TRUTHS THAT TRANSFIGURE
Faith Tonics

By

George Kulp

Foreward

A layman of experience and interest in Christian work wrote me a letter in which he said, "Brother Kulp you have a number of books of sermons that are for preachers and sinners. Why not give us some of your sermons to the saints? I will take two hundred copies and dispose of them if you will." A minister, one of the most successful pastors in the Holiness ranks in Ohio, said that if I would have them printed, he would take one hundred copies. I also have received numerous requests for a book of my poems which have been published in the last ten years in the Revivalist. In answer to the call, which I believe is in the Divine approval, I herewith, by the grace of the Publishers of God's Revivalist, send forth these sermons with an eye that is single to the glory of God. May His blessing rest on every reader of these messages and may such derive comfort and blessing is the humble prayer of

Your Brother and Servant in Christ,
George B. Kulp.

Chapter 1

CITIZENSHIP IN HEAVEN

 Phil. 3:20 -- "Our citizenship is in heaven."

 Eph. 2:19 -- "Fellow citizens with the saints."

A little man, so we are told, stands in the presence of the representatives of the greatest political power on earth at that time. He is afflicted in his body; his friends are absent; they have stripped him for the lash, when he asserts himself, and asks, "Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman, and he uncondemned?" When the Centurion hears this he goes to the Chief Captain, and says, "This man is a Roman; better be careful what you do." At once the Captain is much interested and he goes to the prisoner and asks him, "Art thou a Roman?" And I can see that little man straighten himself up, and, looking his questioner in the eye, he replies, "I am." The Captain says, "With a great price obtained I this freedom." But the prisoner shouts it out, "I was free born," and as a freeman he goes forth after receiving due apologies.

An Englishman was taken captive by Theodore of Abyssinia, and after a few months' imprisonment he managed in some way to get word to England that he was detained a prisoner in the Capitol of Abyssinia, by Theodore the King. Immediately the British Empire was at work -- a work that meant business. Ships were summoned, an army was at once gathered, and under the command of Lord Wollesly they set out for Abyssinia. Arriving in due time, they marched towards the Capital and demanded the surrender at once of the captive Englishman, and he was freed, because he was a citizen of England.

An Austrian came to the United States. In due time he took out his papers and became a full-fledged American citizen. After some years he went back to Austria, and was apprehended by the authorities, and put into prison for evading military duty. He pleaded that he owed none; that he was an American citizen. He got word to the American Consul that he was detained, and the Consul demanded that he be set at liberty. When the Austrian Government was aware the Consul had taken the case in hand, it sent the prisoner on board an Austrian man-of-war in the harbor. The American Consul at once sent word to Captain Ingraham, commanding an American sloop of war in the harbor, that an American citizen was unlawfully detained, in spite of his demand, and was on the Austrian man-of-war in the harbor. Captain Ingraham at once cleared his decks for action, and sent word to the Commander of the Austrian man-of-war, "Put that American on my decks by one o'clock, or I will blow you out of the water." At one o'clock he was there, all because he was an American citizen; because he could say, "I am an American."

But here is something greater by far: Here is a man who is held by the powers that be; he is in durance vile; a prisoner in the Roman prison, but he knows that freedom is not far of'. He is writing to the Church, he looks down through the ages; he takes in all the children of God in all the years to come. He yokes himself up with them all. He looks beyond prisons, and earthly powers, beyond shipwrecks to which he had been no stranger, and stripes, and he says, aye, I think he stopped and praised God for awhile, as he wrote it, "our citizenship is in heaven." And that is not all. It is not mere emotion, a mere stirring of the feelings, but it stays with him. He is writing to the Ephesian Church, and he says it again, "We are fellow citizens with the saints" -- saints of all ages. That takes us in you and me down here in the Twentieth Century -- "our citizenship is in heaven," We are "fellow citizens with the saints."

I like to read after Paul. There is a place where he talks about the commonwealth of Israel. He says that once we "were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world. But now, in Christ Jesus, ye who sometime were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For He is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us ... and came and preached peace to you which were afar off. For through Him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father. Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone ... in whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God through the Spirit."

This Commonwealth to which Paul and you and I belong, is no fancy picture. It is real, as real as the place where you live. It has territory, the Universe. It has a Capital, a King, Chief Magistrate, Citizens, and future destiny.

Let me call your attention to the territory. It takes in all the universe as God Himself knows it. It is all ours. As citizens it belongs to us. I can prove it by the Word, and so can you if you will take time to look it up. When I was a boy I lived in Philadelphia, my native city. Once a year my father would take me to Trenton, N. J., for a visit with his folks who lived there. It was the event of my boyhood days -- to go on the boat up the Delaware River, on the steamer Edwin Forrest, to Trenton. I would talk about it before I started, and for weeks after I got back. It was a big thing to that boy. Since then I have been from the Atlantic to the Pacific States, I have traveled and preached from the plains of Texas to the snows of Ontario. And the United States looks small to me. My vision has so enlarged. I am told that it is twenty-five thousand miles around the earth, and I take it for granted it is so, but it is too small for me. I am headed, as a citizen of heaven, for bigger things. Some of these days I am going to travel as fast as light can travel, one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles a second, and I am going to explore the territory of our God; for it is all yours and mine. I am going to Saturn and Jupiter; take a small journey to Uranus, then along the Milky Way to the Pleiades; go all the millions and millions of miles through space, and look on the works of Him who made all things by His Word. "He spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast." I am going to listen to the music of the spheres, for the planets "go singing as they shine, the hand that made us is divine. "Wheresoever in His rich creation Sweet music breathes, in wave or bird or soul, 'Tis but the faint and far reverberation Of that great tune to which the planets roll."

By the good grace of God some day then, in the eternal day of God in which we will live, I am going to explore the City of our God, the Capital City of the Universe. I was in Washington, the Capital of the United States. Having some time on my hands, I took a ride in a sight-seeing auto, With a guide who told us all about the various places as we passed them. He said, "This is the Capitol Building. It took so many years to build it, cost so much money. The Senate and the House of Representatives do business, make laws for you and me to keep. This is the White House where the President lives. When he is in Washington, the flag is always over the building. When he is absent, the flag is lowered. When Congress is in session, the flag is always over the Capitol. Now we are in the Dupont Circle. There is more wealth represented here than in any place on the globe. Here, we are now looking at the home of the late President Woodrow Wilson. Yonder is the Smithsonian Institute. That tall shaft is the Washington Monument, and there is the old Ford Theater where Abraham Lincoln Was assassinated. Just across the street is the house in which he died." And then I remember, to prove that Washington was the richest place in all the world, he said, "Why, the leaves on the trees all have greenbacks, and the birds all have bills, and even the horses have checks." Then we went over to Arlington, the city of the dead, where lie many boys who laid down their lives during the Civil war. There I saw the grave and monument of my old commanders, Philip Sheridan and General Wright. But one of these days when the saints are all home, I am going to have an angel, one of those appointed to minister to the heirs of salvation, take me through the City and point out to me all the places of interest. I expect to ride along the boulevards of the City and have him tell me, "There is the mansion of Abraham, the man who took God at His Word and asked no questions. There is the home of Daniel, who slept all night though lions growled, and enemies were wishing for his death. Yonder is the home. of the Hebrew children, the boys who would not bow the knee to the golden image. That tall home there is where John Wesley lives, though he is seldom home, as he still keeps on the go, looking around and talking to the redeemed he won for God, and talking over the victories God gave them through grace down there where you once lived. In that row over there that is so resplendent with the glory of God is where the martyrs live, and yonder is the home of Calvin, not far from where John Knox, that great man of prayer, lives." And then I expect he will take me to the home of some saint I never heard tell of down here, and he will tell me as I look on the beautiful Home in which they now live, "Their names were never in the papers; the folks did not know much about them. They never wrote reports, but God knew them. They were doing His will so quietly, and so effectively. They lived in basements and on back streets, down there, but God had them always in mind, and up here all heaven knows them. When they came the angels were looking for them and sang their welcome home." I expect to find a wonderful City there. The Lamb is the light of the place. He is the temple. There are no graveyards on the hillsides. The river of life flows through the City, and the tree of life is easy of access to all the saints. Their employment is doing the will of God even as do the angels.

The Head of the Commonwealth is God. He is King of kings and Lord of lords. He has all the qualifications that are necessary for a King. Washington was the Father of his country worthy of much honor, but he was an aristocrat, the richest man of his day. Lincoln was the typical American. He was the grandest Man that ever filled the chair at Washington. He was wise, patient, humble, had the vision as no other man of his day had, but something he lacked. Woodrow Wilson was a great president. He had the courage of his convictions. Men failed to understand him, but he kept right on. And today we are seeing that he was right, but he lacked some things. But our God, the Head of the Government, is lacking in nothing. He is omniscient, He sees all things, knows all things; His eyes are ever upon His children. He is omnipresent, ever with them, right alongside, when He is needed. He discerns all needs and supplies all necessities. He is omnipotent, has all power, and it is at the disposal of His children as they look to Him. He said once, "All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth." And He said to His children, "Ye shall have power above all the power of the enemy." His infinite goodness desires only the happiness of His elect, and His boundless love is ever manifested.

The government is administered by the Son, and He has all the qualifications needed. He is Divine and Human: He is both God and Man, He is the God-Man, He is the Man Job prayed for when he cried, "Oh, for a daysman who may lay hands upon us both." Jesus Christ in His Deity laid hold of 'God, in His Humanity He laid bold of man and made them at-one. He is the Mediator, and "ever lives above for us to intercede, His all redeeming love, His precious blood to plead, His blood atoned for all the race, and sprinkles now the throne of grace."

The Holy Spirit is the Agent. He represents the Father and the Son; makes us to know our rights; bears witness to our citizenship; acquaints us with our privileges; tells us that the handwriting of ordinances that was against us is now taken out of the way. There is peace through the blood. Minding Him we have victory; and all that are spiritually-minded mind Him. Citizens are all holy beings. Without holiness it is impossible to please Him, and without holiness no man shall see the Lord. Patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs, and all who have repented of their sins, and have accepted of Jesus Christ as their Savior from all sin. Here, character is the basis of citizenship -- not rank, not money, not birth, not reputation, but character -- what you ARE in His sight.

The Government is a theocracy. God is the King and this is God's ideal of Government. When Israel demanded a king and Samuel went down on his face and wept, God said to him, "Getup from off thy face. They have not rejected thee, but they have rejected ME." We talk about making the world safe for democracy, and boast of our republican form of government, but God's plan as shown in His dealings with His chosen people was a theocracy. He will be King, or nothing; He will be all, or not at all. The Psalmist said, "Thou art My Sun, my Shield, My exceeding great Reward." To whom we yield ourselves servants to obey, his servants we are.

The Government is a government of law, and this law we find recorded in His Word. Dr. Elliott tells me of a five foot bookshelf that is the thing that should be in every home. With all due respect to the late President of Harvard, I beg leave to say that long before he thought of his books which he commended so highly, God gave us sixty-six books, all of them only two inches, and they are ahead of anything and all the books the doctor ever commended to the American people. Obey the law and live. Disobey and die! Aye, Jesus summed it up in the Scripture, "Thou shalt Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." And then just before He 'went up to be at home forever He gave a new commandment, "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another, as I have loved you." This is the commandment, this is the law, just love. He left us an Example that we should walk in His footsteps, and love as He loved, even unto death.

The mutual relationship is worthy of our notice: The citizens are all one in Christ. Under the Dispensation of the Holy Ghost there is neither male nor female, neither bond nor free, but ye are all one in Christ Jesus -- not Jew, not Gentile, but just one. This does away with the color line, the bread line; there will be none when the church lives the Book. There will be no distinctions such as man makes now. "One army of the living God before His throne we bow, Part of the host have crossed the flood, and part are crossing now." George Whitefield, while preaching, one time, in Philadelphia, cried aloud, ."Gabriel, have you any Methodists in heaven?" And back comes the answer, "None." "Any Presbyterians in heaven?" "None." "Any Baptists in heaven?" "None." "Gabriel, who have you there?" "All who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." Baptists in hell, Methodists in hell, Presbyterians in hell, but no sectarian lines in heaven -- all one in Christ Jesus. Perfect freedom in that city. Each one does exactly as he pleases, and pleases only to do the will of the king. His folks here are the same, peculiar, unworldly, seeking only to know the will of God and to do it.

Chapter 2

THE DISCIPLINE OF SUFFERING

 John 17:19 -- "For their sakes."

Know a blue-eyed, curly-headed little fellow, about two years of age, who can talk quite glibly, and if you will tell him to do something he will at once say, "Why?" If you tell him you are going down to the city he will say, "Why?" If you propose to do something, he will say, "Why?" His mother and some other folks have gotten so accustomed to hearing that boy say Why, that when they see him at the window they naturally think, "Why?" He stands as an interrogation point, and that is the way we stand before many of the dealings of God with us. There are some things which we would most intensely like to know. There are some things we seek to understand and, standing before them, we ask, "Why?" And God leaves us to the teachings of the past, and to the blessed Holy Spirit, to draw the inferences, and learn the lesson, and get the discipline. And I say to you, there is a discipline in suffering.

When the ground is broken up by the plow, and the harrow is run over it, then the farmer goes along with a big heavy roller, and crushes it still further, and then the drag goes over it again. Suppose the ground should ask the question, Why? All it has to do is to wait and, bye and bye, the seed that is sown in that crushed, powdered ground will spring up. The rain will fall upon it; the sunshine will nourish it, and there will be waving fields of grain. And beyond that there will be the threshing, then the granary, then the flour mill, then the white bread on the fable, then the men and women growing from the sustenance derived from it. Wait awhile, and you can get the answer. Angelo went into a quarry, and saw an immense block of marble. He had it removed to his studio. He took the hammer, and the chisel, and began to shape it, here and there; he kept on working year after year, and after awhile, we find an answer to the Why? There was an angel in the stone, but it took the discipline of the hammer and the chisel to bring it out.

Some years ago I was at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and by the courtesy of a friend I was admitted to the Steel Works. I remember the process by which those cannon, and the armour for the battleships was turned off. First, the ore is taken out of the ground, and there it lays, a big pile on the ground. Then they take it over to the furnace, and it comes out pig-iron in fiery molten matter. Then they take it to the Bessemer and, after the fiery testings, it comes out in ingots of steel. Then the ingot is put under a former, and an immense hammer weighing tons is dropped on it and it is beaten into half its former size. But it is of finer fiber and is ready to become armour for battleships, and when placed there, we know WHY the testings and fiery trials. We get the answer by waiting.

So we stand before the mysteries of life and ask ourselves the question, Why? Listen there is a discipline in suffering. Please remember when you take your Bible and read it, the "Son of God was made perfect through sufferings." It declares here in the Word, that here, in this world, He "learned obedience by the things which he suffered." Only as I stand before the Word of God can I understand the mysteries that come into our lives. Reason fails me; rationalism, explains nothing to the satisfaction of my soul. But I look back over the past, and I see the Second Person in the Godhead -- the Jehovah -- step out of the Council chambers of eternity and declare, "Lo, I come ... to do thy will, O God." As I see Him, I remember that the evangelical prophet had said, "His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace." Love was the explanation of it all.

Wait a moment! Let us go back and look at a picture in the Old Testament, away back in the early ages of the race. I see an old man about to die. He was surrounded by idolaters, and his righteous soul was vexed by their idolatrous practices. He has one boy -- the seed of the promises. He calls his old and faithful servant to his side, and tells him to put his hand under his thigh, and makes him swear that he will not take a wife for his son from the daughters of the land, but that he will go back to his own country and take a wife for him from his own kindred. The servant promises him concerning the matter, and departs, with . camels and presents of gold and silver, for the far country. He trusts God and commits the end of his coming to Him. A girl comes out with her water pot on her head, and he makes known his errand. She invites him to her father's house. She has never seen the man, but God has sent that man. And while he was on the way, God was talking to that girl, hundreds of miles away, and preparing her for the message, so when the question was asked her, "'Wilt thou go with this man?" she says, "I will go." And love was the explanation of it all.

Down in the city of Philadelphia a woman lay dying. Her husband was a drunkard. He seldom came home without being under the influence of liquor. As the wife lay there dying, the daughter stood by her side. The mother said, "Mary, never leave your father; be faithful to him. I do believe the day will come when God will save him." The mother died; the father kept on with his cups. When he would come home with the filth and mire on him, Mary was true to her promise to her mother. She would wash him and place him in bed; she loved and cared for him. He would say to her sometimes, when he had sober hours, "Mary, how can you do this?" And the answer invariably was, "Father, because I love you." For years she stayed and ministered to that drunken father, until at last he yielded to the ministrations of love and, led by the Holy Spirit to the God of his sainted wife, he was saved. But that daughter went down to death, her health wrecked by her devotion to her father. She was a most devoted Christian character, made "perfect through sufferings." Love was the explanation.

Down in the South, there was a man in prison. He was guilty of using money belonging to the banks with which he was connected. He was arrested, tried, found guilty, and sentenced to the penitentiary. He had once owned millions of dollars, lived in palatial style, moved in the first circles of society, but now he is sent off to prison. But, hear it, there was one person who never forsook him, and that was the wife of his younger manhood. She went from one influential person to another, trying to secure for him' a pardon. While others turned against him, she stayed by. He was in prison, clad in the striped garments of a convict, but she never failed him. At last she secured the pardon, and he was a free man. Love explained it all.

So, I can give a reason for all the mysteries connected with the atonement. I can tell you why the Son of God left Heaven, I can tell you' why He suffered. It was because He loved you and me. He did it all for our sakes. Let us examine the life of Christ. I see Him stand in the carpenter shop; I see Him down at Nazareth, subject to His parents. I see Him pushing the plane, driving the nail; I see Him handling the saw. I see Him with hands that are callused and rough, and I want to know the explanation. He was the Son of God. The tallest archangels bowed in His presence. He left it all -- all the glory He had with the Father -- and came and worked in a carpenter shop. The explanation is: for our sakes. He loved us so. Thirty years . in subjection to His parents; thirty years down there in the carpenter shop, getting disciplined for future service. Thirty years to get ready for three years of service that ends on the Cross. Why? According to the Word it was for our sakes. I see Him as He goes to the Jordan; I see Him in the wilderness, forty days and forty nights in the wilderness to be tested and tried. The first Adam was placed in a garden, midst perfect surroundings, with but one law, that of perfect obedience. He sold out. The second Adam we find not in perfect surroundings, not in a garden, but in a wilderness, on a mountain top, the roaring of the lion, the growling of the wolf, the enemy to test and tempt; and He bore it all, and came forth more than conqueror, for our sakes, to be an example unto us. Spurgeon says the devil does not have to take us up to a high mountain and show us all the kingdoms of the world; all he has to do with us is to take us to our back doorsteps, and many will not withstand the temptation.

God help us to get the lesson here for us! Back of His purity, back of His integrity, back of His Christhood, was the discipline of suffering. A great many would serve God, if they could go to Heaven on flowery beds of ease with the applause of the multitude. God wants some folks who will reproduce Jesus Christ in the Twentieth, Century. God wants some folks who will hold still in the furnace. God wants some folks who will hold still in the lions' den, and exemplify His Son. We are to reproduce Him. I want you to get the thought that everything that Jesus met in His life we will meet in ours, and He is our example in order to teach us that we are to learn obedience through suffering.

Another thought right here: He was rejected of men. He came to His own, and His own received Him not. His own brethren did not believe on Him. One evening at George Street Mission there was a woman at the altar, and all at once she stopped praying and said, "Well, if I do get sanctified, no one will have any confidence in me." God bless you! We want the will of God whether anyone has confidence in us or not. That is not the question. The one supreme question is, "Will we go with God?"

For our sakes the Son of God came into the world. For our sakes He was rejected of men. For our sakes He withstood that awful testing in the wilderness. His own brethren did not believe on Him but for our sakes He kept right on. Tradition reads that Jesus was at the carpenter shop one day, and the sun was shining through the window. He stood there with His arms outstretched, and Mary His mother, looking upon the wall beyond Him saw the shadow of the cross. And, shuddering at the thought, she quietly kept it in her heart. The shadow of the cross was on His pathway from the cradle to Calvary. Jesus says in the Word, "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me." Everything that Jesus met you will meet, if you are going with Him. The carnal mind crucified Jesus, and it will crucify you. This world is no friend to Him, and it is none to you. He said, "If the world hate you, ye know that it hated Me before it hated you." Thank God, we do not have to seek the friendship with the world. I like that hymn: "Friendship with Jesus, Felowship Divine.

And I surely like that interpretation of the Psalmist which says (read the margin) "the friendship of the Lord is with them that fear him." Why? Because I am traveling the way that He took, and what He met, you and I are to meet. The world, the flesh, and the devil, the gods that the worldling meets and worships, are no friends to grace; and, through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the fellowship of the Spirit, and the love of God shed abroad in our hearts, we are now more than conquerors.

Let us go a little farther and note the discipline of His everyday life. Now, mark you, Jesus as a Man needed the discipline that came through suffering. God's Word says "He learned obedience by the things which He suffered." He was made "perfect through sufferings." It behooved Him to be made in all points like His brethren, that He might know how to succor us when we are tempted. He did not go outside the Word of God. He did not go outside the will of God. The enemy said, "Turn these stones into bread." And He said, "It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." He would not make bread to satisfy His own hunger. He could have done it. But when five thousand people were hungry, He made bread enough to satisfy them all. He never could have done it, if He had made bread for Himself. He knew the pangs of hunger; they came to Him on the mount where He was tested, and He knew how to sympathize with hungry folks. He would make no bread for Himself, but He would for others.

???of prayer. As a man He needed to pray, but He never forgot His mission in His own needs. He went up into that mountain to pray, and stayed there all night long. But out there on the Sea of Galilee, rowing mightily to get to land, were the disciples, and the winds were all contrary. Jesus had been up there in the mountain praying, getting ready for tomorrow" sorrow and battle, but He knew all about the little craft on the stormy sea, and the gloom around them.. And He came walking on the sea, stepped on the little bark, and said, "Peace be still." He needed to spend all night in prayer, but He never forgot the disciples in that storm. And in the midst of the storms that come to us, day by day, remember that Jesus is at the right hand of the Father praying for us. Again and again He has come to our little bark and said, "Peace be still." Do you know anything about it? I see Him again, in the hinder part of the ship, and He is asleep. As a man He needed to sleep. For your sake, down there sleeping. But while He is there getting His needed rest as a man, the prince of the power of the air is busy, and the waters of the sea are storm swept. The disciples are alarmed and cry out, "Master, carest thou not that we perish?" To be sure He cares! And He rose up and rebuked the storm, and again said, "Peace be still," and there was a great calm. The Christ was indeed on board, and there never yet was a storm that He could not still. There never was a devil let loose that He could not defeat. Hallelujah! The discipline of suffering will be such a blessing to you that you will thank God for storm's. There is nothing like water for making a rainbow. We have been through some storms that we would almost be willing to go through again to see how our God can quiet storms. Why did He go through that storm on Galilee? For us, for our sakes, to teach us that all we have to do when storms come is just to let HIM manage them. He has never failed. He has dried our tears, filled our mouths with laughter, and spread a table for us in the presence of our enemies. I am glad that He taught us there is a discipline in suffering. I am glad that He went through it for us, for our sakes. Love brought Him down our poor souls to redeem. Do you know what will take us through? Love for Him.

Another thought here. In the garden He sweat great drops of blood. I often think of Him going to the garden with Peter, James and John. They went part of the way, and then sat down, and were soon asleep. But He went a stone's throw farther than all the rest. There all alone I see Him before the Father. I see the cup pressed to His lips. I see Him drink the very dregs, and I hear Him say, "All right, Father, even as thou wilt." He is suffering now in agony of soul, and HE did it all for us, for our sakes. "Yes, Father, I separated myself, I left the courts of Heaven, I left the worship of the angels, I left the music of the choirs of the skies, I left the atmosphere of the city, and came down here, taking on myself their nature, for their sakes. Father, the birds we made have nests, and the foxes have holes, but I have nothing but love, Love." He goes down into the garden, and bears your burden and mine. He does it for us. Say, was that all? No; the angels came and ministered unto Him. When did the angels come before? Back there on the mountain, amid the growling of the beasts, after He had resisted the enemy, the angels came. When did they come to Him in the garden? After He had sweat great drops of blood. When will they come to us? When we have stood, when we have had the discipline of suffering. Oh, just to have Him come when other folks leave you, when people sneer, when the iron is driven into your soul, when your heart is heavy, When your cheeks are wet with tears, when the darkness settles down upon you -- to have Him come and minister unto you. He will come. Angels ministered to Him, but He will come Himself and minister unto you. Do you know, my beloved ones, what it means to have Him. come when other folks have left, to have Him whisper to you that you are not alone and never will be, for He has come to stay. Shall we go up to a hill lone and gray, in a land far away, and look on the three crosses? You and I are interested in that middle cross. You remember that when He was twelve years old that He said to His mother, "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" His whole life was a journey to the cross. I see Him struggling up that hill beneath a cross. I see Him nailed thereon. I hear Him cry, "It is finished." The race is run. The battles are fought. He bows His head and gives up the ghost. We go down to His tomb, but the angels say, "He is not here: for he is risen. Hallelujah! There are many folks who do not understand us, but you can afford to be misunderstood. God will vindicate you. Some folks say that you will not be vindicated in this life. Well, you and I know of one man God did vindicate. There was Job. He lost everything but His trust in God. His three friends came to him and said, "Job, if you had not done something you would never have been in this plight. All this has come on you because you are a sinner. But Job held on, took another step out in the dark, and shouted so loud and long that it still reverberates along the centuries, "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh I shall see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another." "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." But after awhile God said to those three wise men, "You did not talk of me as my friend Job did. Now you had better get him to pray for you, that your sins may be forgiven." That was vindication. And more than that, Job had twice as much religion as he had before, and twice as many cattle. Do you want twice as much as you had before? Are you willing to go the way that Job did to get it? Are you willing to be ostracized, have betrayal, rejection? Some folks would say because Job was sick that he was backslidden. But Job knew better, and, best of all, God knew. We learn obedience by the things we suffer. What return have you made? How do you manifest your love? I like that hymn: "I gave my life for thee, My precious blood I shed, That thou might'st ransomed be, And quickened from the dead. I gave my life for thee, What hast thou given for Me?"

What has your love led you to do? Has it led you to sacrifice for God? Do you wonder that you have been called upon to suffer? It is discipline that is necessary for you. You will get through it, bye and bye; God will not let you there one moment longer than it takes Him to see Himself in you. Some one is watching you, and it may be that for their sakes you are permitted to be tested. Do you want Bible for that? "We are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men." We are surrounded by an innumerable company of witnesses, who are watching us. Remember, that if you suffer with Him, you shall reign with Him also.

Down in a hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, there stood an old man and his wife. On a cot lies their only son, dying a soldier's death. When that boy came into their lives they said, "Now we have a boy of our own." And as he grew in years they would say, "He will be the prop of our old age," and the mother would stoop down and kiss him. Then the war came. He enlisted, was wounded in action, and came down to death's door. They wired for the parents, and when they came they saw he was soon to pass over. As they stood there, the old father said, "Mother, take my hand and say it with me, 'The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away.'" The mother accompanied him that far, and her voice quivered and stopped. The old man grasped the hand a little tighter, and said, "Come, mother, say it with me." She took another look at the boy and said, "Father, I will. 'The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.'" Grace triumphed. Oh, there is a discipline in suffering, but glory to the Name of Christ; He will call us through no darker rooms than He went through before.

A boy was carrying a lot of boxes, and someone thought he had too large a load, and said to him, "Is not that load too heavy for a boy like you?" But the little fellow said, "My Father knows how much I can carry." He knows how much you can carry, and He will take the heaviest end of it.

If we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him.

"Bye and bye when the morning comes,
When all the saints of God are gathered home,
We will tell the story how we overcome,
And we'll understand it better bye and bye."

Chapter 3

THE PROGRAM OF JESUS

 Matthew 19:22 -- "He went away sorrowful"

He went away sorrowful." To live twenty, thirty, forty, or fifty years of life and miss the thought of God is my idea of total failure. The Psalmist said, "What is man that thou art mindful of him? Thou hast made him lower than the angels for a little While." And there never was a human being created but to start from the very inception of that life -- and I go back farther than that, from the very foundation of the world -- God had a plan for that life; there was the thought of God for that whole life.

I am not much given to visions, not much given to impressions, but in the Word of God we get the vision of Jesus and we can get the program of our lives. We can and may know the thought of God for us. Jesus said, "The Spirit shall take the things of God and show them unto you, He shall guide you into all truth."

In the very beginning of this discourse I want to bring before your mind two men, each of whom had a vision of Jesus, each of whom met the Lord, and He gave to each the program for their lives. One was honest; one was sincere. He was on his way to Damascus when he met the Lord, and the Lord threw him to the ground, and said, "Why persecutest thou me?" He said, "Who art thou Lord?" And the Lord answered. "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest." He was led inside the city, and God said to a man who lived near enough to Him to hear Him talk: "I want you to go and call on this man I have met just a few miles out of the city and (mark you) I have showed him how great things he must suffer for my name's sake." At the very beginning of his Christian life, the Lord meets him with a program for his future. Now, beloved, in that program were apostleship, ambassadorship, stones, stripes, perils among false brethren, among lions, in prisons, and, at the last, to give up his life just as the Master gave it. Amen, Lord! Prisons, Amen! Shipwrecks, Amen! Stripes, Amen! Perils among false brethren, Ostracism, Amen! Death, Amen! I believe he took in the whole program and, voluntarily, this man abandoned himself to all the will of God.

Let me tell you of another man, one who came running to Jesus. He was a hungry man looking for the Master, with a question upon his lips the answer to which meant all the thought of God to him, and for him, "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" And from the lips of Him who spake as man never spake came this answer: "Go sell that which thou hast and come follow Me and thou shalt have treasure in heaven." He looks at the program, just as the other man did. He saw it clearly. As he got it from the lips of Jesus, so this man gets the program of his life from Jesus. He had propounded a question that was pregnant with eternal issues, but he stands there and fails to meet the conditions, and went away sorrowful, failing to take the program that divine wisdom, that the infinite God, marked out for him.

God has a program for you and me. God gives us His thought in His Word, and just as much as it meant to those two men it means to us today. It means obedience; it means separation; it means abandonment, and it also means reward. The program of Jesus Christ means life, not only from the cradle to the grave, but it reaches out through eternity, as long as God shall live. I am glad for such a program. I am glad for the will of God made known to us. I am glad for the whole Bible made known to us. I believe it from beginning to end as the Word of God. I am glad for the MAN of Calvary who got down on His knees in the garden and drained the whole cup, who prayed, "Father, not my will but thine be done." He made it possible for us to take the whole program. There is a program in this world for your life and mine. This man of our text "went away." What did that mean? Away from Jesus, away from God's thought, away from the program ordained from the foundation of the world for him, away into the night, away into the darkness, away to misery, away to death. One of the saddest things in the Word to me is the record made after Judas betrayed Jesus and went away -- "it was night." Oh, the darkness of the soul that turns down the program of God, and goes away, Away! Never mind if the enemy says, "There are the prisons, there are the stones, there are the stripes, there are the perils among false brethren; there is the ostracism; there is the death, the block, the axe. If is it God's will for you, take it, and count it a privilege to take it and keep step with God Almighty Every step you have a battle you shall have the victory, and for every victory there is reward, a crown of eternal life. The old devil told the truth for once when he said Job did not serve God for naught. Thank God, we do not serve Him for naught. We have the peace that passeth understanding; and today we are marching forward not on corduroy roads (every old soldier will understand this), not on sinking sands, not on slippery pathways, but on a rock of adamantine -- the Word of God -- marching forward with the sweep of conquest, looking forward to the eternal day. Oh, thank God for the privilege of having a part in the program, for the privilege of suffering with Him, of getting into the dark places Thank God for the privilege of knowing that whether you suffer, or bear, or are in the dark, you are foreordained to victory! There is a program for every child of God.

On the surface of our text we see free moral agency. He went away. He might have stayed with Jesus as the other man did. He might have stayed and listened as did others of the disciples. He might have had the privilege of walking with God. He was at the crucial period of his career. He had come to the parting of the ways. One way leads up, and up, and ever up, an ever-ascending plane, and the other down, and down, into the darkness that is eternal. But he chose deliberately to go away.

You are a sovereign. You came from the hand and heart and brain of God, a king, clothed with kingly powers. You are sent out to step like a conqueror. You are sent out to have the victory over the flesh, the world, and the devil. These are the gods of the worldling, but in the conflict every day you may enlarge your caliber, make your fiber stronger. You are sent out every day to increase in size mentally, morally, and spiritually, though the path leads through blazing, red-hot plowshares, and devils howling on every side. You are sent out to walk in the footsteps of Jesus 'Christ. You are sent out not only to be a conqueror, but more than a conqueror. You are sent out that you might have the privilege of waving a palm, and decking your crown with stars, putting it down at the feet of Jesus, that you might have the privilege of putting stars in His crown and making it radiant throughout eternal ages.

Hear it young man, young woman! You can go away; you can go away into the darkness like the man of our text; you can enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; but, if you do, it is to crucify the Son of God afresh and to grieve the Holy Spirit.

We are living in the midst of eternal verities. We are dealing with moral certainties. We are either believing on Christ, are either following and walking with Jesus, or we are going away from Him. We are accepting the program or we are rejecting it. This young man turned his back on Jesus, refused to walk in the light, and said, "No" to God. He said, "Go thy way for this time," and it proved to be for all time, for we never hear of him again. My friend, if you are weak, if you are defeated, it is because you have said "No" to God, rejecting His program for your life. It is because you knew the price and refused to pay it. He might have paid the price. He might have abandoned himself to God, and let other things go. He might have said, "Thy will for me."

Beloved, what you are doing? How about the program of Jesus for you? Paul wrote to a young man and said, "Fulfil thy ministry." Have you fulfilled up to date God's program for you? Either you are either doing it, or you are grieving the heart of God. You are either doing it, or you are adding to the burden of Jesus. You have the thought of God for you, and you know what He is asking you to do. Are you doing it? Stop, look, listen! It is important that you should obey God. You have not the peace, the joy, the victory, in your soul. You are missing God's program for you. No matter what may occur; you can be a victor. Yoked up with God, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, you can defeat all the powers that hell and the devil can array against you. He that is for you is more than all that can be against you. Stop your trembling and get to believing God. Faith is the victory. God bless you, look up! God's people are a conquering people when they measure up to God's thought for them. I remember there was a time when God came to me and talked to me and I said, "Lord, you do not seem to be leading anybody else that way; you are not asking anyone else to walk that way." Thank God, I never, any more, question Divine leadings; it is enough for me to know that it is God. I never hesitate any more. I am saying Amen! Whether He ever asks any other man in the universe to do what he asks of me, I am accepting the whole program. Uncomplainingly? Banish the Word! I am accepting it joyfully. All I want to know is, is it His will? But I am afraid of the programs of men. I do not like to go to conventions where men have put me on the program. I like committees that pray and ask Divine direction as to meetings and preachers. I sometimes question the wisdom of men, but I like the program of God.

God puts it before every man. It will come to each one. I dare you, I challenge you. Ask God, "What wilt thou have me do?" Mean it from your heart, and in due time you will hear from Him. Jesus was walking along one day and He saw a man sitting at the receipt of custom, and all that He said to that man was just two words, "Follow Me." And he arose, left all, and followed Jesus in the way. Customs, good-bye; Roman office, good-bye;. shekels, good-bye. That is what it means -- separation. Go every step of the way. I was honest. I joined the Masons when I was a young man. I had not been converted very long when they made me a preacher that is, they gave me a license to do the work to which God called me. I knew before I was saved that if ever I got religion, I would have to preach. I did not know the secret of that until many years after I had been preaching, and then, one day, my mother told me that before I was born my parents had given me, their first baby, to God for the ministry. After I was made a Mason they made me Chaplain of the Lodge, and one day a good Christian friend of mine said to me, "You cannot utter the name of Jesus in a Masonic Lodge." I said to myself, "I'll show you better than that." So the next Lodge night, when I as chaplain dismissed the lodge I used the Apostolic benediction: "May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, abide with you now and forever. Amen." I had no sooner got through than the Senior Warden, who was in the East that night in the absence of the Master, said to me, "Kulp, keep your Jesus to yourself." I at once told him that when it came to a question of choice between Masonry and my religion, Masonry could go. That fellow was wrong and I was right. I had a perfect right to keep a good conscience, but I was only a youngster and it meant something for me. But 'God helped me. He will help anyone who will go all the way with Him, even though it leads outside the orders to which so many ministers belong. No one says to me, "You do not know what you are talking about." I know, and they know it. God says that separation is the price of victory.

Brother, the price of victory is separation. If you are going with God, He will test you before you go very far. He will allow you to be tested. Obedience, then separation. "You say you will follow Me?" "Yes, Lord. Customs, good-bye; World good-bye, Fashions good-bye, world's politics good-bye." O beloved, if you are going with God, you will come clear out of Egypt. Go with the people of God; pay any price, and you will have victory no matter where you live, no matter what people say; you will have victory, for it is the heritage of those who go with God. If you have not victory, there is a reason. You are not meeting the thought of God for you. I declare unto you, that you may have all the salvation that you want; you may be a temple of the Holy Ghost; you may have communion with God all the time. He will walk with you and dwell in you.

I went into a brother's room and he brought out a record. He gave me a piece called "Old Time Religion." Then he played "God be with you till we meet again." And I said, "Give me that Old-time Religion again; I like that. I am not seeking something new. I am standing in the way, and inquiring for the old paths, and have rest for my soul. I want you to know that I am tremendously, completely, abundantly satisfied." But "how about young men who are In the glow of health?" I am in the glow of health; I stand as straight as any of you, and I can walk as fast. I am in the glow of health and salvation suits me abundantly. I like the program and am measuring up to it. If you choose the world, you may have it, but it means away from Jesus. You may go with the world or you may go with Jesus, but you cannot go with both at the same time. Please bear that in mind. The program of Jesus means separation from the world, and separation unto God. Are you so separated this very hour?

He went away sorrowful, for he was very rich. He had his eyes on the things of this world, he had his eyes on position, he had his eyes on popularity. The devil is a master painter, and he can make the world look very attractive to you; but, if you go that way, you will miss the thought of the Christ. A man who is called of God to preach the Gospel does not need anything else but fellowship with the Triune God through the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. Now, do not misinterpret me. You say, "Brother Kulp, what do you mean?" I mean that you do not have to join a lodge to get along, that you do not have to sacrifice your political convictions to get along Onetime a committee was looking for a preacher and they asked some preachers about a man named Kulp. Well, those preachers said a lot of good things about him -- he could do this and that, and the other, but--. Did you ever do anything of that kind? Did you ever say a lot of nice things about some brother, and then look down your nose and say, But? What do you suppose the but was? It was this "But he is a third-party prohibitionist." My, oh my! Was not that awful in a preacher? I had voted a third-party prohibition ticket for thirty years and would do the same thing over again.

If you are in the program of Jesus you will not have to seek human assistance. You do not have to lean on the arm of flesh. It is vain to put your trust in princes, or bishops, or general superintendents. You take the program of God, and everything that He offers you means a promise goes with it that He will see you through. God help the men and women who are standing around waiting' for a job. If you are in God's program He has work for you as long as you are able to do it, and then at the end, He will give you your last appointment where all the brethren are true, and the Church is eternally triumphant.

O beloved, it means so much as to whether we go with God or not. If we abandon ourselves to Jesus, He gives us the Holy Ghost. If any man has not the Spirit of Jesus he is none of His. If you abandon yourself to Him, He will take control. Your wife will not be in control. The bishop will not be in control. Your friends are not in control. The Holy Ghost is. They that are after the Spirit, mind the things of the Spirit. When you have Him, you are just as sweet at home as you are when you are away from home, and in company. You are just as nice to your wife when you are all alone as you are when there are folks around. You are as good in the dark as you are in the light. You are walking abandoned to the Holy Ghost and you have the best company that there is in the world.

There was a young girl stepped off a ferry boat and a young dude stepped up to her and said, "Miss, may I have your company?" She said, "No, Sir." Not satisfied with this rebuff, he asked her again, and she said, "No, Sir; I have company." "May I ask who your company is? I seen one." And she said, "God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost." "Too good company for me," he said, and then left her. God bless you, we are never left alone, and never lonely when we are with Him. I have heard folks say that they feel just as good when they do not feel good as when they do feel good, and just as happy when they do not feel happy as when they do feel happy. Do you know what I mean?

Out in Kansas a cyclone came along, and wrecked houses and barns and everything in its path. Picked up trees, and everything generally was badly wrecked. It picked up a cradle in which was a baby asleep, and it carried cradle, baby and all, over the fields for half a mile and set it down gently, and the baby never awoke. What was the reason? The cradle was in the center of the cyclone, and in the center there is a calm. Oh, get into the center of His will and be at rest! The devil may start up a tempest; he may set the Galilean sea to rocking and roaring; but he ought to know by this time that He who rides upon the storm can say "Peace be still," and there will be a great calm. Oh, thank God, when He says "Peace," there is calm, and rest! If we are in God's program we have His mind and we are at rest; we are humble. Self-effacement does not hurt us. We can sit in a congregation as well as on a platform, and we can enjoy the sermon just as much. If we have the mind of Jesus we are humble. Our Master was obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross.

One day a brother went into an auction store. The auctioneer was selling a painting. He was standing behind it, almost out of sight, and telling the merits of the picture and the reputation of the artist. The brother got a lesson from this. I want to hold Jesus forth so He will be seen. Brother, are you living so much like Jesus that folks think of Jesus when they see you? That does away with lightness; that does away with trifling. Oh, it means so much to walk with Jesus, and this is God's program for us. When Paul got into the program of Jesus, it was a great thing to look down the years and see what there was awaiting him, and say, "Yes, Jesus! Yes, Jesus!" In the time of Bloody Mary, there were three men condemned to the fire. To make it worse the executioner came to them and said to the first martyr, "You will burn Monday." To the second one he said, "You will burn Tuesday." To the third one he said, "You will burn Wednesday." When Monday came the first one went out to the stake with head, hands and heart uplifted, and he was praising the Lord. But the man who was to be burnt on Wednesday said, "Oh, I can't burn! I can't burn!" Tuesday came, and the second one was led out to the stake, and he went praising God and shouted when they started the fires. But the one who was to burn Wednesday kept saying, "Oh, I can't burn! I can't burn!" But when Wednesday came he came out from his cell shouting, "I can burn! I can burn!" And he passed away in a chariot of fire, shouting the praises of One who never will leave us alone. I heard Bishop Foss say as he told this, "I do not think he ever felt the fire." Beloved, do not be afraid of the whole program. He who walked with the three in the furnace is still the same, and ever mindful of His own. He will be with you everywhere you ought to be, to the admiration of the angels and the astonishment of hell. Do not talk about the days gone by. Our God is the same, and His Word is good everywhere. You do not have to have someone else's experience; you can have one as good as anyone, in any age, if you will mind God.

We not only get under Christ's burdens when we are in His program, but we joy in His joy. If you are a preacher, you can shout because some other brother is having a big revival. When you see another brother in honor preferred. you can rejoice because God has such men. You will not think that you are the whole thing; you will know God has some folks. It may be seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal. You will rejoice in anything that makes God glad.

Some of the old theologians say that the rich man who lifted up his eyes in hell was this young man who went away sorrowful. I do not know, but we do know that he never was worth reporting afterward. We never hear tell of him. The other man went away to shipwrecks. He was on the bosom of the Mediterranean fourteen days and nights; no light, all storm and darkness. It was night when some One stood by him and said, "Fear not, Paul; I will not only save thee, but I have given to thee all them' that sail with thee." The one went out into the darkness and was heard of no more. The other sat in jail with bleeding back. He and his companion began to sing and God did hear and said to an angel, "Go down there and shake that old jail where Paul and Silas are singing and let my servants come forth." Again we find this old man coming forth from a prison -- old, not because of years, but made old by the hardships he had been through. He is covered with the slime and mire of the Mamertine jail, but he walks along the Appian Way with the tread and the air of a conqueror. He has fought a good fight. He has finished the course. He has kept the faith. There is a stir among the angels above and the choir-lofts of Heaven are emptied as they hasten to the battlements of the Celestial City to welcome home this man who kept God's program, for they have heard that Paul is coming Home today. Glory be to Heaven's King!

Which way are you going? You can take the program, if you will. Lord, I will go. If it means to sell my farm, I will go. If it means give up all my plans for the future, I will do it. Thy will for me. Smash every plan. Let all my ambitions lie in ashes at my feet. Amen! I will not only sing, "Where He leads I'll follow," but I am now following even to the end. Some folks are like a man in one of my meetings where God had called me. He came and said to me, "If I were to die tonight, I would go to hell. I am a member of the church, but I have no power at the family altar. We go through the motions, but no fire falls." Beloved, have you a family altar? Are you living where fire falls from heaven on your souls when you pray? Are you so completely in the will of God that you would not be more so if you moved an inch either way? No chafing there, nothing irksome there. But with the Psalmist you can say, "I delight to do thy will, O God." Get God's program for you and live in the victory.

Chapter 4

HAVE YOU THE VISION?

 Isaiah 6:1 -- "I saw the Lord."

In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord, sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.

Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.

And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.

And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke.

Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.

Then flew one of the seraphim unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar:

And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin is purged.

Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me. Isa. 6:1-8.

I believe, firmly, that every soul really converted gets a vision of God, that is brought about by the Holy Spirit, for every really converted person is regenerated -- born of the Spirit.

I admit that man can see God in nature. The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth His handiwork. Every planet has been running on schedule time ever since worlds rolled from the fingers of Omnipotence -- never one for one moment a second behind time. I think that it was General Mitchell who said, 'The undevout astronomer is mad." And he further said, "If at any time any planet should be one half a minute behind time consternation would be found in all the observatories because men would fear that the arms of the Infinite had, grown weary." You can see God in nature. We have the seasons, and the day, and the night in accordance with the divine plan.

We can see God not only in nature, we can see God in history: "His footsteps down the centuries beat one eternal rhyme." It may be only here and there that you can see His imprints, but we know that God is moving. Nations have their judgments in this world. Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people. God has been calling the nations to account. The historian has yet to record the history of any nation that has been true to God. God's own chosen people went away from Him and served other gods, built groves on every mountain top, worshipped idols before whom they bowed, forgetting the living God. They had their judgment, they had their captivity, and at last they were so lost that men today speak of them as "the lost tribes," and the rest of them are scattered and peeled, and dwelling as strangers in the midst of almost every nation that has a name.

You can see God in nature; you can see God in history; you can see God in His providences. Every need of man has been supplied; God has made provision for us. God made wool on the back of the sheep, so that you and I may be clothed; God put enough wood in the forests and enough stones in the ground so that you and I might have homes, every family a dwelling place. He placed the oil so that we could have light and heat; He placed the coal that we might be comfortable with heat and stand the ravages of the zero weather. God placed the gold and silver, that you and I might have the wherewithal to purchase the things that are necessary to our welfare. The providences of God made provision for every son and daughter of Adam. Men have cornered oil. A few men own the coal mines, and the gold mines. Five thousand people in the United States own the great majority of the wealth, but it is all contrary to the will of God. God said that the earth was His, and He made provision in His providences for you and me, and you can read it as you would read . the pages of history. I do not wonder that God has said in His Word, "Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. "How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God?"

You can see God not only in nature, in history, and in His providences, but you can see God in His Word. I believe that an unsaved man with ordinary common sense, and intelligence, can see God in His Word. It gives us the mind of God, gives us the thought of God; shows us the heart of God. I get my ideas of my Christ from the Word. I do not have to read Sheldon in order to find out what God would do; I take down that old Bible and find what He did do, and I know lie is the same, yesterday and forever. If a blind man were lying by the roadside, and Christ passed by, and that blind beggar should cry after Him, I know that my Christ would stop and help him, though on His way to make another world. I know the heart of God by the teaching of that Book.

We can see God in nature, in history, in providences, in the Word, and we can see God in Christ. Now we are getting a revelation of the character of God. You cannot find forgiveness in nature; nature NEVER forgives. It took the incarnation of love to teach us that God would forgive. Philip said, "Show us the Father, and it sufficeth us." And Jesus said (I imagine His heart was almost breaking. He had been with them three years, and such a question as that from those who had walked with Him, and seen His miracles), "Sayest thou unto me, Show us the Father? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father also." God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. God commendeth His love toward us that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.

Every person needs to get a vision of God. You can never be what God wants you to be until you have seen the King. You can never get the thought that God wants to fill you with until you get a vision of Himself, and He withholds it from no man. You are never equipped for service, never effective for service, until you have had the vision. You will never be in God's hands, plastic and passive, until you have had the vision. Men have talked about the first heaven and the second heaven, and the third heaven to which the Apostle was lifted, but it took a man who had a vision to get a better thought of God. He lay down by the side of an old oak, pillowed his head on a stone, and had the sands of Arabia for his couch, had the blue sky for his covering; but while he slept he saw a ladder, the topmost round hard by the throne of Infinite love, and the lowest round where he could put his foot on it, am he saw the angels ascending and descending upon it. And when he awoke in the morning, the man knew as he never had known before that heaven was not very far off. Say, beloved, that ladder was a type of Jesus Christ, and He brings heaven not only near man, but puts it inside of him.

Listen, beloved, men are only effective for service as they get the vision. God wanted a man and He showed him a bush on fire. This man had a staff in his hands; he was attending to his flocks. God never gives visions to lazy folks. This man said, "I will go and see what this means;" and, when he came near, God spoke and said, "Moses (God knows our names) take thy shoes from off thy feet, for the ground whereon thou standest is holy ground." And then He gave him the message, "I want you to go and talk for Me." You have to get the vision of the King before you can talk effectively.

Step down through the centuries! See Elijah discouraged! There are good people who get discouraged. This man had been on the mountain top; this man had brought fire from heaven; then again had unsealed the fountains of the skies, as before he had sealed them. This man became discouraged, but God does not forget discouraged folks. Some folks will not hunt them up, but God does, and I am glad that He did. And He finds him where? Hidden away in a cave. Yesterday he bids defiance to eight hundred false prophets; yesterday he commands the skies, and the fire falls; but today he is off, hid In a cave, and God hunts him up. "Elijah, what is the matter? What doest thou here?" "Well, Lord, there is not anybody else but me; the rest of Thy people have gone off after idols. No one is left but me." Did you ever get where you thought you were the only one left, your church the only church in all the land? It is wonderful how God will waken such folks up. "Elijah, i have seven thousand that have not bowed the knee to Baal." This man now gets the vision. A discouraged man, but God says to him, "You have been true; you have been faithful; you have met much opposition. Come, anoint that man to be king of Israel, then take a journey through the land of Israel and the chariots of fire shall come rumbling along the ridges of the worlds and I will have them stop and bring you home." Oh, thank God, He will send the chariots of fire to the one who gets discouraged and who wants to be true. Glory be to heaven's King, He never forgets us! Our hearts may be breaking; our friends may fail us; and our own brethren may misunderstand us, but God knows, and He will never forget us. Paul had the vision, and he never got over it, and I want my hearers to know that the soul that has had the vision will never get over it. There was a man who was sent to a barren rocky isle, a banished prisoner. He was banished to an island where Rome sent her thugs and anarchists, and her felons, but this man was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day, and he heard a voice behind him and it called him by name, "John." Oh, a few years before that was the sweetest voice in all the world to him. He had been thrilled by it again and again; but there came a time when he saw his Lord defying gravitation and going up to where out of sight the angelic escort met Him and sang, "Be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in. He never thought that he would hear that voice again on earth, but let me tell you, when you are banished, when you are far off from your folks, when you are all alone, the Christ of the Mediatorial throne, will walk the same land where you walk, and He will say, "John," oh, so tenderly. And John turned and saw his Lord. I am so glad that God gave him that revelation; I have been feeding on it ever since I found out about it.

With the vision of God comes the abasement of self. I have seen folks at the altar again and again, and they never get anywhere. Why? Because they are not willing to die to themselves. Along with the vision of God comes the death of self. Oh, here it is, right in this vision, "I am undone ... I am a man of unclean lips." Not only Isaiah, "What is your name?" "My name's Jacob." Oh, names in those days meant something. What is your name? Jacob. What does that mean? Supplanter, Deceiver. Oh, this fellow is coming down, -- I deceived my old father, i deceived my brother, I deceived my father-in-law. He is getting somewhere. That is the trouble; they do not like to make the confession, do not like to acknowledge even to God how mean they are, but He knows all about them. Brother, i never knew how mean I was until God let the light on me. Ah, when the vision comes you will feel the self-abasement, -- "I am the chief of sinners, I am less than the least of all saints." I wish people would get today where Jacob did. when he got his name changed, -- make the confession and hold on. I remember when I would hear the old-fashioned Methodists sing:

"Come, O thou traveler unknown,
Whom still I hold but cannot see;
My company before is gone,
And I am left alone with Thee;
With Thee all night I mean to stay,
And wrestle till the break of day."

I have heard that Jacob limped always after the wrestling. And if folks today would get the experience, wrestling till victory came, they never would be the same. Folks would know them by their walk. Self-abasement comes after you get the vision. Paul had ancestry, -- Hebrew of the Hebrews -- but after the vision, he was less than the least of all God's people. When a person gets the vision, and the victory, he feels so unworthy that he never would force himself into a position where he ought not to be. Will you please get that? And this also, that God will get you where He wants you, no matter how small you feel. Amen! He got this man there. Isaiah saw Him on the throne, and the Triune God is on the throne today. I am as confident of victory for the cause of Christ as I am that I am alive.

Now I want you to get it, that after the confession came the fire, and not before it. "I am a man of unclean lips; I am undone." He saw himself as God saw him, after the 'confession. Say, beloved, have you the fire? If not, Why? I remember once in a meeting where I was, a brother came to the altar and he prayed "O God, I have been secretary of the Y. M. C. A. for a number of years." I can see him yet as he knelt there and uttered those words. He never got anywhere. That was not a confession, that was a boast, and boasting never gets one anywhere. One never gets the fire until they go to the bottom, and confess "My name is Jacob," "I am a man of unclean lips; I am undone," "Lord, I am no good, I cannot talk. There is Aaron, he is a talker, but I am slow of speech. Send Aaron, Lord" -- send somebody else. God will show you your heart and you will shrink, but when your heart is cleansed, God will give you fire. It takes a clean heart to be a hot heart. We have hot heads today, but what God wants us to have and what the world needs today is men with hot hearts. Here a live coal from off the altar touches his lips -- "thy iniquity is forgiven," -- only after he made the confession. God help us now to see it!

After the fire, cheerful obedience. He heard God say, "Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?" And he said, "Here am I, Lord; send me." He did not ask where. See? Some time ago a church wrote me and asked me to send them a pastor. Please recommend us a man. You know men you know our church; you know the kind of a man that we need. So I wrote them, "There is Bro. _____, a bright young man, has a capable wife, a good preacher; write him." I also wrote and told him it was "a good church, good people, etc.," and he wrote that Beard, "How much salary do you pay? Have you a parsonage? Have you stoves, furniture? What is the prospect of support?" They wrote him that they did not want him. Do you wonder? Oh, after you have made the confession, and received the fire, you will not ask where. It will be, "Here I am; anywhere you say go, I will go." I heard a young girl at the altar, and she was boohooing at a great rate. I asked, "What is the matter?" She said through her tears, "Oh, God wants me in Africa." I said, "Well, if you know what God wants, and where He wants you, what is the good of crying? Go." . I heard a young woman in Kansas praying at the altar, and her prayer was, "O God, why don't you call some girl to Africa whose mother does not need her as my mother needs me?" I heard a man testify once that when he was seeking the blessing God said, "Africa," and he said, "No." But he wanted the blessing, and he said, "Yes, Lord, Africa." He has never heard God say, "Africa," once since. I believe if it had been God who was saying "Africa," He would have sent him there. The devil can say Africa, too. God bless you, when you get the vision and the fire you will be glad to labor anywhere that He calls you, and do it cheerfully. It was after the fiery furnace that God promoted the Hebrew children. It was after the lions' den that Daniel was promoted in the confidence of the king.

The great need today is a vision of God -- Not as a third blessing, -- it comes to every one who wants to go with God. It is not to be sought. Just live where God wants you to live, and He will attend to the rest. I know a young woman who received the fire, and for two whole years God let her wash dishes, sweep the kitchen, make. bread, and then when she had proved her consecration, and lived up to it -- "kitchen," if God said kitchen -- then He said, "Now go and preach my Word," and whenever that young woman does preach God blesses her, and often gives her souls. There is a world perishing, -- a hundred thousand souls going to eternity without God every day, a world perishing, a church indifferent, and the devil wise to do evil. You know what the churches are doing today. I just read in the "Methodist," of which Dr. Munhall is the editor, that the leading denomination in the United States is credited with but a fraction of one half of one per cent increase. Property to the value of four hundred and fifty million, a payroll of thirty-two million a year, over one million members, and only one half of one per cent increase according to their own statistics. The churches today are preaching the gospel of do, do, do, running to social service, and neglecting the salvation of souls. Everything today is along the line of humanitarian effort and social lines. The world will never be won for God that way; it is not His way. "Go preach the Gospel saith the Lord." The call is for men and women who are abandoned to His will and who are responding, "Here am I; send me." Read the text again, "In the year that King Uzziah died." He knew when he got the blessing. He knew when the live coal touched his lips. Beloved, has the fire fallen on you? Have you received the Holy Ghost since ye believed? Have you been so cleansed that you are a habitation of God through the Spirit? Well, Preacher, I do not feel. It does not come by feeling. We are not going by feeling. The first term applied to the followers of Jesus Christ was "Believers," and we are the children of Abraham, and he believed God. He was the Father of the faithful, and the first time the word believe is mentioned in the Bible it is in connection with his name. He believed God and it counted. God counts faith. He does today. Lord, increase our faith!

Chapter 5

THE SAINTS' ATTENDANTS

 Psalm 23:6 -- "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life."

Wonderful poem dictated by the Holy Spirit! I do not wonder at the praise lavished upon it by a brother who today is in the presence of the King. I linger on his words while my heart is stirred by their aptness and beauty. He says, "One of the things that we never get tired of is this Shepherd Psalm. More people read that poem than any poem ever written. More people know that poem than any poem that was ever written. Dr. McClure was not the first man, nor the last that, dying, limped his way through the poem of the Shepherd's Psalm. People have read that Psalm or repeated it with the rain of many tears dashing in their faces; people have loved that poem and have repeated it with the wildest winds of trouble that ever blew, blowing upon them; people have put that poem under their tired heads for a sleeping pillow; people have leaned on that poem for a staff better than alpen stock when they climbed the wicked winter mountains; people have had that poem when their way was dark and arduous. Oh, hearts, this is God's own pastoral! Some long since poet, he of the harp and the shepherd's voice, and the shining eyes and bounding steps, he saw it and felt it, and then did like all poets do -- said the thing he saw and felt, and that is the "Shepherd Psalm." And now, hearken, O child of God, the man who gave us the beautiful description of this Psalm one time after this said, "I am the saddest man in the world." The winds were blowing on his face as he went down to the valley, but thank God, this man, too gentle and Christ like to harm others, felt the blows that sin in others bring; but he had the attendance of God's own goodness and mercy, until the gates opened and he saw the glory of which he had often spake, and realized the blessedness of being in the presence of the Bishop and Shepherd of his soul.

Out yonder by the side of the brook, whose waters refresh him, I see a man of God; and the birds of the air by divine appointment wait upon him. Ravens are his servants, bringing him food from afar. Morning and evening the Providence of God sets his table, and God's winged messengers place on it bread and meat.

Again I see him lying under a juniper tree sleeping as only a worn and weary man, discouraged, can sleep, when an angel touches him and says, "Arise and eat," and before him was a cake, broken on the coals, and a cruse of water. First the birds of the air, then the angels from heaven, but all caring for one man of God.

Out yonder near a city in Samaria, I see another man; his enemies are closing fast around him. There are legions of them, all intent upon His destruction, and to human eyes that destruction is certain and sure. But when God opens the eyes of that man's servant he sees above the head of his enemies on all hilltops round about, horses of fire and chariots of fire, a part of God's celestial army, an advance guard from the skies to help, aye, to deliver one man of God. In fact, that is the designation of this man. He is not known by the string of letters after his name, but friends and enemies know him as "the man of God." The schools do not confer this title; it comes first from the skies when God looks down and says of a converted, redeemed soul, "He is mine." Thank God, all may be known as such who will meet the conditions.

Yonder in the jail, yes, in the inner prison, in Jerusalem, I see a sleeping apostle, at Easter time. Herod intends to behead him to please the Jews. Man proposes but God disposes, and in the darkness of the night an angel arouses him from his slumbers, leads him out of the cell, out of the prison, out through the gates of the city and bids him go on his way. Man is immortal till his work is done, and evidently God has more for this man to do.

But two of these men are prophets, and the other one is an apostle; they are eminent men of God, but will God care for His children, His followers today as He did then? Have we any such evidences as will show a divine interest in man, now, as we see in these instances in the past? Is there present care, present deliverance, present attendance, for God's children now? Aye, to be sure there is. The visits of the ravens to the prophet by the side of the brook, of the angel to the sleeping man under the juniper tree, are only expressions of God's goodness given for our encouragement, object lessons from the past, lessons from the King's kindergarten of days gone by. Some time ago a friend said to a good old saint who was on the western slope, "How are you today?" And the reply was, "I am resting in God's easy chair." "Oh, tell me where is that?" "Romans 8:28: All things work together for good to them that love God. Philippians 4:19: My God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory through Christ Jesus my Lord." Fine piece of furniture to add to your belongings and it is free.

Oh, yes, today we have, as children of God attendants every day who wait upon us. Many professing Christians today are like Moses: they pray "Show me thy glory," when it is the last thing they are fit to see. God answered that prayer, but not as Moses asked. He just put him in a cleft of the rock, and made His goodness pass before him, and eighteen hundred years afterward when he was unencumbered with a body, he showed him on the summit of Mount Tabor, His glory; and when Peter, James and John, in the body, saw the same glory, they were so overcome that they knew not what they said. God knew what was best for Moses, so He passed before him in the cleft of the rock, and proclaimed, "The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering and abundant in goodness and truth keeping mercy for thousands." But today far beyond the privilege that Moses enjoyed we are hid in the rock that was cleft on Calvary, and not for one day, but for three hundred and sixty-five days in every year, the goodness and mercy of the Lord passes before us. The Christians of the Twentieth Century are living on the tallest mount of the ages, nearer God in point of privilege than any age in the past. Go back to that time when just one man was privileged to see these things and tell the multitude? Go back to that time when Israel followed the cloud by day and the fire by night? Go back to that day when three men only go up in the Mount with Jesus? Nay, nay, nay; I prefer this blessed, Holy Ghost dispensation when every man can commune with God and when goodness and the mercy of God are to be seen every day. "Oh," someone says, "I wish I could see them!" Open your eyes, yes, the eyes of your soul. There is an old proverb, "Seeing is believing." I want to give you something better that is founded on God's Word. Get it, will you; let it burn into your very soul, "Believing is seeing. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the proof of things not seen. Blessed are they who having not seen with their mortal eyes yet have believed. Faith and trust are the eyes of the soul. Use them and be glad. You will see far down the future, and say with the sweet singer of Israel, "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life." Some folks testify, "Goodness and mercy have followed me all the days of my life." I am glad of that. No doubt it is true, but it I s the privilege of you and every child of God to say, "shall follow me all the days of my life." The meaning and the experience are like this: they shall be my attendants -- God's goodness and mercy -- all the way.

Let us examine this privilege. Goodness supplies all our need, is the treasurer of God's storehouse. Do not talk today about ravens to feed a man, angels to do his baking and cooking, the heavens to drop manna right on the pathway six days out of seven. Why, the believer today has as a constant attendant the goodness of God, goodness that in the years gone by has been feeding, warming, clothing, enriching, redeeming the millions of God's children. Why, I am ashamed that I haven't trusted more. Just to think for one moment! When the world's oppressed millions of God's own children needed a land in which they could grow to the stature of free men, goodness gave then, a continent; when the wood was giving out, and the timber was growing scant, goodness uncovered the coal mines that man might be warmed and cheered; when the great monsters of the deep decreased, and as humanity increased and homes were multiplied, that these homes might be illuminated, goodness uncovered the reservoirs of oil, and we have it in wonderful supply. Goodness is love in action, and goodness waits on man. Believe it? Aye, I can and do believe anything that magnifies the goodness of God. Ever since Christ was lifted up on Calvary's cross that man might be raised to a throne, I have been a believer in the text: Goodness shall attend me all the days of my life. Some time ago I saw an engraving. It represented several scenes in the life of man, as the artist saw them. First a little child -- standing on life's pathway. The path ran near a precipice, but between the child and the danger was a guardian angel. In another scene was a youth embarked on the stormy waters of life. Here and there were the rocks, but the angel still guided the boat and the youth was safe. There was still another scene. It was of an old man drawing very near to the eternal shore, peaceful, serene and triumphant, and still the angel pilot was there. When Admiral Farragut was dying in Chicago, at a hotel, he wanted his pastor, or some man of God, to pray with him, and his wife sent for the preacher. A servant in the hotel who was a Romanist sent for the priest and the priest came in a hurry. It would have been" sent all over the world that in his dying hours the hero of Mobile Bay had called for a priest. The priest approached the bedside and began with the services of the church, but the Admiral shook his head, again and again. His wife, seeing something was wrong, drew near and asked what was the matter, and the dying Admiral said, "I want my own pilot. I want my own pilot." Thank God, we can have, clear down to the end, goodness and mercy until faith is lost in sight, and we look on the King in His beauty and are inhabitants of the land that is now afar off. Oh, it is true, "The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him." They say in England that if a man walks, he is poor; if he sometimes calls a hack, he is better off; if he has a footman, he is rich; and if he has two footmen he has a great inheritance. Judging by that every child of God has a great inheritance, for two of God's servants goodness and mercy are always with him. Paul wrote to Timothy of an inexhaustible supply in Christ Jesus, for who can measure the riches of the grace of God as manifested in the gift of His Son to be our Savior? Think of it! goodness by your side all the time, in his hand the key to a never-failing storehouse. and in your possession the promise, "Every need shall be supplied!" Ask largely that your joy may be filled. Some one who evidently knew puts the Christian's privilege in verse:

"I have a never-failing bank,
A more than golden store;
No earthly hank is half so rich
How then can I be poor!

'Tis when my stock is spent and gone,
And I'm not worth a groat,
I'm glad to hasten to my bank,
And beg a little note.

Sometimes my banker smiling says,
'Why don't you oftener come!
And when you draw a little note,
Why not a larger sum!

Why live so niggardly and poor?
My bank contains a plenty.
Why come and take a one-pound note?
When you might have a twenty.

Nay, twenty thousand ten times told
Is but a trifling sum,
To what my Father has laid up
For me in God's own Son.

Sure then my Banker is so rich
I have no need to borrow.
But live upon my notes today,
And draw again tomorrow."

But we must not pass by mercy for mercy does not pass us by. Mercy blots out all our sins. I remember when I went to the altar a poor penitent sinner, and the burden of my prayer was, "Lord, have mercy on me!" Mercy is the first thing a sinner, conscious of his guilt, applies for. At the battle of Bull Run a wounded soldier as he laid on the field cried, "God have mercy on my soul!" It seemed to be contagious; for here and there among the wounded, the cry was taken up, "Have mercy on me, O 'God." The Psalmist declares, "Thou art plenteous in mercy O God." But who counts the mercies? Who recognizes mercy as an attendant upon the believer? And yet we are the recipients of continual mercy. A benevolent person gave Rowland Hill a hundred pound note to dispense to a poor minister. It was too much to send all at once, so Mr. Hill put a five-pound note in a letter and also these words, "There is more to follow." In a few days he sent another letter, same amount and same words, and so until the hundred pounds were all sent. So God sends us one mercy after another and with every blessing comes the promise, "More to .follow." "I forgive your sins, but there is more to follow. I adopt you into my family, but there is more to follow. I sanctify you, but there is more to follow. I make you more than conqueror, in the very hour of death, but there is more to follow. I receive you unto myself in heaven, but there is more to follow."

"When we've been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun;
We've no less days to sing God's praise
Than when we first begun."

Still always more to follow. Mercy and goodness not only follow us here, but they assure us of a home hereafter. I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. The Psalmist said, "I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord than to dwell in the tents of wickedness. A day in thy courts is better than a thousand." God's worst, smallest, is better than the devil's best. Better have the lowest place in God's economy of grace than to sit on the devil's throne. Any place in God's Church is better than we deserve. When the poor prodigal made up his mind to come back to his father's house, he was so mindful of his unworthiness that he determined to ask, "Make me as one of thy hired servants, for I am not worthy to be called thy son." Paul speaking of this great privilege says, "But God who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he has loved us, Even when we were dead in trespasses and sins, hath quickened us together with Christ and hath raised us up together and made us to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." Beloved, are you sitting together in heavenly places in Christ? Are you singing as your present experience:

"I am dwelling on the mountain,
Where I ever would abide;
For I've tasted life's pure water
And my soul is satisfied.

There's no thirsting for life's pleasures,
Nor adornment rich and gay,
For I've found a richer treasure,
One that fadeth not away."

"Oh, the blessed privilege of the children of God, sitting in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, dwelling in the House of the Lord! An old saint said one time, "Why, I live there." We do not have to wait until we die to sit there, to live there.' 'Tis heaven below, my Redeemer to know." "NOW are we the sons of God." To the Christian this world is just the ante room to .heaven, and death is just the corridor to the more beautiful part of the Father's house. Bye and bye we shall go through it, and with the mortal changed to immortality, with this earthy changed to the heavenly, with eye undimmed, seeing no longer through a glass darkly, but face to face

"Knowing as we are known,
How shall I love that Word,
And oft repeat before the throne
Forever with the Lord!"

And that forever means, Home forever, trials all past, death and the grave past, inside the city of our God and Home forever, cruel partings past, our loved ones with us for ever.

"No chilling winds nor poisonous breath,
Shall reach that healthful shore; .
Sickness and sighing, pain and death,
Are felt and feared no more."

I have imagined a Christian dying; no, not dying, that is a misnomer. I have imagined the homegoing of the Christian. Friends are weeping all around. Heart strings are snapping. Farewells are being said. Every breath is watched as the last, but I see that pilgrim step out of the house of clay, and mount upwards to the city of our God. I hear him as he shouts, "Old body farewell, earth farewell," and as the songs of the redeemed fall on his ear, with goodness and mercy his constant attendants still by his side, he enters in through the gates into the city of our God. And all the angels strike their harps of gold, and all the prophets shout, and all the redeemed sing, as our Christ rises from His throne to greet his last trophy from earth and says to him in tones that thrill the Church triumphant, and makes all the bells of heaven ring for joy, "Enter thou into the joys of thy Lord and sit down on His throne."

"Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing,
My great Redeemer's praise,
The glories of my God and king,
The Triumphs of His grace.

Angels assist our mighty joys,
Strike all your harps of gold,
But when you raise your highest notes,
His love can ne'er be told."

Chapter 6

IT IS WRITTEN

 Rom. 10:15 -- "It is written."

I have very little regard for that method of using the Bible that will permit one to open it at random, put the finger on the verse, and then take it as a message from God. It lacks common sense. One might as well go in a drug store, shut your eyes and reach out your hand and place it on a bottle, and then take it as a remedy from God, and expect to get well. God says in the Word, "Search the Scriptures ... for they are they which testify for Me." The disciples at Berea were more noble than those at Thessalonica, because they searched the Word as to whether these things were so. A knowledge of the Word can be obtained only by a faithful, systematic study of the Book. Suppose you lived in that age and state of the world in which human nature is found unenlightened by the revelation made in the Word. Just fancy yourself back there in the darkness of heathenism; the paths of virtue and safety obscured; your Maker hidden from your view; your origin, your future, your destination, unknown; the way to the tomb, your inevitable course, haunted with specters of doubt and dismay; your heart turning hither and thither, asking for light and direction, but finding only darkness and uncertainty. In the midst of this gloom, suppose the heavens opened and there descended to you a messenger bringing to you a book which informed you of your origin and destiny, which revealed to you the true God, and told you that He loved you, -- a book which made the path of every virtuous excellence plain before you, and disclosed to you a title, an eternal title to immortality. With what transportation you would receive it! The book which he gives you, you would press to your lips, hold to your heart, you would drop on it tears of excessive joy. As the messenger returns to the skies, you would follow him with benedictions until he vanished from your view, and the precious volume you would carry to your home with joy and exultation. You would call in your friends, your neighbors, all your loved ones, and you would tell them of the gift God had sent to you; and were the wealth of the world offered to you in exchange for it, you would clasp it to your heart and declare it to be above all price. Take away the Scriptures and what is your condition but that of unenlightened nature? Think of the inspiration of the Scriptures, and their important contents; and what is their value less than if brought to you immediately and directly from the skies? All the Scriptures are of God, and to you is the Word of this salvation sent. Yet who today regards them at their value? For the love and kindness of God in giving us the Word, no gratitude is too much, nor too excessive. But because we have always been in the enjoyment of it, its light and comfort are familiar to our minds; we be hold it as we do the sun in the heavens, unmindful of the majesty and benignity of its Author, and almost unconscious of the importance of its beams. When one thinks of the inspiration of the Scriptures, of their completeness, and of their end and uses, unless you are ungrateful to your Maker and unjust to yourselves, you would be like the Psalmist, -- as glad of God's Word as one that findeth great spoils. Hear him as he says, "Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against Thee." Oh, how men professing to be called of God do miss it when they resort to hymn books, and literature, to get a text or a subject, when they are to preach!

Preaching is not a profession, -- it is a calling, and men are to preach for eternal results. This morning, while in prayer at the family altar, I asked God, when I was no longer a blessing, to take me out of the world and home to heaven. The ministry is to preach the Word, and win souls; and the preacher who does not do it, no matter how many letters are with his name in his weekly advertisements and bulletins, he is missing the teaching of the Word, and the call of God; and had better go to judgment from a land of darkness, than from a pulpit where he has been a miserable failure before God, the angels and the host of the redeemed. Would to God that every preacher would feel with Paul the burden of the ministry, and the value of souls, and could get a vision of the eternal results that follow! All men need this Book in life; they need it in the dying hour. They need the Christ it tells of, the One whom; men are to preach, if they meet the thought of God. A Southern Christian woman was dying, and in her delirium she imagined that she was riding in her carriage with her faithful servant in the carriage seat. "Is David driving?" she asked. "There is no danger if David is driving." "No, no, Missus," replied the weeping Negro at her side, "Poor Dave can't drive now, de Lord has hold on de lines." And he spoke the truth for all ages. The Lord of life holds the lines, and guides the saints through the gate of death into the Paradise of God. Rabelais, when dying, said, "I am going to meet the great Perhaps." Poor fellow, when the child of God comes to the end, taught by the Word, he exclaims with the dying Horace Bushnell, "Well, now we are all going home together, and I say the Lord be with you -- and in grace -- and peace -- and love -- and that is the way I have come along home." Thank God for a faith built on the Word -- thank God for the word, "It is written."

The exhortations of the Spirit are here for our admonition, exhortation, and instruction in righteousness. "He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches," -- and that is just as appropriate to the church and the world today as it was when first uttered. Jesus is not only the Savior of men, but He is the great Example; not example merely, and yet His life is teaching us the way to God, heaven, and victory. When He was assailed in the wilderness He was well equipped for the conflict. He was acquainted with the Jewish Scriptures, the Old Testament, that you and I have today; and to each suggestion of the tempter He never offered an argument, -- He merely replied with a portion of the Word of God. He was able to say at once to the enemy, "It is written," because He knew what was written. He knew what was in the Word, and by it He repelled effectively every assault of Satan. When Paul wanted to enforce an argument he would write, "For the Scripture saith," and to the old prophets, "Thus saith the Lord," was the rock from which they could not be moved. Paul writes to his son in the Gospel, "Give thyself to reading," knowing well that no one was equipped for the Christian life unless acquainted with the Word. During the late war, and also over in the Philippines, some of our men were armed with the old Springfield rifle, while others had the Krag Jorgensen. The Springfield was effective at half a mile while the Krag Jorgensen was effective at a mile or two miles. The Spaniards were armed with the Mowzer, and had a decided advantage over our men who were armed with Springfields. Our Government, knowing this, made a decided effort to arm all our soldiers with the K. J. rifle. They wanted them at their best and able to contend with any foe. The Bible is the best weapon for the Christian. It is an arsenal full of weapons. It has the Sword of the Spirit, -- the weapon that Jesus used in the wilderness, the dynamite of the Holy Ghost; and it is the duty of every child of God to be well acquainted with the Word. It fits him for any battlefield, any enemy that hell may inspire. It comforts in every hour of trial, and strengthens in moments of weakness. When we have such a book at our command, I do not wonder that the late Oswald Chambers said, "It is a crime to be weak." It enables the believer to say in the confidence born of the Word, when hell assails; "Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy; for though I fall yet shall I rise again." The Word of God was the weapon of Jesus Christ. He might have called on His Father for a legion of angels, and they would have been given to Him but, instead, for your encouragement and mine, He used the Word. It was the weapon of the Apostles. They preached Jesus. The great Apostle to the Gentiles said, "For I am determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ and Him crucified, to the Greeks foolishness and to the Jews a stumbling block, but to them which are saved Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." Such were the victories they achieved that their enemies said, "These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also." An illiterate man who was called of God to preach one time went among his fellows and used this for a text, and his divisions were something like this, "The world is wrong side up. It needs to be turned upside down. Third. We are the fellows to do it." God blessed him? Of course He did. He takes the weak things to confound the mighty. There was a man whom some folks said did not have good sense, but he was impressed that since God had saved him he ought to work for God and get others saved. A lawyer attended the same church to which this man belonged. The pastor was very desirous of saving the lawyer and winning him for the church, so he prepared a sermon to meet the lawyer's case. One night he preached this sermon when the lawyer was present. Shortly after, the lawyer gave his heart to God and joined the church. The pastor felt that his sermon under God had done the work. But get the truth now, and see how God works: The brother who had not much sense went to the lawyer in meeting one night. He was interested in his salvation. The pastor saw him and wished he would stay away from the lawyer, for he knew he would drive him away. The brother said to the lawyer, "Don't you want to go to heaven?" "No," was the reply. "Then go to hell," was the rejoinder, and the brother left him. The lawyer was asked by the pastor, "What part of my sermon was it that convinced you?" "Oh," said the lawyer, "It was not your sermon. I could have answered every part of that, every point you made. It was that dunderhead who came to me and asked me if I wanted to go to heaven, and I told him, 'No.' He told me, 'Then go to hell.' And I got to thinking, 'That is where I am going, if I do not repent.' And I began to pray and asked God to save me. That is why I am here." God can bless any small effort even of the weakest when it is for His glory. He does do it. I have heard many sermons as unctionless as a last year's bird's nest, fine, some folks called them; and then I have heard others that were apparently without point, but God blessed them and souls were saved. Preach the Word. It holds good today, and is owned of God.

There are promises in the Word of God for every condition of life, and an acquaintance with them inspires the soul with confidence. Peter says, "Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises; that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature." And that man called of God to preach the Word says, "Beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God." Let us use them, avail ourselves of them. Do you know what is here for you already provided? Is it not a wonderful provision of God that you can turn at any time to the Word and find there something that will defeat the enemy?

When David was without a sword they told him there was none except the sword of Goliath; and, as he remembered how he had hewed off the head of the giant when he was but a stripling he said, "Give me that, there is none like it." So there are no weapons for you, my brethren, like these that have been proved and tried in the days gone by. When tried, ask the Holy Ghost to guide you in the selection, and then use it to the glory of God. By so doing you are in the Scriptural, Apostolic Holy Ghost line, and you will always find that victory is sure and yours. The Lord did it three times in the wilderness. The enemy charged on Him three times, but He received each assault on the point of the Sword, and the devil was glad to retreat. IT IS WRITTEN, it is written, it is written; you need no other; follow the example of the. Lord, and with Him have the victory. Look, here is a weapon for a storm -- tossed soul -- one who has taken his mind and his trust off the Lord. Look at him. He wakes in the morning and thinks of his cares; thinks of his troubles; dwells on them; regale's his friends with them; takes them to work with him; brings them home with him, and goes to bed with them. You have met him; you know him. Troubles assail him on every side, -- a whole phalanx of cares -- but there is a weapon in the Word of God that will put them all to flight. Use it. It is written, "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee; because he trusteth in thee." Here is another, "Casting all your care upon Him; for He careth for you." Peter walked bravely on the waters until he looked on the waves, then he began to sink. Look to Jesus, and walk anywhere the providences of God call you.

But here is another person. Cares? No. Sickness? No, never was sick a day in his life. But the devil assails him; casts his fiery darts at him day after day. The enemy comes in like a flood; temptations are sore; intense smell of the pit. What is there in the Word of God for such a time? Listen, "When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him," and the margin reads, "and put him to flight." Claim that at once. God still lives and the promise is true, true for you. Claim it and sing,

"Should earth against my soul engage,
And fiery darts be hurled,
Then I can smile at Satan's rage
And face a frowning world.

Let cares like a wild deluge come;
Let storms of sorrow fall;
So I but safely reach my home,
My God, my heaven, my all."

You may have the victory by taking the Word. Simple? To be sure it is; but so many want another way, forgetting that God works by simple processes, that He may bring to naught the wisdom of the mighty. If some folks had been at Jericho they would have rejected rams' horns, and the marching six days, and, on the seventh day, marching seven times, and then worst of all, "shouting." They would have said, "No shouting, please." They would have silver trumpets, and dress parades, -- but God's way brought the victory. The heroes, of whom we have an account in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, put to flight the armies of the aliens by faith in God's Word. Cares, and trials, and afflictions, and temptations, and demons, stand in mortal dread of "it is written." O church of the living God, O ye men and women, ordained before the foundations of the world were laid to be holy and victorious, use the Word, and put to flight all that opposes. Oh, that the prophets of the land were sounding forth that which is written, instead of sermonettes on agnosticism, and evolution, and the state of affairs in Europe. "Go preach my Gospel," saith the Lord. "Bid the whole world my grace receive. He shall be saved who trusts my Word. He shall be damned who won't believe."

Prepare yourself beforehand for time and eternity, for life and for death.

Listen to this: "Perfect love casteth out fear;" all fear; fear of men and devils; fear of judgment. I surely am an admirer of Paul, -- he would walk in every path that God opened up to him. The Holy Ghost testified to him that bonds and afflictions awaited him in every city. Friends implored him with prayers and tears not to go. They dreaded the power of Rome, but lions and perils and demons and threatened death, all failed to stop him. He declared, "I am not only ready to be bound at Rome; I am ready to die for the Lord Jesus' sake also." Fear casts a shadow, -- brings gloom and dread into the heart; but just as when you open the shutters, and let in the sunlight, you drive out all the darkness, so the love of God perfected in the heart, drives out all fear and timidity, and makes the weakest one to say, "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me."

With a full assurance of the value of the Word you can look adversity, and afflictions, and cross purposes, all in the face, and in advance shout the victory, saying, "I know whom I have believed;" and He has it written in the Word, "All things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose." "None of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself." You can bunch them all and say, "I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come ... shall be able to separate me from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus my Lord." For it is written, "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee." Look at Joseph in his dying hour: He gathers his brethren and kinsmen around him and in dependence on the Word of God he says, "God will surely visit you, as He swore unto Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence." He believed God's Word, and I have thought, as I read the last verse in the Book of Genesis, "And Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old; and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt," that unburied coffin was standing evidence of their dependence on the Word: He will visit us as He said, and we shall go up out of this land. Victory and freedom are certain because, "It is written." Do you know what that WORD meant? Let me illustrate. Here is an acorn, a bushel of them. What do you see? "Oh," you say, "acorns, just acorns." Why, bless you, beloved, I see oak trees, and timber and bridges and ships and navies and conquests and victories, all right there in those acorns. So in that promise I see Red Seas crossed, rivers divided, walled cities taken, enemies defeated, Israel in Canaan, -- complete victories. So in "it is written" I see victory for every child of God over everything that may arise, -- victory in the midst of the darkness; victory when friends do not know what to make of you; victory when death comes into the home; victory, till in the very presence of death you may shout defiance to the grim monster and say:

"Knowest thou not when my Master died,
Thy sting was lost in His wounded side;
And the gates of steel and the bars of brass
Gave way that the King of kings might pass?"

"It is written," "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though after my skin worms shall destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God; whom I shall see for myself, and mine eves shall behold, and not another." Amen!

Chapter 7

THERE IS CORN IN EGYPT

 Gen. 42:12 -- "There is corn in Egypt."

Genesis is the book of beginnings. Many streams from which the saints of all ages have quenched their thirst have their source in these chapters. Man may turn from these lessons taught here and say to us who revere the whole Book, that we are "under the law," yet when I remember that this Old Testament was the Scriptures of Jesus which He advised the people of His day to search, declaring at the same time, "they are they which testify of Me," I conclude, for one, that I will stay by the whole Book. Genesis is the authentic basis of the Bible. Before I enter its portals to scan the treasures it contains, I am overwhelmed by the statement the Divine mind first makes to man, "In the beginning God." Remember, in this, no matter what great mysteries are revealed to my untutored mind, nor how massive the truths I meet, God is the explanation of all these. What He does not see fit to reveal to me now I shall know hereafter. But there are more facts left on record than I can comprehend. I learn that in all ages God has had a people, and, wherever He has had a people, there the providences of God were engaged in their behalf. The man who slept on the mountain top all alone said he "had God for his next door neighbor;" but as I step quickly along the history of man, passing from century to century, scanning the footprints of the race, I find also the footsteps of God Himself, always working good to man. And I am firmly convinced "His footsteps down the centuries beat one eternal rhyme." If man fails in the garden under the most perfect conditions, I find that God gives him another opportunity and brightens the clouds that lower over him with a precious glowing promise: 'The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head." If I find man unrepentant and wicked until God in His wrath lets loose the reservoirs of the skies, and the fountains of the great deep are broken up until the waters, rising mountain high, sweep a race beneath their waves, thank God, I also find those very same waters bearing on their breast an ark of salvation that assures the coming of a mighty Deliverer who shall destroy all the works of the devil. In the loins of the occupant of that ark is the seed of the Comer (so the Jews call the Messiah), the Christ of Calvary. In the Book of Genesis I learn unmistakably this great comforting truth, you cannot thwart God. Shadows may come, but back of the shadows is God, keeping watch above His own. The clouds we so much dread are big with mercies. Man may say God is on the side of big battalions, but this book declares He is on the side of truth. "The eternal years of God are hers."

Oh the calmness of the eternal God! He takes a man out of the midst of idolaters, transplants him into a strange land, puts him in to a deep sleep, so he will be still, and then holds converse with him. "Know of a surety thy seed shall be as the stars of the heavens for multitude, and they shall be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them, and they shall afflict them four hundred years, but that nation will judge and they shall come out with great substance." The promises of God are for the people of God. The promise made to Abraham is renewed to his son, and the same Providence cares for and watches over him. To his son's son, God again says, "Thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of." And right here I see in this man's history the story of your life and mine. God has outlined the plan for us, made it known to us in His Word, and by His Spirit, and yet we forget the Word; and, when trials come, when clouds cast their shadows, when God in love is exercising His parental right to strip us, we say, "All these things are against us." We sing with tears on our cheeks, aye, and mean it when we sing:

"The soul that on Jesus doth lean for repose
He'll never, no never forsake to its foes;
That soul though all hell should endeavor to shake,
He'll never, no never, no never forsake."

And then within six hours or less we forget the promises of God and, distrusting His providences, let the great enemy of God and our souls get us on the run. Read carefully the context and get the lesson God would teach us.

I see here the child of the promise in the midst of famine -- the land once so bountiful now blasted and withered, as if by the curse of God -- a child of God, an heir of the promise, surrounded by his children, and his children's children, all heirs of the same promise, and all threatened by the same famine. A mark of God's displeasure? Nay, a mark of His providential care. That famine is a hint from God to Jacob to move out of his nest; it is an assurance, if he but knew it, that the God of Abraham and Isaac is on the throne, and that His eyes are upon His people. We are so short-sighted that a little stress of circumstances makes us forget promises, forget the Promiser, and go to bemoaning our fate, forgetting that the "love of God is broader than the measure of man's mind, and the love of the eternal is most wonderfully kind." That famine means that the Almighty God is moving along the lines of His thought for His people, to get them where He wants them. He is pointing them to the fulfillment of His promises made to Abraham: "Thy seed shall be strangers in a strange land that is not theirs." It means that He is robbing them of sustenance, depriving them of corn; it means He wants to put them where there is corn in abundance. He cannot fail, He will not forget. To the child of promise "All things work together for good" -- all things temporal and spiritual. A man in Nebraska sowed sugar beet, and felt good over the prospect of an excellent crop. But one morning he went to his fields and the frost had nipped them badly. Discouraged, he went away to another farm that he owned, saying, "What a failure; what a disappointment!" Some weeks after, having occasion to return that way, he saw the finest crop of growing sugar beets, he had ever looked upon. The frost had only pruned the plants; the roots had struck down deeper and stronger, and he reaped bountifully from that field. When God sends a frost to nip your plans, when your prospects are blasted, hold still; God wants you to take a better grip, a firmer hold upon Himself. Paul on horseback surrounded by Roman soldiers, Paul on ship and wrecked, in charge of a Roman centurion, is more than the prisoner of Rome; he is the prisoner of the Lord Jesus Christ, who must testify for his Lord and Master at Rome, and he is on the way to greater triumphs, escorted by the cavalry of the greatest world power of the age. I hear him as he gives a trumpet blast from his Gospel trumpet, after looking over the entire field: "Who shall separate us from the love of God? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? ... Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors, through Him that loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." I am here reminded of a dying soldier boy left to perish, and no loved ones near. The chaplain came that way and found him, and, kneeling by the dying boy, he asked him of his faith, to what did he belong. "Belong?" asked the dying boy, not getting the import of the question. "Yes," said the chaplain, "of what persuasion are you?" "Oh," said the boy, not far from the glory to come, "same as Paul: I am persuaded that neither life nor death shall separate me from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus my Lord." And he responded to the last roll call, and went up to see God.

This famine is a blessing to Jacob, if he would only look up, and it is the road to greater blessings, to promises fulfilled, to mighty displays of God's power. It is the road to divided seas, enemies overthrown, angels' food, smitten rocks, to the possession of wells already dug, cities already built, a land in which there is no scarceness of bread, that flows with milk and honey. But what trouble God does have with us to get us there! Their need was great, sure. The famine did pinch, sure. But let me say right here that God does always anticipate our needs. He is never surprised. There are no accidents with God. He is not shortsighted; He knows the end from the beginning. A gentleman visited an asylum of deaf and dumb children and, examining them, he wrote this question, "Does God reason?" One of the children wrote underneath immediately this answer, "God knows and sees every thing. Reason implies doubt and uncertainty, therefore, God does not have to reason." Aye, God knows . every need, every sigh, every heartache. God knew all about the famine, and made provision for it seven years before it came. . Down in Egypt, the richest bottom land in all the world had been producing bountifully, and the Egyptians had been storing it up for the heirs of the promise. I know the Egyptians had some, too, but that is God's way of doing. He blesses His own people so abundantly, that much of it runs over to bless other folks. There was corn in Egypt, God had not forgotten and, better yet, He had His man in charge of the corn. And more yet, His man was a friend of the famine stricken. God had not only prepared an abundance of corn, but He had been preparing the way to get the heirs of the promise to the corn. Jacob shall have corn, but God will have His way to get him there. Look at him, surrounded by his children, among them two upon whom he dotes, around whom his heartstrings seem to twine. The father's love for Joseph breeds envy in the hearts of the brethren, and they conspire to get rid of the dreamer. A dreamer sure enough he is, but his dreams are of God. In his youth God gave him intuitions of coming greatness. In his dreams of the night he saw the sun, moon and eleven stars make obeisance to him. He saw his own sheaf, standing upright in the field while eleven sheaves bowed to his sheaf. The world, aye, and the church, crucifies men who have visions from God. It sends a John Bunyan to jail while it keeps a cruel and God-defying Jeffries on the bench. And this dreamer was no exception. In his way to the future, to which God had called him to be the redeemer and preserver of his brethren, there was the pit, the dungeon, the slavery and the exile. His own brethren sell him to the Ishmaelites, take his coat of many colors, dip it in blood, and say to Jacob, "Know thou if this be thy son's coat?" And Jacob, mourning his son as dead, refused to be comforted, and said, "I will go down to the grave unto my son, mourning." Then his father wept for him. Did God permit it? Yes. Already His providence is at work for Jacob, and he is to learn the lesson, that the man who will live for God shall find that all things are his servants. Sorrows are not meant to disfigure tis; they are to transfigure. The folks who go through fiery furnaces, heated seven times hotter than they are wont to be heated; are on the way to promotion. Lions' dens and jails are stepping stones for saints. Crosses are wings by which they pass over mountains, and get within whispering distance of the throne. This sorrow is a stepping stone out of famine to plenty. Job had twice as much after his trial as he had before it. Don't let the devil frighten you by magnifying trials. Where he puts up a scarecrow depend upon it there is corn, go ahead, and find it, and find the devil's scarecrows are harmless things. My Bible says, "Many shall be purified, and made white and tried." Trials are an evidence of your sonship. By suffering with Jesus God is getting you ready to reign with Him. When famine comes He will tell you where the corn is; when trials come, grace will be nigh al hand. God is able to make all grace abound toward you that ye always having all sufficiency in all things may abound to every good work.

There is an old adage, "Troubles never come singly." How we do remember such sayings of the world, proverbs born of their sorrows and unbelief! forgetting that God's Word assures us that there are two messengers of God that accompany every child of God. Listen to the sweet singer of Israel: "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life." No wonder he adds, "And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever." Trials are apt to double up, but, remember this, "When the tale of brick is doubled, Moses comes." Famine grows sore upon them, and death threatens, for Jacob says "Go down into Egypt that we may live and not die." And when they go in obedience to his command, and return with sufficient for awhile, they are told not to return unless they bring Benjamin, the son of Jacob's right hand. And very soon it is a question of life and death again, but then the Governor who has all the corn of Egypt at his command says: "No, Benjamin, no corn. Jacob, you want life; you want corn; you must let your Benjamin go." "What? Joseph is gone! Simeon is gone! Must Benjamin go, too? Will yet take him away also?" How like us today. God wants to bless us, to enrich us, to feed us, on the very same terms, but we hold on to our Benjamin though we sing,

"The dearest idol I have known,
Whate'er that idol be
Help me to tear it from
Thy throne,
And worship only Thee."

When God instituted the Church in the family of Abraham, He taught us a lesson we are so slow to learn. We admire the man who left everything else at the foot of the mountain, and went up with his Isaac, and deliberately bound him, and put him on the altar, but there are few Isaacs surrendered today. The church at large holds on to the dollars, the Mammon it worships, gives to build million-dollar churches, while it recalls missionaries from the fields, saying, "We have not the money." It burns incense to nets, while forgetting the world at large, dying and without hope. God help us, ministry and people, to practice what we preach! God says in His Word that there are great returns for giving up the best we have. "For iron I will give you brass, for brass I will give you silver, for silver I will give you gold." A man once said he got back more than he shoveled out, for God had the largest shovel. 'Tis true, as many of God's folks have found out. A lady of wealth being well saved took off her pearls and diamonds and, selling them, with the proceeds she built a Rescue Home. For months she visited it, taking great interest in the inmates. In a few years a precious soul saved through the instrumentality of the home was on her deathbed. She wanted to see the founder of the home, and when she came, in gratitude she told how the Lord saved her through the home, and admitting that if it had not been for the Home she would have been lost. As she bent over to kiss the lady's hand, the tears fell on the fingers where the diamonds were once worn. And as the lady looked at them, in gratitude to God she said, "My diamonds have come back again." Surely God gives us back again that which we have given Him.

How loath we are to surrender the dearest! He says, "I want your boy for Africa, I want your girl for India." "O Lord, anything but that." "I want your property. I want to transmute your gold into jewels for my crown. I want to send the Gospel abroad. I want others to hear that there is corn in Egypt. Give Me your money." God wants our dearest and best, and we must surrender or starve our souls.

I see old Jacob standing at the door of his tent: "Joseph is gone, Simeon is gone, and now Benjamin! I am bereft indeed!" But was he? How we do misinterpret God's dealings. Down yonder Joseph is Governor of all Egypt, and all the corn is in his hands, at his disposal, and his heart is longing for Jacob. Down yonder Simeon is boarding at Joseph's expense, and the land of Goshen, the garden spot of Egypt, awaits the whole family. Jacob, cheer up! "We scan His works in vain. God is His own interpreter, and He will make it plain." A lady was working on a piece of tapestry when her pastor came in and, seeing the wrong side of it, he said, "What a strange piece of work! No figure! The whole thing is askew." "Oh," she said, "you are looking on the wrong side of it. There is another side." When Joseph, and Simeon, and Benjamin are all gone, when the last surrender is made, then trust a little, and you will soon see the wagons coming, -- wagons that Joseph will send for you; for Joseph is alive and he will come with them. He is riding in the second chariot and holds the key to all the grain. Soon you shall eat at his table, feel his embraces, and know his kisses on your lips. Do we get the lesson? Do we find this Scripture profitable? Must God tear away our nest before we will try our wings? "He builds too low who builds beneath the skies." Our treasures are in heaven. This is not our abiding place. God wants us to move on and up. Our affections must be set on things above, where our Joseph sits at the right hand of the Father. All power is given him in heaven and on earth. Trust His Word! He says, "I am with you always;" "I am coming again to receive you unto myself, that where I am there ye may be also, I go to prepare a place for you." Jacob started for the corn and on his way met the chariot, and Joseph and a great company of Joseph's friends. We are on the way, and, at any moment, our Joseph is apt to come, in His chariot riding along the edge of the clouds and with Him a great company. He will receive us to Himself. We will sup with Him. Sorrow and saints will be divorced forever. "Then let our songs abound; let every tear be dry. We are marching through Immanuel's land to fairer worlds on high."

Chapter 8

THE LIFE ABUNDANT

 John 10:10 -- "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly."

There is a wonderful fullness in the Word of God, and oftentimes, as we read, our hearts are touched by the abundant promises, and the provision made for the human race, if they will but accept of it. If we do not see this provision when we read we should take the advice of the Spirit to the church of the Laodiceans, and anoint our eyes with eyesalve that we may see. This to my mind is what David wanted when he prayed for some of God's eyesalve, "Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law." And when God anoints man's eyes, when HE opens them, then we see the truth revealed in the light of God. The veil is not on the Word, but on the heart, yet the Spirit will take away the veil, and the Bible, the Word of God, teems with wonders. It is a wonderland; it not only relates miracles, but it assures believers that greater works than these that I do shall ye do also because I go to my Father. Walk with Jesus through the Word, and let Him open the understanding, by the Holy Spirit, and, as the disciples on the way to Emmaus felt their hearts glowing within them with the new spiritual life, so will our hearts burn within us by the way. Beloved, we do not need any new revelation; we just need to search and study and love the Word, the revelation that we now have, and God will wonderfully open up the whole Californias, and Sierra Nevadas, and Golcondas and Klondikes of spiritual wealth unto each one of us. The Bible is the best seller on the bookstands today, but we need more knowledge of the Book that lies unopened on our center tables. Jesus said, "Search the Scriptures; they are they which testify of Me: in them ye have eternal life." Oh, God has mines that very few love to explore; they go after the ashes of the world; they put money into pockets that have holes; they starve their souls on the world's dainties while they might be rich. Listen to what God says in the Word, "I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment that thou mayest be clothed." Buy it, buy it, buy it! The wise man said, "Buy the truth, and sell it not." Nowhere else can we find the abundant life but through Him who is the Life. The prayer of the heart should be as Adelaide Proctor has so well expressed:

"I do not ask O Lord
That life should be a pleasant road;
I do not ask that thou shouldst take from me
Aught of its load;
I do not ask that flowers should ever spring
Beneath my feet;
I know too well the poison and the sting
Of things too sweet.
For one thing, Lord, dear Lord, I plead:
Lend me aright,
Though strength should falter, and though heart should bleed,
Through peace to light."

The Word makes known to us the way in the very word of Jesus who was Himself the Life,the Truth, the Way. He knew that man did not have the life abundant. He knew the misery of a soul in hell, and the joy of a soul in heaven. He knows the meanness of a life left unto itself and, because He knew, He pitied us in our lost estate, and, pitying us when there was no man to help, He brought life to us. And redemption was an assured fact from that very moment for every soul who would accept of the Way as He laid it down. The soul must rise above transitory things and soar into the environment of things spiritual if it would meet the thought of God for all men. God is now waiting to come into every heart, to take full possession, to give life, and life more abundant, but we are so slow to see. A woman very busy one time entered her room as the twilight shades were falling. She went directly to her desk, turned on the gas, and began to write. Page after page she wrote; five minutes she worked, ten, then half an hour. The solitude became oppressive. She wheeled her chair around and, with a shock of joyful surprise, looked squarely into the face of her dearest friend lying on the lounge by her side. "Why, I didn't know you were here! .Why didn't you speak?"

"Because you were so busy you didn't speak to me." So it is with God. The Holy Ghost, the representative of the Father' and the Son, is here all the time, but we are so busy, so taken up with other things, so engrossed with temporal and material things, we fail to listen, to recognize His presence. We can never be alive to the Infinite unless we get the life which so abundantly awaits us, aye, is proffered us on every page of the Word of God; for all these things were written that ye might believe and believing might have life through His Name.

Someone may now say; "I thought grace was free!" So it is. Water is free, but you must drink it or you will die. Air is free, but you must inhale it or you will die. Grace is free, truth is free, salvation is free, and abundant, but you must accept of it, and accept of it on God's own terms. Here is God's own air, take it in, breathe it; fill your lungs with it, and live. If you close your lungs against it, your blood will stagnate and you will die. If you close your heart to the truth of God, you will die of spiritual stagnation. Open all the channels, pay the price, empty your hands, purify your hearts, and just let -- let -- let the Holy Ghost have His way, and you will know the power of this wonderful salvation. Yes, I love this fullness of this wonderful Word; I love it because it is the fullness of God, and it is for you and for me. Praise the Lord! I take a telescope and look up to the heavens and I see stars, stars innumerable. The telescope does not put them there, but it enables me to see them. These wonderful truths are in the Word, in this blessed old Bible, but we do not see them oftentimes because our affections and prejudices and pride and distorted judgment prevent. But just let the Holy Spirit come in, give Him full possession, and He will reveal their beauty and power unto us. Some years ago I was reading after that now sainted man of God, Rev. R. V. Lawrence of the New Jersey Conference, a man who knew what the abundant life meant, and I recall partly an illustration he once used. He told of an Irish boy who was away from home, and so homesick that every day he would go down to the water's edge and look toward home. One day a gentleman who was at the shore took with him a telescope and looked across the waters with so much pleasure that he did not fail to express aloud. The boy heard him, and also expressed a desire to take a look towards home any way, not expecting to see the cabin by the water side over there. The gentleman gratified the boy, and when the lad looked across the waters and saw everything brought right alongside, he began, "There it is! There is the cabin, there are the pigs, and the boys, and there is mother sitting by the door, and there is the green grass! Oh, I feel as though I was home again!" Then turning to the gentleman, that boy who didn't have a penny in his pocket said, "Say, Mister, what will you take for this?" I do not wonder he wanted to buy it. But here is a Book from God Himself. It is the Word of God, and I put it to my eyes and by faith I see, the unseen to mortal eyes. Yonder is my home, my portion fair. Yonder are the mansions of the blessed. Yes, yonder are the loved ones who wait our coming. Yonder my Lord awaits our arrival and, as the soul of the believer catches the inspiration and fire, he sings,

"I am thinking of home, yes of home, sweet home,
And my spirit doth long to be
In that far better land where the saints ever sing
Of the glory of God, my Redeemer and King,
And salvation so full and so free."

Oh, the richness of the Word of God! Oh, the blessedness of the faith that brings salvation nigh! It takes the very best that language can give to express, aye, we fail to express it; language is too poor to tell what one feels as waves of glory roll over the heart that just simply believes God, and takes Him at His Word. Listen, as my heart goes out in the Word, Where sin abounded, grace doth abound. That it? Nay, "grace doth much more abound." Hallelujah! Niagaras of grace! Oh do hear it! Oh do believe it, and get blessed! God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all things, may abound in every good work. Is that it? No! No! "That ye always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work." Men, women, brethren and sisters, here is something of which you can have enough. A woman who was always poor, and never had enough of anything, one time went down to the ocean, and as she watched the waves coming in, one after another, and no cessation, she stood in open-eyed wonder, and said, "Thank God, here is something of which you can have enough!" You may have, and you can have, all the salvation you want. And, beloved, let me say it kinds, you have all you want, for grace abounds. By the grace of God, Jesus Christ tasted death for every man. God is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we can ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us; and again, "We are more than conquerors. through Him that hath loved us." Oh, do not say that you will be satisfied just to get into heaven; God wants you to be more than conqueror, to have an abundant entrance. Get the full import of the text, "I am come that ye might have life and that ye might have it more abundantly." O ye little ones in Zion, ye who are weak because of unbelief, ye who have been wounded in the conflict, God wants you to be strong in Him, to have life, to have abundant life. He can and will heal every wound that sin hath made. If you did fall down, do not lie there. Get up, call on God, give Him a chance to show His abounding grace, and He will gladly do it, and the angels will have a time of rejoicing over another brand plucked from the burning.

I want to bring to you this thought: Life is the Gift of God. Natural life is the gift of God. "God breathed into man's body the breath of life and man became a living soul." When the Master stood before the grave of Lazarus, and spake to him saying, "Lazarus come forth," it is said that many of the Jews believed on Him. Why? Because they knew that none but God could impart life. Spiritual life is the gift of God. Do you accept of it? The Apostle says "Eternal life is the gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord." And this morning, this very hour, it is your privilege to take God's gift and to know that you know you are one of God's live men. Life is the work of the Spirit.

He is called the Spirit of Life. Jesus never spoke of the Spirit as "it". He did not regard the Spirit as an influence. I was preaching one time and in the course of the sermon I said I would not hold union services with any people who denied the Deity of Jesus Christ or the personality of the Holy Ghost. Immediately a person in the congregation asked me, "Can you give me a Scripture that proves the personality of the Holy Spirit?" Of course I did at once. "The Spirit said, Separate unto me Saul and Barnabas for the work whereunto I have called them," "The Comforter when He is come will guide you into all truth," "He will take the things of God and show them unto you," "He will guide you into all truth." He is a person. Never speak of Him as "it" or "itself." It is wrong to do so. Spell "Spirit" with a capital, and honor the Holy Ghost, for the Holy Ghost IS the Eternal Spirit, as we were taught in those days when children in the Sunday School had catechisms in their hands instead of lesson leaves that deny the Deity of Jesus and the efficacy of the blood.

I want to bring before you another thought with this text: Life more abundantly is a term of comparison, is a contrast with life that preceded it. It is comparing spiritual things with spiritual, life more abundantly. This is one of God's great inspiring truths. Believing this we can stand before valleys of dry bones and say, "These can all live," before a mighty chief of sinners, a very Saul of Tarsus, aye, in the very presence of spiritual indifference and wickedness in high places, and claim victory for our God. When God was on a mission to destroy, He would not do it until He talked to Abraham, for He said, "I know Him." And this man, because he believed God, was called the Friend of God. But there is something better than that for the believer today. Yonder goes Moses up to the Mount, and on its summit God comes down to meet with him, and for forty days God talks with Moses. I think those forty days were but as a few minutes to Moses he was so engrossed with communion with God, that he lost all thought of time, and when he came down his face shone with the glory of another world. But for the believer today, there is something better than that. "The Law came by Moses but Grace and Truth came by Jesus Christ." There was something helpful to a penitent sinner when the Urim and Thummim flashed on the breastplate of the high priest, and he knew that he was accepted of God. It was a blessed thing when the High Priest, after the sprinkling of the mercy seat with blood, would come out and with uplifted hands would pronounce the benediction on the multitude, and every man could go to his home a justified and forgiven man; but through Christ we have something better than that:

"Jesus our great High Priest,
Hath full atonement made .
Ye weary spirits rest,
Ye mournful souls he glad!
The year of jubilee hath come,
Return ye ransomed sinners home."

Yonder on the side of old Mount Tabor I see Elijah at prayer; before him an altar, and on the altar a sacrifice, around him Israel and the prophets of Baal. I hear him pray. Listen! Did you ever hear such a prayer? He prays for fire -- fire from heaven, "O thou Lord God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel, and that I am thy servant, and that I have done all these things at thy Word." And the fire comes -- fire from heaven, and it consumes the sacrifice. But we as the children of God today have something better than that. Fire, not for Israel's altars alone, but for every child of God, for every heart; in every church, for all time. Listen to the voice of one crying in the wilderness: "There standeth one among you the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose. He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire." The Baptizer with fire has come at last, and He says, "I am come not only that ye might have life, but that ye might have it more abundantly." If I had my choice to go back to Mt. Tabor where fire from heaven fell upon the altar, or back to Pentecost where the Holy Ghost as in cloven tongues of fire came upon each of them, I would say "Pentecost," every time. And we do not have to go back to either, for here and now we have the very same Jesus that was at Pentecost, and just as ready to give the fire, when we are as ready to receive the Holy Ghost as they were on that day.

The Baptism of the Holy Ghost, the fullness of the Spirit, this is the Life Abundant. The Spirit and the Life go together. You cannot separate them. A Spirit-filled soul is a live soul. Listen! "The words I speak unto you they are Spirit and they are Life." To be spiritually minded is life. The Spirit is life because of righteousness. The letter killeth but the Spirit giveth life. The Spirit shall be in you a well of water springing up to everlasting life. The fullness of the Spirit is the privilege of every believer. This means life enough to help someone else. When Jesus was in the Mount of Transfiguration, there were nine disciples down on the plains, and a boy grievously vexed with a devil was brought to them, and they could not cast him out. But read of them after Pentecost. Read Acts 5th chapter and 11th verse: "There came a multitude from the cities round about Jerusalem, bringing sick folks and those which were vexed with unclean spirits, and they were healed every one." They had power from on high. They had the abundant life. I do not read of very many conversions through the labors of the disciples before Pentecost, but, after that, three thousand were converted in one day, and after that five thousand, and everywhere they went "the Word of God mightily grew and prevailed." When Thomas Harrison was young he wanted to do something for God. He had a passion for work for God. He went to the book stores and bought the Life of John Fletcher, and Carvosso, and Bramwell, and he studied books. He did everything but take the gift. But one day he got desperate. He said, "I'll have this cleansing, this fullness or I'll die. I'll put away all these books, and this afternoon shall be all knee work." And he gave his knees a talking to, and said, "You might just as well come down, for I am not going to get up until I get the victory, until God gives me the Holy Ghost." And he went to praying, when there flashed through his soul there was a better way than long and hard struggling with God for a human soul -- just take God at His Word, believe that He meant exactly what He said, that life, the fullness of the Spirit was the gift of God. And in just three minutes he was on His feet shouting aloud, "Glory to God, I've got it."

God is no respecter of persons. If you want it, meet the conditions, believe God, and take it. Take it now. God sanctifies by the Holy Spirit. To them that believe on His Name all things are possible.

This Life means life under all circumstances, life when your feet are growing cold, when your loved ones fade out from your vision, for it is life eternal. Pardon me for calling your attention to the hero of Pilgrim's Progress. He had the victory when he came down to the banks of the river, and he said, "I feel the bottom and it is good." Old Mr. Standfast, also one of the characters portrayed in this choicest piece of literature it has ever been my privilege to read, came down to the river. Hear him shouting, "This river has been a terror to many, yea, the thoughts of it has often frightened me, but now, methinks I stand easy, for my feet are fixed upon that upon which the feet of the priests that bare the ark of the covenant stood while Israel passed over this Jordan. The waters are indeed to the palate bitter and to the stomach cold, yet the thought of what I am going to and of the conduct that waits for me on the other side, lie as a glowing coal to my heart. I see myself now at the end of my journey. My toilsome days are ended. I am going now to see that Head that was crowned with thorns, and that face that was spit upon for me. I have formerly lived by hearsay and faith, but now I go where I shall live by sight, and shall be with Him in whose company I delight myself. I have loved to hear my Lord spoken of, and wherever I have seen the print of His shoe in the earth there have I coveted to set my foot, too. His name has been to me as a civet box, yea, sweeter than all perfumes. His voice to me has been most sweet, and His countenance have I more desired than the light of the sun. His Word did I gather for my food, and for antidotes against my faintings. He has held me and I have kept me from mine iniquities, yea, my steps has He strengthened in the way." And his last words were: "Take me, for I come unto Thee," and the angels and the trumpeters of the skies sang his welcome home to the city where cometh no night, where the inhabitants never Say, I am sick, and where the people are forgiven their iniquity. Home, forever at Home.

Chapter 9

THE TRIUMPHAL PROCESSION

 2 Cor. 2:14,15, 16 -- "Thanks be unto God, who always leadeth us in triumph and maketh manifest through us the savor of his knowledge in every place. For we are a sweet savor of Christ unto God, in them that are being saved, and in them that are perishing, to the one a savor of death unto death, and to the other a savor of life unto life."

Paul was a student and a scholar. He was acquainted with the history of the nations around him, the most prominent, the most powerful, the most intellectual. He could quote from their poets; he was acquainted with their laws; he knew their history and customs. He had in mind, when he uttered the words of our text, a triumphal Roman procession and entrance. Rome would send forth her armies against those who dared to question her power, her authority, her rights of conquest. They would go out along the Appian Way; they would go by the thousands and tens of thousands, and never give up until the object which they desired to attain had been accomplished. They would never give up until they had achieved victory. They may have been gone for months, for years; they may have been defeated again and again; their enemies may have been numerous, but Rome was only satisfied with one thing, and that was victory. After they had been gone for months or for years, and victory had been gained, they would come back, and the army would camp outside of the city; then the Roman Senate, grave and reverend seigniors, would vote them a triumphal entrance. The city would be decorated in holiday attire; seats would be erected for the Senators and other authorities of the government; the city would be decorated with laurel and pine, and the private homes of the citizens would bear evidence of the gratitude of the occupants towards the soldiers. On the day of the entrance, the Roman soldiers would march down through the city; the gates would be thrown open, and the army would come marching. in. The parade would be led by a large band of musicians furnished by Rome. They would be followed by young men leading animals peculiar to the country that had been conquered. These were decorated with the laurel and with the pine. The horns of the animals that were to be sacrificed would be gilded with gold. After them would come the spoils on floats, the best things the conquered countries could produce. Then after them would come a chariot, a magnificent affair decorated with silver and gold drawn by pure white horses and they would be covered with garlands. In that chariot would be seated the conquering general, on his head a crown of laurel, which afterward would be replaced by a crown of gold, and in his hand a scepter meaning victory. Then after him would come the prisoners, the common soldiers and the priests. These priests would be swinging golden censers, and in the censers would be fire, upon which was thrown incense, making a sweet savor among the prisoners, a savor of life unto life with some, and of death unto death, for others, while others would by decree of the conqueror be set free. Then after them would come the soldiers of the conquering army. These soldiers carried with them laurel and pine and also trophies of victory. As they marched along the streets by the stands which had been erected, on which sat the citizens of Rome and the Senators, these latter would proclaim the victories which had been won, and the countries which had been conquered and the battles that had been fought. They would march along until they came to the triumphal arch. Here the soldiers would take to one side the prisoners that had been condemned to death. After they had reached the Capitol Hill, the crowns would be awarded, and the day would be over. Paul had this in view. He had no idea that we were called to defeat. No man who knows God is ever truly defeated. If a child of God fails, it is because he has not availed himself of the capital which God has provided, because he does not realize the sufficiency of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul never forgot who he was. In writing to some he called himself "a prisoner of the Lord Jesus Christ," and in writing to others he called himself "the slave of the Lord Jesus Christ." He never failed to tell that he belonged to Jesus, and to witness for Him was his delight. As the Psalmist could say a thousand years before him, "The Lord is My God," so Paul could say, "The Lord is MY strength; I can do all things through Christ strengthening me. He would stand before even his enemies and say, "The life which I now live I live by the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ who loved me and gave Himself for me;" "My life is hid with Christ in God." He remembered his relation to Jesus and, because he did, he endured hardness as a good soldier of the Lord. He had the victory when he was shipwrecked on the deep; he had the victory when facing a howling mob at Ephesus, or in whatever place of peril he might be. He never lost sight of the fact that he belonged to God. He was not marching on to victory, He marched IN victory. Difficulties might gather round him; darkness might settle down upon him, swords might be lifted up against him, but on these he could read, "No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper." Lions might be on every side and roar, but he had the victory. A roar hurts nobody. I remember going into battle once and the bullets hissed as they passed. and the Major said, "Never mind them, boys, they are by you when you hear them." Oh, it is true, it is possible to live in victory down here right in the midst of the battle. There can be no victories without battles. Hear it, get ready to shout over it, God's Word declares it: Christ is leading us to triumph. Through this old world, Christ is leading a triumphal procession, and He makes them always to triumph in Him. I like to think about it; there are men and women in the procession who were picked up out of the highest society, some from the lowest. They have all been in the mire and the clay, but as you look at them, you cannot see any mire and clay on them; you cannot see the pit from which they have been dug. They have been washed white. I like to look at them, Paul says, "I am God's branded man," I look back over the procession, and see an Abel who had the testimony that God was pleased with him. I see a Noah of whom God said that he was perfect in his day and generation. I see an Abraham who left folks and home and went out not knowing where he was going, but he had confidence in the Guide. I see a David who valued his relation to God more than he did his crown, I see a Matthew who sat at the seat of customs, a woman out of whom went a legion of devils. I see folks who were gathered up from all sides. There is John Bunyan, the swearing tinker; Newton, the pirate slave stealer; Jerry McCauley, the river pirate; men whom God picked up from an awful life of sin and used in the salvation of souls. These are all alike, for they have all been saved through the blood of Jesus Christ, and sing the same song, "Unto Him that loved us and washed us in His most precious blood, unto Him be glory and honor and power and dominion for ever and ever." To be in that triumphal procession is to triumph with Christ.

His victories are ours and our victories are His. Some years ago, Admiral Dewey waited for the dispatch that would tell him war had been declared between this country and Spain. Soon the tidings came, and Dewey sailed around Correggio, went to Manila Bay, engaged the Spanish fleet, and the news came back of the glorious victory in Manila Bay. What did we say? We said, "It was our victory." What did we do? We brought out our flags, put them up, and said, "It is our victory."

I love to look at the conflict which Jesus had with the enemy in the wilderness where He defeated the devil and defeated him for you and me; and at the victory He gained on the cross when He conquered death, and to say He conquered death for you and me. He went down into the grave; He burst the bands asunder, and arose gloriously triumphant. He conquered the grave for you and for me. I look back at that scene when on Olivet He lifted His hands in blessings on His disciples, then ascended to where the angelic hosts of God sang Him welcome home. He led captivity captive, and His victory was ours because He conquered, you and I shall conquer. Because He lives, we also shall live. In this army we are all conquering generals. In the armies here, there are more privates than generals by far, but there are no privates in God's army. We are all KINGS and Priests. There used to be a time when there was a priest here and a priest there, but, bless your hearts, ever since Jesus went up into the Holy of Holies, and sprinkled His blood to make atonement, all the redeemed are kings and priests unto our God, and all bound toward a triumphal entrance. Today I stand my feet on the promises of God, and expect, anticipate, victory. There is no such thing as defeat to the triumphal army of our God. "I will say to the north, Give up; and to the south, Keep not back; bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth." "They shall come from the north and the south, and sit down in the kingdom of God." The devil is a defeated devil. He is a conquered foe, and from every temptation, God will open a way of escape. Praise the Lord! If I am glad for anything it is that as a child of God He hath illuminated me for victory as He has every child of God. Study God's plan; live up to it, and shout the victory in advance. It is a bad thing to under-rate your enemy, but it is a good thing to know who you are fighting with. The Prince of Orange went out to fight Catholic Europe -- just little Holland. The prime minister said, Your grace, as you are going to fight Europe i would like to ask you, have you made any alliances?" And the Prince replied, "Before I entered this war, I made an alliance, not with the kings of earth, but with the King of heaven and He never lost a battle."

When Judah went out to battle one day, before the battle was begun, the pious King set the Praisers in array that they might be all ready to praise God for the victory that He was going to give, and of which the king was assured. Sure, why not? Has not God said, "This is the victory even our Faith?" God picks out a man here and there to be a leader. Joshua led the hosts of Israel. One morning he got up early and walked out to see the city he was going to attack, to view the situation, look at their weakest point, and he saw a man with a drawn sword in his hand. He went to him and said, "Who art thou? Art thou for us or for our enemies?" And the man spoke and said, "Nay; but as captain of the Lord's hosts am I come." Joshua takes off his shoes, and falls down on his face before him and gets the plan of the battle according to God's order. The Lord said, "Joshua, I have given Jericho into thy hand. You are to march around the city once a day for six days, and on the seventh day march around seven times; then the priests will blow the old rams' horns, and the people will shout." (I am glad there is divine authority for shouting.) On the seventh day they followed the plan; the priests blew, the people shouted, the walls went down, and the saints of God marched in. How? By staying by God's plan.

God has nominated us for victory. The Lord said to Paul, "I will show thee the great things thou must suffer for my name's sake." You remember when Saul was outside the city of Damascus, and a light shone above the brightness of the noon-day's sun, and he cried, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" Do you see that man out there, that man with the stripes on His back? Paul, that is you. Do you see that man with his feet in stocks, and his hand manacled? Paul that is you. Do you see that man in the midst of a howling mob? That is you. Do you see that place way out there in the sea, and the ship going to pieces? Do you see that fellow standing on the deck in the midst of all this? That is you. Do you see that man with his head on the block and the axe all ready for work? That is you. Will you be true? And Paul says, "By the grace of God, I will." But Paul, there is another side to it. "When you are in prison, I will be there with you; when you are in the storm, I will be there, too, and my angels will bring you messages from me. They may sit down on you, but I will stand by you. Paul will you be true?" "By the grace of God, I will." Beloved, God's plan for you is to lead you always in triumph, and to make manifest through you the knowledge of Christ in all places. What does He mean by this? It is just this: God is going to use you to save other folks. I went the other day to see a dying man. He had been very wicked, and did not know how to trust in Jesus. I tell you what he did turn to in his extremity. I heard him utter the Masonic cry of distress. God have mercy on the man who has nothing, better than that when he faces the grim monster, for he surely is a lost man! I stood there at his bedside and told him what God had done for me, how God saved me, and that I knew it as well as I knew my own name, and of the joy that came as a result of believing in Jesus. God wants us to encourage other folks by telling them how we were saved by taking God's way, to tell them how we became temples of the Holy Ghost by believing in Jesus, and how he gives us victory and when they hear of real victory they want it, and are encouraged in the warfare. God bless you, He maketh us to be a blessing to other folks. We are to be a sweet savor unto Christ whether other folks hear or not, whether they are saved or not, whether it is acceptable to them or not. It is acceptable to God, and the man who preaches it, is acceptable with Him. I used to think a sermon was not a success unless the altar was lined, but now I know it is a success whether they come or not. It is my business as a minister of the Gospel, to preach it; the results belong to God. After I preach, when I go to bed, I say, "Lord I did my best." Whether they come or not, the responsibility is with them. They are free moral agents; they accept or they can reject. I sometimes think that God is going to reward us for the people who ought to come as well as for those who do come. Our labor is owned of God if our eye is single to His glory. If you want to please people, you can do it. There was a time when I stood before an audience on the lecture platform and people laughed one minute and cried the next and the reporter would tell in the papers how they were affected by the lecture: they laughed and cried. There was no God in it. I had to quit the lecture platform, or be damned. I was an intense prohibitionist and one night, a Sunday night too, I preached a sermon on Prohibition. When I went home God asked me, "If there had been a sinner there who wanted to be saved was there anything said tonight that would help him?" I quit preaching sermons of that kind, and preached to win folks for God.

I was preaching at a church for three weeks one time, and I was most beautifully entertained in the home of a rich farmer. A number of people were saved in that meeting, but this man though under deep conviction went through that meeting without being saved. It was the last Sunday night, and the last meeting was over. My host took the lamp, (there were no electric lights in that country) and he said, "Mr. Kulp I will show you to your room." I said, "No Sir; please put that light down; I have something I want to ask you. A number of people have been saved in this meeting. You have been there every night, and tonight you are still unsaved. I must ask you a question. Is there any thing I could have done that would have won you for God that I have left undone?" He stood there dumbfounded, like a guilty sinner, and at last he said, "Say Elder, if I am lost, it is not your fault. You have done all you could do." I said, "Good night. I am going to bed." And he showed me to my room. Brother, it is worth more than any thing else to be assured of faithfulness to souls, just to know that God is pleased with you. The Psalmist was conscious of his integrity before God. We as ministers of the Gospel are not seeking the plaudits of worms of the dust.

The victory is eternal and continuous. It will not always be battles, bye and bye it will be peace, eternal peace. By and by there will be rest. I can imagine those soldiers of Rome coming back and waiting outside of the City for that triumphal entrance. Tomorrow they are going to the Capitol Hill and get their crowns. Say, beloved, God bless you! The time is coming when the last enemy will have been overcome, the last battle will have been fought, the last grave will have been dug, and when the saints of God of all ages shall march in through the gates of the Celestial City, and Jesus Christ the Captain of our salvation, will stand by the great white throne of the Eternal God, while God Himself will arise to give us welcome, and all the angel choirs of heaven will sing our welcome home. Home at last! Thank God, there is a triumphal entrance for the saints! No matter what may be the difficulties in the way, God will take you through. Go if you go barefooted, and lions be on both sides of the way, go if you have to go between flashing swords. No weapon formed against you shall prosper. Go on, and one day you shall see the King in His beauty, and when I get there if He will only let me kiss His feet, I shall be satisfied through all eternity.

Christ makes us always to triumph -- to triumph over circumstances, over darkness, over enemies, over every thing that can rear its head against us, -- maketh us always to triumph. Beloved, are you farther along this year than you were last? I am not asking you if you are shouting happy. I am simply asking you, are you in the procession? I know some folks who never shout. I have in my church a little woman in whom I have as much confidence as I have in M. G. Standley, and she never shouts. But I know when she is getting blessed. Her face will get red and her eyes will fill with tears, but I never heard her say "Hallelujah" in all my life, and I was her pastor fifteen years and more. Shouting is good, but oh, there is something way beyond it. Are you in the procession? How many have victory, not twenty years ago, nor twelve, nor five, but NOW? "Brother Kulp, you do not know anything about my trials." Jesus does. Jesus knows all about my trials, Hallelujah! Sister Cowman tells me that over in Japan they have no word for, Glory to GOD, so they say Hallelujah! What word have you got? A brother tells me that he has quiet hallelujahs down in his soul. Have you? Are you conscious of the presence of God with you and in you? I am not talking about when you joined the church, nor when you were baptized, nor when you were blessed last. I am talking about Bible salvation, triumphing in Christ. It is Christ in you the hope of glory. It is just as much your privilege and mine to triumph as it was Paul's. When I was preaching down in Kentucky, an old colored woman would get blessed and shout, and when I was coming away that dear old Auntie came to me and said, "Say, you are my preacher." And I was too. If I can please God and please His people I am glad of it.

One time the Governor of a province in China was taking the Emperor out to see his soldiers. The Governor 'was drawing money from the Emperor for ten thousand soldiers, when he had only five thousand, so he took brooms and dressed them up in soldier clothes. The Emperor reviewed them from a distance. There were only five thousand real soldiers, the rest were broomsticks. Beloved, are you broomsticks or soldiers? Are you real or just professional, just a member of the church? O beloved, it will pay you to get in the procession. His triumph will be your triumph, and the victory will be an eternal victory for you.

Chapter 10

THE ONLY REMEDY FOR SIN

 Psalm 103:12 -- "As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us."

Two facts in the text do not require any effort to prove: Man is a sinner, and salvation has been provided. But our text teaches that sin sticks, stays by you. You can move from the North to the South; you can move from the East to the West. You may go to distant lands, but your sin goes along with you. You may change your name; you may surround yourself with other circumstances; you may move away thousands of miles from where you have sinned, and yet your sin remains with you. You may reform; you may turn over a new leaf; you may begin to lead what you call a different life, and still your record is exactly the same. You may be haunted by your conscience, you may be convicted by the Holy Spirit; you may drink that which for awhile may bring you forgetfulness: but when you awake from your drunk, awake from your stupor, you will find that your sin will remain with you. The world provides no way for the removal of sin. Sin stays by a man, sin sticks close to a man, sin stays in his memory.

Just a few years ago, in one of our States, we had a man who was the Quartermaster, and who had charge of the clothing of the militia. He robbed the State of something like twenty thousand dollars. It was discovered, and he left the State and went to New Orleans. He took passage on a boat that was going to South Africa with a load of mules for the British army during the war with the Boers, but that man carried his sin with him. Everywhere he went he could say with the Psalmist, "My sin is ever before me." There he was, away from friends, away from the American authorities; no one knew, but he was having a perfect hell of it because he carried with him the consciousness of his sins. He took passage on a boat, came back to the State where he had committed sin, gave himself up, and he said, "I only had peace when I determined to return and give myself up, and take the penalty of violated law."

Twelve years ago, in the State of Michigan, a woman was found murdered. They arrested a man, convicted him on circumstantial evidence, and for twelve years he has been in the State Penitentiary. But listen! he was an innocent man. Within the last three months a man went out to the grave where the murdered woman lies buried, stood over her grave, took out a revolver, pulled the trigger, blew out his brains, and sent himself into eternity. When that man killed himself above the grave of that woman he confessed himself the murderer. Why did he kill himself? Why did he go to the grave of his victim? He wanted to make some kind of reparation. Five years had gone by, ten years had gone by, twelve years had gone by, but sin sticks. Sin stays in the conscience, stays in the memory; sin stays on the record of Almighty God; and the memory of that man's sin drove him to suicide; and Daniel Webster, one of the greatest legal minds America ever knew, once said, "suicide is confession."

Some time ago in Michigan, a man had insured his barn for a large amount and he wanted money. In the dead hour of the night he set fire to it and it burned to the ground. He collected the insurance, and no one suspected anything. But God knew, and he knew, and that was enough. In the course of time, there was a revival in that neighborhood, and this man went to the altar; and while he was trying to pray, God said, "How about that barn?" He confessed out, went to the insurance company, paid back what lie had received, and God forgave him. But get the truth: confession did not save him; restitution did not save him; these things do not wash away sin; it takes the blood to do that, the shed blood of the Christ of Calvary.

Here is a woman down at the altar. She is screaming and crying to God for mercy. Oh, how she pleads; how she begs! What is the matter? Years ago, way back there, she had sinned. Her husband was a home man, and she was a wife that wanted the theater, the moving picture show, and she went with another man. It was years ago, but the sin sticks. She pleads, oh, so earnestly, and gets nowhere. At the close of the meeting she came to this preacher and asked what she should do. She had sinned; must she tell her husband? I did not say so; I just said, "Mind God." The next night she came to the altar and prayed through. She had minded God, and was at peace.

Wait a moment. I want you to see that sin sticks, stays with you. Here is a child, a beautiful child. Her hair is curly, and the mother winds it about her finger while the husband, admiring it, looks on. The father takes the little girl on his knees, hugs her, kisses her, and calls her "his own darling child." Watch the wife; she grows pale, as she looks at the husband. Five years roll along, then ten go by; and the father and husband delights himself in that daughter, growing more and more lovely every day. Every time the husband goes near that daughter, and caresses her, the wife goes from the room and draws her hand across her heart and cries, "O God! O God! shall I tell him, must I tell him?" The child grows to womanhood, and the woman carries her sin with her. She wants to get right with God, and so one day she takes him aside and says, "Husband, that child is not yours; you are not the father of that girl. O God, have mercy on me!" Sin sticks, curses, and will eventually damn the soul unless the sinner takes God's way.

An official member of the church was walking along one day, and a member of the church came to him and said, "Here is five dollars on the pastor's salary." He put it in his pocket and kept it. He went along year after year, but was not right with God. Oh, how many backslidden church members and church officials there are! I just read that there are four million church members in one denomination, and the official paper of that church had a communication that said that not half of them gave anything to missions or church benevolences. The professed church today is the greatest hindrance to the advance of the cause of Christ. This man wanted to get right with God, but he had stolen money in his pocket. When will the church do as they did in the days of the Apostles -- select men who are full of faith and the Holy Ghost -- not take men because they are sociable, good mixers, or fine fellows? God said to this man, "Pay back that five dollars." He made out a check, sent the interest along with it, and then God saved him. I was in a meeting some time ago, and a man, after hearing a sermon along this line, sat down and wrote a letter to a railroad official and said, "I rode on your line thirty years ago (sin sticks) and did not pay my fare. I enclose a check for the amount, and ask you to forgive me." That man got an answer back from the company and also got a blessing from heaven that sent him shouting through the Church, and to his pastor. God never forgets the sin that is unconfessed.

Some time ago I went to a lawyer's office, and there on his desk I saw a bottle containing ink eraser, and the directions were, "Take this fluid and apply it to the writing. Do not rub it; do not put a blotter on it -- just apply it and leave it alone, and every vestige of ink will disappear." Man has a chemical by which he can erase anything that he may write, but hell never invented nor discovered anything that will blot out sin from the Book of God's remembrance; but thank God, in the laboratory of the skies it has been recorded, "The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth from all sin." Hallelujah! .

You cannot get rid of sin. You may destroy the books, but you cannot get rid of sin that way. God said to Jeremiah, "Get a stenographer. I am going to tell you what you shall dictate to him. Baruch comes at once with his note book, and Jeremiah with one ear toward the skies, looked to the stenographer, and began to say to him, "Write, Thus saith the Lord, Israel shall be destroyed. She shall be carried off into captivity. I will give her for a prey to the king of Babylon." Baruch read it to the princes. They said, "Sit down and read it in our ears." Then they said, "Tell us, how didst thou write all these words?" Baruch answered them, "He spake all these words unto me with his mouth, and I wrote them with ink in the book." Then they said, "Do not say anything about it. Go and hide, and we will show them to the king." Jehudi reads them to the king, and then takes a penknife and cuts the leaves and burns them; but you cannot get rid of the Word that way. The Word of God is an anvil that has worn out many a hammer, and will wear out all the hammers the modernists and the enemies of God's Word, can use. God said to Jeremiah, "Take another book and write in it all the former words, that were in the first book which the king hath burned." Jeremiah dictated the very same words from the Lord, and added thereunto many like words. Say, listen! When you reject God's message, because it comes red-hot from the throne, God will give a hotter one. You cannot get rid of the Word of God by fire, or knife. You cannot destroy the message that God sends you.

Listen to the Psalmist, "Remember not the sins of my youth." He is the sweet singer of Israel; he is Israel's king; he is sitting on a throne; but back there are the sins of his boyhood days. Do you remember the sins of your youth? Do you remember the sins of your young manhood and young womanhood? Some of you folks shudder when you think of the sins you used to commit, and you ought to shudder. God Almighty has the record. As you have advanced in age, you have grown harder and harder. You have rejected Jesus Christ, and God Himself has the record. But hear it, -- sin may be removed. As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our sins -- my sins -- from me. Who said it? David. He knew what he was talking about, the man after God's own heart. Hear David as he shouts it, "Bless the Lord, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases."

I see a man who has breathed out threatenings and slaughter; I see him bringing men and women bound to Jerusalem; I see him standing by while the first martyr is being stoned to death; but as this man, persecutor and murderer, is on his way to Damascus, he sees a great light, and falls from his horse and hears a voice saying, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" He asks God to have mercy on him, and afterwards he writes, "This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief." Sin may be removed, but it takes God to do it. There is no church, nor minister, nor priest, who can remove sin. "As far as the East is from the West, so far hath He removed our transgressions from us." We cannot do it.

The world by wisdom knew not God. Job found out two thousand years before Calvary that a man could not cleanse himself. He said, "If I wash myself with snow water and make my hands ever so clean; yet are they not clean." The world by wisdom knew not God, but thank God, what the world could never find God made known to us. "God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."

Here is the man who pillowed his head on the bosom of Jesus; who walked with him in loving fellowship for three years; and I ask him, "John, I want you to tell us how much God loves us?" He dips his pen in ink and brings out his parchment and writes, "God So loved the world." Hallelujah! Hallelujah! God So loved the world. Say, I want to measure the depth of the love of God? and I exhaust all the twine in all the rope factories of the world, and I begin to let it down, and down, and when I get to the end I call on God to give me more twine; and when I have exhausted all the resources of earth, I can never find the depths of the love of God. God So loved us!

Wait. How did He do it? A soldier was captured by the Sepoys. An officer came with two handcuffs and began to put them on the prisoners, wounded though they were. Here is a man dying, and they are going to put them on him. The soldier said, "Sir, you would not disgrace humanity by putting handcuffs on a dying man, would you?" He replied, "I must put them on some one. If I go back with any I will have to give an account of why I take them back. There are just enough to go around. What am I to do?" And the soldier said, "Put two pair on me," and they did so. Jesus died in our stead. The law said, "Cut him down." Jesus said, "Let Me die in his place. Let Me go to Calvary." God so loved that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. He removes our sins, takes them all away. The Scripture idea is the separation of the sinner from his sins, not the remission of the penalty.

I see the High Priest as he stands before the multitude. The scapegoat is brought out to him. He puts his hands on the scapegoat and confesses the sins of Israel and then a proper man takes that goat and leads it away to a land of forgetfulness, and with it goes the sins of Israel. Today we put our hands by faith on Jesus Christ, and He bears our sins, and carries them all away -- "as far as the East is from the West, so far hath He removed." How far is the East from the West? I want you to follow Halley's comet, moving at thirty-seven thousand miles an hour. Put a bit in its mouth and a saddle on its back, and start towards the East at thirty-seven thousand miles an hour, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, ten years in a decade, ten decades in a century, and ten centuries in every millennium, and when you have ridden on your fiery steed millennium after millennium you are still going East. How about the West? If you should go at the speed of a flash of lightning for a million years, toward the West, after you have gone a million years at one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles a second, you would not have yet reached the West, and thank God, "as far as East is from the West, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us." I am glad I have a mighty Savior, one who can deliver from sin, one who can remove all sin, and make us white as snow. I am glad that God is so much interested in every sinner. If you will meet the conditions, He will remove every sin. The devil has never once had the cheek to tell me that God did not save me many years ago; and I can point him to the very spot where I knew and felt my sins forgiven. He will wipe out every stain that sin has made. I believe in the power of Divine Grace to reach anybody who wants Bible salvation -- that wants to find Bible salvation. God bless you, beloved, I want you to know that if you want to go with God there are some folks that are headed that way and who know that they know.

There is a woman I want to see when I get to heaven, and that is Mary Magdalene. I want to see the woman who was the last at the Cross and the first at the sepulchre, the woman to whom was given a commission to preach the risen Christ. I want to see the woman who loved Him so because she was much forgiven. A woman phoned me one day, asking, "Mr. Kulp, would you go and pray with a bad woman?" "Sure I would." "Would you go and pray with a very bad woman?" "Yes, why not?" "Will you come and pray with the Madame of a sporting house who is dying?" 'Certainly." "How soon can you come?" I said, "Wait a moment." I turned to my wife and I said, "Wife, there is a woman dying, the keeper of a bad house down on Jackson street. How soon can we go?" She said, "As soon as we eat dinner," and the dinner was ready then. I said to the woman who called me, "I will be there right after dinner and it is all ready now." After the meal we started off, wife and I, and when we got to the place, I tied my horse to the hitching post, helped my wife out of the buggy, and started towards the door of the place. Going, I passed a Doctor who knew me well and spoke to me. He saw where I was going, and my wife said that he turned his head to watch me. But when you have your wife along you can go everywhere, or anywhere that you ought to go. We went right up to the second floor. I knocked at the door, and a woman came. We went in, and I took a seat. They went to the dying Madame and said, "The preacher is here. Will you see him?" "Yes." I went in, and prayed with her, and the heavens seemed as brass. I pointed her to Jesus. My wife said to her, "Sister, did you ever hear of Jesus?" "Oh, yes." Yes, she had, and we left her with Him.

Hear it! I want you to get the thought born out of the great loving heart of God, that whosoever will, may. This Gospel will save the poor and will save the miserable rich, as well, for they need God and are less likely to find Him. The world today has a hold on the rich, as on no others. But I want you to know it, -- He saves to the uttermost all them that will come.

"There is a fountain filled with blood,
Drawn from Immanuel's veins,
And sinners, plunged beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stains."

"Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool."

I want to tell you that every one that is out of Christ needs this salvation. The rich and the poor, the moral and the immoral, the old and the young, all need Jesus, and they may have God by complying with conditions, and meeting God on His terms. How is it with you? Are your sins under the Blood? There is no such thing as a dead past. That is the figment of a disordered brain, whether it was the poet's who sent it out or of the folks who preach it. Sin unrepented of will accompany you to the deathbed, and to the judgment, and will meet you there unless you are saved through the blood of Jesus. Do you want to know the truth of this text? Are you desirous of getting rid of the past? You may know that you are a child of God, that your name is written in the Lamb's Book of life, and you may know that you know. How may you? Just let God have His way. Unconditional surrender and faith in God will bring victory. A soldier was dying in a hospital, and he was afraid to die. "Repent," said the chaplain. "Oh, I do not know what to do." "Surrender," said the chaplain a gain, and the poor fellow, just a few hours from eternity, threw up both his hands and said, "Lord, I surrender unconditionally," and God took him. I was talking, one time, or rather, I was letting Bishop Taylor do the talking, and he was telling of a man in Africa who was dying and they sent for him to come and pray with the dying black. But when he got there the man was dead. Bishop Taylor asked, "Men, what was he saying when he died?" And they told him that he was saying right along, "Oh, Mishwa, I am your man; take me, Mishwa, take me, I am your man." And I'll never forget the words of the Bishop, "If Jesus did not take him, He is not the man I think He is." "As far as the East is from the West, so far will He remove our transgressions from us." Thank God for the Book that tells us that He will save all them that call upon Him.

Chapter 11

HOW READEST THOU?

 Luke 10:26 -- "How readest thou?"

Some time ago a multimillionaire died and left a will disposing of the property that he had once possessed; for it is still true that of all the things in this world that you may own, you can take nothing with you when you leave. Many persons were anxious to know whether they had been remembered in the will, and even the newspapers were asking the question, "How did he dispose of his vast accumulations?" There are not many of us here who are expecting to receive very much if any rich man should die and leave his goods; but there is one thing to encourage us, and that is, we have been remembered in the will of God. The old Bible that you and I revere so much is divided into two parts, the Old Testament and the New, and the word Testament means the last will, and here we have the last revelation of God's will for us. The Apostle said that a will was no good without the death of the testator. Jesus died to make this will good, and on the ground of the Blood of Jesus, we can claim the fulfillment of everything there is in the Book that concerns our present or eternal welfare. During the time of Graham of Claverhouse in Scotland, when the Covenanters were being persecuted and haled to prison and some of them to death, and when the places where they met were being uncovered and destroyed, a young woman was on the way to a meeting when one of Claverhouse's men overtook her. He brutally inquired where she was going, and she replied that a friend of hers had died and she was on the way to hear his will read. He wished her hick and said that he hoped so fair a lass was well remembered. She went on her way to the meeting to hear the Word of God expounded, and to know more of the Will that Jesus left on record for her.

If you will read the Word very carefully, you will find that in former days God spake through the prophets, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son; and the Apostle says, "To you is the Word of this salvation sent," and there is nothing in it but what God means for our good. In this Book God is dealing with eternal verities, teaching us of our relation to Him, of a heaven that we may gain or a hell that we may shun, and if we want to know the will of God concerning us, all that we have to do is to search the Word. Here it is recorded, "The entrance of thy Word giveth light." This book introduces us to God. The study of the Gospels introduces us to a Person. They deal with the personality of Jesus. The Gospels are not a biography of Jesus; we just have a glimpse of Him as a baby, and then for twelve years we know nothing of His history until He comes up to the temple, and then for eighteen years more the Word is quiet, silent, not a word until He begins His ministry. We are introduced to a Person who came to tell us about heaven, about hell. If He were living today and preaching, there are folks who would say He was a "hell-fire preacher," for it is certain that the most tremendous facts about the future came to us through the Words of Jesus found in the Gospels and Revelation. He came to show us the heart of God. All that we know, or the most we know about heaven, we have from the lips of Jesus. "I go to prepare a place for you ... that where I am, there ye may be also." All that is taught us of heaven in Revelation only confirms the truth, and that from the lips of Jesus came nearly all we know about heaven. It is called the Revelation of John, but he was only the stenographer, who took down the words that Jesus gave him. And I am glad to read and believe all that he says, whether I understand it or not. "Blessed are they that DO His commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city." I love to read the Book of Revelation. I remember what the old Scotchman said, ""When you read the Book of Revelation, go canny." When I read, "Blessed is he that readeth the Book" my soul takes fire, and I am glad as I walk up and down this old sin-cursed earth, and see the marks of the serpent all over it -- sin and suffering and disease -- I am glad there is a land where the inhabitants never say, "I am sick," and where the people are forgiven their iniquities.

I one day sat by a little cot not three feet long, and on that cot was a little child who was gradually dying. The mother sat there too crushed to shed a single tear. There was no relief along that line. As I saw that mother looking' down at the little one, I was so glad that Jesus told us of a home where all these things had passed away forever. Oh, I am so glad there is a city where crepe never hangs on the door; where funeral processions never pass along the streets; where families are never separated; where they live in the presence of God; where they not only enjoy eternal health, but have eternal wealth as well. God bless you, beloved, I am glad to tell you that we are drawing nearer the city. Don't come around and talk about growing old, -- we are not growing old, we are growing young. We are drinking from the fountain of youth, what Ponce De Leon looked for in the land of flowers. We have found it in a Holy Land, where the stricken side of the Son of God sent forth water and blood; and, having plunged in the Fountain, we have risen to all the Life of the eternal God. Bless your dear hearts, we have only just begun to live! What man gets down here is only a start in life. When the sun is burned to a cinder, when the stars have grown cold, we will live on, doing the will of God forever and forever.

"When we've been there ten thousand years
Bright shining as the sun,
We've no less days to sing God's praise
Than when we first begun."

I am glad that we are headed that way, and we must give God all the glory. He came to show us God. He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." Now, that is true. The text says, "How readest thou?" This word has a personal relation to us, -- whosoever. That takes in every son and daughter of Adam. If we had our names in, there might have been some folks who bear the same name that we do, but whosoever means you, and me. "Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved." That means you. "Whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive." That means, all the things that you need to pray about, you shall have an answer.

Jesus came a long way to show us God. Now, someone says, "Look here, preacher, don't you believe in the omnipresence of God?" To be sure I do, but I still insist upon it that Jesus came a long way to show us God. Tell me, can you. brother, the distance from the pure and holy God, the infinite One, to the man who was born in sin and conceived in iniquity, the man who transgressed the law of God, the man who by his own transgressions had widened the distance between him and God? The tallest archangel at the throne of God could never measure, but Jesus traveled the whole distance, and put Himself alongside our humanity, and took our nature on Himself. "The Word was made flesh," says the Apostle," (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father) full of grace and truth." "In Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." God will send a man a long way to help an honest inquirer. God may send you a long way to get the blessing, and He may send someone who knows Him a long way to help you. I see a Holiness evangelist in the midst of a great meeting. They are having a wonderful time, and there is great joy because of the work that God hath wrought. Then God said to that evangelist, "Philip, get out of here. I want you somewhere else." Philip never said, "Why, Lord, I am having a great time there, and it will not do to leave these people now." Nothing of the kind. "I want you down at Gaza, a desert way. Go now." And Philip says, "All right, Lord." I do not know that he even took time to say good-bye, or to thank the folks who had entertained him. When he got there, he stood by the roadside and saw a man coming along in a chariot. He stepped up alongside of him and said, 'Understandest thou what thou readest?" And the man replied, "How can I, except some man should guide me?" And right here God's man, whom He had sent a long way to help, got up in the chariot, and preached Jesus to him till he had the victory.

I see another man way off there. He is fasting and praying and giving of his substance to God's cause; bringing up his children in the fear of the Lord, and wanting to know more about God. God sent an angel to him with a message like this, "You send over to Joppa to the house of one Simon a tanner, and there you will find Simon, whose surname is Peter, and he will tell you words whereby thou and thy house shall be saved." In the meantime God was getting the evangelist ready. He was hungry, and waited about two hours after dinner time, for his meal, . and he fell into a trance, and saw a sheet let down from heaven filled with all manner of fourfooted Beasts. God said to him, "Rise, Peter; kill, and eat." He said, "Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean." And God said, "What I have cleansed that call not thou common or unclean." Just then, when God had got this man ready, there was a knock heard at the door, and the question, "Is there a man here named Simon Peter? There is a man Cornelius calling for him. He saw an angel who told him to send over here and you would come." And because of the vision Peter goes with them. God sent him a two days' journey to help an honest inquirer. If you are here, an honest inquirer, then we are here to help you to God; for this is His meeting. Jesus asks this question in the text: "How readest thou?" Here is a lawyer who asks, "Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" And Jesus referred him to the law and said, "How readest thou?" "I read in this wise, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.'" And Jesus said, "This do, and thou shalt live." What is Jesus teaching him? "Put God first." Put God first in your life -- in your social life, in your married life, in your politics. I take up my Bible and read in the very first verse, "In the beginning God." I take up the ten commandments and read, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." I turn to the Lord's Prayer, and read, "Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come." God first. And, my brother, you will never hear from heaven as you may do; you will never be what God wants you to be; you will never witness for Him as He wants you to do, until you put God first. Are you doing it? "How readest thou?"

First, you may know that you are saved from sin. Some time ago a preacher came into the church where I was preaching and I saw him sitting in the congregation. Out of courtesy I asked him to come up and take a seat with me, and make the opening prayer. He prayed, and all the time he was praying I was revolting against his prayer, for I did not believe it. The one subject of his prayer was this, "O Lord, save people from hell." I do not believe that Jesus came to save folks from hell. Bible salvation is not a mere fire escape, -- Jesus came to save people from sin. "Thou shalt call his name Jesus; for He shall save His people from their sins." "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." It is sin that sends people to hell -- not Adam's sin -- your own sin, that which you did most deliberately commit. The only thing in all the world that you need to fear is your own act where you are outside the will of God.

Jesus came to save people from sin in this life. Here and now you may know your sins forgiven. The Christ of God, hallelujah! The Christ of God which bringeth salvation, hallelujah! The Christ of God which bringeth salvation hath appeared unto all men, unto all men, black and white and yellow -- China and India and Japan -- hath appeared teaching. Teaching what? Teaching us that denying all ungodliness we are to live soberly, righteously, godly. After you die? No, sir, in this present world, looking for the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ, who loved us and gave Himself for us, that He might purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. Saved from sin in this life. Are you? You may know it. Do you?

How readest thou? If I have any ambition I get it out of this life, the life that is hid with Christ in God. I have the Book to prove to me that it is the privilege of every child of God to live saved from all sin down here now. I would not have the angel Gabriel to come and tell me that I am saved. I have heard from headquarters. The Spirit bears witness with my spirit that I am a child of God. Do not go by impressions, nor by your feelings. Do you know you are saved? When the wind is the coldest, when the devil is howling, when there is misunderstanding, when friends forget you and do things you cannot understand, then do you still know that you are saved? That is worth more than all the rest. How readest thou? "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." How readest thou? Is this So? Do you know it? "If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: and He is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." Is this so? Do you know it? "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him. return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon." The plaster is wider than the wound. "Where sin did abound, grace shall much more abound." Is that so? Do you know it? But I have been a professor so long, for so many years. "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?" But the King will say, "I never knew you." How readest thou? Have you received the Holy Ghost? Are you a temple of the Holy Ghost? Are you called to be a saint? Do you recognize your high calling?

What is a saint? What is a sanctified person? A person who is set apart, who is separate, holy, through the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, cleansed by the precious blood of Jesus. Bible for that? "Ye shall receive power, the Holy Ghost coming upon you." "Ye shall have power, above all the power of the evil one. Ye shall be witnesses unto me in Jerusalem, and in Judea, and in Samaria, and unto your own home town, right where you live." How readest thou? "The Father and I will come and take up our abode with you, and we will be in you." Oh, His yoke is easy and His burden is light. I never get up and say, "I am having such a hard time." He saves to the uttermost all them that come unto Him. I am proving in my own experience that His Word is true. There are times when plus one, plus one, is one, to them who know the secret; and there is a time when every child of God knows that he knows, and that is when he trusts God, takes Him at His Word, and lives his faith.

You are remembered in the will. Amanda Smith once said, "I will have all there is in the will or break it." So may you. You are, if you are a child of God, living every day on the riches of His grace, and you are a living proof that He saves to the uttermost.

Are you ready for His appearing? Would sudden death be sudden glory? I remember many years ago when E. I. D. Pepper, and John Thomson were in a meeting in the Centenary M. E. Church in Philadelphia, that they would put as a test, "Would sudden death be sudden glory?" Some folks did not like it, and I heard them discuss it; but it is intensely Scriptural. I call your attention to the time when dear old Dr. Godbey was told by the doctor that he was near the end, and he shouted, "In thirty minutes I shall see Jesus!" Was that too much? "This same Jesus, which is taken from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven." "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; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as He is pure." Are you ready for His coming, living for that day, that hour? "For in such an hour as ye think not the Son of Man cometh." It is not a question of what is going on around you; it is a question of what is going on inside of you. Are you ready now? Seeing that He is coming back again, what manner of persons ought we to be in all holy conversation and godliness. Without holiness no man shall see the Lord. Are you practicing the Word? Have your wife and children confidence in you? Do you shout when the grocer and the landlord are around? "If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin." "If any man is willing to do my will, he shall know the doctrine," prove in his own experience that my Word is spirit and life. Beloved, are you doing all the ò will of God as it is made known to you by the Word and the Spirit? "Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you." This is a sanctified life. Are you singing today?

"Not a cloud doth arise to darken my skies,
Nor to hide for one moment my Lord from my eyes."

Chapter 12

APOSTOLIC PRACTICES

 Acts 4:20 -- "Things seen and heard."

We are not indulging in theories; we have not followed cunningly devised fables; we have no pretty word pictures, baseless as the fabric of a vision; but as the old-fashioned Methodists used to sing,

"What we have felt and seen
With confidence we tell;
And publish to the sons of men,
The signs infallible."

The weary, disheartened, discouraged prophet sat alone. The temporal power was against him. Men and women opposed him. His life was sought for, as the partridge upon the mountain. When John heard that Jesus was doing many mighty works, he called to him two of his disciples and sent them to Him with this inquiry, "Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?" And Jesus said, "Go and tell John the things which ye do see and hear; the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the Gospel preached unto them." It was a direct answer to them. It bore more than the words could have borne to the heart of the discouraged man, -- the Christ had really come.

A Christian is one who reproduces the life of Christ, and that only is Christianity which produces the work of Christ. You do not alter a thing, or the nature of it, because you put a label on it. Christianity must prove itself. It must prove by its works that it is of God. The Church itself must prove its right to exist, and it does it only as it manifests the spirit of Christ, and reproduces His works. Men are asking that the Church today do as it did in the days of the Apostles. We need what they had, we want what they had; that when the critic and the opposer shall find fault with the work we are doing, they will not be able to do it successfully, because the man stands in our midst who has been blessed, aye, and lifted up, a new creature in Christ Jesus. I have a very firm conviction that any preacher, any church, any denomination that comes to the end of the year and then makes a report like this, "We have held our own," causes hell to have a jubilee. The orders are, "Forward, March." We are never to camp twice in the same place, get so far along each day that you can never see the ashes of your last camp fire. I believe what Gerald Massey wrote:

"It is weary waiting day by day,
And still the tide flows onward;
We build like coral grave on grave,
And raise a path that's sunward.
We are beaten back in many a fray,
But newer strength we borrow;
And where our vanguard camps today
Our rear shall march tomorrow."

We have no business standing still. We need, we must have, trophies every day to prove that we belong to Christ. The people are crying out, "Oh, for the days of the Fathers." Hear God's Word, "Say not that the former days were better than these, for thou inquirest not wisely concerning this." Today as ever in the past, faith is the victory. That is true, or God is not. Today we ought to be better able to take the journey that Abraham took. Nineteen centuries this side of Calvary, we ought to be better able to take our Isaacs by the hand, march three days away from our loved ones, from our position, from friends, not knowing where we are going, only knowing that we are obeying God; and when we come to the foot of the mount dismiss everything else, everybody else, and take our Isaac, build our own altar, raise the knife and obey God. Why? Because God gave His only Son, and the promise to us is, "If God spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?" His example counts. Your test is Africa. You may never see Africa. Your test is India. You may never see India. God asked for Isaac; and, when Abraham was willing to give what God asked for, he got his Isaac back. It was a test of his faith. As well as Elijah did, we ought to be able to do. By faith we are to go to some Tabor, bury our face in our hands, look out over the sea, ask God for rain, and then look out for it seven times, and the very fact that we are looking, shows that we are believing God. When you do not see anything else but a cloud as big as a man s hand, get up and hurry off home for fear you will be caught in the rain. Faith is .the victory today. We get up into the upper room, shut ourselves in with God, and shut everything else out, and stay, and stay, and stay, until God manifests Himself and things begin to shake, and our enemies have to acknowledge that God is with us of a truth. You may be lashed, your back furrowed, your friends, so-called, turn their backs on you, and still you can have the victory. We are living in prosperous times, spiritually, if we choose to make them so; and all the devils in hell or out of it, cannot interfere and rob you of your individual prosperity, because Jesus said, "Greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world." Praise His name! You can have the victory when everything around you is going to pieces. You can look around you, see a rocking earth, the moon turned to blood, and the heavens rolling together as a scroll, and know that you are secure, because your feet are on the Rock. God's Word says, "He that doeth these things shall never be moved." You have no right to show your back to the enemy. God has provided armor for everywhere but for the back. He knew that you did not have to turn your back to the devil, -- you are foreordained to be a conqueror.

The church is crying, "Oh, for Pentecostal power! Oh, for Apostolic scenes!" Back to God's Word! Back to the promise made to Joel and through him to us, and verified in the day of Pentecost! Back to believing God and cutting loose from the world! Back to the old mourners' bench! And there will be added unto the church every day, such as shall be saved. God still answers the prayer of the penitent sinner. I heard Dr. Godbey say that down South the colored people sing:

"When I was a mourner just like you,
I prayed, and I prayed, till I got through."

Thank God, there is such a thing today as praying through. God is faithful, Jesus is pleading, the Holy Ghost is on the scene all the time. and we can have everything that there is for us in the grace of God.

I like the second chapter of Acts. There I can find out what the promises are upon which they relied, to get down the glory and the fire. When I was put of God in the ministry, I wanted to know all I could about how to win souls. I always had a passion for souls. I bought books that would tell what other ministers did who won souls. I had in my library, Peck, Newell and Hervey, and wherever I saw anything that would help me I would get it. But one day I said, "I am going to read the Acts of the Apostles and see what these men did to win. What did they do on the day of Pentecost?" I read it on my knees, I prayed, I found out, and to this day I never go to a meeting but what I absolutely expect to find God true and that He will bless His Word, and His preacher, and give results. I was much helped in my early ministry by a minister named N. B. Durell, of the Philadelphia Conference. He was the pastor, at the time, of the Fitzwater St. M. E. Church, in Philadelphia. I was preaching for him one night, and in the midst of the sermon I stopped and said, "I wish you people would pray," and then I went on. After the sermon Brother Durell said to me, "Brother George, always remember, that whether you see it or not. the Holy Ghost is always faithful and is working." That has been a blessing to me ever since, and I have remembered it. Indeed, I have. God blessed it, and I have told it to other young men and it has blessed them..

Read what those men did: "And when they prayed" -- when they prayed; when they prayed, and held on. No matter what people did, they could not stop them from praying. If they put them in prison, they prayed; if they lashed them, they prayed; if they separated them from their friends, they still prayed. Everywhere they went they prayed. The devil cannot make anything so hard you cannot pray through. I have been surprised at the actions of preachers at camp meetings. When the altar call is made, first one goes out, then another goes out, or they stand around the fringe and visit while the battle for souls is going on, and the heavens are bending, and hell opposing. When a Colonel brought up his regiment and asked General Heinzelman where he should go in, the General said, "Go in anywhere; there is good fighting all along the line." There is a chance to win souls all along the line. Get ii) and work with God, and for God. If you cannot do anything else, PRAY. Pray! It is always in order to pray. "When they prayed the place was shaken." Hear it. "Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." "How shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher, and how shall one preach except he be sent?" The preaching of the Gospel and the call to preach are joined together with the salvation of souls.

They prayed and prayed until the place was shaken. Persecution did not drive them home, nor make them seek an easy place. Persecution drove them to prayer. I like to read about Hezekiah. When they sent him a letter, he spread it before the Lord. What did you do with the letter you received? Did it drive you to prayer? Hezekiah was one of God's wise men. He went to God with the letter and he prayed. He did not SAY prayers, he prayed, and God did answer. I go to my telephone and take down the receiver and say, "Please give me 4275 W," and I wait. Again I Say, "4275 W." No reply. I say, "Central, please get them for me if you can. It is important." Central calls them again by a loud ring. No reply. I hang up the receiver. Did I telephone? Not a bit of it! You never telephone unless you get the party at the other end, and you never pray unless you get the party at the other end.

"When thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." Some folks pray only when they get into trouble. If you would pray more, you would keep out of trouble. Get the thought of God from the Word; not from some book, but from the Word. It is the thought of God, and all you need. It is the one infallible Book of faith and practice. Shaken? Yes, jails and jailers. Did you ever pray until the place was so full of the presence of God that you were awe-struck? When in banishment, they prayed. Why, God bless you, there was a man one time swallowed by a whale, and he prayed, and prayed, until the place where he stayed was shaken, and he got out. God answered prayer. There is a wonderful power in prayer, faithful, believing prayer. We expect battles. I do not think much of mere home guards. The real soldier hunts the firing line; he expects to fight.

They were all filled with the Holy Ghost. They relied on the promises, they put in their checks and got them cashed. That is very simple, is. it not? I like to go to God and say, "Now, Lord, this is where you said it. This is your Word." Moses did that. He said, "Thou sayest." Bless God. Say, my brother, God does not disappoint me any these days; I take Him at His Word.

They were all filled. They got something. I never seek hilarious times, I am not seeking a big noise. There is no power in noise, and often after so much noise there is an awful sense of barrenness; but I am asking God for results that will honor the Holy Ghost, and make heaven glad. Some time ago I was in a meeting in Kansas and a Methodist preacher came to the altar. Before he came he said, "I once had the Holy Ghost, but I have lost the experience." He got what he came for, and the church would not have him and asked for his removal at the next conference. They moved him, and God made him a better place, and then in the next year God took him to an appointment in heaven where they all believe in the Holy Ghost. Results like that are better than noise. You may have results if you pay the price This was promised in the Book of Joel, and when the Holy Ghost came, Peter said, "This is that," and preachers and laymen received "that" -- the Holy Ghost. He is for you and as many as the Lord our God shall call. When there is failure today the church adds more machinery, another organization, more societies. There is no substitute for the Holy Ghost. Education will not do; diplomas will not do; money will not do. Tarry -- until.

Mrs. Van Cott was in a meeting, one time, and there was not the move on the meeting that she wanted to see. So after breakfast she went upstairs to her room. But before going she said to her hostess, "Do not call me for lunch, nor for dinner; do not call me at all; if you want to retire during the night, do not call me." She went to her knees and prayed, "Oh, God, I am here until this hardness is dispelled, until this opposition breaks." It had not broken at dinner time, nor at supper time, and she kept on praying; but she finally came down with a face shining, for God had given her the assurance that victory would come . and it did. The secret of victory is apostolic practice, prayer, faith, staying on your knees until -- Kneeology, rather than so much theology.

When we are abandoned unto God's plans, He will take care of us. The Apostles were not only abandoned unto God, and filled with the Holy Ghost -- they were witnesses. They spake the Word of God; they had messages from God. I never like anyone to come to me and ask, "Will you preach?" When they say, "You will preach at such a time," that is all right. I say, Amen! We are going to have all over this country a lot of people who will have Billy Sunday's methods, who will not have his messages. The God who never made two blades of grass alike never made two men alike; but God will give each man HIS message, and He will do it every time. The Apostles had a message, and it was God's Word. They were courageous witnesses and they spake boldly -- there was no uncertain sound. There are three characters in the Word of God that I especially like. One is Elijah. He came right out of the wilderness, out from the forests of Gilead, and walked right into the presence of the King, and, looking him right in the face, he said, "As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word." I like that kind of a man. I like John the Baptist. He stood before Herod and said, "You are living with another man's wife." I like Paul. They said he was a little fellow. His enemies said his speech was contemptible and his presence weak, but he can be chained to a soldier on that side, and a soldier on this side, and never tremble, but the people he talked to did the trembling. Such a man never apologizes for the truth; he lets God take care of it, and He always does. They had great power in witnessing and great grace. They had favor with the people. One reason why holiness is so unpopular in some places is because of the unwise methods of some preachers. These men of the apostolic age had favor with the people. Now you say, "Brother Kulp, you are contradicting your own words." I know they were lashed; I know they were stoned; but I know they had a hearing, and some folks got saved. We need more preachers who are courteous, who, while they preach a whole Gospel, they do it in the spirit of Jesus. Again, these men had fervent charity. The poor among them did not lack for anything. They parted with possessions, put it in one common fund, and took care of the poor in the church. No, I do not say that was for all time. It was for the occasion when they had come up to Jerusalem on a special occasion. They had fervent charity, because they had the Holy Ghost. When one gets the Holy Ghost he will be generous with his own money. It is so easy to say what the other man ought to do with his money, but this means the personal use of your own money. In my home my wife is my bookkeeper, and every dollar that comes in, no matter where it comes from, goes down in the book, and there is a column for the tithe and then the freewill offerings come from the balance. God first, Hallelujah! I am practicing what I preach, and am having a good time preaching the Word.

Separation. They were in the upper room. When you go with God you are cutting loose from everything else and everybody else. It is God first all the time. God answers when you are separated. Stay in the upper room until you hear from heaven. I think that now some folks are saying, "Brother Kulp, all those things you are talking of are from the Book of Acts." Have you ever thought that the BOOK of Acts has no ending? There are two books in the Bible that have no end. One is the Book of Acts, and the other is the Book of James. The reason Why? I will tell you. God intended that the Book of James should continue in the practice of the Church. If you do get sick, practice the Book of James. John Wesley said that for the first three centuries the only materia medica the Church had was the Book of James. But when the Church and State were united under Constantine, and the Church was rich and courted by the world, then they departed from Apostolic practice, and precepts, and the power of God left them; and all the wealth of the church, and all the fine churches erected, have never brought back the power the Fathers possessed. The Book of Acts never closed because God expected them to go on. Today, to meet the emergency, we get together and adopt resolutions; but God in the Word tells us that it is Acts on the part of the Church that will meet the occasion -- acts such as are recorded in the fifth Gospel. We need apostolic courage today. Brother Hems, an old Bible School boy, was preaching a straight Gospel in a Western town. He had offended some of the would-be bosses in the town and twenty-seven of them marched up the aisle one night and the leader said to him, "There are four trains on the Union Pacific through this town every day, and we do not care which you take, but you must leave." And that boy, now with God in heaven, shouted out, "Meeting here tomorrow night, at seven o'clock." Did God own him? I dedicated a holiness church in that town the very next year. Praise God, the more God's people are afflicted, the more they grow and are multiplied. O beloved, when you have the Holy Ghost, the only intense desire you have is to be just where He wants you. If you are in the midst of a big revival, and He tells you to pack up and go to the desert, you are willing to go. And, going, you find that He has made no mistake; there is a man who wants to know, and you have the privilege of winning him, and then you are caught up by the Holy Ghost, and put down at your next appointment all ready for work. Thank God, He is the same yesterday, today and forever. Amen!

Chapter 13

THE CROSS OF CHRIST

 Gal. 6:14 -- "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ"

Christianity without the cross of Christ is a misnomer. Christianity without Christ is a farce. The symbol of Christianity is the cross. Men recognize this in various ways -- some by putting the cross on church steeples, others by wearing it on a watch chain. Strange to relate, there was a fashion that sprang out of the devotion to the cross. The Moorish Mohammedans wore smooth faces. They were bitter in their attacks upon Christians, and often when the Christians gathered for defense, they were unable to recognize each other. To make the distinction between the Moor and the Christian, the Christian men wore a mustache, and an imperial right on the chin, and that mustache and imperial was in the form of a cross, and when the Moorish Mohammedan began his attack, the men who wore the sign of the cross distinguished each other by it, and gathered for defense.

I want to call your attention to the distinctive, definite phraseology of the text: "The cross of The Lord Jesus Christ." There have been other crosses. The Lord told Peter the kind of death that he should die, being carried whither he would not, and the time came when he faced the cross; but deeming himself as being unworthy of dying as did his Lord, he asked them to crucify him with the head downward. I look back to that cross. It is not any more to us than the cross of a martyr. I admire his unflinching courage; I admire his fortitude, but that is not the cross to which the text refers.

Crosses have been quite common. The Jew in his blindness said, as he demanded the death of Christ, "Let His blood be on our heads." Whatsoever a man sows, that will he reap. They sowed one cross but they challenged Omnipotence. When Titus gathered the legions of Rome around Jerusalem the city fell, and Titus could not find wood enough to make the crosses on which to nail the Jews. They sowed a cross. They reaped crosses.

There is another cross. There is a penitent thief hanging on it, and he prays, "Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy Kingdom." It took a stretch of faith, surely that did. Yonder he hangs as a criminal. Yonder he hangs, dying the death of a malefactor. But somehow or other, this poor dying penitent sinner sees the God-man and he cries, "Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom." And he got the answer, "Today thou shalt be with me in Paradise."

I am interested in that cross. It tells me of a man plucked as a brand from the burning, to shine radiantly with burning luster in the crown of the Christ who is dying by his side. But I do not want you to get your eyes on that cross. The text says, "The cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." I do not wonder the poet sings:

"When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.

See from His head, His hands, His feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down!
Did e'er such love and sorrow meet,
Or thorns compose so rich a crown!"

Aye, he may well ask it. I want to call your attention to the middle cross. Men glory in their wealth, but wealth takes wings to itself and flies away. You can never take wealth with you into the world beyond. Men glory in fame; men glory in learning. This man of my text with this firm determination had the learning; this man was of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, a member of the Sanhedrin. He had been fourteen years at the feet of Gamaliel. He puts the learning, puts all the past behind him, puts away ancestry and everything else, and says -- mark you he was a Jew, -- "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." In the cross of Christ, to the Jew a stumbling block, to the Greek foolishness, but to the man that believes it, "the power of God unto salvation."

Men need to get a vision of the Cross. Oh, there are many things that are crowding it upon us! The world allures. When a man once gets a vision of the cross, everything else will pale into utter insignificance. A vision of the Cross, . and all your horizon will be filled. All else will shrink in the presence of the Cross of Christ. I do not wonder at that sanctified old tinker, John Bunyan, making his Pilgrim say, when he gets to the cross and stands looking thereon as his burden rolls off his back and down into the sepulchre,

"Blest cross! blest sepulchre! Yea, rather blessed be,
The Man that hung thereon and died for me!"

Say, beloved, it is a wonderful thing to get a vision of the cross. Men are after gold; they are after the honors of the world, after the things that perish. Give my soul a vision of the Christ above all this old world can offer. "Oh, the cross has wondrous glory!" Here everything else fades. The martyred McKinley lay dying in Buffalo, and they say that in the last hour he quoted,

"Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee,
E'en though it be a cross
That raiseth me;
Still all my song shall be
Nearer, my God, to Thee."

Not your Unitarian idea of that hymn, -- McKinley saw more than what the Unitarian sees; he saw the God-Man. Did you ever think of it? Jesus Christ was God manifest in the flesh. As McKinley lay there, with his own body lacerated with the bullet of the assassin, and with an experience born back at an old-fashioned Methodist altar, he had the vision of the Christ.

"E'en though it he a cross
That raiseth me."

Garfield, another martyred Christian President, was dying the victim of the assassin's bullet. They took him from Washington to Long Branch, and in a cottage there he lay dying. The Surgeon General of the United States is there doing all that is possible for the dying man. Out in an adjoining room is his wife, whom he familiarly calls "Crete," and she begins to sing. He says, "Barnes, push the door open a little wider. Isn't that glorious? That is Crete singing!" And what was she singing?

"Guide me, O thou great Jehovah,
Pilgrim through this barren land;
I am weak, but thou art mighty;
Hold me by Thy powerful hand;

When I tread the verge of Jordan,
Bid my anxious fears subside;
Bear me through the swelling current;
Land me safe on Canaan's side;

Songs of praises
I will ever give to Thee."

Oh, thank God, when you have a vision of the Cross you can face death, knowing that you are held in the hollow of His hands. To the child of God the cross of Jesus is an inspiration.

Here go the troops of Napoleon, Europe's chief butcher. The engineers told him there was no way across the Alps, and he said, "There shall be no Alps." He expressed a determination that no matter what it cost, he would scale the Alps, get to the other side, and down into sunny Italy he would carry the Lily of France. He made his boast good. He marches up the mountain side; he gets near the summit, and an avalanche starts. it comes rolling down the mountain side and, striking a little drummer boy, sends him hurling downwards. The little fellow holds on to his drum, until he stops at the ledge of rocks. The soldiers are marching by and they see what has happened. The little fellow has a heart cry, and he expresses it with his drum beat. Many a time has he beat that "relief call" for others; now he beats it for himself, but nobody comes. The hearts of the soldiers are touched, but they dare not move out of the ranks without orders from Napoleon, and he leaves the little fellow to die. What is one life to a man who sacrificed thousands of lives to gratify his ambition! Then the little fellow beats the death march, and it is his own death march. He knows that he is left to die. You and I were marching along life's pathway, and an avalanche of sin came tumbling down the mountain side, and rolled us down to where no human arm. could reach us. But the Christ of Calvary, the Christ of the Cross, He saw and "O amazing love, He flew to our relief."

"With pitying eyes, the Prince of Peace
Beheld our helpless grief;
He saw, and O amazing love,
He ran to our relief;
Down from the shining courts above
With joyful haste lie sped,
Entered the grave in mortal flesh,
And dwelt among the dead."

He drew us with the cords of a man. In our need He reached down -- until He reached us in our lost condition, and lifted us back and made us at one with God. This cross is to me an inspiration, for it tells me that the Christ who died thereon died in my stead, and in yours. Archimedes said -- wondrous old philosopher that he was, he knew the power of the lever -- he said, "If I had a fulcrum I could lift the earth to heaven." What .Archimedes longed to do, Jesus did. His lever was the love of God; the fulcrum was yonder hill called Golgotha; and there in His own humanity He pressed down on the lever until He raised our earth, till men born of this sin-cursed earth can sing a higher song than angels ever sang, for they have been lifted up on a plane above that which angels ever knew. They have felt not the creative power alone, but the redeeming power of the love of God. I am believing in the cross of Christ. I am believing in the Cross because it reveals the love of God. The poet sings, "Love divine, all love excelling." The cross shows us the heart of God. I heard a good thing this morning of a young man who exchanged his mother's heart for his desires, and as he cut out her heart and was running away with it, he stumbled and fell, and the heart of the mother said, "Son, did you hurt yourself?" That was a mother's heart; but here is the heart of God. I have said it again and again; that parable that the men who divided the Bible into chapters, and put a title above the pages, and called it the "Parable of the Prodigal Son," I do not believe that Jesus ever taught it with that idea; I believe it was to show us, not the depths to which the prodigal went, but to show us the heart of the Father. It was the Father who was looking out for the prodigal; it was the thought of the Father's house that drew him back home. it was the Father, who stood looking for the boy to come back. It was the Father who ran to meet him. It was the Father who so smothered him with kisses that he could not get out his confession. It was the Father who had the robe and the ring and the shoes, and it was the Father who ordered the feast. It was the Father who said, "This, my son, was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found." That parable shows us the heart of God. The heart is the seat of the affections and out of the heart comes love. I can read the thought of God in the starry heavens; I can read the wisdom of God in the passage of the planets; but it takes Calvary to show the heart of God, the love of God.

What we need to see and know is one who has a heart of love. I believe in the wisdom of God, the power of God. What we want is to know the love that He commended when He gave His Son to die in our stead. How can we glory in the Cross? Because Jesus bore it for me and for you. In our place condemned He stood, bought our pardon with His blood. Hear that crowd at the Cross. "Give us Barabbas?" "No!" "Well, what has this man done? I have examined Him and I find no fault in Him,. I will set Him free." "No, no; give us Barabbas!" And Barabbas was given to the rabble, while Jesus goes to the cross. Yonder He hangs. The blood is running down over His face, over His hands, His feet. But here comes a man up the road, and he walks deliberately up the hill and stands before the sufferer. It is Barabbas. "Stranger, I do not know who you are nor from whence you came, but there is one thing I do know, you are dying in my stead." You and I can get our eyes on that cross, and there is one thing that we do know -- and if we do not know it, God help us to get the knowledge -- He died for us; He died in our stead.

That cross is an inspiration to every child of God because it tells of the spirit of sacrifice. Here are the old signers of the Declaration of Independence. They are coming up and putting their names to that document and they say, "Every man who puts his name here knows he is risking his life." But every man there puts down his name. One wit among them said, "We'll all have to hang together or we will hang separately." They risked their lives when they signed that paper. Jesus did more than this. He came, knowing that He would die. He always had the shadow of the cross on Him; it fell on His very cradle; it followed Him all through life. He steadfastly set His face toward Jerusalem. He said, "I am going up to be delivered into the hands of the chief priests and the scribes, and to die." Men could not apprehend this, nor the angels. There is a celebrated painting called "The Angel of the Cross." The Christ has been taken down. The body lies over there in Joseph's tomb. Here is a crown of thorns lying on the ground, and there is a nail that has been drawn from His hand. There is the bloody thing lying on the ground, and the angel picks it up, but does not understand it. He picks a thorn out of that crown of thorns. He presses it against his thumb. He cannot understand it. Angels desired to look into it. It was only desire and it never was satisfied. But you and I stand at the very same cross . we look up into the very same face, and we say, "He died for me! He died for me!" I do not wonder that the man who met the Christ on the Damascus Road said, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ." How can we glory in the Cross? The love of Christ constraineth. He loved us and gave Himself for us.

When you get the spirit of sacrifice that impelled the Christ toward the cross (He dipped His fingers in His own blood and wrote, God So loved the world) ; when you get that touch of love that urged Him to the Cross, constraining you to go out after others, and to die if need be for others, then you get the spirit that will stand you good until angels wrap their white wings around you and take you up to your Father's house; and that is the very spirit we need, and must have, if ever we reach the world that needs to see Jesus in us. When the love of Christ constraineth in this manner, then you have something that will last throughout eternity.

The Cross was a symbol of sympathy, and sympathy meant something. The root meaning of that word "sympathy" is "to suffer with," and Jesus suffered with. He gave Himself; He knew that His coming meant death for Himself. q hey have a sample of the sculptor's art in Westminster Abbey -- the Princess Alice. Her little boy was dying of diphtheria. The physician said, "Do not kiss that little fellow; to do so would be fatal." The boy was rolling with delirium, and the mother came near and put her hand on the fevered brow. Her hands were so cold; the chill was creeping near her heart as she watched that darling boy dying. When the cold hand touched that brow it seemed for the moment that the fever was rebuked, and the eyes of the little one looked on the mother's face. He said, "Mamma, kiss me," and she stooped down and kissed him, holding him in her arms of love. But she took the disease and died. Gladstone went into the House of Parliament and told the story of Princess Alice's death. He said, "The doctors said she must not kiss the child; it meant death for her; but that cry from the heart of that boy touched the mother's heart." And Gladstone said, "Where is the mother that would not have died?" But hear this: Jesus Christ came and He knew He would die. He knew He must go to the cross, and He went deliberately. Oh, men and women, for whom Jesus died, you who are bearing the name of Jesus, never shun the cross. I believe what that Scotch saint Rutherford said, "There was nobody to get under it but Him." When He hung thereon others left Him; two or three were near, three Marys, but His disciples stood afar off. But Rutherford said, "When a cross comes to us, He always comes along with it," and he says, "the heavier end for me." There never was a cross came to you but He came with it. "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ."

Now another thought before I close, and that is this: I glory in the cross because I can live in its shadow and be safe. It is a symbol of salvation. Thy sins, which are many, are all forgiven thee. In the shadow of that cross the promise comes, "Today shalt thou be with Me in Paradise." Look at that blood. "The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin." Go away back into Exodus. Read it: "The soul that sinneth it shalt die." "The wages of sin is death." Here is a bill of charges against the whole race. It was a custom in Eastern countries when one was indebted, that when the bill was discharged the creditor would take the bill of indebtedness which he held and nail it over the door of the residence of the debtor. The bill would be receipted and, being placed over the door, it meant that the debtor was free. The handwriting was against us. Sinai's rolling, thundering, rumbling tones, declared "the soul that sinneth it shall die." "The wages of sin is death." It was the handwriting of the law that was against us; but when they nailed the Christ to the Cross, on His hand were the ordinances that were against us, and they drove the nails through His hand and ever since, beloved, we have been free because He paid the price. He took them out of the way, nailing them to the cross in His own blood. I glory in the cross because it reaches back to Eden, goes way back to the very gates of Paradise, goes back to Paradise lost, comes down by Sinai, comes down by Golgotha, on beyond Joseph's tomb, away down to the end of the race, until we come to Paradise regained. It covers all our sorest needs. Oh, when I see some precious souls, how they are burdened, how they cry, saying, "I have sinned against God and God has given me up," I feel like saying, "Get in the shadow of the Cross. There is deliverance, there is safety under the blood." Away back in old Egypt God said, "When I see the blood, I will pass over you;" and today, under the shadow of the Cross of Christ, there is a Man who is a shelter from the storm, a shadow from the heat, and men dwell there in perfect safety. I thank God for the cross of Jesus Christ by which I am crucified unto the world and the world is crucified unto me. Have you taken refuge there? Are you hiding behind the cross? Hell has no centimeter guns that can pierce your hiding place. Nothing can reach you through the blood. Has the devil got you discouraged? Are you crying for help? There is a Helper near at hand, and He came by way of the Cross. One sight of the cross and your soul will be at perfect liberty. Rutherford says, "There have been thousands of heads pillowed on the bosom of Jesus, but there is always room for you." Will you get the thought -- there is room for you?

"His arms the whole creation reach,
So bounteous is the store,
Enough for each, enough for all,
Enough for evermore."

Chapter 14

THE OPTIMISM OF FAITH

 Gen. 15:16 -- "In the fourth generation they shall come hither again."

The man whose eyes are open hath said: he hath said, which heard the words of God, which saw the vision of the Almighty. -- Num. 24:3, 4

Here was a man who could not get away from delivering the message that God would have him to give. He loved the wages of unrighteousness, but he was facing a situation that God controlled, and God gave him something which gladdens our hearts today. Contrary to the circumstances that followed this man, the man who gets his vision from God and whose eyes are open, will be the man who will prosper. History proves it; the past proves it; the Word of God proves it, and man's present experiences, uniting with the Word of God and with the history of the past, prove it to be true.

Columbus sailed westward, week after week -- home, friends, kings and land left behind -- but he had a vision. Others begged him. to turn back, but he cried, "Sail on." Again they gathered round him, threatened mutiny, but he said, "Give me twenty-four hours more and then if we do not see land we will turn back." This man saw something that they failed to see. They might have seen it on the bosom of the ocean where the branches of trees were floating, and in the air where the birds were flying. He knew the land was not very far off. He was observant; his eyes were open and he cried, "Sail on!" And they reached the land.

A boy sat by the hearth in his mother's home. His mother lifted the teakettle over the fire and bye and bye it began to boil. The steam rushed out of the spout, and the lid of the kettle began to dance up and down. The boy watched it, and learned that there was an expansive power in steam, and out of his observation came the steam engine.

A man saw two pieces of metal lying crosswise on the floor. Some one had thrown the leg of a frog across the two pieces of metal, and he saw the frog's leg twitch. The man's eyes were open, and the result was the battery that was named after him -- Galvani.

Sir R. Brown wanted to know how to swing a bridge across the Niagara River two hundred and fifty feet above the rapids. One day he was out walking and he saw a spider's web attached to a branch and the other end was attached to another branch. His eyes were open, and there he saw and did learn the principle on which he built the Suspension bridge on which you go over the Niagara today.

Newton was lying on the ground and saw an apple fall from a tree. Apples had been falling ever since man knew what apples were. What is there in that? But this man's eyes were open, and he said to himself, "Why did not that apple fall upwards instead of down to the ground?" And he discovered gravitation, because his eyes were open.

If there are any people on top of ground who ought to keep their eyes open it is the children of God. We see farther than others. We have the vision of the unseen. We stand in the midst of the darkness where the thunders are rolling, when the face of black clouds are illuminated by the flashes of lightning; and we know that on the other side the sun is shining and the clouds and storm will soon pass away. We stand on the temporal side of the unseen and we know that beyond it God lives, and His eyes are upon the righteous and His ears are open to their cry. We are in touch with the Omnipotent. We are facing eternity and, because our eyes are open, we march with a swing of victory in our souls, and shout over things the world cannot understand.

Faith makes a man an optimist. The man who believes God cannot be discouraged. He hears the Master talking to him and, as he listens to Him, there comes the comforting words, "I am with thee even to the end." Now, the devil can launch his brigades and his divisions and his legions, but this man sees the other side and shouts the victory. With Mrs. Browning we say,

"Speak to me my Savior, low and sweet,
From out the hallelujahs sweet and low;
Lest I should faint and fall and miss Thee so."

O beloved, He will speak to you; He will speak to you if you are united to Him by faith in His Word. He will speak to you and give you lessons, and give you words, and He will give you visions and make you a victor, and the world cannot understand it.

Here stands the man Abraham with whom our first text is connected. He has no child of his own, and he is the multimillionaire of the East. To whom shall all this wealth go? To his steward? God says to him, "Abraham, thy seed shall possess the land. They may be carried into a strange land, but in four hundred years, in the fourth generation, they shall come hither." Hear it! Jesus said, "Abraham saw my day and was glad." If Abraham could stand there and believe God -- no child, no seed -- but could look down and see the Holy Land inhabited by his seed and they as innumerable as the sand on the seashore, by the naked word of God -- what ought we to do, nineteen centuries this side of Calvary, nineteen centuries this side of Pentecost? Our faith ought to be enkindled until a blaze of Gospel glory would sweep this old earth and the isles of the sea, until heaven and earth and hell knew there are some folks who are really believing God and are acting as though they were.

Man had God's own Word. Years roll on. Here is Isaac; here are the twelve patriarchs; here are their descendants, here they are down in Egypt. They are multiplied, increasing and mighty. Egypt's noblemen are afraid. A king arises who knows not Joseph. The task master is set over them, the lash in his hand. They are to make bricks and to make them without straw. They are to rise with the morning light and work until the sun goes down; but hear it, they have the promise, "that in the fourth generation God will bring them out, hither to their own land." Taskmaster, lay on the lash; kill all the babies; but though you rise in the majesty of your strength and scorn these slaves, they have the promise of {he covenant-keeping God, and every time the sun goes down Israel may say, "We are getting nearer the time when we will walk out." Every time they put their feet down they put them on the promises of God, and when they go out they go rich with the spoil of the Egyptians, and richer yet with the promise of the land that flows with milk and honey.

The God who promised that He would take you through, no matter what may befall, is the same today, He will see you through until your soul shall be gladdened one day in the city where the sun never goes down. If I had my choice, I would rather he the son of a poor Christian man, rich with the promises of God, than to be the son of any millionaire on earth who did not know God. I would rather lean on God's Word than on any man' s money.

They had their eyes open on God's Word. "In the fourth generation they shall come hither." Just before Joseph died, he said, "Do not bury me here in this land, for God will visit thee, and we shall move out to the land He hath promised." And they embalmed his body, and laid him aside. I can imagine that every time an Israelite saw the embalmed body he said, "We are going out." Say, if dead dried bones can encourage folks, then bless God, I am encouraged by the Word of the living God. Hallelujah. I have the best of the Israelite; I am looking to the Son of the living God. My eyes are open and they are fixed on Him.

The head of a Bible School went out one day and his enemies got after him (the devil does not like Bible Schools), but he did not tremble any. One of his students who was with him trembled, and the Head of the School pitied him and he prayed, "Lord, open the eyes of this young man." And his eyes were opened and he saw that the hilltops all around were covered with horsemen of fire and chariots of fire. Some folks could not get their eyes open, except to see the Syrians, the chariots of the enemy; but the man who has his eyes open is so enraptured by the vision that he will not see anything but victory. Are your eyes open? . Anoint thine eyes with eye salve that thou mayest see.

Some folks are so narrow in their vision that one man can fill their horizon; but when you get your feet on the promises, and your soul filled with the Holy Ghost, you get a horizon so big that nobody can fill it but the Son of God; and He will fill it, and He does fill it. Hallelujah! There never was a man so big and apparently so necessary to the church of the living God but when that person is taken away God has some one to fill his place. I am very much in sympathy with the woman who went to the funeral of a man who had been a splendid character, and as the minister was descanting upon the merits of the departed, he said, "We never shall see his like again." And a pious old sister said, "Thank God, that is a lie." God will always have someone who has the vision, and who believes His Word and lives it.

You may have the Spirit of Jesus. Some people have Jesus with them and they worry, but they need not. "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee." I have read of some folks who had Jesus with them in the past. One day He was preaching one of those wonderful discourses of His, when the people stayed so long and were so far from home and had nothing to eat, and they grew hungry and weary. Jesus had compassion on them, and said to one of His students, "Give ye them to eat." They said, "Master, how shall WE feed so many?" That was their mistake -- they left Jesus out. "What have you?" "Why, Lord, there is a little boy here who has a few loaves and two fishes, but what are they among so many? That boy has been here before and he knew you would preach long, so he brought his lunch; he was so determined he would stay and hear to the end." And Jesus said, "Bring that boy to me." And the little fellow handed over all he had to Jesus -- not a whimper, either; he was glad to do it, -- and oh, how it did multiply and grow in those dear hands until five thousand were fed besides the women and the children! I really think there must have been about fifteen or twenty thousand there, for where you find one man at church today you will find three women.

Oh, do keep your eyes on Jesus! There was a woman one time who scraped the bottom of the flour barrel. She wondered and said, "This is the last. Elijah will have to go and board somewhere else." But every time she scraped the bottom of the barrel, God heard it, and the flour increased, and the old prophet stayed there two years and a half. The men, the women, the boys and girls, who are in touch with God can stay where they ought to be until God opens other doors and says, "go." Some time ago I got down on my marrow bones and asked God to make all my plans and, Glory to God, He does it! Glory to God! How my soul is blessed as I sit at this typewriter and take off these sermons, when i remember how God has opened doors too many for me to enter! When God redeems a man and gives him the Holy Ghost, He will plan for him, and all the devils in hell or out of it cannot smash those plans until God's purpose is accomplished. All things work together, not will work, but "work" now, for good to them that love God. I have a Quaker friend, a preacher brother, with whom I delight to work in a meeting. He never writes a report; he never publishes a slate; but all the time he is busy, going to every point of the compass, as God opens the way. And he gets blessed, and is a blessing to others. Praise the Lord! My God shall supply all your needs. Do you believe that? I do. Some one says, "Till I get in a storm." That reminds me of an old lady who was telling of a time when her horse ran away, and how frightful it was. She was asked if she trusted in God. She said she did until the harness broke, then she held on like a beaver. "Paul, all the angels of heaven leaned over the battlements of the skies as you testified in Jerusalem, and I heard every word that you said." "As thou hast testified of me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness also at Rome." His enemies sought to kill him but I think Paul was much encouraged and said, "They cannot do it. I have an appointment to witness at Rome." He starts out under guard, and is on a vessel fourteen days and nights and in the midst of Euroclydon. The masts go by the board, and they throw over some of the cargo, and undergird the ship with ropes. I hear the sailors say, "We are going to the bottom; we never were in a storm like this before." But Paul says, "I have an appointment from God to go to Rome, and we shall all get to land. You had better eat something, for you have been some time without meat." I see him again. They are through the surf, and there is rain. They gather chips to make a fire. Paul is that kind of a preacher, that he will not let others do all the work; he gathers some wood, too, and a snake comes out, and bites him on the arm. The heathen say, "This fellow is a murderer, who has escaped the sea, but vengeance will not let him live;" but Paul is due in Rome and he shakes the viper off and feels no harm.

When God gives you a through ticket to Rome, He will see that you get there. I do not know where God wants you, but I do know this, He will get you there if you are faithful to Him. Do not doubt God's Word. Here is the Word to which you may anchor. They could not kill Jesus; they tried to, but they failed until "the hour" had come. lie surrendered His right to live. They killed all the children under two years in His native town, but God saw to it that the Son was safe. Why? He had an appointment to the CROSS. His parents take Him down into Egypt until all that sought His life were dead; then He comes back, and in due time -- God's time -- He takes up His ministry. They would stone Him, but He passes through them, on His way to the appointment on the Hill. It may be that you have an appointment to a cross, but remember, on the other side of that cross there is a crown. I like that hymn, "He's taking me through, however I'm tried; His tender care is never denied." If you will go with Him, He will open your eyes and you will have the plan to work to, and God to work with you.

God gives present victory to all those who will trust and believe and obey. The Epistle to the Philippians was written under circumstances which to some, perhaps to many, it would have been hard to write as did Paul. Only three miles from the headsman's block, but it is joy unspeakable and full of glory. Do you know where John got that wonderful revelation that is the last' of the record that God gives to men? Out there on the Isle of Patmos to which he had been banished by the cruel edict of Rome's emperor. There Jesus talks to him, and he sees things no other ever saw before, but that you and I shall see if we are faithful.

John Bunyan wrote Pilgrim's Progress in Bedford Jail. He was there twelve years. He might have gone out a free man if he would have given his promise not to preach any more, but this he would not do. He had a blind daughter who would visit him in his loneliness. The jailer said to him one day, "You may go and see your wife," and Bunyan went home. After a little he said, "Wife, God tells me to go back to jail. I do not know why, but I am going." And when he got back the jailer said, "Why did you come back?" He replied, "God told me to." Soon after he got back the town authorities came to see if the jailer was faithful. When they were gone, the jailer said to Bunyan, "You can come and go whenever you want to. I know you are all right, and you know better than I do." Beloved, if God wants you ill jail, you are out of place outside of it. If God wants you in the way that leads to the cross, you are wrong anywhere else. Do you know where Rutherford was when be wrote those precious letters that you find today in "The Garden of Spices?" He was in jail; and when he wrote his letters to his friends, he would head them not from the jail, but from "God's Palace in Aberdeen." He declared at one time that the stones in the walls glistened like sapphires because of God's presence.

"Prisons will palaces prove,
If Jesus will dwell with us there."

One day a smart little boy -- and you know there is nothing so smart as a little boy, unless it is a little girl -- said to his sister, "Can you spell water with three letters?" Of course she could not. Then he spelled it for her, i-c-e. When one gets where he can see God, he will find that every promise in the Bible is spelled v-i-c-t-o-r-y, -- victory over sin, over the world, the flesh, and the devil. "Oh, Brother Kulp, I have tried everything and I am defeated." Quit "trying everything," and believe God. Faith is the victory.

There was a meeting held some time ago, and a lady belonging to the M. E. Church South came to the altar, and got the blessing, and acted as though she did. Her sister was also seeking the blessing, and she went to her and said, "Get to where you can do nothing else, and let God do the rest." God did it. When Israel came to the Red Sea, there were mountains on either side, and Pharaoh's army in the rear. They said, "What shall we do? We are all dead men." Moses said, "Stand still, and see the salvation of God; for the Egyptians whom ye see this day, ye shall see no more forever." Stand still and let God work. He is working now. Trust Him and know for yourself.

I heard them sing, "Jesus is a Friend of mine," and when they sang that my heart almost broke, for I remembered the time when I was not His, though He was still my Friend, and I wounded Him many a time. But He is a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother, and I know it now. I want to ask you, How many have a vision of God? How many accept of His Word, are getting promises cashed? You know beyond the shadow of a doubt that you are the Lord's, and the Holy Ghost abides, you being a temple of the King? We often sing, "I walk and I talk with the King." Is that your own precious experience now?

Chapter 15

SONS OF GOD

 I John 3:2 -- "Now are we the sons of God."

When Jesus was initiated into the priesthood " there came a voice from heaven saying, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." If we read the third chapter of Luke, where the genealogy of Jesus is recorded, we find it begins, "And Jesus Himself began to be about thirty years of age," the age at which the priesthood began with the Jews; and then it goes Or] back over a long list until we read, "Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God." Again, we read in the Word that when God created the worlds and spake them into existence, the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy.

I am not surprised that Jesus, the sinless One, He who knew no sin, virgin born, conceived of the Holy Ghost, that He should be called the Son of God. It does not surprise me that Adam who was made in the image of God, the man whom God looked upon and pronounced perfect, that he should be called the son of God. I can appreciate it without surprise when I read that the angels who kept their estate, who stood out their probation, are called the sons of God; but that we, born in sin and conceived in iniquity, sinners by actual transgression, that we should be called the sons of God surprises me, and I can join in the song,

"O 'twas love, 'twas wondrous love,
The love of God to me,
That brought my Savior from above,
To die on Calvary."

Some time ago a man of God was preaching in a Southern City, and in his sermon he said, "If you are the worst man that ever lived, God will save you if you give Him a chance." In the congregation was a man who was looked upon by the church as the worst man in the community. All had given him up. He was the terror of professing Christians. They avoided him because of his wicked tongue, and his hatred of everything good. But one morning that man heard the preacher make that statement. He rose up, went up the aisle, looked the preacher in the face, and said to him, "Preacher, do you say, and do you believe it. that God will save the worst man in the world?" The preacher said to him, "I pledge you my word as a Christian man, that if you will get down on your knees and ask God to save you for Jesus' sake, He will do it, and you will know that you are saved." Down on his knees he went, and in the presence of that great audience made up of many who knew him as such a wicked man, he cried at the top of his voice, "O God, I am the wickedest man in all the world! Save me, for Jesus' sake! Save me, O God, for Jesus' sake!" The audience was breathless and sympathizing and praying. In a little while that man heard from heaven; God saved him, and he praised God and shouted until all heard and knew that a change had been wrought. So the wickedest man in town was saved, and he lived his salvation and became a power for righteousness. Once he was a rebel, an alien, now, "a son of God."

If you go to Boston, they ask, "How much does he know?" If you go to New York, they ask, "How much is he worth?" If you go to Philadelphia, they ask, "Who were his ancestors?" But here my text declares, "now are we the sons of God." Once we were sinners, with no hope, no help in ourselves, outcasts, but now are we the sons of God. It is a present experience, not a theory, but a consciousness of God in the heart, so that we say with the Apostle, "For to me to live is Christ," "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" -- a child of God, if a child then an heir, heir of God and joint heir with Jesus Christ. That is enough to keep me shouting for a week. now, in this dispensation of the Holy Ghost, we are the sons of God. Good-bye, ancestry, good-bye Hebrew of the Hebrews, good-bye tribe of Benjamin, I am now a son of God, adopted into the family, and have the witness of the Holy Spirit. No wonder the poet sings,

"How happy every child of grace
Who knows his sins forgiven!
'This earth,' he cries, 'is not my place,
I seek my place in heaven,
A country far from mortal sight,
Yet oh, by faith I see,
The land of rest, the saints' delight,
A heaven prepared for me.'"

Have you, my hearer, this witness? Can you prove your seed? When Ezra led the Jews back to Jerusalem, there were some who could not prove their seed. They had come by the way of adultery with the world. There had been intermarriages, and the children could not talk the language, so they were put to one side until the matter could be looked into. Can you prove your seed? Do you know when you were adopted into the family? Do you know when, and where? I had an elect lady in my church one time, . and as she and wife and I were riding together one day she said to me, "Oh, Brother Kulp, you do annoy me so with your preaching." I asked, "Why, sister, how do I annoy you?" "Well," she replied, "you preach that unless you know when you were converted, and where you were converted, you never were. Now I do not know the time when I did not love God, I always have." She had been trained by a godly mother, and never knew the blight of sin as many do. I have met one other like her. Baxter, the author of The Saints' Rest, has left on record that back beyond where memory runs he gave his heart to God. Dr. Wentworth, an old Methodist divine, left it on record that he was saved in remote childhood, and had no recollection of time and place. We believe him, and yet I am quite confident that nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand know the time and place.

"There is a spot to me more dear,
Than native vale or mountain;
A spot for which affection's tear
Flows grateful from its fountain.

'Tis not where kindred souls abound,
Tho that is almost heaven;
But where I first my Savior found,
And knew my sins forgiven."

Sons of God have all the characteristics of Jesus. First, they are born of the Spirit. So was Jesus. The angel said to the virgin, "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God." Listen to the words of Jesus, "Except ye be born of the Spirit, ye cannot enter into the Kingdom of God." Ye must be born again -- born from above. You and I may not understand it. "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: So is every one that is born of the Spirit."

They are not of the world, even as Jesus was not of the world. Do you remember the prayer of Jesus for the disciples and for us? "I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world." Pay attention to that. How much was He of the world? The Book says, "Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God." The greatest hindrance to the cause of Christ today is that the world and the church are yoked up together. The supper room takes the place of the upper room. When a church is built nowadays it is built with a kitchen and ranges, and pans, and dining rooms, with the view of courting the folks whose god is their belly. The church is astray on this line today because the ministry at large is catering to the appetite of the crowd instead of to their spiritual needs. I was in a church some time ago where the choir was composed of young folks who were dressed in the styles of the world, -- short dresses, high heels, low necks, bare arms, and they called themselves, "Holiness." Good Lord, deliver us from that kind! It will pave hell six feet deep with professors. The good Lord did remove that pastor and his wife who were catering to the passions of the world, and I have since held a revival there when the altars were stained with penitential tears, and members of the church and sinners wept their way to God. No wonder they have curtains before the choir lofts today; they have to have them for decency's sake. I know a lady who enjoys the blessing of Holiness seven days in the week. She is the wife of a man who is the owner of a large department store, and when he buys his goods he will see a dress that he thinks his wife would look well in, so he takes it home and gives it to her. She looks at it, puts it on, and then takes some dress goods and makes something that will cover up the open space in front. Her husband calls the improvement "Holiness curtains." I have been in churches where I thought a few holiness curtains would be a blessing. "Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord and I will be your God and ye shall be my people." This is still in the Book. For fear some may wonder where this is, I will say it is in Second Corinthians, sixth chapter, 17th and 18th verses. Amen!

Jesus was anointed of the Spirit. So is every child of God. He never received the Baptism. of the Holy Spirit; He did not need it. After the Jordan scene where He was initiated into the priesthood, He went to the synagogue, and took the book out of the hand of the minister and, opening at the prophet Esaias, he read, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor; He hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And He began to say unto them, This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears. Every child of God has the anointing of the Spirit, for every work to which God calls him, and without this he is a failure. John leaves on record in his Epistle, "Ye have an unction from the Holy One -- ye have the divine anointing." One may have Pentecost, and have that once for all; but the anointing, the unction, is the absolute necessity of every minister, every worker, every child of God. "As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." "If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His." You may say that will unChristianize some folks. It is God's Word, and the great need of the church today is the Spirit of Christ. It kills selfishness. It means abandonment to God and it means the possession of the victory to which we as the sons of God are called, and which the world needs to see us have.

Jesus came to save and serve. So do the sons of God. Proof of this? "As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world." The one object of the church is to save; the one work of the ministry is -- not to serve tables, to be financial agents -- but to save; not to be ecclesiastical bosses, but to serve. Jesus said, "I am among you as the serving One." Jesus "must needs go through Samaria," that He might save and serve just one sin-sick soul. On the cross before He gave up His life, He handed a passport signed in His own blood to a poor dying thief, saying, "Today thou shalt be with me in Paradise." Take the Word and read the last thing He has to say to the believer, "The Spirit and the Bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come."

This is the last exhortation of Jesus to the individual believer, and there is nothing in which the individual member of the church is more remiss. Personal workers are scarce. How many can you count in the church where you belong? "Let Him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins." Does this mean your pastor, your class leader? No; it means you.

Jesus was loved of the Father. So are we as the sons of God. God so loved that He gave. Jesus loved the Church and . gave Himself for it. He first loved us. The Father went after the prodigal while he was yet a great way off. Love sent Him. He loved that Prodigal. "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you." Is the world saying today, "See how these Christians love one another?" Are there many giving away the second coat or going the second mile? Yes, there are sons of God. Listen. If we suffer with Him.

Jesus was called to suffer. So are we as the sons of God. Listen. IF we suffer with Him we shall reign with Him. Paul was His branded man, bearing about with him the marks of the Lord Jesus. Jesus said to Ananias, "I will show him what great things he must suffer for my name's sake." Called to suffer? Yes, appointed thereto. Called to stand abuse and say nothing back; called to suffer misrepresentation; to go to prison and, by the grace of God, to sing Psalms in prison until the others shall hear, and heaven shall hear, and earth quake, and chains fall off, and revivals begin, -- suffer, not for wrong doing, but for Jesus' sake.

Jesus was received up into glory. So shall we be some day. Moses prayed, "Show me thy glory." God answered that prayer, centuries afterward, on the Mount of Transfiguration. Hear it: "Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me shall be where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me." His glory! The glory that came to a Caesar, to a Napoleon, to the Field of the Cloth of Gold, all fades away; but you and I are to see His glory, the glory that made the angels hide their faces behind their wings, the glory that was so overwhelming that when Moses came down from the Mount his face shone, reflecting the glory of the Father; fadeless glory, eternal glory, not seen through a glass darkly, but face to face. When the three saw it in the Mount they were dazed, and knew not what they said; but up yonder we shall see His glory, with vision undimmed, and, walking in the light of an endless day, we shall go from glory to glory, and revel in the light and shine of the countenance of the Triune God forever.

"We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is," Praise God. Like Wesley? NO. Knox? No Asbury? No Fox? No But we shall be like Hun, like our Lord and Savior while countless ages roll. Oh, the glory that is to be revealed in us through Him in that day! Once He was the man of the marred visage, once He was the man of the thorn-crowned brow, once He showed the marks of the nails and the spear print, but now He is the Christ of the Mediatorial throne, with Him is all the glory of the Father, and we shall be like Him. Like Him, and where He is. Bishop Quayle one time said, "Christ is staying at home now;" and we are to be at Home with Him. If His presence disperses the gloom here and makes all within us rejoice, what will it do when we are there! Hold on, O soul of thine, a little longer, and then where He is, that will be glory for thee.

Your privilege and mine! Hear it again: "But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name." Faith is the victory. It is your privilege to have this blessed relationship now. You may have the home awaiting you, a home where the garnishing has been done by the Architect of the universe, with all manner of precious stones, jasper and chalcedony, and jacinth, and emerald, and the streets are gold like transparent glass and the gates are solitary pearl. The foundations are all rapture, and the place is praises that are eternal.

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THE END

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