Royal Insignia, The Low Door of the Cross

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Royal Insignia is a collection of 98 two-page readings on the subject of humility and is compiled by Edwin and Lillian Harvey. One of these readings is entitled “The low door of the cross,” and contains a poem written by Annie Johnson Flint who was barred from entering her chosen career as a concert pianist by crippling arthritis.

“Oh, straight and narrow is the door,
The little door of loss,
By which we enter in to Christ,
The low door of the Cross:
But when we put away our pride,
And in contrition come,
We find it is the only way
That leads to God and Home.

“Oh, strait and lowly are the doors
By which Christ comes to us;
We bar the entrance gates of joy,
And when He finds them thus,
By strange, small doors of woe and want,
Of trial and of pain,
He enters in to share our lives
To our eternal gain.

“The narrow doors He brings us to,
The little doors and low,
What large rooms they will open on,
If we will only go:
The strange, small doors of work and want,
Strait doors of grief and pain,
What riches they will lead us to!
What everlasting gain!” Royal Insignia, p. 78
In the next reading, “The Door of Destitution,” there is a quotation along the same lines by Oswald Chambers, taken from his book, He Shall Glorify Me:
“We learn to welcome the patience of Jesus only when we get to the point of human destitution. It is not that God will not do anything for us until we get there, but that He cannot. God can do nothing for me if I am sufficient for myself. When we come to the place of destitution spiritually we find the Lord waiting, and saying, ‘If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.’ There are hundreds at the place of destitution and they don’t know what they want. If I have been obeying the command of Jesus to ‘go and make disciples’ I know what they want; they want Him. We are so interested in our own spiritual riches that souls are white unto harvest all around us and we don’t reap one for Him.
Some men enter the Kingdom of Heaven through crushing, tragic, overwhelming conviction of sin, but they are not the greatest number; the greatest number enter the Kingdom along this line of spiritual destitution—no power to lay hold of God, no power to do what I ought to do, utterly poverty-stricken.” Royal Insignia, p. 69.

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They Knew Their God Volume Three, Edwin and Lillian Harvey

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They Knew Their God Vol. 3 begins with the fascinating story of the Frenchman, Marquis DeRenty, who was born in the early seventeenth century. He is followed by another Frenchman, Stephen Grellet, who was forced to seek refuge in America during the French Revolution and became a Quaker and worldwide traveling preacher. The third sketch presents the life of the Englishman Samuel Pearce, sometimes known as “the Brainerd of the Baptists.” Pearce is followed by the Methodist preacher from Yorkshire, John Smith, known as “The man with calloused knees.” The fifth sketch is short but moving and introduces the reader to Ann Cutler, who was born in Preston, England in the mid eighteenth century.

Her life of prayer influenced more than one prominent Methodist preacher even though she died at the young age of thirty-five. In the sixth sketch, we read of Uncle John Vassar, otherwise known as “God’s sheep Dog. John was a colporteur for the American Tract Society. In the next sketch we are taken back to England and the Salvation Army as we read of the devout, albeit somewhat eccentric George Railton. Railton is followed by the Scotsman John G. Govan, founder of the Faith Mission in Edinburgh, Scotland. Next, comes Oswald Chambers, whose devotional books make him practically a household word in many Christian homes in both the UK and America. His books still challenge, bless and sometimes shock the reader into a closer walk with Christ. He is followed by his wife, Gertrude, who, after her husband’s death at age forty-three, made sure that the legacy Oswald left in unpublished manuscripts, was made available to the Christian world. In the last three sketches of the book, we read of Evan Hopkins, the Anglican clergyman who became a well known writer and speaker at the famous Keswick convention; Mary Mozely, missionary to Africa, and Francis Asbury, the English born American bishop who did so much to establish Methodism in the New World.
—Trudy Harvey Tait.
This book, like its predecessors, is written by Edwin and Lillian Harvey, and is published by Harvey Christian Publishers. It is available on the Online Christian Bookstore.

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