Me First – Articles on Christian Message of Victory Jan-Mar 1979

“Paul, what is the secret of your triumphant, rejoicing life and service?” another might have asked the great apostle. Would he not have answered: “I am what I am, because the ‘I’ has gone out of my life: I am crucified with Christ, and Christ liveth in me”? And through the history of the Church it has been ever so.
When in North Wales, the writer passed a group of boys playing marbles, and heard one of them exclaim in a loud voice: “Me first! Me first! Me first!” The thought came, How like that is to many of us Christians, whose heart language (if not that of the lip) continually is, “Me first, me first!” Numerous Christian lives are spoiled by the spirit that puts self first and lacks the love that “seeketh not her own.”
It is in the home life that this spirit of “Me first” is most noticeable, for it is there that we are most tested and most closely watched. How ready the unsaved members of a family are to detect when the Christians in the home appropriate the best for themselves, or when they neglect to help in the daily duties and leave the burden of things to other hands! Selfishness can come into very small things. I have never forgotten a parlor-maid (she was a thoroughly worldly girl) once saying to me of one of the saints of the earth: “I notice the mistress always takes the worst potato on the dish, and leaves the best for everyone else.” Surely of that “mistress” it might be said that hers was—

“A life which others seeing say
That Jesus owns the whole.”

For Jesus never thought of Himself when He lived on earth. As one has said truly: “If I get hold of the mind of Jesus, nothing could be more hateful to me than anything of self. You never find an act of self in Christ.” More and more, as one advances in the Christian life, one sees that they who are most like Jesus are those who think least of self.
How easy Christian work would be if no one ever got offended or “hurt,” if no one ever sought his own way, but each esteemed others better than himself! An honored servant of God lately said—and his words are worth thinking over—“We ourselves are a greater hindrance in the work of God than any attack made upon it by Satan.”
A tiny baby of two years old taught me a great lesson once. Her natural precocity had gained for her more attention from her grown-up friends than was good for her, so that she had a fair opinion of her own importance. It would be hard to count how many times daily one little sentence was on her little lip—“Look at me.” If you stooped down to fondle her baby sister, immediately a little voice would say, “Look at me.” If you tried to play with her older brother, again you heard the same words from the same quarter, “Look at me.” If you passed her by unnoticed in the garden, again the sentence came, “Look at me.” These childish words, so oft repeated, caused me to search my own heart to see how much of the “Look at me” spirit was there, and I found that the self-love that pitied oneself, and desired the commiseration of others, was only another form of the words, “Look at me.”
We can forgive self-importance in a child, but what about it when it is seen in one who ought to be above such childishness—yes such sin? Someone remarked of a certain Christian worker: “She is a person who must always have satellites”; which meant in plain language that this worker was never content unless individuals were gathered around her, dependent upon her teaching, attracted to her personality. “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself,” Christ said. And His words show us that the sway of Christ and of self are perfectly incompatible; to have the one, we must be prepared to surrender the other.—Bright Words (1903 ?)

EDITORIAL
Edwin F. Harvey
DIVINE DIMINISHING

“And the Lord said unto Gideon, The people that are with thee are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, Mine own hand hath saved me” (Judges 7:3).
And someone has declared, “A man may be too big for God to use but he cannot be too little.” This comes as a shock in an age of extreme bigness. Everything is bigger and more ambitious than ever before. Advocated on all fronts are mergers and artificial swelling processes to give weight and power, or at least an appearance of them. God’s good old Bible shows a principle of Divine success that is the exact antithesis of all this. God must, in His servants, find smallness, nothingness, humility and dependence. Where He does not detect these, He may have to reject the applicant altogether. If, however, He sees even the slightest flickering desire to be humbly used of God, the Divine Master Maker will put the candidate through a whittling process that he will never in the hour of victory say those chest-expanding, but God-dishonoring words, “I did it.”  More important is the provision through the Cross whereby the old Adam can be crucified with Christ so that it is not “I” but Christ Who lives and labors from that hour.
The Old Testament reading is fascinating because of the Divine Diminishing. Much of its charm is the relation of tremendous accomplishments with very small instruments. A word, a rod, a lamp and pitcher, a sling and five stones, and lo, marvelous feats, out of all proportion to the size of the visible instrument, are forthcoming. And so as all human instruments are the largest available, there must be a drastic reduction before God can employ them.
Joseph, though chosen of God, had two very human faults. He seemed to have loved to relate that which exalted the image of himself in the future realization of his dreams. He also had an especially good name where his father was concerned; there was no son so perfect as Joseph. Both of these good things had to be reduced. He must appear as an adulterer among those with whom he worked in Potipher’s house in Egypt. Also he must serve a long prison term though perfectly guiltless. By the time Pharaoh sent for him in a National emergency of an approaching world-wide famine, Joseph was small enough to give God all the glory. God could then use him to save that generation from starvation.
David had simple faith in God but no doubt there was a danger of too much success and popularity going to his head. Saul offered him his own armor with which to combat the giant but God gave him such a feeling of insecurity with all that big armory that he reduced himself to his sling and five smooth stones, plus his faith in God. Then, to the accompanying tune of the most sarcastic and taunting slurs concerning his youth and his littleness and his “light artillery,” a platform was furnished from which God could get all the glory for the victory.
And Gideon, referred to in the opening paragraph, had his army numbered at forty-two thousand men. But what were they against the Midianites who covered the land with their multitude! It took plenty of faith, one would say, for Gideon’s army to think of defeating the enemy with a so much larger army. But God was taking no chances on the natural pride of man, so he reduced it first to ten thousand then to a laughable little party of three hundred, plus lamps and pitchers and a God-taught, God-honoring slogan. And the victory came!
Often we hear at the end of a prayer petition, those good words, “and we shall be careful to give God the glory.” But we can never do this without God’s diminishing process. That process is co-crucifixion by faith with Jesus on the Cross. The old Adam of the old Man is always big, and aspiring to be bigger. The pathetic little pack of failures left by Jesus when He died, rose again and ascended to glory, though mainly humble fishermen, had aspired to be the “greatest in the kingdom.” They had coveted the places of honor on the right and left of the Master when He would come into His kingdom. The future of Christianity was hopeless in their hands, but after Pentecost they were so small that one fails to see them as the actors at all—it was little men with a great God. And their tools were as insignificant as their stature in the sight of the world.
Since Pentecost, God’s instruments have become nothing through Calvary. They have learned that will-power or any other human force can never make a man small enough to be able at all times to let God have all the glory. It is a precious moment, when a weary soul asks earnestly and in faith, “Lord, let me be nothing; let me die with Thee.”
George Mueller of Bristol used to say: “There was a time when George Mueller died.” And as he said the words he would stoop as low as possible in utmost humility. We quote two verses of a hymn very precious to the writer and to many others.

“Oh I must die to scoffs and jeers,
Let me die, let me die.
I must be freed from slavish fears,
Let me die, let me die;
So dead that no desires shall rise
To pass for good, or great, or wise,
In any but my Savior’s eyes.
Let me die, let me die.

“The carnal mind once troubled me.
But it died, but it died;
Christ sanctified and made me free,
So it died, so it died;
So dead that no desires arise
To pass for good, or great, or wise,
In any but my Savior’s eyes;
So I live, so I live.”

EXPERIENCE PAGE

LORD RADSTOCK

Ambassador For God Overseas

“The man who buttonholed the world for Christ.” “The man who wore the worst hats and the best religion.” “That madman!” “The world will never see another like him.” These statements, complimentary and otherwise, were made of Lord Radstock, the Christian gentleman who made everything subservient to finding out God’s will and then doing it at any cost. He was an ambassador of the King of kings, untiring in his travels to India, France, Sweden, Finland and Russia.
Long before the Marxist regime came to power in Russia, God had been silently planning His campaign of living redemption for the peoples of that nation. God is never behind time and never before. While human beings, with their limited foresight, are engaged with trifles, or fuming and fretting about present world events, God’s purposes are being quietly and unobtrusively performed in perfect precision.
The nobility of Russia were soon to be doomed to persecution, to labor camps, to exile and even to extinction by death. It was consistent with God’s character of love that the light of His glorious Gospel should first be offered to a whole strata of society before such a holocaust. This lightwas to shine in the palaces, ballrooms and official residences of those very doomed personages. Princesses, ministers of state and government officials would listen to the old, old story which their dissolute clergy had denied them. They would, with tear-stained faces, embrace that which would be their only anchor in the revolution which was to come.
World systems prepare against coming catastrophe by massing battalions and increasing armaments. God chooses weakness to bring to nought the things that are, and He has in the past often started with a baby. How carefully God had chosen Hannah when He gave Samuel, a statesman and judge to Israel in her time of national distress. Or Elizabeth and Zacharias when He was molding the forerunner to the Messiah, Christ. Or Mary, who was to be the mother of the long-looked for Messiah of the world!
The child whom God was preparing in this instance was born into a home where affluence and culture combined to prepare him for a mission to the aristocracy. Equally noteworthy was the fact that his ancestors, representing Dutch, Swedish, French and English extraction, endowed him with a cosmopolitan inheritance. Granville Augustus William Waldegrave was born in 1833, the only son of the second Baron, Vice-Admiral Lord Radstock. His paternal grandfather, also an Admiral, in a letter had referred to a definite spiritual experience into which he had entered. His paternal grandmother was of Dutch and Swedish extraction. At some time in her married life she had embraced the Methodist faith, which in those days meant a good deal of opposition and misunderstanding for Methodism was then a sect everywhere spoken against.
On his maternal side, too, there had been a deeply religious strain, for his grandmother was of French Huguenot blood—a most unusual woman, possessed of a practical type of godliness which caused her to share her wealth with the needy poor. A contemporary said that “conversations with her were often like an ordinance and her very meals were as sacraments.”
Early in life he had received religious teaching from his mother. In his young breast there beat some sense of mission which he could not explain to others. “He used to think of himself as some great prince with boundless power, feeling that within his breast was a mighty secret unknown to those around.”
His education was received at Harrow and Balliol. Music, society and sport absorbed his youthful energies. He responded to the call of duty in the Crimean war and became an officer. But, after the long journey from England, he found the conflict had ended and, instead of fulfilling a military obligation, he soon was in the grip of what threatened to be a fatal illness.
He had lived a moral life, with no more than a remote interest in spiritual concerns and an opinion that everyone, himself included, needed only enough religion to insure final salvation. But, as he viewed the appalling unknown future, a sense of his unpreparedness to meet God swept over him. Humbly and brokenly, praying for a lengthening of days, he passed the crisis of the sickness and, in gratitude, yielded himself unconditionally to the Divine Will. From that moment, he was conscious of his adoption into the family of God, resulting in a spiritual revolution in his life.
Fortune had seemed to specially favor this young man. He had enough wealth so that he did not need to toil, nor was he burdened with undue possessions. His health was excellent, his abilities were large. He succeeded his father at the age of twenty-three and might have become an influential member of parliament as he had aptitudes for diplomatic service.
Two years later, Lord Radstock married Susan Calcraft, the daughter of the fifth Duke of Manchester. Dr. Livingstone said of her: “I have seen Lady Radstock. She is as good as she is beautiful.” Everything seemed set for a brilliant and worldly career, but God . . .! The instrument which God prepares for His service must needs be subjected to a shaping process which includes the stripping of everything that would hinder or impede. As Lord Radstock grew in grace, something further was dropped from his curriculum in order to make room in his life for the all-important will of God. It was not the act of an ascetic, denying himself for the mere purpose of personal gratification or to have a name for righteousness, but of a “sent one” realizing that too much baggage taken along on the journey of life would impede rather than facilitate.
Dinner invitations amounted to several hundred in a single year. Gradually these social pleasantries were yielded up for wider opportunities. When Lord Radstock, however, did accept an invitation to such gatherings, he gave them the same amount of consideration and prayer he would give to religious appointments, believing that, when divinely led, spiritual good would follow.
Shooting was innocent enough sport, but when this was sacrificed, God “amended” the transaction by making it instrumental in the salvation of his two sisters. When in 1866, Lord Radstock felt he must give up his entire life to the ministry of the Word, something more had to be sacrificed and so the command of the Middlesex Volunteers was relinquished. Some of his friends thought he was making a mistake, for it offered ample opportunity for witness, but his later life proved that his influence was even more widely diffused among military men.
He abstained from pursuits which would have broadened the intellectual side of his nature, although to keep abreast of the times, he allowed himself the perusal of one newspaper a day. He was a man of “one Book,” the principles of which formed the foundation of his Christian life, as well as affording guidance in every problem.
With his ability and position he could have been a diplomat. He himself recognized his powers in that direction and confided to a friend, “I am convinced that even if I had had every possible success (I do not say I should have, but IF I had), I should never have known one-tenth of the happiness which I have had in God’s service, even in this world.”
During one of his visits to India, he keenly anticipated a crossing of the Kyber Pass, with a permit and escort. His early life in the army lent zest to the expedition but, the evening before the scheduled plan, a strong persuasion came to him that, instead, it was God’s will for him to spend the day in prayer. The trip was cancelled.
In his ministry among the poor of East London, Lord Radstock came face to face with abject poverty. To arouse interest among those who could alleviate the misery, he and his sisters conducted tours into that part of the Metropolis. Plans for the betterment of the poor were advocated. One of these culminated in the building of Emigrant Homes, providing for foreigners who came to Britain. Within a few years, seventy thousand persons passed through them, many of whom received spiritual help and guidance.
As so many needs presented themselves to the Radstocks, they cheerfully parted with many luxuries and conveniences. Their carriage was dispensed with; some jewelry and good china were sold and money given toward needy projects. Mrs. Radstock even sold some of her prized books. They had become convinced that one could bank one’s money in a vault of Heaven where the dividends and interest paid were of eternal worth.
A friend, calling at his humble apartment during one of his missions to Paris, found him, wrapped in his overcoat, in a room with no fire. He embraced such self-denial for the sole purpose of saving souls, devoting all he could spare of his income to that end. “I have enough to eat, but just enough; I have not yet come to the starving point,” he once laughingly remarked. It was the opinion of a prominent business man in London that Lord Radstock “wore the worst hats and the best religion” in the city.
One of the most far-reaching of his efforts in England, as far as is known, was a campaign conducted in Weston-super-Mare, where a young German professor, Dr. Frederick Baedeker, was converted from atheism to vibrant faith in God. This remarkable man later, for a period of eighteen years, was tireless in his distribution of the Scriptures in Russian prisons, all the way from St. Petersburg (Leningrad) to the Pacific Ocean, as well as in his unique ministry among the nobility of that land.
One winter in England, Lord Radstock awoke around three o’clock in the morning with an impulse to dress and go outdoors. Walking to the Common, he found there a man in the depths of soul despair. He prayed with him and pointed him to the Cross where his burden of sin rolled away.
An incident revealing the emphasis which he placed on prayer is told in connection with Dr. Barnardo, founder of the homes for needy children. It seems that the doctor, to present his work and arouse interest in finance, planned an exhibition in London. Lord Radstock, in reply to an invitation to attend, wrote the following: “I did not feel free to come to your great demonstration at Albert Hall, but whenever you feel drawn to have a day of prayer and waiting on God for yourself and your fellow-workers, I should like much to join you, for I feel more than ever my need of being taught and of being led to a far deeper communion with Him.”
“Habitual waiting upon God formed the groundwork of his existence, the keystone of his life, and was a truth more often on his lips than any other.” Not only the needs of his countrymen, but those especially of the people of Holland, France, Russia, Scandinavia, Italy and India drew him to his knees in earnest prayer, as well as in “journeyings oft.”
For ten long years, Lord Radstock had waited for the door of service to open in Russia. He had thought that perhaps his daughter might be able to enter this needy country, and so trained her for that purpose. She was, however, called Home and the door opened for Lord Radstock himself to finally engage in labors for his Master there.
A Liverpool solicitor, Reginald Radcliffe, had been led of the Lord to go to Paris. Not knowing a word of French, and having few other assets in his favor, he obeyed the voice that said, “go.” For six weeks he preached to thousands and God owned his ministry. A French banker afterwards organized thirteen different prayer and Bible study groups and it was because of a call to follow up this effort that Lord Radstock found himself in France.
Through a chance remark made at the end of a ball given in the Tuilieries, the door to Russia was pushed somewhat ajar. Two Princess C’s engaged in conversation with Lord Radstock who remarked that the pageantry and show of this gay affair resembled a show of marionettes. The lives of these two aristocrats seemed pointless, having been widowed in youth, and so they consented to attend the services held by God’s ambassador.
Through the interest aroused in these two widows, Lord Radstock was introduced to a certain Grand Duchess of Russia. She had refused to meet him, but through one of those perfectly timed providences, she was brought into inescapable contact with this servant of God. Being a man of such prayer and meditation, he was quiet enough to receive the slightest intimation of the will of His sovereign Lord. Having made an appointment to visit the home of one of the Princess C’s, he was rather loathe after so busy a day and thought of putting off the appointment, but feeling impressed he should go, he took a cab and arrived ten minutes before the appointed time.
The Grand Duchess could not escape meeting the man she had formerly avoided. To her great surprise, Lord Radstock was there to kindly shake hands and his gentlemanly behavior overcame her prejudices. After five hours of conversation, the Grand Duchess became convinced that the Gospel of Christ was news indeed.
This unarranged encounter with the Grand Duchess was the means of widely opening the door into Russia, for upon her return to her own country, she spoke to all of her friends of what she had seen and heard. When God’s ambassador later visited her country, there was a company of relations and friends gathered to meet him.
The aristocracy of Paris had not accepted Lord Radstock and his message, although the poor, the miserable and outcast had received the Word. But it was through the aristocracy of Russia meeting with him in his Paris mission that an invitation came which brought him unexpectedly to St. Petersburg.
As usual, when an open door presents itself, there are many adversaries. Three distinct obstructions threatened to bar his way. Officials had assured him that his entrance would be refused. He had also family problems, and his own health had suffered from the heavy toll placed upon it by his incessant labors.  Lung trouble that he was experiencing would make it hazardous for him to enter Russia in the Spring of the year. But God’s courageous servant decided to go forward. His weakness of body increased as he neared Russia, but on crossing the frontier, he was healed.
Ten to fifteen hours a day were spent in calling from door to door in St. Petersburg with the message of reconciliation. The clergy in Russia, “sunk in ignorance, superstition and drunkenness,” had failed to minister “bread” to the educated classes under whose gay exterior lay aching, famished hearts.
Among his converts were two outstanding cases. One was Colonel Paschkoff, whose palace was adorned with treasures of art. He was a wealthy owner of great possessions in the Ural mountains and Central Russia, but his heart opened wide to the story of redeeming grace. His ball-room, usually used for dances, was now the scene of Bible studies and prayer services, where noble women gathered with tears in their eyes as they listened to the long-awaited messenger of peace.
The other outstanding convert was a minister of the Interior, Count Bobrinsky, a man of great intellectual powers who had contemptuously burned his Bible as well as some philosophical books, considering them full of childish statements. During a serious illness he had prayed to the Unknown and as it seemed Unknowable God, “If there be a God, You must have some way of revealing Yourself.” He had waited twenty years for Lord Radstock to come to St. Petersburg. Listening with half amused interest to a message on Romans, he had retired to his own room to write a convincing answer. Upon the return of the manuscript from the printers, Count Bobrinsky perused it thoughtfully. Suddenly the whole argument seemed pointless, and he said, “I found that Jesus was the key, the Beginning and the End of all.” The Unknowable had revealed Himself!
Lord Radstock received word of the critical illness of his mother just when God’s Spirit was moving powerfully. He resorted to prayer. Soon the issue was settled by a telegram from one of his sisters, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.” He continued his visitation and found high and low, rich and poor, starving on the husks of the national religion. An era of revival was ushered in that reached members of the royal family. These aristocrats in turn concerned themselves with the lower classes of society who received the Word. So great was Lord Radstock’s influence that the government, fearing he was forming a new religious sect, issued an order forbidding any meetings of the “Radstockinians.” Similar effusions of Divine grace were experienced in Sweden, Denmark and Finland under his Spirit-anointed ministry.
An excerpt from his diary, written at this time of Divine visitation, can be read with profit by Christian workers:

“Very naturally, after reading these records, someone might ask, ‘Did all these conversions last?’   I would answer, Birth into a new state is not the end of life, but the beginning, not the effect of bearing fruit, but the power to bear it. The seed is the same whether it falls on ‘good ground’ and bears fruit ‘an hundred fold,’ or whether it is ‘choked with cares and pleasures of this life.’ The results depend on how far it is free to develop its latent powers. . . . St. Paul had to say, ‘Ye did run well; who did hinder you?’”
The depth of his spiritual life never was understood by those whose conceptions of God never advanced beyond the artificial and shallow. But, with a vision of “things which are not seen,” this Spirit-filled man lived in a different realm from that of the majority around him.
Lord Radstock had learned one important lesson at the feet of His Master, “in weakness we are made strong.” He emphasized that the prelude to spiritual resurrection was the loss of all self-sufficiency, along with a sense of utter moral helplessness. He likened the latter state to that of physical death. The potentiality of spiritual life is manifested only when all that the natural man values is thrown away. “Most of us are not weak enough for God to energize us,” he said. Nor is spiritual resurrection to be postponed to the hereafter; rather it is a present experience by faith.
These truths seem to have been first clearly understood when Lord Radstock attended the Broadlands Conference around 1880. From that time his messages were delivered with a greater degree of heavenly unction. A few quotations from his own pen will show how completely the lessons of utter dependence had been learned:
“No one was permitted to come to the altar by steps. The altar in that dispensation of type and symbol was on the ground. On that ground the sinner stood and could touch the altar, so becoming holy. For whatever touched the altar was holy, this change not being a gradual one, but the instantaneous result of contact.
“If God has not control over every circumstance, however small, He is not omnipotent. Those things hidden from the wise and prudent He has revealed unto babes. When struggling for precedence, the disciples were told, ‘Except ye . . . become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.’ Self-effacement is at once the consequence of the Light of God and the condition in which the Incarnation can have its manifestation in us.”
He also had clear views regarding “the mystic union between Christ and His Church.” As he explained it, life in Christ and love for Him leaps over all boundaries of time, personality, differences of method and creed, uniting Christians into one body. “Opinion divides; the Lord that merges self in others alone unites,” he said.
—E. F. & L. Harvey and E. Hey.
Pride is a lonely capital I; were it content to be written small, it would never stand alone.—Hugh Redwood.

DOWN TO GET UP!

I used to think that God’s gifts were on shelves one above another; and that the taller we grew in Christian character the easier we could reach them. I now find that God’s gifts are on shelves one beneath the other; and that it is not a question of growing taller but of stooping lower; and that we have to go down always to get His best gifts.—F. B. Meyer.

THE OTHER KINGDOM

By Mrs. E. F. Harvey

Whole countries of spiritual benedictions become the inheritance of the poor in spirit. They pass from discovery to discovery in the realm of knowledge and grace. It is the lowly place that gives us the point of vision for the spacious outlook.
—J. H. Jowett.

During the impressionable years of my early teens, our family lived in a two-story premises situated on a busy thoroughfare of a large American industrial city. Not a blade of grass or a tree adorned the ugly, red-brick-fronted buildings which extended on and on for streets. Gazing out of my bedroom window, I could see only the dull red rows of similarly built business premises combined with living quarters above. Those bulky, tall structures completely shut out any wider horizon and the landscape was of necessity limited. Sounds of city trams coming to a stop outside my window grated harshly with the occasional chirp of the few birds who might have survived city life. I became adept at threading my way through the ceaseless moving traffic, and honking horns and screeching brakes composed the sound with which I had grown so familiar. Only a happy family made amends for this unlovely environment.

There came, however, an opportunity to motor across more than 2,000 miles of the vast American continent when the city sights and sounds gave way to the more pleasant, unspoiled landscape of valley, mountain and plain. And one never-to-be-forgotten moment on that journey came when I stood on the edge of that yawning chasm of some ten miles in breadth known as the Grand Canyon. The late afternoon sun was shining upon the multi-colored rock face of that huge gorge which had been worn down to its great depth by the erosion produced by the fast flowing Colorado River. The bright green foliage further down in its depths contrasted so beautifully with the varying color of rock.
The scene enthralled me. Its immensity, its vastness quite overwhelmed me. I had entered another kingdom, as it were—out of the vista of man-made structures into the realm of God’s handiwork.
But I recall with greater wonder the moment when I stood entranced by my first glimpse of the spiritual kingdom into which I had just emerged. My past religious environment similarly had been constricted and straitened. The constant sound of human voices presenting theological viewpoints, from platform and in private, had brought me into an ever increasing repetition of man-made bricks of doctrine and tradition. This circumscribed me and shut me up within a human concept of the Christian faith. How I yearned for a break-through into God’s wide-open spaces—an uninterrupted spiritual landscape. The vast sweep of God’s eternal purposes for man before the foundation of the world had been laid had not as yet dawned upon the darkness of my mental apprehension. God’s great forethought of Calvary and its tremendous over-arching dimensions of grace upon grace had not even been dimly imagined, let alone experienced by me. That great kingdom of God, with its never-ending surprises, I had never even suspected as existing. Religion was a theory, a formula.
St. Paul must have stood somewhere on the edge of a vast stretch of God’s continent of grace when he uttered those words, “O, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counselor? . . . for of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever” (Rom. 11:33-36).
And again we glimpse those vast expanses of grace as St. Paul prayed for the Ephesian converts, “The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, Which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come” (Eph. 1:18-21).
Every truly born-again believer has, at some moment or other, crashed through the spiritual sound barrier when his spiritual ears were opened. His eyes have pierced through the veil of this visible world to penetrate the marvelous kingdom of light. He has enjoyed the vista of new dimensions when the unseen realm first burst upon his quickened sensibilities. The things of earth, in comparison, grew strangely dim as the Man of Calvary, once only an historical figure, suddenly loomed upon the unconstricted horizon of his once darkened, circumscribed mind.
Once, I would have thought that the necessity for each one to experience such a break-through was too radical a view to hold. Now, as I grow older and have heard complaints of so many disillusioned and straitened Christians, and have seen them spending their precious allotted span of time on trivial, seen, material things, I have a profound conviction that without the new birth no one can see or enter the kingdom of God.
Jesus made just such a statement to Nicodemus who had come to Him by night, wishing to comprehend His teaching. Jesus made two terse statements in His brief conversation with this teacher in Israel and prefaced them with a repetition of a very strong word, “verily,” which amounted to an oath as to its verity. “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). When Nicodemus questioned again as to how a man could be born a second time, Jesus answered again with “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the spirit is spirit” (John 3:5-6).
When the disciples had been disputing about who was the greatest in the kingdom, Jesus again repeated the same truth: “Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3-4).
This necessary condition for entrance is not often preached. Man must get down—off his pedestal. He must let the adult years fall from him as he takes his place as a little child, as a mere beginner in God’s kingdom of grace. He must allow the Holy Spirit to convince him of his undoneness, and of his failure to achieve any real righteousness by his own efforts.
In the kingdom of this world into which we all came by natural birth, the individual always stands erect on the pedestal of “me.” “My career,” “my happiness,” “my joy,” “my morals,” “my ambition,” “my feelings,” “my achievements.” Listen to any celebrity being questioned on the wireless or TV and notice how he expands as he is questioned about his rise to fame. It is “I,” “me” and “mine.” This is the rule of the kingdom of this world where the halo rests upon a child of Adam, born of the flesh, who has “done well for himself”; who with poise and self-assurance has climbed the ladder to notoriety, wealth or learning.
Oh yes, we are too clever in our knowledge of good and evil not to put on a fair show of interest in others, for that would look like selfishness. However, basically the world’s searchlights of honor are focused upon the man mounted on his block of self-esteem. This is why when tragedy, failure or disenchantment in any way comes to an individual soul, it is often the gateway to something much better. If we will allow the circumstances to humble our pride, we will be the wiser and better for all that has befallen us. If we harbor resentments, bitterness, self-pity or if we blame others, we but remount the pedestal of “me” and will be the losers of the benefits and purpose of the affliction. He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it” (Matt. 10:39).
There is no royal road into the kingdom of God. We do not go into it with heads up, records of past achievement blazing, chests stuck out in pride for some victory which is but self-righteousness. We go in as little children, stripped of all self-confidence. This condition of humbling is so difficult for proud man, that he prefers to remain cramped, straitened, circumscribed in a realm of spiritual darkness.
Oh, how quickly God meets a repentant soul. The prodigal’s father did not introduce his lost son into the bosom of his family until there was the cry of repentance, “I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son” (Luke 15:21). On such conditions alone does Deity meet fallen man. God’s eyes are actually running “to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him” (2 Chron. 16:9). It is not we who first seek God; it is God Who seeks the man who detests this native pride, and who humbles himself to BECOME as a little child. He longs to introduce him to the vastness of His purposes, and unveil hidden things which the angels and prophets have longed to look into.
“I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth,” said Jesus, “because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight. . . . neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him” (Matt. 11:25-27).
To those born again, and we who have had a glimpse of that big country of grace, we would say that there is much more to be discovered. There is a carnal nature, an intrusion of the serpent nature, which was not in man as God originally created him. This, it was God’s intention to deal with, and it was His divine will that we should be delivered from all that mars and spoils the new life of Jesus in us. Charles Wesley, after relating his entrance from the darkness of his own righteousness into the wonders of God’s grace, said, “I never knew the energy of sin till now that I experience the superior strength of Christ.” And it has been the experience of multitudes of souls to know the strength of the Ishmael born after the flesh striving and mocking the new life of the Isaac born by promise and super-natural intervention. We will not make very fast strides in new conquests in this continent of grace, until we deal with this “old man of sin” in God’s appointed way. We must have this “old man” crucified. We must put him off. We must realize that it was for this very purpose that the Son of God was manifested that He “might destroy the works of the devil.”
That which mars the image of God from being fully wrought out in us must be put off and the new man put on. We will, otherwise, spend most of our time striving against the Ishmael within our own breast, rather than be free to make conquests in our Canaan of perfect rest.
When God led the Children of Israel out of bondage through the Red Sea, it was His plan that they should quickly traverse the wilderness and enter the land He had promised to Abraham. When they finally did make the crossing through Jordan, each tribe was given a portion of land, and told he could conquer and drive out the former inhabitants of the land, so adding one spiritual conquest to another. God intended to be their Captain in every battle and it was He Who, with their help, would drive out the evil nations who had possessed the land before them. But for most of them the history only too sadly read: “And they drave not out the Canaanites,” though God had said “thou shalt drive out the Canaanites, though they have iron chariots and though they be strong.”
This kingdom of grace lies via the new birth, and the conditions are that we know ourselves to be nothing. The entrance to that kingdom is low, and only the humble are escorted into that realm where no one enters except as God unlocks the gate by divine revelation. From the beginning of time that domain has been guarded by cherubim with a flaming sword which turns every way. No spirit of pride will ever mar the beauty, harmony and glory of that kingdom where God is to be honored and the glory to be all His. Man once snatched at the glory, but the coming kingdom is safe-guarded by a barrier so impenetrable that no man can enter, save as the Holy Spirit reveals the way.
We have constant and continued access to that kingdom only as we remain poor in spirit. “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:3). “I was brought low, and he helped me” (Psa. 116:6). It is the man who trembles at God’s Word whose heart becomes His dwelling place. Let us become as little children that we might enjoy the kingdom.
Alexander Maclaren, in the following brief quotation, likewise encourages us to take the lowly place: “The door of faith is a narrow one; for it lets no self-righteousness, no worldly glories, no dignities, through. We are kept outside till we strip ourselves of crowns and royal robes, and stand clothed only in the hair-shirt of penitence. We must make ourselves small to get in. We must creep on our knees, so low is the vault; we must leave everything outside, so narrow is it. We must go in one by one. The door opens into a palace, but it is too straight for any one who trusts to himself.”

HUMILITY: THE SECRET OF REDEMPTION

By Andrew Murray

“Have this mind in you which was also in Christ Jesus: who emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant; and humbled Himself, becoming obedient even unto death. Wherefore God also highly exalted Him” (Phil. 2:5-9).
No tree can grow except on the root from which it sprang. Through all its existence it can only live with the life that was in the seed that gave it being. The full apprehension of this truth in its application to the first and Second Adam cannot but help us greatly to understand both the need and the nature of the redemption there is in Jesus.
The Need. When the Old Serpent, he who had been cast out from Heaven for his pride, whose whole nature as devil was pride, spoke his words of temptation into the ear of Eve, these words carried with them the very poison of hell. And when she listened, and yielded her desire and her will to the prospect of being as God, knowing good and evil, the poison entered into her soul and blood and life, destroying for ever that blessed humility and dependence upon God which would have been our everlasting happiness. And instead of this, her life and the life of the race that sprang from her became corrupted to its very root with that most terrible of sins and all curses, the poison of Satan’s own pride.
All the wretchedness of which this world has been the scene, all its wars and bloodshed among the nations, all its selfishness and suffering, all its ambitions and jealousies, all its broken hearts and embittered lives, with all its daily unhappiness, have their origin in what this cursed, hellish pride, either our own, or that of others, has brought us. It is pride that made redemption needful; it is from our pride we need above everything to be redeemed. And our insight into the need of redemption will largely depend upon our knowledge of the terrible nature of the power that has entered our being.
No tree can grow except on the root from which it sprang. The power that Satan brought from hell, and cast into man’s life, is working daily, hourly with mighty power throughout the world. Men suffer from it; they fear and fight and flee it; and yet they know not whence it comes, whence it has its terrible supremacy. No wonder they do not know where or how it is to be overcome.
Pride has its root and strength in a terrible spiritual power, outside of us as well as within us; as needful as it is that we confess and deplore it as our very own, is it to know it in its Satanic origin. If this leads us to utter despair of ever conquering or casting it out, it will lead us all the sooner to that supernatural power in which alone our deliverance is to be found—the redemption of the Lamb of God.
The hopeless struggle against the workings of self and pride within us may indeed become still more hopeless as we think of the power of darkness behind it all; the utter despair will fit us the better for realizing and accepting a power and a life outside of ourselves too, even the humility of Heaven as brought down and brought nigh by the Lamb of God, to cast out Satan and his pride.
No tree can grow except on the root from which it sprang. Even as we need to look to the first Adam and his fall to know the power of the sin within us, we need to know well the Second Adam and His power to give within us a life of humility as real and abiding and overmastering as has been that of pride. We have our life from and in Christ, as truly, yea more truly, than from and in Adam. We are to walk “rooted in Him,” “holding fast the Head from whom the whole body increaseth with the increase of God.” The life of God which in the Incarnation entered human nature, is the root in which we are to stand and grow; it is the same almighty power that worked there, and thence onward to the resurrection, which works daily in us. Our one need is to study and know and trust the life that has been revealed in Christ as the life that is now ours, and waits for our consent to gain possession and mastery of our whole being.
In this view it is of inconceivable importance that we should have right thoughts of what Christ is, of what really constitutes Him the Christ, and specially of what may be counted His chief characteristic, the root and essence of all His character as our Redeemer. There can be but one answer; it is His humility. What is the Incarnation but His heavenly humility, His emptying Himself and becoming man? What is His life on earth but humility; His taking the form of a servant? And what is His atonement but humility? “He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death.” And what is His ascension and His glory, but humility exalted to the throne and crowned with glory? “He humbled Himself, therefore God highly exalted Him.” In Heaven, where He was with the Father, in His birth, in His life, in His death, in His sitting on the throne, it is all, it is nothing but humility.
Christ is the humility of God embodied in human nature; the Eternal Love humbling itself, clothing itself in the garb of meekness and gentleness, to win and serve and save us. As the love and condescension of God makes Him the benefactor and helper and servant of all, so Jesus of necessity was the Incarnate Humility. And so He is still in the midst of the throne, the meek and lowly Lamb of God.
If this be the root of the tree, its nature must be seen in every branch and leaf and fruit. If humility be the first, the all-including grace of the life of Jesus—if humility be the secret of His atonement—then the health and strength of our spiritual life will entirely depend upon our putting this grace first too, and making humility the chief thing we admire in Him, the chief thing we ask of Him, the one thing for which we sacrifice all else.
Is it any wonder that the Christian life is so often feeble and fruitless, when the very root of the Christ-life is neglected, is unknown? Is it any wonder that the joy of salvation is so little felt, when that in which Christ found it and brings it, is so little sought? Until a humility which will rest in nothing less than the end and death of self; which gives up all the honor of men as Jesus did, to seek the honor that comes from God alone; which absolutely makes and counts itself nothing, that God may be all, that the Lord alone may be exalted—until such a humility be what we seek in Christ above our chief joy, and welcome at any price, there is very little hope of a religion that will conquer the world.
Pride is a natural trait in man; humility comes only with grace from God. “In all the copious language of the Greeks,” says John Wesley, “there was not one word for humility till it was made by the great apostle Paul. The whole Roman language, even with all the improvements of the Augustan age, does not afford so much as a name for HUMILITY (the word from whence we borrow this, as is well-known, bearing in Latin a quite different meaning).”

FOR CHILDREN ONLY

By George E. Failing

The kingdom of Heaven, in this world and in the next, is for children only. Self-conscious and self-trusting “adults” are excluded. All three Gospels tell the story of those who brought little children to Jesus “that he should touch them.” But Jesus’ disciples rebuked those that brought children to Him. Why?
The disciples probably thought, first, that the children did not need and could not appreciate Jesus’ attention, and second, that they could not comprehend His teaching. On both counts they were right—from their point of view. But they were wrong from Jesus’ point of view.
Men who think as the world thinks (and even Christians sometimes do!) cannot believe that attention to the small, the sick, and the poor is wise or necessary. Those who want to get ahead choose the appeal to the wise, the well, and the wealthy. That is the path of the future. The world achieves its honors and its progress by appealing to those who can return a favor, who can admire its show of power and astuteness.
But Jesus knew that “this majestic world of sophisticated adulthood” was a fraud. It was too little a world. It was a world that excluded the poor, the unprivileged, the children. While pretending to exist for their benefit, this world never identified itself with these disenfranchised groups. The world’s grand aims must be accomplished by and for grand people.
So Jesus resisted any temptation to become a part of the world’s elite. He came to preach the Gospel to the poor (not those only economically deprived but those who were poor in spirit, those spiritually hungry), to offer healing to the sick, to offer salvation to the sinner. Jesus spent His time with the unprivileged of earth. He built no house or hospital. He had no bank account. He did not covet the greetings of earth’s great and honored persons. He was unimpressed by institutional religion that did little more than preserve or enhance its own image.
There’s no question about it: all children belong to Jesus. They are members of His kingdom. No child has rebelliously and self-consciously renounced Jesus. The atonement included children in its unconditioned benefits.
The danger lies in growing up. We get “wise” and we become proud. We see that smartness pays, that humility is unnoticed, even despised. But if we live long enough, and become honest enough, we recognize that the truly great values of life are “little children,” small things. More than this, we realize that greatness is achieved only by those who are determined to bless the children, to honor the aged, to assist the poor, to feed the hungry, to relieve the sick, to save the sinful. In order to do this, one must renounce the glitter of greatness and become lowly in heart.
The passing centuries have witnessed great strides in human knowledge and technology. But they also bear witness to man’s perpetual pride. Only to the humble and only to the innocent belong the real blessings of this world and the next. This is what Jesus meant, “Verily I say unto you, except ye be converted and become as little children,
ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.”
Heaven belongs only to those of tender years and of tender hearts. Such make a Heaven of any world.—Wesleyan Advocate.

HIMSELF
A Scripture Lesson

Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses. Matt. 8:17.
He saved others, himself he cannot save. Matt. 27:42.
Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue (power) had gone out of him.        Mark 5:30.
To receive for himself a kingdom, and to return. Luke 19:12.
Saying that he himself is Christ a King. Luke 23:2.
He expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. Luke 24:27.
Jesus did not commit himself unto them. John 2:24.
Making himself equal with God. John 5:18.
The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do. John 5:19.
So hath he given to the Son to have life in himself. John 5:26.
Jesus therefore again groaning in himself cometh to the grave. John 11:38.
He took a towel, and girded himself. John 13:4.
God shall also glorify him in himself. John 13:32.
He made himself the Son of God. John 19:7.
To whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion. Acts 1:3.
Even Christ pleased not himself. Rom. 15:3.
Who gave himself for our sins. Gal. 1:4.
Who loved me, and gave himself for me. Gal. 2:20.
Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it. Eph. 5:25.
Who gave himself a ransom for all. 1 Tim. 2:6.
Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity. Tit. 2:14.
To make in himself of twain one new man. Eph. 2:15.
That he might present it to himself. Eph. 5:27.
He made himself of no reputation. Phil. 2:7.
He humbled himself. Phil. 2:8.
He is able even to subdue all things unto himself. Phil. 3:21.
He cannot deny himself. 2 Tim. 2:13.
And purify unto himself a peculiar people. Tit. 2:14.
When he had by himself purged our sins. Heb. 1:3.
Christ glorified not himself to be made an high priest. Heb. 5:5.
This he did once, when he offered up himself. Heb. 7:27.
Who through the eternal Spirit offered himself. Heb. 9:14.
Nor yet that he should offer himself often. Heb. 9:25.
To put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. Heb. 9:26.
Endured such contradiction of sinners against himself. Heb. 12:3.
Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree. 1 Pet. 2:24.
—Notes for Bible Readings.

THE GROUND OF NOTHINGNESS

How precious Bible truths become when Divinely revealed to us: how truly do they touch the deeps of our hearts, and we know God has spoken His word to our souls! Recently, as I sought God for a definite work of His Holy Spirit in my life, purifying and infilling, the Scriptural truth of absolute nothingness came with clarity and conviction. “I” who had stood erect, who had grasped for power and position, saw that this lust for power had to be “slain utterly,” saw by revelation of His Holy Spirit that the only entrance to God’s kingdom was in the dust, low at Jesus’ feet, where there was truly “none of self”—not one good thing. In every life the “I” must step down completely to let the Holy Ghost abide and reign. Shared with you on these pages are thoughts from other writers which emphasize this truth. We pray that it will come alive as you read.—B. M. Freeman.
Lilias Trotter, founder of the Algiers Mission Band, has given us many apt “parables from nature.” But we let her tell in her own words the spiritual truths made real to her as she considered the “bare watercourses” of North Africa.
“In our northern lands a watercourse shows out as the richest green of the meadowland, broken by a ripple and a glimmer and a glitter through reeds and ferns and moss. Not such are the African watercourses, and not such are God’s counterparts in the spiritual kingdom.
“Out here you can detect the channel by the clue that it will be the barest of the bare places—sun-bleached, rounded stones, stretching across a plain or a deep-cut gully winding among the tablelands that bind the Sahara to the north.
“But summer and winter you will see in those barren waterways a supply going down to the oases that cluster among the cliffs and bastions where the plateau breaks down to the desert. Trace the gully upwards till it is but a trench, and you will probably find that it starts with a scooped-out hollow in the gravel no more than a couple of feet across, holding a pool that shows a bubble now and then. In that pool lies the source of life for the oasis down below.
“The water begins by grooving that trench at the lowest level it can find, and it seeks all the time to make that level lower still, carving for itself at last a veritable ravine till it has reached the mission that was the meaning of the lonely path, of the stripping bare of the ever-deepening emptiness. For the last sweep of its ravine has sent it forth into the glory of its mission. Away beyond stretch thousands upon thousands of palm trees, waiting for the treasure that the watercourse has brought down. The power of the water, and the laying low of the channel—between them they have opened this great gateway.        ‘Thou didst cleave the earth with thy rivers.’
“So with ourselves, instead of a life of conscious power, ours will probably, if He is going to do any deep work in us, be a path of humiliation, of stripping, of emptiness, where no flesh may glory in His presence.
“The way goes downward and downward into the valley of humiliation, as the self-life stands gradually revealed by God’s Presence! On and on, instead of the sense of power, there comes only more and more the overwhelming sense of insufficiency—for in the spiritual, as in the natural world, if you want to seek water, look in the very lowest place that you can find. Whatever the ministry may be, it is the same story, the stream-bed going lower and lower, with nothing to glory in but the one wonderful glory of bearing the life-giving water. ‘Death worketh in us, but life in you,’ the watercourses say.”
Yes, the way “goes downward and downward,” while natural man’s whole tendency is to raise himself in arrogant pride. The saintly Fletcher saw this when he wrote:
“I am now led to be afraid of that in my nature which would be for pomp, show and visible glory. I am afraid of falling by such an expectation into what I call a spiritual judaizing; into a looking for Christ’s coming in my own pompous conceit, which might make me reject Him, if His wisdom, to crucify mine, chose to come in a meaner way; and if, instead of coming in His Father’s glory, He chose to come meek, riding, not on the cherubim, but on the foal of an ass.”
And again, in his Checks to Antinomianism, he says, “Remember that your Christian perfection does not so much consist in building a tabernacle upon Mount Tabor, to rest and enjoy rare sights there; as in resolutely taking up the cross, and following Christ to the palace of a proud Caiaphas, to the judgment-hall of an unjust Pilate, and to the top of an ignominious Calvary. Ye never read in your Bibles, ‘Let that glory be upon you, which was also upon St. Stephen, when he looked up steadfastly into Heaven, and said, Behold I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.’ But ye have frequently read there, ‘Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who made himself of no reputation, took upon him the form of a servant, and being found in fashion as a man, humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.’”
We like the translation of the above verse which reads, “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, Who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, But emptied Himself, taking the form of bondservant, and being made in the likeness of men, And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross,” (N.A.S.). The Amplified New Testament renders this last phrase, “He carried His obedience to the extreme of death.” May God help us to carry our obedience to that extreme—that place of death to all that exalts self. Surely it was this truth that had gripped Charles Wesley when in his well-known hymn he penned the line, “The humble poor believe.” In spite of all his religious Churchianity he had stepped down to the place of soul poverty, had seen himself as poor and needy, and in that place of humility had met his God, for it is the “humble poor” who believe, who can believe, and who dobelieve.
Oswald Chambers says: “The thing I am blessed in is my poverty. If I know I have no strength of will, no nobility of disposition, then Jesus says—Blessed are you, because it is through this poverty that I enter His Kingdom. I cannot enter His Kingdom as a good man or woman, I can only enter it as a complete pauper.”

1. B. Godbey, the Bible commentator, writes: “The Gospel ministry is all in the valley of humiliation. Human power, pomp and splendor are totally eclipsed by the supernatural glory of the Christ we represent. Whenever we bring in human power, learning, wealth and influence we thereby put a veil over the popular mind, disqualifying them to see the Invisible One. Therefore our Savior selected the most humble, impotent and uninfluential to preach the Gospel, even ‘unlearned and ignorant men.’

“In every subsequent age, when human power, wealth and culture come to the front, we see the Holy Spirit retreat away, leaving them to run their own machinery, and, pursuant to first principles, picking up others, poor, weak and uninfluential, from the low places of the earth, and sending them out, the custodians of this invaluable Heavenly treasure. God is not going to change His Gospel economy to suit any of us, giving His glory to another. The humiliation of the Gospel is here exemplified by the apostles themselves, down at the very bottom of society, the contempt of the world’s elite.
“Most of the apostles lived like the poorest tramps. The brightest lights and the grandest examples of Christian purity and heroism in every age have lived and died down in the bottom of the valley of humiliation. It is dangerous to climb lest we fall and break our necks. Whenever we get to where the people will account for our efficiency by our own resources, we are on dangerous ground and fearfully liable to the abandonment of the Holy Ghost, leaving us to paddle our own canoe, because He dare not compromise the glory of Christ in human instrumentality.”
Every soul who has known God has found Him through this door of destitution. As a young Christian, Samuel Logan Brengle took the path of complete self-renunciation. He first stepped down from his anticipated career as a lawyer to be a preacher of God’s glorious Gospel. Later, seeking the fullness of the Holy Spirit in his life, he stepped down from all ambition to be a “great” preacher, influencing his congregation by his glowing oratory, to the place of willingness to “stammer and stutter.” He knew that his “honor and glory” would be reaped in Heaven and wrote:
“Personally, an awful fear has shaken me at times in the thought that a man may get in this world all the honor and glory that he seeks, and find in the next world that there is nothing further coming to him, like a man who draws his salary in advance and at the end of the week or month or year has nothing to receive. Abraham said to the rich man: ‘Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things’; and there was nothing due to him in that new world to which his soul had been so suddenly snatched away. He had not put first things first, and he who proudly scorned the poor beggar Lazarus at his gate now found himself an eternal pauper and beggar in hell.”
Yes, the choice comes to each of us—a pauper in spirit in this world, or a pauper for eternity. It is only because of this world’s twisted values that it appears that way, for really we are rich for both time and eternity. But this world does not value the unseen, the self-effacing. We quote from an article by Mrs. Elizabeth Baxter:
“The pride of intellect, the pride of human nature, ‘the pride of life,’ seeks to be independent of God, and to establish its own righteousness, its own wisdom, and make for itself another foundation than that which is laid, even Jesus Christ.
“But faith in Jesus Christ has never been, and never will be a popular thing. The humility of His birth, the obscurity of His early days, the plebian occupation of the Carpenter of Nazareth, all spoke of the ‘dry ground,’ and reflected no credit upon the grandeur of that human nature, of which men who do not understand God can boast themselves.
“Human nature always seeks its own, sets a value upon itself, wills to be self-dependent, and measures all others by its over-valued self. No wonder then that ‘He was despised and rejected of men . . .’
“Men cannot understand a hidden life. They press every advantage to make as much of themselves as they can. But here was something more than modesty in Jesus; he hid His face that He might manifest His Father’s; He sank into insignificance that He might be the express Image of His Father, so serving His purpose in everything. This is the way of the cross for us as for our Master.
“The way of the cross not only saves man from hell, but also crosses him out, to write the name of Jesus Christ in the place of his; Christ hides man and manifests God.”
It just seems an unerring principle of spiritual life that man must be hidden for God to be exalted. Elizabeth Fry felt this when she voiced the heart-cry: “Oh, how deeply, how very deeply, I fear the temptation of ever being exalted or self-conceited. I cannot preserve myself from this temptation, any more than being unduly cast down or crushed by others. Be pleased, O Lord! to preserve me, for the deep inward prayer of my heart is, that I may ever walk humbly before Thee; and also before all mankind. Let me never in any way take that glory to myself that alone belongs unto Thee, if in Thy mercy Thou shouldst ever enable one so unworthy either to do good or to communicate.”
And then, the wonderful fact is that this place of lowliness is the safest place for the soul. On one occasion Billy Bray quaintly said, “Soon after I was converted the devil said to me, ‘Billy Bray, you’ll be a great man.’ But I sunk into nothing, and in that way slipped through the devil’s hands.” And Jonathan Edwards expressed the same thought, “Nothing sets a person so much out of the devil’s reach as humility.”
Let us close with this picture of the valley of humiliation written by Rowland Hill in a letter to a young friend:
“‘He filleth the hungry with good things but the proud he sendeth empty away.’ O that most lovely valley of humiliation—the safest, the most lovely, the most fertile spot between the City of Destruction and Heaven. May you get into it, make your constant abode in it, and never get out of it till from thence you shall be called to glory. O I could say a thousand things concerning this more than celestial valley. The air is so salubrious, the ground so fertile, the fruit so wholesome; while from the branches of every tree the voices of prayer and praise are heard in delightful concert with each other. While living in this valley, no weapon that is formed against us shall prosper, as all the fiery darts of the devil are sure to pass over our heads, since the enemy of souls cannot shoot lowenough to reach us to our hurt. Take this hint from a very old man, just putting off his harness while you are just putting it on.”—Compiled by Beulah Freeman.

MY IDEA

My idea of a wise man: The man who listens to nobody but me.
My idea of brotherly love: Everybody devoted to me.
My idea of a meek man: The man who yields to me.
My idea of a contentious man: The man who takes issue with me.
My idea of unity: Everybody agreeing with me.
My idea of co-operation: Everybody working with me—by my plans.
—Source Unknown.

A WORKER’S DREAM

I sat down in an arm-chair wearied with my work. My toil had been severe and protracted. Many were seeking Christ, and many had found Him. As for myself, I was joyous in my work. My brethren were united. My sermons and exhortations were evidently telling on my hearers. My church was crowded. Tired with my work, I soon lost myself in a sort of half-forgetful state.
Suddenly a stranger entered the room without any preliminary “tap,” or “Come in.” He carried about his person measures, chemical agents, and implements, which gave him a very strange appearance.
The stranger came toward me, and extending his hand, said, “How is your zeal?” I supposed that the query was to be for my health, but was pleased to hear his final words; for I was quite well pleased with my zeal, and doubted not the stranger would smile when he should know its proportions.
Instantly I conceived of it as physical quantity, and putting my hand into my bosom, brought it forth and presented it to him for inspection.
He took it, and, placing it in his scale, weighed it carefully. I heard him say, “One hundred pounds!” I could scarce suppress an audible note of satisfaction: but I caught his earnest look as he noted down the weight; and I saw at once that he had drawn no final conclusion, but was intent on pushing his investigation. He broke the mass to atoms, put it into his crucible, and put the crucible into the fire. When the mass was fused, he took it out, and set it to cool. It congealed in cooling, and when turned out on the hearth, exhibited a series of layers or strata; which all, at the touch of the hammer, fell apart, and were severally tested and weighed, the stranger making minute notes as the process went on.
When he had finished, he presented the notes to me, and gave me a look of mingled sorrow and compassion, as without a word, except, “May God save you!” he left the room.
The “notes” read as follows:

Analysis of the zeal of Junius, a Candidate for a Crown of Glory.
Weight in mass, or total weight, 100 lbs.
Of this, on analysis, there proves to be:

Bigotry                        10 parts          “Wood, Hay and Stubble”
Personal ambition          23 parts          “Wood, Hay and Stubble”
Love of praise                 19 parts          “Wood, Hay and Stubble”
Pride of denomination   15 parts          “Wood, Hay and Stubble”
Pride of talent                14 parts          “Wood, Hay and Stubble”
Love of authority           12 parts          “Wood, Hay and Stubble”

Love of God                    4 parts                        Pure Zeal
Love of Man                   3 parts                        Pure Zeal

TOTAL                        100 parts

I had become troubled at the peculiar manner of the stranger, and especially at his parting look and words, but when I looked at the figures, my heart sank as lead within me.
I made a mental effort to dispute the correctness of the record. But I was startled into a more honest mood by an audible sigh from the stranger (who had paused in the hall). I cried out, “Lord, save me!” and knelt down at my chair, with the paper in my hand and my eyes fixed upon it. At once, it became a mirror, and I saw my heart reflected in it. The record was true!  I saw it, I felt it, I confessed it, I deplored it, and I besought God to save me from myself with many tears; with a loud cry of anguish, I awoke.
I had once prayed to be saved from hell, but prayer to be saved from myself now was immeasurably more fervent; nor did I rest or pause till the refining fire came down and went through my heart, searching, probing, melting, burning, filling all its chambers with light, and hallowing my whole heart to God.
When the toils of my pilgrimage shall be at an end, I shall kneel in Heaven, at the foot of the Divine Alchemist, and bless Him for the revelations of that day.
—Travelers’ Guide.

       A Little Child

The nature of a little child,
I simply could not see
How such a nature ever could
Become a part of me.

The pride of years would never let
My Savior on the throne,
But crowned ME king and kept ME where
I reigned, just I alone.

This pride, oh, what a horrid thing!
Kept me from bending low.
So, through the Kingdom’s door, you see,
I simply could not go.

So, large with what I thought I was,
`I stood outside for years;
I cried, I groaned, I prayed and yet
Would glory in my tears.

Thus all the beauty of His realm
Was on the other side.
Oh, what I missed, oh, what I lacked,
Because of my old pride!

Then, oh the wonder of that day!
I saw what I should do.
I said, “Lord Jesus, I step down
And give the throne to You.”

And so when I by faith obeyed,
A miracle of grace,
Within this haughty heart of mine,
That moment did take place.

For all at once I knew, I felt
Humble and meek and mild,
And saw that God had given me
The nature of a child.

Now would I, dare I, could I try
Once more the Kingdom’s door?
I longed to, yet it looked so low,
So near unto the floor.

But, beckoned by the pierced Hand
Which had removed my sin,
Upon my knees, now weak and small,
A child, I entered in.

I entered in, oh bless the day!
I entered through that door,
And all His Kingdom lay ahead
For children to explore.

And so, diminished as I am,
Stripped of all else but grace,
I live, a trusting little child,
And look upon His face.

And now there is but One supreme
Who rules and wears the crown,
And this great miracle began
The moment I stepped down.
—Trudy Tait.