
 Christ." The light of God shining in the heart, 
 alone can witness to the mystery of His love in the 
 cross. The great hindrance to the preaching of the 
 cross is a worldly spirit. The worldly spirit proves 
 itself in nothing so much as in that, which is its 
 chief boast — its wisdom. 
 
 6th. — Have we not often sought by earnest 
 thought to enter more deeply into the significance 
 of the cross? Have we not, as we got a glimpse of 
 some aspect of its glory, gone from book to book 
 to find out what it really means? Have not some 
 given up hope that words like "I am crucified with 
 Christ," "the world is crucified to me," "baptized into 
 His death," "dead unto sin and alive unto God in 
 Christ," should ever become truly intelligible and 
 helpful? Is not the reason of all this that we want 
 to grasp the hidden wisdom of God with our little 
 mind, and forget that the Holy Spirit wants to give 
 it into the heart, and into the inner life, in a way and 
 in a power that passeth knowledge? 
 
 The cross brings to each one who believes in it, 
 
NOVEMBER. I4I 
 
 the death that is "the gate of life." There is given 
 through it the fulness and the power of the Spirit. 
 
 7th. — Remember that His Holy Spirit, His cruci- 
 fixion Spirit, is in you, not first of all to give you 
 clear or beautiful thoughts, which might delude 
 you, but to communicate the very temper and dis- 
 position out of which the cross grew. 
 
 When the Church has to complain of the with- 
 holding of the saving power, the reason must be 
 that the crucifixion spirit in which the saving 
 power finds its life, is wanting. It must be because 
 the Church is not saying as Paul said, "I came not 
 with excellency of speech, or of wisdom, proclaim- 
 ing the wisdom of God, for I determined not to 
 know anything save Christ and Him crucified. " 
 
 In that life of our Lord the most remarkable 
 thing, its great feature, its Divine mystery and 
 glory, was His being crucified on the cross. He 
 proved how life has no object but as it can be made 
 to serve God's w T ill ; how suffering and sacrificing 
 all is the highest and most well-pleasing religion and 
 obedience ; how there is no way out of the life into 
 which He has brought us into the Glory of God, 
 but through dying to it. 
 
 The cross means the sacrifice of all. To know 
 the Crucified in the conformity of His death, we 
 need to count all things loss. The cross demands 
 
142 NOVEMBER. 
 
 the life. It is a ministry that comes not in ex- 
 cellency of speech, or wisdom, but boasts in the 
 "weakness" and the "foolishness" of the cross that 
 will convict the world of its sin and its earthliness, 
 and will lift men up to a supernatural life. 
 
 8th. — We must ever return to our Lord, and men 
 like His servant Paul, and see what the elements 
 are that go to make up the crucifixion spirit. A 
 deep sense of the sinfulness of sin, and of the right- 
 eousness of God's judgment on it; an entire separa- 
 tion from the world, and a clear protest against its 
 apostasy from God, under the power of the god of 
 this world ; a life-long surrender of our own will 
 and pleasure as a sacrifice to God to work out His 
 will in us ; a parting with all excellency of speech 
 and wisdom as making the cross of none effect; a 
 passion of love for the souls of men, giving its life 
 as completely up for them as Christ did ; the ac- 
 ceptance of death to all that is of human nature as 
 sinful and under the curse that the life and power 
 of heaven may work all in us: this was the spirit 
 that animated Paul as it animated Jesus Christ. 
 
 9th. — Accept your sense of ignorance heartily: 
 depend entirely upon the Spirit to reveal the hidden 
 mystery in "the hidden part ;" count confidently on 
 the work He is doing in you. Keep your heart set 
 on your Crucified Lord in meditation and worship, 
 
NOVEMBER. I43 
 
 with an increasing sense of how little you know or 
 understand, and the Blessed Spirit will do His 
 hidden work where you cannot see it. Trust Him 
 fully: He will do it. 
 
 The cross is the wisdom of God in a mystery: 
 the Spirit of God alone can reveal it. How this 
 would teach us how to preach the cross aright. A 
 mystery must be accepted on authority. The Apostle 
 or preacher holds a Divine commission to tell men 
 in the name of God what they do not know, what 
 they cannot understand, until they first bow before 
 God to accept it. 
 
 10th. — The spirit of the world, apparently honor- 
 ing and proclaiming the cross, is the great cause 
 why the Church's preaching is so little in demon- 
 stration and in power. It robs the cross of what is 
 its chief glory, that it is the wisdom of God in a 
 mystery, with the Holy Spirit from heaven as its 
 only interpreter. 
 
 The sense of mystery is of the very essence of 
 true worship. Though at first it burdens and bows 
 down, it soon becomes as the high mountain air, in 
 which faith breathes free and strong. The sense of 
 mystery brings the soul under the power of the In- 
 visible and Eternal, the Holy and Divine. 
 
 The cross the wisdom of God in a mystery: let 
 us bow and worship and wait in deep hnmility. 
 
144 NOVEMBER. 
 
 What God devised God will reveal. We are come 
 to Mount Zion: the Lamb is the light thereof. As 
 we adore what we cannot, would not understand, 
 the Spirit will impart what God hath bestowed. 
 And we shall learn to walk as men who know that 
 what ear hath not heard, and what heart cannot 
 conceive, God is working out in them that love 
 Him. 
 
 nth. — Let anyone who desires to be brought into 
 fellowship with his crucified Lord, hold fast the 
 words "The wisdom of God in a mystery: God hath 
 revealed it to us by His Spirit." As you gaze upon 
 the cross, and long for conformity to Him, be not 
 weary or fearful because you cannot express in 
 words what you seek. Ask Him to plant the cross 
 in your heart. Believe in Him, the crucified and now 
 Living One, to dwell within you, and breathe His 
 own mind there. It is not alone the work of Christ 
 but the living Christ Himself, as the crucified One 
 that the Gospel reveals. A sinner often wearies 
 himself in vain, in trying to take hold of the work 
 of Christ and its blessings. When he sees that it 
 is Jesus Christ Himself, and Him crucified, he has 
 to trust, he finds one who takes charge and works 
 all in him. 
 
 LET US DRAW NIGH. 
 
 1 2th. — How much your life depends on your re- 
 lation to the promises. Connect the promises with 
 
NOVEMBER. I45 
 
 the Promiser, the Promiser with His unchanging 
 faithfulness as God, and your hope will become a 
 glorying in God through Jesus Christ our Lord. 
 
 Confession strengthens hope; what we utter be- 
 comes more real to us. It glorifies God. It helps 
 and encourages those around us. Fulness of faith 
 and fulness of hope make the true heart. Because 
 we have nothing in ourselves, and God is to be all, 
 and to do all, our whole attitude is to be to look up 
 to Him, expecting and receiving what He is to do. 
 The entrance into the Holiest is given us as priests, 
 there to be filled with the Spirit, and the love of 
 Christ, and to go out and bring Christ's blood to 
 others. 
 
 No effort of thy will can bring forth love. It 
 must be given thee from above. 
 
 13th. — The knowledge of what Christ has won for 
 me, the entrance into the Heavenlies; of the work 
 He did to win it, the shedding of His blood, all this 
 is very precious. But there is something better 
 still: The living, loving Son of God is there person- 
 ally to make me partaker of all the blessedness that 
 God has for me. 
 
 In the Court there were the Brazen Altar and the 
 Laver. At the one, the priest sprinkled the blood, 
 at the other he washed ere he entered the Holy 
 Place. At the installation of the Passover, they 
 
I46 NOVEMBER. 
 
 were first washed and then sprinkled with blood. 
 In the Great Day of Atonement, the high priest 
 had to wash ere he entered the Holiest. The Word 
 and water are joined together, — Eph. 5:26; Jno. 
 13:10; 15:3 — because the Word is the external 
 manifestation of what must rule our whole outer life. 
 The liberty of access, the cleansing the Blood gives, 
 can only be enjoyed in a life of which every action 
 is cleansed by the Word. 
 
 14th. — Nothing will help us to keep ourselves un- 
 spotted in this w r orld, but the Spirit that was in 
 Christ, that looked upon His body as prepared by 
 God for His service. It is for every man as for the 
 Master to put away sin by the sacrifice of self. Not 
 burnt sacrifices but the sacrifice of our own will to 
 do God's will, is what delights God. 
 
 Our eating and drinking, our sleeping, our cloth- 
 ing, our labor and relaxation, influence our spiritual 
 life. They often interrupt the fellowship we seek 
 to maintain. Through the body Satan conquered 
 in Paradise ; in the body he tempted Christ. It was 
 in sufferings of the body that Christ was perfected. 
 
 15th. — Where God is, is heaven, the heaven of 
 His presence includes this earth, too. Into the Holi- 
 est into the light of God's holy presence and love, 
 into full union with Him, the soul can enter by faith 
 
NOVEMBER. I47 
 
 that makes us one with Christ, and abide continu- 
 ally, because Jesus abideth continually. 
 
 The boldness to enter into the Holiest is not a 
 conscious feeling of confidence, it is the objective 
 God-given right of entrance of which the Blood 
 assured us. The measure of our boldness is the 
 worth God attaches to the Blood of Jesus. 
 
 Which is now greater in your sight: Your sin, or 
 the Blood of Jesus? There can be but one answer. 
 As your sin has hitherto kept you back, let the 
 Blood now bring you nigh and give you the power 
 to abide. The Blood has put away the thought of 
 sin from God. He remembers it no more forever. 
 The Blood has put away the thought of sin in me 
 too, the evil conscience that condemns me. The 
 better things which the Blood speaks in heaven it 
 speaks in my heart too. 
 
 1 6th. — The truth of Jesus' heavenly Priesthood 
 is so often powerless because we look upon it as 
 an external, distant thing, a work going on in heaven 
 above us. The one cure is to know that our Great 
 Priest over the house of God, — and we are His 
 house too, — is the glorified Jesus, who makes His 
 presence and power in heaven by the Holy Spirit, 
 to be as real within us here, as it is above us there. 
 
 There are seasons for Bible reading, prayer, 
 church-going. But how speedily and naturally the 
 
I48 NOVEMBER. 
 
 heart turns to worldy things. It is not the worship 
 of a true heart. God asks the affection, the will ; 
 the head and the heart are in partnership, but the 
 heart must lead. Our religion has been too much 
 of the head, — hearing, reading, thinking. Draw 
 nigh, it never says with a clear head, but with a 
 true heart. 
 
 The action of the Blood in heaven is increasing. 
 Even so will it be in the soul that enters in to live 
 amid the cares, engagements, companionships of 
 daily life in an inner sanctuary, where everything 
 acts in the power of the upper world. 
 
 17th. — There are outer court Christians, Israel- 
 ites who trust in Christ who died on Calvary. 
 Beyond these are Christian priests who know the 
 power of the Blood for service. Then come those 
 high priests who know that the Holy Spirit ap- 
 plies the Blood in such power, that it indeed brings 
 to the life in the inner sanctuary, in the full and 
 abiding joy of God's presence. 
 
 The surrender of all becomes only possible, when 
 the soul sees how truly Jesus engages to put His 
 own delight in God's law into the heart, to give the 
 will, and the strength to live in all God's will. 
 
 Faith accepts the promise in its divine reality ; 
 Hope goes forward to examine and rejoice in the 
 treasures which Faith has accepted. Faith will per- 
 
NOVEMBER. I49 
 
 haps most be tried, when God wants most to bless. 
 Hope is the daughter of Faith, the messenger, it 
 sends out to see what is to come. It is Hope that 
 becomes the strength and support of Faith. 
 
 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 
 
 18th. — One chief cause why some do not grow 
 more in grace, is that they do not take time to hold 
 converse with the Lord in secret. Christians, give 
 yourselves, give your Lord time to transfer His 
 heavenly thoughts to your inner, spiritual life. 
 Take time to remain before Him, until He has made 
 His Word living and powerful in your souls. Then 
 does it become the life and power of your life. 
 
 Books can become a blessing to the reader, only 
 when they bring him always to that portion of God's 
 Word, which is treated of, in order that he may 
 meditate further upon it himself, and receive it for 
 himself, as from the mouth of God. 
 
 19th. — To find food for angels: for this only one 
 word was necessary. But to prepare for man a 
 banquet upon this accursed earth, a banquet of 
 heavenly food, — that cost God much. Nothing less 
 than the life and blood of His Son, to take away the 
 curse and open up to them the right and the access 
 to heavenly blessings. 
 
150 NOVEMBER. 
 
 The greater the work is that a man undertakes, 
 the more important is the preparation. Four days 
 before the Passover, the Israelite had to make his 
 preparations. The Lord Jesus also desired that care 
 should be taken to obtain an upper room, furnished 
 and ready, where the Passover might be prepared. 
 When I am called upon to meet my God and to sit 
 down at His table, I will see to it that I do not ap- 
 proach it unprepared. 
 
 20th. — Great thoughts of Jesus and large ex- 
 pectations of what His love will do, will set the heart 
 aglow and be the best preparation for meeting Him- 
 self. To have a deep-rooted renunciation of my- 
 self, in order to be willing to live through Jesus 
 alone, — this is the attitude of a soul which leads to 
 a blessed observance of the Supper. 
 
 Even as the little weak infant, that does not know 
 how to eat, is fed by its mother's hand, so will Jesus 
 break for me the bread of heaven, and impart to me 
 what I have need of. 
 
 2 1 st. — There is nothing on earth that awakens 
 love and rouses it to activity so powerfully, as the 
 thought of being desired and loved. Jesus' desire is 
 toward me. Believe and ponder this wonderful 
 thought, until you feel drawn with overmastering 
 force, to give yourself over to Jesus, for the satis- 
 
NOVEMBER. 151 
 
 faction of His desire toward you: then shall you, too, 
 be satisfied. 
 
 22nd. — The more the believer really despairs of 
 himself, the more glorious will Christ become in his 
 eyes. The more keenly he feels every sin, the more 
 will Jesus become to him. Every sin is a need that 
 calls for Jesus. By the confession of sin, you point 
 out to Him the spot w T here you are wounded and 
 where He must exhibit the healing power of His 
 blood. Every sin that you confess, is an acknowl- 
 edgment of something which Jesus must cast out, 
 and the place of which He is bound to fill up with 
 one of the lovely gifts of His holiness. Every sin, 
 that you confess, is a new reason, why you should 
 believe more and ask more, and a new reason, why 
 Jesus should bless you. 
 
 The very same light that enables you to feel the 
 curse of sin more deeply, enables you also to dis- 
 cern the perfect and final victory over it. The ex- 
 perience utterly lost, prepares the way for the ex- 
 perience utterly redeemed. 
 
 23rd. — The sin offering, by which atonement was 
 made, was the type of the sacrifice of Christ alone. 
 "He was made sin for us." The burnt offering, 
 which had to be wholly consumed by lire on the 
 altar, as a symbol of entire devotedness to the 
 service of God, was the type alike, of the sacrifice of 
 
152 NOVEMBER. 
 
 Christ and of the sacrifice of believers, in which they 
 surrender themselves to the Lord. The idea of thank 
 offering is exhibited more fully to the apprehension, 
 in the feast of thank offering and in the fellowship 
 that ensued. 
 
 24th. — Of the sin offering, by which atonement 
 was made, the priests might eat, as a token of their 
 fellowship with God through the atonement. The 
 Lord's Supper is our fellowship in the perfect sacri- 
 fice of Jesus Christ which has done away with sin 
 forever. Of the thank offering in which dedication 
 to God was shown forth, the offerer himself might 
 also eat, in recognition of his fellowship with God 
 in this dedication. The Lord's Supper is a com- 
 munion with Christ, not only because He offered 
 Himself up for us, but because in and with Him, 
 we offer ourselves to the Father, with all that we 
 have. 
 
 My Saviour, do Thou Thyself come into me: my 
 faith can only be the fruit, of what Thou givest me 
 to know of Thyself. 
 
 25th. — He loves us so dearly that He sets great 
 store by our love. Our love is to Him, His happi- 
 ness and joy: He requires it from us with a holy 
 strictness. So truly has the eternal Love chosen us, 
 that it longs to live in our remembrance every day. 
 Thou knowest, Lord, it is not by any force my heart 
 can be taught to remember Thee. 
 
NOVEMBER. I53 
 
 If by Thy love Thou dwellest in me, thinking of 
 Thee becomes a joy, — no effort or trouble, but the 
 sweetest rest. 
 
 When I hear the glad tidings that Christ died 
 for sin, I obtain courage to say : Sin is mine, and 
 Christ, who died for sin, died also for me. When 
 I first look on sin, 1 can make bold to say that 
 Christ is mine. The forgiveness of sin is, as it were, 
 the pledge of entrance into the whole riches of the 
 grace of God. 
 
 26th.-— All knowledge of the truth, and all ac- 
 quaintance with the Gospel, are of no avail without 
 the personal appropriation of that short phrase, — 
 For me. And that word of man has, on the other 
 hand, its foundation in the word of Jesus, "For 
 you!' 
 
 As by the circulation of the blood, every member 
 of our body is kept unceasingly in the most vital 
 connection with the others, so the body of Christ 
 can increase and become strong only when, in the 
 loving interchange of the fellowship of the Spirit 
 and of love, the life of the Head can flow unhindered 
 from member to member. 
 
 27th. — To be thankful for what I have received, 
 and for what my Lord has prepared, is the surest 
 way to receive more. A joyful, thankful Christian 
 
154 NOVEMBER. 
 
 shows that God can make those who serve Him 
 truly happy. He stirs up others to praise God 
 along with him. If my Saviour went singing from 
 the Lord's Table to the conflict in Gethsemane, 
 may I, in the joy of His redemption, follow Him 
 with thanksgiving into every conflict to which He 
 calls me. The nearer to the throne of God, the 
 more thanksgiving. In heaven they praise God day 
 and night: a Lord's Supper, pervaded by the spirit 
 of thanksgiving, is a foretaste of it. 
 
 28th. — Life must be fed with life. In corn, the 
 life of nature is hid, and we enjoy the power of that 
 life in bread. It was to make heavenly life ac- 
 cessible to us that the Son of God died like the seed 
 corn in the earth, that His body was broken like the 
 bread grain. It is to communicate this life to us and 
 to make it our own, that He gives Himself to us in 
 the Supper. 
 
 29th. — "I have meat to eat that ye know not of." 
 Jesus had a hidden manna that he received from the 
 Father, and that was the secret of His w r onderful 
 power. The nutriment of His life, He received from 
 God in heaven. The doing of God's will was for 
 Jesus, the bread of heaven; and since I have now 
 received Jesus Himself as my heavenly bread, He 
 teaches me to eat what He Himself ate: He teaches 
 me to do the will of God. 
 
NOVEMBER. 1 55 
 
 It was when Abraham returned from the cam- 
 paign for the deliverance of Lot, that Melchisedek, 
 the priest of the Most High God, set before him 
 bread and wine. 'To him that overcometh," — says 
 Jesus, — to him that works and strives and over- 
 comes, — "will I give to eat of the hidden manna." 
 Heavenly food brings heavenly strength, and 
 heavenly strength brings heavenly work. 
 
 30th. — It is one of the characteristics of God's 
 work, that with Him the end is as certain as the 
 beginning. He has sought me and made me His 
 own, and what He has thus done to me, points 
 back to that which He did for me: He gave His 
 own Son, and by His blood He bought for Him- 
 self as His own possession. And that again points 
 back to eternity. He chose me and loved me before 
 the foundation of the world. My soul, ponder what 
 this means: "He has begun." Then shalt thou be 
 able joyfully to exclaim, "the Lord will perfect that 
 w^hich concerneth me." 
 
DECEMBER. 
 
 CHILDREN FOR CHRIST. 
 
 ist. — It is where parents love the Lord, their God, 
 with all their heart and strength, that the human 
 love will be strengthened and sanctified. It is only 
 parents who are willing to live really consecrated 
 lives, entirely given up to God, to whom the promise 
 and the blessing can come fully true. 
 
 An angel of the Lord had appeared to Manoah's 
 wife to predict the birth of Samson; this angel's 
 name was Wonderful. This is still the name of the 
 parent's God. 
 
 2nd. — Not only does the child, in his tenderness 
 and lovingness call forth the love of your heart, his 
 waywardness and wilfulness call for it still more, as 
 they put it to the test and school it in forbearance 
 and gentleness. 
 
 Children that are allowed to be unruly and self- 
 willed will speedily lose their child-like faith. What 
 is said of men that having thrust from them a good 
 conscience, they have made shipwreck of the faith, 
 holds good of children too. 
 
DECEMBER. 157 
 
 3rd. — Now with the Bible of God's grace, and 
 then, with the books of God's glory in nature, the 
 whole of the day, and the whole of the life is to be 
 an uninterrupted fellowship with the Holy One. 
 The continued and spontaneous outburstings of the 
 heart, in the language of the life, to prove that 
 God's presence and love are a reality and a delight. 
 This is the source: — "Thou shalt love the Lord with 
 all thy heart, and the words shall be in thy heart, 
 and thou shalt teach them diligently to thy children, 
 and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine 
 house, and when thou walkest by the way, when 
 thou liest down and when thou risest up." 
 
 4th. — Many parents never understand the truth, 
 that to train for God's service secures the fullest 
 salvation. God says of Abraham, "I have kno^n 
 him, to the end he may command his children, that 
 they may keep the way of the Lord." Remember 
 Pharaoh's words, "Go ye, serve the Lord, let your 
 little ones also go with you." 
 
 5th. — The secret of home rule is self rule, first 
 being ourselves what we want our children to be. 
 A calm stillness of soul that seeks to be guided by 
 God's Spirit, is one of the first conditions of suc- 
 cess in our own spiritual life, and so in the sacred 
 influence we wish to exert on our children. 
 
158 DECEMBER. 
 
 6th. — Of old, God sought above everything to 
 train His saints to be men of faith. Faith is the 
 soul's surrender to God. It begins with faith in 
 His Word. In an age of doubt and questioning, 
 teach your child to accept what it cannot under- 
 stand, even what appears mysterious and contrary 
 to reason, because God who is wise and great has 
 said it. The child wants to trust, the Word wants 
 to be trusted, let your unfeigned faith bring them 
 into contact. 
 
 7th. — Christ's healing w r ork is spoken of as the 
 natural result of His atoning work, of which Isaiah 
 had spoken as a bearing of our sickness. Isa. 53 ; 
 Matt. 8. He left, among the exceeding great and 
 precious promises, w^hieh are the riches of His 
 church, the assurance that the prayer of faith would 
 save the sick. He has a thousand times over by 
 His Spirit led His children, — applying the promise 
 of His doing whatsoever we will if we abide in Him, 
 — to believe and receive the healing of a sick child. 
 
 8th. — Mother, God gives you this picture of 
 Elizabeth and her child of promise: — 'Thou shalt 
 have joy and gladness and many shall rejoice at 
 his birth, for he shall be great in the sight of the 
 Lord," — three marks of a child born under the 
 covering of the Holy Spirit. Among men he may 
 not make a name, in -gifts and talents he may not 
 
DECEMBER. 159 
 
 be great, but great he will be in the sight of Him 
 who sees not as man sees. He will be a vessel God 
 can use for His work, a true way preparer for the 
 coming of the Lord in His Kingdom. 
 
 9th. — "Weep not, she is not dead, but sleepeth." 
 Jesus draws near the lifeless form of each little one, 
 over whom a mother's heart is weeping, to remind 
 her that death has been conquered, and that the 
 loved one is not dead, in the terrible meaning which 
 sin gave that word, but truly sleeps in that deep and 
 blessed sense which that word now has in His 
 mouth. There is a better life than the life of this 
 earth — the eternal life in which God dwelleth. He 
 took this little one that He might draw thee heaven- 
 ward, that He might empty thy heart to make more 
 room for Himself, that thou mightest be drawn to 
 Him in thy need, and be prepared for receiving the 
 new revelation He has to give of His power, His 
 love, Himself and thy life. 
 
 10th. — The Syrophenician woman believed and 
 triumphed with one weapon, — more prayer, more 
 trust. Mother, pleading for your prodigal child, 
 you have her example, and a thousand words of 
 promise and a revelation of the Father's will and the 
 Saviour's power and love, such as she never had. 
 In the face of all doubts, claim the promise of an 
 answer to prayer in the name of Jesus. Yield your- 
 
l6o DECEMBER. 
 
 self to the Holy Spirit, to have everything brought 
 to the light that you must cast out. Trust not the 
 wrestling urgency of your petition; seek your 
 strength in God's promise and faithfulness, in His 
 power and love. 
 
 nth. — It is as the parents serve God upon the 
 Sabbath, in the beauty of holiness, and as the spirit 
 of holiness breathes on, and from them, in the 
 services of the Sabbath, as that day is to them, not 
 a day of strict observance, but of joyful worship, of 
 real loving fellowship with God, as it is a delight, 
 that the first condition will be fulfilled for teaching 
 their children to love it. 
 
 12th. — God's highest gift to creation was His 
 will, that man might choose the will of his God. 
 Obedience is the path to liberty. Parents often say 
 that to develop the will of the child, the will must 
 be left free. The will of the child is not free, — 
 passion and prejudice, selfishness and ignorance, 
 seek to influence the child in the wrong direction. 
 Your highest work is to be God's minister in lead- 
 ing your child's will back to His service. To know 
 to refuse the evil and choose the good, will be to 
 choose Christ, and holiness, and eternal life. 
 
 13th. — It is because the Christian parent too little 
 realizes, that ruling his house well is a simple mat- 
 
DECEMBER. l6l 
 
 ter of duty, a command that must be obeyed, that 
 so many children are ruined by parental weakness. 
 Not to restrain the child is to dishonor God by 
 honoring the child more than God, because the duty 
 God has imposed, is made to give way to the child's 
 will. 
 
 14th. — "Only believe." Living faith will teach 
 us to see new beauty and preciousness in our chil- 
 dren, will waken in us new earnestness and desire, 
 in everything to hold and to train them for God 
 alone. The name of "Faith Home" has been ap- 
 propriated to certain special institutions ; we shall 
 boldly claim it as the name of our own dear home, 
 because everything is done in the faith of Jesus. 
 
 15th. — God asks and expects us in doing our 
 work as parents, in every way to copy Him. God's 
 fatherhood is our model and study. In the tender- 
 ness and patience, and self-sacrifice of the Divine 
 Love, in the firmness and righteousness of Divine 
 rule, the parent will find the secret of successful 
 training. In a Christian father, a child ought to 
 have a better exposition, than the best of sermons 
 can give, of the love and care of the Heavenly 
 Father, and all the blessing and joy He wants to 
 bestow. 
 
 1 6th. — The branch is a perfect likeness of the 
 vine; the only difference is, the one is great and 
 
l62 DECEMBER. 
 
 strong, and the source of strength, the other little 
 and feeble, ever needing and receiving strength. 
 Even so the believer is the perfect likeness of Christ 
 — The True Vine. 
 
 17th. — How can we glorify God? Not by adding 
 to His glory or bringing Him any new glory. In 
 a vine bearing much fruit, the owner is glorified, as 
 it tells of his skill and care. In the disciple who 
 bears much fruit, the Father is glorified. Before 
 men and angels, proof is given of the glory of God's 
 grace and power; God's glory shines out through 
 him. — The True Vine. 
 
 MONEY. 
 
 1 8th. — We ask how much a man gives. Christ 
 asks how much he keeps. We ask what does a man 
 own? Christ, how does he use it? The world 
 thinks more about the money getting: Christ, about 
 the money giving. The world looks at the money 
 and its amount; Christ at the man and his motive. 
 We look at the gift; Christ asks was the gift a 
 sacrifice? 
 
 19th. — If our Lord wanted us to give Him all, 
 like the poor widow who cast her farthing into the 
 treasury, why did he not leave a clear command? 
 That would be the spirit of the world in the church, 
 
DECEMBER. 163 
 
 looking at zvhat we give, at our giving all. We 
 must put all at His feet, as the spontaneous ex- 
 pression of a love, that cannot help giving, just be- 
 cause it loves. 
 
 20th. — If we did but see the Lord Jesus in charge 
 of the Heavenly Mint, stamping every true gift and 
 then using it for the Kingdom, surely our money 
 would begin to shine with a new lustre. We should 
 begin to say — the less I can spend on myself, and 
 the more on my Lord, the richer I am. Day by 
 day, give as God blesses and as He asks — it will 
 help to bring heaven nearer to you, and you nearer 
 to heaven. 
 
 2 1 st. — One of the ways of manifesting and main- 
 taining the crucifixion of the flesh, is never to use 
 money to gratify it. The way to conquer every 
 temptation to do so, is to have the heart filled with 
 large thoughts of the spiritual power of money. 
 
 How many count themselves really liberal, be- 
 cause of what they will while what they do, even 
 up to their present means is not what God would 
 love to see. 
 
 22nd. — When you lie down at night, weary, the 
 bed holds you up and allows you to stretch out your 
 whole body and to rest there. God, the Everlasting 
 One, stretches out His arms and says: — "Now, soul, 
 
164 DECEMBER. 
 
 come and rest." He will take you up individually. 
 The Father is very near, not a general father and 
 God of the universe, but a special Father for every 
 child of His. — Miscellaneous. 
 
 23rd. — Do you believe that if God had sent an 
 angel to whisper every moment in your ear: "The 
 Everlasting God is keeping you," you would then 
 have understood how you were to be kept? You 
 have something better than an angel. God has 
 actually given His Holy Spirit into your hearts to 
 keep you always in remembrance of the presence 
 of Jesus, so that you can every minute be kept 
 trusting Him. — Miscellaneous. 
 
 24th. — The experience of the love and the saving 
 power of our incarnate, crucified, glorified Lord 
 depends entirely upon His indwelling in us to re- 
 veal His presence and to do His work. The Lord 
 Jesus brings the heart which accepts and trusts 
 Him to dwell within, into sympathy and harmony 
 with Himself. He becomes your life. He will live 
 in you, and all your thoughts, and tempers, and 
 dispositions, and actions will have His Life and 
 Spirit breathing in them. 
 
 25th. — Jesus was born twice. The birth at Beth- 
 lehem was a birth into a life of weakness. The 
 second time, He was born from the grave — "the 
 
DECEMBER. 165 
 
 first born from the dead/' Because He gave up 
 His first life, that He had by His first birth, God 
 gave Him the life of the second birth, in the glory 
 of Heaven and the throne of God. 
 
 Jesus' heart toward us is all love. His work was, 
 and is nothing but the revelation of infinite love and 
 tenderness, and nothing but love on our part can 
 be the proof, that we have really accepted and 
 known His love. 
 
 26th. — To do God's will Christ came from 
 heaven ; to do God's w r ill in you He has entered 
 your heart. God gave us a will, that with it we 
 might intelligently will what He wills. 
 
 When Christ comes in to take possession, He will 
 by His Spirit within, make you what God w T ould 
 have you be — comformable to the image of His 
 Son. Christ's life is altogether too high and too 
 divine for us to reproduce. It is His own life, and 
 only His, but He will live it out in us. 
 
 HAVE MERCY UPON ME. 
 
 27th. — Not what a man does or brings, although 
 it is apparently the performance of the Law, but the 
 childlike disposition of loving subjection, is the true 
 fulfilling of the Law. The worth of our religion 
 depends wholly upon our relation to God. 
 
l66 DECEMBER. 
 
 In the midst of all its working and praying, the 
 little child has always the hidden sense of the moth- 
 er's nearness. The Christian can attain to being so 
 closely knit to his God, that in the midst of the 
 severe activities of earth, there may always remain 
 the blessed feeling, "My God sees me, and I can 
 look up unto Him." 
 
 28th. — The joy of forgiveness will not always re- 
 main, unless it be confirmed as the joy of sanctifi- 
 cation. When the first joy began to yield, many a 
 Christian has ascribed the loss to God, as a trial 
 which he has sent him. Had he but asked for grace, 
 not only to be washed from guilt, but also to be lib- 
 erated from the dominion of sin, he would have 
 found that with the progressive work of grace in 
 the soul, a progressive joy would have been minis- 
 tered unto him by God. 
 
 29th. — The more that you cleave to God, and 
 commit yourself to His Word and counsel, the more 
 steadfast shall you stand. Let the Word be your 
 food. Strive by it to think what God thinks, to will 
 what He wills. If the Word of God is thus the rock 
 of your confidence, you will be just as little moved, 
 as there is variableness or shadow of turning with 
 God. 
 
 30th. — The Law of God guards the entrance to the 
 gate of heaven. It will let no one within, who is not 
 
DECEMBER. 167 
 
 whiter than the snow. "Wash me and I shall be 
 whiter than snow." Nothing less than this God has 
 offered us, nothing less than this can bring us full 
 peace. Alas! how many are seeking peace in their 
 own activity, endeavors, experiences, but they can- 
 not find the stable, full peace which Jesus gives and 
 which passeth all understanding. 
 
 31st. — The book of Psalms God offers us as a 
 Prayer Book, adapted to our need, because the pray- 
 ers come from His Spirit and are therefore divine ; 
 and yet just as genuinely human, because they come 
 from those who are our flesh and blood, and are in 
 everything like ourselves. With the infant class 
 learning the "A B C," the teacher puts the sounds 
 into their mouth. In the Psalms, the Lord God 
 puts into our mouths the very words with which, we 
 may come to Him. 
 
THE TWO COVENANTS. 
 
 i. — It is often said that the great aim of the 
 preacher ought to be to translate Scripture truth 
 from its Jewish form into the language and the 
 thought of the nineteenth century, and so to make 
 it intelligible to our ordinary Christians. In the 
 translation the force of the original is lost. The 
 scholar who trusts to translations will never become 
 a master of the language he wants to learn. A race 
 of Christians will be raised up, to whom the lan- 
 guage of God's Word, and with that the God who 
 spoke it, will be strange. In the Scripture words 
 not a little of Scripture truth will be lost. For the 
 true Christian life nothing is so healthful and in- 
 vigorating as to have each man study for himself 
 the very words in which the Holy Ghost has 
 spoken. 
 
 2. — As long as we expect God to do for us 
 what we ask or think, we limit Him. When we be- 
 lieve that as high as the heavens are above the earth, 
 His thoughts are above our thoughts, and wait on 
 Him as God to do unto us according to His word, 
 as He means, we shall live the truly supernatural, 
 heavenly life the Holy Spirit can work in us — the 
 true Christ life. 
 
THE TWO COVENANTS. 169 
 
 3. — The first great work of God with man was 
 to get him to believe. All the dealings with indi- 
 viduals, and with Israel, had just this one object. 
 Where He found faith He could do anything. Un- 
 belief was the root of disobedience and every sin, it 
 made it impossible for God to do His work. The 
 one thing God sought to waken in men by promise 
 and threatening, by mercy and judgment, was faith. 
 
 4. — As often as we see men engaged in their 
 earthly pursuits in search of money, pleasure, fame, 
 or power with their whole heart, shall we not ask, 
 Is this the Spirit in which Christians consider that 
 God must be served? Is not this the one thing 
 needful in our religion. 
 
 5. — God made two Covenants — because there 
 were two parties concerned. In the first, man was 
 to prove what he could do, and what he was. In 
 the second, God would show what He would do. 
 The former was the time of needed preparation ; 
 the latter, of Divine fulfilment. The one difference 
 between Old and New is, that in the New every- 
 thing is to be done by God Himself. The Old 
 Covenant was necessary to waken man's desires, to 
 call forth his efforts, to deepen the dependence on 
 God, to convince of his sin and impotence, and so to 
 prepare him to feel the need oi salvation, that sin, 
 by the commandment, might appear exceeding sin- 
 
I70 THE TWO COVENANTS. 
 
 ful. How could God make a covenant of which He 
 knew that man could not keep it? All education, 
 Divine or human, ever deals with its pupils on the 
 principle — faithfulness in the less is essential to the 
 attainment of the greater. God dealt with Israel, 
 as men in whom, there was still a conscience to 
 judge of good and evil, a heart capable of being 
 stirred to long after God, and a will to choose the 
 good and Himself. Before Christ and His salva- 
 tion could be understood, these faculties had to be 
 wakened. In the provision made in the law for a 
 symbolical atonement and pardon, in all God's reve- 
 lation of Himself through priest, and prophet, and 
 king, everything was done to win His people, and to 
 give force to the appeal to their self-interest or their 
 gratitude, their fear or their love. The Old Covenant 
 is called a ministration of condemnation and death, 
 not because there was no grace in it — it had its own 
 glory (2 Cor. iii. 10-12) — but because the law, with 
 its curse, was the predominating element. The two 
 aspects we find with especial clearness in Paul's 
 epistles. So he speaks of all, who are of the works 
 of the law, as under the curse (Gal. iii. 10). Then, 
 almost immediately after, he speaks of the law as 
 our schoolmaster unto Christ, into whose charge, 
 as to a tutor, we had been given until the time ap- 
 pointed of the Father. 
 
 6. — God would teach us by the Covenants the 
 
THE TWO COVENANTS. 171 
 
 two great lessons of Sin and of Holiness. As the 
 one demand of the First Covenant was the sense of 
 sin, that of the New, is faith that that need, created 
 by the discipline of God's law, will be met in a 
 Divine and supernatural way. 
 
 7. — In the Old Covenant man's heart was not 
 right with God. In the New Covenant the central 
 promise is a heart delighting in God's law, and hold- 
 ing fellowship with Him. In our heart, there are 
 no chambers in which the law can be put, while the 
 seat of the heart can be given up to other things ; 
 the heart is a unity. 
 
 8. — At Sinai, the tables of the Covenant were of 
 stone, as a lasting substance. The stone was wholly 
 set apart to carry and show this Divine writing. It 
 and the stone were inseparably connected. So the 
 heart in which God writes His law in power, lives 
 only and wholly to carry that writing, and is un- 
 changeably identified with it. 
 
 9. — The pardon of sin is the root of all blessing. 
 Having God as our God and the Divine teaching 
 are the fruit. The tree itself is the law in the heart. 
 
 10. — The whole Old Covenant was dependent on 
 man's faithfulness: "The Lord keepeth covenant 
 with them that keep His commandments." Noth- 
 
172 THE TWO COVENANTS. 
 
 ing could help man until the "If ye shall diligently 
 keep" of the law was replaced by the promise, "I 
 will put My Spirit in you, and ye shall keep My 
 judgments." 
 
 ii. — The great sin of Israel under the Old Cove- 
 nant was this: "They limited the Holy One." Under 
 the New Covenant there is no less danger of this 
 sin. His oath is an end of all fear or doubt. 
 
 12. — Let me say to all, fain to believe fully: 
 Cherish every whisper of the conscience and of the 
 Spirit that convinces of sin. Whatever it be, a hasty 
 temper, a sharp word, an unloving or impatient 
 thought, anything of selfishness or self-will — cherish 
 that which condemns it in you, as part of the school- 
 ing to bring you to Christ and the full possession of 
 His salvation. 
 
 13. — The Book contained all the conditions of 
 the Covenant; only through the Book could the 
 people know all that God asked of them, and all 
 that they might ask of Him. The Bible is the Book 
 of the Covenant. 
 
 14. — What loss the Church is suffering because 
 so few believers truly live as the heirs of the New 
 Covenant, in the true knowledge and enjoyment of 
 its promises. 
 
THE TWO COVENANTS. 173 
 
 15. — Between what God has already wrought in 
 us, and what He waits to work, obedience is the 
 blessed link. 
 
 16. — Why have so many believers seen so< little of 
 the beauty of this New Covenant life, with its power 
 of holy and joyful obedience? The Lord was with 
 the disciples, but "their eyes were holden that they 
 knew Him not." It is with many as with Elisha's 
 servant: all heaven is around them and they know 
 it not. Nothing will help but the prayer, "Lord, 
 open their eyes, that they may see." 
 
 17. — To be jealous with God's jealousy, for God's 
 honor, and rise up against sin, is the gate into the 
 Covenant of an everlasting priesthood, is the secret 
 of being entrusted by God with the sacred work of 
 teaching His people, and burning incense before 
 Him, and turning many from iniquity (Deu. xxxiii. 
 8-1 1, cf. ; Ex. xxxii. 26-29; Num. xxv. 10-13; Mai. 
 ii. 6). 
 
 18. — We should serve Him. My servant does 
 not serve me by spending all his time in getting 
 himself ready for work, but in doing my work. 
 
 19. — Galatians shows the difference between the 
 two Covenants in three things: (1) The law and its 
 works are contrasted with the hearing of faith ; (2) 
 
174 THE TWO COVENANTS. 
 
 the flesh and its religion with the flesh crucified; 
 (3) the impotence to good with a walk in the liberty 
 and the power of the Spirit. 
 
 20. — Because in the New Covenant, obedience 
 no longer occupies the place it had in the Old, as 
 the condition of the Covenant, many are under the 
 impression that obedience is now no longer as indis- 
 pensable. The New Covenant comes not to provide 
 a substitute for absolute obedience in faith, but 
 through faith to secure the obedience, by giving a 
 heart that delights in it, and has the power for it. 
 Men abuse the free grace, that without our own 
 obedience accepts us for a life of new obedience, 
 when they rest content with the grace, without the 
 obedience it is meant for. 
 
 21. — The indispensable necessity of obedience ex- 
 plains why so often the entrance into the full enjoy- 
 ment of the New Covenant has depended upon some 
 single act of surrender. Faith could not lay hold of 
 the blessing until the soul consented to regard this 
 little thing as the test of its surrender to obey in 
 everything, and of its faith that in everything the 
 Surety of the Covenant would give the power. 
 
 22. — There is a twofold work of the Spirit: one in 
 giving a holy disposition and character, the other in 
 qualifying and empowering a man for work. The 
 
THE TWO COVENANTS. 1 75 
 
 former must always come first. The promise that 
 the disciples should receive the Holy Spirit for their 
 service, was very definitely given to those who had 
 followed and loved Christ, and kept His command- 
 ments. 
 
 23. — The minister of the Spirit must specially see 
 to it that he lead men to the Holy Spirit. Men may 
 become too dependent upon him, may take his Scrip- 
 ture teaching at second-hand. The New Covenant 
 is: "They shall no longer every man teach his 
 brother, know the Lord, for all shall know Me, from 
 the least even to the greatest." 
 
 24. — The minister of the Spirit, very definitely 
 and perseveringly, points away from himself to the 
 Spirit. This is what John the Baptist did. Christ 
 did the same. In His farewell discourse, He called 
 His disciples to turn from His personal instruction 
 to the inward teaching of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 25. — The two most remarkable chapters in the 
 Bible on the preaching of the Gospel are those in 
 which Paul expounds the secret of his teaching 
 (1 Cor. ii. ; 2 Cor. iii.). Every minister ought to see 
 whether he can pass his examination in them. 
 
THE SCHOOL OF OBEDIENCE. 
 
 1 
 
 I. — As we see where, and how often, and in what 
 connections, a Bible word, or a truth of the Chris- 
 tian life is found, its relative importance may be 
 apprehended as well as its bearing on the whole of 
 revelation. 
 
 2. — Obedience is the one virtue of Paradise, the 
 one condition of man's abiding there, the one thing 
 his Creator asks. Nothing is said of faith, or hu- 
 mility, or love: obedience includesall. From Para- 
 dise lost to Paradise regained, it is only obedience 
 that gives access to the tree of life and the favor of 
 God (Gen. ii. 16; iii. n; Rev. xxii. 14; xii. 17; 
 xiv. 12). 
 
 3. — With any new beginning in the history of 
 God's Kingdom, obedience always comes into spe- 
 cial prominence. Take Noah, the new father of the 
 human race: "According to all that God com- 
 manded Noah, so did he" (Gen. vi. 22; vii. 5, 9, 16). 
 It is the man who does what God commands to 
 whom God can entrust His work, whom God can 
 use to be a saviour of men. 
 
 Think of Abraham, the father of the chosen race. 
 "By faith he obeyed" (Heb. xi. 7). When he had 
 
THE SCHOOL OF OBEDIENCE. 1 77 
 
 been forty years in this school of faith — obedience, 
 God came to perfect his faith, and to crown it with 
 His fullest blessing. Nothing could fit him for this 
 but a crowning act of obedience. When he had 
 bound his son on the altar, God said, "In thy seed 
 shall all nations be blessed, because thou hast 
 obeyed My voice" (Gen. xxii. 12, 18). And to Isaac 
 He spake (xxvi. 3, 5), "I will perform the oath 
 which I sware to Abraham, because that Abraham 
 obeyed My voice." 
 
 4. — At Sinai, God gave Moses the message to the 
 people (Ex. xix. 4), "If you will obey My voice, ye 
 shall be a peculiar treasure to Me, above all people." 
 In the last three chapters of Exodus you have the 
 expression nineteen times, "According to all the 
 Lord commanded Moses, so did he." And then, 
 "The glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle." 
 Again, in Lev. viii. and ix., you have, with refer- 
 ence to the consecration of the priests and the taber- 
 nacle, the same expression twelve times. 
 
 5. — Our great need is more of God. 
 
 6. — Read Deuteronomy. No book uses the word 
 "obey" so frequently, or speaks so much of the 
 blessing obedience will assuredly bring. The whole 
 is summed up in the words (xi. 27), "I set before 
 
I78 THE SCHOOL OF OBEDIENCE. 
 
 you a blessing, if ye obey; a curse, if ye will not 
 obey." 
 
 7. — Beware of praying only for a blessing. Let 
 us care for the obedience, God will care for the 
 blessing. 
 
 8. — God sums up all His dealings with the fathers 
 in one word, "I spake not with them concerning 
 sacrifices ; but this I commanded them, 'Obey My 
 voice, and I will be your God.' " 
 
 9. — In the Sermon on the Mount Christ began 
 with obedience: No one could enter the kingdom, 
 "but he that doeth the will of My Father. ,, In the 
 farewell discourse (John 14, 15, 16, 21 23), no words 
 could express more simply or more powerfully the 
 glorious place Christ gives to obedience, with its 
 twofold possibility ; as only possible to a loving 
 heart, as making possible all that God has to give of 
 His Holy Spirit, of His wonderful love, of His in- 
 dwelling in Christ Jesus. I know of no Scripture 
 that gives a higher revelation of the spiritual life, 
 or the power of loving obedience, as its one condi- 
 tion. 
 
 10. — Peter says, "God hath given His Holy Spirit 
 to them that obey Him," and "We must obey God 
 rather than man." The preparation for Pentecost 
 
THE SCHOOL OF OBEDIENCE. 179 
 
 was the surrender to Christ; on the manward side, 
 obedience is to be unto death; nothing dare hinder 
 it in the man given to God. 
 
 1 1 . — It was for "the obedience of faith among all 
 nations," that Paul was made an apostle. He speaks 
 of what God had wrought "to make the Gentiles 
 obedient." He teaches us that we become "the ser- 
 vants of obedience unto righteousness" (Rom. i. 5 ; 
 xvi. 26). 
 
 12. — James warns us not to be hearers of the 
 Word only, but doers, and expounds how Abraham 
 was justified, and his faith perfected, by his works. 
 
 13. — Peter speaks to the "elect unto obedience" 
 (1 Peter i. 2). He points to it as the eternal pur- 
 pose of the Father, the great object of the work of 
 the Spirit, and a chief part of the salvation of Christ. 
 In verse 13 he writes, "As children of obedience," 
 born of it, and marked by it, "Be ye holy in all man- 
 ner of conversation." In verse 22 we read, "Seeing 
 ye have purified your souls in your obedience to the 
 truth," — the whole acceptance of the truth of God 
 was not merely a matter of intellectual assent or 
 strong emotion; it was the subjection of the life to 
 the dominion of the truth of God. 
 
 14. — With John, obedience is the one certificate 
 
l8o THE SCHOOL OF OBEDIENCE. 
 
 of Christian character. "He that saith I know Him, 
 and keepeth not His commandments, is a liar." 
 "Let us love in deed and truth ; hereby we shall 
 assure our hearts before Him." "Whatsoever we 
 ask, we receive of Him, because we keep His com- 
 mandments." Obedience is the secret of a good 
 conscience, and of the confidence that God heareth 
 us. "This is the love of God, that we keep His 
 commandments." This obedience is the garment 
 in which the hidden love reveals itself. 
 
 15. — Sin had made us believe it a humiliation 
 always to be seeking God's will. We knew not that 
 the beauty, the unspotted purity of the robe of crea- 
 ture-hood was its obedience. Christ put on that 
 robe to show us how to wear it, and with it, enter 
 into the presence and glory of God. 
 
 16. — The object of Christ's obedience was three- 
 fold: — As an Example, to show us what true obe- 
 dience was ; as our Surety, by His obedience to fulfill 
 all righteousness for us ; as our Head, to prepare a 
 new and obedient nature to impart to us. 
 
 17. — The one likeness between Adam and his 
 seed was disobedience ; the one resemblance between 
 Christ and His seed, obedience. "Whosoever shall 
 do the will of My Father, is My brother, and sister, 
 and mother." The link in a family is, a common 
 
THE SCHOOL OF OBEDIENCE. l8l 
 
 life shared by all and a family likeness. The bond 
 between Christ and us is, that He and we together 
 do the will of God. 
 
 18. — In Christ obedience was a life principle, "I 
 come to do Thy will, O God." It was a joy, "I de- 
 light to do Thy will, O God." "My meat is to do 
 the will of Him that sent Me." Food is the one 
 necessary of life. Doing the will of God satisfied 
 His hunger, and made Him glad. David meant 
 this, when he spoke of God's words being "sweeter 
 than honey." This obedience led to a waiting on 
 God's will. "The Son can do nothing of Himself, 
 but what He seeth the Father do ; for the Father 
 showeth the Son all things, that Himself doeth." 
 "As I hear, I judge." The secret of a true and con- 
 tinual obedience is close and continual fellowship 
 zvith God, and continual teaching. This obedience 
 was unto death, and sprang from the deepest hu- 
 mility. "Have this mind in you, which was also in 
 Christ Jesus, who humbled Himself, becoming obe- 
 dient to death" (Phil. ii. 8). It was of faith— in 
 entire dependence upon God's strength. "The 
 father that dwelleth in Me, doeth the works." 
 
 19. — From the commencement of His public life 
 to its close, Christ lived by the Word of God. "It 
 is written" was the word with which He conquered 
 Satan. "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me" 
 
l82 THE SCHOOL OF OBEDIENCE. 
 
 was the consciousness with which He opened His 
 preaching. "That the Scripture might be fulfilled" 
 was the light in which He gave Himself to the 
 death. After the resurrection, He expounded "in 
 all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. ,, 
 
 20. — Paul writes, "I lie not, my conscience bear- 
 ing me witness in the Holy Ghost." The Holy 
 Ghost speaks through conscience; He is the Voice 
 of God. 
 
 21. — In intercession, more than in the zeal which 
 works in its own strength with little prayer, the 
 highest type of piety, the true Christ-likeness, is 
 cultivated. 
 
 22. — Cherish carefully the consciousness of "doing 
 unto the Lord," of being a servant simply carrying 
 out orders ; your work will then not come between 
 you and Christ, but link you inseparably to Him, 
 His strength, and His approval. 
 
 23. — Doing God's will is the only key to the 
 knowledge of God's truth. Obedience on earth is 
 the key to a place in God's love in heaven. 
 
 24. — There is a general will of God for all His 
 children, which we can, in some measure, learn out 
 of the Bible ; but there is a special, individual appli- 
 cation of these commands — God's will concerning 
 
THE SCHOOL OF OBEDIENCE. 183 
 
 each of us personally, which only the Holy Spirit 
 can teach. 
 
 25. — Give yourself to Him, not to be saved from 
 disobedience, that now you may be happy, and live 
 your own life without sinning and trouble. No; 
 but that He may have you wholly for Himself, as a 
 vessel which He can fill with Himself, with His life 
 and love for men. 
 
 26. — Write with invisible fluid and nothing can 
 be seen. Tell a man of it, and by faith, he knows it. 
 Hold it up to the sun, and out comes the secret 
 writing. So God's law is written in your heart. 
 Believe this firmly, say it to God, and hold up that 
 heart to the light and heat of the Holy Spirit, and 
 you will find it true. The law in the heart will mean 
 the fervent love of God's commands, with the power 
 to obey them. 
 
 27. — Christ appealed to the law. He was come 
 to secure its fulfilment. To the young ruler He 
 said, "Thou knowest the commandments." He re- 
 vealed the new law of love. An unforgiving spirit, 
 unloving thoughts and sharp words, the neglect to 
 do good, is all so much disobedience. He spoke 
 much of self-denial. Self is the root of all lack of 
 love and obedience, the source of all sin. Christ's 
 disciple must "deny himself, take up his cross, be- 
 
184 THE SCHOOL OF OBEDIENCE. 
 
 come the servant of all." Christ claimed for God 
 the love of the whole heart. 
 
 28. — How much in ordinary society, how much in 
 school-life will not stand the test of strict truth- 
 fulness ! 
 
 29. — The consciousness of ignorance lies at the 
 root of true teachableness. "The meek will He 
 guide in the way." Head knowledge only gives 
 human thoughts without power. God by His Spirit 
 gives a living knowledge that enters the love of the 
 heart, and works effectually. 
 
 30. — The holy day, at the opening of the week, 
 is appointed, not that we might have at least one 
 day of rest, but that it might fit us to carry God's 
 holy presence into all the week and its work. "With 
 the first-fruits holy, the whole lump is holy; with 
 the root holy, all the branches are holy, too" (Rom. 
 xi. 17). 
 
 31. — Obedience to God is such a heavenly art, our 
 nature is so utterly strange to it, the path in which 
 the Son Himself learned it was so long, that we 
 must not wonder if it does not come at once, nor if 
 it needs more time at the Master's feet in medita- 
 tion, prayer and waiting, in dependence and self- 
 sacrifice than the most are ready to give. Jesus 
 will teach us to keep His commandments and abide 
 
THE SCHOOL OF OBEDIENCE. 185 
 
 in His love, even as He kept His Father's com- 
 mandments and abides in His love. 
 
 32. — If you ask how the change was effected out 
 of the disobedience at the beginning, that closed 
 the way to the tree of life, to the obedience at the 
 end, that again gained entrance to it, turn to that 
 which stands midway between the beginning and 
 the end — the Cross of Christ. "Through the obe- 
 dience of the One shall the many be made right- 
 eous" (Rom. 5:19). "He learned obedience, and 
 became the Author of Salvation to them that obey 
 Him." (Heb. 5:8-9). He came from heaven to 
 learn obedience that he might teach it well. His 
 obedience is the treasury out of which, not only the 
 debt of our past disobedience is paid, but out of 
 which the grace for our present obedience is sup- 
 plied. Obedience is the essence of salvation. 
 
 33. — Scripture was not written to increase our 
 knowledge but that the man of God may be perfect, 
 thoroughly furnished unto all good works. "If any 
 man will do, he shall know." If a man's heart is 
 given up to do God's will, as far as he knows it, he 
 shall know what God has further to teach him. It 
 is simply what is true of every scholar with his art, 
 of every apprentice with his trade, of every man in 
 business — doing is the one condition of surely know- 
 ing. 
 
t86 the school of obedience. 
 
 34. — With only Moses to speak to them, and the 
 tables of stone, the whole history of Israel is one of 
 disobedience, because they were afraid of direct 
 contact with God. Many Christians find it so much 
 easier to take their teaching from godly men than 
 to wait upon God Himself. Their faith stands in 
 the wisdom of men, not in the power of God. Only 
 as the Holy Spirit teaches you, only as the Gospel 
 is preached to you by man or by book, with the 
 Holy Ghost sent down from heaven will it really 
 give you, with every command, the strength to 
 obey, and work in you, the very thing commanded. 
 
 35. — The expression "obeying the command- 
 ments" is very seldom used ; it is almost always, 
 obeying Me, or obeying or hearkening to My 
 voice. 
 
 36. How often we have asked to abide con- 
 tinually in Christ. We have thought of more study 
 of the Word, more faith, more prayer; we have 
 overlooked the simple truth, "If ye keep My com- 
 mandments, ye shall abide in My love." 
 
 yj. — Giving up our will to God is ever the 
 measure of His giving His power in us; a sur- 
 render to full obedience is nothing but a full faith 
 that God will work all in us. 
 
 38. — In Saul we have the most solemn warning 
 
THE SCHOOL OF OBEDIENCE. 187 
 
 as to the need of exact and entire obedience in a 
 man whom God is to trust as ruler of His people. 
 Saul is sent against Amalek. God had said, "Utterly 
 destroy all." Saul had spared the best sheep for 
 the Lord, and Samuel said "To obey is better than 
 sacrifice. Because thou hast rejected the word of 
 the Lord, He hath rejected thee." Sad type of so 
 much obedience, which in part performs God's 
 commandment. Let nothing else than obedience to 
 the minutest details satisfy you. Lest while we say, 
 "I have obeyed," God say, "Thou hast rejected My 
 word." 
 
 39. — If you study the Bible without an earnest 
 and very definite purpose to obey, you are getting 
 hardened in disobedience. Only when you know 
 that God is telling yon to do a thing, you feel sure 
 He gives the strength to do it. 
 
 40. — Not the text that is easiest and most en- 
 couraging brings most blessing, but the text, 
 whether easy or difficult, which throws you most 
 upon God. 
 
 41. — Do give God time in secret so to reveal 
 Himself, that your soul may call the place Peniel — 
 "for I have seen Him face to face." 
 
 42. — If the Word does not lead us to wait on 
 
l88 THE SCHOOL OF OBEDIENCE. 
 
 God, to glorify Him, to receive His grace and 
 power for sweetening and sanctifying our lives, it 
 becomes a hindrance. 
 
 43. — A soul may grow out of a feeble obedience 
 into a fuller one ; but there is no growing out of dis- 
 obedience into obedience. A turning away, a decis- 
 ion is needed ; and that only comes by definite in- 
 sight into wrong, and its confession. The special 
 things in which we actually disobey must be found 
 out. 
 
 44. — As binding as the first great commandment 
 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
 heart" is this last great command too — "The Gospel 
 to every creature. " The Church needs to preach, 
 in the power of the Holy Ghost, the absolute and 
 immediate duty of every child of God, not only to 
 take some part in this work, but to give himself to 
 Christ to be guided and used as He would have. 
 
 45. — The last great command has been promi- 
 nently urged in connection with foreign missions. 
 Our Lord's words, "Make disciples of all nations; 
 teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I 
 commanded you," tell us our aim — to make every 
 man a true disciple, in holy obedience to all Christ's 
 will. 
 
 46. — Ere He gave His command, and pointed to 
 
THE SCHOOL OF OBEDIENCE. 189 
 
 the great field of the world, Christ first drew the 
 eyes of His servants to Himself on the throne. "All 
 power is given Me in heaven and on earth. " Then 
 followed "Lo I am with you alway." Christ's power 
 in heaven, His presence on earth — between these 
 two pillar promises, lies the gate through which the 
 church enters to the conquest of the world. 
 
 47. — The vow of entire obedience is the entrance 
 fee, for him who would be enrolled by Christ Him- 
 self, in the school of obedience. A little child of 
 five can be as implicitly obedient as a youth of 
 eighteen. The difference between the two lies not 
 in the principle, but in the nature of the work de- 
 manded. Though externally Christ's obedience 
 unto death came at the end of His life, the spirit of 
 His obedience was the same from the beginning. 
 Whole-hearted obedience is not the end, but the 
 beginning of our school life. The end is fitness for 
 God's service. A heart yielded to God in unreserved 
 obedience is the one condition of progress in 
 Christ's school. 
 
 48. — Let your closet be the class-room, your 
 morning watch the study hour in which your rela- 
 tion of entire dependence on, and submission to the 
 Holy Spirit's teaching is proved. 
 
 49. — Do not pare down the time limit of the 
 
I90 THE SCHOOL OF OBEDIENCE. 
 
 morning watch to less than the half-hour — ten min- 
 utes from sleep, ten from company or amusement, 
 ten from lessons. The watch means the conviction 
 (1) that the only way to maintain the surrender to 
 Christ and the Holy Spirit, is by meeting God very 
 definitely at the commencement of each day ; (2) an 
 insight into the folly of attempting to live a heaven- 
 ly life without close communion with God ; (3) the 
 confession that alone in personal fellowship with 
 God, and the delight in His nearness, proof can be 
 given that our love responds to His; (4) the faith, 
 that if time enough be given for God to lay His 
 hands on us, and renew the inflowings of His Spirit, 
 our soul may be so closely united to Him, that no 
 trials or duties can separate us; (5) a purpose to 
 live wholly for God, and by the sacrifice of time 
 and ease, prove that we are willing to pay any 
 price for the first of all blessings — the presence of 
 God for all the day. Such a period awakens the 
 feeling: (1) I have a great work to do, and I need 
 time for it. (2) It will give your Bible study new 
 point, as between the reading you bow for the Holy 
 Spirit's hidden working, and wait for some real ap- 
 prehension of God's will for you, through the Word. 
 (3) It may help you in that habit of definite inter- 
 cession of which the Church so surely stands in need. 
 In your future life your time may be more limited, 
 your Christian earnestness feebler. Now is the ac- 
 cepted time; to-day, as the Holy Ghost saith. 
 
THE SCHOOL OF OBEDIENCE. I9I 
 
 50. — What made the sick, the blind and the 
 needy, in the Gospel, so much more ready to be- 
 lieve than we are? There can be no strong faith 
 without strong desire. Desire is the great motive 
 power in the universe. God's desire to save us 
 moved Him to send His Son. Desire for salvation 
 alone brings a sinner to Christ. Desire for God, 
 fellowship w r ith Him and His will, will make the 
 promised land attractive. All indeed wish, in a way, 
 to be better than they are, but how few really 
 "hunger and thirst after righteousness. " 
 
UNION BIBLE CLASSES. 
 
 REV. D. M. STEARNS, D. D. 
 
 BROOKLYN — Hanson Place Baptist Church. 
 
 Monday, 10.30 A. M. 
 NEW YORK — Reformed Church, Fifty-seventh 
 
 Street and Madison Avenue. 2 P. M. 
 
 MORRISTOWN, N. J.— South Street Presbyterian 
 Church. Alternate Mondays, 7.45 P. M. 
 
 ORANGE, N. J.— W. C. T. U. Hall. Alternate 
 Tuesdays, 10 A. M. 
 
 EASTON, Pa.— Alternate Tuesdays, 3.45 P. M. 
 
 PLAINFIELD, N. J.— Y. M. C. A. Hall. Alter- 
 nate Mondays, 7.30 P. M. 
 
 NEWARK, N. J.— Second Presbyterian Church. 
 Alternate Tuesdays, 10.30 A. M. 
 
 JERSEY CITY, N. J.— Bergen Reformed Church. 
 Alternate Tuesdays, 2.30 P. M. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA, Pa.— S. S. Union Hall. Thurs- 
 days, 4.30 P. M. 
 
 WASHINGTON, D. C — Fourth Presbyterian 
 Church. Alternate Fridays, 11.30 A. M. 
 
 BALTIMORE, Md.— Church of Redeemer. Alter- 
 nate Fridays, 3.30 P. M. 
 
 HARRISBURG, Pa.— Y. M. C. A. Hall. Alternate 
 Fridays, 11.45 A. M. 
 
 LANCASTER, Pa.— Moravian Chapel. Alternate 
 Fridays, 3.45 P. M. 
 
 GERMANTOWN, Pa. — Church of Atonement. 
 Saturdays, 8 P. M. 
 
♦•♦Watchword & Truths 
 
 ADDRESS, BOX 5326, 
 BOSTON, MASS. 
 
 This is a Monthly Magazine standing for the 
 PRIMITIVE FAITH, HOPE AND LOVE. 
 
 EDITED BY 
 ROBERT CAMERON, D. D., 
 
 ASSISTED BY 
 
 DRS STIFLER, MOREHEAD, EARDMAN, WEST, 
 
 PARSONS, URQUHART, MARSH 
 
 AND OTHERS. 
 
 Price $ LOO— to Ministers 75 cents* 
 Sample Copies free. 
 
 BY THE EDITOR: 
 
 ' THE DOCTRINE OF THE AGES," 75 cents. 
 'THE FIRST EPISTLE OF JOHN," $1,25. 
 POST-PAID. 
 
Scripture Studies and Bible Readings, cloth, $1,00 
 Notes on the Gospel of John, - - .25 
 Notes on Matthew, - - .25 
 
 Our Coming Lord, - - .25 
 
 Outlines of Scripture, cloth, .50, paper .25 
 
 By WM G. CARR. 4 Alice Court, Brooklyn, H. Y. 
 
 Bible Study 
 
 Correspondence 
 
 Course. 
 
 The Bible the only text-book. No refer- 
 ence books required. Each Student a personal 
 pupil. Students may begin at any time. 
 Course covers the entire Bible. 
 
 Conducted by Rev. C, I. SCOFIELD, of 
 East Northfield, Mass., author of "Rightly 
 Dividing the Word of Truth." 
 
 Send for Free Prospectus, giving full par- 
 ticulars, with commendations of eminent 
 teachers. Address : 
 
 FRANCIS E. FITCH, Publisher, 
 
 47 Broad St., N. Y. City. 
 
Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process 
 Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
 Treatment Date: Nov. 2005 
 
 PreservationTechnologies 
 
 A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 
 
 111 Thomson Park Drive 
 Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
 (724)779-2111