Whose Experience is Just Trust – Christian Victory Message

Surely if we are led by the Spirit of God to yield ourselves fully to Him, we are then and thenceforward to reckon ourselves as His, and not to call in question the fact that we are His, but to consider this fact settled once for ever, and expect that the Spirit of God will constantly be with us to show us what to do and work in us to will and to do of His good pleasure.  It will be profitable often to call to remembrance that we have been made over to God; in fact never to forget it; and daily seek to have before us what is involved in it.
We fear that there are too many whose religious experience is just a circle ever renewed.  Consecration; then, forgetfulness of the consecration and resumption of this and that thing belonging to the sacrifice; then, distress and doubt; then, re-consecration, and so on, an everlasting round without any real advance.
In the sixth chapter of Romans we have some very emphatic teaching with reference to this:  “Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him; knowing that Christ being raised from the dead, dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over Him.  For in that He died, He died unto sin once.”  He did not return to the sepulcher after He had once issued from it.  Well, just here is the force of the parallel drawn between His death and resurrection, physical, and ours, spiritual:  “Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin.  For sin shall not have dominion over you.”
The grand point to be secured is the thorough surrender and sacrifice of ourselves to God, through the recognition of the redeeming efficacy of Christ’s blood.  The Son of God has paid the price for us, and in view of that we hasten to make ourselves over to Him, and our most sacred obligation is to regard ourselves thenceforward as Christ’s.  To take back anything thus laid upon the altar is high treason, a most presumptuous sin which we are to guard against with all our heart.  As Christ may not return to the tomb of Joseph of Arimathaea, so we may not return to the condition of being dead in trespasses, in sins; we are to reckon ourselves alive unto God, a habitation of God through the Spirit.  To resume our own authority over ourselves, our time, to reinstate our own will in the abdicated place, is a making light of the blood of the covenant wherewith we have been sanctified.
We believe that many are wronging themselves out of great spiritual blessing and power, through not remembering the true significance of their act of consecration.  If there is a defective consecration, then, of course, there must be a consecration not defective; when fully made there will be an influx of the Spirit, testifying that God has accepted what we yielded and entered upon possession.  They to whom the Epistle to the Hebrews was written had failed to do this, and were in a position of great peril, and the sacred writer most earnestly appeals to them to recognize their danger, return to Christ with a worthier faith, and then spend no more time in laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith towards God.  Dead works are our own works—works done in our own strength, not of Christ through the Spirit.
The Christian once united to Christ by a living faith has no more right to ignore that union, or call it in question, than a man who has been married to the object of his affections has to doubt, or attempt to verify, or propose to renew, the nuptial ceremony.  The covenant which God makes with His people is the everlasting covenant, and the believer must regard it as such, and take it for granted that God will withhold from him nothing that belongs to the new and true life.  The strongest expressions are used in the Bible to set forth the permanence and unalterableness of the New Testament or Covenant.  There is nothing more heinous in the sight of Him with Whom we thus covenant than to fail to take for granted that He means what He says.  Christians consecrate themselves in the most formal and solemn way, and presently allow themselves to forget that they have made themselves over to the Lord to be led by the Spirit, or they act as though they thought God had forgotten it.—Submitted by Norman Woodhouse.

Editorial
THE ENEMY WITHIN

“Because the carnal mind is enmity against God:  for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be” (Rom. 8:7).  “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked:  who can know it?” (Jer. 17:9).
In ancient Greek history we read of the Siege of Troy.  For ten years the Greek forces had besieged that strongly walled city.  They had in vain tried again and again to force an entrance into its gates.  Finally, by treachery, after the Greeks had appeared to abandon the attack, the people of Troy were persuaded to pull a huge wooden horse inside the walls, having been told by a Greek spy that it would make the city invulnerable.  Within those hollow sides of that “horse” were one hundred armed men.  In the night, at a signal from the spy, these men of war opened a door in the side of the horse and flung open the city gates.  Immediately there rushed in the Greek army, now returned to the assault, and Troy was destroyed.
In contemporary history, during the Spanish Civil War, one of Franco’s Generals declared, as the forces neared Spain’s capital, Madrid, that in addition to the four Fascist armies fighting their way towards the capital, they possessed a “Fifth Column” within the city ready to turn it over into the hands of the attackers.
How aptly these accounts illustrate what is happening within the heart of every Christian who cannot say like St. Paul, “I am crucified with Christ.”  There is much prejudice and even scorn leveled against Holiness people because they claim that the old Adamic nature has been taken to the cross and slain.  But we say together with a very clear exponent and possessor of the experience, now in Heaven, “Holiness is not a theory but a necessity,” for there lives a “Fifth Column” within every human heart and that traitor must die.
This enemy has been condemned by the Son of God.  “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and by a sacrifice for sin, condemned sin in the flesh” (Rom. 8:3).  This dreadfully relentless foe within must die or he will spoil the picture every time, whether it be in the family, in the church, or anywhere else.  We know only too well what it is to endeavor to work for the Lord along with people who have not brought their self-nature to the cross.  We have seen it over and over again in every kind of assembly or organization.  It may be among people that declare there is no deliverance till death or it may be under the guise of a profession of holiness itself, but if Self is allowed to live and reign there will be trouble every time.
To “go forward” for sanctification is not enough.  To battle against the old nature and try to obey the law in one’s own strength is to invite failure.  But Christ did condemn this foe!  There is deliverance.  “Knowing this that the old man is crucified with him that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin” (Rom. 6:6), and “Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God” (Rom. 6:11).
The Enemy Defeated.  A cloud of witnesses in Glory, and some still living, testify to the glorious fact that Jesus not only took their sins to the cross but He took their old carnal natures to the cross as well.  Someone has said that if you wished to see a city delivered from the curse of drink, you would not only need to put the public houses that distribute the stuff out of business, but you would have to do away with the breweries and distilleries that manufacture it.  So it is with our lives.  It is not enough to be saved from sinful acts of past and present, wonderful as that is, but that within that produces those acts must be dealt with.  Thank God, Calvary did deal with my sins and my sin!
Please read carefully the pages of this issue of the Message of Victory.  Article after article agrees that there is deliverance, that there must be deliverance, or the Christian life will end in dismal defeat.  And if we could only call up George Fox, Charles G. Finney, William Bramwell, Hester Ann Rogers, Sister Eva Winkler, John Wesley, John Fletcher, Catherine Booth, Madame Guyon, Paget Wilkes, Samuel Logan Brengle, Oswald Chambers, and oh, so many others—they would confirm every word herein printed.
God bless you, our dissatisfied and defeated reader friend.  There is victory for you.  You need not struggle for ever.  The deed was done more than two thousand years ago.  You need to see that it was done for you.  The Holy Spirit can make it real and apply it in such a way that earth and hell cannot shake you.  And as you have found victory so you will see it continued.  A crisis happening is wonderful, but it is just the gateway.  By the same reckoning with the Spirit’s aid you can see momentarily that the blood of Jesus cleanses and keeps on cleansing.
Holiness—A Source of Trouble.  There can be no peace between holiness and sin.  In closing, we quote an extract from “The War Cry” which appeared a few years ago in the Wesleyan Advocate under the caption, “Holiness—a source of trouble.”
“Holiness is not only the opposite of sin, but it is eternally and aggressively antagonistic to sin,” states a writer in Heart and Life.
“Holiness is not merely a passive skirmish; it is war.  This is the reason for the ‘conflict of the ages’ between truth and error.  Jesus  Christ, the absolutely Holy One, while on earth was in this contest all the time.  At His birth the contest began.  The illustrious men of Hebrew 11 ‘subdued kingdoms . . . turned to flight the armies of the aliens.’
“Holiness must be aggressive because its business is to annihilate sin.  When it is not in pronounced, emphatic opposition to sin, it ceases to be holiness.
“A holy man is compelled to make choices against sin.  He has to be uncompromising with sin or cease to be holy.  This, of course, condemns those who love sin and wish to continue in it.  A holy man, then, no matter however sweet he may be, will by his choices and decisions condemn those who love sin.  This is the reason holy people and holiness will never be popular in a worldly church.
“Holiness will be a disturbance to those carnal professors of religion who do not wish to get rid of the carnal mind.  Nothing else could be expected.  As sure as truth is truth, holiness will be a source of trouble with those who do not want it.
“In the light of these facts, people give themselves away when they object to holiness preachers and evangelists, saying that they make trouble.  The question is, Whom do they trouble?  Certainly not those who earnestly desire to improve every opportunity to be good and to get good.  And they ought to trouble everybody else.  It is a preacher’s business to make trouble for some people.
“If holiness doctrine and preaching is wrong, show it, but do not seek to condemn it because it troubles you, lest in so doing you betray your sad spiritual condition.”

CALL TO HOLINESS
By Mr. and Mrs. E. F. Harvey

We, the editors of this paper, feel it more imperative than ever to emphasize the need for a holy people, fully yielded to do the will of God in absolute obedience.  We feel this because it is a “first” in the thought of God, and throughout Scripture.  In Genesis 1:26 we are told that God’s purpose was, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”  God will never be foiled in that original intention.  He is vitally concerned in making a holy people unto Himself who will “show forth the praises of him who hath called us out of darkness into his marvelous light.”
Paul tells us in Ephesians 1:4 that this was God’s initial thought from before the foundation of the world, “He hath chosen us in him . . . that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.”
In Genesis 3:15, in the first Gospel sermon ever to be preached, God indicated that there were two seeds—the seed of the serpent and the anticipated seed of the woman.  Between these there would be eternal enmity.  When Christ came as the Heaven-born Father of a new race, the first-begotten of God and first-begotten among many brethren, it became wonderfully possible for depraved, polluted, hopeless sinners in the first Adam, to become new creatures via the new birth and co-crucifixion with Christ.
Jesus, in the New Testament, recognized the two seeds and, piercing beneath the outer covering of religiosity, said, “Ye generation of vipers,” “O faithless and perverse generation,”  “ye being evil,” uncloaking the degenerate seed of the serpent.
Christ went on to show how we might be able to judge “the wolf” who went about in sheep’s clothing, pretending to be something he was not inwardly.  He spoke of nature, showing that a seed is true to itself in reproduction.  Unless men and women had been born of God, they were corrupt even though they were clean on the outside as cups or whited outwardly as sepulchers.  “A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.”  He then proceeded to speak of the end days when signs and wonders, rather than a holy seed, would seem to be the criteria of genuineness.  He prepared His listeners for the fact that people would come with loud professions of “Lord, Lord” upon their lips.  They would be able to cast out devils, to do signs and wonders, and they would claim these accomplishments in Christ’s Name.  But He announced that they were not His seed, nor His family for He never knew them.  They were workers of iniquity.  He then showed that only those obedient to the will of God who did His saying were true men.  (Matt. 7:15-29).
Amazing provision, that through the last Adam, we could be born not of corruptible seed, but incorruptible!  The holy seed produces a holy people. We are privileged throughout the Bible to be called the sons and daughters of God.  “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be:  but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him. . . . And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure” (1 John 3:1-3).
There is a call for Christians who are crucified to the world.  James 4:4 speaks of friendship with the world as spiritual adultery and treats the world as a rival of our Lord Jesus to woo us from loving obedience and service.  1 John 2:15-17 commands us to “love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.  If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.”
There is a call to holiness which demands full abandonment to all the will of God.  “Ye are not your own, ye are bought with a price:  therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit which are God’s.”  In Romans 6 we are told to yield ourselves as servants unto righteousness.  When the Christian world stops thinking of its own happiness, of the personal benefits in serving God, and considers its sinfulness in ever failing of God’s original purpose and determines to serve whatever the cost in suffering, sacrifice or even death, then we will see true holiness spreading.  We are called to holiness, not to show forth how pious we are, but to be ready for God to use at any time; to serve as His foothold in a world that hates holiness and righteousness.
The call is to holiness as pilgrims and strangers in this world.  The desire to grasp material good has gripped Christians as well as worldlings.  Mothers have abandoned home duties for more money; Christian men have become slaves to labor for “the meat that perisheth” when they were commanded not so to labor.  One would hardly credit the fact that Christians believed our Lord was coming again, and that He has said not to build here in time for it would all be burned up.  The tent-life is ever the life of one who keeps in view a city which has no foundation here, but whose builder and maker is God.  He acts so, and gives the pilgrim aspect to all his decisions.  As pilgrims and strangers, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul.
There is a call to those who have discernment because they have exercised their senses to discern between good and evil.  There is an hour of trial which is to come upon the entire world.  That hour, we believe, is upon us.  The devil has always been religious and counterfeited God in many ways.  He was an angel of light and, heading up to the anti-Christ, will be able to turn people by doing great signs and wonders.  Not holiness, not humility, not faithfulness in obscure duties are valued today, but crowds and signs and wonders deceive the gullible multitudes because they have not exercised their senses to discern between the two seeds—between good and evil.
There is a call to holiness in a return to being prayerful, Bible-reading Christians.  How can we be assured that the pressures that are already upon us in this wicked world will not prevail to shake us if we do not refresh our minds daily by reading God’s commandments?  How can we maintain a healthy inner life if we do not become deep feeders on the Word and receive in prayer and communion more and more of that wonderful, holy life of the Lord Jesus Christ made available by faith to those who seek, ask and knock?
Don’t mind the hue and cry which your insistence upon holiness will arouse from the Church today.  It can tolerate adulterers, defaulters and fornicators, but it cannot tolerate a man or woman who simply by faith proclaims the full provision of Christ for complete victory through the blood of Jesus Christ.  “Hung up on the peg of sanctification,” “sinless perfectionists” will be hurled at those who maintain the witness, for the hatred of the serpent seed is still enmity against the seed of the woman.  Ishmael and Isaac still relive their old antagonisms today; Cain still has murderous intentions against Abel; Esau seeks the life of his brother who obtains the birthright.  “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you . . . because ye are not of the world . . . therefore the world hateth you.”  Let us return to a humble but clear declaration of God’s first intention to make men holy, and constantly portray the provision by which alone this may be accomplished—through the Cross of Christ where we, by death to ourselves, identify ourselves with the life of Christ.

THE PERSON GOD USES:

Has Been Born Twice and Died Once
By Rev. Norman Lewis

The person God uses is one who has been born twice and died once.  Our title has three parts.  We have all been born once.  If not, we wouldn’t be here this morning.  Perhaps the second point of our outline ought to be as quickly concluded.  A spiritual birth, the new birth, conversion to Jesus Christ, is certainly a prerequisite to any Christian work.  Yet some people are trying to do Christian work without having been born again.  The human heart is a marvel of deceitfulness.
Think of the words of our Lord, “Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name?  and in thy name have cast out devils?  and in thy name done many wonderful works?  And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you:  depart from me, ye that work iniquity” (Matt. 7:22-23).
What do these verses mean?  Mind you, Christ is talking about people who in the hour of judgment will declare to Him that they have preached, cast out demons, and done many wonderful works, not only in the name of the church or religion, but “in thy name.”  That expression is repeated three times.  Here are people with a head knowledge of Jesus Christ, people who have been active in Christian work.  They even claim to have cast out demons in the Name of Jesus.  Is it not startling to have such persons rejected for never having known Christ personally?
Jesus says, “I never knew you.  Depart from me.”  What does it mean?  The deceitfulness of the human heart may lead unregenerate people to be associated with Christian enterprises, without really belonging to Jesus Christ.
Such was the case of Judas.  You like not to be compared with him.  He walked and talked with the Son of God, saw His miracles.  Yet Judas’ heart was dark as the pit of Hell.  Finally he sold his Lord, then by suicide cast himself into the lost world of eternal torment . . .
The person God uses is one who has died.  This is not academic, theoretical hair-splitting.  This is something the New Testament writers spoke of frequently, something they understood very well.  None the less, many Christians are confused about the whole matter.
What does the Bible mean by:  “I am crucified with Christ—dead to sin—baptized into his death—buried into death—planted together in the likeness of his death—our old man is crucified with him—we be dead—dead indeed unto sin.”  This emphasis occurs again and again.  The Holy Spirit is presenting something tremendously important.  He intends us to understand.

What Must Die?

Let us ask, “Who or what is it God says must die?”  We must experimentally take something to the place of death.  What or who is it anyway?
One approach has greatly helped me.  It is to understand that God has put under sentence of death all that I am by virtue of my first birth.  My whole being, all factors in my personality based on my physical birth, God says must be crucified. . . .
All that I am, all that you are, by virtue of our first birth, ambitions, talents, inclinations, strong points, weak points—God declares all this must be crucified.

A Common Error

It is a common error to think old Adam can glorify our Lord Jesus Christ.  That mistake works havoc among Christians.  How?  Perhaps a person before his conversion played the violin or piano or was a good speaker, etc.  After conversion he concludes that his particular talent is just the thing the Lord needs.  But he has never taken his talent to the place of death.  He has not been crucified.
Such a Christian is in for a bad time.  And he often makes it bad for others.  You remember how Moses thought that the people would understand that he had been sent by the Lord to deliver Israel.  But Israel didn’t see it that way.  Moses had to retire for an additional forty years of training.  God needed to remove some rough spots from his character. Then God could use him.  If forty years was necessary to prepare Moses, what about you and me?
You recall how Israel left Egypt, miraculously crossing the Red Sea.  Egypt speaks of the world, the Red Sea of conversion.  Did Israel go alone into that new life?  No.  Who else went?  The mixed multitude (Exod. 12:38).  With what result?  The mixed multitude got Israel into trouble.  The mixed multitude began to complain.  Israel did the same.  God’s judgment came down.
The mixed multitude speaks to us of things carried over from the old life into our Christian life.  Old talents are presented to God.  But God wants nothing of old Adam’s talents.  He cannot use them.

All New

God did not resort to the cross as a halfway measure.  Calvary was God’s terrible judgment on all that was old Adam.  The only thing God is interested in from Calvary onward is the new resurrection creation through Jesus Christ.  If we form part of that, blessed be our happy state.  But God must reject the “mixed multitude” we bring from the old creation.
The Christian’s greatest problems are not gross sins.  Even decent unsaved people wish to avoid those things.  Our problem is righteous self.  A young minister asked an old ploughman if he didn’t think the hardest thing in Christianity was to deny sinful self.  The old ploughman said, “No, sir, the hardest thing in Christianity is to deny righteous self.”
Paul said, “In me, that is in my flesh (my personality), there dwelleth no good thing.”  What is your opinion of yourself?  Do you have an inward idea you are pretty nice?  Do you feel God must be pleased with you?  That other Christians ought to recognize your special gifts?  Be honest now.  Do you have that sort of feeling?  If you do, you are not in the place of death.  There you must go before God can resurrect you.

The Whole Truth

For death is in order to resurrection.  It is possible to over-emphasize the truth of crucifixion if considered alone.  Death may be exaggerated by neglecting the truth of resurrection.  Cartoonists work that way.  When any feature of our face is exaggerated, a caricature results.  If a man has a nose a bit too long, the cartoonist represents it even longer.  People recognize the cartoon but laugh because the nose has been exaggerated.  Something like that can be done with any aspect of truth.  If we dwell only on crucifixion—well, we may have the odor of death about us.
Yet crucifixion must be emphasized.  God can never raise you from the dead until you have died.  Do not detour crucifixion.  The sad results of seeking an easier way are everywhere apparent in modern Christianity.

Slay Utterly

1 Samuel 15 is a clear illustration of this matter.  God commanded King Saul to go and utterly destroy Amalek.  Amalek stands for the flesh, the old man.  “The Lord hath sworn that the Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation” (Exod. 17:16).  God has had trouble with Amalek all through the ages.  The old “I” refuses to die.  He seeks to thrust his ugly head and carnal attitude into all Christian activities.  He makes more trouble than all outside opposition.
God said to Saul, “Go and smite Amalek and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not.”  Saul went.  “He took Agag the king of the Amalekites alive, and utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword.   But Saul and the people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep . . . oxen . . . fatlings . . . lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them:  but everything that was vile and refuse, that they destroyed utterly.”
Here is the perfect picture of our natural attitude. We know that gross, vile sins must be destroyed.  We try to get rid of the bad, but keep the good.  “They spared the king of the Amalekites, the best of the sheep, oxen, fatlings, lambs, all that was good.”  What did they do with them?  What we Christians often try to do.  They took things “which should have been destroyed, to sacrifice unto the Lord.”
Samuel told Saul he had sinned, and said, “To obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.”  God wants obedience in this matter.  He doesn’t want old Adam’s talents or good things.  If these things could have pleased God, a lonely cross would never have been raised at Calvary.

A Puzzling Question

A question may still be in your mind about the right attitude regarding talents.  You say, “I have no other gifts, but my voice is reasonably good.  Must I never sing?”
Abraham’s experience in Genesis 22 gives the answer.  God told Abraham, “Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there . . . upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.”  That command was awfully hard for Abraham to receive.  To understand it was impossible.  Isaac was not only his beloved son, but the son through whom God had promised to bless the world.  Abraham might have said, “Lord, explain.  Have You forgotten Your promise?  Why must I now slay Isaac?  There is some confusion.”  But no.  Abraham obeyed God.  Preparations were rapidly made.  The journey began.  For Abraham, every step of that three days’ journey must have been agony.  And just as Abraham bore his darling Isaac to the place of death, so we must take our darling talent or ability, whatever it may be, to the place of death.
Abraham put the wood in order, bound Isaac, took a sharp knife and was ready to strike the fatal blow.  We know he was set to go through with it because the Holy Spirit tells us in Hebrews 11 that Abraham counted that God was even able to bring Isaac back again from the dead.  Beloved, that is consecration.  That is faith.  That is the real thing!
At the last moment the angel of the Lord stopped Abraham.  God had read his heart and took the will for the act.  So with the Christian.  The only talent you have a right to use is that which has been taken to the place of death and given back by God Himself.

This is Real

A missionary returning to Japan was seeking a fresh anointing.  He says:  “The Lord searched my heart and my possessions to see if anything had become dearer to me than Himself.  ‘Lovest thou me more than these?’—meaning my wife and boy.  I hesitated.  I felt as though He had laid before me an execution warrant and was waiting for my signature.  There was a terrible fight in my heart:  surrender meant death.  After a long struggle and by His grace, I made the surrender and I did it with the fullest expectation that this meant the end of their earthly lives.
“When I arrived home my wife came to welcome me, and she said, ‘Gordon is sick.’  I said, ‘I knew it, it has come at last.’  Then there came that agonized struggle, ‘Lovest thou me more than the boy?’  But I had won the victory.  So with a heavy heart I went up to the lad to say goodbye.  He lay on his bed, his little white face against the pillow, desperately ill.  There I realized that the only surrender which truly counts is the surrender unto death.  I was able to say to God out of a full honesty of heart, ‘Thy will is best, and I would rather have Thy will than anything on earth.’  What happened then?  It happened with me as with Abraham when he brought his son to the place of surrender unto death on Mount Moriah.  God gave him back his boy—and mine.”
Christian, are you willing just now to take your Isaac to lonely Calvary and slay him there as God has commanded?  That is the way to an anointed, victorious Christian experience.—Evangelical Christian.

         NOT I BUT CHRIST

Lord, bend that proud and stiff-necked “I”.
Help me to bow the neck and die,
Beholding Him on Calvary,
Who bowed His holy head for me.

MAN’S WORST ENEMY

By Mrs. M. Baxter

Paul is speaking of his own experience when he says, “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.”  As crucified with Christ, we can have no self-life, and therefore can expect nothing from ourselves, and God can expect nothing from us.  To blame a dead man would be absurd.  If we really by faith take the place of death, and reckon ourselves not only condemned but executed on the cross, in the body of Jesus, we shall then understand what it is to deny, or ignore ourselves in every sense and acknowledge Jesus Christ only.
Paul knew, and fully entered into, this position of death, and consequently we never find him considering how things affected him, but always how they affected Christ. We find him never counting on himself, but always on Christ.  Misjudged he says, “With me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man’s judgment” (1 Cor. 4:3).  When in prison, he did not feel any self-pity, nor any bitterness against the Roman Government; not Paul lived; it was Christ in him who owned that he was “the prisoner of Jesus Christ” (Eph. 3:1; 4:1).
When writing from his prison to the Philippians, instead of grumbling that he was restrained from preaching the Gospel, he saw the divine side (Phil. 1:12-20).  His occupation in prison was as far from self-consideration as anything could be; he wrote to cheer the very disciples who were out of heart because of his imprisonment, and prayed such prayers “in the Holy Ghost” as might perhaps never have been possible in the midst of his activity (Eph. 3:13-20).
In this we see he ignored himself; living as though he was never to be thought of, and taking his place as a member, and only a member of another body, another life.  “To me to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21), “Not I live, but Christ.”  Thus he was enabled to see all things from the divine side, all persons (himself included) from the divine standpoint.  Then he knew that “all things work together for good to them that love God.”  Many Christians take this stand, but when they are tried, they leave the ground of faith, and recommence to recognize themselves instead of Jesus Christ.
The apostle James is very practical; and he does not scruple to give exceedingly practical directions for leading a life crucified with Christ.  “Submit yourselves therefore to God” (James 4:7-17); i.e., in every circumstance recognize God.  Has something arisen in the life of one nearly connected with you, which may appear to other Christians as though you were most inconsistent in your teaching, and you have no power to justify yourself, although your whole soul has been against it?  Your Christian reputation belongs to God.  Submit to God.
So long as persons and circumstances occupy us, we are on ground which is open to Satan, for we leave our position as crucified with Christ.  But as soon as our refuge is in God, we are unassailable.  It is thus we “draw nigh to God and He will draw nigh” to us.
The apostle James speaks to the unreal, the double-minded, who, while claiming a position as God’s children, seek also the friendship of the world.  James does not spare such.  “Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double-minded.  Be afflicted, and mourn and weep:  let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness.”  There is no slipping into a deeper experience of God without going through humiliation.
In the Christ-life, death always precedes, for His is resurrection-life.  There must be a breaking down of the human, before there can really be the divine.  Thank God, He never wants to keep us down, and only desires us to humble ourselves in order that He may lift us up.
We are sometimes asked, “What do you mean by self?  Do you mean selfishness?”  No; selfis that which is reminding us of ourselves all the time.  It is this presence of self at all times which makes us fancy that, wherever we are, people are either applauding or depreciating us.  We are so present to ourselves, that we fancy we are as present to others.
Self is God’s greatest enemy.  He that loves this self, and looks after it, shall lose his life.  He that is always pitying himself, is sure to miss other people’s pity, and the Lord’s pity most of all.  But when we let this self go into the Lord’s hands, and hand this self over to the Lord, then we “see Jesus,” not here or there, but everywhere.  We see Jesus Christ in every kind word that is spoken, for He prompts it, and in every unkind word that is spoken, for He permits it.  We cannot look at our enemies and love them, we cannot look at ourselves and love them; but when we look at Jesus Christ, there is love enough in Him for us and them, too.  Instead of being touchy, and thinking:  “How does this touch me?” our thought is, “How does this touch Jesus Christ?”
How do we give ourselves to the Lord?  If the Lord has come in as our only Self, the “I” and “me” of our life and our “self” is gone out, then that which used to touch us is passed over to Him as His business and it is such a relief to have nothing to do with it.
The moment we deal with man, we cease to deal with God.  It must be “hands off” in every transaction which we commit to God, otherwise we are not trusting at all, but are fighting our own battles.
Can He break down with anything I trust to Him?  Impossible!  So he that loseth his life in this world what does he do?  He shall find it all along the line.  He becomes “more than conqueror,” because he shouts victory before the battle begins.
God’s thought is not a joint-stock operation, but to do it all Himself.  His thought is to do all His work perfectly, and all our works are imperfect.
It is just the same with sanctification.  We want to get rid of impure, envious, unkind thoughts, critical, impatient, jealous feelings.  Our first effort is to school ourselves to overcome and gradually grow better.  But it does not answer.  We must let all go, die to our own efforts, our own thoughts, our own ways.  It must be an absolute giving up of ourselves to be operated upon by the Holy Spirit.  We have to die to our plans of holiness.
If you could do anything yourself, you might be thinking afterwards, “I won that victory!”  But when it is the Lord Who does all, where are we in the transaction?  Nowhere!  We are to be “crucified with Christ,” not to be reckoned on, any more than a man who died yesterday.  Ours is just a vacant place.  We “see Jesus” when we retire from the

GLORIOUS IT IS TO DIE!

By Oliver G. Wilson

A man’s worst enemy is himself—when that “self” is under the dominion of sin.
Communism is not Enemy Number One.  While communism is atheistic and materialistic and undemocratic, it has no power over the minds of men who have been delivered from the power of sin.  The communistic philosophy runs counter to the Christian’s highest  ideals and firmest faith.
Capitalism is not Enemy Number One.  Jesus commanded us to love our neighbors as ourselves, but He never commanded us to live in communal fashion.  Jesus taught the principles of ownership and of prudent and gainful stewardship.  Only because of sin do men selfishly gloat in wealth and divert it from the channels of blessing through which it should flow.
Paul identifies man’s worst enemy as the “I.”  This “I” cannot be redeemed or converted.  It is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.  It is sin’s virus that infects every member of the human race, a virus that can be dealt with only by the cleansing blood of Christ.  The “I” must be crucified if Christ is to live in us.
Galatians 2:20 expresses the saint’s deepest desire:  The life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God.  If I live the Savior’s life, then I no longer live my own.
It is not too difficult to identify the “I” that must be crucified.
The “I” of pride must die.  Pride is not honest self-evaluation.  It is dishonest self-conceit.  Pride is that false inflation of oneself which makes one admire in himself his ability, his influence, his shrewdness, his virtues.  He discerns how obnoxious these are to God as he reads Jesus’ searching condemnation of the Pharisee who thought he was praying in the temple.  All he did in his prayer was to boast of himself!
The “I” of cowardice must die.  A man is no more courageous than he is in the presence of God.  In Jesus’ presence Peter confessed “I am a sinful man.”  That required courage!
On the other hand, in Jesus’ presence Judas had dry eyes and an innocent “it-couldn’t-be-I” air.  But it was the coward Judas that betrayed Jesus, and the coward Pilate that delivered Him to be crucified.
The cross of utter death to self-will and self-esteem stands between every carnal Christian and the more abundant life.  When the believer consents in his heart to the crucifixion of the “I” life, he breathes the air of resurrection life.  He moves out into the “rest of faith.”  He enjoys relief from the bondages of the self-life.
Glorious it is to die—that we may live only to God!—The Wesleyan Methodist.

TWO ASPECTS OF THE CROSS

By Mrs. Penn-Lewis

It is because the children of God do not apprehend the two aspects of crucifixion with Christ that they fail to realize abundant life in practical experience.  The objective, or the finished work of Christ in His death and resurrection is the basis of the subjective work of the Holy Spirit in us.
Objectively the death of Christ was not only a propitiation for sin, but was, in the purpose of God, the death of all for whom He died.  In our position before God we, who are believers, are in Him, the Cleft Rock—planted into His death.  The Holy One became a curse for the accursed ones, that the accursed Adam life might be nailed to the Cross with the Substitute, the Lamb of God.
Subjectively it is the work of the Spirit of God to apply to us the power of Christ’s death and resurrection; to bring us inwardly into correspondence with our “position” in Christ—crucified, buried, risen, and ascended in the Redeemer.
The “objective” and “subjective” aspects must both be made real to the soul by the power of the Holy Ghost, if “life out of death” is to be known in practical reality.
On our part, if we have been brought by the mercy of God to truly hate ourselves—our “own life” (Luke 14:26) as well as our sins—and to recognize that all is accursed, being heartily willing to renounce all that we ourselves have, we may turn to Calvary, and see that in Christ we are delivered, being dead to that wherein we were held (Rom. 7:6 A.V.m.).
In dependence upon the Divine Spirit, we may appropriate the death of Christ as our death, and count upon the immediate inflow of the life of the Risen Lord, to possess us to the fullest capacity of the earthen vessel. . . .
From this point—the faith position that we have been crucified with Christ—we may expect the Holy Spirit to bear witness, and “make to die the doings of the body” in ever-deepening power.
The Eternal Spirit—charged with the work of applying to us the death, and of communicating the resurrection life of Christ—will cause us always to bear about the dying of Jesus.  Thus shall be manifested in our mortal flesh the life also of Jesus, and in the power of that endless life we shall be energized to labor according to His working, working in us mightily.—The Overcomer.

DISCIPLESHIP

Self is the idol, formed of sin and dust,
All worship, burning incense to their pride;
Each deeming homage paid to self most just;
Save their self-will knowing no law beside.
Poor, worthless idol set up first through guile
Of the old Serpent; when our parents took
That fruit, whose taste was death; but thought the while,
When they the God of love and light forsook.
That gods they made themselves instead of slaves;
Gods, that have made God’s world a world of graves.

O glorious triumph of Incarnate Love,
The Son of God, self-sacrificed for those—
Who, when He came self-emptied, from above—
From love of sinful self became His foes;
O how it humbles self on Him to gaze
In His unselfish path of patient grace;
Servant of others all His pilgrim days,
Who can one shade of selfish seeking trace?
“If Thou be Christ, save self,” they mocking cried,
Others to save He gave Himself, and died.

Self cannot conquer self.  In vain men try
The hermit’s cell, and cowl, and fasts, and cord;
The body may be lashed, and starved, and die;
Self-humbled self more proudly self will laud;
When on the cross we fix our wond’ring eyes,
Or sit adoring at the Savior’s feet,
The meek and lowly One such grace supplies,
As makes His self-denying yoke so sweet,
That dead with Him to self, love only lives,
And Him to follow daily victory gives.
—J. G. Deck.

EXPERIENCE PAGE

We reprint the following confession from a denominational minister’s magazine, as it later appeared in Emmanuel.  Because of space, it is given in a condensed form; and is printed anonymously because it was so presented in origin.
When my church reversed their decision for the building that I had planned, my ship sank, but not without impulsive and vocal reaction from me.  Immediately after, I was sorry, but I didn’t apologize then.  How I thank God that with this experience came the realization, for the first time, of the absolute bankruptcy of my spiritual resources and the emptiness of my own heart!
I told God I was finished, that I could not go on in the condition I was in.  I knew I had to have some answers or get out of the ministry.  I quit all the mad running that I had called “work for the Lord” and locked myself in my study each day.  There before God I opened my heart for His examination and promised Him that, whatever it cost to follow His will, I would obey if He would show me what was wrong.
I had not cried out of the anguish of my soul very long until God began to reveal the blackness and emptiness of my heart.  He took me back several years and let me listen and see almost as by tape recording and photographically the places and persons I had failed in my walk with Him.  Although it was humiliating beyond description, I would admit the failure, repent of it, and promise to rectify the damage I had done, to the best of my ability.  How clearly He showed me that the issue was not the wrong in the other person, but that I was responsible for my attitude and reaction to those who were wrong first!  He showed me it mattered little who was wrong first, for wrong was wrong whether it was first or last.  I apologized more, wrote more letters of restitution, and retraced my steps more during those days than I think I ever did in my life.
I was dying to the old dominion of self that I had allowed to again contaminate my being.  The Lord showed me that I had pride of possession, desired the praise and approval of men, longed for a bigger church for the sake of selfish ambition.  He showed me that I had failed Him more in the light I had received than anyone else.  He showed me that He judged by light—and I by sight—and since I could not know the amount of light others had received, my judgment was incorrect.  The searching continued, and each time He showed me my failure and sin I admitted it and repented in tears.  It seemed there would be no end, but there was, hallelujah!  After this had gone on for some time and I had obeyed the Lord in all that He asked, I was waiting on the Lord in my study asking, “Lord, what lack I yet?” when suddenly the Lord responded with floodtides of blessing that filled the whole room with the glory of His approving presence.  Again the Holy Spirit came to cleanse and fill my unworthy heart.
My tears of repentance and remorse turned to tears of rejoicing as His overwhelming fullness swept into my being.  There are no words to describe the preciousness, the joy, the assurance that I was owned, approved, sanctified and made fit for the Master’s use.  The change that followed was far more significant than the act of His infilling, for He had been given the temple, and now He proceeded to make it a place where He would exercise His loving rulership.
Hurry and worry fell off me like an old coat, and every temptation to put them back on was gently checked.  The Bible became the living Word and my soul could never get enough.  How He spoke to me and taught me through the Word!  I had once looked for sermons; now I was shown that I was just to feed my own soul because I was starved, and He would feed others as He desired out of a full and overflowing life.  Oh, the precious lessons that came!  I was to live only for His glory and His alone.  Possessions were to belong to Him, subject to His desire and expenditure.  I was His steward, subject to obey His command and to delight in the privilege just of being counted worthy to be the vessel for His indwelling.  My only purpose was now to allow Him to refine and purge me.
Worship and not work became the center of my life.  He taught me that if I would always abide in Him, and live in the Source, all the work and expression of fruit would be just the natural outcome of this union.  Just as Jesus did nothing of Himself, for Himself, or by Himself, my constant relationship with the Father was to be the same.  I was to live for the Father’s glory, for the fulfillment of the Father’s purpose, in obedience to the Father’s will.  I found Christ, not as my Helper, but as my Life.  I ceased to labor, that the labor of Another might be accomplished through me for His glory.  I ceased to speak, that the words of Another might be spoken through me.
Slavery, you say?  Oh, no, glorious freedom, for I discovered that the foundation of the universe demonstrated in the heart of God is that getting is through giving, living is through death.  The road of death to carnal self led to eternal life in Himself.  To lose our little all is to allow God to give us His all.  When I released my grasp, thinking it would mean death, I found it was only for the purpose that I might fall into His abounding, abundant life.

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

A Swiss hunter, crossing the Mer de Glace, fell into one of the large crevasses in the ice.  He fell a hundred yards without receiving any serious injury, but yet how hopeless was his situation!  He could not climb out and to remain would mean freezing to death.  A little stream of water flowed down the crevasse and following it by wading, stooping, crawling or floating, he at length reached a vaulted chamber from which there was no visible outlet.  The water heaved threateningly, but it was impossible to retreat and he knew delay would mean death.  Commending himself to the care of God, he plunged into the whirling waters.  A moment of darkness and terror followed and then he was thrown up amid the flowers and hayfields of Chamouni.  What a good illustration of the way God delivers a soul in the dark hours of human experience!

INSIST ON DEATH

By Vivian Dake

We are in danger of being swamped by the modern holiness movement.  Holiness is becoming popular, and the proud, worldly and aristocratic of the day are talking about being saved from all sin, while they still live in and for the world.
How shall we avoid the threatened danger?  By insisting more thoroughly on separation from the world as necessary to pardon.  If one has not the light, then let the light shine.  We are becoming too weak-kneed on this, and are allowing to ourselves the possibility of some having the world, and yet being saved.  We may allow the possibility of individuals not having light, but that does not release us of the responsibility of letting the light shine upon them, nor them from walking in it when it does shine.
Justified persons do not love the world, and if they see anything about themselves that is worldly in appearance, they gladly get rid of it.  “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”  Show the people that God demands separation.  If justified, they gladly receive the light.  If they refuse the light, this is their condemnation.
Holding steadily to separation from the world will do much to turn back the tide of popular holiness.  The danger here lies in our granting that after light shines, those outwardly worldly can continue in a justified and even a sanctified state without walking in the same.  We do not grant this in our theology or preaching; but like many popular teachers, are we not beginning to fearfully fail in the enforcement of the same?  When the signs of worldliness do not stir us to vigilance it is because we are backsliding ourselves.  Have you done your duty here, my brother?  Sound an alarm in God’s holy mountain.
Worldliness is on the increase, and we shall be swamped unless we take timely warning.  Which side of the line are you on, brother?  “Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”
We shall avoid the threatened danger from the popular holiness movement by insisting on death to the carnal mind.  While this is in our theology, it is almost entirely neglected in our altar work.  The generalization of the modern teacher is overwhelming us.  Consecrate all and then believe, in general terms, is all we hear insisted on.  The Bible teaches a death, a crucifixion of the “old man.”  This is the place to bring in the conflict.  Begin to talk death to carnality, and there is a stir among carnal holiness professors.
Around our altars twenty years ago we used to hear the cries, “Let me die.”  “Crucify the old nature,” and the groans of the dying were heard.  But we have holiness made easy in these days.  The trouble is, the seeker does not see the blackness of inbred sin.  He does not realize the awful nature that dwells within.
The body of sin contains all the elements of iniquity.  When the seeker gets his eyes open to it, then comes in the agony of death.  I believe in every case there will be agony and a sense of the death throes, if the individual goes through on the line shown by the apostle Paul in Romans 6:6.
No doubt there are thousands deceived today who have gone through with the intellectual formula.  It is, “I consecrate all and put it on the altar.  The altar sanctifies the gift.  I believe God’s words, and I am now sanctified.”  The poor soul often finds pride, envy, jealousy, touchiness, peevishness, impatience, stubbornness, love of flattery, desire for place, lustfulness, evil thoughts, evil surmisings, etc., in the heart, but calls it temptation, and goes on saying to himself, “There isn’t as much to holiness as I thought, but I must believe and not dishonor God.”
Oh!  bring your “old man” to the cross.  He hates the cross, but bring him to it.
Now, not merely in theory, if you please, but confess your carnality to God.  Look at the blackness until you realize it.  Cry out to God, “Let me die.”  Don’t waver nor let any dauber with untempered mortar divide your mind.  It shall be done. You will know when you have gone through the death throes.  Consecration will walk hand in hand with the death agony; and when your “old man” is dead, your consecration will be complete.  Hallelujah!  Then faith will spring up and grasp God easily, naturally.  Amen.  God bless you.  Go to the cross.

         The Way of Victory

There is no field without seed.
Life raised through death is life indeed.
The smallest, lowliest little flower
A secret is, of mighty power.
To live—it dies—buried to rise—
Abundant life through sacrifice.
Would’st thou know sacrifice?
It is through loss;
Thou canst not save—but by the Cross.
A corn of wheat, except it die,
Can never, never multiply.
The glorious fields of waving gold,
Through death, are life a hundredfold.
Thou who for souls dost weep and pray,
Let not hell’s legions thee dismay.
This is the way of ways for thee,
The way of certain victory!

The law of sacrifice is the greatest law in earth and Heaven . . . A corn of wheat must fall into the ground and die, or else be a shriveled-up seed; but as it dies it lives and multiplies and grows into the beautiful spring, the golden autumn and the multiplied sheaves.  And so it is in the deeper life of the higher world, as you rise from the natural to the spiritual.  Everything that is selfish is limited by its selfishness.—A. B. Simpson.
The life imparted to me is a crucified life, a life of death to self in its myriad forms.  Self can never overcome self.  But thank God I am already Christ-possessed.  And, as I yield all to the crucified Christ, His mighty death will work out in me an inner crucifixion.  The more fully the Crucified has me, the more fully I must die to self.—L. E. Maxwell.

LETTERS FROM CATHERINE BOOTH

In these letters written to her parents, we have first-hand insights into this godly woman’s entrance into the fullness provided in the Atonement of Jesus Christ for the soul.
My soul has been much called out of late on the doctrine of holiness.  I feel that hitherto we have not put it in a sufficiently definite and tangible manner before the people—I mean as a specific and attainable experience.  Oh, that I had entered into the fullness of the enjoyment of it myself!  I intend to struggle after it.  In the meantime we have commenced already to bring it specially before our dear people.
February 4, 1861.  I spoke a fortnight since on holiness, and a precious time we had.  On the Sunday following, two beautiful testimonies were given in the Love Feast as to the attainment of the blessing through that address.  One of them, an old gray-headed leader, is perhaps the most spiritual man in the society.  He had never before seen it his privilege to be sanctified.  Others have claimed it since.  I only want perfect consecration and Christ as my all, and then I might be very useful, to the glory, not of myself, the most unworthy of all who e’er His grace received, but of His great and boundless love.  May the Lord enable me to give my wanderings o’er, and to find in Christ perfect peace and Full Salvation!
As has always been the case with every quickening we have experienced in our own souls, there has been a renewal of the evangelistic question, especially in my mind.  I felt as though that was the point of controversy between me and God.  Indeed, I knew it was.  And on the day I referred to in my last letter to you I determined to bring it to a point before the Lord, trusting in Him for strength to suffer as well as to do His will, if He should call me to it.  I did so.  What I went through in the conflict I could not, if I would, describe.  It seemed far worse than death.  Since that hour, however, although I have been tempted, I have not taken back the sacrifice from the altar, but have been enabled calmly to contemplate it as done.
Such an unexpected surrender on my part, of course, revived William’s yearning towards the evangelistic work, though in quite another spirit to that in which he used to long for it.  In fact, now, I think the sacrifice will be almost as great to him as to me.  He says that we shall not lack any good thing if we do His will, and if He puts us to the test we are going to trust Him with each other—life, health, salary and all.
The curse of this age especially is unbelief, frittering the real meaning of God’s Word away and making it all figure and fiction.  Nothing but the Holy Ghost can so apply the words of God to the soul that they shall be what Jesus declared they were, “spirit and life.”  May He so apply them to our waiting, anxious hearts on this momentously important subject.
More than ever I am determined to keep clear of all worldly conformity, and to say of its maxims, its practices, and all its paltry gratifications, “The daughter of Zion hath despised thee!”
The Lord will order all things if we only do His will and trust Him with consequences.  “Them that honor Me I will honor.”  Oh, what a fool I have been!  How slow, how backward, how blind, how hindered by unbelief!  And even now some bolts and bars are round me, which my foolish heart will not consent to have broken down!  Oh, unbelief, truly it binds the hands of Omnipotence itself!  “He could not do many mighty works because of their unbelief.”  May the Lord increase our faith!
February 11, 1861.  If I am only fully the Lord’s He has unalterably bound Himself to be the portion of my inheritance for ever.  This, of late, I have especially realized, and a week ago last Friday, when I made the surrender referred to in my last, I saw that in order to carry out my vow in the true spirit of consecration I must have a whole Christ, a perfect Savior.  I therefore resolved to seek till I found that “Pearl of great price”—“that white stone, which no man knoweth, save he that receiveth it.”  I perceived that I had been in some degree of error with reference to the nature, or rather the attainment of sanctification, regarding it rather as a great and mighty work to be wrought in me through Christ, than the simple reception of Christ as an all-sufficient Savior, dwelling in my heart, and thus cleansing it every moment from all sin.  I had been earnestly seeking all the week to apprehend Him as my Savior in this sense, but on Thursday and Friday I was totally absorbed in the subject.  I laid aside almost everything else, and spent the chief part of the day in reading and prayer, and in trying to believe for it.  On Thursday afternoon, at tea-time, I was well nigh discouraged, and felt my old visitant, irritability.  The Devil told me I should never get it, and so I might as well give it up at once.  However, I knew him of old as a liar and the father of lies, and pressed on—cast down, yet not destroyed.
On Friday morning God gave me two precious passages.  First, “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”  Oh, how sweet it sounded to my poor, weary, sin-stricken soul!  I almost dared to believe that He did give me rest from inbred sin, the rest of perfect holiness.  But I staggered at the promise through unbelief, and therefore failed to enter in.  The second passage consisted of those thrice-blessed words:  “Of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption!”  But again unbelief hindered me, although I felt as if getting gradually nearer.
I struggled through the day until a little after six in the evening, when William joined me in prayer.  We had a blessed season.  While he was saying, “Lord, we open our hearts to receive Thee,” that word was spoken to my soul:  “Behold I stand at the door and knock.  If any man hear My voice, and open unto Me, I will come in and sup with him.”  I felt sure He had been long knocking, and, Oh, how I yearned to receive Him as a perfect Savior!  But, Oh, the inveterate habit of unbelief!  How wonderful that God should have borne so long with me!
When we got up from our knees I lay on the sofa, exhausted with the excitement and effort of the day.  William said, “Don’t you lay all on the altar?”  I replied, “I am sure I do!”  Then he said, “And isn’t the altar holy?”  I replied in the language of the Holy Ghost, “The altar is most holy, and whatsoever toucheth it is holy.”  Then he said, “Are you not holy?”  I replied with my heart full of emotion and with some faith, “Oh, I think I am.”  Immediately the word was given me to confirm my faith, “Now are ye clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.”  And I took hold—true, with a trembling hand, and not unmolested by the Tempter, but I held fast the beginning of my confidence, and it grew stronger; and from that moment I have dared to reckon myself dead indeed unto sin, and alive unto God through Jesus Christ, my Lord.
I did not feel much rapturous joy, but perfect peace, the sweet rest which Jesus promised to the heavy-laden.  I have understood the Apostle’s meaning when he says, “We who believe do enter into rest.”  This is just descriptive of my state at present.  Not that I am not tempted, but I am allowed to know the Devil when he approaches me, and I look to my Deliverer, Jesus, and He still gives me rest.  Two or three very trying things occurred on Saturday which at another time would have excited impatience, but I was kept by the power of God through faith unto full Salvation.
And now what shall I say?  “Unto Him who hath washed me in His own blood be glory and dominion for ever and ever,” and all within me says, “Amen!”  Oh, I cannot describe, I have no words to set forth, the sense I have of my own utter unworthiness.  Satan has met me frequently with my peculiarly aggravated sins, and I have admitted it all.  But then I have said the Lord has not made my sanctification to depend in any measure on my worthiness, or unworthiness, but on the worthiness of my Savior.  He came to seek and to save “that which was lost.”  “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.”
Speaking later on this subject, Mrs. Booth says:
“I think it must be self-evident that it is the most important question that can possibly occupy the mind of man, how much like God we can be—how near to God we can come on earth preparatory to our being perfectly like Him, and living, as it were, in His very heart for ever and ever in Heaven.  Anyone who has any measure of the Spirit of God must perceive that this is the most important question on which we can concentrate our thoughts; and the mystery of mysteries to me is, how anyone, with any measure of the Spirit of God, can help looking at this blessing of holiness and saying, ‘Well, even it if does seem too great for attainment on earth, it is very beautiful and very blessed.  I wish I could attain it.’  That, it seems to me, must be the attitude of every person who has the Spirit of God—that he should hunger and thirst after it, and feel that he shall never be satisfied till he wakes up in the lovely likeness of his Savior.  And yet, alas!  we do not find it so.  In a great many instances, the very first thing professing Christians do is to resist and reject this doctrine of holiness as if it were the most foul thing on earth.
“I heard of a gentleman saying, a few days ago—a leader in one circle of religion—that for anybody to talk about being holy showed that they knew nothing of themselves and nothing of Jesus Christ.  I said, ‘O, my God!  it has come to something if holiness and Jesus Christ are the antipodes of each other.  I thought it was in Him alone we could get any holiness, and through Him alone that holiness could be wrought in us.’  But this poor man thought otherwise.
“We are told over and over again that God wants His people to be pure, and that purity in their hearts is the very central idea and end and purpose of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  If this is not so, I give up the whole question—I am utterly deceived.  Oh, that people, in their enquiries about this blessing of holiness, would keep this one thing before their minds—that it is being saved from sin; sin in act, in purpose, in thought!
After all, what does God want with us?  He wants us just to be and to do.  He wants us to be like His Son, and then to do as His Son did; and when we come to that He will shake the world through us.  People say, ‘You can’t be like His Son.’  Very well, then, you will never get any more than you believe for.  If I did not think Jesus Christ strong enough to destroy the works of the Devil and to bring us back to God’s original pattern, I would throw the whole thing up for ever.  What!  He has given us a religion we cannot practice?  No!  He has not come to mock us.  What!  He has given us a Savior Who cannot save?  No, no, no!  He ‘is not a man that He should lie:  neither the son of man that He should repent:’  and I tell you that His scheme of Salvation is two-sided—it is God-ward and man-ward.  It is not a scheme of Salvation merely—it is a scheme of restoration.  If He cannot restore me, He must damn me.
“True, there is the condition, ‘Be not conformed to this world:  but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove.’   Oh! if you could be transformed to Him and conformed to this world at the same time, all the difficulty would be over.  I know plenty of people who would be transformed directly; but, to be not conformed to this world—how they stand and wince at that!  They cannot have it at that price.  But God will not be revealed to such souls, though they cry and pray themselves to skeletons, and go mourning all their days.  They will not fulfill the condition, ‘Be not conformed to this world’; they will not forgo their conformity even to the extent of a dinner-party.
“A great many that I know will not forgo their conformity to the shape of their head-dress.  They won’t forgo their conformity to the extent of giving up visiting and receiving visits from ungodly, worldly, hollow and superficial people.  They will not forgo their conformity to the tune of having their domestic arrangements upset—no, not if the salvation of their children and friends depends upon it.
“Finally, to obtain this blessed experience, there is the great desideratum, faith.  You can’t know it by understanding.  Oh! if the world could have known it by understanding, what a deal they would have known!  But He despises all your philosophy.  It is not by understanding, but by faith!  If ever you know God it will be by faith; becoming as a little child—opening your heart and saying, ‘Lord, pour in’; and then your quibbles and difficulties will be gone, and you will see holiness, sanctification, purity, perfect love, burning out of every page of God’s Word . . . If you want this blessing, put down your quibbles, put your feet on your arguments, march up to the Throne, and ask for it, and kill, and crucify and cast from you the accursed thing which hinders, and then you shall have it; and the Lord will fill you with His power and glory.”—From Catherine Booth, by Booth Tucker, Vol. 1.

       Prayer for Holiness

Show me, as my soul can bear,
The depth of inbred sin;
All the unbelief declare,
The pride that lurks within;
Take me, whom Thyself hast bought,
Bring into captivity
Every high aspiring thought
That would not stoop to Thee.

Thou didst undertake for me
For me to death wast sold;
Wisdom in a mystery
Of bleeding love unfold;
Teach the lesson of Thy cross,
Let me die with Thee to reign;
All things let me count but loss,
So I may Thee regain.
—Charles Wesley.

THE INNER SPIRIT OF THE CROSS

By G. D. Watson

“Entire sanctification is the end of the disposition of sin, but only the beginning of the life of a saint.”

The act of crucifixion is one thing, but the spirit in which the crucifixion is to be borne is another.  In some respects the act may be brief and finished, but the inward heart disposition that should pervade the crucifixion is a continuous principle extending through life, ever widening its range over a multiplicity of applications, and growing in intensity to the end.  This divinely beautiful spirit of self-immolation cannot be defined.  It can only be faintly described.  It is a heart quality, a soul essence too fluid to be held by words.
If we could get a vision of the soul of Jesus from the last supper to His death on the cross, and have a clear spiritual discernment of all the thoughts and feelings, and affections, and sympathies, and every quality of disposition that was in His nature during those long hours, in such a spiritual vision we should see the full-sized mind appropriate to crucifixion.
Thousands have had in greater or lesser degree a spiritual revelation into this history of the soul of Jesus.  Such an insight can only be given by the Holy Ghost, for it is infinitely beyond the natural reason and imagination.
In the same proportion that we discern the inward spirit Christ had during those hours, in that proportion we can drink that spirit, until we can suffer, bleed, and die in our measure, with the very same disposition He had.
It is a silent spirit.  It suffers without advertising the depths of its suffering, it can be subdued, scolded, criticized, misunderstood, misrepresented and checked and hindered in a thousand ways without a groan, or a kick, or a trace of threatening or imprudence (1 Peter 2:23).
It has calmly signed the death warrant of self.  It can have a thousand little gifts and treasures, and harmless earthly pleasures, and pleasant hopes and friendly ties snatched out of its hand, without clutching the fingers to hold on to them.  It can obey God and be rushing at full speed on lines of service and duty for Him, and then at the touch of God’s Providential air-brake, it can be brought to an instantaneous standstill without shaking the train to pieces by a single jar, or the least jostling of the will from its perfect repose in Jesus.
It is a flexible spirit with no plans of its own.  It can be turned by the finger of God in any direction without a moment’s warning.
It can walk into a dungeon, or a throne, into a hut or a palace with equal ease or freedom.
It partakes of the movement of the Divine mind, as a floating cloud partakes of the movement of the air which encircles it.
It can wear old, threadbare clothes, and live on plain food with a thankful and sweet disposition, without even a thought of envy or coveting the nice things of others.  It looks with a quiet, secret, joyful contempt on all the honors and pleasures, learning and culture, and the honorable splendors of earth.  It inwardly despises what other people are longing to get hold of.
This is because it sees into Heaven, and is so fascinated with the magnitude of coming glories, that even the pretty and honorable things of the world look ugly to it.
The rugged cross which frightens so many Christians is embraced by this spirit with a secret, subtle joy, because it knows that all suffering will enlarge and sweeten its love.  What other Christians shun as hardship, it will gladly accept, as an opportunity of sweeter union with God.  It loves its enemies with a sweet, gentle, yearning affection utterly beyond what they would be willing to believe.  It can be bruised and trampled on and turn with a quivering, speechless lip, and a tear-dimmed eye and kiss and pray for the foot that under the pretense of religious duty is trampling it in the dust.
It will not receive human honors upon itself.
If it is praised or honored by its fellows, instead of eating it as a sweet morsel, it offers it up instantly to the Lord as the angel did with the good dinner which was presented to him by Manoah.  Its highest delight is in sinking into God and being little.  It loves to humble itself both before God and man.  It shuns debate and strife and theological argument.
It is modest and retiring and loves to get out of God’s way, and see Him work.  It does not make others wear its sackcloth.
It would rather take other people’s sufferings on itself than to take their joys.
When the soul enters sanctification it is just the beginning of the spirit which is to spread, intensify and brighten, until the crucifixion life becomes a beautiful flame of self-abnegation, which takes hold of all sorts of woes and troubles, and mortifications and pains and poverties and hardships, as a very hot fire takes hold of wet logs and makes out of them fresh fuel for more self-sacrificing love.  It opens the gate of Heaven without touching it.
This is the spirit that wears out the patience of persecutors, that softens the hearts of stone, that in the long run converts enemies into friends, that touches the hearts of sinners, that wins its way through a thousand obstacles, that outwits the genius of the devil, and that makes the soul that has it as precious to God as the apple of His eye.