YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

From the Library of
HERVEY D. LELAND, YALE 1885
Gift of
JAMES R. JOY, YALE 1885

>c** .

¦£***¦*

«/jt Z^_-^^f^2 ^-_

^tyi^ujtn/^ /fZJ

DIVINE UPLIFTINGS

DIVINE UPLIFTINGS

Gbe messes Xife of
peace ano IDicton?

REV. G. H. KNIGHT
AUTHOR OF
" THE MASTER'S QUESTIONS TO HIS DISCIPLES,"
"IN THE SECRET OF HIS PRESENCE,"
ETC.

LONDON : MARSHALL BROTHERS
KESWICK HOUSE, PATERNOSTER ROW, EC

K7±S

R. W. SIMPSON AND CO., LTD.,
PRINTERS,
RICHMOND AND LONDON,

<fc>

PREFACE
THIS book is meant for Christians only.
It is not for the unspiritual and un
renewed, but for those who, by Divine
new-birth, are the children of God. To none
but these will it be either a help or an appeal.
And it is meant specially for those Christian
disciples who are either less full of peace than
they ought to be, and less full of power than
they might be, or less fully consecrated to
God in life than He would have them to be.
For all such sin-troubled, weak, and weary
hearts, there is but one way of deliverance —
getting nearer to God : and this book is sent
out with the earnest prayer and hope that, to

vi PREFACE
some, at least, of the children of the kingdom,
it may set forth not only their Lord's call to
the living of a higher life of peace and power,
but also His own Divine way of helping them
to live it.

Garelochhead, August, 1906.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE HIGH CALLING OF GOD .... 3
II. THE WEARY CRY FOR REST - - 15
III. CHRIST'S ANSWER TO THE CRY : IN PEACE OF
CONSCIENCE - 25
IV. CHRIST'S ANSWER TO THE CRY : IN FULNESS
OF JOY ... 37
V. Christ's answer to the cry: in inward
CALM - - - 51
VI. FELLOWSHIP WITH CHRIST : ITS MYSTICAL
SIDE ... 63
VII. FELLOWSHIP WITH CHRIST : ITS PRACTICAL
SIDE  75
VIII. THE SECRET OF NOT SINNING : ABIDE IN
CHRIST - 85
IX. THE SECRET OF NOT SINNING : LIVE OUT YOUR
SONSHIP  97
X. THE LIBERATING SPIRIT - - - - 100

viii CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
XI A PURE CONSCIENCE  121
XII. CLEANSING THE TEMPLE - 1 33
XIII. CONSECRATED PRIESTS, AND HOLY SERVICE 145
XIV. VISIBLE OWNERSHIP - - 157
XV. THE GREAT KEEPER - - - 171

CHAPTER I
Zbe Ibfgb Calling of Gob

"To set up on high those that be low; that those who
mourn may be exalted to safety." — Job v. ii.
"To bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to
the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that
are bound." — Isa. lxi. i.
"The high calling of God in Christ Jesus." — Phil.
iii. 14.

CHAPTER I
GOD is not merely the Saving God
and the Comforting God, but the
Uplifting God : and there is nothing
we more need than continuous and strong
upliftings over the sins and sadnesses and
weaknesses that keep us down. The blessed
life is a life of peace, and He wants us to
know fully what His peace means ; but it is
also a life of victory, and He wants us to
know what that means too. The world is full
of over-burdened souls, some burdened with
a load of cares, some with a load of sorrows,
some with a load of regrets, some with a load
of fears, and some also with a load of sin.
Burdened lives, burdened hearts, and bur
dened consciences there are in thousands
everywhere ; and it is not among sordid
world- worshippers alone that they are found.

4 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
Even Christian disciples are too often
grievously overladen, and that not simply by
burdens laid upon them by the hand of God
as a discipline of faith, but by burdens of their
own making, burdens due only to their faith
lessness and sin, burdens which, if they were
living in the full liberty of Christ's evangel,
and in the power of the Holy Spirit, they
would not carry for a single day.
Why do so many of us live only poor
defeated lives, when they might be lives of
victory ? Why should our lives be only a
constant sinning and repenting and sinning
again — falling and rising and falling again
— yielding and resisting and yielding again,
and that always at the same points, in the
face of the same temptations in the same
old way ? This is a condition hurtful to
ourselves, a hindrance to our brethren, an
injury to the world, a dishonour to Christ,
a grief to the Spirit, a disappointment to God.
Is it wrong or irreverent to speak of a disap
pointed God ? What then do these words

THE HIGH CALLING OF GOD 5
mean, " O that they were wise, that they
understood this, that they would consider
their latter end ! " (Deut. xxxii. 29), "O that
there were such a heart in them that they would
fear me and keep my commandments always,
that it might be well with them and with their
children for ever ! " (Deut. v. 29.) " O that
my people had hearkened unto me, and Israel
had walked in my ways ; I should soon have
subdued their enemies ; but their time should
have endured for ever ! " (Ps. lxxxi. 13, 14, 15.)
"O that thou hadst hearkened to my com
mandments ! then had thy peace been as a
river, and thy righteousness as the waves of
the sea." (Isa. xlviii. 18.) " O Jerusalem,
Jerusalem, . . . how often would I have gathered
thy children together . . . and ye would not ! "
(Matt, xxiii. 37.) " O if thou hadst known
the things that belong to thy peace ! but now
they are hid from thine eyes " (Luke xix. 42).
We know the " Lamentations of Jeremiah " —
do we not listen, in these words, to the lamenta
tions of God ? Over our failings and fallings,

6 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
our backgoings, our faithlessness, our unbelief,
there is the sorrow of a disappointed God, a
disappointed Christ. If we are at all like-
minded with God, this low condition of ours
will be a grief and a disappointment to
ourselves. All true Christians have " life," for they are
" born of God" ; but not all have that divine
life so strong as to be overcoming life, or so
full as to be overflowing life ; overcoming life
that gives victory both over outward tempta
tion and inward corruption, overflowing life
that can spend itself joyously in blessing
others because it is itself so full. What is the
explanation of this ? Simply that we are
living so low down, lower than we might live,
lower than we ought to live, lower than we
have been redeemed to live, lower than it
is safe for us to live. We live below our
duty because we live below our privileges,
below our occasional aspirations, below our
prayers ; and the worst of it is that we are so
content to live in that low condition, while an

THE HIGH CALLING OF GOD 7
infinitely higher one is within our grasp.
What a disconcerting revelation of ourselves
to ourselves it would often be to ask, " Am
I really living the kind of life that my
Redeeming Lord would have me live ? Is
there anything in me that really distinguishes
me at a glance from the unrenewed world at
my side ? Is my character different ? Are
my tastes and habits and ambitions different ?
Do I wear the name of God " upon my fore
head," or am I hiding it out of sight some
where beneath my dress ? Am I " declaring
plainly" whose I am, or are the marks of
my discipleship so faint that even a micro
scope could hardly discover them ? Are they
like the old inscriptions often met with on a
castle wall, and on the gravestones of a burial-
ground long disused, so moss-grown and
weather-eaten as to be undecipherable even
by minute inspection ? "
Questions like these must search us deeply.
Well for us if they humble deeply too, and
rriake us feel tjiat there is nothing we more

8 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
need than a great uplifting of our low lives
and hearts to a higher level ; for victory over
the downdrag of our earthly environment, an
uplifting above the world, and for victory over
our sins and weaknesses, an uplifting above
ourselves. Such an uplifting can come to
any of us through the grace of the uplifting
Christ, and the indwelling of the Holy Ghost ;
but there is no other way of getting it.
Paul speaks of the " high calling of God in
Christ Jesus." It is " high," not only or
chiefly in the sense of being a call from One
Who is high, but rather in the sense of being
a call to high things, and these not in the
future only but in the present too ; a high ex
perience, a high fellowship, a high character,
a high position, as well as a high destiny at
the end. But do we not often speak of the
" calling," and leave out the " high " ? We
delight to hear about high privileges, but do
we listen as eagerly when God speaks to us
about high lives ? We welcome what will lift
us above the world's sorrows, but are we as

THE HIGH CALLING OF GOD 9
eager to learn how to get above the world's
joys, above its maxims and opinions, above its
poor ambitions, and aims, how to live as the
unworldly followers of an unworldly Lord, and
surrender ourselves not only to all His love,
but to all His will ?
Do we want this higher power ? then we
must begin by rising into a higher peace :
for we cannot fight against sin successfully
except from the vantage-ground of assured
and settled peace. Our first enquiry, there
fore, must be, " What has God to give us in
the way of ' perfect peace ' " ? and then,
" What will the possession of this peace
enable us to be and to do for Him " ? If we
have first of all peace with God, and then
peace in God, victory for God will be sure to
come. I would not be supposed to imply that weak
and baffled and disheartened souls cannot be
the Lord's at all. Many of them are so in
very deed ; but, just because they are, they
need to hear the pall to be stronger and holier

10 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
and therefore happier than they are. This is
not a question of final salvation, but of joyous
freedom and healthy vigour for the journey
and the work of life here.
Of twenty men who set out to make a long
pilgrimage on foot, travelling twenty miles
each day, some will be so full of strong and
buoyant health that they do the day's march
with perfect ease and joy: others do it, but
with no spring in the step ; the journey tells
upon them ; they find it hard to keep up, and
are glad at every nightfall to throw themselves
down and rest : while others yet are feebler
still ; tired all the way, they linger far behind,
and it is long after the camp has been pitched
that they come limping to the tent. But they
all get in. In the great pilgrimage to heaven
some journey far more easily and joyously and
unflaggingly than others can do, but no real
pilgrim ever dies upon the road. They all get
in. And yet it is surely better to walk the
miles with springing steps than to cover them
painfully, feeling the pilgrimage to be a burden

THE HIGH CALLING OF GOD n
instead of a joy. The Lord of the pilgrim host
has made it possible for all these weak ones to
be strong, and these dispirited ones to be glad.
He has provided power enough to carry every
one of them triumphantly to the journey's end
— He has promised to give out that power every
day and hour ; and we have but to claim that
promise and to expect that power, to be
" strengthened with all might by His Spirit in
the inner man " (Eph. iii. 16), so as to " finish
our course with joy " (Acts xx. 24) and receive
the conqueror's reward.
Perhaps the pages of this book may help
some of the weak pilgrims to claim the
promised help of the Uplifting God, and so to
rise not only into a higher joy, but into a
higher self-surrender too, a more entire con
secration of will and life to Him. " Look
higher" and "live higher" are His calls to
every one of us ; " look higher " if you want
more peace, live higher if you want more
power,"

CHAPTER II
Zhe Wears Ct£ for tRest

" O that I had wings like a dove ! for then would I fly
away and be at rest," — Ps. lv 6.
"I bare you on eagles' wings and brought you unto
myself."— Exod. xix. 4.
"They shall mount up with wings as eagles." — Isa. xl. 31.
" I will carry you." — Isa. xlvi. 4.

CHAPTER II
THESE are very ancient words, but they
express a quite modern feeling ; for
there is in all men a cry, not loud but
deep, for more freedom from worry and care,
for more release from sorrow, for a more
abiding calm. " There is sorrow on the sea,
it cannot be quiet," says Jeremiah ; and that
is true of the sea of life. Rest, more rest, is
what all men seek. Some seek it by plunging
deeper into the world — but " who can bring a
clean thing out of an unclean ? " Some seek
it by rising above the world. Some seek it,
and hope to find it, only beyond the world.
But one way or other it is the universal quest ;
and the weary cry of Israel's king is echoed by
crushed and dispirited millions to-day. They
do not know where they would fly to, these
weary souls. They only feel that somewhere,

1 6 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
on some far horizon, or beyond some dividing
sea, there must be a place of rest, and if they
could only reach it they would be at peace.
In the case of utterly earthly-minded men,
the want of rest is easily explained. It is due
simply to the fact that the soul which God has
made in His own image, and which is the
biggest thing He ever made, is too great for the
world to fill. " Is the child happy ? " asks an
old Puritan writer, " No, but he says he will be
when he is a man. Is the man happy ? No,
but he says he will be when he is rich. Is the
rich happy ? No, but he will be wheu he is
ennobled. Is the noble happy ? No, but he
would be if he were a king. Is the king happy
then ? Listen, for it is a king that speaks —
" I said lo ! I am come to great estate, and
whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from
them, I witheld not my heart from any joy ;
then I looked upon all that my hands had
wrought and all the labour that I had laboured
to do, and behold ! all is vanity and vexation
of spirit."

THE WEARY CRY FOR REST 17
But it is not the world-worshippers alone
that feel as David felt. That weary cry of his
is often wrung from the noblest souls, and by
the same things that wrung it from him. He
was a God-fearing but a bitterly disappointed
man. Things were going against him. His
children were turning out ill. His efforts for
righteousness in his kingdom were frustrated.
Professed friends were showing themselves to
be his bitterest foes. He was slandered and
defamed : " They cast iniquity upon me, and
in wrath they hate me " ; and so, sitting in his
palace and listlessly watching the doves that
were circling round, he envied them their
happy freedom from all worry and care, and
cried, " O that I had wings like "a dove to fly
away and be at rest."
On some lips, words like these are only a
selfish longing for ease from the burdens of
life ; but they are not always so. They spring
often from nobler feelings by far. They come
sometimes from the lips of men who are
honestly trying to do the work of God's

1 8 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
righteousness in the world, and yet find
nothing but disappointment as the result. In
moments of strained weariness and exhaustion
they often give way. And there are even more
disheartening experiences than this to some ;
their long and fruitless fight, not with the
corruption outside of them, but with the
corruption within, their own besetments of
evil rising up against their better will, their
own unsanctified feelings and desires, whether
these be the lusts of the flesh or the lusts of
the mind ; sin in themselves disheartening
them by the consciousness of their impotence
to overcome. If they long for rest, it is rest
from these workings of unholiness, rather than
rest from the trials inseparable from the
pilgrim way. God's blessed heaven is attrac
tive to them not for its freedom from trouble,
but for its absolute freedom from sin. Bodily
suffering of the sharpest kind, suffering that
might keep them lying for years on beds of
pain, unbefriended and alone, they could meet
calmly enough, for they know the love ot

THE WEARY CRY FOR REST 19
Christ and its blessed power to sweeten the
bitterest cup ; but this inward struggle is a
different thing altogether : why this should
continue in spite of efforts and prayers and
tears they cannot understand.
Now it is not enough to say that God is
very tender to such discouraged souls, that
He does not condemn them but rather pities
them ; for the question still remains, " Has He
no real uplifting into victory to give me ? Can
He give me an experience of rest from defeats
now, as well as the hope of that rest here
after ? " God's answer to that question is,
emphatically, Yes ; and if we still ask, " How
is this rest to come?" His answer is, "Get
nearer to Me." We cry, O for the wings of a
dove ! God says, " You have the wings, use
them ; but do not seek to fly away, fly up, and
though ye have lain among the pots yet shall
ye be as the wings of a dove covered with
silver and her feathers with yellow gold."
There is a sense in which we ought to have
the wings of a dove ; and there is a sense in

20 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
which we may be said actually to have them,
only we do not use them enough. God's
message to us is not merely that we may soar,
but that we ought to soar easily above the
things that depress us and keep us down ; and
if we are in fellowship with Christ, and in the
fellowship of the Holy Ghost, we will.
If we keep on "lying among the pots," we
are sure to be defiled, and weakened as well.
But that is not what God has made us for.
He means us to soar. The true sphere of
bird-life is the air : and the true sphere of the
Christian life is " above the world," not in any
unreal, proud, fanatical sense, but in the sense
of being, as risen with Christ, superior to its
attractions and to its discouragements also.
If we only lived more habitually above the
world, we would have larger freedom, larger
joy, and larger safety. Have we not noticed
how very helpless any bird is on the ground,
though on the wing it is both strong and safe ?
To fight temptations on their own level is not
always the most successful way. It is better

THE WEARY CRY FOR REST 21
to rise so far above them that we shall feel as
little enticed by them as God's pure angels
were enticed by the iniquities of Sodom.
And yet it is God's own divine life working
in us that alone can make us soar. Life is the
only thing that really overcomes the gravita
tion of the earth. An arrow shot from a bow,
a bullet projected from a rifle, overcome it only
for a moment or two. Much of our Christian
life is only of that sort, a spasmodic thing, due
to some external impulse, and not to an in
dwelling power. But the wings of a bird
overcome the down-drag of gravitation because
of the life that moves them ; and it is Christ's
own strong life within us that gives us our
whole ability to soar. To rise at all we must
have " life " — to rise sufficiently high and keep
long upon the wing, we must have " life more
abundantly." " Without me," says Christ,
"ye can do nothing" — :but "I can do all
things," said Paul, "through Christ who
strengtheneth me." Do we long for rest ?
We can get it only if we learn to soar. Do we

22 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
long to be able to soar ? we get the power by
having Christ's strength made perfect in our
own weakness. Make larger room in the heart
for Christ Himself — and He will bring His
own power with Him when He comes in.
It is worthy of note that when God speaks
of the wings by which we may soar, He speaks
not of the comparatively weak wings of a dove,
but of the strong wings of an eagle, " they shall
mount up with wings as eagles " (Isa. xl, 31),
just as, when speaking of His own sustaining
power, He said, " I bare you on eagles' wings
and brought you unto myself" (Exod. xix. 4).
That is God's own strength coming to be
ours : and so, when we are lamenting our
weakness and wondering how we are ever to
be strong, He says, " it will not be your own
strength that bears you up, but mine in you,"
for " even to your old age I am He, and to
hoar hairs will I carry you" (Isa. xlvi. 4).
Carried on the strong wings of God, carried
every day, carried to the very last, — what an
uplifting is this !

CHAPTER III
Christ's Hnswer to tbe Cr^ :
peace of Conscience

" Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest." — Matt. xi. 28.

CHAPTER III
IN the Dore gallery in London there
is a large painting called " The Vale
of Tears." A dreary, narrow, mist-
covered glen, flanked by grim crags that no
human foot could climb, is filled with
sufferers of every kind, and every degree,
a motley multitude with not one single happy
face amongst them. The king is there
with a wan look upon his face in spite ot his
purple robes and jewelled crown ; the poet is
there, a laurel wreath encircling his brow, but
the life-blood welling from a wound in his
heart, and the lyre lying neglected at his feet ;
the soldier is there, the priest, the hermit, the
slave ; the maimed and halt and blind ; the
miser hungrily clutching his bag of gold, the
poor wanderer shivering in his rags ; the man
of science with a learned folio in his arms, but
25

26 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
a hopeless look upon his face ; strangers from
every land, the Indian, the Chinese, the
African, the Esquimaux ; the once gay votaries
of pleasure ; the haggard victims of sin ; men
prematurely old, and children wasted even in
their youth ; here, a dying mother convulsively
grasping her child ; there, a young husband
and wife weeping over their firstborn lying
dead. No kind of human heart -wretchedness
but is suggested by some figure to the eye.
But, at the farther end of the " Vale of
Tears " there is a break in the clouds that
shows a winding path leading up beyond the
mists to a region where all is peace ; and just
in the centre of the light stands the rainbow-
encircled Christ, bearing His cross. He is
looking down the valley of misery, beckoning
with His hand to the weary and heart-broken
there ; and every eye is gazing upon Him,
some with a wistful longing, some with a faint
glow of hope, some, too, with the tranquil joy
of a heart that has found its rest. The great
central figure in the picture is Christ. He

PEACE OF CONSCIENCE 27
carries His cross, and behind the cross is
Heaven. It is a noble sermon to the eye, as
powerful as many a sermon to the ear : and as
I looked upon it, I felt how blessed a work it
is for any man, be he preacher, or artist, or
poet, or singer, to hold up in some way to
his fellow-men, as that picture did to me, the
All-sufficient Christ, the Saviour, the Restorer,
the Comforter, the Rest-giver to weary souls ;
the great Uplifter who says, what none else
can say, " Come unto me and I will give you
rest." These words of His have found their way to
the heart of the world. They are among the
very tenderest of all His messages of peace —
familiar to us in earliest childhood, and fresh
as ever to us when the head is grey. They
are a message both to the burdened conscience,
and to the burdened heart.
We must not overlook the first of these, for
it was what Christ had first in view when He
spoke to the multitudes nineteen centuries
ago. He was not thinking so much of those

28 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
that were crushed by the sorrows of life, as of
the hopeless souls that were vainly seeking to
get peace with God by efforts after righteous
ness which were a burden that neither they nor
their fathers were able to bear. They were
wearying themselves by trying to carry the
piled-up load of their own good works, stagger
ing under the weight of a hundred ceremonial
observances, tithings, fastings, almsgivings,
prayers, in the hope of winning thereby a good
hope of heaven. Rest they could never find,
and these multitudinous rules were making
life a misery ; for the sense of failure and short
coming remained, do what they might. It was
with an infinite pity for their blindness and
helplessness that Christ looked round upon
these weary souls, and said " that is not the
way to rest at all ; I will show you a surer and a
diviner way. I will give you the rest you can
not win — for heaven is not of merit but of
grace : acceptance with God may become to
you a present reality and not merely a future
hope, if you will but take it through Me ; for

PEACE OF CONSCIENCE 29
this is the will of the Father who hath sent Me,
that every one that seeth the Son and believeth
on Him may have everlasting life."
That was Christ's divine way of relieving
the burdened conscience, and with that all
uplifting of the soul must begin. For us, too,
the only answer to a troubled conscience is
Christ : and if the unsaved sinner needs to
begin with a coming to Christ for this, the
Christian believer needs as much to be every
day coming to Christ afresh for the continuance
and perfecting of his peace. For we do not
lose the consciousness of our sin when we are
once for all forgiven. The consciousness of
our sinfuluess grows and deepens to the last.
The nearer we live to God, the deeper is our
sense of sin. When our eyes are opened to
see the awful reality of our guilt, to see the
spirituality of the law, how wide it is in its
sweep ("exceeding broad"), covering with
condemnation great areas of life that we used
to think it had nothing to do with, and how
deep it goes, laying its accusing hand upon

o DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
our most secret thoughts, and a thousand feel
ings that we would call only natural : when
we thus see how hopeless must be the task of
winning rest of conscience, then the rich grace
of the Gospel comes with instant uplifting
power, as the atoning Christ stands before us
showing us His Cross ; for He stands before
us not simply as a Helper of the weak, but as
the Saviour of the lost, not as One who
strengthens us to bear the load of sin, but One
who, as the Lamb of God, has borne it for us,
so giving us release.
Is it unnecessary to recall all this to,
Christian disciples ? No, verily, for a
weakened sense of obligation to redeeming
grace lies at the root of all our sins. We
cannot afford, even the best and holiest of us,
to live far from the Cross. If we think we can,
God will soon show us, or Satan's temptations
will, "that we cannot live safely out of touch
with the Atoning Blood. As soon as the Cross
retires into the background of our thoughts,
we lay ourselves open to every peril — tempta-

PEACE OF CONSCIENCE 31
tions that we have no power to resist, evil
imaginations, unholy desires, seductive sins,
strange new doubts about things that we
never doubted before. Sin will present itself
with new attractions at the same old points
where it assailed us before, and every day we
will be brought to our knees in shame and sell
loathing. How can we be lifted up again after
these falls ? Only one Hand, a pierced Hand,
can do it, and woe to our peace if we are out
of reach of that Hand when our need of the
uplifting comes. We cannot dispense with
the Cross, for a single day. A "purged" con
science is a great blessing, but it is very easily
lost, and Christ is as much needed to keep us
in peace, as to give peace at the first. Even
when " sitting in heavenly places with Christ,"
our soul's foundation-rest must be the sacri
fice of the altar. We cannot get beyond the
Cross. If we could get beyond it anywhere,
it would be in heaven ; but the very centre of
heaven is "the Lamb that was slain " : and
the one characteristic of all that enter in is

32 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
that they have " washed their robes and made
them white in the blood of the Lamb." Let
us learn to feel about the Cross as they do
whom the Cross has redeemed and perfected.
Let us learn with Peter to speak adoringly of
"the precious blood," with Paul to "glory in the
Cross," and with John to feel that it is no inter
ruption to any other train of thought to break
in with the glad heart-song " Unto Him who
loved us and washed us from our sins in His
own blood, to Him be glory and dominion for
ever and ever."
Well said old Martin Luther : " By faith
take hold of Christ, and thou shalt begin
aright ; by faith keep hold of Christ and thou
shalt go on aright ; for there is none other
bridge, none other ferry over life or over death
but Christ alone ; look well therefore to where
thou art planting thy feet, that thou art tread
ing the only bridge that will bear thee. If the
King, wishing to cross some foul and loathsome
ditch, were to say to thee, Lay thyself down
in that foul mire, that I may step upon thy

PEACE OF CONSCIENCE 33
body and so pass over, what meanest subject
would consent to do it ? But what no man
would do even for his king, the Great King of
kings has done for Thee."

CHAPTER IV

Christ's Hnswer to tbe Ct£
Jpulness of Jo^

" I will feed them in a good pasture, and upon the
high mountains of Israel shall their fold be ... . and
in a fat pasture shall they feed upon the mountains of
Israel .... I will make with them a covenant of peace,
and will cause the evil beasts to cease out of the land, and
they shall dwell safely in the wilderness, and sleep in the
woods .... they shall dwell safely, and none shall make
them afraid." — Ezek. xxxiv. 14, 25, 28.
"Friend, go up higher." — Luke xiv. 10.
" Let all those who put their trust in Thee rejoice : let
them ever shout for joy because Thou defendest them : let
them that love Thy name be joyful in Thee." — Ps. v. 11.

CHAPTER IV
IN Christ's beautiful parable of the guests
at the wedding feast, He makes the feast-
giver say to the humble man that took
the lowest place, " Friend, go up higher."
There is a rich suggestiveness in these four
words. We can read them spiritually, and
find in them a call, not only to higher honour,
but to a higher fellowship with Himself, and a
higher joy. We must never forget the advice
to begin by taking the lowest place, for the
self-abashed humility of a sinner in accepting
Gospel-grace can never be too deep. " In
your estimation of yourself," says Christ, " be
very low ; sit down in the lowest place ; have
humbler thoughts of yourself than of any in
the whole world besides ; think of yourself as
" the chief of sinners," claim only the place of
the poorest of the poor, the vilest of the vile ;

38 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
and then the great feast-giver will cast a
kindly eye upon you, even while you shrink
from meeting it for very shame, and will say,
"Go up higher"; for He likes to seat the
most humbled of all sinners nearest to
Himself." But the strange thing is that many who
rightly enough begin by taking the lowest place,
refuse to leave it for a higher one, even at the
call of Christ Himself. They are like an out
cast who has been rescued from degradation
by a loving hand, adopted into his benefactor's
family to be treated as a real child of the
home, but who, out of a false humility, refuses
the position of a child, rejects the generous
comforts of the home, and persists in still
sleeping out of doors.
There are multitudes of Christians just in
that mood. They have salvation, but not the
joy of salvation ; they call themselves God's
children, but walk about in rags ; they live un
sheltered while they might be resting under
the shadow of His love ; they starve while they

FULNESS OF JOY 39
might be " abundantly satisfied with the good
ness of His house." To all such, the Lord's
own message is " Friend, go up higher in your
appropriation of the exceeding riches of my
redeeming grace." It is a false humility that
refuses what the bountiful Lord is pressing
us to take. There is no merit in that. It
is only distrust and unbelief. It is well to take
at first the place of the dogs, and ask only the
crumbs that fall from the table, but it is dis
honouring to the Lord to satisfy ourselves with
living to the very last on crumbs, when we
might be feasting on the large loaf that is the
children's bread. It is well to begin by lying at
Christ's feet as starving sinners at the point
to die, but the gracious Lord who welcomes
us there would fain lift us higher than that,
and seat us at His table, and give us a larger
and more restful experience every day of the
exceeding riches of His house. It is well to
begin by "taking hold of the horns of the
altar" in the outer court, confessing that we
must owe our life to mercy and to nothing

40 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
else ; but how much better to go, sprinkled
with the blood of the altar, through the rent
veil, into "the holiest of all," claiming the
privilege of full acceptance with the Holy One !
It is good to get near to the throne of grace
in any way, even though it be only with a
trembling step, but the child of God can do
more than that ; he can " go boldly to the throne
of grace," with the confident step of one who
knows that he is welcome there, and, as an
heir of God through Jesus Christ, can calcu
late with certainty on having every one of the
great promises fulfilled to him, " according to
God's riches in glory."
Alas ! how many of God's children are far
less assured of their Father's love than they
ought to be ! It should never content us to
think of the salvation of a trusting heart as
being a possible thing, or a likely thing ; we
ought to "go up higher" into the revealed
secret of the everlasting covenant, and see it
to be a certain thing, because God cannot lie.
You are somewhat happy in the thought of

FULNESS OF JOY 41
the love of Christ, but you doubt, for all that,
whether it will last and keep you all the way ;
but if you go higher, and get nearer to the
heart of Christ, you will see that your conscious
unworthines of his love has nothing to do with
the continuance of it. He never asserts your
right to be loved ; what He does assert is His
own right to love you, if He chooses to do it
— and His assurance to you is that if He loves
you at all so as to save you by His blood, He
will never cease to love you, He will love you
" to the end," He set His love upon you, not
at your best, but at your very worst, when you
were "dead in trespasses and sins." You
never can be more unworthy of his love than
you were then. Well, " if when we were
enemies, we were reconciled unto God by the
death of His Son, much more, being reconciled,
we shall be saved by His life."
There is an expression of Paul's which is
one of the sweetest that the whole Bible con
tains — " God who is rich in mercy. u What
is it to be rich ? It is to have more than

42 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
enough — more than you need. So God has
more mercy waiting for you than He will ever
need to show : as John Bunyan said, " God has
many bottles of mercy lying by Him, the seals
of which have never been broken yet." And
with what a tone of exultation the 89th Psalm
rings out, " Mercy shall be built up for ever ! "
So then, God's mercy to you is only at the
beginning of its glorious work — it has got
beyond the foundations, but the great build
ing, God's true "Bethesda" — the house of
mercy — is rising higher every day, and every
day's mercy is only adding to it a new stone.
Now if mercy is to be built up for ever, do you
think God will expose Himself to the taunt,
" He began to build and was not able to
finish"? No, verily. " The gifts and calling
of God are without repentance." What He
has given He will never recall : what He has
said He will never retract ; what He has pro
mised He will never deny ; whom He receives,
He will never cast away.
We may thank God every day we live, that

FULNESS OF JOY 43
it is not our weak and fitful hold of Him that
assures us of a home-coming at the last, but
His unchanging grasp of us, a grasp that will
not let us go. With reverence we may say
that His honour is involved in this ; for that
old Christian woman said truth who, being
asked, " Do you never fear that Christ may
lose you after all ? " answered, " No, if He lost
me, He would lose more than me, He would
lose His own character."
On the ground, then, of the great " finished "
transaction of the Cross, and the promise of
the Good Shepherd, " My sheep shall never
perish — I give unto them eternal life, and
none can pluck them out of My hands," we
who believe may " enter into rest," and have
"perfect peace." This is high doctrine, you
say. Yes, but it is " the fat pasture upon the
high mountains of Israel," where the Divine
Shepherd makes His flock to lie down, where
they may " dwell safely in the wilderness and
sleep in the woods, and none shall make them
afraid."

44 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
Why have we, as Christian believers, so
little of this joy flooding our hearts and beam
ing in the very face ? The want of it is a
serious loss, a loss to ourselves, and a loss to
the world beside us too. It is not for the
honour of Christ that His followers should so
often give the impression that religion is a
thing of gloom. Should we not rather show
the world how happy Christ is making us ?
Do we not often speak and live as if He had
never said anything else to His disciples than
"Deny yourselves and take up the cross"?
Restrictions upon our waywardness there must
be, and they are merciful ones ; but surely it
is a poor way of describing the service of
Christ when we lay all the emphasis on the
restrictions, and say nothing of the joys.
If a Greenlander were to ask what a garden
is, would it be a true description to say "it is
a piece of ground fenced in by walls " and say
nothing of the bloom and scent of flowers, of
trees laden with luscious fruit, of rest under
foliage from the burning heat, and of bird-

FULNESS OF JOY 45
music entrancing the ear ? Or, if asked what
a cathedral is, would it be enough to say, " it
is a huge building of cold stone " and say
nothing of its noble proportions, its clustering
pillars, its tracery on spire and pinnacle, its
glowing colours in the window glass, its holy
worship, and its heavenly music swelling
through the aisles ? Yet such descriptions as
these would be more accurate by far than a
description of discipleship to Christ which
speaks only of its restrictions and says nothing
of its entrancing joys.
All that the Lord Jesus spoke to His
disciples was for this purpose, "that my joy
may remain in you and that your joy may be
full" (John xv. 11), and Peter testified that
the suffering Christians of his day were yet
" rejoicing with a joy unspeakable and full of
glory" (1 Pet. i. 8). They had heaven in
their hearts, and they carried the reflection of
it on the very face.
What was the secret of that joy ? "In
whom believing ye rejoice " — that explained it

46 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
all. The truths of Gospel-grace were living
realities to them, and not merely a form of sound
words. Through the Christ who died they
knew that they were really forgiven ; through
the risen Christ they had assurance of
acquittal ; they were absolutely sure that that
Christ would come again and receive them to
Himself ; and they listened every day to the
Spirit of adoption in their hearts, witnessing
with their spirits that they were really God's
sons. Has any one of these grounds of joy been
taken away from us ? Are they not as sufficient
to-day as they were nineteen centuries ago ?
Why then should our joy in Christ be so poor
compared with theirs ? The reason is not
that their faith was stronger than ours, but
that it was far simpler and more confiding.
" We venture on the promises of Christ as one
would do on doubtful ice, putting a light foot
out to see if it will bear, and always haunted
by the fear that it is going to crack." We do
not give Christ the complete trust of the

FULNESS OF JOY 47
heart, but continue to have a lingering
suspicion that, after all, His assurances may
not be true, or must not be taken too literally,
or are not meant for us. If we have
really come home to God, even though the
tears of penitence are not yet dried upon the
cheek, we have a right to feel — we are dis
honouring Him if we do not feel, that we are
taken into an embrace of Divine Love that
will never relax : and therefore, however true
it be that if we had more joy we would be
better Christians, it is equally true that if we
were only more believing Christians, we would
have more joy. " Rejoice in the Lord alway,
and again I say Rejoice " (Phil. iv. 4). "These
things write we unto you that your joy may
be full" (1 John i. 4).

CHAPTER V
Cbrist's Enswer to tbe Cv^
Jnwatb Calm

" Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me ; for I am
meek and lowly in heart : and ye shall find rest unto your
souls." — Matt. xi. 29.
" My peace I give unto you." — John xiv. 27.
" I will bless the Lord at all times : His praise shall
continually be in my mouth." — Ps xxxiv. 1.

CHAPTER V
TWO kinds of rest are needed by us all :
and they are both in the great
uplifting promise of Christ. The one
is, as we have seen, rest of conscience ; and
that rest He says " / will give." It comes
at once. It is not to be laboured for,
but to be accepted as a gift of grace. The
other is rest of heart, and that rest He says
" you shall find" : it comes into us gradually,
but comes more and more, the meeker and
lowlier, like Him, we become.
This was His message to the weary souls
that were crushed by the vain strivings and
disappointments of life, restless just because
they were putting their own will in the place
of God's. He was not speaking to the sick in
body when He said that, but to the sick in
heart. Except in two cases of individual

52 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
sufferers, the Lord Jesus never called the sick
in body to come to Him. They did come,
and when they came He healed them all, but
He did not call them to come. Those whom
He called were the sick in heart, for He wished
to go to the root of heart -misery, and first of
all get the soul right with God ; and so He
said " Take my yoke upon you and learn of
me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and
thus ye shall find rest to your souls."
Now, what exactly did Jesus mean ? Per
haps we misunderstand Him if we think of
Him as speaking of a yoke which He would put
upon them, and telling them that they would
find that easier than the yoke they were
putting upon themselves. He was rather
speaking of the yoke He was wearing Himself,
and asking them also to put it on — the yoke
of entire submission to the Father's will. This
seems to be suggested by the words " for I am
meek and lowly in heart " : and so His mean
ing would be, "put yourselves into the same
relation to God as I am continually in ; cease

INWARD CALM

S3

utterly from your foolish ambitions to be rich,
or honoured, or worldly-prosperous, or great ;
cease too from all complainings about your
earthly lot, all envyings of other men, all bitter
feelings against them or against God ; live as I
am doing in unquestioning submission to my
Father's will concerning me ; I am meek and
lowly in heart, accepting willingly the yoke of
poverty and homelessness, the burden of
humiliation and contempt, but I find that
yoke easy and that burden light because I
thoroughly acquiesce in my Father's will ; do
you the same, and you too will find the rest in
which I am living every day."
Christ's message, therefore, to the millions
of earth's weary souls is that their cry for rest
is often a wholly misdirected cry : for what we
need is not that our surroundings should be
changed, but that we should be changed our
selves. It is not change of circumstances nor
change of place that will give us rest, but
change of heart-feeling and life-aim : not the
world changed to us but ourselves changed to

54 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
it. Let that change of feeling come, our
centre will be changed, and there will come to
us rest, though all our world should go.
An old legend tells how Rabbi Judah and
his brethren sat in the temple at Jerusalem
disputing about rest. One said that it was to
have attained sufficient wealth without sin ;
another, that it was to have fame and the
praise of all ; another, that it was to have
power to rule the State ; another, that it lay
in the possession of a happy home ; another
still, that it could only be found in the old age
of one who was both famous and rich, and was
surrounded by children's children to call him
blessed. And there sat near them a fair-haired
boy, who, hearing their talk, looked up and
said, "Nay, fathers, he alone hath perfect rest
whose meat and drink it is to do the will of
God, who loveth God above all, and loveth his i
brother also ; for that will make him greater)
than all power, and richer than all wealth, and1
happier than the best home without that can ¦
be." And the doctors were amazed, and said,'

INWARD CALM 55
" When Messias cometh will He tell us greater
things than these ? " But that fair-haired boy-
was none other than He who afterwards said'
to all seekers after rest, Learn of me, and rest'
shall be yours for ever.
But what of those who are not opposing
God's will, not planning for themselves, not
setting their hearts upon earthly things or
seeking to be great, but who are crushed by
calamities utterly unexpected, by sudden and
sore bereavements, and sorrows that seem to
come directly from the hands of God Himself ?
Has the Great Uplifter no word of cheer for.
them ? Yes, verily : and it is just the same,
"learn of me." The sorest of all His afflic
tions were those that came directly from the
Father's smiting hand, and yet both at Geth-
semane and Calvary He could say, " Father,
glorify Thy name." Even He " learned
obedience by the things that He suffered " —
do not we need to learn it too ? and what are
we that we should refuse a discipline that even
He had to undergo ? Was the brilliant sun-

56 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
shine always over Him ? Why should we lose
heart and hope if darkness falls on us ? We
sometimes look enviously at men that seem to
be always crowned with joy, and to have never
a sorrow or a care. Christ looked on hundreds
of men like that, and never envied one of
them. He only pitied them. Would " learn
ing of Him " not help us also to overcome ?
for what He promises to us is just what He
had Himself; not immunity from suffering,
nor release from it, but something better than
either of these, victory over it through simple
contentment with a Father's will. "My
peace," He said, " the very same peace that
is filling me, I give to you " (John xiv. 27).
Suffering hearts often feel that the example of
Jesus does them little good, for they say "there
is no similarity between us and Him — He was
Divine." But this is to forget that His whole
life on earth was a completely human one as
well, and that He lived by faith as any of us
must do, that simple faith that made Him
always say, "Not my will but Thine be done."

INWARD CALM

57

And if any burdened spirit would only lay
down its burden in perfect trust on the loving
heart of God, as Jesus did, would only look
up into the Father's face, and tell Him that it
trusts Him utterly, that it is sure that all is
arranged for it in the best and kindest way,
and would not have one single item of life
otherwise than what He ordains, it would have
immediately the very same peace that filled
the soul of the Great Sufferer Himself, and
kept Him absolutely calm. For even a little
of Christ's peace can give us a great deal of
heaven. It is worthy of note how often God throws
His great promises about trouble into a form
which implies that trouble is sure to come.
He does not promise that we shall never have
any evil — but only that we shall be " quiet
from the fear of evil." He does not say that
we shall never need to go through fire and
through water, but only " when thou passest
through the waters I will be with thee, and
through the fire, thou shalt not be burned,"

58 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
He does not say we shall never hunger or
thirst, but only " when the poor and needy
seek water and there is none, and their tongue
faileth them for thirst, I the Lord will open
rivers in high places and fountains in the
midst of the valleys." We are never to expect
to have no " tribulation or distress or famine
or nakedness or peril or sword," but we may
learn to say " In all these things we are more
than conquerors through Him that loved us."
And, after all, the greatest of Christ's upliftings
over the sorrows of life is His steady pointing
of our hearts to His own blessed heaven.
" For the joy set before Him, He endured
the cross " ; for the joy set before us, we may
endure our cross too.
There is a lonely island in the northern
sea, where fiercest storms rage, and where,
even when the air is still, dark mists come
down and cover the land with so thick a veil
that all landmarks are blotted out from view.
But when the husbands and sons are baffled
and perplexed at sea, the women and the

INWARD CALM 59
children go down to the shore, and sing loud
their island songs. Borne out on the quiet air,
these songs strike cheeringly upon the fisher
men's ears and guide them home. Do there
not seem to come to us, surrounded by life's
mists and in danger of losing hope, voices of
good cheer from the celestial shore that draw
us to it, the voice of Christ Himself, and
voices from the joyful saints who are beside
Him there, all waiting eagerly for our home
coming too ? Thousands have listened to
these voices in the past. Thousands are
listening to them to-day. They are whisper
ing courage to the weary heart, and are even
transfiguring death itself, turning the last
enemy into a smiling friend.
The princess Elizabeth, daughter of King
Charles the First, who lingered out her youth
ful days in Carisbrook Castle, a prisoner
during the Commonwealth wars, was found
one morning seated at her table dead ; her
well-worn Bible lying open, her head resting
on it, and one of her cold fingers still pressed

60 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
upon the page. God grant that the words it
pressed may be as precious to us while living
as they were to her when dying ; for they were
just these tender words of the All-sufficing
King of Love, "Come unto me, all ye that
labour and are heavy-laden, and I will give
you rest."

CHAPTER VI
dFellowsbip wttb Cbrist
3ts mistical Sfbe

" God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the
fellowship of His Son Christ Jesus our Lord."- — i Cor. i. 9.
" Our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son
Jesus Christ." — 1 John i. 3.
" The Communion of the Holy Ghost." — 2 Cor. xiii.
14.

CHAPTER VI
WHAT a joyous tone there is in these
words of Paul's ! We can almost
see the glow on his furrowed
face as he wrote them down. They are
most comforting words. " God shall confirm
you to the end, that ye may be blame
less in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ,
and if you think that so transcendent a finish
to your poor life here is an impossible thing,
remember that the very " faithfulness " of
God secures it. Since He has called you not
only into discipleship to His Son, not only into
friendship with His Son, but into actual fellow
ship (or oneness) with His Son, your struggling
life is linked indissolubly to that Son's
triumphant life, and because He lives you
shall live also."
But they are most inspiring words too.
63

64 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
" The fellowship of His Son " is a very short
phrase, but it stands for a great deal. It
links earth to heaven. The whole mystery of
Gospel peace, and Gospel holiness, and
Gospel victory lies in this one phrase. We
are called to fellowship with Christ in His
death, fellowship with Him in His resurrec
tion, fellowship with Him in His ascended
power, fellowship with Him in service and in
suffering, fellowship with Him in the whole
spirit of our lives, and fellowship with Him at
last upon His heavenly throne.
Deeply doctrinal, profoundly experimental,
even mystical as all this may be, it is yet
intensely practical ; for if it lifts us to glorious
heights of privilege, it does so only to lift us to
greater heights of service, and greater victory
in our daily fight with sin. To live always in
the fellowship of God's Son is to have perfect
peace ; but it is also to have triumphant power.
On its Divine or mystical side, it is simply
a gift to be received. On its human, practical
side it is an experience to be attained. As a

ITS MYSTICAL SIDE 65
gift of grace we receive it when we are
" born of the Spirit " ; as a personal ex
perience we attain it as we "live in the
Spirit." What is fellowship ? It is partnership, the
having something in common with another.
It may be chiefly an outward thing, the
sharing of a common business, or a common
position, or a common home. But it may be
chiefly an inward thing, the sharing of common
tastes and sympathies, common joys and
sorrows, common aims and aspirations, com
mon feelings and hopes of any kind. In both
cases there is the idea of a perfect oneness
between two, so that what the one has the other
has ; what the one is the other is ; what the
one feels the other feels. It is not one giving
and the other receiving ; it is both giving and
both receiving. It is not one speaking and
the other listening ; it is both speaking and
both listening. It is not one loving and the
other loved ; it is both equally loving and
both equally beloved. It is standing face to

66 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
face, walking hand in hand, feeling that heart
answers heart, seeing eye to eye.
Look first at fellowship with Christ on its
mystical side.
i. Our mystical fellowship with Him begins
at the Cross, as fellowship in death : for it is
there that, identifying ourselves with Him as
our Representative, we feel that we died in
Him. This was what Paul meant when he said
"I have been crucified with Christ." He
meant " The great Sinbearer represented me,
my sins were laid on Him, my doom He took ;
in Him I myself died upon that Cross ; in Him
I have already endured the penalty of my sin ;
the sinless One was treated as I a sinner
ought to have been, that I a sinner might be
treated as a sinless one." That is fellow
ship with Christ in His death, the only
foundation of perfect peace with God.
2. Then, after that, we have fellowship
with Him in His Resurrection. We are
" risen with Christ." God has "quickened us
together with Him, having forgiven us alj

ITS MYSTICAL SIDE 67
trespasses." Christ's rising from the dead
was God's seal to the completeness of His
sin-atoning work ; and we, as sharers in that
resurrection, may know that we are really for
given. Christ's position after He rose from
the dead was wholly different from what it had
been before. He was no longer the Sin-
bearer. As He moved about the world for
forty days, He was no longer the substitute of
sinners, made for them under the law, and
paying for them the debt they could not pay.
He moved about as One who had paid it to the
last farthing and therefore was absolutely free :
and what Paul says is that believing men,
who are " in Christ," may now stand in
Christ's own position as the Risen One.
"There is no condemnation" to them, for,
in Christ, their condemnation is past ; they
have got beyond it ; they are now on the other
side, "passed from death unto life."
3. Then farther, we have fellowship with
Him in His ascended power : for as the Risen
Christ is our answer to doubt, the Ascended

68 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
Christ is our strength for war. The ever-
living Christ who " has the keys of hell and
death," ruling and reigning in our hearts by
His Spirit, gives us daily victory over the
world without, and over sin within.
4. We have also a wonderful fellowship
with Christ in endowment for service. We
are sharers with Him in the gifts of the Holy
Ghost. The same Spirit who "anointed"
Him (Luke iv. 18) gives us also " an unction
from the Holy One (1 John ii. 20, 27)." The
same Spirit who " rested on Him as a Spirit
of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and
might, making Him of quick understanding in
the fear of the Lord " (Isa. xi. 2, 3), teaches
us so that " we know all things." He was
under the leading of the Spirit (Matt. iv. 1) ;
so are we (Rom. viii. 14). He "went in the
power of the Spirit, and taught " (Luke iv. 14) ;
and He said " Ye shall receive power, after
that the Holy Ghost is come upon you, and
ye shall be witnesses unto me " (Acts i. 8).
Power to " speak the words of God " came to

ITS MYSTICAL SIDE 69
Him by the Spirit (John iii. 34) , and that is
the only power by which we can speak them
(Acts iv. 31). The Spirit revealed to Him
the whole range of His commission (Luke iv.
18, 19) ; and the same Spirit gives us the
message itself as well as the power to utter it.
" He by the Eternal Spirit offered Himself
without spot to God " (Heb. ix. 14) ; and it is
the same Spirit who enables us to "present
ourselves as living sacrifices, acceptable to
God " (Rom. xii. 1). Thus, all along, we
share with Christ in the gifts of the Holy
Ghost. 5, And we have a fellowship with Him of
a more transcendent kind still as our blessed
hope — a fellowship with Him upon the throne ;
" To him that overcometh," he says, "will I
grant to sit with me upon my throne, even as
I also overcame and I am set down with my
Father on His throne" — "The glory Thou
hast given me I have given them." So, our
fellowship with Christ, which is largely a
mystical and hidden reality now, will be a

7o DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
manifested reality at last. It is now fellow
ship in His death, fellowship in His Resurrec
tion, fellowship in His life : it will be fellow
ship in His glory when He comes again.
6. And now there comes in another inspiring
thought from those great words of the beloved
apostle John, " truly our fellowship is with the
Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ." The
meeting place for this fellowship between us and
the Father is Christ. I as a believer meet God
as a Father in Christ, in Christ God meets me :
and we have both the same feelings about
Christ, the same delight in Christ, the same
trust in Christ. The Father trusted Him
with the most precious thing He had, the
glory of His own Eternal Name, and felt that
it was in safe keeping in the hands of His
beloved Son, the Son with whom He was ever
well pleased. I trust the same Christ with
what is the most precious thing I possess, my
never-dying soul, and feel that it is in safe keep
ing in His hands of love and power. Christ is
the same to me that He is to the Father — the

ITS MYSTICAL SIDE 71
"well-beloved," God was well pleased with
Christ, so am I. God honours his dear Son,
so do I. God delights in the work of His Son,
so do I. God puts a crown upon the head of
His Son, so do I. All the Father's gifts reach
me through Christ, and all my gifts reach the
Father through Christ. In Christ God draws
near to me ; in Christ I draw near to God. In
being one with Christ in all His feelings and
aims, I am one with all the feelings and aims
of God Himself ; and so I have "fellowship
with the Father as well as with the Son."
This is a great mystery, a thing quite
incomprehensible by unspiritual men ; but
what a glorious, transcendent, and inspiring
mystery it is when God reveals it unto us by
His Spirit ! " O Zion, get thee up to this high
mountain," for there is a wonderful uplifting
there for those that are low.

CHAPTER VII
fellowship witb Cbtist
3ts practical Sfbe

" As Thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I
also sent them into the world ; and for their sakes I
sanctify (consecrate) myself, that they also may be sancti
fied (consecrated) in truth." — John xvii. 18, ig.
" Joint-heirs with Christ ; if so be that we suffer with Him,
that we may be also glorified together." — Rom. viii. 17.

CHAPTER VII
OUR fellowship with Christ is not
merely a mystical one ; it is meant
to be an intensely practical one as
well. It is not to be a fellowship in privilege
only, but a fellowship in service too. There
is given to us the same mission as was given
to Him, "As thou hast sent me into the
world, even so have I also sent them into the
world" (John xvii. 18). He did not simply
leave His disciples in the world, He sent them
into it, to do in their own measure the same
work He came to do, the work of witnessing
for God's righteousness, vindicating God's
truth, speaking God's message, seeking God's
lost ; the work of rebuking sin, lifting up the
fallen, teaching the ignorant, comforting the
sad, relieving the distressed, healing the sick,
making the world brighter and holier and
happier by their presence in it.

j 6 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
Fellowship with Christ, therefore, cannot
be consistent with lives of self-indulgence and
selfish ease. He did not live to please Him
self — no more may we. He sought not the
prizes which the world seeks — no more may
we. His mission was " not to be ministered
unto but to minister " (Matt. xx. 28) — that
also must be ours. Self-sacrifice to the utter
most was the law of His life — and it must be
the law of ours. If He made it His motto
" not to do His own will but the will of the
Father who had sent Him " (John vi. 38), how
can we be in " fellowship " with Him, if our
practical every-day motto is just the reverse
of that ? He is in the world still what He
was in it nineteen centuries ago, its un
acknowledged but real King and Priest ; and
He has " made us kings and priests unto His
God and Father," kings to rule the world for
Him and priests to serve it for Him. Is that
fellowship a mere name, or is it a real thing
for us ? Are we only " kings " in title, but
kings that live in ease and do nothing to

ITS PRACTICAL SIDE 77
make the world better and holier ? Are we
only called priests, but priests that never serve
either Him or their brethren at all ?
There is a shadowed side to this fellowship
which we must not refuse. We are " called"
to a fellowship with Christ in suffering, to be
partners with Him in all the sorrows of His
heart. If we are living in oneness of spirit
with our Lord, the same things will sadden us
that saddened Him — the world's unbelief and
sin, its cold contempt of God, its hard
rebellion against His law, its proud rejection
of His love. To share in His mission to the
world will inevitably make us sharers in His
trials and sufferings as we carry it on. We
shall need to bear reproach as He did, to be
evil-spoken-of as He was, to be shunned and
stigmatised for the same faithfulness to God
that drew down on Him the enmity of men.
The more perfectly we resemble Him, the
more of this we shall have to endure ; indeed,
the measure in which we suffer it will often be
an accurate measurement of the extent of our

78 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
resemblance to our Lord. And yet, there is a
joy in walking these rough paths in " fellow
ship " with Him, a joy in feeling that if we
have only the shaded and dark side of the
world for our journey, we have the companion
ship of the Great Sufferer at every step.
The thought of having to be one with Christ
in suffering may not be an attractive one
when all is bright ; but if, at any time, our
path of consecration leads steeply down into
a veritable " valley of the shadow of death,"
if friends grow cold, and bitter things are said,
and "our good conversation in Christ is
falsely accused " (i Pet. iii. 16) and our very
" names are cast out as evil for the Son of
man's sake" (Luke vi. 22), then, at least, it
will be comforting to remember that He has
trodden that same path before us, and is with
us in it still, that we only "suffer with Him,
that we may be glorified together" (Rom. viii.
17)- It is just with a view to our being helped to
realise all this, that we are brought into

ITS PRACTICAL SIDE 79
another Divine fellowship, "the communion
(or fellowship) of the Holy Ghost " (2 Cor.
xiii. 14). Whatever else may be included in
these words, this surely is, that between us as
renewed souls and the Holy Spirit there is a
oneness of feeling and of aim. In all our holy
desires and holy efforts we are at one with the
Spirit of God, and the Spirit is at one with us.
The Spirit is in us, and we are " in the Spirit"
(Rom. viii. 9). The Spirit " dwelleth in us,"
(Rom. viii. 11) and we "live in the Spirit"
(Gal. iii. 25). We long to have a fuller
possession of the Spirit, and the Spirit longs
to have a fuller possession of us, " the Spirit
which dwelleth in us yearneth for us unto
jealous envying" (J as. iv. 5). The Holy
Spirit's sympathies go out to us in our
struggles to overcome, for He " helpeth our
infirmities," and "maketh intercession for us"
(Rom. viii. 26) ; our sympathies go out to the
Holy Spirit in His strivings with the world to
bring it to repentance, and we pray that these
strivings may be more successful. The work

80 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
of the Spirit is to " convince the world of sin
and righteousness and judgment" (John xvi.
8) ; and we make that our work too. It was
for the specific purpose of glorifying Christ
that the Spirit was to be sent (John xvi. 14),
and it is for the same end that we are sent to
live and labour in the world from day to day.
We are thus at one with the Spirit in all His
aims, whether for our own sanctification or
for the world's conversion. We have not
only fellowship with the Father and with the
Son, but fellowship with the Spirit too.
And now, coming back to the great thought
with which we began, we can better see what
" fellowship with Jesus Christ our Lord "
really means on its practical side. It is :
Christ identifying Himself with us, and we
identifying ourselves with Him.
Christ loving us, and we loving Him,
Christ giving Himself to us, and we giving
ourselves to Him.
Christ abiding in us, and we abiding in
Him.

ITS PRACTICAL SIDE 81
Christ living for us, and we living for Him.
Christ serving us, and we serving Him.
Christ listening to us, and we listening to
Him. Christ full of sympathy with us, and we full
of sympathy with Him.
Christ consecrating Himself for us, and we
consecrating ourselves to Him.
Christ working for us, and we working for
Him. Christ pleading for us, and we pleading for
Him. Christ keeping all His promises to us, and
we keeping all our promises to Him.
Christ willingly bearing reproach for us, and
we willingly bearing reproach for Him.
Christ dying for us, and we, if need be,
dying for Him.
Christ longing for our coming to Him, and
we longing for His coming to us.
Christ crowning us, and we crowning Him.
The fellowship is a thing that is the same
on both sides. Let us ask if this fellowship is

82 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
a blessed reality to us, or only a theory and a
name. Can this Christ to Whom we profess
to cling, with Whom we say we are one, speak
of us, as His "fellow-helpers" and "fellow-
workers " and " fellow-soldiers," and " fellow-
sufferers " as well as His "fellow-heirs " ?

CHAPTER VIII
Zbe Secret of not Sinning :
Ebibe in Cbrist

•-I" He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth
forth much fruit : for without me ye can do nothing." —
John xv. 5.
" Whosoever abideth in Him sinneth not." — 1 John iii. 6.

CHAPTER VIII
IT is a wonderfully uplifting experience
when we come to know and realise what
fellowship with Christ means in all its
length and breadth ; but the question will
still be asked by many an earnest soul
" What can this Christ do for me
to give me victory over habits of sin ?
I want larger estimates of His redeem
ing grace, but I want also larger experiences
of His cleansing power ; can these experiences
really be mine ? " The load that presses
heaviest on many hearts is not a load of
sorrow, nor a load of guilt, but a load of felt
impotence to vanquish sin. They believe
heartily in the grace that saves, but they have
only a very small experience of the grace that
sanctifies. They long to have it. They are
depressed and disheartened by the want of it j

86 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
for almost all they know of the Christian life
is a vain warfare with inborn corruption, an
ineffectual struggle carried on by a feeble will.
They live defeated lives instead of lives of
victory, and have nothing of the overcomer's
joy. They are alive, but that is nearly all
that can be said. The new life in them is
strangely and disappointingly weak. Tempta
tions overpower them easily; and, at times,
they are almost terrified by finding such a
persistence in them of sins that they ought to
have trampled under foot many years ago.
For they are not indifferent to their weakness.
It costs them many a tear. They are
attracted by what they hear others tell of the
grand possibilities of victory that lie in a closer
fellowship with the all-conquering Christ, and
are often filled with a passionate longing for
the life more abundant. But the effort to
reach it seems always in vain. They cannot
explain to themselves how they remain so
weak. They know this to be their sin, and it
is their sorrow too. They mourn it, and con-

ABIDE IN CHRIST 87
fess it, and pray about it, and still it remains,
almost crushing them into despair.
How is it so ? Perhaps the secret of failure
lies in this — the " effort " to reach victory,
if the effort be to pull themselves up to it by
reasonings, and self-reproaches, and resolves
to gain it by direct attacks. The victory does
not come by self-effort, but by self-abandon
ment ; a complete surrender of the soul to
Christ that He may give a victory which self-
effort cannot reach. Our own weakness is
not the barrier in the way, but the want of a
sufficiently complete heart-surrender to Christ's
enabling power. When we cannot, by all our
strivings, either lift ourselves or keep our
selves, let Him do both the lifting and the
keeping, trust Him to do it as He has promised
to do, and then it will be just as easy to soar
on eagles' wings as to creep on hands and
knees. That such a life of daily victory is possible
is shown by Christ Himself, " he that abideth
in me, the same bringing forth much fruit ;

88 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
severed from me ye can do nothing " (John
xv. 5), and also by the beloved apostle John,
" whosoever abideth in Him sinneth not " (1
John iii. 6). There we have the Divine recipe
for a holy life.
The words of Christ are very familiar ; but
do we not often quote them as if they referred
only to our responsibility to bear holy fruit, and
not also to the power by which alone we can
produce it ? Our holy fruit-bearing is not a
matter of self-power, but of Christ's power.
Its not the power of the vine-branch that
produces the fruit. If it is livingly united to the
vine, it is the stem that really puts forth all
the power ; the branch is only the vehicle of
the power. So then, our sanctification comes
just as our justification comes, through a living
union to Christ. Our relation to Christ for
holiness is just the same as our relation to
Him for righteousness, the dependence of faith.
Is salvation by Christ and sanctification by
ourselves ? Is salvation by self-abandonment
and sanctification by self-reliance ? It cannot

ABIDE IN CHRIST 89
be. They are both of them by grace, and
both of them through faith. Faith in the
Christ who died — that gives us peace. Faith
in the Christ who lives — that gives us power.
Just as our peace rests on Christ's identifying
Himself with us, our holiness comes through
our identifying ourselves with Him.
The beloved disciple was absolutely right
when he said "Whosoever abideth in Him
sinneth not." That is not an advice, it is the
statement of a fact. It is not the enforcing
of a duty, as if it ran " whosoever abideth in
Him should not sin, ought not to sin, must
not sin." It is not even the drawing of an
inference, as if it ran "whosoever abideth in
Him will be careful not to sin, will not will
ingly sin, will not be likely to sin." It is the
broad, clear statement of a positive fact.
Between abiding in Christ and sinning there
is such an absolute incompatibility that who
soever sins is, for the time being, not abiding
in Christ. We abide in Christ by faith that
unites us to Him ; but the faith that unites us

90 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
to Him makes us resemble Him too, so that
we have an entire oneness of feeling with Him,
and a oneness of aim ; we are of the same
mind as Christ, and take the same views of
everything as Christ; and, manifestly, while
we are doing that, we cannot sin, we do not
sin. With most of us, however, this abiding in
Christ is a sadly intermittent thing, and, when
the abiding is interrupted, sin seizes its
opportunity and easily regains its mastery.
But it need not be so. Let our abiding in
Christ be close and unbroken too, so that,
moment by moment, we live in perfect one
ness of will with Him and perfect sympathy
of feeling with Him, and His presence in the
heart will itself drive out the sin that tempts
us, and against which we strive otherwise in
vain. " He shall save His people from their
sins " (Matt. i. 21). Does not that mean that
He will save them from sinning ? from sin's
power as well as from sin's doom ? He does
this, not certainly by taking the sinful nature

ABIDE IN CHRIST 91
out of us, and so making us perfectly holy all
at once, but by so dwelling in and filling us,
that there will be no room for sin to dwell
beside Him even if it could ; and if it tries
to do so, His presence in us will kill all natural
cravings for it as soon as they appear.
" Abiding in Christ " is thus a greater pre
ventive of sin than even " looking to Christ "
as our example : for He becomes not merely
our example of not sinning, but our strength
against sinning. Even if He only stands before
us as a bright pattern of holiness, looking
steadily and lovingly to Him will enable us to
resist temptation ; but if He dwells within us
and fills us, that will do far more ; it will kill
the very propensity itself on which temptation
lays hold.
The real secret, therefore, of not sinning is
" Abide in Christ and let Christ abide in you,"
for it is vain to hope to conquer sin merely by
reasoning against it and making vows to
abstain from it. In the face of temptation
these will utterly snap. The only effectual

92 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
way is to let Christ come so fully in that
He will drive all intruders out. Varying the
figure slightly, we might put it thus, " Let the
Holy Spirit have unquestioned and supreme
and glad possession of the citadel of the
soul, controlling everything from thence,
and He will, by His felt presence there,
overawe the rebels lurking in the city,
and put down all insurrections in the
streets." There is deep meaning in Christ's use of
the word " abide in me " ; for it is a con
tinuous union to Him that alone can give us
daily victory over sin. We need not merely
to feel that we are branches of the Vine, but
to realise that we are only branches, and have
no independent strength. If we would fain be
something else than branches, and draw our
life from ourselves, we wither at once. May
God guard us from the deception that sub
stitutes the working of our own spirits for the
working of the Holy Ghost, and teach us that
all our power, every atom of it, must be the

ABIDE IN CHRIST 93
power of the Christ who abides in us by His
Spirit given to us,
And, if we are to abide in Christ, let us never
attempt to fight to-day by the strength of
yesterday ; for nothing is poorer or more
pitiable than a life which, instead of drawing
fresh power daily from the only source of
power, tries to subsist upon the recollected
leavings of the past. In this sense, as in many
others, we need to be "forgetting the things
that are behind " if we are to reach " the prize
of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."

CHAPTER IX
{Ebe Secret of not Sinning :
%iv>e out \>our Sonsbip

" Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin." —
i John iii. 9.
" And now, little children, abide in Him ; that, when He
shall appear, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed
before Him at His coming." — 1 John ii. 28.

CHAPTER IX
ALL this is repeated in another form by
the same apostle John, when he says,
" Whosoever is born of God doth not
commit sin." This statement, like the former
one, is absolute. It is a statement of fact.
He cannot sin, so long as he is feeling as a
true son of God feels, so long as he gives his
new, heavenly, God-begotten nature full play.
If we do sin, it is only when, for the time, we
have ceased to feel as the sons of a holy God,
realising their sonship, must feel, If we
could always let the new nature begotten in
us act, we would always act as Christ, the
Only-Begotten of the Father, did ; would "do
always the things that please Him " (John
viii. 29). " Realise your sonship," John
would say, " and all that sonship to such a
Father implies, — ask, at every moment, Is

97

H

98 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
this, and this, and this consistent with my
character as a real son of God ? Do this, and
you will not sin — do this, and you will prove,
in every hour of temptation, the truth of the
words " He that is begotten of God keepeth
himself, and that wicked one toucheth him
not" (i John v. 18).
To take these two thoughts, then, and lay
them alongside of the many doubtful things
we too often allow ourselves in, would quickly
settle for us the rightness or the wrongness of
them. In this plan for my life, this great
ambition I am setting before me and striving to
realise, am I really abiding in Christ, really
feeling as a true son of God should feel ? In
this kind of amusement, or this particular
form of self-indulgence, which has a pleasant
ness about it that I am unwilling to forego,
am I really abiding in Christ ? really acting
as a holy son of God should act ? There are
many things in daily life which cannot be
labelled " sins," but must be labelled
" doubtful." The world around us sees no

LIVE OUT YOUR SONSHIP 99
harm in them ; some even, whom we must
acknowledge to be Christian brethren,
approve of them ; and yet, in our better
moments, our moments of honest self-
inspection, we have doubts about them. We
cannot, of course, take the world's opinion as
settling anything ; and we cannot rest in the
opinion of our fellow Christians either; we
want to know what God's opinion about them
is. And yet it often seems as if God's opinion
were hard to get, so many things being left to
our Christian instincts and sanctified feelings,
without any positive command about them.
Would it not often shed a flood of light
upon such perplexities just to ask " In yield
ing to these solicitations of my self-indulgent
nature, am I really abiding in Christ ? really
feeling as an emancipated son of God must
feel, if he is true to his Father's character and
mind and will ? " There are few practical
matters which an honest answer to these
questions would not settle at once ; for,
though the line of demarcation between the

ioo DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
allowable and the unallowable is sometimes a
narrow one, it is generally clear enough to be
seen by a guileless conscience and an upright
heart. Whatever could bear the searching
light of Christ's personal presence is safe
enough ; but where we would be afraid, or
ashamed, or even half-ashamed to have our
Master find us, we ought never to find our
selves. How prominent, in John's view, this feeling
was can be seen in what he says (i John ii. 28)
" And now, little children, abide in Him, that
when He shall appear, we may have con
fidence (both you and I ) and not be (either
you or I) ashamed before Him at His
coming." What an appalling possibility for
any Christ-lover is this, to feel ashamed to
meet His eye, to shrink away and seek to
hide from Him, to be afraid to look Him in
the face ! Who would like to be taken by
surprise, all unprepared, if the Lord who is to
come were suddenly to come, and all the holy
angels with Him ? Who would like to be

LIVE OUT YOUR SONSHIP 101
surprised by His glorious appearing at an
hour when he is busy with what must grieve
that holy and loving heart of His — so taken
by surprise as to wish for a few moments'
delay, to get over his nervous flutter and con
fusion, and be able to give Him the welcome
He expects ? Who would like to shrink
ashamed from Him when He comes as Judge,
"to give every man according as his work
shall be " (Rev. xxii. 12) ?
But it is not merely this final coming of the
Lord that John is thinking of. The revised
version gives a turn to his words that shows it
is with the present, rather than the future, that
we have to do ; " that if He shall be mani
fested, we may have boldness." The sup
position is that Christ may come at any
moment, and the question is, " Would you be
ashamed before Him, if He were suddenly to
stand beside you this very day ? " Let us
take that question home. If Christ, my Lord
and Master, were to be manifested to me to
day, were to come out of His invisibility and

102 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
stand revealed beside me to-day, would I
have boldness to meet Him without shame ?
If He were suddenly to appear when I am
in some society or engaged in some pursuit
about which I have occasional doubts — if He
were to come uninvited into my house, my
private room, my secret chamber, and just
show Himself openly as the very Lord who is
there always though I see Him not, would I
shrink from His holy presence, would I fear
the rebuke and grief that would be seen in the
glance of His eye ? It is a searching question
this ; and the only way to escape that shame
is to keep every day, every hour, every
instant, abiding in Him, even as we would
wish to be found abiding in Him if, this very
day, this very hour, this very instant, He
should appear before us as the Glorified Son of
man. Is such a life of victory an impossibility ?
Rare it may be, rarer than it ought to be, but
surely there is no inherent impossibility in it ;
for every failure in experiencing it is due only

LIVE OUT YOUR SONSHIP 103
to failure in abiding in Christ. It is not perfec
tion that God promises, but He does promise
daily victory through abiding in Christ ; and
if anyone should decry the hope of this as
utterly vain, it might not be amiss to ask,
" Can you not keep all sin down for a few
moments, at least, in some special hour of
high fellowship with Christ — on the bent knee
of secret prayer, or at the Holy Table where
His love is strongly felt ? " Well, what is it
that, at such an hour, puts sin beneath your
feet ? Is it not just the fuller presence of
Christ within you, your more complete
surrender to the love-power that lifts you up ?
Now, if it is possible for you to feel this for
a few minutes, is it in its own nature impos
sible that such a blessed experience should
last for a complete day ? The records of
missions, both among the degraded at home,
and among the heathen abroad, are full of
cases where the power of a life-long habit of
sin has in a moment been not only overcome
but absolutely and finally crushed, by the

t04 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
grace of Christ coming in and taking posses
sion of the soul. Not only has the sin been
successfully resisted, but all craving for the
sin has been utterly rooted out, so that no
temptation to return to it has ever been felt.
The change was absolute, and it was instan
taneous too. Christ came in and took
possession ; and the devil was immediately
cast out.
Saintly souls, such as Brainerd, Flavel,
Edwards, and many more have told of long
seasons of such rapt fellowship with Christ
that no sinful thought or feeling so much as
rose within them, and they seemed to be
living a life which was heaven begun. If such
perfect fellowship with Christ were our normal
condition, we would have the holiness of
heaven even here ; and if we do not attain to
this, it is not because there is any inherent
impossibility of attaining it, but only because
we cannot keep up continuously that perfect
faith which links us to a victorious Lord, and
enables us to abide in Him.

LIVE OUT YOUR SONSHIP 105
That this is so, all Christians practically
admit, however different their expression of it
may be. The sins of believers John Wesley
would call a " falling away from grace," while
John Calvin would call them " declensions in
the spiritual life " ; but both Wesley and
Calvin would agree that they are due to not
abiding in Christ. And, to all therefore who
mourn the power of sin within them, and
would fain be delivered from it, the Master's
great uplifting message is " Abide in Me, and
let Me abide in you, live out your sonship to
the Father always, as I always did."

CHAPTER X
Zbe ^Liberating Spirit

"The law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus hath
made me free from the law of sin and death." — Rom.
viii. 2.
" Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." —
2 Cor. iii. 17.
" I am full of power by the Spirit of the Lord." —
Micah iii. 8.

CHAPTER X
IT was a startling question that was put
by Paul to some disciples whom he
found in Ephesus, " Have ye received
the Holy Ghost since ye believed ? " (Acts
xix. 2.) It took them by surprise. It was a
matter of which they had never thought,
about which they had never been instructed.
If the same question were put to some dis
ciples now, it is possible that they would be
startled too : for the presence and the power of
the Holy Ghost in our hearts and lives is a
thing we know too little of. The Spirit is
acknowledged in our creed — " I believe in the
Holy Ghost " — He is named continually in
prayer, in the baptismal formula, in the Bene
diction ; but, practically, His work within us
is greatly ignored, and, experimentally, it is
greatly unknown.
109

no DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
Paul had a deeper conception of the work
of the Spirit than any other of the apostles.
At least he speaks about it more, proving what
a reality it was to him. There are no fewer
than sixteen references to the Holy Spirit in
one chapter — the 8th of Romans — and all
that he has to say of Him as the Spirit of
peace, the Spirit of purity, the Spirit of
prayer, or the Spirit of joy, springs out of the
first conception of Him there, as the Spirit
of Life.
Lamenting and weeping over the workings
of sin in his soul that brought forth fruit unto
death, and crying "Who shall deliver me?"
he bursts out, after a few moments, into a
shout of victory, " I thank God through Jesus
Christ my Lord ; for the law of the Spirit of
Life in Christ Jesus has made me free from
the law of sin and death." What he says is
this: " There has been the entering into me
of a new triumphant power, the very power I
needed by which to conquer sin ; and I sur
rendered myself wholly and gladly to that

THE LIBERATING SPIRIT in
power. I subjected myself to it as to a new
law that might rule me absolutely ; and it set
me free from the tyranny of sin."
That is what no other power than the power
of the indwelling Spirit of Life can do ; and
every spiritually taught Christian knows that
as well as Paul. Education will not do it,
culture will not do it, filling the soul with
noble ideals will not do it, self-torturing
flagellation of the body will not do it, no
amount of conventional religious practices
will do it, the best resolutions will not do it,
the most solemnly taken vows will not do it ;
we need a Divine power in us to do it, we need
the "Spirit of Life."
Paul prayed for the Ephesians that they
might be " strengthened with power through
His Spirit, in the inward man " (Eph. iii. 16
R.V.), and be " filled unto all the fulness of
God " (Eph. iii, 19 R.V.), filled as full as God
could make them to be filled. A wonderful
prayer that ! too great, we may think, to be
answered ! and therefore he speaks of God as

112 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
" able to do exceeding abundantly above all
that we can ask or think " (Eph. iii. 20). Alas !
there are many who would hardly wish it to
be answered, for if God were to come so fully
into them, they would need to be willing to
part with many sinful and down-dragging
habits that they love too well !
What is it to be filled with the Spirit ?
Paul's own illustration, or parallel (Eph. v. 20),
may help us to see it. His comparison of the
effects of being filled with the Spirit and being
filled with wine, is very suggestive. When we
look at a drunkard we see that the whole man
is under the mastery of a foreign power. We
see that mastering power in his eyes, for they
are bloodshot ; in his hands, for they tremble ;
in his voice, for it is thick and stammering ; in
his feet, for they stagger. From head to foot
he is under the power of the intoxicating
drink. " So," says Paul, "you ought to be
filled with the Spirit." It ought to be visible
to all that God has laid hold of you, and filled
you, and mastered you. Your eye, and ear,

THE LIBERATING SPIRIT 113
and lips, and hands, and feet, everything
about you should bear witness to the power
of the Holy Spirit in your hearts." What a
glorious thing it would be for any of us, if this
were our experience ! How is it to become
so ? Let the Holy Spirit come freely into
you, surrender yourself to His divine indwel
ling, and let Him strengthen you to vanquish
sin. It is worthy of note that Paul very rarely
speaks of the Christian as being " strong,"
and never of his being strong in himself — but
of his being " strengthened " (or made strong).
" Be strengthened in the Lord and in the
power of His grace " is the literal rendering of
Eph. vi. 10. So too (in 2 Tim. ii. 1) he says
'• be strengthened in the grace that is in
Christ," and again (in 1 Cor. xvi. 13) " quit
you like men and be strengthened." This
exactly corresponds to Isaiah's words, " He
giveth power to the faint, to them that have
no might He increaseth strength " (Isa. xl. 29),
Our power is not our own power : it is God's 1

n 4 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
power coming into us. It is not our own self-
sufficiency, but God's sufficiency that gives us
the victory.
The working of this " Life " within us is a
mysterious thing ; but it is a great reality. It
is like the mysterious working of the sap
through an old tree. We sometimes see old
leaves on a tree all the winter through, cling
ing with a strange tenacity to the boughs.
The fiercest storms do not loosen them, nor
do the keenest frosts. But when spring comes
round, and the sap begins to rise, the old, un
sightly leaves do not need to be torn off ; they
drop off themselves, they are pushed off by
the new power flowing through every branch :
the new life displaces the old. How many old
leaves of sinful habits and sinful lusts and
sinful desires and sinful ambitions linger in
the soul, and show a strange tenacity, and
defy all outward influences to tear them off !
How are they to be got rid of? only by
the rising of the new life within. Let the
Spirit of Life take possession of us, and

THE LIBERATING SPIRIT 115
these things will drop away almost before we
know. How are we to get the Holy Spirit to come
powerfully into us and produce this emancipa
tion ? There is only one way — " If ye being
evil know how to give good gifts unto your
children, how much more shall your Heavenly
Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask
Him" (Luke xi. 13). "Turn you at my
reproof; behold, I will pour out my Spirit
unto you" (Prov. i. 23). If we want this
overcoming Life within, we can get it only by
prayer. If we want more life, we can get it
only by more prayer. The praying Christian
is the overcoming Christian, because by prayer
he calls for and gets the overcoming Spirit of
Life to dwell unchallenged in his soul. John
Bunyan well represents the Christian soldier
as conquering Apollyon only when he got to
his knees. It was as the result of an utterly
agonizing cry for deliverance that Paul got the
Spirit of Life poured into him. He was in
dead earnest about it. His cry was not, a

116 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
mere sentiment : it was the agonised cry of a
drowning and despairing man. He had got
to the end of all his own resources, and cried
"Who shall deliver me ? " and then, but not
till then, God said " I will." And when the
Spirit of Life came in and filled him, his
happy heart burst into a song. " All prayer "
is the strongest weapon in the Christian's hand
(Eph. vi. 18). So true is that, that either our
praying will make an end of our sinning, or
our sinning will make an end of our praying.
The one of these must drive the other out.
And there is nothing like much secret prayer-
fellowship with God for keeping us under the
power of the Spirit of Life. It will insensibly
raise the whole tone of our life, and the whole
tone of feeling about everything. It brings
God Himself into us, and lets us look out upon
things as with His eyes ; and it gives us such
delight in His presence within us, that the
very thought of those sins that grieve Him or
drive Him away becomes abhorrent. To
begin each day with fervent prayer is like

THE LIBERATING SPIRIT 117
putting on the armour that secures us. Con
tinuing in prayer all the day through will give
us the strength to use it ; and the anticipation
of prayer again at the close of the day will
force us to ask when confronted by any temp
tation to sin, " how will this look to me when
I am on my bent knee before my loving Father
to-night ? will I be able, if I yield, to look
Him in the face for shame ? "
Living very near the throne of the King and
delighting in His society, we will come to
abhor the very idea of disloyalty in word or
act. The inmost thoughts will be purified,
and so our lives will be holy too.

CHAPTER XI
E pure Conscience

" Herein do I exercise myself, to have always a con
science void of offence toward God and toward men." —
Acts xxiv. 16.
" Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing
which he alloweth." — Rom. 14-22.

CHAPTER XI
THERE are few things, perhaps, that
more prevent the Holy Spirit from
gaining full possession of our hearts
than our disregard of the whispers in which He
so often speaks. We do listen when His voice
comes like a thunder-peal ; but when it is
only like . a soft breathing in the innermost
sanctuary of the soul we give little heed. His
voice that warns us of danger to our souls, or
rebukes our self-indulgences is often very low,
and we need a very sensitive ear to hear it.
There is nothing that we, as Christians living
in the world, more emphatically need than
great tenderness of conscience about sin,
more sensitiveness to even small departures
from God, departures from Him in small
things ; and more alarmed shrinking from all
that would lead into sin, all that would defile
21

122 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
the holy temple in which the spirit of purity
would dwell, all that would hinder our
Christian influence and our power over other
men. We need to have a great fear of sin
in order to escape it, and a great sensitiveness
to sin in order to fear it. We need to " keep
conscience as the noontide clear," to do what
Paul did, "exercise ourselves to have a con
science void of offence both toward God and
toward men " (Acts xxiv. 16).
There are many kinds of conscience. There
is the unawakened conscience, the ignorant or
unenlightened conscience, the drugged or
sleeping conscience, the "weak" and mor
bidly scrupulous conscience, the " defiled "
conscience, the conscience that is " seared."
But there is also the " good " conscience, the
conscience that is " purged," the "pure con
science," the " conscience void of offence."
This last was what Paul was ever striving to
keep. He knew that he could not live with
out sin, but he was determined to live without
guile ; to live in such subjection to the will of

A PURE CONSCIENCE 123
his Master that, in spite of all failures, he
might be able to look all accusers in the face
and say, " my rejoicing is this, the testimony
of my conscience that in simplicity and godly
sincerity I have my conversation in the world "
(1 Cor. i. 12).
To keep a good conscience we must of course
make sure that it is an enlightened conscience,
a conscience that has got the use of its eyes ;
for, though conscience is to be the guide of
life, knowledge is the eye of the guide ; and if
that eye be blind, both the leader and the led
will fall into the ditch. Conscience in the soul
is like the compass in a ship. It must be
depended upon at sea, but, in order to make
it dependable, it has to be both carefully
adjusted ere the voyage begins, and carefully
watched all the voyage through to make sure
of its being secluded from disturbing influences,
else its guidance will be unsafe ; and the smallest
deviations of the ship from the right direction
to which the compass points must be as care
fully noted as the large. Look at Peter in the

i24 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
High Priests' hall. His conscience must have
pointed to a small deviation when he entered
as if he were a mere onlooker, and stood
warming himself at the fire, concealing his
true character as a disciple, and keeping
silence when false testimony that he could
easily have contradicted was swearing away
his Master's life. What wonder that when a
great temptation speedily came, he fell.
Let it then be borne in upon us with abso
lute conviction that if we are to have a pure
conscience in everything, we must listen to its
whispers about many things that seem only
small ; small luxuries and self indulgencies
that are " weights "to us if not positive
" sins " — small compliances with the worldly
spirit rampant in social life — habits of reading
certain kinds of literature, habits that tend to
unspiritualise us, to enfeeble us, to take away
our relish for higher things, habits that a very
sensitive conscience would condemn, but
habits about which we seldom give conscience
full liberty to speak. Of many of these things

A PURE CONSCIENCE 125
we say " Oh ! they are mere trifles," and when
some whisper of conscience tells us that we
are not walking honestly before God in regard
to them, we argue conscience down. But
can anything be really a trifle which prevents
God's Holy Spirit from having full possession
of us, or which hinders to any extent our use
fulness for God ? Let us be honest about all
this, and ask ourselves : —
1. Do we make conscience- work about our
secret life, allowing nothing there that would
defile the purity of the soul, nothing that would
make prayer distasteful, nothing that we would
be ashamed to do if Christ were standing by?
2. Do we make conscience-work of our
home life, curbing passionate tempers on the
one hand and sullenness on the other, show
ing no selfish determination to have our own
way while careless about wounding the feelings
of others, putting down the frivolous gossip
and uncharitable comments so prevalent in the
home, carefully watching against all bitterness
of speech and all unkindness of act ?

126 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
3. Do we always make conscience work of
our social life, uttering none of those conven
tional insincerities that go by the name of
" white lies," no hollow compliments to those
we know to be undeserving of them, no expres
sions of admiration for those only who flatter
us, and of dislike for those that cannot honestly
do it, no " walking according to the course of
this world " (Eph. ii. 2) in its sinful extrava
gance and show, its frivolous amusements, its
hypocrisies and shams, its patronage of things
that only pander to " the lust of the flesh, the
lust of the eye, and the pride of life" (1 John
ii. 16) ?
4. Do we make conscience-work of every
kind of business life too ? Do we allow prac
tices there to remain unchallenged which a
really sensitive conscience would instantly
condemn ? It may be that the whole kind of
business in which we are engaged is tainted,
and defiling as well as defiled, for, as Spurgeon
said in his own nervous way, "business has
often no business to be the kind of business

A PURE CONSCIENCE 127
that it is." Or, if the business itself is
legitimate, there may be some sharp practices
in it which verge upon actual dishonesty, and
go dead against the command " as ye would
that men should do to you, do ye even so to
them likewise" (Luke vi. 31). Are we sensitive
enough about things like these? Would we
like our Lord and Master to be close beside us
as we are doing them ?
It may be a very searching question to some
— " Would you like Christ to overlook you at
your daily work ? Could you make Him a
partner in your business, and keep nothing
from His eye ? " The Lord Jesus on one
occasion did overlook His toiling disciples,
who were disappointed because their whole
night's fishing had failed. He made Himself,
for the time being, a partner in business with
them, and so directed the business that
immediately they had a quite unprecedented
haul. If He were to offer to take the manage
ment of your business would you let Him do
it ? If, some day, seeing how harassed you

128 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
look, He were to say, Give me these books of
yours, and these ledgers, and that pen, let me
send off these orders, and write these letters,
and make out that balance-sheet ; or, Go you
and rest, and let me take your place behind
the counter to-day, and serve the customers
for you, would you do it ? or would you be
afraid of His eye seeing some things on which
your own eye looks, or tries to look, com
placently enough ? There is many a man,
even in Christ's professing church to-day, who,
if the great Master were to propose such
a thing, would hurry out of His presence and
never come back ! And yet, what Christ
would certainly rebuke, ought not a sensitive
conscience in ourselves to rebuke, so that we
shall put it at once away?
The want of this "living in all good con
science toward God and toward men " is sure
to produce two evils, the loss of peace, and
the loss of power. We cannot "assure our
hearts before God" (i John iii. ig) while these
hearts condemn us for tolerated sins, and we

A PURE CONSCIENCE 129
cannot have success in our efforts for God in
the world. Do we want to know how our
influence over others does not tell ? What if
the reason be that we are tolerating in our
lives much that is questionable, to say the
least of it, much that our consciences tell us
should be honestly put away ? Men are not
impressed by us as they would be if only they
saw more cf Christ's absolute purity and
unworldliness in us. The finest gifts will not
tell in the absence of this. " It is not great
talents that God blesses," said the saintly
McCheyne, " but great likeness to Jesus." If
our utterances for Christ are not backed up by
our own manifest "clearing of ourselves " (2
Cor. vi. 11), our influence by means of them
will go for very little. " Happy is he that
condemneth not himself in that thing which
he alloweth " (Rom. xiv. 22). " Thou there
fore who teachest another, teachest thou not
thyself?" (Rom. ii. 21).

CHAPTER XII
Cleansing tbe temple

" And I came to Jerusalem, and understood of the evil
that Eliashib did for Tobiah, in preparing him a chamber
in the courts of the house of God ; and it grieved me sore.
Therefore I cast forth all the household stuff of Tobiah out
of the chamber  and they cleansed the
chambers, and thither brought I again the vessels of the
house of God, with the meat offering and the frankincense."
— Nbh. xiii. 7-9.
" Take these things hence ; make not my Father's house
a house of merchandise." — John ii. 16.
" Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that
the Spirit of God dwelleth in you ? If any man defile the
temple of God, him shall God destroy ; for the temple of
God is holy, which temple ye are." — 1 Cor. iii. 16, 17.

CHAPTER XII
THERE is deep spiritual teaching for us
in that act of Jesus almost at the
beginning of His ministry, by which
He drove out the profaners of God's house
with the scourge of small cords. It was not
the inner but the outer court of the Temple
which He found defiled by worldliness ; yet
even that outer court had to be kept sacred
for God. Paul speaks of our bodies being
temples of God. These bodies (representing
the whole outer life) are the soul's outer court,
the inner court being the soul itself; but how
often is the outer court desecrated, while the
inner is still, professedly at least, kept pure ?
Christ shows that such a separation between
the two is impossible ; for if He claims the
soul for Himself, He claims the life as well.
In this respect, as in so many others, He
has " broken down the wall of partition."
133

i3; DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
The Temple of God includes the whole man ;
and the whole life is to be a consecrated
thing. Defilement in the outer court implies
defilement in the inner court as well. He
claimed even the outer court as being His
" Father's house," and zeal for the purity of
that house made Him purge it by a judgment-
stroke of holy wrath both swift and sure.
And it is the whole man that He claims for
God ; less than the whole He cannot accept.
The sacrilegious intruders into God's
temple still are many, and most of them of
the same kind as intruded into it in Jerusalem,
selfishness, covetousness, proud contempt of
others, worldliness, greed of gain, and many
more. These force their way in till the place
is wholly secularized ; and where there ought
to be only the voice of praise, there is heard
the lowing of oxen, the bleating of sheep, and
the ring of coin on the money-changers'
tables. Most needful teaching for us all lies in that
judgment-stroke of Christ's. The Lord wants

CLEANSING THE TEMPLE 135
to have us pure all throughout ; not that we
should have some small portions of the life
railed off and kept as sacred enclosures, but
that the whole life should be consecrated to
His service and glory.
Some passages in the Old Testament,
frequently overlooked, cast a flood of light
upon this duty of complete consecration.
Listen to the good king Hezekiah, as he began
his reforming work. " Hear me now, ye
Levites, sanctify yourselves, and sanctify the
house of the Lord God of your fathers, and
carry forth the filthiness out of the Holy
Place," — "And the priests went into the
inner part of the house to cleanse it, and
brought out all the uncleanness that they
found in the house of the Lord," — "And on
the eighth day they came to the porch of the
house," — " And they went in to Hezekiah and
said, We have cleansed all the house "
(2 Chron. xxix. 5, 16, 17, 18). When king
Josiah set himself to the same cleansing work,
he " brought out the graven image from the

r36 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
house of the Lord, and the altars that
Manasseh had made in the two courts of the
house . . . and burned them at the brook
Kidron" (2 Kings xxiii. 6) ; a complete and
final overthrow of evil, burning the polluting
things that they might never be replaced.
And Jehoiada the priest went even farther than
that in his cleansing work, for he " set porters
at the gates of the house of the Lord that none
who was unclean in anything might enter in "
(2 Chron. xxiii. 19). He "commanded the
porters to watch" (Mark xiii. 34). Even
more striking was Nehemiah's zeal for the
purity of the temple when, finding that
Eliashib the priest had allowed Tobiah the
Ammonite to establish himself in a large
luxurious chamber of God's house, and had
taken out of it all the consecrated things the
chamber used to contain, he instantly and
peremptorily " cast out all Tobiah' s household
stuff out of the chamber, and brought into it
again all the vessels of the house of God with
the meat-offering and the frankincense "

CLEANSING THE TEMPLE 137
(Nehem. xiii. 7-9). This desecration of the
sanctuary had gone on in Nehemiah's absence ;
but as soon as he saw it, he cast out all that
" household stuff" and would give it no room
there. The desecration of the temple in Christ's
day, too, had gone on unchecked while Christ
was not there, but no sooner did He see it than
He also cast out the traffickers " and all their
stuff." We can allow many defiling things
both in heart and life so long as we do not feel
the great Purifier standing there : but let the
holy Christ come in, and what a sudden
change ! how instantly His presence awakens
us and shames us, and rebukes ! Let the
Holy Spirit, like a divine Nehemiah, come
home to us as a Spirit of judgment, after
being long absent from the heart, and what
an instant cleansing of the sanctuary comes
too ! Tobiah cannot be left in comfortable
possession then ; not only is he refused a
dwelling any longer there, but all his household
stuff is remorselessly cast out.

138 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
What we need is to let the Holy Spirit, the
Spirit of purity, do His cleansing work in us
at once ; to let Him go into the chambers
which belong to God, and which we have
usurped, and lay His Holy Hand upon all
that is defiling there, till the chambers are
wholly disinfected, and re-consecrated for a
holy use. Nehemiah's cleansing of the
temple (like Christ's) was prompt, peremptory,
immediate. He could not kill Tobiah,
though that doom would have been just ; but,
failing that, he did not offer him a smaller and
less luxurious chamber of God's house to
dwell in. Out, finally out, completely out,
Tobiah had to go. We cannot kill the sin
that defiles us, but we can at least refuse to
harbour it a moment longer in us ; and we
must be peremptory about this, casting out
whatever is sinful the very moment we see it to
be sin.
We are sometimes told that emancipation
from any sinful habit can only be a very
gradual thing. But must it be so ? Complete

CLEANSING THE TEMPLE 139
emancipation from all sin must necessarily be
gradual ; and our discovery of what is sinful
may be gradual too, clearer as our self-
knowledge and the knowledge of God's will
concerning us become more deep. But the
casting-out of any one sinful habit need not
be a gradual thing, ought not to be so ; it
ought to get an immediate " notice to quit " ;
we are not to allow ourselves to live in tolera
tion of it for a single day.
How are we to overcome all sin ? Not, as
is sometimes suggested, by the toleration of
less sin, and less, and less, till we come at
last to tolerate none ; but by the instant
abandonment of every sin the moment we see
it to be sin. If you were teaching a thieving
child to be honest, would you say " Two days
ago you stole six times, yesterday only thrice ;
you are getting better ; now to-morrow you
must steal only twice, the day after, only once,
and by the end of the week you will be able to
steal nothing at all " ? And yet, we think of
the grace of God working in us in some such

140 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
way ! It cannot be so. Complete and final
victory over every kind of sin may be a
gradual thing, but there will be no victory
even to begin with, unless whatever is seen to
be sinful is, that moment, resolutely given up.
In this great cleansing of God's desecrated
house, as in so many other things, all is
spoiled by half-heartedness and delay. The
old way is the only successful way, " I thought
upon my ways, and turned my feet unto Thy
testimonies ; I made haste and delayed not to
keep Thy commandments " (Ps. cxix. 59, 60).
" Will God in very deed dwell on the
earth ? " asked Solomon, with wondering awe.
Yes, verily, He will. He will dwell in us as
in His temple, if only we will let Him have
the temple as His own ; but He will not dwell
in any heart that does not renounce all sin.
We can choose whether the heart and life
shall be wholly His, a palace of the Great
King crowded with ministering graces and
holy loves, or a haunt of doleful creatures, a
chamber of unclean imagery, a habitation

CLEANSING THE TEMPLE 141
meant for God degraded till He cannot
remain in it for its defilement. But one or
other of these it must be, or must become.
Into a polluted heart He will not come — and
in a divided heart He will not stay.
And He must have the outer court clean as
well as the inner one. " Cleanse your hands"
is as imperative a call as " purify your hearts "
(J as. iv. 8). Oh! for more Christians in all
the churches whose lives, as well as their lips,
shall proclaim that they are outwardly as well
as inwardly, holy temples of the Holy Ghost !
Thoughts like these may perhaps be some
what unwelcome and even disconcerting to us
in our self-indulgent hours and moods ; but
they are only the probe of the Great Physician
of our souls who wants to bring us the joy of
perfect health ; and they may be His answer to
the prayer we often utter, without realising all
that it implies, " Search me, O God, and know
my heart, try me and know my thoughts, and
see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead
me in the way everlasting" (Ps. cxxxix. 23).

CHAPTER XIII
Consecrateb priests anb
1bol\> Service

"A holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices
acceptable to God by Jesus Christ." — i Pet. ii. 5.

CHAPTER XIII
SPEAKING of the whole company of
redeemed and believing men and
women, the apostle Peter calls them
" a holy priesthood." That is his designa
tion, not of any special class amongst them,
but of them all without exception, however
humble, obscure and ungifted they might be :
and in calling them so, he was evidently
alluding to the priesthood of Old Testament
times. Then, the priests were a special
class — but now, the holy priesthood embraces
all alike. All are consecrated and set apart
to serve.
We turn, then, to Leviticus, to see how
priests were consecrated of old, and find (i)
that their consecration was emblemed by four
things — their bodies were washed with pure
water, they were sprinkled with sacrifical
145

r46 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
blood, they were clothed in priestly garments,
and they were anointed with the holy oil
(Levit. viii. 6, 7, 10, 30) ; and (2) that the
blood of the ram of consecration was put, in
every case, " on the tip of the right ear, the
thumb of the right hand, and the great toe of
the right foot," (Lev. viii. 24).
That was like saying ' ' you are consecrated
for God's service from head to foot " ; and it
meant more than that ; it was as much as to
say " that consecrated ear of yours is now to
listen obediently to the voice of God, and
sympathisingly to the cry of your brethren ;
that consecrated hand of yours is to be used
only in holy service, and never to touch any
defiling thing ; that consecrated foot of yours
is to lead you to a holy walk, and never to
carry you into any paths of sin."
True priests of God still must all be con
secrated for the same holy use, and in the
same way : by the washing of regeneration, by
the sprinkling of the blood of Christ, by the
wearing of the white garments, " the right-

PRIESTS AND HOLY SERVICE 147
eousness of saints," and by the anointing of
the Holy Ghost. We call ourselves a holy
priesthood ; is our consecration to it anything
so complete as that ?
Then, what about the service of these con
secrated priests ? We turn to Leviticus
again, and find their work, as well as their
consecration, minutely specified. It includes
a great number of very lowly and, as we
might call them, secular things. Besides the
slaying and offering of the sacrifices, they had
to undertake the baking of the shew-bread,
the compounding of the incense and the
anointing oil, the trimming and lighting of the
lamp in the Holy Place, the carrying of the ark,
the sounding of the trumpets for advance and
rest. They had to be expounders of the law,
and teachers of the young. They appointed
the kind of sacrifices to be offered for different
kinds of sin, decided cases of controversy,
settled disputes, pronounced on cases of
leprosy and other diseases. They had also
to cultivate the suburbs of the cities allotted to

148 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
them, selling the surplus produce and also
the meat-offerings which they could not use
themselves. Thus they had to be butchers, bakers,
apothecaries, agriculturists, merchants, judges,
lawyers, physicians, teachers, valuators,
sanitary inspectors, besides performing many
lower offices such as lighting the lamps,
sweeping the floors of the sanctuary, and
preparing the wood for the altar fire. Nearly
all the common trades and professions of our
every-day life were carried on by the priests
as holy duties to which they were consecrated
by the sprinkled blood and the anointing oil.
And God's holy priesthood now is to discharge
all the common duties of life as holy services,
and to feel and show that they can, all of
them, be discharged in a holy way, " as unto
the Lord and not unto men." Doing what
God appoints us to do, doing it because He
appoints it for us, doing it in such a way as to
please and honour Him — that is holiness. In
this respect, there is no distinction between

PRIESTS AND HOLY SERVICE 149
" secular" and " sacred " service. Work will
become worship, and worship will be always
at work.
It would matter nothing to a consecrated
priest whether he had to discharge some
highly spiritual, or some common work ; for,
in both cases, he would be " serving the
Lord." It has been well said, " If in the
highest heaven, hard by the Throne, an angel
were harping the praise of the Eternal, and
the command came to him to descend to
earth, and be the guardian of some wandering
'beggar's child, I tell you that blessed being
would not stop to finish his song, but, know
ing that holiness lies only in obedience, would
spread his wing for instant flight, and though
he left behind him the glowing throne, would
bring his glory and his blessedness along with
him." That is equally true of every con
secrated priest on earth : for the life current
and the life everlasting, though different in
many things, must be the same in this,
that the same ruling principle is to

ISO DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
govern both — supreme devotion to God's
will. It was just this universal consecration of
common life that was spoken of by Zechariah
when he said, " There shall be upon the bells
of the horses holiness unto the lord, and
the pots in the Lord's house shall be like the
bowls before the altar ; yea, every pot in
Jerusalem and in Judah shall be holiness unto
the Lord of hosts " (Zech. xiv. 20). The
peculiarity of that prophecy, above others that
speak of holiness, is that it speaks of holiness
in common things ; not of holy Sabbaths and
holy ordinances, but of holy work, holy enjoy
ments, holy amusements even ; vessels of
every kind, vessels for the delight of the eye,
as well as vessels for the service of the home,
holy to the Lord ; the very bells on the horses,
those tinkling ornaments that were more for
beauty than for use, holy unto the Lord ; the
pots in Jerusalem's homes as holy in their uses,
as those in Jerusalem's temple.
The holiness, therefore, which God wants

PRIESTS AND HOLY SERVICE 151
to see is not only holiness in the soul, but
holiness in the life ; not merely holiness in
the sanctuary, but holiness in the home,
the business, the street ; holiness in our
hours of recreation as well as in our hours of
serious thought ; holiness in all our social as
well as in our sacred engagements. In God's
view, a holy life is just common life
sanctified — making all our plans so that God's
glory shall hold the first place in them ;
regulating the home so that if He were visibly
present in it for a single day, His holy
presence there would necessitate no change
in anything ; transacting business so that
men shall see beyond question that the fear
of God is before our eyes; showing always
the transparent honesty that scorns deceit,
the utter truthfulness of lip that shuns every
thing approaching to a lie, the meekness that
will not resent a wrong, the charity that will
not suspect wrong where none was meant,
the delicate consideration for others that will
not put forth a finger if it would cause a weak

1 52 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
brother to fall, the tenderness of conscience
that will make us as scrupulously faithful in
small things as in great, as faithful when no
eye is on us but God's, as when the eyes of
men are watching all we do.
If the whole round of life were thus made a
consecrated thing, would we not bear visibly
upon our foreheads the great inscription,
HOLINESS unto the lord ? The glory of
God in us would so transfigure us that we
would be shining witnesses to His presence
there, just as the thorn-bush in the wilderness
of Horeb was transfigured when God entered
it, till it shone bright with the holy fire. In
itself it was only a poor, common shrub, a
wild acacia of the desert, with nothing
remarkable about it, nothing to distinguish it
from hundreds of others as poor and common
as itself : but God came into it, and suddenly
it blazed with a sacred glory.
God can make any of us shine in the same
way, if only we give Him complete possession
of us. Even drudgery can become luminous,

PRIESTS AND HOLY SERVICE 153
if He comes in to sanctify it. Our poor,
common-place, humdrum, earthly duties He
can so transfigure by His presence that in
them all we can shine as glowing witnesses to
His indwelling ; and what was yesterday only
a stunted shrub in a stony wilderness may to
day be a real shrine of the Holy One.
Only let there be on all we do the large
and legible inscription, " Holiness to the
Lord," and then there will be going up every
day from heart and life, louder than the noise
of the workshop or the din of household cares,
one great continuous hymn of praise, a fore
taste of the anthem that is yet to ring out
over all the world, " Holy, holy, holy is the
Lord God Almighty, the whole earth is full
of His glory."
Let us face the question honestly, " Am I
a really consecrated priest to God ? and am
I doing all my common work as the service
of a consecrated priest ? Am I making my
whole life a priestly thing ? " That was how
Christ lived who was the great exemplar

iS4 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
Priest, to whom the whole world was a
sanctuary, and whose whole life was
" ministry," who showed in his humble
carpentry in Nazareth, as truly as in His
preachings by the lake, the absolute faithful
ness of his obedience to God, and his delight
in serving Him, and who did it all, " leaving us
an example that we should walk in His steps."
Surely it ought not to be forgotten that if,
for three years of His life, He was a special
example for men whose work is " spiritual,"
for thirty years before these he was living as
an example for men whose work is " secular,"
the common work of every-day duty, and
trade, and drudgery. From the humble
home and workshop of Nazareth we can learn,
as clearly as from the Sermon on the Mount,
how to serve as consecrated priests, doing
simply the holy will of God.
Are we doing it ? " He that saith he
abideth in Him ought himself also so to walk
even as He walked " (i John ii. 6).

CHAPTER XIV
Dfeible ©wnersbip

" Ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ
ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of
the living God ; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy
tables of the heart." — 2 Cor. iii. 3.
" I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." —
Gal. vi. 17
" Jesus, that He might sanctify the people with His own
blood, suffered without the gate. Let us go forth therefore
unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach." — Heb.
xiii. 12, 13.

CHAPTER XIV
ONE of Paul's lively and telling meta
phors, compressing a large amount of
truth into a few pithy words, is that
one in which he says " Ye are manifestly
declared to be epistles of Christ, written not
with ink but by the Spirit of the living God."
That is, men and women whose lives are one
continuous and easily-read testimony to the
power of Christ's grace, commendatory letters
setting forth His worth, and introductory letters
bringing Him to the notice and regard of
others that know Him not. A noble idea of
Christian living this ! and the want of it is
doing a great dishonour to our Lord. Men are
reading us always with keen eyes and passing
silent comments on us ; but when they are
criticising and blaming us they are not criticising
us alone. They are also criticising the Christ
157

158 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
whom we represent. We may have the grace
of Christ within us, but we dare not be content
with that fact being known in heaven to the
Father who seeth in secret. What Christ
needs for His glory is a discipleship to Him so
genuine and open and unchallengable that it
will be an unmistakable testimony to " all
men " of what He has done for us and in us,
and is doing every day. Christ needs this
clear and outspoken witness from us, and we
need it for ourselves. When harsh things are
said of us, and we are misjudged by the world,
we often take refuge in the thought "The
Lord knoweth them that are His " (2 Tim. ii.
19), and yet the secret of the world's mis-
judgments may only be that we have not been
making our allegiance to Christ the open and
unmistakable thing it ought to be. We are
not only to be Christians, but Christians whom
none can mistake. Were we only liker to our
Master we might be more cordially hated by
the world, but we certainly would not be so
constantly misjudged.

VISIBLE OWNERSHIP 159
The very face of a Christian disciple should
testify to the grace of God within. It is a
matter of constant observation that strong
ruling emotions of heart do come, in time, to
stamp themselves upon the countenance.
Glance at the faces you pass in the street, how
easy it often is to read on them the character
that is behind them. On one you detect, at
once, the stamp of vice, on another of anxiety
and care, on another of crushing grief, on
another of vanity, on another of arrogance
and pride. But sometimes you will see a
different kind of face altogether, a face that
speaks of beaming kindliness, or of sweet,
devout, and holy peace. What God wants is
that His character should so be stamped upon
the lives of all His children that every observer
of their daily walk should recognise in them
what is really Divine.
After the death of the saintly McCheyne, a
letter addressed to him was found in his locked
desk, a letter he had shown to no one while
he lived. It was from one who wrote to tell

160 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
him that he had been the means of leading
him to Christ, and in it were these words, " it
was nothing that you said that first made me
wish to be a Christian, it was the beauty of
holiness which I saw in your very face." Ah!
that beauty of likeness to Christ — how often
do the most worldly men admire it, and feel
its power, and bend in reverence before the
saintly soul that wears it ! No wonder that
they do, for it is the very beauty of the perfect
ones who are before the throne on high.
One of the chief hindrances to such an out
spoken Christian life is that subtle love of the
world's good opinion that makes us afraid of
offending it, a dread of the battery of sneers
that will be opened upon us if we take any
decided and world-condemning stand ; for we
do allow ourselves to be sadly and fearfully
ruled by the world, both in our habits of
thinking and our habits of life. We make our
selves " servants of men " (i Cor. 7, 23), our
" fear towards God is conditioned and limited
by the precepts of men " (Isa. xxix. 13) ; and

VISIBLE OWNERSHIP 161
so, in spite of all we profess to believe, we let
ourselves live in a quite worldly way. We go
into the sanctuary and sing " I'm not ashamed
to own my Lord," and sometimes are ashamed
of Him as soon as we get into the street ! We
must not believe as the world believes ; no,
certainly not ; but may we then feel as the
world feels ? speak as the world speaks ? and
live as the world lives ? Why do we live as
the world lives ? Simply because we are
ashamed of Christ. Ashamed of Him as a
Saviour ? No. Ashamed of Him as a Master ?
Yes. When the apostles were beaten for their
bold witness to their Lord, " they departed,
rejoicing that they were counted worthy to
suffer shame for His Name " (Acts v. 41). Is
not that about the last thing the great majority
of professed Christians now would feel ? They
might endure it, calling it hard ; but how few
would make it a song ? Could we welcome
this ? The man who wrote that glowing
" Epistle to the Hebrews " could. " Let us
M

162 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
go forth to Him," he says, " without the camp,
bearing His reproach" (Heb. xiii. 13). " With
out the camp" — that was where the Jews
crucified their King ; let us go there and honour
Him. He meekly accepted the place of shame,
let us accept it too ; and when we stand beside
our crucified and world-rejected Lord, let it
not be with averted eyes, and gloom-covered
faces and trembling feet : let our faces shine,
and our hearts be glad, and our lips be praise.
Why do we hesitate so often about doing
this ? Is it not because, though Christ
attracts us greatly, the world attracts us too ?
We are too much in love with Christ to go all
lengths with the world, but then we are too
much in love with the world to go all lengths
with Christ. Has the world, then, so changed
that it is no longer true that " if any man
love the world, the love of the Father is not
in him" (1 John ii. 15) ?
The baneful influence of this half-hearted-
ness upon the world itself is too clear to be
denied. Nothing more saps our power to win

VISIBLE OWNERSHIP 163
others to Christ. How can they be expected
to feel the force of our appeals if they see us
in almost nothing different from themselves ?
A very gay and worldly Christian once offered
to go and read and pray with a dying friend.
" I don't want Christians of that sort to speak
to me about my soul," was his reply. Dr.
Gordon, of Hull, who was long an infidel,
being asked after his conversion what had
been his chief difficulty in the way of accept
ing the truth, replied, " the inconsistencies of
professing Christians." Lord Byron wrote to
a friend, " I date my first impressions against
religion to seeing how very little Christians
were actuated by the example and spirit of
Christ." An educated Brahmin in India
lately said, " Thousands of my countrymen
are, like myself, convinced that Jesus Christ
does stand without a rival, and we would
accept Him at once if only we saw His teach
ing so exemplified in Christians as to convince
us that it has any real power." Unutterably
sad it is that the world everywhere should have

1 64 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
so much reason to taunt the Church of God
by saying, " What do ye more than others ?
What is this Christ to you after all ? "
It is well worth remembering that it was
not the irreligious heathen world but the
religious world that crucified God's Christ.
It was not the Roman, but the Jew. The
frankly secular world, as represented by Pilate,
cried, "Why? What evil hath he done?"
The professedly religious world, represented by
the priests and Pharisees and Scribes, cried,
" He is a blasphemer, He hath a devil and is
mad," and they were the real murderers of
the Lord of glory. " What wounds, O Christ,
are these in thine hands ? Those with which
I was wounded in the house of my friends "
(Zech. xiii. 6).
If we want to know how to be glad sharers
in Christ's reproach, we may learn it from
Paul when, in the prison at Rome, he wrote
" let no man trouble me, for I bear in my
body the marks of the Lord Jesus " (Gal. vi.
17). He felt as a slave would feel who was

VISIBLE OWNERSHIP 165
branded with his master's name, in token that
he was that master's absolute property ; he
could say, "lam not my own, I belong body
and soul to Him who has bought me with a
price " ; and so far from being ashamed of his
chains, he gloried in them. They were burn
ing into his flesh, and leaving marks on his
wrists and ankles that showed how they were
wounding him ; but he looked at them with
joy, and said, "They are the marks of my
Lord and Master." If anyone had pitied
him, and said, " You must feel it a degrading
thing to wear these brands of infamy," he
would have replied, " Not so, they are the
marks of my Lord Jesus." " But look at
your wrists, how terrible that all should see
your poor flesh torn, and red lines of disgrace
marked deeply on it where the manacles have
been." " Friends," he would have answered,
" you are under a complete mistake ; don't
pity me, for I don't pity myself; these are
not marks of disgrace ; they are the property-
marks of my Lord Jesus." He was really as

1 66 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
proud of these badges of servitude to Christ,
as though they had been medals hung upon
his breast ; and in two of his epistles to the
Churches he begins by speaking of himself as
" the bond slave of Jesus Christ " (Rom. i. I.,
Phil. i. i). It is the highest title of honour
he can use.
O for a ten-fold and thousand-fold multipli
cation of such devoted souls ! — men and
women who will let it be no secret to whom
they absolutely belong, and (as one of the old
Puritan writers says), " will wear the name of
Christ upon their foreheads, and not hide it
under their cloak, as though He were a stolen
Saviour." What useless lives, so far as the glorifying
of Christ is concerned, must those lives be
that never show to the world anything of the
grace that is really within ! There is a strange
old tower upon the Rhine which carries, near
the top, a large clock face without any hands to
show the hour. The clock is still good and
sound.

VISIBLE OWNERSHIP 167
It is regularly wound up every week,'
and has been going for centuries : but, from -
some ancient superstition connected with it on
prophecy regarding it, the hands on the out
side of the dial were long ago removed, and
have never been replaced. So, there it stands,
a clock with no outward sign whatever of its
being so, a thing that might be a blessing to
all the town, but an absolutely useless thing
that does good to none ! How many
Christian souls, with the grace of God
really within them, show nothing of that
grace to any outside eye ! The clock is
there, and the clock face too ; but there are
no hands !
We shall never make our discipleship the
visible, outspoken, and undeniable thing that
it ought to be, till we have a far deeper and
more habitual sense of how much we owe to
the Lord who has redeemed us ; till His
absolute self-surrender for us is answered by
our absolute self-surrender to Him ; till, as we
hear Him telling us how gladly He bore the

1 68 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
deepest shame for us, we can look up to Him
and say, " If on my head, for Thy dear name
Shame and reproach should be ;
I'll hail reproach, and welcome shame,
If Thou remember me."

CHAPTER XV
Zbe Great Ikeeper

" Now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling,
and to present you faultless before the presence of His
glory with exceeding joy ; to the only wise God our
Saviour be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both
now and ever. Amen." — Jude xxiv. 25.

CHAPTER XV
TO all the foregoing messages of God,
meant to be His Divine upliftings into
a higher experience of peace and
purity, there must now be added one other
message uplifting us beyond the haunting fear
of failure at the last ; and this we find in a
very unlooked-for place. It is at the end of
what is one of the darkest and most sombre
passages of the whole Word of God ; the
Epistle of Jude, an Epistle full of the most
terrible exposures of the hollowness of the
profession of multitudes who still called
themselves by the Christian name.
The warning note was needed, but it was
disheartening to listen to. It told of evil in
all forms coming in like a flood ; seemingly
strong Christians swept off their feet by the
m

172 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
torrent ; some of the brightest lights of the
Church quenched in darkness ; and some who
seemed to have escaped the corruption that
is in the world becoming like raging waves ot
the sea, foaming out their own shame.
It was terribly depressing ; and we can fancy
one and another, as he listened, saying, " Is
this, then, to be the end, only this ? Is there
to be no victory for Christ ? Is evil to have
the mastery after all ? and, when so many are
making shipwreck of their faith, will I, too, fall
away ? What is to preserve me ? "
How cheeringly must the closing words ot
the letter have fallen upon their ears, with its
great message of hope, "There is One who
both can keep you, and who will. Cling ever
to the great Christ in whom you have
believed, and He will not only keep you from
falling, but will do that in so grand a way
that He will, at last, present you faultless
before the presence of His glory, with exceed
ing joy! "
Now, all experience testifies that we cannot

THE GREAT KEEPER 173
keep ourselves from falling. Not even the
ripest saint can. We might as well speak of
an unattached vessel remaining, by its own
strength, suspended in mid-air, as of a
Christian standing firm if he loses a close
connection with Christ. It is a great truth
that we are " kept through faith unto the
salvation ready to be revealed " ; but there is
a deeper truth than that. Our faith itself needs
a keeper, else we will lose it in a day.
And we cannot keep each other from fall
ing, though our pleadings and example and
prayers may help. Even angel-hands are not
strong enough to keep us from falling : some
angels could not keep themselves. But there
is One who can, though only One.
It was said of Eliakim (Isa. xxii. 22, 25),
whom Christ referred to as an illustration of
Himself (Rev. iii. 7), " I will fasten him as a
nail in a sure place, and they shall hang upon
him all the glory of his father's house, and all
the vessels, from the vessels of cups even to
the vessels of flagons." Now, vessels thus

174 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
hung upon the nail do not hang by their own
strength, but by the strength of the nail : and
if the nail is needed for the small vessels, it is
needed equally for the large. It may be
flattering to our pride to think of ourselves as
" vessels of flagons," and not small " vessels
of cups " ; but if so, we need the reminder
that we can no more keep ourselves from fall
ing than the smallest can. The larger the
vessel is, the more it must depend upon the
strength of the nail. But Christ is verily the
" nail fastened in a sure place," and hanging'on
Him, all the vessels of the Lord's house will
be kept from falling, be their weight or their
fragility what it may.
There is no necessity that a Christian
should ever fall. His life might be one of joy
and victory every day, if only from hour to
hour of every day he trusts Christ to hold him
up. But there is no Christian who does not
often fall, and who, if all depended on himself,
would not fall utterly : for neither shame for
the past nor resolves for the future will keep

THE GREAT KEEPER 175
us in the hour of temptation, without a con
scious clinging to Christ.
" I will not mourn my weakness, Lord ; though ever felt
it be:
Nor strength implore Thee to accord, except to cling to
Thee.
All I would seek, ere love enfold beyond the reach of
harm,
Is just enough of strength to hold The Everlasting Arm."
It may be sad to feel helpless, not only in
the presence of difficult duty, but in the
presence of alluring sin ; and yet it is just the
confession of this weakness that attracts God
to us. The fulness of His power will not
come in till we feel that we have no power of
our own. Our conscious emptiness is our
fitness for being filled. " The Creator of the
ends of the earth fainteth not ; and He giveth
power to the faint" (Isa. xl. 28, 29). This is
not a case of " like drawing to like." It is just
the reverse of that. The weakness of the
creature and the power of the Creator seek
each other. Each corresponds to the other :

176 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
and when they meet, the power passes from
the Hand that is full to the hand that is
empty. But the power does not always come at
once. Sometimes we have to " wait upon the
Lord " to get it. Still, get it we shall, if the
waiting is the waiting of an eye that never
ceases looking up and expecting it to come.
For God's way of helping us is wise. As
" the only wise God " He does not give us, at
the outset, the whole " portion of goods that
falleth to us," leaving us to spend it as we
please. That would soon land us in foolish
bankruptcy, as it did the prodigal son. But
He issues to us, without stint, His promissory
notes, and pays them one by one, as we
present them at the Throne. When we get
bankrupt in power, we talk as if it were the
resources of Christ that had failed ; whereas
the failure is in ourselves alone — our not
going daily to the Throne to present the
promise there.
A man seems very poor who has only one

THE GREAT KEEPER 177
farthing in his pocket ; but if there are ten
thousand pounds standing in his name in the
Bank, and he can draw out daily what he
needs, he is a rich man after all. We are
poor enough if our spiritual wealth is estimated
only by the grace that is in our hearts to-day ;
but who can tell how rich we are, if the
treasure we have to draw upon can only be
expressed by the words " God's riches in glory
by Christ Jesus ! "
There are outside things too, as well as the
workings of His Spirit upon our souls, by
which we are often kept from falling : for
God needs to try many ways with us ; and
outward restraints are often needed as well as
inward power. Of this kind are His direct
commands, and the prohibitions of His law.
These are like fences on either side of the
narrow way, or notice-boards at the top of a
steep decline, saying "This hill is dangerous,
look well to your feet." Even these will not
always prevent a fool-hardy breaking of the
fence, or a presumptuous rush down the steep,

178 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
but they are God's warning voice saying "It
is at your peril if you do " ; and every fall
comes either from venturing upon forbidden
ground or from trusting in our power to
escape; for, always, "pride goeth before
destruction, and a haughty spirit before a
fall." If something more than even these is needed,
the gracious Lord will often use sore afflictions
for the same end, chastenings the real mean
ing of which is not seen at once, but is
discovered afterwards, just as the angel with
drawn sword crossed the wilful way of the
disobedient prophet and blocked the narrow
vineyard-path, to save him from the sin he
was going to commit ; or as the " thorn in the
flesh " kept Paul from falling under the power
of spiritual pride. Many of God's children
have been kept from falling by being held
prisoners on beds of pain, or by having some
of their ambitious projects wrecked before
they could be realised.
It is told of one of the great painters of

THE GREAT KEEPER 179
Italy, that being engaged upon a fresco inside
the dome of a lofty cathedral, and standing
on a platform hung more than a hundred feet
from the floor, he paused to look at the effect r^
of his work, and, absorbed in his art, kept ^
walking backward for a better view, till, for- 4
getful of danger, he had almost reached the u^
platform's edge, unconscious that two more ^
backward steps would hurl him down to death.
A brother artist seeing his danger, but afraid h
to speak lest a sudden shout should precipitate £,
the fall he was anxious to prevent, seized a
brush full of paint and hurled it against the V
face of the brilliant figure on the dome, com- j> v
pletely spoiling the labour of many days. ^
But that saved the painter's life ; for, resent- 3
ing what he thought an insult, and springing
forward with a cry, he only then discovered
that that had been a friendly act to save him
from an awful death.
And when God, with a seemingly cruel
hand blots out our beautiful visions, and spoils
the life-picture that we thought so fair, till we

180 DIVINE UPLIFTINGS
cry out in surprise and anger too, He may be
saying with a tender voice, " It was to keep
you from falling." We cry out impatiently,
" Lord, why dost Thou thus wreck my joy ? "
and His answer may be, " Because, without
this, thou wouldst have wrecked thy soul."
Let the " only wise God " be " our Saviour"
in His own wise way : and the end of it all
will be "to present us faultless, before the
presence of His glory, with exceeding joy."
Did a more uplifting word than this ever
fall upon the ears of fainting men? "To
present you faultless" ; not merely with our
faults concealed from view beneath the white
robes, but "without fault before the Throne
of God" (Rev. xiv. 5), " unreprovable in His
sight" (Col. i. 22), absolutely white souls
beneath the white robes— " faultless in the
presence of His glory," so pure that we can be
presented even there without any shame,
That purity must be perfect that can pass a
test like this : for it is not in the presence of
His mercy, but in the presence of His glory,

THE GREAT KEEPER 181
that we shall be " without spot and blameless "
(2 Pet. iii. 14), pure as He Himself is pure
who is the " Lamb without blemish and with
out spot " (1 Pet. i. 19) — presented, too,
" with exceeding joy," a joy on His side as well
as upon ours. What a transcendent finish to
God's redeeming, and sanctifying, and keep
ing work in this ! Wherefore let us comfort
one another with these words, and say, "To
Him be glory and majesty, dominion and
power, both now and ever, Amen."

YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

3 9002 08844 9591