The Message of Victory, Jan-Mar 1976 / They Learned the Secret

“I come, Lord, to restore to Thee what Thou hast given and I freely relinquish it, to enter again into nothingness.  For what is the most perfect creature in Heaven or earth in Thy presence but a void, and capable of being filled with Thee and by Thee as the air which is void and dark is capable of being filled with the light of the sun?  Grant therefore, O Lord, that I may never appropriate Thy grace to myself any more than the air appropriates to itself the light of the sun, who withdraws it every day to restore it the next; there being nothing in the air that either appropriates his light or resists it.  Oh, give me the same facility of receiving and restoring Thy grace and good works!  I say, Thine; for I acknowledge that the root from which they spring is in Thee and not in me.”John Fletcher adds:  “The true means to be filled anew with the riches of His grace is thus to strip ourselves of it; without this, it is extremely difficult not to faint in the practice of good works.  Therefore that your good works may receive their last perfection, let them lose themselves in God.  This is a kind of death to them, resembling that of our bodies, which will not attain their highest life, their immortality, till they lose themselves in the glory of our souls, or rather of God, wherewith they shall be filled.  And it is only what they had of earthly and mortal which good works lose by this spiritual death.”

EDITORIAL
COVETOUSNESS

Saints are interested more in duties than in rights. Those who claim the most rights are those afflicted with covetousness.
The popular spirit of the age—the demanding of rights—is gripping the church. Priests claim “the right” to marry or to join labor unions. Church leaders claim “the right” to commit their denomination to positions not representing the traditional stance of the church. Local churches claim “the right” to defy proper denominational policies.
All this is sheer covetousness. One man wishes to do what others can do. A leader wants to build up his power in an ecclesiastical organization. A local church tries to secure its own independence from denominational “colonialism.”
These are aggressive devices, self-aggressive. They bear no resemblance to the words of the Man Who said, “I came not to do my own will.” These actions are all based on self-will and self-interest.
It is difficult to preach sincerely, without desire to promote oneself or to humiliate others. In his day Paul lamented (when speaking of Christian workers—alas!), “For all seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ’s.”
It is difficult to administer one’s work for the best interests of the work itself. A position so easily becomes a platform for self-promotion. And it takes more than average grace to turn down the chief seats and place oneself where he can do his best work.
In public, it is difficult even to testify or to pray without having too eager an ear to listen to oneself. Self-admiration tempts us at every turn. In fact, what we do in public is seldom done for the sake of the deed itself. It is done for ourselves. For this very reason, Jesus practically forbade us from praying on the street corners. He encouraged us to give anonymously—so that we don’t even remember to credit ourselves. We must forget what we do.
Jesus did—it is true—some bold and shocking things in public. But He never did them for Himself; they were done only when they had to be done for the good of others.
Few today in the church—almost none in politics—are studying how to be little in their own eyes so they can become great in the service of God.
If we could only busy ourselves at God’s task, how wholesome and helpful our work would be. We would forget what we have at stake—in salary, in honors, in disappointments, in dangers. We would glory only when Christ was magnified. What recognition or advancement we got out of it—or what persecution—would not concern us at all.
The blessed truth is—we can be delivered from covetousness. We can become Christ-centered by the radical work of the Spirit. But having life by the Spirit and walking in the Spirit are very different. One is God’s work alone, the other is an endless and co-operative endeavor.
To walk in the Spirit is as difficult for Wesleyans as for Presbyterians. The factors are all the same, allowing for very modest differences that these theological systems represent. There’s God, Satan, and me. The outcome of the battle will depend on whom I enter into final alliance with. Self-interest is the great “theological” center of all of Satan’s creed. Self-crucifixion is the great theological center of all that are Christ’s.
Away then with secret councils for self-promotion, compromising positions for popular support, accommodation of the language of truth to win the approval of mortal men.—G. E. Failing, in Wesleyan Advocate.

THE HUMILITY OF JESUS

By Andrew Murray

“I am in the midst of you as he that serveth” (Luke 22:27).

In the Gospel of John we have the inner life of our Lord laid open to us. Jesus speaks frequently of His relation to the Father, of the motives by which He is guided, of His consciousness of the power and spirit in which He acts. Though the word humble does not occur, we shall nowhere in Scripture see so clearly wherein His humility consisted. We have already said that this grace is in truth nothing but that simple consent of the creature to let God be all, in virtue of which it surrenders itself to His working alone. In Jesus we shall see how both as the Son of God in Heaven, and as man upon earth, He took the place of entire subordination, and gave God the honor and the glory which is due to Him. And what He taught so often was made true to Himself: “He that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” As it is written, “He humbled himself, therefore God highly exalted Him.”
Listen to the words in which our Lord speaks of His relation to the Father, and see how unceasingly He uses the words not, and nothing, of Himself. The not I, in which Paul expresses his relation to Christ, is the very spirit of what Christ says of His relation to the Father.
“The Son can do nothing of himself” (John 5:19).
“I can of my self do nothing; my judgment is just, because I seek not mine own will” (John 5:30).
“I receive not glory from men” (John 5:41).
“I am come not to do mine own will” (John 5:38).
“My teaching is not mine” (John 7:16).
“I am not come of myself” (John 7:28).
“I do nothing of myself” (John 8:28).
“I have not come of myself, but he sent me” (John 8:42).
“I seek not mine own glory” (John 8:50).
“The words that I say, I speak not from myself” (John 14:10).
“The word which ye hear is not mine” (John 14:24).

These words open to us the deepest roots of Christ’s life and work. They tell us how it was that the Almighty God was able to work His mighty redemption work through Him. They show what Christ counted the state of heart which became Him as the Son of the Father. They teach us what the essential nature and life is of that redemption which Christ accomplished and now communicates. It is this: He was nothing, that God might be all. He resigned Himself with His will and His powers entirely for the Father to work in Him. Of His own power, His own will, and His own glory, of His whole mission with all His works and His teaching—of all this He said, It is not I; I am nothing; I have given Myself to the Father to work; I am nothing, the Father is all.
This life of entire self-abnegation, of absolute submission and dependence upon the Father’s will, Christ found to be one of perfect peace and joy. He lost nothing by giving all to God. God honored His trust, and did all for Him, and then exalted Him to His own right hand in glory. And because Christ had thus humbled Himself before God, and God was ever before Him, He found it possible to humble Himself before men too, and to be the servant of all. His humility was simply the surrender of Himself to God, to allow Him to do in Him what He pleased, whatever men around might say of Him, or do to Him.
It is in this state of mind, in this spirit and disposition, that the redemption of Christ has its virtue and efficacy. It is to bring us to this disposition that we are made partakers of Christ. This is the true self-denial to which our Savior calls us, the acknowledgment that self has nothing good in it, except as an empty vessel which God must fill, and that its claim to be or do anything may not for a moment be allowed. It is in this, above and before everything, in which the conformity to Jesus consists, the being and doing nothing of ourselves, that God may be all.
Here we have the root and nature of true humility. It is because this is not understood or sought after, that our humility is so superficial and so feeble. We must learn of Jesus, how He is meek and lowly of heart. He teaches us where true humility takes it rise and finds its strength—in the knowledge that it is God Who worketh all in all, that our place is to yield to Him in perfect resignation and dependence, in full consent to be and to do nothing of ourselves. This is the life Christ came to reveal and to impart—a life to God that came through death to sin and self. If we feel that this life is too high for us and beyond our reach, it must but the more urge us to seek it in Him; it is the indwelling Christ Who will live in us this life, meek and lowly. If we long for this, let us, meantime, above everything else, seek the holy secret of the knowledge of the nature of God, as He every moment works all in all; the secret, of which all nature and every creature, and above all, every child of God, is to be the witness—that it is nothing but a vessel, a channel, through which the living God can manifest the riches of His wisdom, power, and goodness. The root of all virtue and grace, of all faith and acceptable worship, is that we know that we have nothing but what we receive, and how in deepest humility to wait upon God for it.
It was because this humility was not only a temporary sentiment, wakened up and brought into exercise when He thought of God, but the very spirit of His whole life, that Jesus was just as humble in His intercourse with men as with God. He felt Himself the Servant of God for the men whom God made and loved; as a natural consequence, He counted Himself the Servant of men, that through Him God might do His work of love. He never for a moment thought of seeking His honor, or asserting His power to vindicate Himself. His whole spirit was that of a life yielded to God to work in. It is not until Christians study the humility of Jesus as the very essence of His redemption, as the very blessedness of the life of the Son of God, as the only true relation to the Father, and therefore as that which Jesus must give us if we are to have any part with Him, that the terrible lack of actual, heavenly, manifest humility will become a burden and a sorrow, and our ordinary religion be set aside to secure this, the first and the chief of the marks of the Christ within us.
Brother, are you clothed with humility? Ask your daily life. Ask Jesus. Ask your friends. Ask the world. And begin to praise God that there is opened up to you in Jesus a heavenly humility of which you have hardly known, and through which a heavenly blessedness you possibly have never yet tasted can come in to you.

THE FLOOR—THE PLACE OF PURGING

By Margaret Smith

Nobody likes to be down. The contesting boxer wants to stay on his feet to the end of the match. The fellow who is on the ground in the street brawl comes off the worst in kicks and bruises, and he tries to protect his head from the boots of his offended and irate opponent. The ground is the place of defeat and humiliation.
To the Christian, however, the “floor” is the place of blessing. Let us take a closer look at the words of John the Baptist in Matthew 3:12, “He will throughly purge his floor.” Here the floor referred to was the threshing floor, and we are told that it is to be thoroughly purged by the One coming after—the wheat from the chaff. There is something to be learned here, though—that Christ’s purging is always at the lowest level.
The floor—the place of purging! But what keeps us off the floor? Basically, of course our pride. We know what we ought to be and can so often act the part, perhaps hardly conscious that there is any pretence involved. But we find our prayers are not answered because what we have said was not for God’s ears but for the benefit of the other members of the prayer meeting. Had we uttered five words of positive truth, bringing us down to the “floor,” we would have found the place of cleansing and blessing. Christ purges the floor.
We utter aloud, O Lord, we love You,” or “we are so burdened about this certain situation,” etc., when the truth would have been, “My heart is cold towards You and those around me. Please, Lord, melt me in Thy presence, and fill me with Thy love.” God ever meets us at the point of truth.
The dictionary defines “purge” as “to make pure, to carry off whatever is impure or superfluous, to clear from guilt or accusation.” The Pharisee who went up to the Temple to pray probably could truthfully say that he was “not as other men are . . . or even as this publican.” Doubtless he hadn’t committed the same outward sins, yet, he was not justified. Why? He had come to justify himself, whereas the publican had come to be justified. Somehow the Pharisee so fills the picture in his self-esteem that one can hardly see the publican with his face on the “floor” (he “would not lift up so much as his eyes to heaven”) in his attitude of confession, keen sense of guilt and humble plea for forgiveness. To admit one’s wrong in the eyes of the world is to invite a reproachful, “holier than thou” reaction. To confess one’s guilt in the presence of Christ is to find mercy and pardon and the lifting up again of one’s head!
We put ourselves on our self-made pedestals too. We think we know what others expect of us. We labor to attain this, and very often feel the precariousness of our position; we wish we didn’t have to work so hard at it. Oh, the blessedness of coming down and just being ourselves! The restfulness and security of the “floor”! Jesus took the place of “no reputation” on this earth, and if we raise ourselves above it, we are out of line with the divine Presence, where alone is cleansing and blessing.
The first part of Ezekiel’s vision of the holy waters (in ch. 47) was that they “issued from under the threshold of the house (temple) eastward.” They eventually became waters to swim in, but they came first from under the threshold. Again we see that God’s blessing begins at the lowest level.
What a transformation is required, and gloriously possible—at the feet of Jesus! Mary sat at Jesus’ feet. The place of lowliness and nothingness is the place of blessing today—and tomorrow. We must stay here, where the purging continues and the river flows.

THE GREAT HINDRANCE TO FAITH

By Alexander Vinet, D. D.

“How can ye believe, who receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour which cometh from God only?” John 5:44.

To be praised, admired, or at least, esteemed, is the secret desire of every human being whom misery does not compel to degrade himself to a lower ambition, and whom a profound degradation has not rendered insensible to the opinion of his fellows. We have, indeed, already within ourselves a judge, who is very indulgent with reference to our qualities and conduct; but this judge does not suffice us. It appears that, irresistibly driven to the sentiment of our nothingness, and dreading to be compelled some day to undeceive ourselves, we feel the necessity of appealing to other men to aid our self love, and of deriving from them an additional life, which we find not in ourselves.
Do not, then, deceive yourselves. Rich or poor, high or low, we all love glory. The craving for the esteem of others follows us as our shadow. It glides with us everywhere. Chased away under one form, it produces itself in another. From retreat to retreat, from corner to corner, it eagerly pursues its timid enemy, humility. Does she think she has escaped from it, she lifts up her eyes and finds it before her. The love of glory can find a place even in the tears and confessions of penitence. It secretly animates the voice of the moralist who thunders against glory; and sometimes, alas, it accompanies into the pulpit the preacher who condemns it.
We cannot deny, that, in a certain degree, the esteem of others ought to be a real want of each individual. In the first place, the privation of this esteem would divest us of a greater part of the advantages attached to the social state. What credit is to a merchant, good reputation is, in the same degree, to every member of society. In the second place, without some mutual good-will, society would not be supportable and good-will is inseparably connected with esteem. Besides, public confidence is the first condition of the good we desire to do.
I acknowledge that, in the absence of Christianity, the love of esteem is one of the best things which can be met with in fallen man. In the absence of an object worthy of our homage, it is an indirect homage to those moral ideas of which society cannot divest itself, and is the best of those social elements which keep men united. But how different from this necessary care of a temporal blessing is that pursuit of glory, from which we see issuing two very clearly marked characteristics.

1. Making the esteem of men the rule of our actions.
2. Seeking in addition to a good reputation, praise, fame, celebrity.

This is what our text condemns; the praise of men as an end of our actions, their approbation preferred to that of God, the glory which comes from men eagerly desired, the glory which comes from God neglected.
The text does not only say, “Ye love to receive glory from one another;” it also adds, “ye seek not the glory which cometh from God alone.” The glory, then, which comes from God only is a thing to be sought after. The following words of Jesus serve as a supplement to those which He uttered on another occasion: “There is no one who hath forsaken house, or brother, or sister, or father, or mother, or children, for my sake and the gospel’s, who shall not in the present time receive a hundred fold” (Mark 10:29-30).
In like manner, there is no one who shall not receive a hundred fold from Him Who required the sacrifice. In the kingdom of God, then, there is no sacrifice without compensation, and the compensations of God are infinite. In our souls there is no want He will not satisfy, but in His own way. We were born for glory. Well, He invites us to seek it. The same invitation is abundantly reproduced in the Gospel. There, glory is represented as an object worthy of our pursuit, as the final recompense of our toils, as the price of the blood of Jesus Christ. The blessings of Heaven are offered to those “who, by persevering in good works, seek honour, glory, and immortality.”
Here, it is no longer man that praises man; it is no longer the wretched flattering the wretched; it is the human soul satisfying itself with true glory in the bosom of the God of glory. It is the Christian, expecting and obtaining from the mouth of the only witness whose regard he seeks, these noble and precious words, “Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things; I will advance thee to many things.” This is the glory which ought to be desired, which ought to be the end of life—a glory we cannot dispense with without crime. It is the glory which cometh from God alone.
But as to human glory, Jesus Christ is so far from authorizing the pursuit of it, that He declares it incompatible with Christian faith. “How can ye believe,” says He, “who love to receive glory from one another, and seek not the glory that cometh from God alone.”
Indeed, this love of human glory is one of the principal quicksands of Christian faith. When the soul, oppressed by the consciousness of its sins, and anxious respecting its future destiny, turned in the direction of religion, it meets, on its way, numerous enemies of its salvation. Proud reason is there objecting to the obscurity of the Christian doctrines, and urging it to reject what it cannot comprehend. Indolence dissuades it from the conquest of a kingdom, “which is taken by force, and of which only the violent take possession.” Sensuality makes it afraid of a chaste and austere life. But when all these perfidious counselors have been successively driven away, human glory, more dangerous still, and more certain to be heard, presents itself.
If faith were only an act of the mind, in which the heart had no part, it would doubtless be impossible to see how the desire of human glory could hinder us from believing. But to believe in Jesus Christ is another thing; it is to receive, to choose, to embrace Him, with all those qualities which are ascribed to Him in the Gospel. It is to submit to Him our heart, our will, our life; in a word, it is to become the subject, the servant of this divine Master.
But there is a disposition of soul in which, though the mind is subdued, the heart is yet undecided and rebellious. We desire to believe, and cannot; or rather we believe, and do not believe. We possess the Gospel as a treasure of which we have not the key, with which we can do nothing, and upon which we cannot live. “We have a name to live, but are dead.”
This is the secret of so many half-conversions, of so much defective Christianity. This explains the character of those men, who, according to the remarkable expression of the apostle, “are ever learning, but never coming to the knowledge of the truth.”
Let us apply this general observation to human glory, and set forth a truth which presents itself in the very commencement of the subject. The moral law is a law of perfection; this every one will admit without difficulty. But in order that the pursuit of glory should not prevent us from keeping this law, it is necessary that the being from whom we expect glory should be perfect in disposition, principle, and action. If he is not, he will not require from us perfection in return for his approbation, or as a pledge of it; for you may be sure he will not put his admiration and praise at a price so high. But more than this, he will with difficulty permit himself to be surpassed. Perfection, nay, the very tendency to perfection, will offend his jealous eyes. He will deny the necessity of this tendency, or rather he will deny the reality of it in your heart; he will misrepresent your intentions; he will call good evil, and candor hypocrisy.
At all times the tendency to perfection has cost those who have frankly avowed it, either repose or fortune, honor, or even life. Whence I conclude that he who desires the glory which comes from the world must descend to the standard of the world, by espousing its maxims, or at least taking care not to profess, I do not say opposite, but only loftier maxims.
When comes the applause of the world? For whom does it prepare crowns? For whom does it raise thrones? And, to present the same question in another form; if one who obeys the perfect law obtains its homage, on what ground does he obtain it? To what part of his being and his life is it addressed? Is it not to that which may be insulated and detached from the fundamental principle of his conduct? Is it not the natural man that they admire in him? Has the supernatural man, the new man, the man of God and of the law, any share in that homage? You know as well as I; you perceive without difficulty, that here the exception confirms the rule, that to secure the glory which comes from men, he must lend himself to their maxims, and proportion himself to their measure; that he must not surpass, that is, humble, those from whom he expects glory. On the other hand, in order to be perfect, he must seek the regard and be ambitious of the approbation of a perfect Being.
How can the soul, which prefers the glory which comes from men to that which comes from God only, believe in Jesus with a real and efficacious faith? He has been compelled to acknowledge Jesus as the Son of God; but the world refuses Him that august title. Since the appearance of that divine Prince of humanity, the world has heaped opprobrium upon the adorers of Jesus. An external and formal adherence to Him has been permitted in consideration of circumstances; but earnest and efficient faith has generally been exposed to derision. Is it then, easy for him who values the opinion of men, to confess that divine Savior, still spat upon and scourged, still crucified as in Golgotha? And must he not, in order to lie prostrate at His feet, have bid adieu for ever to the esteem and approbation of that crowd which reject Him?
“He that says he believes in Jesus Christ, ought to live even as Jesus Christ lived.” But how did He live? In a manner so different from received opinions, that it may be said that His religion is quite opposed to that of the world. The world has its religion, wherein all the passions of the flesh are elevated into divinities. Here is pride; but we are to follow the steps of Him Who was meek and lowly in heart: here is sensuality; but we are to conform our spirit to His Who had not where to lay His head. Here is independence; yet we are to resemble Him Who came into the world to serve, not to be served. Here is selfishness: and we are to be clothed with the dispositions of Him Who gave His life for His friends. In a word, we must embrace a life, some of whose virtues please the world, because they are of use to it, but the general character of which wounds and condemns it. How can all this be done by him who cleaves to the approbation of the world?
The God of the Gospel, my brethren, is a jealous God; He is a God Who will suffer no division, either in adoration or obedience. To seek our law anywhere but in Him is to renounce our Lawgiver; to seek glory anywhere else is to renounce our Judge. And surely He must hold Himself honored by the rivals we give Him! Worms of the earth, creatures of a day, poor sinners, equaled in our esteem, mingled in our homage with the eternal Jehovah, King of Immensity, Sovereign of hearts, adorable Source of all holiness. The fickle judgment of a feeble intelligence preferred to the infallible judgment of the God of truth! There is not even equality here; the creature is not equalized to the Creator; it is placed above Him. From the very moment that the comparison is conceived, the outrage is consummated, the Creator is degraded below the creature; because in such an approximation, to hesitate is already to choose.
We descend exceedingly low, to the very dust, to solicit praise. It is to the false tongue of a neighbor, to the smiling flattery of a wit, to the condescension of some earthly grandee, to the fear of ridicule, to the false customs of society, to some transitory fashion, to the pleasure of making a little stir in the circle of our acquaintances, that we wantonly abandon the dignity of the government of God, and the honor of His Name. Behold the glory of man which we prefer to the glory of God!
There is only one kind of approbation which can be sought without danger; in Heaven, that of God, on earth, that of the saints. And we must not seek even the latter, except as a manifestation of the divine approbation. In general the reproofs of the just are of more value than their praises. Let us not forget those beautiful words of David: “Let the righteous smite me, it shall be a favour: let him reprove me, it shall be to me an excellent balm” (Psa. 141:5). He has not spoken thus of the praises of the righteous.
Even on earth, the triumphs of self-love are vain and miserable. They do not fill the heart. They can only deepen more and more the immense and devouring void; the first effect of a triumph is to produce the desire for another. Changes of opinion are excessive and cruel.
I repeat it, then, that, if to be conformed to truth it were only necessary to know it, you might rely upon yourselves for the success of this discourse. But experience has proved to you the contrary. There are a thousand truths that have subdued your intellect, without controlling your life. Know then, that this work is not yours, and that you will never save yourselves. Ah! you feel it, perhaps. To renounce the esteem of the world, to cease making it an end and a rule, and to seek only the approbation of God, is a miracle which belongs only to God to work in you, and which it is your privilege to ask of Him.
May you, then, may we all, ask it of Him, with sincerity, earnestness and perseverance. May we see forming in our hearts a holy tranquility, with reference to the judgments of men. Freed from the heavy chains of opinion, may we feel ourselves free to believe, to love, to obey, till the day comes when, delivered for ever from that importunate vision of human glory, we shall rejoice in the rays of a true glory, in the bosom of our God and of His Christ.
PITIFULLY SMALL
I was exceedingly ambitious as a boy to have a name that would rung around the world, that would set me on a pinnacle with everybody staring at me and acclaiming me, but when God sanctified me I felt that the angels must look down upon the honors that men bestow upon each other about as we look down upon the honor that the ants in the ant-hill may bestow upon some distinguished ant leader. It all looked so pitifully small to me and it does to this hour.—Commissioner S. L. Brengle.

An ambition for the honor of reaping the greatest results for Christ may be quite another thing from the ambition to be most self-sacrificing, most humbly devoted to, and most ardent in love for Him. The former may be of the earth earthy, centering in and reverting to one’s self the latter cannot be.—David Hill.

Then learn to scorn the praise of men,
And learn to lose with God;
For Jesus won the world through shame,
And beckons thee His road.
God’s glory is a wondrous thing,
Most strange in all its ways,
And, of all things on earth, least like
What men agree to praise.
As He can endless glory weave
From what men reckon shame,
In His own world He is content
To play a losing game.
—F. W. Faber.
GEORGE HENRY LANG
God’s Obedient Servant

“The only authentic information concerning my family in earlier times,” wrote G H. Lang in an account of his ancestry, “is that its original head was a tenant of a particularly attractive property on a large and well-ordered estate and was especially favored by the noble owner. But, being discovered in an alliance with an implacable enemy of his landlord—in the very act—he was summarily ejected with his wife who, in truth, had led him open-eyed into such folly. He was thus reduced to the level of a common field laborer. And the ill-effects of his ingratitude and misconduct have dogged the footsteps of each and all of his descendants unto this day. Their names were, of course, Adam and Eve.”
The author of such a description of the fall of the human race had more than an ordinary understanding of the Word of God. Born into an Exclusive Brethren family, from infancy he was reared in an atmosphere where the Bible was studied and honored with the utmost diligence and reverence.
When we add to that, the influence of such a true saint of God, as Robert Chapman of Barnstable, Devon, who led George’s grandfather to the Savior, it is evident that the Master Potter was shaping this vessel for no ordinary use. Nor is it surprising that, with such a scriptural concept of the depravity and lostness of humanity, George Lang should early possess a deep hunger for full salvation and also should become a most coherent exponent of the sanctified as well as of the converted life.
George Henry Lang was born in November, 1874, at Greenwich, then a refined suburban district of south-east London. His mother died eight days after his birth. Fortunately for him and his sister, his father married again in 1876. And still more fortunate was the choice he made of a stepmother for his two small children. Lang wrote of her:
“Though I owe not my natural life to my stepmother, I owe to her, under God, everything else that a mother can give and also my spiritual life.”
Mr. Lang later expressed his opinion that Christian parents should instruct their children, not only in the truth of the redemption and pardon received from Christ as a personal Redeemer, but also that the Holy Spirit is Sanctifier and Indweller. He believed that, had he known these further verities, his life, even as a child, would have glorified the Savior more.
His early education involved attendance for several years at a preparatory school for boys in Sidcup. Later he enrolled as a student in one opened by a Congregational minister, an able instructor to whom he owed much. On Sundays, he walked a total of fifteen miles to attend services.
George commenced work as an office boy in a builder’s firm and, successively, became a junior clerk in several insurance companies. By the time he was eighteen, he was in charge of the claims department of a large insurance company in Bristol. This necessitated his leaving home, but God directed his steps, and he found lodgings with a Christian family in that city.
The spiritual conflicts of a Christian in the business world can well be imagined. One day, the manager, while dictating some letters, made a statement which George knew to be untrue. What a struggle went on within his heart! He was reluctant to say, “It is a lie, Sir.” But the Holy Spirit, which was gaining increasing control in his youthful breast, gave both the courage and wisdom to face the issue, and the young man remarked, “I think, Sir, it would hardly do to say that. The case does not really stand so.”
The manager rapped his desk with his knuckles for a few moments, then altered the wording of the letter. The young clerk had won another victory in his own spiritual life. The shrewd business man knew that a clerk who would not lie for him would not lie to him and from that day he was fully trusted.
About this time, the great crisis of his Christian life occurred. However, preceding this, he had made a decision which doubtless prepared the way. He had long cherished a secret and ardent attachment to a young woman, a Christian in the same circle of friends. He had not consciously given her a hint of his regard but, at this time, God showed him that, from his heart, he must relinquish this affection. It was a most poignant experience but, through prayer and self-discipline, he was enabled to obey the divine command. Later it became evident that she would not have been a suitable companion in the life to which God was leading him and for which He was painstakingly preparing him.
From his own words, we understand the great struggle and victory, which marked the beginning of the overcoming life, which only those who discover the fuller possibilities of Calvary can hope to live.
“A vicious habit learned at school had continued to master me for ten or eleven years. I was a slave, and cruel was the slave-master. How desperately I struggled, how dismally I failed. How bitterly I mourned, how sincerely I confessed, how sweetly was I forgiven. I knew the unfailing grace of God in fulfilling 1 John 1:9, ‘If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.’
But pardon so freely accorded did but make me the more ashamed of my sin. The way of pardon I knew; the way of victory I knew not. I had been well instructed and well assured as to justification; the means of sanctification I had not been shown. I could tell the lost how to be saved, but could not tell the saved how to be holy. Calvary was a precious reality; of Pentecost I had no experience. Before God I was in Christ by faith; now Christ was to enter me by His Spirit. The hour of deliverance struck.
“Kneeling at my bedside in an agony of conflict, fighting a desperate but losing battle, suddenly, with overwhelming authority the Voice spoke the words, ‘I know that in me, (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing’ (Rom. 7:18). Instantly the whole situation was illuminated. The truth of the assertion had been burned into my soul by years of dismal failure. In the intensity of the moment, I exclaimed, ‘Then, Lord, victory over sin will never come out of me, for that is a very good thing, and there is no good thing in me, and You can’t get blood out of a stone. Now, Lord Jesus, I will see what Thou wilt do for me.’
“At that instant I was free, free forever. One moment, I was the slave; the next moment, the master. One moment, I was a weakly infant in the grip of a giant; the next moment, I was Samson rending the lion as a kid. Long I had labored in vain to draw water out of a dry well. Now I drank the water of life and knew that word in power, ‘The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death’ (Rom. 8:2).”
Two other important factors entered into Mr. Lang’s life about this time. One was the vital conception he obtained in regard to the importance and method of consistent, honest, impartial study of the Bible. He became convinced that “all scripture is given by inspiration.” So, time and again, he read the entire Word of God from cover to cover. This strengthened that which was Bible-backed both in his beliefs and living.
The other significant event of this period was the meeting of his future partner. His landlady had invited a few Christian friends to the home where he lodged. Among them was Florence Mary Brealey, whose father and grandfather were godly men and had engaged in considerable evangelistic work in Devon, where they lived. Her sister, Ada, became a devoted missionary in India.
Some three years before his marriage, Mr. Lang had accepted an appointment as Pastor of Unity Chapel in Bristol. He had given up his secular employment and, after a year of service at the Chapel, requested the cessation of a regular allowance. The way was now clear for a life of faith.
After eight years of ministry at Unity, Mr. Lang was convinced that his divine Master was asking him to go abroad, so in March, 1909, he set forth. It was while ministering abroad that Mr. Lang perceived how unschooled in the lessons of overcoming Satanic forces were many of the missionaries whom he met. They had never been instructed as to how to gain the advantage over the Adversary’s methods. The experienced warrior says:
“For myself, in England, on race courses, in slums, in Gospel work in a priest-ridden village, and, indeed, and alas, in the church of God also, I had been given preliminary experience of Satan’s kingdom, its atmosphere, dangers and strength. I had been in active and varied labors for eighteen years before the Lord sent me to India in my thirty-sixth year. But for this I could easily have collapsed under the moral and spiritual assaults not to be avoided on such Devil-ridden territory.”
One incident illustrates his ministry in India:
“There came to me at Coonoor an earnest young woman, a teacher in a school. She bemoaned that for a long while she had found herself plagued with jealousy of her fellow-workers. If the principal but spoke kindly to or looked kindly at another of the staff, she felt wickedly jealous of her. So obsessed was she, and so ruined was her inward life, that she felt she must return to her home in America, unless deliverance could be gained.
“Now it is important to make sure that such a disease in the moral realm is not a symptom of disease in some physical organ. This can be the case. But in this friend there was no reason to think that this was a factor. She had never been so troubled in earlier years, and her general health was good.
“I told her that the Bible gave an explanation of her case, but that it was sorrowful and humiliating. James 3:14-15 says that where bitter jealousy is found, it is earthly (not from Heaven); but soulical (not of the new spiritual nature); demoniacal and that, in some way, no doubt unrecognized by her, she must have given access to a demon to infect her with this evil feeling.
“I then pressed upon her that, if she would humbly accept this as God’s explanation of the matter, then she could claim such a promise as 1 John 3:8, ‘For this purpose was the Son of God manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.’ With bitter tears, she bowed before God, claimed the promised deliverance and was set free immediately and permanently. In the text cited above, the word ‘destroy’ means to loosen, disentangle, and so set free, as a bird from a snare or a captive free from the cords of his captor.”
After his return to England, calls for evangelistic effort reached him from many countries—Egypt, Tunisia, Palestine, Germany, Romania, as well as others. Some of these lands he visited several times, remaining for considerable periods of time. Always he trusted his heavenly Father for his own expenses and the sustenance of his family. Towards the close of these “journeyings oft” he wrote:
“Long before I was called out of secular business and separated unto the Gospel, I had been taught by the love of God to find happiness in keeping my personal expenditures low and using for others the whole surplus. For thirty years, I have not issued circular letters as to journeys or other undertakings. And I have thus proved the thorough soundness of George Muller’s resolve that he would not knock at man’s door until he should find his Heavenly Father’s door locked against him. That was a valid and prevailing argument by Catherine of Siena, that she was prepared to be the second to whom God should fail to keep His word, but she was not willing to be the first.”
In one of his books, Mr. Lang illustrates the working of the above principle by citing an instance in a certain mission field, where several missionaries, sent out by home boards and supported by the same, had labored for years with little success. However, in the course of time, one of God’s servants commenced work in those same areas in New Testament simplicity both as to method and finance. With a definite assurance that he had been called of God, he chose his Heavenly Father as the source of his supplies. It is not surprising that the Lord of the harvest blessed this course by saving precious souls.
With the outbreak of World War 2, his activities in foreign lands were curtailed. But the need of evangelism in England called for his consecrated energies. At this period, he also devoted much time to writing. The books that issued from his pen were intended especially to encourage God’s children to advance in the spiritual life. Pictures and Parables is one of his outstanding works. He also helped in translations from the German.
To the end of his life, Mr. Lang’s conception and personal application of the truth of the complete Lordship of Christ was most evident. Personal interests, family claims, the opinions of strong men about him—all were eclipsed by the fact of his love for and obedience to the loving commands of his divine Head.
This obedient servant witnessed with regret the humanly planned efforts that have become so evident in our modern evangelistic methods. He constantly exhorted one and all to let God do the planning and the ordering, as for example in the following:
“We need to get back to the original apostolic plan of waiting for the Lord to take the initiative in all His work, special as well as ordinary. If He sends Paul to Corinth, it will be found that He has much people there. If He forbids Paul to go to Ephesus it is because the time for work there has not yet come. His control when we accept it, is real and perfect.”
Regarding soul-winning, this “single-eyed” man of God decried, like others today, the methods of organized evangelism. We read in his booklet, God at Work on His Own Lines:
“The most common plan is to arrange a ‘mission’; to call in some stirring evangelist, perhaps with a tent; to advertise around, and in general to stir things up and get a move on. My experience on that line has been discouraging. I had co-operated with one mighty effort, when money had been spent like water for months; thousands had filled a vast hall, and hundreds went into the inquiry room. At the close, thirty-four names were sent to me of persons who had given our hall as their spiritual center. Only one or two had ever been near us. For six months I visited them all diligently and I fear that only four had been touched by the Spirit of God.”
In contrast he tells about an experience of his own in a small English village, while residing there for some little time when laid aside as far as world-wide travels were concerned. A farmer and he were convinced that intercessory prayer was the key to the situation. They waited until the Lord sent His own human instrument along—a Scottish evangelist. There was no spectacular rushing forward on the part of inquirers, but on the last night of the effort one soul was saved. The evangelist went on his way, but the blessed but quiet work of conviction and conversion proceeded from this point.
Numbers of the converts were young people who were happy to unite with the more mature Christians and a blessed fellowship was established between old and young. It was not necessary to provide special young people’s meetings. Too often these have the baneful result of cleavage within the church which is weakening. No precious hours were wasted singing choruses. The weekly meeting for prayer and Bible study was now attended by fifteen to twenty, mostly youths and maidens. It was but a year or two before God had raised up five preachers in that village church. Mr. Lang further comments:
“In the home, in business, the church and the Gospel it is dreadfully usual for Christians to make their own arrangements on their own initiative and by their own wisdom; and then they ask the Lord to add His blessing. But the Lord of Glory is not our lackey to further our plan, but our Lord to command us for the furtherance of His plan.
“For this we must wait His initiative, His direction, His prior activity. ‘When thou hearest the sound of marching in the tops of the mulberry trees . . . then thou shalt bestir thyself; for then shall the Lord go out before thee! (2 Sam. 5:24). We may bestir ourselves vigorously before God has gone forth, but defeat will result.
“It is my especial wish and prayer that this account of the Lord’s gracious ways with myself may encourage my brothers and sisters in Christ to give to God, their Father, His full, rightful place, as the sole Orderer of life, to His praise and their own good. And in particular, I long that my fellow-preachers of the Word should commit their service to His direct ordering: and abandon the injurious practice of mortgaging the future by looking ahead unless, of course, by unmistakable divine guidance.
“How can one be a messenger unless he waits every time for both the message and the time and the person to whom to deliver it? The general habit of taking time and gifts out of the actual control of the Head of the Church has plainly forfeited His unction to a lamentable degree.”
This obedient servant of God lived to be eighty-four years of age. In the decline of his last months, shortly before his death, Mr. Lang wrote to a friend, “Remember me still, a frail old warrior, ready to fold his cloak around and go to sleep.” He passed from time to eternity to further serve His Lord on the 20^th October, 1958.
(We acknowledge permission from Paternoster Press for use of material from An Ordered Life by G. H. Lang).
It’s the life you live after death that counts. If you haven’t died, the life you are now living isn’t counting.—Mr. Homer, Bible Baptist Missionary, Taiwan.
God has two thrones—one in the highest heavens, the other in the lowliest hearts.

“Oh, what a heart was mine!
A den of raging beasts!
Without, a mansion fine;
Within, satanic feasts!
There foulest thoughts did freely rove,
There furious passions fiercely strove.

“Oh, what a heart was Thine!
A region undefiled;
Heaven’s light undimmed did shine,
The verdant landscape smiled;
There thoughts serene held converse sweet,
There luscious fruit God’s eye did greet.

“And Thou hast come to me
Within my heart to dwell,
My spirit’s life to be!
Oh, who the bliss can tell?
Now Thou Thy life dost shed abroad,
And Thou of all my heart art Lord.

“The passions rage no more,
And Satan flees apace;
Now Love’s pure flood doth pour
To beautify the place;
And oh, Thy peace, Thy joy are mine,
Since now my heart is wholly Thine.

“Though evils lurk around,
And I must watch and pray,
Yet Thou within art found,
And Thou dost win the day;
When e’en the flesh doth strive again
How swift the victory Thou dost gain!

“How radiant the room
When Thou art on the throne;
The garden needs must bloom
Where Thou Thy face hast shown;
Thou, Sun of righteousness, dost shine,
And flood the heart with health divine.

“The chalice of Thy joy
I now have sipped and cry—
All other pleasures cloy,
Let sin’s foul cisterns dry;
That Thou within my heart dost dwell
Yields streams from Heaven’s exhaustless well.”
—G. H. Lang.
There is something in every man that resents the interference of God. Before a man can be saved, the central citadel of his being has to be stormed and taken possession of by the Holy Spirit.
* * * * * * * * *
The simplicity which is in Christ is rarely found among us. In its stead are programs, methods, organizations, and a world of nervous activities which occupy time and attention, but can never satisfy the longing of the heart.—A. W. Tozer.

THEY LEARNED THE SECRET

“That no flesh should glory in his presence” (1 Cor. 1:29).

Many of God’s dear children, after a series of frustrations, failures and deep heart-searchings, have learned that “the greater the spiritual activity within a man the less is he able to ascribe this activity to himself.” The mysteries of the kingdom are revealed to babes, and divine power is given to those who empty themselves of all that is of self. Different expressions are used in order to convey this humbling process of “becoming nothing” that He might be exalted. How careful were some of the ablest of Christians to return all the glory to their Maker.

Henry Venn relates how in his associations with Mr. Fletcher, he noted how unfeigned was his humility and how spontaneous his hatred of personal glorification. He says:
“When I thanked him for two sermons he had one day preached to my people at Huddersfield, he answered as no man ever did to me. With eyes and hands uplifted, he exclaimed, ‘Pardon, pardon, pardon, O my God.’ The words went to my very soul. Great grace was upon this blessed servant of Christ.”
Robert Murray McCheyne, the young man in whose church God was so graciously pleased to pour out of His Spirit, realized the truth of man’s innate pride and God’s glory.
“I sometimes think that a great blessing may come to my people in my absence. Often God does not bless us when we are in the midst of our labors, but we shall say, ‘My hand and my eloquence have done it.’ He removes us into silence, and then pours down a blessing so that there is no room to receive it; so that all that see it cry out, ‘It is the Lord.’
“It is our truest happiness to live entirely for the glory of Christ—to separate between ‘I’ and ‘the glory of Christ.’ We are always saying, ‘What have I done? Was it my preaching, my sermon, my influence? Whereas we should be asking, What hath God wrought?’”
Andrew Bonar, the biographer of McCheyne as well as being a writer and pastor, observed that he could tell when a Christian was growing. In proportion to his growth in grace he would elevate his Master, talk less of what he himself was doing and become smaller and smaller in his own esteem, until, like the morning star, he fades away before the rising sun. Of himself, he said,
“My ambition now is very feeble compared with other days. To win souls and to know God more, and then to be in the kingdom, is all my desire.”
Hudson Taylor realized the necessity of ascribing all honor to God. Once when a minister introduced him to a crowded audience, he referred to him “as our illustrious guest.” Mr. Taylor stood quietly for a minute, his face illuminated and then replied, “Dear friends, I am the little servant of an illustrious Master.”
Alexander MacLaren when praised as a guide and teacher whose name called forth veneration, replied in a pained voice: “Oh, stop! I cannot listen to words like these. When I woke this morning and thought, I said to myself, ‘A sinner saved by grace—that is all.’”
Barclay Buxton asked his wife to keep from him any praise that she might hear concerning him or his addresses “because pride is such a danger to me.”
Billy Bray realized that humility was his safeguard through life. An aged person remembered hearing him say on one occasion,
“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.”

1. L. Moodycould boast of little formal education, and grammatical errors abounded in his letters. His physical appearance was not attractive. His voice was high pitched and his tones nasal. A reporter, who was covering his campaigns, endeavored to discover the secret of his power, observed, “I can see nothing whatever in Moody to account for his marvelous work.”

Moody chuckled, “Of course not. The work is God’s, not mine.”
Francis Ridley Havergal renounced all idea that her poetry or hymns were the result of her own gifts:
“My experience is that it is nearly always just in proportion to my sense of personal insufficiency in writing anything, that God sends His blessing and power with it; so I don’t wonder that your papers are so sweet, and helpful! I think He must give us that total dependence on Him for every word, which can only come by feeling one’s own helplessness and incapacity, before He can very much use us. And so I think this very sense of not having gifts is the best and most useful gift of them all. It is so much sweeter to have to look up to Him for every word one writes. I often smile when people call me ‘gifted,’ and think how little they know the real state of the case, which is that I not only feel that I can’t, but really can’t, write a single verse unless I go to Him for it and get it from Him. You know I only desire His glory and not F. R. H.’s credit; and I greatly shrink from anything of mine being used only as a sort of compliment to me!”
Mrs. Elizabeth Swift Brengle wrote to her husband, Colonel Brengle:
“I think if all this hoisting up of our great men in front of the Cross could be stopped, it would be one great step toward regaining some of our lost power. Continue to insist on this in your case, and I believe God will greatly reward you . . . I am sure it grieves God. You know I love to hear you lauded, and I can spend many happy hours at it. But when I go to meetings I want no one mentioned but the One Who can save people from sin.”

1. D. Drysdale,a man greatly used of God in our own day, remarked,

“How often during those waiting years the prayer would rise to God, ‘Lord, never permit me to enter the ministry until non-apparent success will not cause discouragement; or apparent success cause inflation and pride.”
—Compiled by Lillian G. Harvey.
SOMEBODY’S STEALING GOD’S GLORY

Eric S. Fife wonders why we talk so little about the most important factor in the work of the Kingdom.

When the walls of Jericho fell, God’s people exclaimed in praise, “What God has done!” But today, when something notable happens in the work of the Church, people say, “How did you do it?”
What fascinates us, what occupies our time and energies, is methods. The principle of our complete dependence upon God to do His work is lost in the shuffle.
The British, especially in the conduct of world missions, have a reputation for stressing principle while being rather vague about the method. Americans, on the other hand, are noted for their innovative and aggressive attention to method.
When one aspect is emphasized at the expense of the other it becomes a caricature or even a heresy. Today, methods in the church receive so much emphasis that we have reached a place of great danger. The Bible says little about method but dwells continually upon principle. This is why the Biblical Church has been so adaptable, flourishing, both in highly civilized societies and in primitive tribes.
What is our focus?
Today the evangelical Church is choking on its preoccupation with methods. In a word, the focus is on self, not on God and His glory.
One organization uses four steps to lead people to Christ. It not only presses people to use the steps but even copyrights them! A book is written about the ten churches that raise the biggest missionary offerings. Another extols the ten churches with a remarkably successful evangelistic program.
In our work we assume that God’s supreme purpose in the world is to save men, and accordingly we emphasize methods that promise to accomplish this. The fact is, however, that God’s supreme purpose is to glorify Himself.
Yet we continue to saturate our trainees with methods. In most cases the Apostle Paul would not have been accepted by our schools or our boards. When we bring a person from overseas for training in the West, he rarely returns home knowing more about God; rather he returns knowing more about the ingenuity of man.
Some time ago I was given responsibility for speaking at a great congress on evangelism. Beforehand one of the best known youth leaders in the world urged me not to talk about motives. I was stunned and asked why he had this concern. “Because I have a method for leading men to God. It works and therefore it must be the sovereign will of God.” I was so amazed that I had a most remarkable experience—I was lost for words.
“If it works it must be of God.” A handy, all-purpose slogan, suited for the board room of McDonald’s Hamburger chain and for all kinds of political deals! But what a perversion for the “kings and priests of God!”
The real problem is that we have become so man-centered that we are blind to the importance of keeping God central. As a result, we copy business methods that are extremely bad taste and act as if we, armed with the latest copyrighted approach, can lead a person to God. But, of course, only God can lead a person to Himself.
Our chief purpose is not to help man. The Bible teaches that our top priority is to glorify God. Until we realize this we shall think in terms of statistics, men and methods. Instead, let us be obsessed with the Lord Himself, “to whom be glory for ever and ever, Amen.”—in Convention Herald.

BEWARE, THE PRAISE OF MEN!

A translation of a certain book was sent by its author to J. N. Darby. In the preface, the writer had given a most flattering opinion of the eminence and piety of J. N. Darby. We give in abbreviated form the letter Darby sent to the author, in which he repudiated the undue praise:
Pride is the greatest of all evils that beset us, and of all our enemies it is that which dies the slowest and the hardest; even the children of the world are able to discern this. Madam De Stael said, on her deathbed, “Do you know what is the last to die in man? It is ‘self-love.’” God hates pride above all things because it gives to man the place that belongs to Him Who is above, exalted over all. Pride intercepts communion with God, and draws down His chastisement, for “God resisteth the proud.”
I am sure, then, you will feel, my dear friend, that one cannot do another a greater injury than by praising him and feeding his pride. “A man that flattereth his neighbor spreadeth a net for his feet.” “A flattering mouth worketh ruin.” Be assured, moreover, that we are too short-sighted to be able to judge of the degree of our brother’s piety; we are not able to judge it aright without the balance of the sanctuary, and that is in the hand of Him Who searches the heart. Judge nothing, therefore, before the time, until the Lord come, and make manifest the counsels of the heart and render to every man his praise.
The most eminent Christian is one of those of whom no one has ever heard speak, some poor laborer, or servant whose all is Christ, and who does all for His eye and His alone. The first shall be last. Let us be persuaded to praise the Lord alone. He only is worthy of being praised, revered and adored. His goodness is never sufficiently celebrated. The song of the blessed, Revelation 5, praises none but Him Who redeemed them with His blood. It contains not one word of praise for any of their own number—not a word that classed them into eminent, or not eminent—all distinctions are lost in the common title, the redeemed, which is the happiness and glory of the whole body.
We cannot have two mouths—one for God’s praise, and one for man’s. May we, then, do now what the seraphim do above, who with two wings cover their faces, as a token of their confusion before the holy presence of the Lord; with two cover their feet, as if to hide their steps from themselves; and with the remaining two fly to execute their Lord’s will, while they cry, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of Hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory.”

SOMETHING OUT OF NOTHING

It’s the nature of God to make something out of nothing; therefore when anyone is nothing, God may yet make something of him.”—Martin Luther.
A once venerable bishop was a man of commanding abilities, and at an unusually early age was placed at the head of a college. This nourished the propensity to self-confidence and vanity, which became conspicuous even to the students. While he would have died the next hour at the stake rather than deny his Lord, he was far from having died to his self-trust, so that the Christ-life might fill his career. His stature was as much larger than that of other men as were his mental abilities.
One day he visited one of his students, who was raving in a delirium of fever. As the young man caught sight of the large figure of his instructor, he turned on him, and said wildly, “Great big Mr. President! great big Mr. President! You think yourself some great one. When you preach you are so big that you hide the Cross; all that we see is great big Mr. President!”
The Lord, by these delirious ravings, brought him to see his self-conceit; that self and not Christ, had been uppermost. He at once went out “weeping bitterly” to a lonely spot in the woods, and there on his face he confessed it all to his merciful Savior. There he learned the lesson of resurrection life. Forty years of eminently successful labor for Christ had borne the impress of that sacred hour of self-renunciation and trust. I heard him, in his old age, tell this incident with tears in his eyes, to a company of many hundred ministerial brethren.—Oxford Holiness Meetings.

SMALL BEGINNINGS

Great revivals among God’s people and awakenings among the ungodly never begin in a great way. They begin as oak trees begin. There is nothing startling and spectacular about the beginnings of an oak tree. In darkness, in loneliness, an acorn gives up its life, and the oak, at first only a tiny root and a tiny stem of green, is born out of the dissolution and death of the acorn. So revivals are born, so souls are won, so the Kingdom of God comes. Some one, no longer trying to save himself or to advance his own interests, dies—dies to self, to the world, to the praise of men, to the ambition of promotion, for place, for power, and lives unto Christ, lives to save men, and the awakening of sinners comes; souls are born into the kingdom of God, they rally round their leader and in turn become soul-winners. “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”—S. L. Brengle.
Foam-like, man with vain pretensions
Dashing upwards sinks and dies;
Tree-like, saints to full dimensions
Solidly and slowly rise.
—Selected.
A gourd wound itself round a lofty palm, and in a few weeks climbed to its very top.
“How old mayest thou be?” asked the new-comer.
“About a hundred years.”
“About a hundred years, and no taller! Only look! I have grown as tall as you in fewer days than you count years!”
“I know that very well,” replied the palm; “every summer of my life a gourd has climbed up around me, as proud as thou art, and as short-lived as thou wilt be.”
—Selected.
Does it not belong to a participation in the humiliation of Jesus that I should consent that my Savior should be in me, first, as a little Child, and gradually grow up? But does not pride often desire that we should all at once experience the kingdom of God in its full power and that the powers of the world should be hurled down at one blow? But divine wisdom has ordered that only by fighting and tears we should grow up to the perfect man in Christ Jesus. The new birth is indeed a miracle, but it is no enchantment. Therefore the new man is not made perfect at one stroke; there needs contest and struggle, weeping and praying.
It was only the carnal eye which despised the lowliness of Jesus, as He lay there, a little helpless Babe in the cradle; and it is only the carnal eye which despises the beginnings of the spiritual life in the heart of man because they seem insignificant. But is not even a little spark, fire? Test it, blow upon it, add coals to it, and it will become a great fire.—Tholuck.
MESSAGE OF VICTORY, No. 31
April-June, 1976

GOD IS THE LOVABLE ONE!

It is necessary that we seek to acquaint ourselves with God as He has revealed Himself in the Scriptures. We must not content ourselves with the notions that people have about God; but we must diligently seek to know what He has disclosed regarding Himself. For the notions which the world has about God and His character are not the truth. And we do not want merely to gather our views from what the church says about God, or what Christian men say about Him. But we want to come to the very fountain, the revelation the Lord has made of Himself in His written Word; and step by step, as we read, to learn not only of the power, infinite wisdom, justice, and holiness of our God, but also of His gentleness, pity, beautifulness and bountifulness.
When we read and see what God has revealed of Himself in His Word, we shall find out more and more from it that God is the lovable One, God is the lovable One. Before I go any further, I stop and ask you what is the response of your inmost soul? Is God, to you, the lovable One? If not, you are not acquainted with Him. You have yet to find out that He is the most lovable One. The result will be that you will confide in Him unreservedly, at all times, in all circumstances. Though He slay you, yet will you trust in Him.
Read Psalm 9:9-10: “The Lord also will be a refuge for the oppressed, a refuge in times of trouble. And they that know Thy name will put their trust in Thee; for Thou Lord, hast not forsaken them that seek Thee.” If these words are not according to the world’s views; if they are not according to the practice of church members, do not be troubled, for their notions are often plainly erroneous. We who learn to see God as He has revealed Himself in His Word, are so satisfied with Him and with His dealings with us, that we see everything He does is for our good.
On this account, it is deeply important for our usefulness and for our growth in faith that we get correct ideas of God from the fountain of truth contained in His Word. And, in the exercise of our faith, and in studying God’s Word, our Faith grows.
The Church is not aroused to see God as the beautiful and lovable One He is, and hence the littleness of blessedness. Oh, beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, seek to learn for yourselves, for I cannot tell you the blessedness. In the darkest moments I am able to confide in Him, for I know what a beautiful and kind and faithful and lovable Being He is. And if it be the will of God to put us in the furnace, let Him do it, that we may acquaint ourselves better with Him as He will reveal Himself to us. Let us say, “It is my Father—let Him do as He pleases.”
Fifty-one years ago, when I first began allowing God to deal with me—simply relying on Him for myself, family, taxes, traveling expenses and every other need—I rested on the simple promises of His Word. I found in Matthew sixth chapter the passage, “I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, whet ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? . . . Take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? Or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow; for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”
I believed the Word, rested on it, and practiced it . . . In the last half century of labor I have been able, with the simplicity of a little child, to rely upon God. I have had my trials, but I have laid hold on God, and so it has come that I have been sustained. It is not only permission, but positive command that He gives us to cast the burden upon Him. Oh, let us do it, my beloved brothers and sisters in Christ. “Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee” . . . And now come with your burdens, the burdens of your business, your profession, your trials and difficulties; and you will find help.
—George Muller.
The Hundredth Report of the Muller Orphanages records over £3,000,000 raised in the century, or an average of £30,000 a year, without a single advertisement or appeal or request for help, but by prayer only. As The Spectator said on the occasion of Muller’s death, let him who doubts or denies the power of prayer attempt to raise the same sum, and that for orphans, by the same methods, but without prayer, and let him see what happens.
Believe Good Things of God

When in the storm it seems to thee
That He Who rules the raging sea
Is sleeping—still, with bended knee,
Believe good things of God.

When thou hast sought in vain to find
The silver thread of love entwined
With life’s oft-tangled web—resigned,
Believe good things of God.

And should He smite thee till thy heart
Is crushed beneath the bruising smart,
Still, while the bitter tear-drops start,
Believe good things of God.

’Tis true, thou canst not understand,
The dealings of thy Father’s hand;
But, trusting what His love has planned,
Believe good things of God.

He loves thee! In that love confide—
Unchanging, faithful, true and tried;
And let now joy or grief betide,
Believe good things of God.

Thou canst not raise thy thoughts too high;
As spreads above the earth the sky,
So do His thoughts thy thoughts outvie;
Believe good things of God.

In spite of what thine eyes behold;
In spite of what thy fears have told;
Still to His gracious promise hold—
Believe good things of God.

For know that what thou canst believe
Thou shalt in His good time receive;
Thou canst not half His love conceive—
Believe good things of God.
—William Luff.
EDITORIAL

FAITH’S FIELD OF OPERATION

We desire to introduce the following by G. D. Watson because we believe it presents the key to that higher level of faith, the keynote to this issue of the Message of Victory. How our inner souls echo to what we read below! We have been privileged to know in the very slightest measure something of that stripping, disappointing, humbling process that reduces to utter dependence upon the mighty God Who can in the briefest span of time produce that which a life-time of earnest toil cannot accomplish. It will enable the reader to understand the strenuous dealings of a loving God to his soul.
“A nourishment to faith is the removing from the soul of natural and human props. Naturally we lean on a great many things in nature and society, and the Church, and friends, more than we are aware of.
“We think we depend on God alone, and never dream of how much we depend on other things until they are taken from us, and if they were not removed, we should go on, self-deceived, thinking that we relied on God for all things. But God designs to concentrate our faith in Him alone by removing all other foundations, and one step after another detaching us from all other supports.
“There are many souls which cannot endure this utter desolation of secondary supports, which would be more than they could bear, and they would react in open rebellion; so God allows them to have junior faith, and to lean on other things more or less. But to those who are able to undergo the strain of faith, He allows all sorts of disappointments—the death of bright hopes, the removing of earthly friendships or destruction of property, the multiplied infirmities of the body and mind, the misunderstanding of dear ones, until the landscape of religious life seems swept with a blizzard, to compel the soul to house itself in God alone.
“At the time the soul is having all secondary support removed, it does not perceive what is taking place within itself, but afterwards it finds that faith has been growing and expanding with every wave that has beat against it. Faith grows when we least expect it; storms and difficulties, temptations and conflicts, are its field of operation; like the stormy petrel on the ocean, faith has a supernatural glee in the howling of the storm and the dash of the spray.
“Faith not only is nourished by the removal of earthly props, but by the seeming removal of divine consolation. Our answer to prayer seems too long delayed, and faith is tested to the uttermost, when it seems as if the Lord has turned against us and all we can do is to continue holding on, with the pitiful cry of ‘Lord, help me!’
“Even then faith is expanding and growing beyond all we are aware of, by the very extension of the delay of the answer. Long delays serve to purify our faith, till everything that is spasmodic and ephemeral and whimsical is purged out of it, and nothing is left to it except faith alone!”

CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST
A Personal Testimony By J. B. Friend

Hudson Taylor once said: “A trip across the sea will make no one a missionary,” and my promotion to the status of “full-time worker” did not deal with the conflict within. The selfishness of my heart, with its accompanying pride and jealousy, pursued me into the Africa Evangelistic Band. In my unsaved days I could never play “second fiddle.” In my unsaved days I always had to be captain of the cricket or football team, and I found that this spirit was still present.
Unless I was the “star-turn” at a convention I was miserable. The first year in the A.E.B. it seemed as if Mr. von Staden valued my work more than that of the other Pilgrims, and I basked in the sunshine of his favor. The next year (1941) however, Brother G. came to the Transvaal, and achieved success far surpassing anything to which I could lay claim. It was a very bitter pill for me to swallow. I remember Brother G.’s coming to the Transvaal Headquarters. He explained: “I have come to fetch the big tent. I commenced in a house, but we were quickly crowded out. I had fortunately brought the small tent and that was filled in a few days. The first time I made an appeal there, half the congregation stood up to seek the Lord.”
I tried to say, “Praise the Lord.” That was the proper response I knew, yet I was so conscious that there was a bitterness and rebellion in my heart. Why should this man get the crowds, while I was fortunate if I got twenty or thirty to my meetings, with one or two seekers? Then to make matters worse, Mr. von Staden sent me to work in a tent campaign with Brother G. Our kind hostess (and she was kind) would be loud in her praise of my fellow-worker. “Wasn’t Mr. G. wonderful tonight,” she would come and whisper to me. Never a word of appreciation for me! How I wanted to say: “Mrs. S., let me tell you a few things about Mr. G., then you wouldn’t think so much of him.” Oh! praise the Lord for keeping my mouth shut. But praise the Lord still more for the day when I trusted the Lord to deal with the cause of “evil speaking.”
In August, 1942, after our honey-moon, we were sent to the Eastern Cape. Our Superintendent, a great soul-winner, greeted us with tremendous optimism. He almost seemed to think that we were “bringing revival in our suit-cases” though why, I do not know. We had meetings in important churches, good attendances throughout, but we “caught nothing.” This was literally true. After five months of evangelizing not a single soul; not one! This was repeated in Port Elizabeth where we had a series of tent campaigns. It was the time of the “Black Out” (due to war conditions), and I would walk the dark streets, 11.00 p.m., midnight, 1.00 a.m. crying to the Lord for power. I would be up again at 4.00 a.m. my usual hour in those days for commencing the “Morning Watch.” How my body stood the strain I do not know.
We concluded 1942 with a “Special Yuletide Campaign,” conducted from Christmas Day to New Year’s Eve. Again no fish! Our superintendent asked a well-known minister to preach at the final service. He brought a mighty message, and then made an appeal. As all our heads were bowed my heart was saying, “I hope no one raises his hand. If someone does, what will they think of me? They will say, ‘Friend preached a whole week, and no results. This man comes and the first night he gets souls.’” There was no response to the appeal, but, as I groped my way through the Black-Out to my lodgings, I felt like a murderer. I knew some of the people who had been in that service; knew that they needed salvation desperately; yet I wanted them to go to Hell to save my reputation.
In March, 1943, I went to the monthly meeting of the “Victorious Life Testimony.” The Rev. Kenneth Bedwell was preaching on Gal. 2:20. Like a flash of light from the sky this realization burst upon me: “For months you have been praying for power, but what do you really need?” A leader of camp-meetings in America became so tired of the same people coming back year after year for the “fulness” that finally he cried out, “What you people need is not the filling but the killing.” From that moment I no longer sought the Lord for power, but for crucifixion. When the Lord saw that I was on the right track he graciously began to give us souls. From that time onwards we had genuine seekers in every campaign. Yet I myself was not yet through into the experience.
In July, 1943 I went up to Windhoek, the capital of what used to be “German South West Africa,” to be one of the two chief speakers at a convention of the A.E.B. held in the Methodist Church there. The series of meetings commenced on a Thursday, and was planned for ten days. Right throughout I felt as flat as a pancake on which an elephant had sat. I said to myself, “All the money they spent to bring me here (it was a 1,000 mile train-journey) was wasted.” Fortunately my fellow-laborer was dear Mr. H. T. de Villiers, “a man full of faith and the Holy Ghost, mighty in the Scriptures,” and his ministry saved the convention.
By the Wednesday I was utterly desperate. I went out into the fields, determined to seek the Lord until He met me. I got nowhere, however, and, at last, utterly dispirited, crept into bed. The following evening I was sitting in front of the hall while the Chairman of the Convention conducted community singing. I do not know if it was a remark he made, or a line in one of the choruses, but suddenly there came a second flash of Heavenly light. It spoke thus to my heart: “All these months you have been seeking God for crucifixion, but you don’t really believe He can do it.” If, before that revealing moment, you had inquired, “Do you really think the Lord can deliver you from selfishness and pride and jealousy?”, I would have replied, “Why do you ask? Of course I do. That is what I preach.” But that night I saw my “evil heart of unbelief” (Heb. 3:12). While my lips had been crying, “Oh! God, deliver me from this accursed self,” my heart had been replying: “But, Lord, I know you can’t do it. You see, Lord, I’m a Baker” (my mother’s maiden name).
My mother had thirteen brothers and sisters, and it seemed is if they were all the domineering type. They all had to be “No. 1.” They were always right and the other man or woman was wrong. It seems awful to so slander your own family. Yet, unless I am frank, you will find it difficult to understand my problem. When I realized that I had been saying in unbelief, “I was born a Baker; I will die a Baker. I cannot be anything different,” I realized why for weeks and months I had been praying in vain. “Let not that man” (the doubter) “think that he shall receive anything from the Lord” (Jas. 1:7; Revised Version).
The next evening was Friday. I was due to bring the main message, but went to the Chairman and asked: “Would you mind if I just gave a few, short opening remarks?” He readily gave his consent. I have forgotten my exact words, but I said in effect, “Friends, for a week I have been preaching holiness and the victorious life, but I do not experience it myself. My heart is full of selfishness, pride, and jealously. Please pray for me.” I have often asked myself, “Was it necessary for me to strip my soul naked in that way?” I think one should be very cautious in a matter of this sort. I am afraid public confessions have been made, which have only brought embarrassment to the hearers, and unfortunate consequences to the one who made them. Yet to this day I believe that this baring of my inner soul was the will of God.
Up to that point the pride of my heart had produced hypocrisy. I so much wanted people to think well of me, that I was quite willing for them to have an inflated opinion of me. For instance in my early days in the A.E.B. dear Mr. von Staden would tell the friends, “Mr. Friend has made great sacrifices to enter this work. He has given up his splendid position in the commercial world to become a poor Pilgrim.” I think Mr. von Staden was judging my past in business life by the size of the car in which I was driving round. I should have gone to him and said, “Mr. von Staden, I had a good job in Cape Town, but not nearly as wonderful as you think.” To hear these flattering remarks, however, gave a big boost to my ego. I, therefore, did not correct these false impressions and was thus, again, guilty of “making a lie” (Rev. 21:27). But the fact that, on that Friday night, I was so honest about my condition, enabled God to pour His reality into my soul.
The immediate result of that confession was, however, just the very reverse of all I had expected. I had thought, “Now that I have so humbled myself, even into the dust, I will waken up tomorrow to find myself deluged with Divine blessing.” Instead, on the Saturday morning I felt as dead as the chair on which I sat. It seemed as if I had lost every scrap of religion I ever possessed; and as if God Himself had turned His back on me. For years I could not understand why, after obeying God, I should feel so utterly forsaken, until one day it suddenly dawned upon me: Well, of course, the Lord was knocking every prop out from under me, so that I would have nothing upon which I could lean but the naked Word of God.
The workers and speakers at this convention met together each morning for Bible study and united prayer, but I felt too miserable that Saturday to join with them. I went down to the Town Gardens and did something which was always a great comfort to me: i.e. I wrote a letter to my wife. When this rather lengthy epistle was concluded I looked at my watch: “Just time enough to post this letter, and make my way back home for lunch.” When, however, I arrived at the house I found it open, but deserted. They had all been invited out for lunch, but I was not there to tell. When they returned they were very sorry for me. “My, what you have missed! We had a wonderful meal!”
Yet to my dying day, I will be profoundly grateful for the lost lunch. I first of all prepared a little for the afternoon meeting, at which I had to speak, and then discovered that I still had twenty minutes to spare before I needed to walk down to the Methodist Church. In some way, I cannot remember now how, my attention was directed to 2 Cor. 5:14-15 as it is translated in the Revised Version. I noticed two things in that passage: first of all that the Lord Jesus had died on the Cross, not only to deliver us from Hell, (Praise the Lord for that marvelous redemption), but there was something even more in His precious Blood for us. “He died for all, that they that live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto Him Who for their sakes died and rose again.”
This is wonderful, I thought: I can be so really, so radically delivered from all selfishness that I will never again “live unto myself, but unto Him.” All my desiring and doing will arise from selfless love for the Master and men. I saw a second fact: “We thus judge, that if one died for all, therefore all died” (2 Cor. 5:14). I said: “All; why, that includes me.” Immediately I began to praise the Lord. At first it was just a “work” (John 6:29); i.e., a sheer act of the will. I had to make myself praise, for all my feelings were utterly against me.
If at that moment you had asked me, “How do you feel?”, I would have replied, “Feel? I feel awful. I feel as if I am going to Hell.” Yet I walked up and down my little room saying, “Lord, I thank Thee that when You died, I died with You.” As I did so, suddenly I knew it was real. Praise the Lord for His marvelous grace, and praise the Lord that from that day to this I have been able to say with truth and certainty, “I am crucified with Christ” (Gal. 2:20). Yet that assurance has only been mine because the initial faith of that first moment has been repeated day by day, because each morning, and in each test, I have “delivered up myself unto death” (2 Cor. 4:11).
This is, of course, not physical death, for it is “we who live” or, as it is in the original Greek, “we, the living ones” who are “delivered.” For instance, there have been times when I have been pushed into the background, and a younger man advanced to the position that might have seemed mine by right. Or, another worker has been used, while I seemed to have been laid on the shelf. At such moments the Devil has been quick to come and say, “You are the old Friend. Inside you are just as jealous as ever.” But the Holy Spirit, in His tender love, has shown me how to combat the Tempter. At that crucial moment I have cried, sometimes in the silence of my soul on a public platform or in a crowded congregation, “Lord, I thank Thee that when Thou didst die, I died with Thee.” And how quickly the Holy Spirit has responded to the faith of my heart with the renewed assurance that I was still “crucified.”
At other times it has just been the reverse. The Lord has been pleased to use me, and “The Accuser of the Brethren” (Rev. 12:10) has come with his insinuation, “You are just like you used to be; all puffed up inside.” As I have pleaded the power of the Cross I have once again been conscious that the only reaction to God’s gracious using of me, has been humble gratitude. Praise His Wonderful Name!

ONLY A TELEPHONE AWAY

“The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart; that is the word of faith which we preach” (Rom. 10:8).
“The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon him . . . in truth” (Psa. 145:18).

“A famous American business organization has as its advertising slogan: ‘We are as close to you as your telephone.’ Forgive me if I seem to put it too crudely, but that is what Heaven says to earth, what God says to man: ‘We are as close to you as the inner telephone of prayer.’ All God is asking for is a receiving set in your heart and a sincere call from your soul. He will answer!”
The above words are those of the Evangelist Paul Rees who is attempting to expose the biggest lie of Satan. That lie is the suggestion that God is far off and can be approached only by some circuitous, uncertain and very long path, if indeed He can be personally approached at all.
God’s time is always “now” and His place always here. The Apostle made this clear to the heathen of his day by saying, “God is not far from any one of us.” And to his own people, the Jews, he declared that they didn’t have to ascend into the heavens or descend into the earth to make contact with God but that “the word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart.”
The evil one longs that we should believe that God is far distant. The greater the need of the Christian the more insistent will be his effort to impose this deception upon our minds. Recently the author found seven hours of water travel between himself and his dear wife who was ill. Depressed beyond words, he suddenly snapped out of it with a start as he remembered that his loved one was “only a telephone” away. Direct dialing brought communion in less time than it takes to tell. The wife received an instant uplifting.
God’s children are suffering all kinds of onslaughts, tolerating defeats, experiencing frustrations, bowing before problems, and all because they do not realize that the word of connection is in their hearts and that God’s ear is available now. His ear is not heavy that He cannot hear.—Editor.
Faith is the telegraphic wire which links earth and Heaven; on which God’s messages of love fly so fast, that before we call He answers, and while we are yet speaking, He hears. But if that telegraphic wire be snapped, how can we receive the promises?—C. H. Spurgeon.
O seekest thou afar
The secret place, wherein may meet
Thy Lord and thou—where at His feet,
Without a voice of earth to mar
The calm, deep fellowship, thy heart
May worship, utterly alone
With His life only, and thine own,
And all the world apart?

It is not far away
Beyond some distant gates—
The secret place, wherein He waits,
Even today,
To talk with thee.
Dost thou not see—
With eyes so pitifully dim,
And heart so earthbound, even yet—
The center of thy being, thine,
Is set apart by Him,
For His abode! And there,
Making the place divinely fair,
With His own presence, there, I say,
His throne is set.
—E. H. Divall.
A GOD-APPOINTED BRIDGE
By Northcote Deck

Between Rom. 7:24, “O wretched man that I am,” and Rom. 7:25, “I thank God through Jesus Christ,” there is a great gulf fixed! And, alas, most believers seldom cross it, nor find a bridge to span this spiritual chasm! For I suppose most believers (from their own testimonies) and all carnal Christians habitually live and die on the wrong side of the gulf that comes at verse 24. They wander still in the wilderness of the flesh, the “I” country, with its continual conflict and defeat. For you can go to Heaven from verse 23, and probably most believers do, for, except on rare occasions, they get no farther. Hear their despairing voices: “What I hate, that I do” (Chap. 7:18). “For the good that I would (do) I do not, but the evil that I would not, that I do” (v. 19), for “when I would do good, evil is present with me” (v. 21), “bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members” (v. 23). Could you not have written just those words? Have you not often despaired like that? Many and many a time I did as a young medical student.
And to further guide us, and make clear where we dwell, the spiritual landscape of the flesh is so painfully described in Galatians 5:17. “The works of the flesh are manifest, which are these, adultery . . . uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry . . . hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife . . . envyings . . . and such like.” These must be our sordid, hateful surroundings, in large measure, unless we can find some way of deliverance and escape.
Yet across the gulf, the pons asinorum as it were of the spiritual life, there waits for every humblest believer this “better land” of God. It is indeed “a land of pure delight.” In it there “blaze the unimaginable flowers” and fruit of the Spirit. “Heart’s ease” grows well in that fair summer valley along with “joy and peace in believing.” And among other best blossomings there is “a loyal will” and “passion for souls,” and “prevailing prayer.” “Love to all saints,” too, you will find flourishing there, and “power for service” very abundantly. This is indeed “the Lord’s doing, it is marvelous in our eyes.” “Let us go up at once and possess it.”
Yet first let us clearly realize that there are two great opposing spiritual powers, with two distinct codes of laws, on either side of the gulf. On this side. In the realm of the flesh, there is “the law of sin and death.” Here, “the whole world lieth in the evil one,” and Satan has power and great authority. But on the far side there is the realm of God, where only “the law of the Spirit” is in force. And can we but cross over and abide there, we are passed completely beyond the jurisdiction of the powers of darkness, and so, automatically, are liberated from “sin’s dominion.”
To emphasize how far-reaching and important is the difference of government and the altered legal status to the believer, in these two different realms, it is worth-while instancing the slave-holding days in America. There, though for a time a slave might escape from his master in the United States, his liberty was short-lived. The whole weight of the law of the land was against him. But let him once cross the border into Canada, and he was free, automatically free. For he had passed into a new realm where slavery was illegal. And now the whole weight of the law of the land was on his side, protecting him from his old masters. A yard across the border and he was a free man; free, not because he was stronger in himself, or more able to fight and defend himself, but because he had passed right beyond the reach of the old law and the old master. And more, so long as he stayed in Canada he could not be recaptured. For the law of Canada had set him free from the then-slave-holding laws of America.
Now at the new birth a definite change took place in my relationship to “the flesh,” whose realm is “the law of sin.” For I am specifically told (chap. 8:5) that “if so be the Spirit of God dwell in me (as at a conversion) now I am no longer in the flesh, but in the Spirit.” Yet the flesh is not eradicated. During my earthly life there remains enough of the flesh in me for me to go on deliberately living “after the flesh” (chap. 8:12) as a carnal Christian. But as long as I am living on that level I am on the wrong side of the gulf, and am still in Satan’s power and jurisdiction. And so sin will still have dominion over me, for with the flesh I am still serving the “law of sin” (chap. 7:25), and I must be defeated. But when in God’s appointed way I cross the gulf between verses 24 and 25, and so begin to “walk in the Spirit,” as I am urgently exhorted by God, I am entered on a new realm. And at once, automatically, “the law of the Spirit has set me free from the (old) law of sin and death” and Satan (chap. 8:2). And now “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
How then am I to deal with “the flesh” which still remains in me? How am I to cross the gulf and to dwell in the realm of the Spirit? To discover that secret I must go back from what seems to be Paul’s recital of his experience in chapter seven, to his revelation of the doctrine in the sixth chapter. I must go back seeking a bridge with which to span the great gulf. And I find just such a God-appointed bridge in Romans 6:11. Here it is: “Reckon ye yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin,” but reckon ye yourselves to be “alive unto God through Jesus Christ.” Here, then, is the double “reckoning” which is God’s one appointed way for us to deal with the flesh. Here is His perfect and sufficient way of holiness and victory over sin. Let us interpret it in simpler language.
There is first the negative, “reckon . . . yourselves dead.” Now we know that at the grave, the flesh and its fatal proneness to sin is finally finished with. For, “he that is dead is free from sin.” But God is not prepared for many of us to die like that just yet. We have not yet “finished our course.” But as “the flesh” cannot be improved, it must die somehow, if we are to be freed from sin. And so, while we are on earth still, the best thing God can do with the flesh is to count that it is dead, that it died when we died with Christ at conversion (chap. 6:6,8). That is our legal position or standing in God’s eyes. And now He urgently exhorts us to make it true in experience, by “reckoning” the flesh dead, by treating it just as if I were a dead man, and so had nothing further to do with my own natural fleshly desires and ways.
A simple, literal example of such “reckoning dead” in practice was the case of two fashionable girls, recently converted to God. They were asked to a ball by a rich relation, and this is the answer they sent: “We are sorry to have to refuse your invitation. But the fact is it is not possible for us to be present with you, for we are dead! We died with Christ a week ago, so we cannot come!” That was a very simple and effectual putting in the place of death, the old natural self and its desires, of being “crucified with Christ.” But this “reckoning” ourselves literally to be “as dead,” here commanded, is none other than the “absolute surrender” many of us have been practicing with thankful hearts for years, a thought which is also literally Scriptural. For in Romans 6:13, 19, we are exhorted to “yield” or “surrender” ourselves, and our members, “servants” or “bond-slaves” unto God, so that we may be at God’s absolute disposal. And thus we are in effect “as good as dead” to the flesh and our own lusts and desires so long as that “reckoning” is maintained.
But this “reckoning” ourselves as dead, or absolute surrender, is only half the secret. By itself it is not enough for deliverance. And I remember many, many times honestly and wholly surrendering, as a student, without finding deliverance. Climbing out, as it were, on this single half of the bridge, and vainly longing for the other side, for the land and fruit of the Spirit, where a number of my friends so evidently were already. But one only relapsed again into the wilderness of despair. For one was only using half the bridge, and it was inadequate, and could not bear me over. And surely it is evident why. “Reckoning dead” is not life. It is not enough for the house to be “empty, swept and garnished.” It must be occupied, and by Christ Himself. For holiness is not negative, not the mere absence of sin. Holiness is Christ Himself and His perfections appropriated.
So, first, I must make room for Him by this “reckoning dead,” and emptying of self. The temple must be cleansed and prepared by the confession of all known sin, and the giving up of all doubtful practices. But I still need Him as my life, Him, ministered and imparted to me by the Holy Spirit, that I may overcome and “walk in the Spirit.”
Now it is true that in “The Acts” the miracle of Pentecost is described differently. There the wonderful change is described by God: “They were all filled with the Holy Ghost and with power.” And today we likewise are commanded in our turn to “be filled with the Spirit.” Whose, then is the power through which we are to overcome? Some of us, using the language of the Acts, may have been in the habit of thinking it was the Holy Ghost’s own power, that He did the work, and through Him we are to overcome. But it seems clear that, though He is the Executive of the Godhead and as such is to be recognized and honored, and not ignored as a Person, still, the power He imparts, through which we are to overcome, is Christ Himself in His resurrection life.
So now we are ready for the second half of the bridge, for the positive “reckoning.” Reckon yourselves “alive . . . through Jesus Christ,” or “alive” with the life of Christ. And that just means my continually appropriating Christ Himself through the Holy Ghost, as my present and perfect sufficiency. And this appropriation has got to be done by what should be to me the usual, normal act of faith of the Christian. It will not be by my merely “knowing” the truth. I must do more than know it. I must act upon it.
Let us be quite clear about this. “The just” is not only converted by the act of faith, to go on afterwards by works and self-effort. Four times over in the Scriptures we are exhorted: “The just shall live by faith,” that is, by daily appropriating our needed “supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:19), by a succession of definite daily acts of faith. So, as a believer, by this deliberate exercise of faith, I must continually claim and receive, and give thanks for Christ, in all His fulness, imparted to me by the Holy Spirit.
And again let us reiterate, in this deliberate act of appropriation we are depending, not on our feelings of blessing, which change so quickly, but upon God’s faithfulness and promises which never change. Having done our part in asking for, and accepting, and giving thanks, we are now depending on His having done His part, in filling and empowering, though we may feel no different. Personally, what seemed the turning point, the final key, which at the last opened the gates of glory, to one who had been a believer since childhood, though in constant defeat and despair, was the believing that God had answered my definite act of Faith, and had filled with the Holy Ghost though one felt no different. The transaction had been completed on God’s side and on mine, and one’s feelings formed no part of the compact. And I remember that attitude of blind trust, of believing, in spite of feelings, that God had answered and one was “filled” had to be maintained for four long desperate days. Then the Holy Spirit broke through and graciously manifested Himself in power and glory and burning joy, which could not be mistaken, and which completely transformed life, and service, and the whole world.
But that was only the beginning. This double “reckoning” of surrender and appropriation may bring a tremendous crisis into the believer who thus for the first time is “filled with the Holy Ghost.” But, as has so often been said, this first crisis is but to lead to a continued process by which, again and again, I must appropriate Christ Jesus, through the Holy Ghost, for my daily needs.
Having discovered the great secret, the bridge will need to be used again and again (even many times in the day), as the happy years of service and blessing go by. For in a moment we can relapse into the realm of the flesh, and its sins and lusts and failures. But the gulf is no longer impassable! God’s way of deliverance has been discovered. The bridge is available, and will always prove effectual.
It is significant that we are not told when the apostle passed through the spiritual experience of Romans seven, or what happened to him between verses 24 and 25. Surely, like the “thorn in the flesh” both are left undefined that each of us may fill in our own varying spiritual experiences. But I believe that (though often unrealized), with every heart truly “filled with the Holy Ghost,” when analyzed, the experience will be found to have consisted in jut these two complementary acts, emptying and filling, surrender and appropriation, dying and being made alive. And I think as the years go by, and we thankfully continue to practice this reaction of the soul, the two acts will become merged in one. And we shall become more practiced and more habitual in maintaining the position, as it becomes more natural and instinctive to seek to maintain an ungrieved conscience before God. “Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.”
Certainty!
God the Holy Ghost helping you, resolve in your hearts this day that all the boasted discoveries of science you will doubt, all the affirmations of the wise you will doubt, all the speculations of great thinkers you will doubt, all your own feelings and all the conclusions drawn from outward circumstances you will doubt, yea and everything that seems to be demonstrable to a certainty you will doubt, but never, never, never, while eternity shall last, will you suffer the thought to pass your mind that God can ever in the least degree run back from anything that He has spoken, or change the word that has gone forth of His lips.—C. H. Spurgeon.
The Fullness of Faith
By S. A. Keen
Acts 6:5: “A man full of faith.”
Every believer has faith, but not every believer is full of faith; with much faith there may coexist much lack of faith. Therefore Paul longed to see the faces of the brethren at Thessalonica, that he “might perfect that which was lacking in their faith.” The soul may have saving faith and still lack a fulness of faith. We now take up the subject of special faith, which, under various phases, is as clearly distinguished in the Scripture from saving faith as saving faith is from unbelief.
Much of the misapprehension which exists respecting the nature of faith arises from confounding faith in its saving measure with faith in the measure of its fulness. SAVING FAITH is a voluntary act of the soul, by which it appropriates salvation. THE FULNESS OF FAITH is a state of the soul in which it apprehends divine and spiritual things. It is a temper of mind—an entirely new frame of heart. It is faith shorn of none of its saving efficacy, graduated into the “substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen” by the baptism of the Holy Ghost in His indwelling presence received into the soul. Let us notice some of the characteristics of THE FULNESS OF FAITH:

1. A consciously exclusive confidence in God.

Having the fulness of faith, the soul continuously exclaims, under all circumstances, with the Psalmist, “Wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from him.” It is such a vision and persuasion of God’s almightiness, all-lovingness, and all-faithfulness as that the soul is given a set God-ward. It will not look for help self-ward, man-ward, earth-ward, circumstance-ward—or other-ward. Faith in an imperfect measure is often deluded by favorable circumstances or promising indications, only to be disappointed.
I recall in my own early ministry how my immature faith was disappointed on one occasion in its hopes, because it unconsciously reposed in indications. A protracted meeting was begun; the attendance was large; general interest good; my heart prophesied to itself a glorious revival. But the interest evanesced; the results were meager. My faith had been misplaced. As I now know, I had great faith in the indications, and but little faith in God.
A noted evangelist taught me in a very abrupt way a lesson of faith. I had been chosen to welcome him to the city where he was to labor. I met him on his arrival at the station; introduced myself to him, when he at once informally said to me: “Have you faith in God?” I replied: “Our preparatory services have been good; the indications are favorable.” Instantly he rejoined: “We can’t depend on good meetings, favorable indications, or anything of that kind. Have you faith in God?” Then as I came to think of it, I found that I had much faith in the auspicious meetings already held, and in the coming evangelist, but very little faith in God.
The soul that is full of faith never becomes confounded by unconscious dependence upon apparent encouragements. Neither will discouragements dismay it. Oppositions, adversities, difficulties, do not enter into its calculations. It believes fully that all things are possible to him that believeth. It anticipates revivals in the face of prevalent deadness; expects victory where opposition is the most formidable; and keeps in heart where providences are the most disheartening. The fact is, a soul full of faith can’t be discouraged, because it knows it shall not be disappointed. It says, “We are fully able to go up,” though the rabble of unbelief clamors: “We can’t.” It utters the victorious hallelujahs which bring the walls of every frowning Jericho into the dust.
A pastor went to his field of labor; everything was unpromising; religion was in great decline. His wife said: “There can be no success here.” His reply was: “Faithful is He Who hath promised, Who also will do it.” That faith was honored in a most wonderful ingathering of souls and a great quickening of the Church a few months later. Faith in its fulness is
“A faith that shines more bright and clear
When tempests rage without,
That when in danger knows no fear,
In darkness feels no doubt.”
A man full of faith is a man of God. He has sustained conviction that God can not be unfaithful, and has an impressive sense that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who trust Him.

2. A consciously vivid apprehension of Christ.

Having the fulness of faith, Christ is to the soul, the Son of God indeed. The divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ becomes a spiritual verity, rather than a doctrinal conception. The soul on the heights of the fulness of faith exclaims, “My Lord and my God,” as never before. The sacrificial work of Christ receives under the illumination of faith in its fulness a new interpretation to the heart. The mystery of the cross becomes the glory of the soul.
The blood of the cross is exalted into infinite worth; it is seen as the sole ground of reconciliation, justification, sanctification, and eternal redemption. It is recognized not as a part, but as the whole of the atoning work; not as its symbol, but as its substance. The blood has wondrous significance to one who is full of faith. The substitutional propitiatory significance of the death of Christ is no longer a dogma, but a felt truth.
Moreover, the Name of Jesus becomes freighted with a power that is measureless; it is seen as “The Name high over all;” as the prevailing element of successful prayer; as the mediatorial channel of all communion and communication between God and man; as the true Jacob’s ladder which joins earth and Heaven, and turns Christian life into a Bethel—a house of God.
Christ becomes the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the all and in all to the soul which has come into the fulness of faith. So realized is Jesus to the soul in sensible glory that it exclaims:
“O could I speak the matchless worth;
O could I sound the glories forth,
Which in my Savior shine,
I’d soar and touch the heavenly strings,
And vie with Gabriel while he sings,
In notes almost divine!”
I once called upon a lady who had gone through deep waters of sorrow. When I met her she had not been inside of a church for four years, though a Christian. The death of her husband had so saddened her by the peculiar circumstances under which it had occurred, that she could not summon courage to take her accustomed place in the house of God. Besides, the shadow of sorrow rested so deeply upon her heart that she had kept, all through those four years, lights burning every night in every room of her house, not out of superstition, but because she felt that natural darkness, superadded to the darkness of her sorrow, was more than she could bear.
I said to her: “Jesus will help you and comfort you.” She replied petulantly: “You ministers say Jesus will be this and Jesus will be that to the soul, but He has been nothing to me in this sorrow.” I saw she was not in a condition to be talked with much. She was holding on to Jesus as her Savior, but had not embraced Him as her Comforter.
She was made the subject of special prayer by a few to whom her case was reported. A few weeks afterwards she came to one of our morning meetings. I was almost startled when I saw her enter the door. A few minutes after the meeting began she arose, and said in almost an exclamatory tone: “It is true, it is true! Jesus can help a broken heart! Oh, He came into my soul yesterday, and I blew out all the lights last night, and my soul and my home are now brighter than when all were burning.” When she opened her heart and received the Comforter, there sprang up in her heart a fulness of faith which realized Jesus to her in all His “matchless worth.”

3. A consciously higher appreciation of God’s Word.

The Bible is an infallible book to the soul that is full of faith. It is then received as a divine revelation, as the very Word of God. It becomes a volume all instinct with holy inspiration. The plenary inspiration of the Holy Scripture passes from being a merely doctrinal conception into a spiritual apprehension. He who has come into a fulness of faith drops all questioning and quibbling as to the complete inspiration and divine authority of the Scriptures. Their very enigmas, difficulties, and obscurities are accepted as significant, and what is incomprehensible in them is believed even more fully than what is clearly understood. The fulness of faith not only accepts the Bible as an inspired book, but it also renders it an illuminated book. It reads it by a new light, and sees in it new meaning. The Bible, hitherto uninteresting, becomes a supreme delight.
Once in my ministry a lady came to me who was a very creditable worker in my church, and a converted woman. She said to me: “I don’t love to read the Bible. I haven’t a relish for it. I find that I prefer to read the magazines and the best authors and current papers. There must be something wrong. I know I ought to love the Bible.” I said: “There is something wrong. You need that baptism of the Holy Spirit that will unseal the Book, and illuminate its pages so that your soul will exclaim, ‘How I love Thy law!’”
About two months after she came to me and said: “O, the Bible is a changed book to me now! O, it is a new book, such a precious book! I only wish I had more hours in which to linger over its pages!” I asked her what had transformed it so wonderfully to her. She replied: “I went with it open before me on my knees one day, and I said: ‘Give me, Lord, a heart to love and delight in Thy Word,’ and there came to me such a view of its truth, and such a sense of its divine origin, that my heart was filled with a completeness of faith in it, and ever since it has been a glorious enjoyment to me.”
The fulness of faith compromises such an immediate confidence in God, such an apprehension of Christ, and such a full reception of the Bible as the Word of God, as gives to Christian experience an effectiveness, enjoyment, and completeness that saving faith alone does not compass. Have we this baptism of faith? The triumphant experience of Stephen is not beyond the reach of every believer. He was a “a man full of faith.”
“Lord give us such a faith as this,
And then, whate’er may come,
We’ll taste, e’en here, the hallow bliss
Of an eternal home.”
—Faith Papers.
I find that, while faith is steady, nothing can disquiet me; and when faith totters, nothing can establish me.—Belcher.
To be strong in faith two things are needful—a very low esteem of ourselves and a very high esteem of Christ.—R. Chapman.
Belief is the abandonment of all claim to merit. That is why it is so difficult to believe.—Oswald Chambers.
My Happiness Is All In Thee
Trouble and loss and grief and pain
Have crowded all my forty years;
I never could my wish obtain
And own at last with joyful tears
The man whom God delights to bless,
He never curses with success.
How oft didst Thou my soul withhold,
And baffle my pursuit of fame,
And mortify my lust of gold,
And blast me in my surest aim,
Withdraw my animal delight,
And starve my groveling appetite!
Thy goodness, obstinate to save,
Hath all my airy schemes o’erthrown;
My will Thou wouldst not let me have;
With blushing thankfulness I own
I envied oft the swine their meat,
But could not gain the husks to eat.
Thou wouldst not let the captive go,
Or leave me to my carnal will,
Thy love forbad my rest below,
Thy patient love pursued me still
And forced me from my sin to part,
And tore the idol from my heart.
Thrice happy loss which makes me see
My happiness is all in Thee.
—Charles Wesley.