The Message of Victory, July-Sept., 1976 / A Convivial Christ?

Our latter-day Christianity would not abolish the cross indeed, but it seeks so to festoon it with flowers, that the offence thereof may be hidden out of sight.  If Christ crucified is “unto the Greeks foolishness,” why not first present Him in some other character if any of this cultured people are among the hearers?  But does not the reader remember that when “certain Greeks” came to worship at the feast, saying “we would see Jesus,” the first recorded word which the Savior spoke to them was:  “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit,” thus presenting the whole deep doctrine of the cross in a single condensed parable?
Never has there been such a laborious attempt to popularize Christ as in the closing years of this 19^th century.  But if the Savior were to come to church and reveal Himself to those who have so mistaken His identity, we can well think of His saying:  “Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle me, and see.”  Ah, yes!  here are the tokens by which we recognize His real personality.  “I perceive that Christ suffered only His wounds to be touched after He had risen from the dead,” says Pascal, “as though He would teach us that henceforth we can be united to Him only through His sufferings.”
Upon the enthronement of Constantine, the sentiment gradually changed, and the notion grew up that in order to convert the heathen it was necessary to conciliate them by conforming somewhat to their customs.  The great Augustine also fell under this delusion, and gave his countenance to the engrafting into Christian worship of usages borrowed from the theatre.  He said:  “When peace was made (between the emperors of Rome and the church) the crowd of Gentiles who were anxious to embrace Christianity were deterred by this, that whereas they had been accustomed to pass the holidays in drunkenness and feasting before their idols, they could not easily consent to forego these most pernicious yet ancient pleasures.  It seemed good then to our leaders to favor this part of their weakness, and for those festivals which they had relinquished, to substitute others in honor of the holy martyrs, which they might celebrate with similar luxury, though not with the same impiety.”  Here is the door opened through which the whole troop of abominations entered—saint worship, idol worship, virgin worship—till in an incredibly short time the church, which had gone forth to Christianize the heathen, was found to have become herself completely paganized.
The 19^th century is presenting almost the exact facsimile of the 4^th century in this particular.  The notion having grown up that we must entertain men in order to win them to Christ, every invention for world-pleasing which human ingenuity can devise has been brought forward till the churches in multitudes of instances have been turned into playhouses, with theatre-boards announcing the courses for the gay season boldly set up at the doors; and there is hardly a carnal amusement that can be named, from billiards to dancing, which does not find a nesting place in Christian sanctuaries.  Is it then Pharisaism or pessimism to sound the note of alarm and to predict that at the present fearful rate of progress, the close of this decade may see the Protestant church as completely assimilated to 19^th century secularism as the Roman Catholic Church was assimilated to 4^th century paganism?

Principle or Propriety?

The late Oliver G. Wilson was editor of the Wesleyan Methodist magazine.  Being more contemporary than A. J. Gordon, his words are also relevant.
Let it be said once and for all that the Church is neither a showboat nor a wailing wall.  It is a lifeboat and a watch-tower.  Christians are soldiers, not visitors at a carnival.  He who tries to keep step with the age is out of step with the Son of God.
Have we gone crazy over bigness?  Are we blinded by statistics?  Have we run ourselves out of breath seeking celebrities to put on our platforms or on our boards the while we soft-pedal anything that would offend the bigwigs who have condescended to let their names be on our roll and their presence at our parades?
The offence of the cross may thin the ranks, but it will produce greatly needed spiritual results.  It might be time for the Church of Christ to do as did Gideon—thin the ranks until only hot-hearted fighters are left to press the battle.  We must not become so fascinated with Numbers that we forget Leviticus.  Bigness may be the result of bloat, and large numbers may be reached by counting corpses.
The battle is fierce, the issues are clear—holiness and unholiness, God and Satan, Christ and the world.  Whatever dims our vision of Calvary, whatever lessens our zeal for the lost, whatever slackens our race for the eternal city must be repudiated and cast aside.  Quality must come ahead of quantity, principle must be placed before propriety, and God must be ahead of gold.—Oliver G. Wilson.

EDITORIAL
THE CHRISTIAN LIFE—CHIEFLY HAPPINESS?

“Get saved and you will be happy ever after.” “Become a Christian and you’ll end all your troubles.”  “Accept Christ and be sure of Heaven.”  This late 20^th century happiness motive for becoming a Christian is totally unscriptural.  It is a substitute of the devil which caters to men’s love of themselves and antipathy to God and truth.  Modern preaching which approaches the subject of salvation from man’s viewpoint alone is the curse of today.  It is not a question of how leaving a life of sin and rebellion will affect you, the sinner, primarily.  It must be viewed primarily from God’s standpoint—how it affects His holiness, justice, mercy, truth and eternal glory.
It is true that the Bible promises that the Christian’s life is filled with joy and blessing, but that is only one of the fruits of the life of loving sacrifice.  The same Lord Who promised His disciples persecution and reviling also told them to leap for joy.  And how wonderfully it worked!  Threatened and beaten, they went their way “rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His name.”
In the sixth chapter of the second epistle to the Corinthians, we come across some astonishing lists which it would be well for us to study.  Verse four introduces the array thus:  “But in all things approving ourselves as ministers of God.”
Following is the series of the costs of being God’s man or woman:  “In much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labors, in watchings, in fastings.”
Thank God for the next wonderful section of the list displaying what the Christian has at his disposal:  “By pureness, by knowledge, by long-suffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned, by the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armor of righteousness on the right hand and on the left.”
Finally, we view an array of pairs of opposites—“Kingdom anomalies” we might term them:  “By honour and dishonour, by evil report and good report; as deceivers, and yet true; as unknown, and yet will known; as dying, and behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.”  These form God’s tempering process.  They are some of the “all things” that our Father causes to work for our good.
And how the lives of those early servants of a suffering but triumphant Lord, manifested these things.  Take for example, James the son of Zebedee, one of the three of the inner circle of disciples, for whom it might have been supposed there would be reserved a long and successful earthly ministry.  His life was unexpectedly cut short by the axe of Herod’s executioner.  Doubtless, the Master’s instructions, the Spirit’s infilling and the discipline of suffering fitted him not for labor here but for eternal service above.  Peter, for the moment, faced the same thing.  He spent part of a night in very sound sleep in Herod’s prison.  He, who had trembled at the pointed finger of a serving maid, was enabled on the eve of almost certain death to sleep so soundly that the delivering angel had to smite him to get him moving through the Heaven-opened gates of the prison.  He, who had once been so very fearful, tells more than any of the epistle writers, of the many things which the Christian is to suffer.  He was spared for lengthy service in this world.  In eternity he and James are doubtless equally happy about God’s plan for them.
John found himself the last survivor of the twelve.  Hear his story in brief from his own pen:  “I John, who also am your brother, and companion in tribulation, and in the Kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the Isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.”
His pictures of the glimpse of God on His Throne are an incentive to any servant of God to be faithful unto death.  One writer says that John was able to keep his sanity by this vision of the throne.  What a picture John gives of the triumph of the once suffering saints at the end of Revelation, chapter seven!  “These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.  Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple; and he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them.  They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them nor any heat.  For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.”
Paul, blessed in his first mission into Europe, found himself and his companion in the Philippian prison at midnight.  They were bruised, bleeding and bound.  They could not help praying.  It just gushed out.  And soon it turned to praise, and then things happened so fast that it is evident that the One Whom they served had taken things in His own hands.  And the sweetest solo a soul-winner can hear floated on the night air from the lips of the prostrate jailer, “What must I do to be saved?”
This is only a sample of Paul’s experience of the two-fold life of joy and suffering to be experienced in this world.  What is more eloquent than the words that ushered forth from his Roman prison, “In heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”  “Exceeding abundantly above all we can ask or think”?  But he declared that he must know the “fellowship of his suffering” as well as the “power of his resurrection.”
That was Christianity at its earliest and best.  But the Gospel has never changed.  Through the dark ages, at the time of the Reformation, and ever since, it has been the same story.  Joy and suffering blended.

A BACKSLIDER RECLAIMED

A refreshing letter from a reclaimed backslider that made our day!  We share its contents with the permission of the writer.

Sunday, 7^th March, 1976.

My very dear Brother and Sister Harvey,
My earnest Christian greetings to you and all there who labor with you in seeking to spread this Everlasting Gospel.
Over the last 10 or 14 years, I’ve got really far away from God and all that I ever knew to be right and Christian.  I never read the Bible, never prayed and just turned mulishly dour and absolutely discourteous.  The devil and I (I might say) saw to it that such I persisted in.  I was a gross sinner and far, far from God.
It’s almost two years now since I was made redundant, having worked till I was within a fortnight of my 70^thbirthday.  I had lied about my age, as it would have been most difficult to get a job at the trade after my 65^thbirthday.  But, (is it strange?) I always felt God would welcome me back to His way.  At times when the temptation to take something that did not belong to me (I don’t mean shop-lifting or the like; no, nothing like that, but things like helping myself to screws and nails from the firm I worked for at the time) I would do this without much compunction.  Oh, I could have, and did, pay a little to the job-clerk to sort of salve my conscience but the amount I gave never was enough to cover the cost of what I’d taken.
I had thoughts about restitution to be made (with these thoughts away far back in my mind, will I say sub-conscious mind).  I was even offered over £80 redundancy money some years ago and when I called to collect it, said, “I falsified my age in the first instance to get this job and feel that it would be wrong for me to accept it.”  The clerk, I may say, said, “It’s all right.  You have been paying the full stamp and that’s how this sum has come due you.”
What I’m not trying to say is, that there was any good in me.  Oh no! far from it, for I just was not living an upright life and the sinner position did not worry me or, will I say, I would seek to put it out of my mind with little success.  I’ll say I did feel that people were praying for me—yes, I know enough about God-fearing people to know that such was undoubtedly the sort of restraint that at times pressed me.  It’s sort of, shall I call it sixth sense or better still, it’s just God’s faithfulness to a man who was once in the way and who fell from grace.
Well, anyway ─── has been very faithful.  He came up to do some jobs about the house, and he talked to me quite a bit.  I believe God used him.  I do indeed!  He would say, “Why not come over some night to the Church.  It’s a very bright service and the Pastor is a most sincere man.”
Well, I did give it much thought and when he came up one day and took me a car drive into the country, we had really quite a heart-to-heart talk.  Well, do you know, God enabled me to go over to the Church, but I’ll tell you this, I was enabled to go over not as a critic but as a seeker.  Oh, I’d been to a Church before even during these barren days and years, estranged from God and serving the devil.  But when I’d go to a church before my attitude would be, “I wonder how many in this church are really Christians?”
The services influenced me greatly!  I was sort of opening up in a definite way to what the blessed Spirit of God sought to show me.  Sometimes there would be tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat, but I always tried to hide it and I believe was successful in this.  I would, however, go away with some of that “leaven” working in my life.  At 71 years of age can one presume on time!
I was awake one night for hours.  I wasn’t tired and do you know I wasn’t unhappy.  I shed tears but they were not tears of sorrow for myself but the words of that wonderful hymn of General Booth came to me:  “Oh, Boundless Salvation.”  That word “boundless” so seemed to grip, yea, enthrall me.
I went over one Sunday to the Church.  I did feel God’s Spirit had brought me up to a deciding point.  I felt I had to declare myself.  It was possibly new to the procedure of seekers after God in that church.  I was sort of tried afterwards about it, but from my heart, I felt that was what God wanted of me.  So this is what I did.  I sought an opportunity to go out to the front and just say how God was dealing with me.  Maybe it was a bit unorthodox, but God knew my heart.  I was asked into a side room or vestry and we had prayers.
Maybe, I’ve talked rather much on what I’ve done and what I did.  Well, if it does appear that there is overmuch of “me” in this rather disjointed letter, do forgive me.  For let me say with a filled-up heart that I feel God has forgiven my sins, even mine, and I’m back in God’s way.  Sort of wonderful?  Well, I do think so!  It’s been nothing of a big burst of light affair, but I’ve felt like my champion of champions of human beings—John Wesley—“my heart strangely warmed.”  That’s rather wonderful to one like me who was so far away from God.  He is faithful and I feel some of that spirit of faith has “cottoned” on to me.
Well, my very dear people, I’m a bit thankful that I’m able to write so to you.  I have done so to others to whom I’ve failed to bring that loving, blessed Spirit of Christ into the words and thoughts.  There could be a sort of God-given vocation in letter-writing, don’t you think?
Was struck with a man’s words on Christ’s three claims.  Christ said:

“I am the Way”—to go.
“I am the Truth”—to know.
“I am the Life”—to grow.

Well, goodbye meantime.  I’ve really begun to pray for you dear folks.  I find it a rewarding and a blessed occupation.  You know, I looked for a job in many places after being made redundant.  Always my age was against me but, my, oh my, I’ve got one now and the rewards are on this earth and in Heaven.  Bless the living God!  All my love to all there and your own dear selves.  Are you listening?  I do mean it.  Well, as the man said, when he was dying, I’m going to Glory and I’ll send you on my address.  This is my desire if I go before you.

Yours in my dear Savior’s Name,

W.W.

WHY SO FEW RECEIVE THE FULLNESS OF THE SPIRIT

By James Elder Cumming

“If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children; how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?” (Luke 11:13).

Taking a calm survey of Christians as a whole, it is impossible to resist the conclusion that very few Christians have received this gift.  Earnest workers for the Lord’s cause may be numbered by tens of thousands.  What is called “power for service,” is also not uncommon.  Men who have been honored to gather in great multitudes to the feet of Christ, are not few.  Men and women of holy and beautiful lives—lives of sweetness, humility, patience, courage, sacrifice, are to be found in every district, and in most churches and congregations; but there is something different from all these, and something more, which we call being “filled with the Spirit.”
Sometimes we can recognize it in others unmistakably; sometimes we do not.  And while we must be careful not to commit the mistake and the sin of judging others about this thing, we are constrained to say that it seems a rare possession in the souls of Christians.  Did we need further testimony to this, which shall not be open to the imputation of “judging” our neighbors, we shall find it in their own confession and lament, that they do not know it, and do not possess it.
Our problem here then, is to answer the question of how the prayers of Christians to be filled with the Spirit go so often and so long unanswered, especially in the presence of the promise which says, “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good things unto your children; how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?”  Why is the cry of the church apparently unheeded?
A short answer to this question is that many of those who ask, are

not prepared to receive it.

Either they do not know what they ask, or they have not submitted themselves to that preliminary dealing by God, which is needful before so great a gift can be bestowed by Him.
In this connection we reach the circumstances of the apostles before Pentecost.  At the ascension of the Lord, the condition on which alone the Holy Spirit could be sent (John 7:39) was fulfilled on the side of the Sender.  Christ was glorified.  But the apostles had to wait for ten days and nights—a season which they spent together in prayer, unity and meditation.
During that time they took a step of a very important kind, the propriety of which there is much reason to doubt. They appointed a new apostle. It is not written that they were directed to do so, or that they enquired of the Lord before they took the step.  They proceeded, as far as we learn from the Book of Acts, on the ground of general reasoning that, as the number had been twelve originally, this was to be the number still; and from their inference from a passage of Scripture, that the place of Judas must be supplied.
Not only so, but they took another step, and out of the general body of disciples they selected two, whom they considered to be the best qualified to fill the vacant post.  Then, indeed, they asked God to choose one of the two.  The lot which they cast fell on Matthias.
“He was numbered with the eleven apostles” and we never meet with his name again.
It has always been a question, which I think we cannot decide with any authority, whether, in so acting, before the advent of the Holy Spirit, they were premature and unjustified; and whether the so-called apostle, Matthias, was ever recognized by God.  Saul of Tarsus seemed to be God’s choice; he is called an apostle; he became a witness of the resurrection of Christ, having seen Him at his conversion near Damascus.  His appointment completes “the Sacred College,” without the inclusion of Matthias’s name.
Possibly this action of the eleven is recorded to show us how helpless they would have been, and how full of mistakes, had not the change of Pentecost come, when the Holy Spirit was Himself put in charge of the Church.
At all events the long waiting, day and night, the constant prayers, the lengthened disappointment, mourning over the absent Lord, and unable to move themselves, constituted a real testing of their faith.  And, though they do not seem to have understood it, it was a time of preparation for them.  A great change took place in them during these ten days.  The crisis of the Cross had been followed by another crisis of a different sort, during the forty days when the Lord appeared occasionally, and then went they knew not whither.  And to this succeeded still a third crisis, in those long silent days in the upper room, when they knew they should see Him no more, and when they had nothing to do but to “wait upon God.”
The possibility of this long and silent time was quite new to them.  To a man like Peter, of hasty and violent impulse, it must have been specially trying; and the old man within him must have been perfectly subdued, conquered and laid low ere he could wait.  To produce that willingness and submission of soul, and all that it implied, was the very object which God had in view.  It was the necessary condition of Pentecost, on the apostles’ side; just as the glorification of Christ was, on God’s side.
When earnest Christians now pray and continue to pray for the fullness of the Spirit to be given to them, and receive no answer, is it not, in very many cases, that they are not prepared for such a gift?  Is it not that, like the apostles, they need a period of waiting, watching, expecting and preparation?  Would the gift of the Spirit be “a good gift” to them as they are?
Parents know often what it is to be obliged to lock away some gift from a child, because it is too precious for him to be entrusted with, for a time.  A father’s watch will become the possession of the boy, but how many a widowed mother is compelled to keep it for years under lock and key, because the boy is not old enough, nor wise enough, to have it now!
So there must be a work of emptying, of self-abasement; a work that shows us our need and helplessness, perhaps by our mistakes, and which shall at the same time test the reality of our desire and confidence in God, before the answer to our prayer can come.
A second reason for God’s withholding this gift of the Holy Spirit is, that men too often
desire it for their own purposes.
Self mingles in a subtle way with this cry of the soul.  Why do they desire the fullness of the Spirit?  “Ye ask and receive not because ye ask amiss, that ye may spend it in your pleasures!” (James 4:3).
Those “pleasures,” or strong desires, which are in spiritual men, what are they, in which they would spend the great gift of the Holy Spirit?  In some, there is a sort of “quietism,” which would be content to enjoy the presence of God, and experience peace, love, and joy in their own hearts—the beautiful dream of a holy and quiet life, a sort of Christian Essenism, a life-long monastic retreat, which, standing alone, is most unlike the pattern life of Christ.
In others, there is a desire for a sort of eloquence which should characterize the speaker as one of ten thousand, before whom cities should fall prostrate, like Jericho, at the sound of a trumpet-voice.
In others still, it is the power of being used, instrumentally, to bring thousands to the foot of the Cross, of becoming an evangelist who should repeat the story of Peter in Jerusalem, surrounded by a crowd crying, “What shall we do to be saved?”  How much there is of noble desire in this last instance, yet how subtle and all but overpowering the temptation which lurks in it!  How few men there are whom God can entrust with such a power!  How many have too plainly shown that such power, when in a measure it has been given, has been abused!  God will not give His Holy Spirit to glorify us, or to promote any object of ours, or that we might “spend (the gift) in our pleasures!”
So looking at the same thought in still another aspect, and dwelling upon it the longer from its practical influence, Christians ask for the Holy Spirit, and do not receive Him, because
they are not willing to receive the gift upon God’s own terms.

These terms are not always what men expect.  The results of being “filled with the Spirit” are not uniform, nor do they always follow one general line of influence and action.
The most outstanding proof of this is what happened in the case of Stephen (Acts 7), compared with what happened in the case of Peter (Acts 2).  Stephen did not convert the Sanhedrin by the spiritual force of his wonderful address.  He neither made his judges to “tremble” before him as he spoke, nor did he melt them into tears.  He intensified their opposition, and provoked them so by the power and truth of his words that they stoned him for blasphemy!  That was in the view of God when He filled Stephen with the Holy Spirit!
A very different position was that which was allotted to Saul of Tarsus, after what is recorded in Acts 9:17.  He had to escape from Damascus, and then apparently took place the experience recorded for us in Galatians 1:17.  He did not go up at once to Jerusalem to testify and preach; but he went “into Arabia” where there was nobody to listen to him, and there he remained “three years!”
What was he doing all the time?  And why was he sent there?  To read his Bible, or to re-read it, in a new light, so that he might find Jesus in it all, where he had never seen Him before.  That, too, was necessary for Paul, who was yet to write so much of the New Testament; and we can now see that it was the very best time that could have been chosen in his life for the purpose.  It was God’s choice.
How many a Christian finds it to be so still!  A new life for the Christian means a new Bible.  The fullness of the Spirit is needed for the Christian student as well as for the worker or the missionary.  Would that this were understood, and that our students of the Word had this gift also!
Separation from other men is sometimes the result of this great gift, and sometimes is the special purpose of God for the man to whom He gives it.  The life that is so possessed by the Spirit is not always or of necessity an active, busy, and outwardly useful life.  On the contrary, it is sometimes a long sick bed.  The lesson is patience; the testimony is the sufficiency of grace.
One such sufferer I have seen, whose power of bodily movement was literally confined to the eye, which looked from side to side and the mouth, which ate and which spoke; and as he was wont to say to himself, “I lie here to show what He can do!”
Another I have seen, who for more than thirty years lay in like case, and through whose chamber passed a daily stream of hearers, who came to listen, learn and wonder at the power of God.  One other still so lay for many years.  He was unable to see any.  He could only speak to them; he could not listen; he could only write with a pencil a letter, or half a letter, in a day.  His letters live, and God is magnified in them.  In all these cases the Spirit of God separated those to whom He came, and cut them off from labor and apparent usefulness.  So He may do when He comes to souls now.  Are they willing that it should be so?
In a word, the terms on which God is prepared to give this most precious gift to a Christian are that the life shall be absolutely at God’s own disposal, as He shall think best, from time to time.  No one can say beforehand what his lot or work is to be.  God encourages no such prevision or anticipation in any case, least of all when the Holy Spirit’s fullness is in question.  Leave the future to Me!  That is His demand from every one who craves and is to receive an answer to his crave.
These, then, being the reasons why the multitude of Christian men who have been “Asking for the Holy Spirit” have yet not obtained this gift, I may be allowed to add a few words as to how the gift may be received.

1. In making such a request to the Father, it is needful for us to subject ourselves to a new and searching inquiry as to whether we are right with God.  Such inquiry is not merely self-examination, but a submitting to the examination of God.  Is there anything wrong that might be set right?  Is there anything proposed to be done by us, any plan for the future, that will not bear the full scrutiny of God’s eye?  Is there anything in our business, our family, our life, our habits, our heart, that we are ashamed of before God?

The nearer we are to God, the more weight we shall put on what might otherwise be regarded as trifles.  The more precious the jewel, the more do we lament the slightest flaw.  And those who have proved the power of God already to cleanse from many things, will the more readily believe in His power to deliver from any habit which yet remains.  And God does continually show us things in the heart which have long been there, but which we have not seen hitherto.  Especially on the eve of receiving a new blessing, so great and deep as the fullness of the Holy Spirit, shall we be shown the hindrances which exist in us, if we really “seek to know.”

2. It is hardly needful to add that, whatever is found in this solemn search to be impure, or selfish, or contrary to God’s mind, or unlovely, or base, or too low a thought of His law and grace, we must be willing to put away.  And for this end we must definitely, by an act of faith and will, yield ourselves to God for the purpose of being so cleansed.  God will accept us when we so “present our bodies” unto Him.   On that acceptance of His must rest our security.  Being wholly His, He will keep.  And He will accomplish His purpose in us by removing the hindrances.  The emptying will come.  It will be no mere talk.  It will be a reality going deep down to the springs of our being.  It may be in sharp suffering and affliction, in great humiliation and self-discomfiture; but it will all be needful.  If we draw not back, it will be effectual.
3. Then comes another step, for want of understanding of which many seem to have gone wrong.  When the proper moment comes, instead of continuing to ask, we must go on to take the fullness of the Holy Spirit!  Is it needful to dwell on the great and radical difference between these two things, frequently confounded, because sometimes both are included in one act of prayer?

One would suppose that no man who had passed through the gate of conversion could fail to note the difference between the soul that asks for what God has promised, and the soul which accepts, or takes, it.  Taking Christ as our Savior is conversion.  Taking Christ for the needs of daily and hourly life is sanctification.
It may help some to see this more clearly if they reflect on two passages in which this great gift is spoken of.  The very difficult verse (John 20:22), “When he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost,” is one of these.  I may be permitted to remark on two points in the verse which are little noticed in general.  The word translated (in both our English versions) “breathed on them” has surely a somewhat different meaning from what these versions convey.  It is not “breathed upon them,” which would require a different preposition in the Greek, or, at least, must be followed by the pronoun, which is absent.  It is the only place in the New Testament where the word is used; it stands alone, and surely means “He breathed in”—He took a long breath; inhaling, not exhaling.  It is the same word as is found in the Septuagint of Genesis 2:7, “He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,” and seems to refer, not to a movement from without, but to one from within.
So here, as the Lord breathed a long breath, He says, “As I breathe thus, so do ye take into your being Him Who shall be to you the very breath of life.”  One cannot be quite positive in such a matter, but it seems to me that the probabilities point in this way.
The other remark is more important.  “Receive ye the Holy Ghost” is a command.  As such it requires obedience, and obedience is by taking the Holy Ghost.  Not asking at that moment; asking has passed into taking, when we obey.
So, too, in the other and chief passage in which this great gift is brought before Christians as their possession in the future:  “Be filled with Spirit” (Eph. 5:18).  The thought presented is, that the Holy Spirit is pressing for admittance into the Christian’s soul, to fill it.  That is His desire; but there are things within which exclude Him, and whose continued presence is subject to the will of the man.  Resist not, then, the Divine pressure, but consent to the removal of what impedes His entrance; welcome Him, and He will come in and fill thee!
—From the book, After the Spirit.

                   Anticipation

I walk as one who knows that he is treading
A stranger soil;
As one round whom a world is spreading
Its subtle coil.
I walk as one but yesterday delivered
From a sharp chain;
Who trembles lest the bonds so newly sever’d
Be bound again.
I walk as one who feels that he is breathing
Uncongenial air;
For whom as wiles the tempter still is wreathing
The bright and fair.
My steps, I know, are on the plains of danger,
For sin is near;
But looking up, I pass along, a stranger,
In haste and fear.
This earth has lost its power to drag me downward;
Its spell is gone;
My course is now right upward and right onward,
To yonder throne.
Hour after hour of time’s dark night is stealing
In gloom away;
Speed thy fair dawn of light, and joy, and heaven,
Thou Star of Day!
For Thee, its God, its King, the long-rejected,
Earth groans and cries;
For Thee, the long-beloved, the long-expected,
Thy bride still sighs!
—H. Bonar, D. D.

The Unfinished Cornice

In the nineteenth century people who passed the Rothschild mansion in the fashionable quarter of London noticed that the end of one of the cornices was unfinished.  The question may be asked: “Could not the richest man in the world afford to pay for that cornice, or was the lack due to carelessness?”
The explanation is a very simple yet suggestive one when it is known.  Lord Rothschild was an orthodox Jew, and every pious Jew’s house, tradition says, must have some part unfinished, to bear testimony to the world that its occupant is only, like Abraham, a pilgrim and a stranger upon the earth.
The incomplete cornice on the mansion seemed to say to all:  “This is not Lord Rothschild’s home; he is traveling to eternity.”—Selected.

             It Matters to Him

It matters to Him, when lonely my way,
It matters to Him, when hopes all decay;
It matters to Him:
He biddeth me cast on Him all my care.
He bendeth His back my burdens to bear;
It matters to Him.

It matters to Him the life that I live,
The faith that I hold, the gifts that I give;
It matters to Him:
He wants me to crown Him Lord over all,
He wants me to go where’er He may call;
It matters to Him.

It matters to Him when I am maligned,
When suff’ring and death to me are assigned;
It matters to Him:
He suffers the shame that men thrust on me,
He feels all my grief, my deep agony;
It matters to Him.
—Unknown.

THE VELVET CURTAIN

By Lillian Harvey

When we hear of the persecutions that now are being endured by heroic Christians behind the Iron Curtain, we are deeply touched and we do well to pray.  Their sufferings have driven them to Christ, resulting in a strengthened faith.  But, what of obscure but heroic Christians who are suffering for Christ behind the Velvet Curtain!  Just as the Iron Curtain is known by its tough fist of might, so the Velvet Curtain is that behind which lush material standards have come to dominate the minds of millions in the western hemisphere.
We need to pray earnestly for that minority of Christ-followers here in the western world upon whom almost unbearable pressures are being exerted in order to make them deny their God-given convictions received from the Holy Ghost in times of revival.  The same enemy, who hates Christ in human temples behind the Iron Curtain, is just as spiteful in his diabolical efforts to side-track the true saints of God behind the Velvet Curtain.
We write to encourage those Christians who day and night, on the right hand and on the left, are being pressed out of measure to conform to the world order which has come to be adopted so largely by a drifting church.  Only God knows how much His impending wrath, ready to be outpoured upon us, is restrained because of such stalwarts.
Let us together briefly note several of the methods Satan used to oppose Christians behind the Iron Curtain.
Brainwashing!  We have read with horror of the oft repeated sessions in which men and women have withstood for hours the Satanically-inspired arguments aimed at destroying the believer’s faith.  We have wondered how body and mind could stand up to the strain imposed by those who so insidiously accuse and continuously implant arguments to undermine the Gospel.  The same tactics are resorted to behind the Velvet Curtain.  The Prince of this world seeks to re-educate each follower of Jesus Christ in order to conform him to a world pattern.  He batters ceaselessly from the secular and even religious press, radio, TV, advertising hoardings.  He uses ordinary everyday conversations at work.  No longer do we see the infidel lecturer arguing it out with the preacher, for Satan has his modernist ministers successfully doing the same job.
A young Christian mother told of her surprise when she took her young son to a speech therapist.  After witnessing to this man of her newly-found faith in Christ she was warned that she would be doing her child untold damage by inculcating Christian principles into his mind.  He would later discover that these teachings were accepted only by a small minority.  This would give rise to grave anxieties which could aggravate her son’s present speech defect.  The woman, saved only for a year, knew that her newly-discovered faith had not been the cause of her boy’s nervous complaint, although the therapist had hinted that this might be the case.
Christians, in their distress, have gone to psychiatrists who have most skillfully questioned them as to their early upbringing and, it seemed, aimed their most telling arguments at a godly parent, or a religious institution which was blamed for their present distress.  I have wondered if they ever ask the patient whether he was guilty of disobeying the Scriptures as inculcated at the family altar or by Church teaching.  Doubtless these advisors are not aware that Satan is using them as tools to brainwash their victims just as interrogators in concentration camps are tools which destroy the foundations of Christian faith.  “If the foundations be removed what can the righteous do?”
Teachers at colleges and schools sneer at young people for their faith, and suggest that the student has never thought for himself.  Ministers sometimes unwittingly advise in such a way as to test the strength of a saint’s heavenly vision.  Fellow Christians, who have not been crucified with Christ, who have shallow views of the atonement, will often counsel so as also to lend their weight on the side of world pressures.  By these repeated suggestions from different sources, all contrary to Bible practice, Satan hopes gradually to wear down the strongest resister. But we can conquer!  God has made a way!
Lot lived in Sodom and in seeing and hearing so constantly the lowered moral concepts of that civilization, he vexed his righteous soul daily.  But he dwelt too near and listened too frequently to the permissive propaganda of Sodom.  He and his family were affected until an angel had to urge their quick departure from this threatened place.
We can choose daily to be like Abraham who dwelt much alone on the mount, apart from the throngs, with his ear attuned to God so that the tragic happenings—war and destruction—were first revealed to him, preparing him to participate in intercession and then rescue.  God is preparing His saints now!  The worldlings will not take note of us in their hour of prosperity, but when impending doom threatens, the prepared saint will be ready to give succor.
Christians may advise us that we must keep abreast of the times in order to act helpfully.  But Abraham, in the mount, was more conversant with coming events than was Lot who daily saw and heard local opinions.  “God revealeth His secrets to His servants.”
Exile!  Jesus went outside the camp and He beckons us His road.  The city dwellers will never feel at ease with a pilgrim and stranger in their midst.  They will banish us from their social functions, from the churches’ festive occasions.  Jesus prepared His disciples for such treatment, “They will cast you out of the synagogues.”  Let us not retaliate with coldness and hardness of heart.  Let us meekly and quietly take our banishment, knowing that if we were of the world, the world would love its own.  It may not be to Siberia that we are exiled.  It may just be in the midst of some social function; it may be on the factory floor when some questionable story is being related or some book or picture being shown; it may be that we will be separated from their company when some unbiblical practice is being planned.  But let us not compromise with the rival of Jesus Christ—the World—even though it means this kind of loneliness.  “Men will separate you from their company,” advised our Lord in some of His last words to His disciples before He went to the cross.
St. Paul knew some of this isolation.  “All they that be in Asia are turned against me,” “The more I love, the less I be loved,” “No man stood with me,” he laments in his epistles.  About those who are not willing to accept this kind of estrangement from the world, Dr. A. W. Tozer writes, “The weakness of so many modern Christians is that they feel too much at home in the world.  In their effort to achieve restful ‘adjustment’ to unregenerate society they have lost their pilgrim character and become an essential part of the very moral order against which they are sent to protest.  The world recognizes them and accepts them for what they are.  And this is the saddest thing that can be said about them.  They are not lonely, but neither are they saints.”
Concentration Camps!  No! we don’t have the 1,000 camps as Russia is reported to have, where men and women of sometimes great stature in intelligence are often put to forced labor.  Satan is more artful with us in the West.  He has here instead, public opinion with its rod of iron to wield over Christian society.  I have watched the agitation of a young mother as she feelingly spoke of being castigated for not going out to work as others were doing.  The implication was that she was either lazy or not up-and-coming enough to care.
Arianna Stassinopoulos, the writer and marriage counselor, wrote, “By spreading guilt and anxiety among women who have chosen to stay at home and be wives and mothers, the women’s lib movement has done more harm than good.  If you talk to women who are married and don’t have jobs, they feel guilty.  Ten years ago a woman going out to work was more likely to have a sense of guilt.”
Cannot you see, dear Mothers, Satanic strategy in pressing the keepers of our homes out to work for meremoney that perisheth?  Their more precious possessions—their children and their husbands and their neighbors—are being neglected and given the hasty treatment in the odd hours which spent resources will permit.  Home is no longer the haven where world-weary, loved ones return at close of day to find restful love and understanding.
Many a pastor or Christian worker is doomed to a concentration camp type of drudgery when their time could be spent in much more productive efforts.  Committee meetings, business meetings and demands of the organization eat up all the priceless hours of the soul-winner.  At night the wearied worker falls into bed, wondering whether or not he is being side-tracked from God’s original call.  Public opinion and the carnal man favor feverish activity, and worship movement and work that can be tabulated statistically.  So often the Christian has this gaoler of world opinion standing over his conscience prodding him to forced labor.
Spying on Private Lives!  The attacks upon public characters today in politics are being used to subtly undermine confidence in those who lead.  Has not the evil one also got his agents who tattle bits of gossip, relate events in the past that have been forgiven, and so undermine the influence of the saint!  Be patient, Christian friend, if you are suffering like insinuations against your moral character or your business practice.  Muller was accused of wrongly treating his orphans.  Spurgeon and Moody despaired at times because of caustic remarks in the Press, not just from worldly critics, but sometimes from men of the pulpit.
Bribes and Rewards!  We have heard of those who have been pressed into service for Russia by either blackmail or the promise of great rewards of money or of benefits to the family.  Behind the Velvet Curtain, the devil has often frightened a minister or a worker from preaching the truth by telling him that his congregation will dwindle; his wife and children may suffer diminished financial assistance.  The promise of a bigger congregation, a larger church, a bigger salary, made by the devil has caused many an individual to succumb.  This compromise with principle may be ever so slight but it can be the beginning of spiritual decline.
Let us look forward with eager anticipation to the time when the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our God.  “If we suffer with him, we shall also reign with him.”  “These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”  While we “look at the things which are unseen,” we can endure “these light afflictions which are but for a moment.”  We are certain of rescue from this world order.  Our Jesus is coming again.  We have work to do for Him in the ages to come.  Let us be loyal down here during this time of anarchy, when the Prince of this world has the whole world in his hands, save those redeemed and ransomed from his grasp.  We can suffer if we, like Moses, see Him Who is invisible.  We have the Holy Spirit as our great Enabler and He is pledged to come to our assistance when brain-washing, exile, concentration camps, blackmailing or tempting bribes are our portion.  Let us not permit our spirit to become embittered or react in acrid recriminations to spoil our stand for truth.  Let us strengthen and encourage one another by prayer and personal communication as we see the day approaching.  Let us pray one for another behind the Velvet Curtain.

             Scarred

But, Lord, I’ve scars,
Deep scars within my mind,
My body, too, and spirit—
They are scarred.
Things that are with me still.
I can’t forget humiliations,
Batterings, bruisings and
Injuries I gave myself
In trying to forget.

My child, I see your scars.
I know each one, received
Because you live within a world
Where people have for
Long, long years
Rejected my great love.

My child—I too have scars.
I bear them still in Heaven.
Scars in My hands, My head,
My feet, and deeper still,
Within my heart.

These scars I chose for love of you,
For only as I gave Myself to death
Upon a cross of wood,
And only as I bore upon My spirit
Every sin and evil thing
The world would ever do,
Could I deliver those
Who with their sins and scars
Would come to Me,
And let Me take away their sin,
Bind up their wounds
And make them whole,
Till perfected once more
In Heaven with Me.
—H. M. Reeve, in Truth.

WHO IS WORTHY?

Among the many sad lessons that we have to learn as we go through life, perhaps there are none more painful than those that teach us to know our own unworthiness and the unworthiness of others.
At the time of our conversion, when we start in the Christian life, how much we often expect from ourselves!  Our hopes run high for what we can do, for what we can be; but alas! sooner or later we learn that our own efforts can accomplish nothing; that we can make neither ourselves nor others holy.  Failure, indeed, seems written on all our life and work.  At times we seem overwhelmed and paralyzed—do we not—by the sense of our own weakness and unworthiness?

In those early years, also, we are not only confident of our own goodness and powers, but we have absolute faith in the worthiness of our friends.  We all have our heroes, and we freely give them our homage.  “Theyare worthy of our praise,” we say.  But soon, too soon, our heroes fall.  We have our chosen friends, also, to whom our hearts overflow in affection and trust.  Gaily we chant, “Worthy are they to receive the riches of our love”; and we think no gift too choice to bestow upon them.  But then comes a dark day when we are disappointed in them.  They change towards us perhaps; another takes our place in their affection, and at length we sadly confess to ourselves that we have given the most sacred secrets and treasures of our hearts to those who were unworthy of them.
Painful—yea, agonizing—at such times is the sense that we can no longer glory in men.  We are like one of old, who cried, “I wept much because no one was found worthy.”  Yes, it is not an uncommon experience to find none on earth truly worthy of our best love, admiration, and praise.
There are some souls who go through life forever crushed, because they put their trust in a human being, and found he or she was a broken reed—a faithless friend—a cistern that could hold no water.  Others again are sad and drooping Christians, scarcely able to lift their heads, so real to them is the sense of their own utter unworthiness.
Is there no balm in Gilead, that these souls may be comforted and delivered?
Glory to God, there is a balm, there is a deliverance!  There is one way—one only way—we can get rest, perfect rest, from our own unworthiness and from the unworthiness of others; and that is, to join in the glad song of Heaven, and say unceasingly—
“Worthy art THOU, O Lord!”
“Worthy is THE LAMB that was slain, to receive power, and riches . . . and honour, and glory, and blessing.”
We have never grasped the secret of a happy life till, taught by the Spirit, we learn to expect nothing from ourselves, and nothing from man, but everything from the Lord.  As one has said—“We must find everything but Christ to be nothing.”
“I am never disappointed in myself,” a lady once said to a friend of mine, and my friend was startled by what she thought was a very egotistical speech; but the lady went on to say—“No, I am never disappointed in myself, because I never expect anything from myself.”  She was able to utter these words because she had so deeply learnt the meaning of Christ’s own saying—“Without Me ye can do nothing.”
Is there a reader of these pages who is burdened with the sense of shortcoming and failure?  If so, let your heart find hope and gladness in these words, “SATISFIED WITH FAVOUR” (Deut. 33:23).  Even your heart can be completely at rest, not because you are satisfied with yourself, but because you are satisfied with Christ.  You may not be satisfied with your imperfect work for Him, but you can be satisfied with His finished work for you.  There is full satisfaction to be found in the wonderful “favour” which God has bestowed upon you in Christ.  “He has taken us into favour in the Beloved” (Eph. 1:6, New Translation).  Dissatisfied we must ever be with our unworthiness as we are in ourselves, but blessedly satisfied because the Lamb is worthy, and because God is well pleased with Him and with us in Him.
How often are we hindered in prayer by the sense of our unworthiness!  We feel we dare not claim such precious promises; we are not worthy of them, are not fitted to receive so rich a blessing; and so we go away from the throne of grace empty-handed.  While recognizing our short-coming, why, oh why, did we not plead the merits of Jesus, and claim the answer to our prayer from the Father, because His Son is worthy?  How the devil delights to rob us, if he can, of the worthiness of Jesus, and to hinder us from using with God the plea that—

“All the worth I have before Thee
Is the merit of the blood.”

We must never forget that God can use even the failures of others to cause us to see more clearly that Jesus only is the altogether lovely One.  How often He drives us to seek perfection in His Son by allowing us to find it nowhere else!

“Watching my heroes—those I loved the best—
I saw them fail; they could not stand the test.
Even by this the Lord, through tears not few,
     Unto Himself me drew.”

The evil one ever seeks to get us taken up with the short-comings of others; but, as someone has said, “Let us stop looking for a perfect Christian, and be satisfied with a perfect Savior.”  And, if we are disappointed in our friendships, let us not be cast down because we cannot find an ideal friend; but let us seek to know better the Friend Who is above all others, Whose love and beauty will ever surpass our highest expectation.  And so the wondrous vision of the Lamb Who is worthy causes us to lose sight, not only of our own wretchedness, but also the unworthiness of others.
—Helena Garratt, in Bright Words.

“Worthy the Lamb” Who died to save us;
“Worthy the Lamb”—let it sound thro’ earth and sky;
“Worthy the Lamb” sing the angels in chorus,
“Worthy the Lamb” our redemption draweth nigh.
Worthy of honor from highest archangels,
Worthy of glory of the universe around;
Worthy of majesty, pow’r, adoration,
“Worthy the Lamb,” the lov’d and lost are found.
—J. Wakefield MacGill.

THE DANGERS OF PROSPERITY

By G. D. Watson

There is nothing on earth more ruinous than uninterrupted prosperity, that is, using the word prosperity in the human sense; and the very persons who insist that success does not hurt them, are the very ones most ruined by it.  The greatest fool is the one who will not admit his foolishness.  There is a danger not only in outward prosperity of health and finances and social standing, but the principle is just as true when applied to religious experience; that is, having no trials or crosses to sink the soul in self-abasement.
Prosperity is not always a token of God’s favor.  There is an awful meaning to the words of the Holy Ghost in speaking of persons who have things cozy and prosperous when He says, “Thou hast already received thy reward.”  Can there be a darker curse in eternity than the one couched in those words?  And yet millions not only of sinners, so-called, but professed believers are intensely eager to grasp the fulfillment of those awful words.  When prosperity is given us of God, it is mostly because He condescends to our childish weakness, because He sees we have not the strength to endure hardness.  What people call success is often permitted to us of the Lord because of our infantile weakness of faith.
It requires great inward strength of heart to endure great losses and privations, and what seem to others sore failures, and to be cut off from all creature comforts and consolation, and yet all the while be tightening the hold on God, and sinking into self-depreciation, and believing that God is doing everything for the best.  Temporal success has a wonderful tendency to weaken our faith, because it attaches our trust to creatures and circumstances, whereas adversity shuts our faith up to God above.  God becomes dear to us in the same proportion that we are shut up alone to Him.
Again, prosperity gives us a false estimate of ourselves, by a growing conviction that it was our skill or wisdom, or righteousness of character that brought it to us.  Like the ancient king we say, “Is not this great Babylon which I have built?”  with an emphasis on the “I.”  Prosperous people, by an unavoidable law of comparison, must note the contrast between themselves and the vast multitudes who fail on the very lines where they succeed.  Seeing only the operation of natural causes, they are led imperceptibly to form a very high estimate of their faculties, or their industry, and to secretly pride themselves on their advancement.  This leads to a host of vices such as self-conceit, self-righteousness, impatience with persons of less success, and lack of charity for those of less attainments.  Hence it develops a habit of esteeming people as to their real worth by their amount of success:  and just in the same proportion as prosperity gives us an over-estimate of ourselves, it gives us an under-estimate of others who are not so prosperous.  This corrupts the very fountains of character.  This is why prosperity in a thousand ways lays the foundation of its own ruin.
This principle is true when applied to individuals, or families, or churches, or nations.  There never has been known a nation, or a church, or a family since the fall of Adam, that prosperity has not proved in the end its degeneration, and in most instances its utter downfall.  There is a fascinating mist that success brings to the eyes, which blinds people to the very causes which produce success.  These causes are humility, perseverance, sobriety, self-denial, painstaking, and consideration for others; but success causes the soul to forget these very things, and to cease their practice, and as there comes a gloating over the effects, there is a simultaneous neglect of the cause.
Many a preacher begins his life-work in humility, much secret prayer, self-denial, searching of God’s Word, and after these things have brought success, he neglects the Bible for philosophy, neglects secret prayer for conversation, self-abasement for the receiving of honors, and loses all his power, and becomes an empty figure-head.  Even when God blesses a believer with great spiritual joy, and bright visions of heavenly things, there is a subtle tendency in the mind to lean on its spiritual blessings, and to call in the sentinels from picket-guard.
Hence Satan watches God’s children to make an onslaught upon them just after a spiritual banquet.  “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” and this is true in the spiritual life as in the political.  In most cases the absence of chastisement in one’s life is anything but a proof of God’s love, for He himself declares, “As many as I love I rebuke and chasten.”  The soul learns things under God’s chastisement which it is utterly and eternally impossible for it to learn otherwise; and those who disagree with these declarations are of a light and superficial experience and mostly of a trifling mind.
Prosperity makes people shallow, in their thinking, praying, self-knowledge, in their Scripture insight, and in their interior knowledge of God, so that what is popularly called prosperity, is in most cases real failure.  What mankind looks upon as utter failure, turns out to be with God, and in eternity, in many cases, the grandest kind of success.  We shall never know who have made the greatest achievements till all the human race render up their account before the great white throne.  Only see how a little success makes people dictatorial, and critical, and over-bearing towards others.  This proves a terrible danger.
At the very time that thousands of people insisted on making Christ a King, and when His popularity was at the highest pitch, He withdrew Himself that same day from everybody and spent the night alone in the mountain praying to His Father.  Here we see infinite wisdom.  For every wave of success, He sought a deeper self-abasement, and more complete solitude with the Father.  Here is the pattern for all believers.  If for every little touch of prosperity we have, we seek in some way to deny ourselves and get closer to God, and sink in deeper humility, and strip ourselves of every thought of self-merit—this would save us from the danger of prosperity.  It would preserve what blessings we have acquired, and yet keep us in heart so detached from those blessings, and so broken and poor in spirit, that our Father could safely increase His benefactions.  If we had the wisdom to practice this, there is no telling how much God would bless us.
We are worth more to God than the blessings He bestows upon us, and if those blessings are going to wean us from Him, and make us play the fool, then His infinite wisdom compels Him to take them from us, for just as soon as God’s blessings begin to take the place of God, they become a curse.  Just as soon as prosperity lifts us up, it prepares the way for our failure.  Will we ever learn to intensely and continuously and increasingly love our God for His own sake, and to secretly, with a supernatural discernment, despise other things in comparison with Him?
—From Pure Gold.

         I’m Going Home

Not waverings, not even tossed,
But, like a child who has been lost,
I hurry Home.
I know my Father waits for me,
I’m sure a welcome there will be,
For He Who died to set me free
Has called me Home.

And as I go, I watch and pray.
He meets my every need alway.
I’m going Home.
Oh, all my heart is in His hand.
I’m going to Immanuel’s land,
Where the redeemed with Jesus stand;
I’m going Home—
I’m going Home to God.

I’m going Home, I’m going Home,
I’m going Home tomorrow;
The winds may blow, the storm clouds low,
I’m going Home tomorrow.
And oh the joy as I press on,
Yes, on, and on, and on, and on,
I may reach Home tomorrow;
And then, my hands shall clasp His hand,
My eyes look into His,
And all throughout eternity,
Eternal days of bliss.
I’m going Home, I’m going Home,
Like some glad child I’m going Home,
There nought of sin or pain or sorrow,
Where only love meets me tomorrow,
I’m hurrying on, where Jesus trod,
I see His footprints marked with blood,
I’m going Home, I’m going Home,
I’m going Home to God.
—Mary Warburton Booth.

MARY ELLEN’S SECRET

By Mrs. Laidlay

Everyone in our village had always loved Mary Ellen.  But, after the accident which deprived her of the power to walk, a feeling of protective care was added to our love.
At first things were not so bad.  She could sit up, use her hands, and be wheeled about in a chair.  We all tried to help her and cheer her up.
After a while Mary Ellen could no longer sit up; then came the time when her hands lay useless too, and she could but lie rigid under the bedclothes, unable even to turn.
Our hearts were sore for her, but to our great wonder, as she lost in physical power, so did she gain in liveliness, even in gaiety of spirit.
Now we visit Mary Ellen not so much to cheer and help her as to receive from her comfort for ourselves.  Little children run to her with their ills; men and women, young and old, take their troubles and their joys to Mary Ellen, and no one ever leaves her presence without being strengthened.
This evening I went to sit with her.  “Read to me,” she whispered.  I took up the Book which she loves and read to her the great story of the coming of the Holy Spirit.  As I closed the Book I looked across at Mary Ellen and saw that the evening sun had gathered in a shaft of light and was resting, like a tongue of fire, on her head.
“Mary Ellen,” I said, half smiling, “I think the Holy Spirit has come to you.”
She smiled back, a smile of such knowledge and joy that understanding suddenly dawned on me.  “Mary Ellen, is that your secret?  Did God give you His Spirit long ago?  Tell me, Mary Ellen.”
She told me . . . how at first after her accident she had cried out in rebellion against her fate; how she had resented the thought that for ever she must be dependent and helpless.  One day we had wheeled her to church.  The minister had spoken of the gift of the Holy Spirit.  “It is,” he said, “a gift that is open to all, but to be won only after definite striving.  We must not, like Simon the Sorcerer, desire it for unworthy reasons; we must only wish for it that we may carry out God’s purposes.  The first essential for those who seek it is that they should accept Christ.  Many think that the powers it gave the disciples would be impracticable in modern life, but this is not true—it may be used for healing, comforting, strengthening, in the same measure today as by those who first received it.  How is it,” he added, “that so many resist the Holy Ghost?  How is it that, though the gift is for all, so few claim it?”
“That night, and for long after,” Mary Ellen continued, “I pondered what I had heard.  I thought, if God would grant me this power of the Spirit, could I not use the long idle hours of my weakness to think for others, to counsel them, to pray for them?  Gradually, as my bodily power failed, a new power of belief and prayer grew within me.  On the day when I knew I could never move again, all self-pity was swept away by a great inward stirring of my spirit.  I think that on that day God gave me His gift, and, as I lay with all strength gone, I felt no doubt that He, working through me by His Holy Spirit, would give me power to move others to serve and love Him.”
Mary Ellen was silent, and then in her weak voice spoke again, “I wish that more people would accept the Promise; the joy, the hope, the comfort of the Holy Spirit.”
—From  Life and Work.

And many a rapturous minstrel
Among the sons of light
Will say of his sweetest music,
“I learned it in the night.”
And many a rolling anthem
That fills the Father’s Home
Sobbed out its first rehearsal
In the shade of a darkened room.
—Anon.

GOD’S TESTING ROOM

About eight years after a certain blacksmith had given his heart to God, he was approached by an intelligent unbeliever who asked him, “Why is it that you have so much trouble?  I have been watching you.  Since you joined the church and began to “walk square” and have seemed to love everybody, you have had twice as many trials and accidents as you had before.  I thought that when a man gave himself to God his troubles were over.”
With a thoughtful but glowing face, the blacksmith replied, “Do you see this piece of steel?  It is to be used for the springs of a wagon, but it needs to be ‘tempered.’  In order to do this, I heat it red hot and then cool it with water.  If I find that it will take a ‘temper,’ I heat it again, then hammer it and bend it and shape it so that it will be suitable for the wagon springs.  Often I find the steel so brittle that it cannot be used.  If this is so, I throw it on the scrap heap.  Those scraps are worth less than one cent a pound; but this wagon spring is valuable.”
He paused a moment, and his listener nodded.  Then the blacksmith continued:  “God saves us for something more than to have a good time.  At least, that is the way I see it.  We have the good time, all right, for the smile of God means Heaven.  But God wants us for service, just as I want this piece of steel.  And He puts the ‘temper’ of Christ in us by the testings and trials which come our way.  He also supplies the strength to meet these testings.  Since I have learned this, I have been saying to Him, ‘Test me in any way You choose, Lord—only don’t throw me on the scrap heap.’”—World Conquest.

***                  ***                  ***                  ***                  ***                  ***
I stood once in the testing room of a great steel mill.  All around me were partitions and compartments.  In each was a piece of steel.  It had been tested to the limit and marked with figures that showed its breaking point.  Some pieces had been twisted until they broke and the strength of tension was marked on them.  Some had been stretched to the breaking point and their tensile strength indicated.  Some had been compressed to the crushing-point and also marked.  The master of the steel mill knew just what these pieces of steel would stand under strain.  He knew just what they would bear if placed in the great ship, building or bridge.  He knew this because his testing room revealed it.
It is often so with God’s children.  God does not want us to be like vases of glass or porcelain, which shatter at the mere touch of temptation.  He would have us like those toughened pieces of steel, able to bear twisting and crushing to the uttermost limit without collapse.  He wants us to be, not hothouse plants, but storm-beaten oaks; not sand dunes driven with every gust of wind, but granite rocks withstanding the fiercest storms.
To make us such He must needs bring us into His testing room of suffering.  It is there He tries out the stuff of which He would have us to be.  Many of us need no other argument than our own experience to prove that suffering is indeed God’s testing room of faith.—James McConkey.

***                  ***                  ***                  ***                  ***                  ***
Iron is refined and converted into steel by the process of the furnace.  It is like the process of heating and cooling by which steel, after it is made, is tempered so as to become duly elastic or capable of sustaining the sharp cutting edge desired in any tool or instrument.
Apart from what is called probation, man is to be looked upon as an incomplete or not completely finished creature:  iron not yet converted into steel, or steel not hardened and tempered to its uses.  This is the object of man’s probation.  It is not to break him if he will break.  It is to strengthen him finally that he may never break.  It is to make him what as yet he is not, to carry him on beyond the state of raw being and perfect him in character.—Horace Bushnell.

 ***                  ***                  ***                  ***                  ***                  ***

“He is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel:  For I will shew him how great things he must suffer for my name’s sake” (Acts 9:15-16).

That life is not as idle ore,
But iron dug from central gloom,
And heated hot with burning fears,
And dipt in baths of hissing tears,
And batter’d with the shocks of doom
To shape and use.

Dare to go Underground

Would you be happy for your name never again to appear in the Christian press?  We can write up great reports of great blessing and many converts and say, “to God be all the glory.”  But we’ve got a bit of it and the people say, “what a wonderful preacher he is—we must have him.”  Be careful, brethren!  I don’t know, but I somehow feel that if the Church dared to go underground; dared never to report; dared just to trust the Lord—would we see the revival then?  Because then self would be out altogether and Jesus would be all.  “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.”
—Alan Redpath, at an Evangelical Alliance Conference for ministers.

When Nature wants to take a man
And shake a man
And wake a man;
When Nature wants to make a man
To do the Future’s will;
When she tries with all her skill
And she yearns with all her soul
To create him large and whole . . .
With what cunning she prepares him!
How she goads and never spares him,
How she whets him and she frets him,
And in poverty begets him . . .
How she often disappoints
Whom she sacredly anoints,
With what wisdom she will hide him,
Never minding what betide him
Though his genius sob with slighting and his pride
may not forget!
Bids him struggle harder yet.
Makes him lonely
So that only
God’s high messages shall reach him
So that she may surely teach him
What the Hierarchy planned.
—Angela Morgan.