The Frightful Ruins – Christian Message of Victory July-Sep 1980

“You will not attain sanctification save by much trouble and labor, and by a road which will appear to you quite contrary to your expectation.  You will not, however, be surprised at it if you are convinced that God does not establish His great works except upon ‘the nothing.’  It seems that He destroys in order to build.  He does it so in order that this temple He destines for Himself, built even with much pomp and majesty, but built none-the-less by the hand of man, should be previously so destroyed, that there remains not one stone upon another.
“It is these frightful ruins which will be used by the Holy Spirit to construct a temple which will not be built by the hand of men, but by His power alone.  God chooses for carrying out His works either converted sinners whose past iniquity serves as counterpoise to the exaltation, or else persons in whom He destroys and overthrows that ‘own’ righteousness, and that temple built by the hand of men, so built upon quicksand, which is the resting on the created, and in these same works, in place of being founded on the living stone, Jesus Christ.  All that He has come to establish, by entering the world, is effected by the overthrow and destruction of the same thing He wished to build.  He established His Church in a manner that seemed to destroy it.  Oh, if men knew how opposed is the ‘own’ righteousness to the designs of God, we should have an eternal subject of humiliation and distrust of what at present constitutes our sole support.”

EDITORIAL

Satan is the biggest liar of all.  He is the father of lies.  Jesus said that he was just that!  But there is no lie bigger than the one which he hisses into the ears of a seeker after God.  “Become a Christian and you will be great!”  “Get saved and you will be successful.”  “Receive the Holy Ghost, and you will be the most famous man around.”
We are now living in the age of the Holy Spirit.  He is the Spirit of Truth.  But the devil tells us the biggest lies about Him.  The Holy Ghost is promised that we may be witnesses to Jesus, but the arch-liar insinuates, “Go on, get the Holy Ghost in your life and you will be the greatest preacher in this part of the country!  Everybody will sit spell-bound at the words that proceed from your lips!  You will draw the crowds!  You will make the head-lines in religious papers.  You have been a poor, hidden nobody but that will end if you get the Holy Ghost in your life.”
Again, a struggler after a victorious life comes along.  He is trying to be a real, consistent, blameless Christian but in a carnal way and the old nature spoils it all.  “Ho,” says the liar of liars, “here is just the thing for you.  It will make you the most notable saint in the country.  Your holiness will be the talk of the neighborhood.  If anybody ever does wrong around here, the people will say, ‘You ought to see that chap that got that wonderful experience of holiness.  It makes him the most absolutely perfect person you could ever find.’”
The Apostle Peter had been a poor, weak, defeated disciple and when he finally denied the Lord at Christ’s trial before the High Priest, he had gone out and he wept bitterly.  But Jesus had commanded his fellow-disciples to stay in Jerusalem until they would all be endued with power from on high.  They had done that and the great outpouring of the Holy Spirit had come upon them.  But instead of becoming big men, and wonderfully perfect men, and men much acclaimed as blameless, it was only Jesus Who was exalted.  He was held up before great and small as the answer to their every heart need.  But as for them, the best they could expect was suffering for their Master.  And their greatest joy was that they were counted worthy thus to suffer for Him.  Instead of compliments, they received whip-lashes; instead of welcome into the places of the great, they were imprisoned.
Peter and John had that true spirit of Christ now within them by the Holy Spirit’s baptism.  They were nothing but servants.  They had nothing to do with the transmission of power, but to be channels.  Had not their Master said on that last great day of the feast, that not only could the thirsty come to Him, the fountain of living water, and quench his thirst, but that through the man who truly believed on Him should flow rivers of living waters to other thirsty souls (John 7:37-39)?
They had no desire for praise or recognition.  Indeed, it was revolting to them when they realized how weak and small they were except through the power of the Spirit so graciously outpoured upon poor, frail vessels.
These men felt like John the Baptist after he had finished his mission of preparing the way for the Messiah.  He had faithfully preached repentance and by it prepared a way not only for the Messiah through this ministry, but he had shown the way of preparation for the salvation that the Savior brought.  Once the task was finished, he uttered some of the most self-effacing words we could find written anywhere in the literature of the world.  “He must increase, but I must decrease.”  And so he bowed out of the foreground, faithfully preached the truth to Herod, the king, landed in prison and finally was beheaded.
No, my friend, the Holy Ghost’s power in your life will not make you famous or great.  It will simply help you to exalt Jesus, whether it is before a congregation or to the ones or twos.  It matters not whether it is by sermon, testimony or by consistent, blameless living.  It is, “Up with Jesus, and down with self.”
A certain nominal church member heard people whom he knew well, claiming to have received the cleansing baptism of the Holy Ghost; heard them preaching and proclaiming the message of heart holiness and death to self.  All he could think of was that they were exalting themselves and said, “When people go to the ‘top’ there is nothing to follow in their lives but to come down from such a position.”
God’s provision for becoming little and unknown and yet a blessing to one’s generation, in the greatest degree possible, is to identify oneself with Jesus on the Cross of Christ.  St. Paul did this and testifies in Galatians 2:20, “I am crucified with Christ:  nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me:  and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”  In teaching littleness, St. Paul wrote to the Philippians in chapter two:  “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.”  What mind was that?  It was the mind that took seven steps down from the throne of His Father’s glory to the most degrading death of a slave, outside the city walls.  We would like to quote here the last two verses of that wonderful hymn by Paul Gerhardt:

Thus though worn, and tried, and tempted,
Glorious calling, saint, is thine;
Let the Lord but find thee emptied,
Living branch in Christ, the Vine!
Vessels of the world’s despising,
Vessels weak, and poor, and base,
Bearing wealth God’s heart is prizing,
Glory from Christ’s blessed face.

Oh to be but emptier, lowlier,
Mean, unnoticed and unknown,
And to God a vessel holier,
Filled with Christ and Christ alone!
Naught of earth to cloud the glory,
Naught of self the light to dim,
Telling forth His wondrous story,
Emptied, to be filled with Him.

IT COSTS TO BELIEVE IN HOLINESS

By J. R. Mitchell

Do we really believe in holiness?  The question is not whether we believe in a theologically structured doctrine of holiness or in a culturally conditioned concept of holiness, but in the holiness that is taught in the Scriptures, exemplified in the life of the Master, and demonstrated in the lives of the authentic saints.  Before we make a reply, it might be well to ponder the implications of that question.
The Pain of Divine Discipline
For one thing, to really believe in holiness means that we must, without murmuring, bear the pain of the Divine Discipline.
“For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness” (Heb. 12:10).  The saintly Commissioner Brengle declared that “God has never coddled me.”
Any Christian who has taken seriously God’s call to holiness can echo that testimony.  It simply means that God is dealing with stakes too high to permit Him to humor our petty whims and carnalities.  Even our redeemed humanity must surrender to the claims of Christ.  The happiness that we cherish is secondary to His high purpose of conforming us to the image of His Son.
To really believe in holiness means that we must be prepared to allow the Holy One to stride with authority and devastating power over our self-will, our pride, pretences, and prejudices.  He has no tolerance for our religious pride, or our denominational pride, or our pride of office or position.  The God Who loves us so utterly is not primarily concerned about whether we are rich or poor, sick or healthy, famous or unknown; His great concern is that we might be “partakers of his holiness.”
That can be a costly commitment.  To God it meant committing His Son to the cross; to us it means to “lay in dust life’s glory dead, and from the ground there blossoms red, life that shall endless be.”
Though His heart is infinitely tender, He will not allow our whimpering self-pity to divert Him from His holy purpose.  Moreover, He will not permit us to take any satisfaction from our professed superiority over others; He has one standard, “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”  You see, God means it when He says He wants us to be holy.

Becoming Spiritual Adventurers

To believe in holiness means that we are willing to be spiritual adventurers.  “Pursue holiness, without which no man can see the Lord” (Heb. 12:14).  There is nothing static or dated about the life of holiness.  There is no time or place for self-satisfaction or self-congratulation.
The Holy Spirit will not let us make a nice little nest in which to insulate ourselves from the rigorous demands of adventurous living.  We are running a race, waging a fight, pursuing a goal.  No saint has arrived; he is always en route.

Moral and Spiritual Purity

To believe in holiness must mean that we have accepted the rigorous demand for moral and spiritual purity.
“For God called us to holiness, not to impurity” (1 Thess. 4:7, NEB).  Only a commitment to the holy life will fortify the soul against the downward pull of the fleshly lusts.  There must be no trifling with the sanctities of life, no excusing ourselves for human frailty.
That God can and does forgive sin is gloriously true; but no sincere child of God will presume on that forgiveness.  The sacred credentials of our Lord were that He “loved righteousness and hated iniquity.”  His children can do no less.

Love to the Point of Pain

Finally, to believe in holiness must mean that we love to the point of pain.  “Abound in love one toward another and toward all men, to the end that ye may establish your hearts unblamable in holiness” (1 Thess. 3:12-13).
Holiness is love.  That is not only Wesleyan theology; that is the whole thrust of the biblical teaching of holiness.  Not love as a sentiment, but love as a Divine principle.
To really believe in holiness, then, means that we bare our hearts to the anguished cry of a Christless world.  We dare not plead that “they are not our kind” or that they “brought it on themselves.”  There must be no shielding our delicate sensibilities from the ugliness of man’s sin.  Holiness caused Christ to “be made sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor.5:21).
There is no sharing in His holiness without sharing in His compassion.  It really costs to love.  William Booth wanted “to run a rescue shop next door to hell,” and, in some sense, that is the destiny of every redeemed soul.
Yes, believing in holiness is costly business.  Unless we are really in earnest about it, maybe we had better not trifle with the vocabulary.
—From the book And They Shall Prophesy 169 pp., compiled by G. Failing, Editor of Wesleyan Advocate.

FRONT AND REAR VISION

By David Moore

“But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins” (2 Peter 1:9).
The earnest and hungry Christian who desires to grow in grace and in the knowledge of Christ is encouraged and exhorted by many portions of the Bible.  2 Peter 1 is not the least of such helpful passages.  In fact, I view it as clear a recipe for spiritual growth as any chapter in the Holy Bible.
Peter talks of grace and peace being multiplied to us, of all things being given to us that pertain unto godliness, of knowledge of Him Who hath called us, and comes to a climax with the exceeding great and precious promises given unto us which enable us to partake of the Divine Nature—the crux and sum of spiritual life.
Besides all this, he exhorts us to add to our faith in Christ many practical characteristics which make up the spiritual man:  virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness and charity.  If these things be in us and abound we shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord.  After all, should not every Christian vehemently desire with St. Paul, “That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection.”
Why then are the bulk of professing Christians falling so far short of this Scriptural standard so clearly laid down in black and white?  Why the lack of growth in grace, the multiplying and adding to of spirituality?  Reading the New Testament lately, I was amazed how the early Christians had such long-range vision.  Suffering and reproach were welcomed for they saw beyond the few short years of living on this earth.  The return of Christ was eagerly anticipated so that His Kingdom could be established.  It was because they were walking in light, growing in grace, looking with faithful Abraham “for a city which is afar off.”
Verse 9 of our chapter suggested to me what is ailing and crippling the church of today.  After clearly explaining a way for growth in grace, Peter states that he who lacks these things is blind and suffers from two fatal spiritual diseases:

1. “He cannot see afar off.”
2. “He hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins.”

What a sick Christian!  His disease is worth deeper study!

He Cannot See Afar Off

The Christian who avails himself of the qualities provided for him in chapter one, is one who goes on with God and correspondingly his attitude to this world changes.  He doesn’t see it any longer as a home, a place for progress and advancement, an opportunity for personal success.  No, he becomes a pilgrim and a stranger along with the inspiring characters of Hebrews 11.  He gets his eyes on a country which is afar off, where Christ is all and in all.  This world then becomes a training ground, a place of preparation.  Things that are highly esteemed among men pale into insignificance, and life’s sorrows, trials and disappointments are embraced as a process of maturity to the new man in Christ Jesus.
It is sad to say that that is not what I see in most professing Christians today.  The long-range vision of the coming riches and glories of the ages to come, is dimmed and obscured by a short-sighted view of things of self and this world.  Materialism and living for the things of time satisfy believers and prevent them from looking with expectancy to that which is afar off and which is the true magnet to the spiritual man.
Peter diagnoses the disease.  We are short-sighted; we cannot see afar off because we lack those characteristics to which we are to give diligence, for growth in grace.  How the devil has satisfied Christians today with near-sighted vision!  Offer a five-year-old an apple or ten pounds, and he will choose the apple.  So with the short-sighted Christian.  He chooses material comforts and earthly pleasure rather than exert himself to avail himself of the exceeding great and precious promises which will be to him “spiritual binoculars.”

He Hath Forgotten That He Was Purged. . .

But the disease gets more critical and is nearing the point of fatality.  Not only does he not “see afar off,” he forgets “that he was purged from his old sins.”  You say that is not possible.  I say it is.  A sinner can have a wonderful experience of the convicting power of the Holy Spirit and of the love of God poured into his heart in Calvary forgiveness.  But if, through the years, he does not add to and multiply in spiritual growth, that which was once real and vital to him will wane and decrease until the sparkle has all gone.  How many Christians are in such a state today!  “I was saved on such and such a date in such and such a place” but the reality of being a new creature is not apparent.  Why?  Because they haven’t gone on in the knowledge of Him Who hath called us to glory and virtue.
Thus rear and front vision is dulled and spiritual life is on the ebb.  Is all lost?  Not if we take heed and “give diligence to make our calling and election sure” that an abundant entrance may be made for us into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
The world needs today Christians who are full of the reality of their spiritual birth, the wonder and awe of being a sinner saved by grace, whose spiritual eyes do not suffer from short-sightedness, who view afar-off realities with excitement and expectancy.

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If I believe in the Holy Ghost, then I must believe that He will not rest until He has transformed every trait of my own character.  I believe that every inherited failing, whatever it be, must yield before the quiet working of the Holy Ghost.  It is worth while, it is worth everything, that God should attain to the full, His purpose in us.
—Otto Stockmayer.

THE TAKEOVER

By Barry Tait

Why is it that we Christians are so ignorant concerning the blessed purposes of Christ’s death?  If I had to sum up my life in two words before Christ’s complete takeover, they would be “Arrogance” and “Ignorance”—arrogance before conversion and ignorance after.
You see, I was saved from an irreligious life and had only ten days with Christians before leaving them for the Shetland Isles to live for Christ among my relatives, whom I had not seen since I was a baby.  And so much of my Christian convictions had to be revealed, not taught, although I thank God for those who faithfully instructed me from time to time.  Often there were things I had to repent of before realizing that they were not to be a part of the Christian’s life.  But through it all, God had a foothold in Barry Tait and was working towards complete Lordship.
After spending several months in the Shetland Isles, I felt called into Christian service rather than to return home to Australia.  I applied on the grounds of His call rather than those of my ability, and was accepted with the words, “If He has called you, He will have something for you to do.”  I have found no lack of things to do!  It was, however, the spirit in which I did them that troubled me.  Often I would be inhibited by my fear of man—that fear that always shut my mouth when prompted by the Holy Spirit to testify at unusual times and places.  However, it is not for us to dictate when and where, and I began to realize that it was still “my life” with which I was trying to serve Christ and not “His life.”  I found this especially true with regard to the discipline and training so necessary yet so repugnant to the natural man.
Ignorance, ignorance, ignorance, was written all over my life—ignorant of how to serve Christ and ignorant of what His death upon the Cross could mean with regard to my self-life.  I had not realized the secret Paul discovered was “The sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in Christ which raiseth the dead.”
At this time, at about nineteen years of age, I was subjected to much true holiness preaching, but although I was gaining a mental conception of where the solution lay, I had yet to receive that revelation which made these things mine in reality.  I strove to believe, staying up parts of the night in prayer and rising early.  I was yet to find His faith implanted in me by the Holy Ghost.
I thank God for the process which led up to my appropriation of Christ’s death as my death.  God gave me that word in Romans 6:5, “If we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be in the likeness of his resurrection.”  I seemed to see that the resurrection was an automatic response to going down into His death.  But to die is not an easy thing, let alone to die daily.  As I read later, my first priority was to be assured that I had died definitely before I could die daily.
The battle reached its height, or depth rather, with a growing affection I had for a young lady Christian worker.  I had all the arguments of how she would be such a strength in the right direction.  When working with her, I always seemed to do better than with anyone else and all the right reasons for our attachment seemed at hand, but it was my will which motivated me rather than His will.  When in despair about whether to proceed with a definite friendship, God broke through my desire with an almost audible “NO!”  How much it cost me to accept this verdict, could only be realized by those who have undergone a similar experience.  Not only did it seem I cared for her but I had felt she would be such an asset to me in the Lord’s work.  I was learning that even the best has to come from Him and not through our own engineering.  As I yielded, however, my last stronghold fell and, not long afterwards, while kneeling in my private devotions one morning, I realized by His faith, that Barry Tait died in Christ 2,000 years ago.  Oh, what a rest of faith came to me!  It seemed harder to disbelieve than to believe.
People would ask me what was the result of this experience, thinking mainly in terms of outward evidence and power.  I found that the power I received was that which tended towards straight-forward positive spirituality.  Things before disconnected now became connected.  My times were in His hands and He ordered all things.  I had learned the secret not to trust in myself and I found Him always available.  Battles, struggles and oppression from the enemy still came at times but God could more clearly reveal the enemy’s strategy and gain the victory when there was not a traitor within.  I had entered into what could be termed “a working rest.”
As the months passed, I found my affection for this same person unabated.  How I prayed over this matter!  I know God understood my feelings and I was ready to be sent to the furthest part of the globe, but here I remained, so close.  After six months had elapsed and God did not seem to be hearing my prayers about separating us one way or another, I felt such affection still that I knew that He wouldn’t torment me.  We, with the Lord’s approval, entered into an understanding together to seek the will of God.  Two years later we were married and now, nearly eight years have been added also.  We have a son and I have found, as a father, that the same secret I had discovered those years before, while kneeling in prayer that morning, is still my life.  “We had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead.”  I have often remarked that, if it were not for this reality I could not have undergone the refining process which is to bring us into His likeness.  In practical terms it means being baptized into the Body of Christ and finding that others, who are God’s love-slaves, have a similar spiritual objective.
It is in the home especially that I have found the power to realize a unity in Christ in the fullest sense.  When the center is Christ, we can all move more coherently and co-operatively.  In many areas, my son and I have natures that clash but I can see how much of my old uncrucified self would have made me totally unable to be that father who could help mold and shape his son’s young life.  But, as I take Christ’s life daily as my own, I find then, and only then, can I fulfill the role which He has given me.
It is more and more my ambition to be holy.  This I find is the consuming passion of the Holy Ghost, to bring my life into that matured growth and to conform me to the image of Christ.  All is consumed by this desire and used to this end.  There is no higher goal in life and I am so grateful for an insight into this vast spiritual domain.  It may be unseen to others but it is Eternal and I know what the Holy Ghost works in me here and now shall last into the ages to come.  Truly those “things that are seen are temporal, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”

THE LURE OF THE VISIBLE

By Mrs. E. F. Harvey

“The things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Cor. 4:18).

God, in His infinite love and wisdom, has placed man on this earth with the power to choose between the invisible world, which can be grasped only by faith, and the material realm which unregenerate man can possess without faith or revelation.  The unseen world is God’s real world and is everlasting.  It is embraced by men of faith.  The statement, “The just shall live by faith,” is mentioned at least three times in the Bible.  Faith is the instrument which enables us to keep the vision of the unseen world ever in view.
God permitted Satan to tempt man with the materialistic, but it is fleeting. In the garden the serpent offered Adam and Eve the fruit of that which was good to look at, good to make one wise and good to eat.  What advantage over God, Satan seemed to be given!  Being a deceiver, he could make the real seem most unreal; and the unreal appear to be the important and all-demanding reality for man’s attention and time.  He offered the seen glory of the world—its pomp, its riches, its impressive buildings, its honors and its outward splendor which unregenerate man could grasp without faith.  The modernist can appreciate all this world’s artistic and cultural values without one ounce of Scriptural faith.  The skeptic can appreciate the literary value of the Bible accounts, but deny their supernatural power, calling them fables and legends.  Because of unbelief, he is denied entrance into this invisible, mysterious realm.
What our first parents did in the garden of Eden, almost all religious organizations have eventually done—they satisfy the multitude’s love for the seen in order to attract them to the Church.  Houses and lands, splendid edifices, ornate churches and cathedrals, massive campaigns—all enthrall the soulish nature of man till his entire religious life can be wrapped around these seen things, and yet he will miss the eternal world.  All these things are to crumble in the dust.  The man with the muck-rake, scooping up all the riches in time, while a crown hangs suspended over his head, of which he is scarcely aware, pictures the most of mankind absorbed in the rat race for mere “things.”
Can we look for a moment at the Old Testament and note the quality of the men God chose to fulfill His purposes?  Abraham “looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.”  “By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise” (Heb. 11:9).  They grasped God’s promises from afar and treated the invisible as the substance, the “evidence of things not seen.”  Lot, viewing all the land below, chose the visible advantages of a city with lush plains surrounding it, but he ruined his prospects, and almost perished.
Moses abandoned the seen splendors of an Egyptian court, the solid pyramids with their seeming everlastingness, the wisdom and culture of Egypt, and embraced the reproach of a slave people.  “By faith Moses . . . chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he had respect unto the recompense of the reward.  By faith . . . he endured, as seeing him who is invisible” (Heb. 11:25-27).  Isaiah speaks of a God “who hides himself.”  He works unobserved by us, in order that faith must operate if we are to see His works.
Only recently did we notice that while Moses was on the Mount with this God Who filled the heaven of heavens, and while he was receiving the commandments, the first of which was to forbid anyone making any likeness to God, Aaron was down on the plain succumbing to the demands of a temporizing people, making for them a visible representation of the unseen God.  We might inveigh vehemently against Aaron, but how often do religious leaders give in to this subtle form of temptation.  Will they present an invisible Kingdom with its hidden Ruler to the people, or will they yield to the demands of the carnal for big buildings, impressive speakers of note, or worldly forms of entertainment in order to draw the masses to occupy the empty seats in their churches?  Aaron chose to appease the carnal appetites of the people by presenting God in visible form.
While God was appearing in all His power to Moses, Aaron, though a gifted speaker, was offering the people a mean, despicable caricature of an Almighty God.  By doing so he revealed his own lack of spiritual vision.  Show me how big a man’s God is, and I will show you that man’s spiritual capacity.
Elijah on Mt. Carmel was temporarily overwhelmed with doubt as to the final issue of victory for an unseen God as against the Baal worshippers—the visible versus the invisible.  Alone, and hunted for his life, he despaired.  He did not see the invisible company of loyal supporters which God above saw.  God loved the lonely prophet and took care to introduce him to earthquake, wind and fire, and then employed the still, small voice as the most important.  That voice directed the prophet to appoint three others to finish the task Elijah had begun, and then He shared a secret with him  There were seven thousand believers scattered throughout Israel.  They were symbolic of that mystery of “the Body of Christ” which Paul was so ably to reveal to the New Testament Church some thousands of years later.
But the peak of the Old Testament occurs when Israel rejected the invisible Commander, God, for a mere mortal to be their king and command their nation and armies.  They desired no longer to march under an unseen Lord of Hosts Who could, without use of any carnal weapons, direct the straggling minorities to victories over massive, armed forces.  Israel could not show to the pagans their mighty fortresses, buttresses, iron chariots or large cavalry of horsemen with shining spears.
It is highly significant that after rejecting the Lord as their Ruler, not a weapon could be found in all the land of Israel, save the swords of Saul and Jonathan.  God had been their defense in a pillar of fire by night, their cloud by day.  He had mustered heavenly hosts of angels, had caused nameless fears to haunt standing armies, until, mastered by dread, they fled with no seen weapons or armies in view.  God had also all the forces of nature to call to the defense of the unarmed Children of Israel.  Locusts, hornets, thunder, hail, lightning, earthquake, the movement of marching hosts in the tops of mulberry trees—all these God had used when His people had trusted Him and exerted faith in their unseen Commander.  There was no need for the use of carnal weapons which Paul later saw were useless in fighting spiritual battles.  “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.”
The choice of the people to be like the nations round about, and desire the splendor of a king, a palace, and armies, displeased God.  “They have not rejected thee,” He said to Samuel, “but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them.”  They had made a fatal mistake which henceforth would accelerate their downward course.
Solomon, their most carnal king, reached heights of outward splendor almost beyond human conception.  Gold was multiplied, although God had forbidden it being amassed.   He knew how material prosperity almost always robs a people of the true.  Horses were multiplied and even brought from Egypt and bred in the land of Israel, though also prohibited.  Princesses of foreign courts were courted and brought to Solomon’s harem, also in direct disobedience to a given command.  The size of an oriental king’s harem was the measure of prestige he enjoyed.  Solomon enhanced his kingdom by slave labor, and he reaped the just rewards of his selfish desire for opulence and grandeur by his kingdom being rent in twain under his son.
A close study of the Old Testament will reveal that that one act of Israel—rejecting the invisible God for a mortal—was the height of folly.  They had truly partaken of the serpent’s fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  The nation paid the penalty for this transient glory by finally having its ancient and beloved city sacked and the Jewish people dispersed throughout the nations of the world.
In the New Testament we see the last Adam coming, refusing the tempting offer of Satanic inducement to worship the “seen” glories of the kingdoms of this world.  How lowly His birth!  How humble His followers!  How obscure His upbringing and unrecorded history of thirty years!  But how very real was His confidence in His heavenly Father!  He reintroduced the unseen Kingdom which He said came “without observation.”  In His brief lifetime He made the unseen God once again the over-ruling Providence.  He obeyed the commands of an unseen Guide and Sovereign.  He evaded the publicity which could have brought Him notoriety, for He had come to show man how he must act by faith in the unseen.  To the woman at the well, He announced a form of worship which was not enacted in the ornate temple in Jerusalem, or in this mountain of Samaria.  He declared that all true worshippers would be those who worshipped “in spirit and in truth,” “for” He said, “the Father seeketh such to worship him.”  This is His delight, when ruined man re-establishes His connection with the offended God and henceforth takes his orders from Him.
Jesus angered the Jews, so proud of their temple, by saying that not one stone would be left upon another.  He prophesied the end of all material things.  To the Jews this was blasphemy and cause for His death by crucifixion.  But when Christ went away, He left a courageous band of men and women initiated by revelation into the mysteries of the Kingdom.  Peter had first been introduced to this invisible church which flesh and blood could not reveal.  The Father in Heaven had drawn the curtain back on time and showed “His Church” to this humble fisherman of Galilee.  And Peter shows how he had caught the idea when in his epistle he says, “Ye also, as lively stones are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:5).  The visible glory of the temple had given way to a building of living stones, built up into a spiritual temple.
To Paul, however, it was given to proclaim the mystery of the Body of Christ.  How Paul exults in this grand picture of an invisible Body whose Head is in Heaven, but whose members are scattered throughout the known world!  “Know ye not,” he says in astonishment at their inability to grasp spiritual ideals, “that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost?”  The Holy Spirit was to indwell human bodies instead of brick and mortar.  He was to inhabit frail vessels of clay and make them His habitation on earth.
The human body was but the picture of that greater spiritual body, the members of which were to receive those impulses from the Divine Head and act in most harmonious concert in performing the will of God silently and unobservedly throughout the earth.  This is a triumph which is recognized only by anointed eyes.
Every organization, every denomination, is now being tested during this short time of trial upon earth as to whether it will build in lively stones or whether it will rear beautiful, spacious structures of brick and stone to which the carnal will flock with their offerings, swelling the numbers to furnish impressive statistics.  These will pass away.  They are the seen, whose penalty for existence is a brief, ephemeral earthly flight like that of the butterfly, instead of the everlasting life during ages upon ages in which to glorify the living and now eternally seen God.
The offence of the Cross is the cost of acting contrary to the values upon which the great mass of Christianity set a premium.  When men all about us are impressed by the apparent, how crucifying it is to adhere to the Kingdom which cometh not with observation!  One must be dead to the praise and applause of man.  Little wonder that Paul stated that it was impossible to appease carnal man’s love for big things, and still please God Who has desired, from the beginning of time, to remain invisible except to faith.  Daily and hourly the temptation arises to placate the clamor of the religious press and religious congregations for impressive things.  Like Aaron we can make an image of God, or like Hezekiah, we can show all our treasures to the kings and potentates who come to view our possessions.  He showed them “all that was in his house” and the prophet reproved him and told him these would be taken away.  The homage they bring is of so temporary a nature!  They die and pass away.  Our ancient monuments and modern buildings crumble into dust, or worse—are sold to false sects, or to Muslims for their mosques.  How hurt we feel sometimes when we see church buildings turned into garages, auction rooms or furniture display rooms.  The rich worshippers, who gave lavishly, are buried in graves surrounding the moldering ruins.  The denominations, once large, dwindle as some new sect lures the Christian populace to some bigger enterprise that dazzles their imagination.  And so, the temporal is the penalty.
Revelation ends with the invisible becoming visible.  A new Heaven and new earth!  Everything built of wood, hay and stubble has been burned in the fire which is to try every man’s work.  All that is not of faith will be combustible fuel for that time when the heavens will melt with fervent heat.  The continuing city will come to earth.  The season of probation, when faith was needed to make invisible things real, will be past.  The sons and daughters of God, hidden and unobserved, will be set in array before an assembled universe.  The tabernacles and tents of the pilgrim life will all be folded up, exchanged for the permanent city of God, coming down out of Heaven with its gates of pearl and its walls of gems, and its mansions prepared for its inhabitants.
No, these are not the ravings of a visionary or an enthusiast, but “the substance of things hoped for” and seen from afar by the eye of faith, and now brought into reality.  Whether we have indulged materialistic goals, building in things seen, or whether we have put our money, time and talents into heavenly banks and projects, thus literally laying up treasure against that day, will be apparent only on that great day.  But it will be too late to begin afresh.  Time will have ended our history here.  How wonderful to have the upward look, realizing faith’s goal in actuality!

The Lure of the Invisible
Tell  me no more of the splendor
Of the courts of mighty kings;
Speak to me not of the grandeur
Of the brightest earthly things;
For how shall I care for the glitter
Of gold or pearl or gem?
Or how shall mine eyes be dazzled
By yon monarch’s diadem?
Or how shall this heart be ravished
By the choicest earth can boast,
Now that mine eyes have seen Him,
The King, the Lord of hosts?

For who will gaze on a candle
While the noonday sun shines clear?
Or who will turn to the servant
While the Master standeth near?
Or why should one leave the palace grand
To stand in courtyard bare?
Or who depart from the Throne room
While the monarch sitteth there?
And how can I leave His service
For the highest earthly posts
Now that mine eyes have seen Him,
The King, the Lord of hosts?

As he that enjoys the sunlight
Needeth not that the stars should shine,
So I ask not for earthly light,
Having guidance all divine.
As a bride careth not who chideth
If her lover but agrees,
So I care not who condemneth
If but the Lord I please.
To afford His heart some gladness
Is the prize this heart seeks most,
Now that mine eyes have seen Him,
The King, the Lord of hosts.

So offer me not the bauble
Which the blinded worldlings seek,
For mine eyes have seen the King of kings;
Mine ears have heard Him speak.
And I cannot but be satisfied
With His favor full and free;
I cannot but His bidding do
As He enables me.
The world has no attractions left;
How mean is all its boasts,
Now that mine eyes have seen Him,
The King, the Lord of hosts.
—G. H. Lang.
                       (Used by permission).

HE’S DONE IT FOR ME

By Dudley Kidd

My conversion was of a low type, for the salvation I heard preached had very little saving power in it.  There was but little help during the life at a public school.  Now and then a word would be dropped to some friends about Christ; but my life sapped my testimony of power.  At the university I became what is generally called “an out-and-out Christian.”  Aggressive work in the open air, Gospel services, Bible classes, were the order of the day.  While being an out-and-out Christian, I began to feel that my need was to be an “in-and-in” one.  The holiness question came up during this time, and I felt it to be what I needed; but a friend persuaded me that it was unorthodox, and so I began to fight the movement with all possible bitterness.  I searched the Bible for arguments against those holiness people, and of course found what I wanted.  Only go with your mind made up to find Roman Catholicism, Sabbatarianism, Plymouth Brethrenism, Conditional Immortality, or any other doctrine and “ism,” in the Bible, and you will be sure to find it!  The preaching of salvation from sin was like a red rag to a bull in my case.
How tender are God’s dealings!  For a whole year I was laid low by a bad knee-joint, and in the forced inactivity began to get very hungry at heart.  Rush of active work had kept the heart in ignorance of its true state; now an intense soul-hunger to be true inwardly came over me like the incoming tide.  Some of the hostility to “holiness people” vanished, but a half-and-half holiness was accepted—a system of repression of sin.  This made but very little change in my life, for I never expected the enemy to be cast out:  according to my unbelief, so it was.  A system of theology was accepted which was pleasing to the carnal mind.  But this repression theory did not satisfy, and the experience it brought was disappointing.
To satisfy my soul-hunger, hours were spent in seeking for the Baptism of the Spirit.  After months of waiting, I was at last face to face with a definite written consecration of all to God; but the question was, Would I sign it, solemnly, in God’s presence?  As soon as this irrevocable surrender was made and signed, it seemed as if an immense load was lifted from off my soul.  Things were brighter, but there was no disguising the fact that things were not all right.  I was not saved from sin.
God graciously brought me into contact with the Rev. E. W. Moore, at a little private talk with a few friends at Portsmouth on a memorable Saturday night.  Mr. Moore spoke on Malachi 3:1-4.  At this meeting all prejudice was broken down by the Holy Spirit.  We had met to talk about the Baptism of the Spirit, but to my disappointment Mr. Moore spoke about heart-cleansing.  At first I felt ruffled inwardly, saying to myself, “There, after all, he is not talking about the Baptism of the Spirit, but about a clean heart.  I do not believe in a clean heart:  why ever is he wasting the time?”
But the time was anything but wasted.  I saw why the definite consecration a few days before had been so helpful, and I saw why it had been so limited in blessing power.  I had done my part, but doubted that God would do His part.  I then found out that there was no virtue or energy or efficacy in consecration.  It was a life-long lesson.  The blessing comes in when we commit God by our trust.  Consecration does but remove the hindrances, and puts us into the area where blessing descends:  it is God Who must give the blessing, and the only organ we have for receiving blessing is faith.
It is impossible to describe all that happened in that little room in Portsmouth in a short hour.  My entire life was thrown into a new channel; I went away saved from sin.  The change that took place in my heart and life is something like the change that takes place when the chrysalis bursts its dark brown husk and the butterfly stretches its wings and flies off into the sunlight.  The smile of God began to rest on my soul.
But as soon as God’s smile rested on me, the Christian world began to frown on me, and that frown is still hanging over me.  But what does that matter, when God smiles into the soul?

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

My friend, do you hesitate to take the step lest friends and Christians frown on you?  Are you trying to guess what they will do?  You need not:  I will tell you that as soon as you let Jesus Christ save you from sin the Christian world will cast you out.  They do not want a salvation that is so uncompromising with sin.  It is a fearful thing to say; but alas, the most fearful thing about it is that it is true.
What made the mighty change?  Was it something that I did and about which I can glory?  God forbid.  It was something that Jesus did and for which I shall praise Him for ever and ever.  Jesus came into my heart as Lord and Master, as Monarch and King.  He came in as Cleanser and Keeper.  Salvation is of the Lord.  For the first time in my life I fully allowed God to be my God; I just took my clumsy fingers off, and allowed Christ to be Christ; I let Jesus be Jesus.
“Did not this make you very proud?” you ask.  Turn to Ezekiel 36:31, “Then (when you are fully cleansed from all idols and filthiness) ye shall remember your own evil ways and your doings that were not good, and shall loathe yourselves in your own sight, for your iniquities, and for your abominations.”
How can you be proud about something someone else has done in your heart?  Pride is one of the sins that Jesus cleanses from, and how will you be proud about pride being cast out?
“And why were you kept waiting for months while you were seeking the Baptism of the Spirit?” you ask again.
Because I had my eye set upon the wrong thing.  I wanted power to remove mountains so as to attract attention to myself; what God wanted was a clean vessel that He might fill with the water of life, not for its own glory but for the thirsty souls around.  My mind was set on power; God’s heart was set on cleansing.  As long as I willfully sought my own way I got no power.  I remained dirty at heart; but as soon as I allowed God to have the way He thought best, I got both cleansing and power.
“And does salvation from sin imply a constant flame of seraphic feelings?”  Well, do not misunderstand me:  I did get feelings of a most blessed quality, but these were the accidentals, as it were, of the blessing; the real kernel was the indwelling of Christ in the heart, all else was secondary to this.  But yet I do not live by feelings, but by faith, and when I feel as dry as a chip I just see that my attitude to God is right as regards surrender and trust, and then keep on praising my Savior from all sin.
The downward tendency which was so prominent before has now given way to an upward tendency instead.  The proneness to wander is exchanged for a settled habit of making God my dwelling-place.  This does not mean that I have become a little pope, incapable of mistakes.  Infallibility is no essential constituent of salvation from sin.  Mistakes and sins differ in nature.  Nor does it mean that sin is impossible.  To lay claim to an inability to sin would be to profess sinless perfection.  We do NOT believe in sinless perfection.
“And how long did this blessing last?”  People said they would give me a month or two:  well, it is now 133 months since that memorable night, and surely that is a fairly good time in which to find out whether the whole thing was a mistake!  But it is not “the blessing” that lasts:  blessings may come and go, but “He remaineth.”  It is not an “it” that we get hold of and cling to, as tightly as we can:  it is a new relationship to Jesus that we enjoy.  Jesus becomes to us a Savior Who always saves, and not merely a Savior Who sometimessaves.  We can change our attitude to Christ if we choose; or if we neglect to watch and pray we shall be an easy prey to Satan.  Sanctification is a life, and not a thing.  Jesus becomes the life of our life, and then He saves from sin.
Make Jesus King, and then you will prove what He can do in the heart, and you too will join with us in giving glory to the wonderful Savior WHO SAVES HIS PEOPLE FROM THEIR SINS.—From an 1897 Bright Words magazine.

THE SOLDIER OF THE CROSS

By R. Arthur Matthews

It was a sad day for Adam, and for the rest of us, when his comfortable life in the Garden of Eden came to a sudden end.  Though Adam was created to have dominion, his choice to disobey God changed everything.  His status as royalty over God’s creation was lost, and he became a bond-slave of sin and a wage-earner on Satan’s terms.  By his act of disobedience Adam yielded his kingship to Satan, who from then on claimed the dominion offered by man’s disobedience and became “the prince of this world.”  In Eden God decreed enmity between the serpent’s seed and the seed of the woman.  Because of this, the law of strife became the law of life for the human race.  Hereafter the sinister eye of the deceiver would be on perpetual alert for evidences of the arrival of the Seed in order to lay plans to prevent the coming of this One Who was to crush his head.
In the fullness of God’s time the Lord Jesus Christ, the Seed of the woman and the eternal Son of God, was born.  As the Son of Man on earth, Jesus was no mere civilian passively suffering the attacks and harassment of Satan.  He was the Pioneer and Captain of our salvation, the original Soldier of the Cross, pressing forward along the lonely road to victory through the sufferings of death.  Nailing His feet to that Cross could not prevent Him from crushing Satan’s head beneath His heel.  And with His nail-pierced hands He tore off from Himself the evil powers that attempted to prevent Him from ascending to the throne.
Now glorified and seated at the Father’s right hand, “far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion,” Jesus as Lord of all is beyond reach of Satan’s attacks.  The finished work of Calvary is now completely unassailable.  Nothing that Satan may do can change the finality of the victory stroke that crushed his head.
However, the implications of that victory over the powers of evil and its application in the world of men is now in the hands of the Church on earth.  Consequently, the bitter enmity of Satan is now directed against the Church in order to vent his spleen against the Head through the members of His Body.  In his true character as adversary Satan is very much alive to rob the finished work of Christ of its full effect among men.  His fiery darts zero in on the members of Christ’s Body who have not learned to take their position in the heavenly places with Christ by faith and who face life without taking to themselves by prayer the whole armor of God.  He is especially concerned about those who are proclaiming the Good News of the finished work of Christ in earth’s dark corners.
Because of the hostility of the devil, the work of conforming the members of Christ’s Body to the likeness of the soldier-image of the Head is high on the priority list of the Holy Spirit.  As believers we are in Christ and He in us, and this means that His aggression against Satan must be expressed through us.  So we are no longer free to play the role of civilians, living as if there were no war.
Our soldier role is pictured for us throughout the Old Testament and is now established by our union with our conquering Head and affirmed in the New Testament.  The history of the saints in every age is one of conflict.  The pathway the disciple treads as he follows His Lord is one of certain warfare.

At this point let us ask ourselves some serious questions.
* Am I expressing the enmity God put between the devil and the Church’s Head?
* Or, am I seeking détente, coexistence, and peace through compromise?
* Am I available to my Lord as a willing instrument, ready for His use in His
warfare?
* Am I aware of the teaching of Scripture about my part in the spiritual conflict?

It has been said that “the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.”  The essential principles that brought about the defeat of Napoleon were developed on the football field.  Had there been no football-field discipline, there could have been very different results at Waterloo.  The schoolboy playing for his school learns that the will of the individual must be subservient at all times to the will of his captain.  He plays to give all that he has for the glory of his side, not just to win a name for himself.
It might appear to border on impudence to transfer the thought and say that the battle of the Cross was won on the praying field of Gethsemane, but I am serious.  If not actually in terms of encounter with the enemy, then from the point of vital principle, it was most certainly so.
The Soldier of the Cross had taught His disciples the need to pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  The obvious inference is that God has limited certain of His activities to responding to the prayers of His people.  Unless they pray, He will not act.  Heaven may will something to happen, but Heaven waits and encourages earth’s initiative to desire that will, and then to will and pray that it happens.  The will of God is not done on earth by an inexorable, juggernaut omnipotence “out there” overriding or ignoring the will of man on earth.  On the contrary, God has willed that His hand be held back while He seeks for a man, an intercessor to plead, “Thy will be done on earth,” in this or that specific situation.
The Cross of Jesus Christ represents the one focal point in history at which the redemptive work of God for man focused and culminated in one infinite, massive act.  Gethsemane represents the vital principle which makes it possible for that redemptive work to be successfully consummated on earth.  So let us deepen our consideration of this “infinite, massive act.”
On the road to the Cross the Savior is seen as passive, a man acted upon, not a man active.  He was taken, led away, scourged, spat upon, and finally nailed to the Cross.  He was “brought as a lamb to the slaughter,” “a victim led, His blood was shed.”  The Lamb of God was a victim caught in the squeeze between the good and acceptable and perfect will of God and the evil will of heartless men.
In the quiet solitude of Gethsemane’s olive grove, Jesus appears in an active role.  If He is acted upon on Golgotha, He is the lead actor in Gethsemane.  It is here that He sets Himself to endure the travail pains of a demanding prayer warfare and actively wills for God to do His work through Him, regardless of the cost to Himself.  His troubled spirit expresses itself in groans, strong crying and tears.  The battle is joined.  The intensity mounts.  Heaven’s legions press forward to help, but this is not their battlefield; it is His alone.  His will is assailed at every point.  “His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.”  Here is God’s work being done in God’s way.  God willing it in Heaven, and a man willing it on earth.  The sacrifice at Calvary happened because first, out of His soul’s depths in dark Gethsemane, the Soldier of the Cross wills with God for it to happen.  As His prayer groans upward, “Thy will be done,” the determinate counsel of the Father moves to the sacrifice of His Lamb.  The Soldier of the Cross wins His battle in the praying field of Gethsemane with only a sentence prayer, but it involved His life.  There the embattled Savior knelt and “fired the shot heard round the world”—“Thy will be done.”
In His Gethsemane struggle the Lord Jesus teaches us two important things:  “Submit to God” and “resist the devil.”  God’s warfare against Satan is carried on by His submissive people actively resisting Satan by insisting at all costs, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Prayer:  Oh, Lord!  help me to accept the fact that I am born for battle and am responsible to seek the doing of the will of my Father on earth by resisting the enemy’s attempts to reverse that will.  To this end I pray that the will to disentangle myself from the smothering absorption of civilian living may be strengthened in me, so that I may be a good soldier of Jesus Christ.  And “Oh, may no coward spirit seek to leaven the Warrior code, the calling that is ours.”—R. Arthur Matthews, from his book Born for Battle, published by Overseas Missionary Fellowship, and reprinted with their permission.

THE WAY OF CHRIST IS STILL NARROW

By A. W. Tozer

Deception has always been an effective weapon, and is deadliest when used in the field of religion.
There was a time, no longer ago than the twenties and thirties, when a Christian knew, or at least could know, where he stood.  The words of Christ were taken seriously.  A man either was or was not a believer in New Testament doctrine.  Clear, sharp categories existed.  Black stood in sharp contrast to white; light was separated from darkness; it was possible to distinguish right from wrong, truth from error, a true believer from an unbeliever.  Christians knew that they must forsake the world, and there was for the most part remarkable agreement about what was meant by the world.  It was that simple.
But over the last score of years a quiet revolution has taken place. The whole religious picture has changed.  Without denying a single doctrine of the faith, multitudes of Christians have nevertheless forsaken the faith and are as far astray as the Modernists who were at least honest enough to repudiate the Scriptures before they began to violate them.
Many of our best-known preachers and teachers have developed ventriloquial tongues and can now make their voices come from any direction.  They have surrendered the traditional categories of religious thought.  For them there is no black or white, there is only gray.  Anyone who makes a claim to having “accepted Christ” is admitted at once into the goodly fellowship of the prophets and the glorious company of the apostles, regardless of the worldliness of his life or the vagueness of his doctrinal beliefs.
I have listened to certain speakers and have recognized the ingredients that went to make up their teachings.  A bit of Freud, a dash of Emile Coue, a lot of watered-down humanism, tender chunks of Emersonian transcendentalism, auto-suggestion a la Dale Carnegie, plenty of hopefulness and religious sentimentality, but nothing hard and sharp and specific.  Nothing of the either/or of Christ and Peter and Paul.  None of the “Who is on the Lord’s side?” of Moses:  just tender pleading to “take Jesus and let Him solve your problems.”
If such as I here describe were cultists or liberals of one stripe or another, I would say nothing more about it, but many of them are professed evangelicals. . .
The notion is now pretty well disseminated throughout the ranks of current evangelicalism that love is really all that matters, and for that reason we ought to receive everyone whose intention is right, regardless of his doctrinal position, granted of course that he is ready to read the Scriptures, trust Jesus and pray.  The unregenerate sympathies of the fallen human heart adopt this foggy creed eagerly.  The trouble is that the Holy Scriptures teach nothing of the kind. . .
The apostle Paul warned against what he called “profane and vain babblings,” as for instance that of Hymenaeus and Philetus, stating that their words would eat as doth a canker and overthrow the faith of some.  And what was their error?  They merely taught a spiritual resurrection instead of a physical one.
“If a man hath the mind to get the start of other sinners and be in hell before them,” said an old divine, “he need do no more than open his sails to the winds of heretical doctrine, and he is like to make a short voyage to hell; for these bring upon their maintainers a swift destruction.”
This is nearer to Paul’s view than is that of the new evangelical latitudinarians.  The way of the cross is still narrow.

HOLY TASTE

By G. D. Watson

There is a deep meaning in the old Methodist interrogation, “Do you enjoy religion?”  It means a great deal more than being a church member, or being a Christian in the ordinary sense of that term.  It suggests a state in which religion has become a seraphic passion in the heart, that the stream of grace has so swollen and filled the channel of the soul, that its onward rolling tide is a luxury.  One of the blessings attached to a pure heart is that the vitiated tastes of the soul are so corrected that the service of God becomes our highest, keenest, sweetest joy, and Divine things have a perpetually increasing charm to our tastes.
Someone has triflingly said that “this thing of religion is a mere matter of taste.”  Very true; but this thing of taste lies at the root and center of every moral being in existence.  As the taste of our mouth decides what kind of food is eaten, so the inner taste of the heart decides the moral pabulum on which the soul feeds.  It is impossible to deeply enjoy that for which we have not a keen relish, so that to serve God joyously we must serve Him in agreement with the keenest tastes of the heart and mind.
Diseased organs will impair the taste, and all moral diseases must be washed away from the soul in order to render the spiritual taste strong, united and heavenly.  When the heart is in a mixed moral state, grace and depravity warring against each other in the soul, then there is a division in the tastes of the mind.  The voice of conscience and the proclivities of taste are often opposed to each other.  In such a state we have some taste for worldly things, for worldly emoluments, literature, honors, etc., and yet would feel shocked to go to the full length of sinners.  On the other hand we have a taste for religion, its pursuits and future glories, but our taste is not sufficiently strong to make us yield ourselves completely and enthusiastically to the pursuit of holiness.
How many thousands of Christians, both preachers and people, are living along this miserable line of moral mixtures; they would feel disgraced to go as far as sinners in earthly things, and (shall I say it?) they would feel nearly as equally disgraced to go as far as the entirely sanctified in the triumphant zeal for heavenly things.  You have a taste for eloquent preaching, of a general character, but you cannot endure the full-orbed blaze of definite holiness preaching.  You have some taste for a quiet, orderly, indefinite prayer meeting, but your diseased moral appetite is disgusted with the Pentecostal fire and glory of a holiness prayer meeting.  You have a taste for a little religious conversation, but you are fairly nauseated at a Scriptural testimony to full salvation.  What you need is a perfectly healthy religious taste, so that you can relish the deep things of the Spirit, and relish them all the time.  When the will is sweetly united to God, and the heart made pure, it puts an end to this disagreeable division of soul tastes.  The appetite for liquor and tobacco, in any form, is utterly extirpated.  The secret lingering taste for jewelry, gaudy dress, light literature, gay society and earthly amusements is utterly washed away; so much so that they are disgusting to the pure soul.
On the other hand, everything in the service of God becomes a perennial joy.  The tastes of the intellect, the perceptions of reason, the dictates of conscience, the choices of will, and the appetites of the heart, flow like a crystal stream towards the heavenly and Divine.  Now that the sanctifying Spirit has cured the moral palate, how it feeds on the pure Word and prayer!  The Sabbath, the Church, the holy hymns and gathering of God’s people are all filled with supernatural charm.  Then everything is beautiful only in so far as it gives the soul gleams of its precious Lord, and all the so-called fine things of earth grow unlovely that lack the mark of the Lamb.  The old duties are performed with a new and delicious zest.  Ah, here is the only panacea for all the vitiated tastes that corrupt and blind the Church.
That is not all.  When our tastes are thoroughly cleansed and renewed in the Spirit, they are far more intense toward Divine things than they ever were toward earthly things.  Nothing is normal in the soul until it is brought into union with God; hence when our taste is restored to the pure taste of God, it acts with an energy and zest surpassing its former relish for sin.  A real saint has an intense taste for Heaven and holiness, greater than any sinner has for the things of earth.  It is only as our faculties are brought into blissful union with Jesus that they act up to their maximum of strength.
The heart which has become the habitation of the Sanctifier will often have a sweetly distressing thirst for God, and a taste for Infinite Love, that is utterly inexpressible, and exceeding any sinner’s craving for evil things.  Who will believe these things, and then, who will prove their reality?  These seraphic ardors can be raised only upon the utter spoliation of our earthly and semi-earthly tastes.  It is God’s plan to spoil us for this world, that He may fit us for Heaven.  Only a question of taste, verily!  Yet Heaven and hell revolve on that pivot of taste.  The vulture and the dove are divided only by their taste; so are demons and seraphs.  When all the tastes are perfectly holy, the soul will be spoiled for all worlds except Heaven, into which it will appropriately and inevitably gravitate.

Getting Egypt Out Of Them
It was a mighty miracle,
When Israel out of Egypt came:
But then the hardest obstacle
Was “getting Egypt out of them.”

Across the sea-bed dry they fled
Away from Egypt’s curse and shame;
But harder far than this great deed
Was “getting Egypt out of them.”

They spurned God’s Manna, “Let’s depart
To Egypt’s fleshpots, whence we came,”
They murmured.  Yes, the hardest part
Was “getting Egypt out of them.”

Help us give heed to Your rebuke,
For often, Lord, we must confess,
The hardest of the Spirit’s work
Is “getting Egypt out of us.”
—Martin J. Muffitt.
From Redemption Tidings, used by permission.