The Highway of our God

by

Catherine Booth

Part 1: Entering the Highway

CHAPTER ONE

What is Repentance?

IN the mouths of three witnesses--John the Baptist, Jesus Christ and the Apostle Paul--this word shall be established, that repentance is an indispensable condition of entering the Kingdom of God.

People generally are all at sea on this subject, as though insisting that repentance were an arbitrary arrangement on the part of God. I believe God has made human salvation as easy as His almighty, infinite mind could make it. But there is a necessity in the case that we should 'repent and turn to God.'

It is just as necessary that my feelings be changed and brought to repentance toward God as it is that the wicked, disobedient boy should have his feelings brought back into harmony with his father before he can be forgiven. Precisely the same laws of mind are brought into action in both cases, and there is the same necessity in both.

If any father has a prodigal son, I ask, How is it that you are not reconciled to your son? You love him intensely. Probably you are more conscious of your love for him than for any other of your children. Your heart yearns over him, you pray for him, you dream of him, your bowels yearn over him. Why are you not reconciled? Why are you obliged to hold him at arm's length and not have him come in and out, and live with you on the same terms as the affectionate, obedient daughter? 'Oh!' you say, 'the case is different. I cannot. It is not "I would not", but "I cannot". Before that can possibly be the boy's feelings must be changed toward me. He has mistaken notions and thinks I am hard and exacting. I have done all a father could do, but he will go on in defiance of my will. You say, 'As a wise and righteous father I must insist on a change in him. He must confess his sin and ask me to forgive him. Then I should run to meet him and put my arms around his neck!' But there is a 'cannot' in the case.

Just so. It is not that God does not love you, sinner, or that the great benevolent heart of God has not, as it were, wept tears of blood over you. It is not that He would not put His loving arms around you this moment if you would only come to His feet, and confess your wrong, and seek His pardon. He cannot. The laws of His universe are against His doing so. The good of, it may be, millions of immortal beings is involved. He dare not and cannot until there is a change of mind in you. You must repent. 'Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.'

Well, if repentance be an indispensable condition of salvation, let us try to find out what repentance really is. How full of confusion the world and the Church are upon this subject!

Repentance is not merely conviction of sin. If it were, what a different world we should have, for there are tens of thousands on whose hearts God's Spirit has done His office by convincing them of sin. We should be perfectly astounded if we had any conception of the multitudes whom God has convinced of sin, as he did Agrippa and Festus. They are convinced of sin, but they go no further. That is not repentance. They live this week as they did last.

Neither is repentance mere sorrow for sin. I have seen people weep bitterly and writhe and struggle, yet hug their idols, and vain has it been to try to shake them from them. If Jesus Christ would have saved them with those idols they would have had no objection at all. If they could have got through the strait gate with one particular idol they would have gone through long since, but to part with it is another thing. Some people will weep like your stubborn child when you want him to do something which he does not want to do.

He will cry, and when you apply the rod he will cry harder, but he will not yield. When he yields he becomes a penitent, but until he does he is merely a convicted sinner.

When God applies the rod of His Spirit, of His providence, of His word, sinners will cry, and wince, and whine, and make you believe they are praying and want to be saved, but all the while they are holding their necks as stiff as iron. They will not submit. The moment they submit they become true penitents and are saved. There is no mistake more common than for people to suppose they are penitents when they are not.

Repentance, therefore, is not mere sorrow for sin. A man may be ever so sorry and all the way down to death be hugging some forbidden thing, as the young ruler hugged his possessions. But that is not repentance.

Neither is repentance a promise that you will forsake sin in the future. If it were there would be many more penitents. There is scarcely a poor drunkard that does not promise, in his own mind, or to his poor wife, or somebody, that he will forsake his cups. There is scarcely any kind of a sinner who does not continually promise that he will one day give up his sin and turn to God, but he does not do it.

What then is repentance? Repentance is simply renouncing sin--turning round from darkness to light, from the power of Satan unto God. This is giving up sin in your heart, in purpose, in desire, resolving that you will give up every evil thing, and that you will do it now. Of course this involves sorrow; for how will any sane man turn himself round from a given course into another if he does not repent having taken that forbidden course? It implies, also, hatred of the course he formerly took, and from which he turns.

He is like the prodigal who, when he sat in the swine-yard amongst the husks and the filth, fully resolved, and at last acted. He went, and that was the test of his penitence. He might have sat resolving and promising till now, if he had lived as long, and he would never have got the father's kiss, the father's welcome, if he had not started; but he went, and went to his father honestly and said 'I have sinned'--which implied a great deal more in his language then than it does in ours now. Then comes the proof of his submission, 'and am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants'--put me in a stable, or set me to clean the boots, so that I can be in thy family and have thy smile. That is Jesus Christ's own beautiful illustration of true penitence.

Submission is the test of penitence. My child may be willing to do a hundred and fifty other things, but if he is not willing to submit on the one point of controversy he is a rebel, and remains one until he yields.

Here is just the difference between a spurious and a real repentance. I am afraid we have had in our churches thousands who had a spurious repentance: they were convinced of sin--they were sorry for it; they wanted to live a better life, to love God in a sort of general way; but they skipped over the real point of controversy with God; they hid it from their pastor, perhaps, and from the deacons, and from the people who talked with them.

Abraham might have been willing to give up every other thing he possessed, but if he had not been willing to give up Isaac, all else would have been useless. It is your Isaac that God wants. You have got an Isaac, just as the young ruler had his possessions. You have got something that you are holding on to, that the Holy Spirit says you must let go, and you say, 'I can't.'

Very well; then you must stop outside the Kingdom.

Then another difficulty comes in, and people say, 'I have not the power to repent.' There is a grand mistake. You have the power, or God would not command it. You can repent. You can this moment lift up your eyes to Heaven and say, with the prodigal, 'Father, I have sinned, and I renounce my sin.' You may not be able to weep. God nowhere requires or commands that.

But you are able, this very moment, to renounce sin in purpose, in resolution. Mind you do not confound the renouncing of the sin with the power of saving yourself from it. If you renounce it, Jesus will come and save you from it, like the man with the withered hand whom Jesus intended to heal. Where was the power to come from to heal him? From Jesus. The benevolence, the love, that prompted that healing all came from Jesus; but Jesus wanted a condition, and that was the response of the man's will. So He said, 'Stretch forth thine hand.'

If the man had been like some of you he would have said, 'What an unreasonable command. You know I cannot do it.' Jesus wanted that 'I will, Lord' to be inside the man, the response of his will. The moment he said that, Jesus supplied strength. He stretched forth his hand and you know what happened.

Stretch out your withered hand, whatever it may be, and say, 'I will, Lord.' You have the power and mind, you have the obligation, which is universal and immediate. God 'now commandeth all men everywhere to repent' and to believe the gospel. What a tyrant He must be if He commands that and yet knows you have not the power!

Now, do not say, 'I do not feel enough.' Do you feel enough to be willing to forsake your sin? That is the point. Any man who does not repent enough to forsake his sin is not a penitent at all. When you repent enough to forsake your sin, that moment your repentance is sincere and you may take hold of Jesus with a firm grasp. Then 'believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.'

CHAPTER TWO:

A True and False Peace

PEACE is the universal want of man. Everywhere and always the race is in a state of unrest, seeking rest and finding none. Consequently, men adopt many counterfeits, and try to satisfy the aching void of their souls with the opiates of Satan.

Peace is not a state of mere quietness or insensibility. Alas! Many are in this state of torpor, and when you ask them about their souls they say, 'Oh, yes! I have a hope; I have a measure of peace. I hope I am right.' But when you try to shake them up, and find out whether they have any thorough foundation for their peace, they don't want to be disturbed. But peace is not insensibility to existing differences between the soul and God, for in such a condition there are all the elements of awful and eternal warfare. There only needs a change of circumstances in order to land the soul into conflict, distress and desolation. We do not mean that sort of peace.

True peace, divine peace--the only peace that will do to die with--arises out of a settlement of our differences and a cessation of hostilities toward God, and reconciliation with God, bringing assurance and quietness in view of the past, the present and the future. By false methods Satan lulls the souls of sinners and backsliders into a false peace. For one thing, he gets them to make a false estimate of the character and deserts of sin. When God's Spirit wakes them up, puts before them the heinousness and enormity of their sins, Satan comes and helps them to reason and search for excuses. They say, as the Jews did in Ezekiel's day, 'If we pine away in them (our iniquities), how should we then live?' They charged their sin back again upon God. They said His way was unequal, and when years later He accused them with wearying Him they said, 'Wherein have we wearied Him?' When He charged them with robbing Him they said, 'Wherein have we robbed Thee?' They made excuses for themselves in their sins.

Multitudes do that now! People want to make out that they are dying for want of light. I say no. They are not dying for want of light; they are dying for want of honesty.

This spirit of finding excuses is most hateful in the sight of God. In the Old Testament He is continually reproving this spirit and threatening the backslidden people with chastisement because of it; whereas He tells them that if they would confess and forsake their sins they should be forgiven.

In Revelation 2:5 it says: 'Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent.' Do you see that the everlasting principle on which alone God can pardon sin, laid down in the last utterances of the New Testament as well as all through the Old, is repenting and forsaking of sin, and not excusing and covering it up?

Some people are convinced that they are wrong, but the devil is saying, 'Well, but you were once right.' And so were these Jews. He is saying, 'You are a Christian'; and they were Israelites. 'Well, but you know you are the children of God.' They were the children of Abraham, and they said they were the children of God. But Jesus Christ said, 'Ye do the deeds of your Father.'

Whose works are you doing? Do not let Satan deceive you, if you are living in sin, no matter what church you are a member of, no matter how long you have been a professor of the faith. By excusing yourselves you can get quietness perhaps, but peace never! Would that every soul that is quiet in sin were awakened as the gaoler at Philippi was, by an earthquake if necessary. People in that condition say they have peace, but all the elements of everlasting warfare are ready to break out in their bosoms at any moment. Do not confound quietness with peace.

Another method by which people get false peace is that of stifling their fears and convictions. You may succeed in stifling your convictions for a while, perhaps a long while, but when death comes it will open the floodgates of Hell. Oh, the deathbeds of people who have been burying their iniquities in their bosoms, instead of confessing and forsaking them and being saved!

Some would get off their beds and hang themselves if by so doing they could get out of their misery. There is only one way to deal with sin; and that is to be out with it, to forsake it, and to have it washed away.

Another method by which sinners and backsliders seek peace is by adopting false views. They say, 'I am not to look at myself, but at Christ. I have nothing to do with my feelings or dispositions; I am to be saved by believing the word. Salvation is not of works, and I am clinging to the Cross, so I must be right. I belong to the church, I take the communion and read my Bible, and pray morning and night.' Such people are trying to heal their hurt slightly, and crying, 'Peace, peace'; when there is no peace.

The only way to find true peace is to put away the occasion of war. Where there is sin there must be conflict and misery. God Himself cannot give peace to a soul that is holding on to sin, nor does He ever propose to do so. 'Your iniquities have separated between you and your God,' and before you can be restored to Him they must be repented of and put away. Give up trying to make yourself believe that you are right, and just get right! Then your peace will flow as a river.

Another false method of trying to get peace is by putting off the reckoning day. I heard a lady say, 'The fact is, I have given up the struggle, and I hope somehow or other I shall get right when I am dying!' Poor woman! that is an awful experiment. You need to have all the powers of mind and body in full play when settling your accounts with God. Dying pains and distractions will be poor circumstances for making your peace with Him, even if you were sure of the opportunity; but the people to whom God has been showing his way of peace for years, and who have refused to obey, are not the people who get right when they are dying.

Then you say, 'If none of these is the right method for getting peace, what is?'

God's way is always effectual, and this is to put away sin. No power can give peace to a guilty being only by taking away his guilt. Confess and forsake your sins and cast your guilty soul on Jesus. Then He will give you his peace, which will abide with you for ever.

CHAPTER THREE:

The Faith that Saves

ONE of the most abused texts in the Bible, and one which perhaps has been made to do as much work for the devil as for God, is that which occurs in the story of the conversion of the Philippian gaoler:

"Then he . . . brought them out, and said, 'Sirs, what must I do to be saved?'

And they said, 'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.'"

Let us inquire first, Who are to believe? then, When are they to believe? and again, How are they to believe?

To whom does the Holy Spirit say, 'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved?' I answer, not to all sinners indiscriminately. Here is a grand mistake in a great deal of the teaching of this age. These words are wrested from their explanatory connection and held up independently of all the conditions which must ever, and did ever, in the mind and practice of the apostles, accompany them. Only within the last sixty or seventy years has there sprung into existence this new gospel preaching indiscriminately to unawakened, unconverted, unrepentant sinners, 'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.'

Great injury has been done to the cause of Christ by thus wrongly dividing the word of truth, to say nothing of the unphilosophical character of such a course; for how can an unawakened, unconvicted, unrepentant sinner believe? As soon might Satan believe. On the top of an omnibus a man who was the worse for liquor and using very improper language was being shown the danger of his evil course. 'Oh!' said the man, 'it is not by works, it is by faith, and I believe as much as you do. I believe in Jesus Christ, and of course I shall be saved.'

That man is a sample of thousands. They believe there was such a man as Jesus, and that He died for sinners, and for them, but as to the exercise of saving faith they know no more about it than Agrippa or Felix, as is manifest when they come to die, for then these very people are wringing their hands and sending for Christians to come and pray with them. If they had believed, why all this alarm and concern at the approach of death? They were believers only of the head and not of the heart; that is, they were but theoretical believers in the facts recorded in the Bible, not believers in the scriptural sense, or their faith would have saved them.

We maintain that it is useless, and as unphilosophical as it is unscriptural, to preach 'only believe' to such persons. Christians have not done their duty, and have not discharged their responsibility when they have told them that Jesus died for them, and that they are to believe in Him!

They have a much harder work to do, and that is to 'open their eyes' to a sense of their danger, and make them, by the power of the Spirit, realize the dreadful truth that they are sinners.

The eyes of the soul must be opened to such a realization of sin, and such an apprehension of the consequences of sin, as shall lead to an earnest desire to be saved from sin.

There is not one instance in the New Testament in which the apostles urged men to believe, or in which a person is narrated as believing, in which we have not good grounds to suppose that these preparatory steps of conviction and repentance had been taken. The only apparent exception was Simon the sorcerer. He, like numbers of people in great religious movements, was carried away by the influence of the meeting and the example of those around him, and professed to believe. Doubtless he did credit the fact that Jesus died on the Cross. He received the facts of Christianity into his mind, and in that sense he became a believer and was baptized. But when the testing point came as to whose interests were paramount with him, his own or God's, then he manifested his true state, and the Apostle said, 'Thy heart is not right in the sight of God.' Nobody is converted whose heart is not right with God. That is the test. If Simon had been converted he would not have supposed that the Holy Ghost could have been bought for money. And Peter added, 'I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity.' What further did he say to him? 'Therefore at once believe?' No, he did not. He said,

'Repent . . . and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee.' Repent first, and then believe and get this wickedness forgiven. So we get a double lesson in the same passage. This Simon is the only person we have any record of as believing where there is not in the passage itself, taken with its context, reasonable and rational evidence that the preparatory steps of conviction and repentance were taken before the exercise and confession of faith. Simon had this faith of the head, but not of the heart, and therefore it ended in defeat and despair.

Some have written me that you had believed. You had been persuaded into a profession of faith, but no fruits followed. It was not the faith of the heart: it was the faith of the head-like that of Simon's--and it left you worse than it found you, and you have been groping and grovelling ever since. But do not think that was real faith, and that therefore real faith has failed, but be encouraged to begin again, and repent. Try the real thing, for Satan always gets up a counterfeit. Do not go down in despair because the wrong kind of faith did not succeed. God forbid that that should make the real faith of God of none effect.

Look at the three thousand who were converted in a day at Pentecost. What was the first work that Peter did? He drove the knife of God's convincing truth into their hearts and made them cry out. He awoke them to the truth of their almost lost and damned condition, till they longed to know what they must do to be saved. They were so pricked in their hearts, their eyes were so opened to the terrible consequences of their sin, that they cried aloud before the vast multitude, 'Men and brethren, what shall we do?' He convinced then of sin, and thus followed the order of God.

The eunuch who was converted under Philip on the road to Gaza is often quoted as an illustration of faith; but what state of mind was he in? Was he a careless unconvicted sinner? He was an Ethiopian, a heathen. But where had he been? To Jerusalem to worship the true and living God in the best way he knew and as far as he understood. And what was he doing when Philip found him? He was not content with the mere worship of the Temple; he was searching the Scriptures. He was honestly seeking after God.

The Holy Ghost always knows where such souls are, and He said unto Philip,

'Go near, and join thyself to this chariot.' There was a man seeking God, whose heart was honestly set on finding Him. Philip was to preach Christ, and tell him to believe. That man would have sacrificed or done or lost anything for salvation, and as soon as Philip expounded the way of faith he received it as, of course, all such individuals will.

Saul of Tarsus on his way to Damascus is another instance. Jesus Christ was the preacher there, and surely He could not be mistaken. Where did He begin? He saw there an honest-hearted man. Saul was sincere, so far as he understood, and if, in any case there needed to be the immediate reception of Christ by faith, it was in his. But the Lord Jesus Christ did not say one word about faith. 'Saul, Saul,' He said, 'why persecutest thou Me?'--tearing the bandages of deception off his eyes, and letting him see the wickedness of his conduct.

When Saul said, 'Who art Thou, Lord?' the Lord repeated the accusation and did not come in with the oil of comfort. He said, 'I am Jesus whom thou persecutest.' He ran the knife in again and opened Saul's wounds wider, and sent him with a bleeding heart on to Damascus, where he was three days before he got any healing. God had to send for a poor human instrument, and Saul had to hear and obey before the pardon of his sins was pronounced, and the Holy Ghost came into his soul.

I wonder what Saul was doing those three days. He neither ate nor drank, and he was in the dark. What was he doing? No doubt he was praying. No doubt he was seeking after this Christ who had spoken to him in the way. No doubt he was looking with horror upon his past life and abjuring for ever his accursed antagonism to Jesus Christ and his gospel. Of course, he was bringing forth fruits meet for repentance, according to the divine order. Then came Ananias and preached Christ unto him. He believed unto salvation, the scales fell from his eyes and his heart, and his mouth was filled with praise and thanksgiving.

Cornelius is another instance. But what was the state of his mind and heart?

We know that he feared God and wrought righteousness, as far as he was able. He gave alms to the people, and prayed day and night. That is more than some ever did who have lived in gospel times. Yes, Cornelius was seeking God. He honestly wanted to know Him. He was willing at all costs to do His will. Consequently, the Lord sent him the glorious message of the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Look what state of mind the Philippian gaoler was in. We see from the whole narrative how his eyes had been opened. The earthquake had done that. Some people need an earthquake before they get their eyes opened, and it has to be a loud one, too. The gaoler's eyes were opened, and he made the best use of his time. He was lashing the backs of the two apostles a little while before.

Here was a change! 'Sirs, what must I do to be saved?' When a man comes to that state of mind he has nothing more to do but believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. The gaoler came in trembling and went down on his knees and washed their stripes. When any man gets to that state of mind he will soon be saved, having nothing more to do but to believe.

When is a sinner to believe? When he repents. A gentleman writes to me and says, 'I am afraid I do not realize my sin sufficiently. I have no particular agony on account of sin, but I do see my whole life to have been one huge error and sin.' There is nothing more common than for people to delude themselves on the point of feeling. That gentleman confounds feeling with conviction. He thinks because he has not this extreme agony which some have, therefore he is not sufficiently convinced. Yet such a perception of his true character is given him that he sees his whole life to have been sin. Surely he is convinced, for none but the Holy Ghost could have shown that. Now, the truly repentant soul first sees sin; secondly, he hates sin; thirdly, he renounces sin.

An entirely unawakened soul does not see sin; that is, in its heinousness, in its consequences. He admits that all people are sinners, but he does not see the deadly, damning character of sin. The Holy Ghost alone can open a man's eyes to see this. Without Him, all preaching, even the preaching of angels, might go on to all eternity and it would never convince of sin. If you see sin it is the Holy Ghost who has opened your eyes. If God has thus opened your eyes, does it not augur well that He desires also to save you? He has opened your eyes in order that He may cause you to see light in His light.

As I have said, the true penitent hates sin; that is, his feelings toward sin are quite different from what they were in the past, he could commit sin almost without concern. People do not realize the great change that takes place in them in this matter. It occurs gradually. The very things that now cause them distress were practiced by them every day and gave no concern. There was no hatred of, no dread of sin. Still, hating sin is not being saved from it.

Sin, I say, must be renounced. Here is a man who is daily addicted to drink, and who becomes convinced of sin. The Spirit of God says, 'Will you give up the cup?' Then commences the struggle. Are you to tell that man that he may go on drinking, and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved? Or are you to tell him, 'You must put away your sin, and renounce that drink for ever in your heart, in your purpose, in your will, because until you do you cannot exercise faith in the Lord Jesus?'

A servant, we will say, systematically robs his master. He goes to a religious meeting and is convinced. The Spirit of God says: 'You must cut off that dishonesty. You cannot pretend to want to be saved while you go on robbing your master. You must give up that pilfering, and resolve that you will make restitution.' To any who may be addicted to an evil habit I would say, Jesus Christ wants you to forswear that habit in your will, determination and purpose. You have not the power to deliver yourself from it, yet you know that if you had the power to extinguish the force of that evil habit you would do it. You say, 'Would to God I had the power!' That is genuine repentance.

Having become truly penitent, having shown that you hate sin and are willing to renounce it, trust and obey, and expect that it is going to be with you according to His word. The faith of many people is like that of a person afflicted with some grievous malady. A friend tells him of a wonderful physician who has cured hundreds of such cases, and gives him abundant evidence that this doctor is able and willing to cure him, if only he will commit himself to his treatment. The sick man may thoroughly believe in the testimony of his friend about this physician, and yet for some secret reason he may refuse to put himself into his hands.

There are numbers like that with Jesus Christ. They believe He could cure the malady of sin on certain conditions. They believe He 'is no respecter of persons.' They believe He has done it for hundreds as bad as they, and yet there is some reason why they do not trust Him. They hold back.

Now, what you want is to give your case into His hands and say: 'Lord Jesus, I come as Thou hast bid me, confessing and forsaking sin. If I could, I would jump out of it now and for ever. Thou knowest I come renouncing it, but have not power to save myself from it. I put my sins upon the glorious sacrifice of Thy Son, and trust Thee.' That is faith, and I have never known a soul who came to this and did not become saved.

CHAPTER FOUR:

How Christ Transcends the Law

I WANT to show how Christ transcends the law. He does so, among other things, by giving power over sin. I believe He can do a great deal more for His people than this, but we. will stop here.

We have all been slaves of sin. How is it, if there is no deliverance from this dreadful plague and scourge of God's people, that the Holy Ghost sets every real child of God struggling after it? Whatever may be a man's theory in his creed, you get him on his knees and he will begin to pray to God to save him from sin. Sin is the abominable thing which he hates and longs to be delivered from, and the universal experience of God's people is that the Spirit urges them to seek to be saved from it.

If I have been under the power of sin so as to become its complete slave, and Jesus Christ comes and pardons me for the past and delivers me from the guilt and condemnation which came upon me in consequence of the past, what do I want? I want something besides pardon. I want power to stand, or I shall be down again the next minute.

What God does for us through Jesus Christ outside of us is one thing, and what He does in us by Jesus Christ is another thing; but the two are simultaneous, or one so immediately succeeds the other that we hardly discern the interval. Now, I say, I want power to enable me to meet that temptation which is coming on me tomorrow, as it came on me yesterday; and if Jesus Christ pardons me and leaves me under the reigning power of my old appetites, what has He done for me? I shall be down in the mud, and tomorrow night I shall be as condemned as ever. I want power. I want regeneration. As the Holy Spirit has put it, I want the renewing of my mind.

This is precisely where Jesus Christ transcends the law. The law could not renew the spirit of my mind. It could only show me what a guilty rebel I was. It could not put a better spirit in me. It could not extract the venom, but only show it to me, and make me writhe on account of it. But Jesus Christ comes and gives me power.

How does He give it to me? He unites me to Himself. He delivers me from the condemning power of the law when He pardons me, and does not leave me there, but unites me to Himself. Then I attain power to bring forth fruit unto God. It is by the union of my soul with Him. I cannot explain it. God Himself cannot explain it. While we cannot explain it, yet we know it. As Jesus said to Nicodemus: '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.' The mystery is too great to be explained, but there is the beautiful illustration; united to Christ I have power to conquer, to trample under foot those things which heretofore have been my master, and by virtue of Him I retain the power, and in no other way.

What a delusion there is on the subject of Christian knowledge. If knowledge could save people, what a wonderful world we should have today. Knowledge is as powerless as ignorance. A man is not a whit nearer God, or more like Christ, because he has his head crammed with God's word. In fact, some I know who have been best acquainted with the word, have been the greatest slaves of sin.

God is raising up thousands of witnesses to this fact, that it is not in knowledge but in union with Him. The little child in intellect and intelligence who has the real, vital union with Jesus, has more power than the most cultivated theologian can have without Christ. The things of God can only be understood by those who have the Spirit of God. The world by wisdom knows not God any more now than it did in Paul's days. The things of the Spirit are only spiritually comprehended. Hence this beautiful union cannot be explained; I only know it is spoken of all through the Bible as knowing God.

'Abide in Me, and I in you,' said Jesus. 'As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in Me.' You know what the branch is when it is broken off. It retains the form of a branch, and for a while the beauty and the greenness of a branch, but it is broken off. It can never bear fruit, because the communication is cut between itself and the vine, and there is no sap in its fibre.

You can be like a branch. You can get so much scriptural knowledge that you can look just like a real Christian. You can get many of the feelings and sentiments, as well as a great many of the aspirations and desires, of a Christian. You can be so like a branch that nobody but Jesus Christ may know you are not in that true Vine, and yet you have never been grafted (Rom. 11: 17, R.V.) on to the tree. Hence you have no power, and down you go when the temptation comes. What weary years of strife some professing Christians have through trying to perform the functions of living men when they have never been spiritually made alive.

I made up my mind to know God when I was fifteen years of age. I had had the strivings of God's Spirit all my life, since I was about two years old. All through my childhood I was graciously sheltered by a watchful mother from outward sin and, in fact, brought up as a Christian. When I came to be between fifteen and sixteen and, as I believe, was thoroughly converted, the great temptation of Satan to me was this: 'You must not expect such a change as you read of in books. You have been half a Christian all your life. You always feared God. You must content yourself with this.' I was frightened at it. I said, 'No! no! My heart is as bad as other people's, and if I have not sinned outwardly I have inwardly.' I cried to God to show me the evil of my heart, and said, 'I will never rest until I am as thoroughly and truly changed, and know it, as any thief or any great outward sinner.' I went on seeking God in this way for six weeks, often till two o'clock in the morning. I told the Lord I would never give up, if I died in the search, until I found God; and I did find Him, as every soul does who comes to Him in that way.

All can have this union. Christ, who is no respecter of persons, bought it for us. He need not have come if we could have known God by the law. If that old covenant had been perfect, there would have been no room for a second. It brought us not into the full realization and enjoyment of God, but the new covenant does. It cleanses the conscience from dead works to serve the living God, and God is henceforth revealed to His people, and they walk with Him.

All through the New Testament, and indeed the Bible, no truth is taught with greater force and frequency than this, that without a vital union of the soul with Christ all ceremonies, creeds, beliefs, professions, church ordinances, are sounding brass and tinkling cymbals, and all who trust in them will be deceived. This is the very essence of the gospel. Christ came on purpose for us to have union with Himself. What is the result of this union? 'That we should bring forth fruit unto God.' Jesus Christ recognizes the fact that we are still in the body; still in the world; and that we are open to the attacks of Satan. He has foreseen and has provided for the temptations which come to us through our natural appetites and instincts and desires, as they came to Him.

It matters not how intensely excited any physical appetite may be--that is not sin. The more you suffer through the excitement of the physical appetite, of whatever kind it may be, the more Jesus Christ sympathizes with you, for He

'was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.' If you endure temptation, He will sympathize with you more than with the man who does not have to endure and resist. If you resist as He did; if you say, 'Get thee behind me, Satan' you sin not. What was Eve's sin? Unlawful self-gratification. The devil might have tempted her until now, if she had lived so long; but if she had steadily resisted Him she would not have brought sin into the world.

Under the law you see that it is sin, and you struggle against it, but you have no power to resist and down you go. United to Christ, you see that it is sin, you have power to resist, and the devil runs away. That is the difference.

The devil comes with direct, subtle spiritual influence, with his old insinuation, as he came to Eve, and says, 'Hath God said this, or that?' He tries to inject into the believer's soul doubts as to God's goodness and veracity as he used to do under the law, and under the law the convicted sinner's soul used to swell with rebellion.

Satan still comes and tries to excite ill-feelings and chargings of God foolishly in the soul, but by virtue of this union with Christ, who came not to do His own will but his Father's, and who spoke only the things that His Father bade Him, the believer says, 'Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?' And the devil is gone.

When he is foiled at all these points he tries higher ground. 'Really, you are a wonderful Christian. You have had special grace, for surely very few people can have resisted the amount of temptation that you have. You must be one of God's specially favoured ones. Now cast yourself down. It is written "He shall give His angels charge concerning thee."' He comes as an angel of light. But Christ is hard by, and He says, 'Be not ignorant of Satan's devices. Behold, I am thy salvation. Trust, and be not afraid.' And so the soul refuses to cast itself into unnecessary troubles, and is content to abide in and walk with the Lord. That is how He gives us the victory. He shows us Satan's devices, and gives us power.

Part 2: Treading the Highway

CHAPTER ONE:

Being Like God

IT must be self-evident to a great many people that the most important question that can possibly occupy the mind of man is how much like God we can be and how near to Him we can come on earth, preparatory to our being perfectly like Him and living in His very heart for ever in Heaven.

The mystery of mysteries to me is how anyone with any measure of the Spirit of God can help looking at this blessing of holiness and saying, 'Well, even if it does seem too great for attainment on earth it is very beautiful and very blessed, and I wish I could attain it.' It seems to me that we all should hunger and thirst after it, and feel that we shall never be satisfied till we wake up in the likeness of the Saviour. And yet, alas, we do not find it so. In many instances the very first thing professing Christians do is to resist and reject this doctrine of holiness.

I heard of a leader of religion saying that for anybody to talk about being holy showed that they knew nothing of themselves and nothing of Jesus Christ. It has come to something if holiness and Jesus Christ are at the antipodes of each other. I thought He was the centre and fountain of holiness and through Him holiness could be wrought in us.

Large numbers of people make infirmities into sins. They insist that the requirements of the Adamic law have never been abated. We are not, they say, under the evangelical law of love, or the law of Christ, as the Apostle puts it, but still under the Adamic law, and imperfections and infirmities are as sins. I wonder such people do not think of a certain passage which must for ever explode such a theory, where the Apostle says, 'Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.' Had these infirmities been sins we should have the outrageous anomaly of an apostle of Jesus Christ glorying in his sins. These infirmities were only those defects of mind and body which were capable of being overcome and overruled by grace to the glory of Christ and to the furtherance of His kingdom.

I glory in my infirmities that in consequence of them the power of Christ shall rest upon me and lift me above them, that Christ shall make me independent of them and master of them, so that I shall glorify His strength and grace more than if I were perfect in mind and body. Previously Paul had said, 'Lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me.' Some people think this was sin; but surely the words 'messenger of Satan' show that this thorn was no act or disposition of Paul's, but some external temptation or affliction inflicted by Satan. Besides, the divine assurance, 'My grace is sufficient for thee,' ought to forbid the idea of sin. Paul sought the Lord thrice to have this thorn removed. If it had been sin, the Lord would have been as anxious to have it removed as His servant was. This thorn was doubtless some physical trial, as the words 'in the flesh' indicate-some tribulation or sorrow through the patient endurance of which the strength of Christ could be magnified.

Mark that this was a divinely permitted discipline to prevent Paul from falling into sin, and that is quite a different thing from sin itself. The Lord sent this to Paul not for the purpose of making him humble, for he was humbled before, but to keep him humble. And does He not send something to us all? Do we not need trials and tribulations in the flesh in order to keep us humble? But is this evidence that pride is dwelling in us and reigning over us? It is an evidence just to the contrary.

Holiness is being saved from sin in act, in purpose, in thought!

A young lady wrote me that she had been the bondslave for four or five years of a certain besetting sin which she had struggled and wrestled and prayed to overcome. Now and then she would gain the victory, and then down she would go again. She said, 'It is such a subtle thing, connected with my thoughts and imagination, so that I do not think I ever can be saved.' I showed her how dishonouring this unbelief was, and that if she would trust Christ to come and reign in her heart He could cleanse the very thoughts and imaginations. She made a little advance, but said she could not come so far as to think that Christ could purify her thoughts. She believed that He could save her from putting them into practice, but not that He could purify them. I tried to show her how Jesus, by the inspiration of His Holy Spirit, could purify the very thoughts of our hearts and, thank God, she did go another step. She said, 'I rejoice with trembling for fear it should be only temporary, but I have trusted Him to purify the source. I must say He has done it, and instead of thinking these thoughts I have holy thoughts. If Satan presents anything to my mind it is so repulsive to me that I cannot tell you the grief and horror with which it fills me.' Later she said, 'I am conscious that my thoughts are pleasing to Him and He has saved me from this sin which has been the torment of my life for all these years.'

What I say is that anything He can do for one He can do for another. If I am wrong here I give up the whole question. I am perfectly mistaken in the purpose and aim and command of the gospel dispensation if God does not want His people to be pure. Not, however, to count themselves pure when they are not. We are told over and over again that God wants his people to be pure, and purity in their hearts is the end and purpose of the gospel of Jesus Christ. If it is not so I am utterly deceived.

'This is the will of God, even your sanctification,' wrote Paul to the Thessalonians. There is a sense, and an important sense, in which sanctification must be the will of man. If it is not my will the divine will can never be accomplished in me. I must will to be sanctified, as God is willing that I should be sanctified. James, in his epistle, says, 'Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded.' This was said to people who had been professing to believe, but had gone back under the dominion of their fleshly appetites. There are two or three other texts which seem to sum up the whole matter as, for instance, 'Jesus Christ . . . gave Himself for us (that is, for us Christians, the whole Church of God) that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.' Then 1 Timothy 1:5

shows God's purpose and aim in the whole method of redemption: 'Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned'--cleansed and kept clean, for if it had been clean and had become dirty again it would be not a good, but a bad conscience. And again, in 1 John 3:3, 'Every man that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself, even as He is pure.' These are summing-up texts and there are numbers of others to show that the whole purpose of redemption is to restore us to purity; not only to purge us from the past, but to keep us purged to serve the living God. This shall be by the application of the Blood of Christ to the conscience, and by the power of the Holy Ghost keeping us in a state of purity and obedience to righteousness. If God through Christ cannot do this for me, what is my advantage at all by his coming?

What a great deal more there is in these epistles directed to the individual Christian to be this, that and the other, and to do this, that and the other, than there is about what God will do for him. This is not an objective Christianity. This is not a sitting down and sentimentalizing and thinking of Christ in the heavens, but a bringing Him down into our hearts and lives here. One of the continual exhortations is, Be ye this, and do ye this and the other.

These epistles represent a real, practical transformation to be accomplished in us, which is the only thing that will do to die with. If it is not so accomplished in you now, you will want to be cleansed before you can venture into the presence of the King of kings. You will want a sense of beautiful moral rectitude and righteousness spreading over your whole nature that will enable you to look up into the face of God and say, 'I love Thee and know Thee, and Thou knowest me and lovest me, and we are one.' You will want that, and nothing less will do to die with. And why not have it? Put away the depths of unbelief which are at the bottom of your difficulty and say, 'Be it unto me according to Thy word.'

CHAPTER TWO:

What is Conscience

CONSCIENCE is that faculty of the soul which pronounces on the character of our actions (Romans 2:15). This faculty is a constituent part of our nature, and is common to man everywhere and at all times. All men have a conscience; whether enlightened or unenlightened, active or torpid, there it is. It cannot be destroyed. Therefore Christianity cannot propose to dispense with it, as God in no case proposes to destroy, but to sanctify, human nature.

There has been much philosophizing as to the exact position of conscience in the soul--whether it be a separate faculty, as the will and understanding, or whether it be a universal spiritual sense pervading and taking cognizance of all the faculties, as feeling in the body. It matters little which of these theories we accept, seeing that the vocation of conscience remains the same in both.

The office which conscience sustains to the soul is to determine or pronounce upon the moral quality of our actions, to say whether this or that is good or bad. Conscience is an independent witness standing between God and man; it is in man, but for God, and it cannot be bribed or silenced. Someone has called it 'God's Spirit in man's soul.' Another, 'God's vicegerent in the soul of man,' and certainly it is the most wonderful part of man. All other of our faculties can be subdued by our will; but this cannot. It stands erect, taking sides against ourselves whenever we transgress its fiat; something in us bearing witness against us when we offend its integrity.

Now it is a question of vital importance to our spiritual life, whether the gospel is intended to deliver us from this reigning power of conscience and make us independent of its verdict, or whether it is intended to purify and enlighten conscience and to endow us with power to live in obedience to its voice.

Examine a few passages on this point. See first what is done with conscience in regeneration. Hebrews 9:14: 'How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?' See also Hebrews 10:22. Secondly, let us see the office which conscience sustains in regenerate men. 1 Timothy 1:19: 'Holding faith, and a good conscience; which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck.' Romans 9:1: 'I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost.' See 1 Timothy 3:9 and Acts 23:1. We have also set forth the consequences of allowing conscience to become defiled. 1 Timothy 4:2:

'Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron.'

See also Titus 1:15.

The apostles clearly show that true Christianity no more dispenses with conscience than it does with the great moral law by which conscience is set, and to which it is amenable. Hence Paul tells us that he exercised himself always to have a conscience void of offence.

Having a conscience void of offence implies a 'purged' conscience, made clean. Conscience must be made clean, before it can be kept clean. The residuum of all sin settles on the conscience, and as all have sinned there can be no consciences clean by nature. The only way by which consciences can be purified is by purging from guilt and making them ready for new service.

'Purge your conscience from dead works' (Hebrews 9: 14)--from all pollution, uncleanness, sterility. Conscience is not only polluted by sin, but outraged, incensed, made angry; it needs to be pacified as well as purged, and this can only be done by the Blood of the atonement.

Every believer remembers the precious sense of purity and peace which spread over his soul when first he realized a saving interest in the Blood of Christ; how sweet it was to feel that all the stains left by the sins of a past life were washed out, to realize that the anger and vengeance of an aggrieved conscience were appeased, that God, having accepted the Lamb as a sufficient atonement, conscience accepted Him also and was pacified. The offence and condemnation of past sin is washed away, and now the conscience is void of offence--clean, and ready to serve the living God.

To keep a conscience void of offence requires unremitting effort and determination; a bringing up, so to speak, of all the other powers and faculties of the being. 'Herein do I exercise myself,' said Paul--the whole man, soul, mind, body.

Here is need for 'exercise' indeed. This signifies no child's play, no mere effervescing emotion, expending itself in sentimental songs or idle speculations. Here is 'the fight of faith,' the faith of the saints, which can dare and do and suffer anything rather than defile its garments.

It is no uncommon thing to meet with people in this condition. Conscience is defiled and incensed, and demands that the evil shall be put away and repented of, and the soul cast afresh on the Blood of atonement for pardon and healing. Instead of doing this, however, they cling on to what they call faith, and quibble and reason to try to make out that they are right.

I knew a young lady, a professing Christian, who was deeply convinced by the Spirit of God that the business in which she was engaged was inconsistent with her profession and with her becoming a real follower of Jesus. After much controversy she took three days to debate with conscience as to whether she should give it up or not. Minister, friends, everybody but conscience said, No. She yielded, and 'put away' a good conscience in order to keep a good business. Shortly afterward she married a young man with the same sort of religion as her own. 'They rushed into imprudent and extravagant expenditure. Soon he failed and she was plunged into seas of trouble and sorrow. Surely 'thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee!'

To keep a conscience void of offence requires the subjection of the whole being to the will.

As conscience is the reigning power of the soul, the will is the executive, and in order to keep a pure conscience the will must act out its teaching. When inclination lures, when the flesh incites to that which conscience condemns, the will must say, No, and be firm as adamant. When Satan takes us up to 'an exceeding high mountain' and says that all these things will he give us if we will do this or that, the will must say, No, and repel the tempter. This is just the point where human nature has failed from the beginning. Our first parents fell here. Their consciences were on the right side, but their will yielded to the persuasions of the enemy. This is sin, committal of the will to unlawful selfgratification. Joseph's conscience thundered the right path, and his will acted it out. Pilate's conscience also thundered the right course, but his will failed to carry it out. In one we behold a hero, in the other a traitor.

Young man, when you have got the fiat of your conscience, act on it. At all costs carry it out. Better be counted a fool and die poor than be damned as a traitor to God and righteousness.

Young woman, what says your own conscience about accepting that unconverted lover? Never mind what friends say, what inclination says, what apparent interest says; they all lie if they contradict God. And miserable comforters will they all prove when His chastisements overtake you. Let your will be firm, though it slay you. Man of business, conscience intrudes ever on the arena of trade. You hear its voice about this and that practice, or such and such a scheme. Does your will carry out its dictates? Do you resolutely say I will not do this thing and sin against God? This is the test of faith. Real faith dares to trust God with consequences; a spurious faith must look after consequences itself. It must save its life whatever becomes of a good conscience. Judge how much it is worth.

To keep a pure conscience requires great vigilance, lest by surprise or inattention we defile it. It also requires patience.

Often it necessitates our walking in an isolated path, taking a course which men condemn. Men judge from outward appearance; they do not see the intricacies of individual experience. The very course which they condemn may be that which conscience insists on, and which must be done or suffered, or conscience and God will be grieved and offended.

Patience will wait till God, by time and providence, justifies our course. Paul said it was a small matter with him to be judged of man's judgment. Why?

Because his conscience acquitted--justified--and God witnessed that he was right. Such a soul can go on with all the world up in arms against it. This is just what the martyrs did, nothing more, nothing less.

Last of all, a pure conscience is its own reward. No matter who condemns, if it approves there is peace and sunshine in the soul. And whatever our trials or persecutions we can draw near to God without wavering, for 'if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God. And whatsoever we ask, we receive of Him, because we keep His commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in His sight' (1 John 3:21, 22).

As a clean conscience is its own reward, so an offended conscience is its own punishment. Conscience frequently offended soon becomes 'seared'--mark, not destroyed; quick and raw enough underneath, ready to be probed and fretted by the worm that dieth not, and scorched by the fire that never goes out, but seared on the surface, of no use for present service; numbed, dark, useless.

People with their consciences in this state often tell us they do not feel condemned for dispositions and practices which are evidently forbidden by the word of God, nor for things which they once would have trembled to do. Poor things, they do not see that their consciences are seared.

A lady once told us that early in her religious experience she would have felt very much condemned if she had gone to a theatre, but now she could go there and feel that she was sitting with Christ in heavenly places at the same time! She had got such an increase of light, or rather darkness, that the godless entertainment, the worldly multitude, the flippant jokes and pot-house songs did not strike her as inconsistent with the teaching and profession of Him who said, 'They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.' Truly, it is an awful thing to have a seared conscience! There is but one step between that soul and everlasting death.

CHAPTER THREE:

With Christ on the Offensive

SUPPOSING we could blot out from our minds all knowledge of the history of Christianity from the time of its inauguration with the pentecostal baptism--or, at any rate, from the close of the period described in the Acts of the Apostles-and take the Acts of the Apostles and sit down and calculate what was likely to happen in the world, what different results we should have anticipated, what a different world we should have reckoned upon as the outcome of it all!

Considering the system which commenced under such auspices, with such assumptions and professions on the part of its Author (speaking after the manner of men), and producing, as it did, in the first century of its existence, such gigantic and momentous results, we should have said, if we knew nothing of what has intervened from that time to this, that the world would have long since been subjugated to the influence of that system, and brought under the power of its great Originator and Founder!

From reading the Acts, from observing the spirit which animated the early disciples, and from the way in which everything fell before them, we should have anticipated that ten thousand times greater results would have followed. And, in my judgment, this anticipation would have been perfectly rational and just.

We Christians profess to possess in the gospel of Christ a mighty lever which, rightly and universally applied, would lift the entire burden of sin and misery from the souls of our fellow-men--a panacea, we believe it to be, for all the moral and spiritual woes of humanity. Christians have professed to believe this ever since the time of which we have been reading; and yet look at the world, at so-called Christian England, in this present century! The great majority of this nation utterly ignoring God, and no pretence of remembering Him one day in the week.

Now, I ask, how is this? I do not for a moment believe that it is in accordance with the purpose of God. Here is a system launched under such auspices, with such purposes, with such promises, and with such prospects, and yet how little alteration has been effected in the habits and dispositions of the race!

But some will say, 'Well, but there is a good deal done.' Thank God there is. It would be sad if nothing were done; but it looks like a drop in the ocean compared with what should have been done. I cannot accept any theory which so reflects upon the love and goodness of God as to make Him to blame for this effeteness of Christianity. I believe that the old arch-enemy has done in this dispensation what he did in former ones--circumvented the purposes of God and retarded the accomplishment of God's purposes by deceiving God's own people. He has always done so. He has always got up a caricature of God's real thing, and the nearer he can get it to be like the original the more successful he is.

He has succeeded in deceiving God's people as to the standard of their own religious life. He has got the Church, nearly as a whole, to lower the standard which Jesus Christ Himself established of victory over sin, the world, the flesh and the devil; real, living, reigning, triumphing, Christianity! Satan knew what was the secret of the great success of those early disciples. It was their whole-hearted devotion, their absorbing love to Christ, their utter abnegation of the world. An enthusiastic religion had swallowed them up and made them willing to become wanderers and vagabonds on the face of the earth--for His sake to dwell in dens and caves, to be torn asunder, and to be persecuted in every form. Before this degree of devotion Satan saw he had no chance. Such people as these, he knew, must ultimately subdue the world. So the arch-enemy said, 'What must I do? I shall lose my supremacy as the god of this world.' No use to bring in a gigantic system of error, which everybody would see to be error. That has never been Satan's way; but his plan has been to get hold of a good man here and there, who shall creep in, as the Apostle said, unawares and preach another doctrine, and who shall deceive, if it were possible, the very elect. And he did it! He accomplished his design. He gradually lowered the standard of Christian life and character, and though, in every revival, God has raised it again to a certain extent, we have never got back thoroughly to the simplicity, purity and devotion set before us in the Acts of the Apostles. And just in the degree that it has approximated thereto, in every age Satan has got somebody to oppose and to show that this was too high a standard for human nature.

I said when I was young, and I repeat it in my maturer years, that I would never pull this standard down. There it is, a glorious standard put before us. The power is proffered, the conditions are laid down, and we can all attain it if we will; but if we will not, do not let us drag it down and try to make it meet our little, paltry, circumscribed experience. Show the world a real, living, selfsacrificing, hard-working, triumphing religion, and the world will be influenced by it; but anything short of that it will turn round and spit upon.

I have been reading the New Testament with special reference to the aggressive spirit of primitive Christianity, and it seems to me that we come infinitely short of any right and rational idea of that spirit. Satan has got Christians to accept what I may call a namby-pamby, kid-glove system of presenting the gospel, a sort of half-frightened way of putting the truth before unconverted people. To me this is utterly antagonistic and repugnant to the spirit of the early saints. 'Go ye into all the world,' said Jesus, 'and preach the gospel to every creature.' What is implied in this commission? People have never yet fathomed its meaning. I believe we of The Salvation Army have come nearer to it than any. Would it ever occur to you that the language meant, 'Go and build chapels and churches and invite the people to come in, and if they will not, let them alone?'

Divesting our minds of all convention and tradition, what would the language mean? 'Go ye.' To whom? 'To every creature.' Where am I to get at them?

Where they are. Seek them out; run after them wherever you can get at them and preach the gospel. If I understand it, that is the meaning and the spirit of the commission.

Again, to Paul He says: 'Unto whom now I send thee, to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God.'

They are asleep; go and wake them up. They do not see their danger. They are preoccupied. Open their eyes, and turn them round by your desperate earnestness and moral suasion and moral force. How did Paul understand it?

He says, 'We persuade men.' He did not rest content with just putting it before them, giving them gentle invitations and then leaving them alone. He ran after them and pulled them out of the fire. We, too, must go after them. The spirit of the apostles and of the early Christians was such that when they were scattered by persecution, they went everywhere, preaching the word. This does not mean that they preached always in set discourses and at public assemblies; but they went like ancient Israel, 'every man after his man' to try to win him for Christ.

Some people think that the apostles laid the foundations of all the churches. In this they are quite mistaken. Churches sprang up where the apostles had never been. The apostles went to visit and organize them after they had sprung up as the result of the work of the early laymen and women who went everywhere preaching the word. May the Lord shower upon us in this day the same spirit! We should build churches and chapels; we should invite the people to them; but do you think it is consistent with these divine commissions that we should rest in this, when three parts of the population utterly ignore our invitations and take no notice whatever of our buildings and our services?

What is to be done? Jesus Christ says, 'Go after them. When all the civil methods have failed, go and compel them to come in.' We want more of this determined aggressive spirit.

People say you must be very careful, very judicious. You must not thrust religion down people's throats. Then, I say, you will never get it down. Am I to wait till an unconverted, godless man wants to be saved before I try for his salvation? He will never want to be saved till the death-rattle is in his throat. It is for us to go and force the truth upon the attention of those who are indifferent and preoccupied. There is some one soul that you, more than any other person on earth, can influence--some soul or souls. Are you doing all you can for their salvation?

It is a bad sign for the Christianity of this day that it provokes so little opposition. If there were no other evidence of its being wrong, I should know it from that. When the church and the world can jog along comfortably together you may be sure there is something wrong. The world has not altered. Its spirit is exactly the same as it ever was, and if Christians were equally faithful and devoted to the Lord and separated from the world, living so that their lives were a reproof to all ungodliness, the world would hate them as much as ever it did. You say: 'We should be getting into endless turmoil. There would be an uproar.' Yes; and the Acts of the Apostles is full of stories of uproars. One uproar was so great that the Chief Captain had to get Paul over the shoulders of the people lest he should have been torn in pieces.

'But,' you say, 'wouldn't it be inconsistent with the dignity of the gospel?' It depends upon the standpoint from which you look at it, upon what really constitutes the dignity of the gospel. Is it human dignity, or is it divine? Is it earthly, or is it heavenly dignity? It was a very undignified thing, looked at humanly, for Christ to die on a cross between two thieves. So considered, it was the most undignified thing ever done in this world, and yet, looked at on moral and spiritual grounds, it was the grandest spectacle that ever earth or Heaven gazed upon, and methinks that the inhabitants of Heaven stood still to look. The Pharisees, I know, spat upon Him and wagged their heads and said,

'He saved others; Himself He cannot save.' But He was intent on saving others. That was the dignity of almighty strength allying itself with human weakness in order to raise it. It was the dignity of everlasting wisdom shrouding itself in human ignorance in order to enlighten it. It was the dignity of everlasting, unquenchable love, baring its bosom to suffer in the stead of its rebellious creature--man. It was incarnate God standing in the place of condensed apostate man--the dignity of love!

God save us from maligning the gospel by clothing it with our paltry notions of earthly dignity, and forgetting the dignity which crowned the sacred brow upon the Cross! That is the dignity for us, and it will never suffer by any employer talking lovingly to his servant, maid or errand boy and trying to bring them to Jesus. That dignity will never suffer even though you should have to be dragged through the streets with a howling mob at your heels, though you should be tied to a stake, as were the martyrs of old, and surrounded by laughing and taunting fiends. That will be a dignity which shall be crowned in Heaven with everlasting glory. If I understand it, that is the dignity of the gospel--the dignity of love. I do not covet any other.

CHAPTER FOUR:

Prayer that God Cannot Answer

THERE is no experience perhaps more common in these days than this among professing Christians: 'I have prayed a long time for certain things, but I don't seem to get any answers to my prayers.' I often wonder such people do not give up praying altogether.

This is a very God-dishonouring experience, and to account for it something must be wrong either with the suppliants or the Giver. Often I feel what a deeply dishonouring thing it is when Christians meet, as they do, to pray for a revival or for some specific thing in their churches and in their families, and it never comes.

Some years ago, when a wave of revival was sweeping over Ireland and America, the churches in this country united to pray that it might come to England; but it did not come, and the infidels wagged their heads and wrote in their newspapers: 'See, the Christians? God is either deaf or gone a-hunting, for they have had prayer meetings all over the land for a revival and it has not come.'

How my cheeks burned with shame as I thought of it. I knew it was not because God was asleep, not because His arm was shortened, not because His bowels of compassion did not yearn over sinners, not because He could not have poured out His Spirit and given us glorious times of refreshing. There was only one reason, and that was that His people asked amiss. They did not fulfil the conditions of prevailing prayer. If they had prayed till now and maintained the same attitude, they would not have got the answer, because there are conditions to God's promises.

We may pray ourselves black in the face, but if we do not comply with the conditions God will never move an inch to meet us. There are plenty of gracious promises in the Book, in which God has bound Himself to answer the faithful prayers of His people. 'The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.'

Why is it, then, that a great mass of professing Christians do not get answers to their prayers? In the first place they are not the characters to whom God has made the promises. The promises are made to those who keep His commandments, who walk in the light and have fellowship with Him through the Holy Spirit who, therefore, can make intercession for them. How can the Spirit make intercession for a man when He is not in him? Those who are walking in the light can see what sort of requests to make, when to make them, and how to make them. They see it all, because they are in the light. Such people ask and receive. But, alas! Because there are so few of these, God's character is traduced every day and infidels laugh at us and at Him. I challenge anybody to find me promises in this Book, taken with the context (except in the case of repenting sinners, who are a special class and met with special promises), that are made to any except to saints. Certainly they are not made to everybody. The prayer of the wicked is an abomination to God, except it be when he is forsaking his wickedness. The promises are made to people who are in fellowship with God. 'If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you,' said Jesus, 'ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.'

The promises, I say, are made to those who, having been brought into living fellowship by a living faith, maintain that union, who walk in it, live in it, and avail themselves of the opportunities and privileges which Jesus has bestowed upon them by virtue of it.

It is not enough to have been in union with Jesus, in order to get answers to prayer. There are thousands who have let go the grasp of faith, and are not abiding in Christ, and yet are constantly praying and wondering why God does not answer their prayers. You see, the first condition is wanting. There is no possible way of approach to the Father but through the Son, and no prayers made while out of living union with His Son are accepted.

That does not mean saying, 'For the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ.' It does not matter much what people say. God never pays attention to people's words. What they mean and feel He pays attention to, and He knows when people really offer their prayers in union with His Son. When they are not in union their prayers never rise any higher than the room in which they are offered.

The next condition of prevailing prayer is obedience to the light. What does it mean to walk in obedience? It is coming right out and saying, 'Lord Jesus, I want to know Thy will. Pour Thy light upon me. I am prepared to follow it, even though it be to the block and to the stake.'

There is plenty of light; but you must say, 'Lord I am willing to have it, even if it condemns my life, my companions and indulgences, my business or my family relations.'

To walk in the light means to obey His voice, to walk so that your own heart condemns you not. The obedient child who lives in complacent affection with his parent has no fear in coming up to ask for favours. He knows he will be given them. His own heart does not condemn him. 'If our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God.'

I defy any man to separate confidence from obedience. If you will not be obedient, you cannot have confidence, and every Christian knows he cannot go up to the throne of God in faith for any blessing when his own heart condemns him. He has to get that state of condemnation taken away. Walk in the light, have fellowship with Him, and his Blood will cleanse you from all sin. Then the Spirit will teach you how to pray, and what to pray for, which the great mass of those who profess religion know nothing about.

The leading, teaching and urging of the Holy Ghost is the next condition of effectual prayer. We might call these conditions a four-linked chain connecting our souls with the heart of God. First, fellowship with Jesus; second, obedience to His commands, walking in the light; third, the intercession of the indwelling Spirit; and fourth, the exercise of faith. If you miss any one of these links your prayers are done for. You may have all the other three, but if you miss one you will not get answers. It will cut communion, and there will be no response.

Many professors do not know what the spirit of intercession means. They do not know anything about the Spirit making intercession for them with groanings which cannot be uttered. When we get more of this spirit of intercessory prayer in parents we shall see more spiritual children born. We know not what to pray for as we ought unless the Spirit teaches; hence people are constantly, as James says, asking and not receiving, because they ask amiss. 'Ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts'--that means, your earthly desires and purposes.

I believe in my soul that this is the great reason why thousands of Christians pray and never get answers. They are selfish in their prayers. Mothers tell me that they have prayed for their children for years, and not had one of them converted. Why? Because they prayed merely selfish prayers, because they were their children, or because they wanted them to be religious, so that they would not bring disgrace upon the family, or it would be so nice to have them religious. They don't want them to cut off the vanities and fooleries of this world, and give themselves up wholly to Christ. That would be too much. They want just enough religion to make them a comfort to themselves. Would you answer such prayers if you were God? You must look at your child always as God's, as having a precious soul redeemed with the precious Blood of Jesus, and having talents and capacities to glorify Him and spread His kingdom, and you must ground your prayers on that and say, 'I would rather lay them in the grave than that they should grow up to dishonour Thee.' Then you will have your prayers answered.

The last link is faith. Here is another secret. No believer can exercise faith for anything that the Holy Ghost does not lead him up to. You may pray, and pray, but you will never exercise faith until you have the Spirit making intercession in you.

There is very little difficulty about believing for people who have taken the three preceding steps. Those who are in fellowship with Jesus, those who are walking in the light, those who have the Holy Ghost as an interceding Spirit-they know what to pray for; they know what the mind of the Spirit is: they know how the Spirit is leading them, and they can march up to the throne and ask and receive. They know their request is according to the mind of God, and they can wrestle, if need be, if He sees fit to try their faith. God does not always answer at once. He lets His people wrestle with groans that cannot be uttered; but they know they will get it, because they know the Spirit is making intercession for them, and they hold on, sometimes amidst great discouragement and temptation, till the answer comes. They get the assurance of faith, which says, 'Yes, it shall be done.'

You say the age of miracles is past. Yes, because the age of that sort of faith is past. You will get miracles back when that sort of faith returns. God has bound Himself over to the faith of His real people, and He would sooner break all the laws of nature than break the laws of grace. He can easily set aside a law of nature, but He will never set aside a law of grace. He has bound Himself to faith--the only power in the universe to which He has bound Himself-and nobody can truly rise up in this world and say, 'I trusted God, and He deceived me.' Prayer is agony of soul, a wrestling of the spirit. You know how men and women deal with one another when they are in desperate earnestness for something to be done. That is prayer, whether it be to man or to God; and when you get your heart influenced and melted and wrought up and burdened by the Holy Ghost for souls, you will have power, and you will never pray but somebody will be convinced, some poor soul's dark eyes will be opened, and spiritual life will commence.

CHAPTER FIVE:

Charity True and Counterfeit

I suppose that in no department of roguery in this roguish world has there been more time and ingenuity expended than in making counterfeit money, especially bank notes. Just as wicked men have tried to imitate the most valuable of human productions for their own profit, so the devil has been trying to counterfeit God's most precious things from the beginning, and to produce something so like them that mankind at large should not see the difference.

Perhaps in no direction has he been so successful as in producing a spurious charity. Almost he has got it to perfection and cannot very well improve on the present copy. Charity, or love, is God's most precious treasure. It is dearer to His heart than all the vast domains of His universe, dearer than all the glorious beings He has created. So much so that when some of the highest spirits amongst the angelic bands violated this love He hurled them from the highest Heaven to the nethermost Hell, because He saw that it was more important to the well-being of His universe to maintain the harmony of love in Heaven than to save those spirits who had allowed selfishness to interfere with it. So our Lord says, 'I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.'

What is this precious, beautiful charity? For one thing it is divine. It must be shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost. In vain do we look for this heavenly plant amongst the unrenewed children of men. It grows not on the corrupt soil of fallen nature. It springs only where the ploughshare of true repentance has broken up the fallow ground of the heart, where faith in a crucified Saviour has purified it, and where the blessed Holy Spirit has taken permanent possession. It is the love of God--not only to God, but like God, from God, and fixed on the same objects and ends as those which God loves. It is a divine implantation by the Holy Ghost.

Our first work is to have this love shed abroad in our hearts. It is a divine principle, in contradistinction to the mere emotion of love. All men have love as an emotion, mere natural love toward those whom they like, or who do well for them. 'If ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?' Wicked men love one another from mere natural affinity, as the tiger loves its cubs.

There is great confusion amongst professors of religion on this subject. They feel sentiments of pity and generosity toward their fellow-men, and they may even give their goods to feed the poor, and yet not have a spark of divine charity in their hearts. King Saul, after God had departed from him, was not wholly destitute of generous feeling respecting his family and his kingdom. Dives in Hell had some pity for his brethren. But neither of them had a spark of this divine charity. Consider one or two points wherein a spurious and a divine charity utterly and for ever diverge and disagree in their nature. For example, spurious charity is never exercised but to gratify some selfish principle in human nature. Many motives inspire it. We read in the Bible that a man may give his goods to feed the poor, and his body to be burned, and yet be destitute of true charity.

What an anomaly. But we have wonderful illustrations that such a thing is possible. A man may do this to support and carry out a favourite system of intellectual belief of which he has become enamoured, just as men become absorbed in politics, or in what they consider the good of their nature, and will even go to the cannon's mouth to promote it. A man may do it in order to merit eternal life. Paul did this when he went about to establish his own righteousness. He tells us that his own exaltation was the mainspring of all his zeal. There was no divine love; he was an utterly unrenewed, Christless and selfish man at the very time he was doing this.

Another motive may be to gratify a naturally generous disposition. To a friend of mine, when he was talking in a confidential way about his giving and the delight it gave him, attributing it to divine grace, I used to say, 'Hold I my friend; I am not so sure it is all grace. You like giving better than other people like receiving.'

Look out that you don't lose your reward through not taking the trouble to see what you give to; don't give your money to any and every scheme. You are answerable to God for your wealth, and God will demand of you how you have bestowed your goods. True charity takes the trouble to find out the best channels in which to give for God's glory and the salvation of men.

A false charity begins in self and ends on earth. It always contemplates the earthy part of man in a superior degree to the spiritual part; and here it exactly crosses and contradicts the divine charity, which always contemplates man in the entirety of his being, and always gives the first importance to the soul.

We have plenty of spurious charity. People will say, when speaking of godless and even wicked men, 'You must be charitable, you must not judge.' Satan does not care how much of this one-sided charity there is; the more the better for his purpose; it will make people all the more comfortable in their sins, and get them all the more easily down to Hell.

If you are more concerned about relieving temporal distress than you are about feeding famished souls you may know where your charity comes from. Do not misrepresent me and say that I teach all of one and none of the other. God forbid, for if any man 'hath this world's goods, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?' But, on the other side, if he sees him spiritually famishing--dying for want of the bread of life--how dwelleth the love of Christ in him if he does not minister to this spiritual destitution? I know that real Christianity cares for body and soul. Bless God, it does. But always mind that it sets the soul first. The Master fed the multitude but before that He had them with Him three days trying to save their souls, and when they grew hungry in the process then He made them sit down while He fed their bodies. He always looked after the soul first, and so does everyone possessed of divine charity.

This divine charity makes everything subservient to the salvation of souls. On one occasion the Master had fed the multitudes, and when they came to Him again to be fed He said, 'Ye seek Me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled.' You would have said, 'Quite right; the people want to be fed; they are hungry.' But do you hear the divine lament that comes out in these words, that the people were so spiritually obtuse that they valued the earthly bread more than the heavenly?

People are so unphilosophical in religion. They talk about not knowing. But you can find out in two minutes whether you love God or yourself more. What woman does not know whether she loves her husband more than herself?

What is the proof? She seeks to please him and is willing to sacrifice herself for him--in fact, merges her interests altogether in his. Do you love God best?

Are you willing to forgo your interests and to seek him?

Another main point of difference between a true and a false charity is that divine charity is not only consistent with, but very often necessitates, reproof and rebuke on the part of its possessor. It conforms in this, as in everything else, to its divine model--'As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten.' The possessor of this divine charity can afford to rebuke and reprove sin wherever he finds it. He will not suffer sin upon his neighbour, but will in any wise reprove Him, and strive to win him to the right. For a beautiful illustration of the working of this divine charity look into the heart and life of the apostle who wrote the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians. It is Paul himself who, writing to the Galatians, says:

"But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed. For before that certain came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles: but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision. And the other Jews dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation. But when I saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, I said unto Peter before them all, If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews? We . . . are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles."

It would be exceedingly painful to Paul thus publicly to rebuke Peter. They loved one another, for we find Peter, long after this, in one of his epistles, calling Paul 'our beloved brother Paul.' Paul understood the claims of true charity, or he could not have written this thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians. If he loved Peter, and if he understood the claims of true charity, why did he thus openly rebuke Peter, and why did he inflict upon himself the pain of doing so? Faithfulness to Peter himself, faithfulness to the truth, faithfulness to Jesus Christ demanded it; therefore he sacrificed his personal feelings and inflicted this pain upon himself, rather than allow Peter to go wrong, the Romans to be misled, and the Jews to be carried away with worldly policy.

There is a greater example still in our Lord Himself whose whole soul was love. How faithfully He reproved even His own when they erred from the truth, and how fearlessly He exposed and denounced the shallowness and hypocrisy of those who professed to love God and yet contradicted this profession in their lives. He said to His disciples on one occasion, 'Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.' And again to the hypocrites and Pharisees He said, 'If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham . . . If God were your Father, ye would love Me: for I proceeded forth and came from God . . . Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.' And yet His divine heart was full to breaking of love, and broke itself on the Cross for them. Would to God there were more of this faithful, loving charity that dares to reprove sin, instead of the false charity that fawns on a man to his face and goes behind him and stabs him in the back.

Do you suppose that the great mass of the professors of this generation think one another to be right? Witness what they say behind each other's backs. Yet not one in a thousand ever went privately to his brother, lovingly took hold of his hand, and reproved him.

If everybody who sees sin upon his neighbour would do that--if he would take the Lord's counsel and go and see his brother alone and tell him his fault--how many would be saved from backsliding, and how many a disgraceful split and controversy in churches might be saved.

But where are the people who will do it? If it were a pleasant duty, many would do it easily enough; but it is a painful duty, and a man does not like to screw himself up to it. Where is the man who would rather himself suffer than that his brother should go to sleep in his sin and the precious cause of Christ be disgraced and injured?

False charity is the opposite of this. Its possessor cannot afford to reprove anybody. He would faint at the very idea, and he calls people hard and censorious who dare to do it. But he will not be afraid to stab a man behind his back. The speech of this false charity flattereth. Honey is on its tongue, but the poison of asps is underneath. Beware of it! Even when it professes to commend a brother or neighbour, it rolls up its sanctimonious eyes and always puts in a 'but'. Oh, the fair reputations that this slime of the serpent has trailed over!

Mind which charity you have got. True charity rejoiceth not in iniquity. Are you conscious in your soul of a feeling of triumph when anybody that you do not like happens to fall on some evil thing? If you have, the devil has got hold of you. Do you rejoice in iniquity when it happens to an enemy? If so, woe be to you unless you get that venom out. 'Love your enemies' love them; 'bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in Heaven.'

CHAPTER SIX:

Formalism or Grace

I HAVE chosen to inquire into the principle of adaptation as applied to the gospel. No person can imagine for a moment that we would hold or teach adaptation of the gospel itself. We deem this so above any change that we would not be responsible for transposing its order, much less altering its matter, so sacredly intact do we believe the gospel of Christ ought to be. We believe also that the order of God ought to be strictly maintained, that it is as rational and true in philosophy as it is in divinity and that the way the Spirit operates upon the minds of men is just the same as ever. When we come to speak of modes and measures, that is quite another thing. A most easily fathered truth running through the New Testament is, that forms and ceremonies are nothing except as they embody and express real spiritual life and truth. Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing; baptism is nothing, and being baptized is nothing; the Lord's supper is nothing, and abstaining from the Lord's supper is nothing--nothing in themselves as matters of form. Embraced under circumcision are all mere outward forms and ceremonies; all are nothing, save keeping the commandments of God.

Now, it was the crowning condemnation of the Jews that they had frittered away the spirituality and practical bearing of divine law, clinging to those forms and ceremonies which were instituted only to embody and symbolize it.

They had better have come out and avowed themselves as unbelievers than have gone on professing to be the children of God while they were doing the work of the devil. But they would not receive this teaching. They held on to the form whilst the spirit had gone. They would make clean the outside of the . . . platter but within they were 'full of extortion and excess appearing beautiful outwardly, but within they were full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness.'

Alas! there is this tendency still in our fallen human nature. It is so much easier, or Satan makes it look so much easier, to an unregenerate man to rest in a form than to seek till he finds the spiritual grace which that form represents. It is so much easier than bringing his evil, unregenerate heart to God for Him to circumcise it and write His law in it, as He promises to do under the new covenant. God wants every man to bring his heart to Him, and let Him renew it.

How many thousands in so-called Christian England today are just there. They have the form; like the Jews, they are Pharisees with a Christian creed instead of a Jewish, the same in character, only different in name. They hang on to the creed of Jesus Christ, while they know nothing of the spirit; they have the form without the power. As in the individual there is this tendency to rest in form, so in the Church collectively. With the Jews their Temple service and the paraphernalia of Judaism was all in all to them, and they thought that Jesus Christ was the most awfully severe and uncharitable Person who had ever appeared on the face of the earth, because He told them the truth. We are very largely in the same condition as the Jews were when Christ came. There are, I know, grand and glorious exceptions; but I speak of the great whole, and I am backed up in this opinion by some most thoughtful and spiritual men.

What is to be done? There is no improving the future without disturbing the present, and the difficulty is to get people to be willing to be disturbed. We are so conservative by nature and feel such a rooted dislike to having anything rooted up or knocked down. It is as much the work of God, however, 'to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy,' as 'to build, and to plant,' and God's real ambassadors frequently have to do as much of the one as of the other. We have the accumulated traditionalism of ages to dig under, and it takes considerable force of character and a great deal of the Spirit of God to enable us to do it.

The law of adaptation is the only law in the New Testament with respect to modes and measures. While the gospel message is laid down with unerring exactness, we are left at perfect freedom to adapt our measures and modes of bringing it to bear upon men to the circumstances, times and conditions in which we live. 'I am made all things to all men.' declared the great apostle to the Gentiles who had thrown off the paraphernalia of Judaism years before, yet became as a Jew that he might win the Jews.

The great strong intellect became as a weak man that he might win the weak. He conformed himself to the conditions and circumstances of his hearers in all lawful things that he might win them; he let no mere conventionalities or ideas of propriety stand in his way when it was necessary to abandon them. He who was brave as a lion, and hailed a crown of martyrdom like a conquering hero, was willing to submit to anything when the requirements of his mission rendered it necessary.

Now here it seems to me that the Church--I speak universally--has made the grand mistake of exalting the traditions of the elders into the same importance and authority as the word of God. People contend that we must have quiet, proper, decorous services. I say, Where is your authority for this? I defy any man to show it. I have a great deal more authority for such a lively, gushing, spontaneous, and what you call disorderly, service, as our Salvation Army services sometimes are, in the fourteenth chapter of First Corinthians than you can find for yours. The best insight we have into the internal working of a religious service in apostolic times is in this chapter, and I ask you, Is it anything like the ordinary services of today?

We cannot get the order of a single service from the New Testament, nor can we get the form of government of a single church. Hence one denomination thinks theirs is the best form, and another theirs; so Christendom has been divided into various camps ever since; but this very quarrelling shows the impossibility of getting from the New Testament the routine, the order and the fashion of mere modes. Do you think God had no purpose in this omission?

The forms, modes and measures are not prescribed as in the Old Testament dispensation. Why?

The principle is laid down that you are to adapt your measures to the necessity of the people to whom you minister; you are to take the gospel to them in such modes and habitudes of thought and expression and circumstances as will gain a hearing. You are to preach to them in such a way as will cause them to look and listen. What scope for the various manifestations of the Spirit! The argument that this free operation of the Spirit has been abused is no argument against it, for then you might argue against every privilege. Here is abundant evidence that these Corinthian converts had opportunity to witness for Jesus, each one to give forth the gushing utterance of his soul, and tell other people of the experience which the Holy Ghost had wrought in him.

And look at the result! 'If . . . there come in one that believeth not, or one unlearned, he is convinced of all, he is judged of all: and thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest; and so falling down on his face he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth.' What unkind things have been said of The Salvation Army because people at our meetings have fallen on their faces under the convicting power of the Spirit. But you see this is apostolic.

Should we not pray to be set free from the traditionalism and routinism in which Satan has succeeded in lulling us to sleep? It was only the repressing, and ultimately, I am afraid, the all-but extinguishing, of the Holy Spirit's urgings that has led to the dead way in which many services are conducted.

I maintain that the only indispensable qualification for witnessing for Christ is the Holy Ghost. Paul expressly, over and over again, abjures all mere human equipment. He expressly declares that these things were not the power even where they existed, but that it was the Holy Ghost. Therefore, give me man, woman or child with the Holy Ghost, full of love and zeal for God, and I say it would be a great strength and joy to that convert to testify to the church and to the world, and it would be the bounden duty of the church to give him or her the opportunity to do so. The Lord is not going to evangelize this land by finished sermons and disquisitions, but by the simple testimony of people saved from sin and the devil, by His power and His grace. He is going to do it as He began, by witnessing.

Read your New Testament and you will be struck with the amazing amount of evidence for this unconventional kind of service. When shall Peters and Marys be so filled with the Spirit that they cannot help telling what God has done for them, like the woman of Samaria who, when she had found Him of whom Moses and the Prophets had written, went and fetched her fellow-townsmen and women to hear Him? The way in which the Lord is going to gather out his great and glorious kingdom in these latter days is by the power of testimony in the Holy Ghost.

The Master Himself adopted these very measures. I was much struck with this when someone said, 'Why, you are sending people to preach who cannot read or write!' For a moment I was staggered, but I asked Him, 'How many of the apostles do you suppose could read and write when they were first sent out?' And then it was the questioner's turn to be staggered. There is no reason to suppose that, with but two or three exceptions, any of them could. Education then was far more uncommon than it is now. It was not reading and writing that was the great qualification for preaching Christ; it was knowing and seeing. It was not the power of eloquence, but being able to cast out devils that was the test. Give me somebody able to cast out devils, and I don't care whether they can read or write or put a grammatical sentence together.

Why did not Jesus Christ call the doctors and scribes of his day? There were plenty of them--highly educated men with trained and disciplined minds. He acted on the law of adaptation. He wanted His gospel preached to the great masses--not to the select few. How was He to have his gospel so preached, but by men like unto themselves? They would not listen to the doctors, and they will not now. It may be very wicked and obstinate and foolish, but such is the fact--they never have, and they never will.

Hence Jesus Christ chose the weak things of the earth to confound the mighty. He would, in the other case, have been obliged to have all those scribes and doctors untaught almost all they had learned, and so set them free from the bonds of tradition. He would have had to remould their minds, and then equip them. There was no necessity for this when He found the fishermen ready to His hand. They were just the men He wanted. They only required tempering with the Holy Ghost, and they were ready for the work. They thought as the people thought; they spoke with and associated with the people and, in fact, were of them. As He wanted the masses of men evangelized, He chose men from amongst the masses to evangelize them. Here was infinite wisdom. His purpose was that the gospel might be propagated in all climes and among all conditions of men, through any kind of agent--Greek, Jew, Barbarian, Scythian, man, woman, child. Any person who has experienced its power in the soul may go and speak of it to anybody who can be persuaded to hear them. Are there not teeming thousands round about you who live every day trampling his law under their feet? For Christ's sake, send somebody after them. If they will not have your doctors of divinity and your polished divines, get hold of fishermen and costermongers and send them. Let the people have a chance for their souls. Let them hear; for if they hear not, how shall they believe? Hundreds of men in this country were never in a place of worship, save to be christened or to be married, and a good many, sad to say, are living together without even being married. While we have been standing upon our dignity, whole generations have gone to Hell!--if the Bible is true. The whole work of redemption is a work of humiliation, selfsacrifice and suffering; and if we are not willing to follow Him in that, we may as well give up professing his name.

The Lord help us to go down amongst the fishermen, amongst the poor, the weak, the unlearned, the vulgar, to 'condescend to men of low estate.'

CHAPTER SEVEN:

Sham Judgment

GOD has reared a judgment seat in every man's conscience, which in some slight measure answers to, and prefigures, the sentence which He declares He will pronounce on every man's action, whether it be good or bad.

Then, if there be a great judge of all, and a standard of right and wrong which He has set up, it must be of supreme importance that we should correctly understand what is this standard, and that we should judge the conduct of ourselves and of those around us according to it. Surely nothing could be more deceptive and Soul-ruining than to accept as correct any short of the one unalterable and eternal standard of righteousness and truth which He has laid down; yet popular Christianity distinguishes itself by nothing more than a systematic misrepresentation of right and wrong, calling evil good and good evil.

'Judge not, that ye be not judged' is a favourite text of popular Christianity, which is interpreted to mean that we are on no account to form an opinion of the rightness or wrongness of anybody's conduct.

On this principle we are asked to allow that people who never go to a place of worship or bow their knees in prayer may be as good and faithful servants of God as any others. We are told that perhaps they are carrying out the divine will in a spirit of true devotion to duty, that working is praying, and that a man's belief bounds his responsibility.

'We are all aiming at the same thing' is a favourite way of expressing this popular Christianity, which suits the ideas of drunkards, adulterers and liars, as well as of shallow professors.

To declare positively that people are sinners, condemned already and on their way to Hell, is accounted as 'uncharitable judging,' 'really dreadful', and no one, we are told, can possibly be justified in coming to such a conclusion.

All this we could understand perfectly, coming from the camps of infidelity or from the haunts of vice; but to find it passed off in connection with the name and teachings of Jesus Christ is monstrous. What a sham to worship Him who declares Himself to be the Way, the Truth, and the Life, if there be no certain way, no definable difference between the true and the false, no practical separation between the Christ life and the life without Christ. Surely it is high time for all who care about the right of Christ on earth to make up their minds to one thing or the other. If Christ be our Master, let us learn His lessons, and abide by His rule, and obey His commands. If, on the other hand, some are unwilling to see any difference between the narrow and the broad road, between those who are in the Kingdom of God or out of it, who are with Christ or against Him, let them be honest enough to declare openly that they have no Christ and will have no prophet but 'Society'.

Another text which might be taken as setting forth a favourite theory of modern Christianity is that in which Paul personified the struggles of a convicted but unsaved soul: 'For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.' We are all to look upon ourselves as poor, incapable, fallible creatures, and this assumed humility is to absolve us from all condemnation, on account either of doing evil or neglecting to do good. How often have I heard people say, with regard to some man holding an official position of great responsibility in the Church, 'Well, he does not do this, that, or the other (whatever may be the duty in question) as he might; but, you know, he can't do everything.' Such an apology as this would be beautiful, applied to those who are known to be earnestly and faithfully striving to do their share for the Kingdom of God; but when applied, as I have generally heard it, to what everyone knows to be a systematic and inexcusable neglect of everyday duty, it is no more nor less than a wholesale cloaking of sin.

How differently people treat the question of doing their duty in commercial matters. Imagine the business man who cannot attend to all his customers, or who thinks it unnecessary to keep his place of business open all the week and every week. What would you think of a servant who should consider it unreasonable to get up at the proper time every morning, or carry out your wishes in matters in which her views differed from yours? How long could society hang together if this looseness of thought as to what we ought and ought not to do were permitted to enter into the sphere of everyday life? But alas, alas! How much more ruinous is this looseness when it relates to our great spiritual duties toward God and our fellow-creatures. Either you ought or you ought not always to pray and not to faint, to learn and to do the will of God, to care for perishing souls, to warn, counsel and help those around you; and what applies to you applies to all who take upon them the name of Christ in any way whatever. We should never allow ourselves to excuse any neglect of God and duty because such neglect is all but universal; we should look at things as they are, and in the light of the judgment throne; and when we see conduct worthy of condemnation, condemn it, and be determined to separate ourselves in heart and life from evil practices, however much respected they may be, and to take our stand on the side of duty and of God at all costs.

I have turned away numberless times of late years, and with almost despairing disgust, from audiences of what would be called intelligent Christians; that is to say, persons who talk and act upon an intelligent view of any imaginable subject, except that of Christian duty. How often do I hear the remark, 'We know things are not as they should be,' from people who have not the slightest intention of striving in any way to make things better, and who would not, on any account, incur the odium of expressing any condemnation on that neglect of religious duty which they profess so much to deplore. Away with this unmanly, unwomanly cowardice! We have the light; let us come to it in order to see whether our deeds, and the deeds of those around us who profess to be working for God, are wrought in Him. We can, by God's grace, do our duty, if we will. Christ came on purpose to empower us to do it; but let those who will not have such a doctrine and such a Christ, but who prefer to accept the miserable theories of impotency, which would not be tolerated for a moment in the kitchen, the shop or the exchange--let them at least save Christ from the indignity of having such helpless, incapable creatures called by His name and professing to be His followers. He says with respect to all such, 'Why call ye Me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?'

The brutal tastes of the lower orders is another pet phrase of modern Christendom. It represents the idea that for a poor man, who has to keep himself and his family on a few shillings per week by hard labour, which takes away all inclination toward study or more exalted pursuits, it is a brutal taste to like to have a quart of beer as often as his scanty means will allow. It is a brutal taste to take pleasure in seeing two men fight each other, with their fists inflicting in the course of half an hour many hard knocks and bruises; and it is a still more brutal taste which leads men to train animals to fight each other, and to take pleasure in seeing them do so. Now I perfectly concur in the denunciation of all these evils, from which God is enabling The Salvation Army to rescue multitudes of these poor, so-called 'brutal fellows'; but let us turn the light of truth upon the Christian society which shrugs its shoulders in horror at the mere description of these men who get drunk and beat their wives, the Christian society whose refined taste leads it to have as little intercourse as possible with these 'lower orders.'

What sort of taste is it which, in the presence of the existing state of things among the poor, spends not fourpence but four shillings, and double and triple that sum on a single bottle of wine for the jovial entertainment of a few friends, and from twenty to forty pounds for a dinner to be swallowed by a dozen or two of people? I maintain that no splendid furniture, no well-trained and liveried servants, no costly pictures or display of finery or jewels, can redeem such a scene, viewed in the light of the teachings of Christ, from being worthy of being called brutal, and all the more brutal because it is delighted in by persons whose intelligence and knowledge of the awful state of things in the world around them must make them fully aware of the good that might be done with the money which they thus lavish upon their lusts.

Let me take you to another scene. One of the greatest employments of every Christian government and community is to train thousands of men, not to fight with their fists only, in the way of inflicting a few passing sores, but with weapons capable of killing human beings at the rate of so many per minute. It is quite a 'scientific taste' to study how to destroy a large vessel with several hundreds of men on board instantaneously. Talk of brutality! Is there anything half as brutal as this within the whole range of rowdyism? But against all this, modern Christianity, which professes to believe the teaching of Him who taught us not to resist evil, but to love our enemies and to treat with the utmost benevolence hostile nations, has nothing to say. All the devilish animosity, hard-hearted cruelty, and harrowing consequences of modern warfare are not only sanctioned, but held up as an indispensable necessity of civilized life, and in times of war, patronized and prayed for in our churches and chapels with as much impudent assurance as though Jesus Christ had taught, 'But I say unto you, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and return evil for evil, hate your enemies and pursue them with all the diabolical appliances of destruction which the devil can enable you to invent.' Alas, alas!

Is it not too patent for intelligent contradiction that the most detestable and brutal thing in the judgment of popular Christianity is not brutality, cruelty or injustice, but poverty and vulgarity?

I appeal to you whether I have spoken more than the truth; and I speak it in love to you who wish to hear and to obey it in the love of it. I see the utter hopelessness of any improvement, of any recurrence to the simplicity and purity of the gospel, without an utter abandonment of the false and hollow judgment of modern Christianity. I would fain hope that some of you may be induced to forsake every refuge of lies which has been reared around you, and to abandon all the false standards of faith and practice to which I have alluded, and open your hearts and ears to listen to the voice that never changes, but which in all ages alike tells men of a just judgment to come. We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; and it will be no excuse for us there that we were surrounded by false witnesses, sham lights and an openly received system of hypocrisy. God has shown us His beloved Moses, Daniels, Nehemiahs, Jeremiahs, Pauls, Johns and numberless other worthies, standing out gloriously alone in the midst of a pagan society, full of refined and splendid iniquity, and standing out ever more divine when all round were weighed in the balances and found wanting. You have but the old choice to make; may God enable you to make it, and to stand out for God and righteousness against all around you.

Part 3: Following the Highway Code

CHAPTER ONE:

Courtship by Principle

WHO can wonder that marriage is so often a failure when we observe the ridiculous way in which courtship is commonly carried on? Would not any partnership result disastrously that was entered into in so blind and senseless a fashion?

Perhaps the greatest evil of all is hurry. Young people do not allow themselves time to know each other before an engagement is formed. They should take time and make opportunities for acquainting themselves with each other's character, disposition and peculiarities before coming to a decision. This is the great point. They should on no account commit themselves until they are fully satisfied in their own minds, assured that if they have a doubt beforehand it generally increases afterward. I am convinced that this is where thousands make shipwreck and mourn the consequences all their lives.

Then again, every courtship ought to be based on certain definite principles. A fruitful cause of mistake and misery is that very few have a definite idea as to what they want in a partner, and hence they do not look for it. They simply go about the matter in a haphazard fashion, and jump into an alliance upon the first drawings of mere natural feeling regardless of the laws which govern such relationships.

In the first place, each of the parties ought to be satisfied that there are to be found in the other such qualities as would make them friends if they were of the same sex. In other words there should be a congeniality and compatibility of temperament. And yet how many seek for a mere bread-winner, or a housekeeper, rather than for a friend, a counsellor and companion. Unhappy marriages are usually the consequences of a too great disparity of mind, age, temperament, training or antecedents.

As quite a young girl I made up my mind to certain qualifications which I regarded as indispensable to the forming of any engagement.

In the first place, I was determined that his religious views must coincide with mine. He must be a sincere Christian, not a nominal one, or a mere church member, but truly converted to God. It is probably not too much to say that, so far as professedly religious people are concerned, three-fourths of the matrimonial misery endured is brought upon themselves by the neglect of this principle. Those who do, at least in a measure, love God and try to serve Him, form alliances with those who have no regard for His laws, and who practically, if not avowedly, live as though He had no existence. Marriage is a divine institution, and in order to ensure at any rate the highest and most lasting happiness the persons who enter into it must first of all themselves be in the divine plan. For if a man be not able to restrain and govern his own nature, how can he reasonably expect to control the nature of another? If his being is not in harmony with itself, how can it be in harmony with that of anybody else? Thousands of Christians, women especially, have proved by bitter experience that neither money nor position, nor any other worldly advantage, has availed to prevent the punishment that invariably attends disobedience to the command, 'Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers.'

The second essential which I resolved upon was that he should be a man of sense. I knew that I could never respect a fool, or one much weaker mentally than myself. Many imagine that because a man is converted, that is all that is required. This is a great mistake. There ought to be a similarity or congeniality of character as well as of grace. As a dear old man once said, 'When thou choosest a companion for life, choose one with whom thou couldst live without grace, lest he lose it.' The third essential consisted of oneness of views and tastes, any idea of lordship or ownership being lost in love. There can be no doubt that Jesus Christ intended, by making love the law of marriage, to restore woman to the position God intended her to occupy; as also to destroy the curse of the Fall, which man by dint of his merely superior physical strength and advantageous position had magnified, if not really to a large extent manufactured. Of course there must and will be mutual yielding wherever there is proper love, because it is a pleasure and a joy to yield our own wills to those for whom we have real affection, whenever it can be done with an approving conscience. This is just as true with regard to man as to woman, and if we have never proved it individually during married life most of us have had abundant evidence of it at any rate during courting days.

For the same reason neither party should attempt to force an alliance where there exists a physical repugnance. Natural instinct in this respect is usually too strong for reason and asserts itself in after life in such a way as to make both supremely miserable, although on the other hand nothing can be more absurd than a union founded on attractions of a mere physical character, or on the more showy and shallow mental accomplishments that usually first strike the eye of a stranger.

Another resolution that I made was that I would never marry a man who was not a total abstainer, and this from conviction, and not merely in order to gratify me.

There were also certain rules which I formulated for my married life before I was married or even engaged. I have carried them out ever since my wedding day, and the experience of all these years has abundantly demonstrated their value.

The first was, never to have any secrets from my husband in anything that affected our mutual relationship or the interests of the family. The confidence of others in spiritual matters I did not consider as coming under this category, but as being the secrets of others, and therefore not my property.

The second rule was, never to have two purses, thus avoiding even the temptation of having any secrets of a domestic character.

My third principle was that, in matters where there was any difference of opinion, I would show my husband my views and the reasons on which they were based, and try to convince in favour of my way of looking at the subject. This generally resulted either in his being converted to my views or in my being converted to his, either result securing unity of thought and action.

My fourth rule was, in cases of difference of opinion, never to argue in the presence of the children. I thought it better even to submit at the time to what I might consider to be mistaken judgment, than to have a controversy before them. But of course when such occasions arose I took the first opportunity for arguing the matter out. My subsequent experience has abundantly proved to me the wisdom of this course.

CHAPTER TWO:

The Training of Children

HAVING had myself a large and young family, and being well acquainted with the trials and duties of maternity, I can sympathize deeply with mothers and would fain help to lighten their burdens by a little practical advice and instruction.

I presume that all are agreed as to the responsibility devolving on parents to give some sort of training to their children. There is not a mother who would think it right to leave her child to grow up without discipline or training of some kind. The question then for us to consider is, What sort of training does God, and our duty to our children, require from us?

The first important matter for a parent to settle in her own mind is, To whom does this child belong? Is it mine, or is it the Lord's? This question should not need any discussion, at least by Christian parents. Do we not recognize, even before children are born, that they are peculiarly and exclusively a heritage from the Lord, and when they come into the world the first effort we put forth is to hold them up and offer them to Him? Keeping this one fact before the mind of a mother will be the best guiding principle in training; and it is because Christian parents so often forget whose their children are that they make such mistakes in training them.

The responsibility for training arises first out of the command and ordination of God. Under both the old and the new dispensations the Lord has, in the most emphatic and solemn manner, laid the obligation on parents to train their children for Him.

Secondly, this responsibility arises out of the nature of the relationship between parent and child. The parent is in the most complete sense the possessor, the guardian and the controller of the child. Its utter helplessness and ignorance when it first comes into the world throws it completely under the power and at the discretion of its parents. The infant has no option but to be trained and developed physically, mentally and spiritually as its parents may direct; and it is during these early stages of helplessness and ignorance that the impetus is generally given to its future life. There is an old adage that

. . . the hand that rocks the cradle Is the hand that rules the world,

and it certainly does; but I am afraid that the world has been very badly ruled, just because those who rock the cradle have not known how to train the child.

Thirdly, this responsibility arises out of our ability for the task. We are able to train our children in the way they should go, or God would not have enjoined it upon us. He required all fathers and mothers in Israel to train their children for Him and admitted of no exception, and in the New Testament it is assumed as a first duty with believers to train up their children 'in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.' The training God requires is a moral training--the inspiring of the child with the love of goodness, truth and righteousness, and leading him to its exercise in all the emergencies of life.

Any parent, however poor, unlearned or occupied, can do this, if only she has the grace of God in her heart and will take the trouble. Training a child in the way he should go does not necessarily imply a scholastic training. Not all parents have the power to educate their children, to do much for them temporally, or put them in a position to get much of this world's goods. But these things are not necessarily included in right training. A child may be trained for the highest moral and spiritual development without them and, where there is natural ability, for the highest mental development also. This is abundantly established in the histories of some of our great men. We know the kind of homes in which some of them were trained, what humble parentage some of them had, what little learning they had in their early days. Nevertheless, they were trained in the way they should go, and having been set going in the right path they did not fail to help themselves when they came to mature years. No poor parent need be discouraged because he cannot educate his children in the popular sense.

But, fourthly, this responsibility is increased by the opportunity which parents, and especially mothers, possess to train their children. Being constantly with them, having them continually under their eye by night and by day, when no one else is there, being acquainted with all their peculiarities of disposition and entering into all their joys and sorrows, what splendid opportunities are theirs daily for pruning, correcting, inspiring, leading and encouraging them, as the case may require.

Then, fifthly, what an awful responsibility arises out of the influence which God has given parents over their children. This influence is irresistible until parents by their own injudicious conduct fritter it away. A little child who has been rightly trained has unbounded, unquestioning confidence in his parents; what father or mother says is to him an end of all controversy; he never seeks for further proof. This influence wisely used will never wear out, but will spread like an atmosphere around the child's moral nature, moulding and fashioning all his future life.

I sometimes meet with parents who tell me that at the age of sixteen or seventeen their children have become quite unmanageable, and that they have lost all influence over them. I cannot tell which I pity most, such children or such parents. One of the worst signs of our times is the little respect which children seem to have for their parents. There are numbers of boys and girls of from twelve to seventeen years of age over whom their parents have little or no control. How has this come to pass? Did these children leap all at once from the restraints and barriers of parental affection and authority? Oh no, it has been the result of the imperceptible growth of years of insubordination and want of proper discipline--the gradual loss of parental influence until they have thrown it off altogether and resolved to do as they please.

I think I hear some mother asking, 'I feel my responsibility and I long to train my children in the way they should go, but how am I to do it?'

To train does not mean merely to teach. Some parents have the notion that all they have to do in training their children aright is to teach them; so they cram them with religious sentiment and truth, making them commit to memory the catechism, large portions of Scripture, a great many hymns, and so on. This is all very good as far as it goes, but it may all be done without a single stroke of real training. Nay, this mere teaching, informing the head without interesting or influencing the heart, frequently drives children from God and goodness, and makes them hate, instead of love, everything connected with religion. Observation and experience have shown me that many parents inform the head without training the heart. They teach what they neither practice themselves nor take the trouble to see that their children practice, and the children see through the hollow sham and learn to despise both their parents and their parents' religion.

But some mother says, 'What a deal of trouble!' Many parents fail because they are afraid of trouble. But, as Mrs. Stowe says, 'If you will not take the trouble to train Charlie when he is a little boy he will give you a great deal more trouble when he is a big one.' Many a foolish mother to spare herself trouble has left her children to themselves, and 'a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame.' Many parents teach their children in theory the right way, but by their negligence and indifference train them in just the opposite way. See that mother seated at some important piece of work which she is anxious to finish. Her three little children are playing around her, one with his picture book, another with his horse and cart, and baby with her doll. It is Monday afternoon, and only yesterday she was giving those children a lesson on the importance of love and goodwill amongst themselves. That was the teaching. Now comes the training.

Presently Charlie gets tired of his pictures, and without asking permission takes the horse and cart from his younger brother, whereupon there is a scream, and presently a fight. Instead of laying aside her work, restoring the rightful property and explaining to Charlie that it is unjust and unkind to take his brother's toys, and to the younger one that he should rather suffer wrong than scream and fight, she goes on with her work, telling Charlie that he is a very naughty boy, and making the very common remark that she thinks there never were such troublesome children as hers!

Who cannot see the different effect it would have had on these children if that mother had taken the trouble to make them realize and confess their fault, and voluntarily exchange the kiss of reconciliation and brotherly affection?

What if it had taken half an hour of her precious time; would not the gain be greater than that which would accrue from any other occupation, however important?

Well then, how is this training to be given? The first and most important point is to secure obedience. Obedience to properly constituted authority is the foundation of all moral excellence, not only in childhood, but all the way through life. And the secret of a great deal of lawlessness both toward God and toward man is that when children these people were never taught to submit to the authority of their parents. You may convince them ever so clearly that it is their duty, and would be to their happiness, to submit to God, but if their unrestrained, unsubdued wills have never been accustomed to submit to anybody it is like beginning to break in a wild horse in old age. God has put in all children a tendency to obey.

Watch any young child, and you will find that as a rule his instincts lead him to submit; insubordination is the exception, until this tendency has been trifled with by those who have the care of him. How important it is in right training to take advantage of this tendency to obedience, and not on any account to allow it to be weakened by encouraging exceptional rebellion. In order to do this you must begin early enough. Multitudes of mothers begin too late. Children can be ruined for the formation of character before they are five years old by the foolish indulgence of mothers.

Seldom is there need for chastisement when mothers begin early and wisely. There is a way of speaking to and handling an infant compatible with the utmost love and tenderness, which teaches it that mother is not to be trifled with; that, although she loves and caresses, she is to be obeyed. A child that is trained in this way will not as a rule attempt to resist. In exceptional cases it may be tempted to become obstreperous, and then the mother must show her authority.

We will suppose that your son of six months is in a fractious mood, and indisposed to take his morning nap. His nurse has put him in his cot and struggled with him till she is tired, and the child is tired too. At last you come and take the baby, after he has been rolling and tumbling about, and lay him down with a firm hand, saying with a firm voice, 'Baby must lie still and go to sleep,' putting your hand on him at the same time to prevent his rising in the cot of turning over after you have spoken.

If this child for the previous three months has been trained in this line, if this is not the beginning, he will, as a natural consequence, lie still and go to sleep; but if he has not been accustomed to this kind of handling he will perhaps become boisterous and resist you. If so, you must persevere. You must on no account give up; no, not if you stop till night. If he conquers you this time he will try harder next, and the task will get more and more difficult. Mothers make a mistake here because they give up and will not inflict on themselves the pain of a struggle, forgetting that defeat now only ensures endless battles in the future. Remember you must conquer in the first battle, whatever it may be about, or you are undone.

Perhaps some mothers are saying, 'It is too late; my children are too old.' I say, better late than never. Begin to do all you can to exact obedience. Be judicious and forbearing, remembering that your children's habits of disobedience are the result of your own folly, and deal as gently as the case will permit; but at all costs secure obedience, and nevermore allow your commands to be trifled with.

Do not be afraid to use your authority. One would think to hear some parents talk of their relations with their children that they did not possess an iota of power over them. All they dare to do seems to be to reason, to persuade, to coax. I have frequently heard mothers using all manner of persuasion instead of exerting the authority which God has given for the safeguard and guidance of their children. They give their commands in such a voice as leaves it optional whether the child shall obey or not, and this he understands very well. There is no command, no firmness, no decision, no authority, and the child knows it by its instincts just as an animal would. Men are much wiser in breaking in and training their horses than they are their sons, hence they generally are much better served by the former than the latter I God has sent your child to you to be guided and restrained by your authority as much as to be inspired and encouraged by your love.

Another important point in training a child in the way he should go is to train him in the practice of truth and integrity. To establish the soul in such habits must be one of the first objects of right training. I have actually seen mothers smile at and almost extol the little artifices of their children in their attempts to deceive them and to hide some childish delinquency. No wonder that such parents fail to inspire their offspring with that wholesome dread of falseness which is one of the greatest safeguards to virtue in after life.

No mother will succeed in begetting in her child a greater antipathy toward any sin than she feels for it herself. Children are the quickest of all analysts, and instinctively detect in a moment all affectation of goodness. They are not influenced so much by our teaching as by our spirit and example.

A person calls to see you whose society your child knows that you neither esteem nor desire, but you are all smiles and compliments, pressing her to come again and assuring her that her visit has given you very great pleasure. What more effectual lesson could you give your wondering little one in deception and double-dealing than this?

I once stayed in the house of a lady who had a fine promising boy about eighteen months old. He used to kick and scream violently when he found that she was going out of the house. This, of course, was the result of previous bad training. But what did she do? Instead of facing the difficulty, and in a calm, firm and affectionate manner curing her little son of this bad habit, she used to promise every time that she would bring him a pony that he could ride on, and the little fellow believed and believed until he got tired, and then put down his mother, in his baby-mind, as a liar. Of course, he would not have understood such a definition, but the deception would be burned into his soul never to be eradicated. A child hurts himself against the table; the mother strikes it and says, 'Oh! naughty table, you have hurt baby'; but the child soon learns that the table was not to blame, and at the same time learns to distrust his mother who said it was.

A mother invites some little friends to spend an afternoon with her children, during which games are played requiring skill and tact in the winner. Her little boy wins several of the games, and although his brother or one of his little friends says that he was not fair--that is, that he cheated--she does not appear to notice it, but contents herself by saving, 'Oh, you must be good children and not quarrel thus inflicting an unjust reflection on the child of honour and integrity, while encouraging the other in the meanest and most selfish form of sin--allowing him to rejoice over the victory won through fraud or sleight-of-hand. The children go away feeling that your son is a cheat just the same and, what is worse, feeling that you are a party to his wickedness.

Again, Charlie is ill, and it is needful for him to take a dose of unpleasant medicine; but he has been so badly trained that his mother knows he will not take it if she tells him it is nasty. So she resorts to stratagem, and tells him that she has got something good, and thus coaxes him to take it into his mouth; but before it is swallowed he detects the cheat, and medicine and mother's veracity are spit out together. In this way thousands of children are taught deception and untruth, and you may labour in vain in after years to make them truthful and sincere.

If you have any reason to suspect your child of insincerity or falsehood, do not rest until you have got to the bottom of the matter, never mind what trouble or pain it involves. Anything is preferable to sin being covered up and consequently encouraged.

I know some children amongst whom it is a common remark, 'It is of no use trying to hide anything from Mamma, for she is sure to find it out; so it is best to tell her at once.' How much misery it would save if it were thus in every family!

But further. To train a child in the way it should go we must not stop with those qualities and virtues which bear on man; it must be trained in the exercise of devotion and piety toward God. Of course, none but truly Christian parents are equal to impart this kind of training. The Holy Ghost must needs be in the heart of the mother who undertakes to lead her child to God. The bias to evil is too strong to be turned aside by unassisted human wisdom or strength, however great.

Many parents bring up their children under the idea that they must needs live in sin till they come to be fifteen or sixteen years old. I am a firm believer that the children of Christian parents need to be converted as much as others; and why may not the minds of children be renewed very early? Why may they not be led to choose Christ at seven or eight years of age as well as at seventeen? If the will of a child be sincerely yielded to God, cannot the blessed Spirit as easily and as effectually renew and actuate his heart and affections as those of an adult?

One great rule to be observed in all teaching is to make your lessons interesting. If you cannot awaken the interest of your child you had better give up, and school and inform yourself till you can. I have not a doubt that many an impetuous, earnest, high-spirited child is driven to hate the Bible, the sanctuary, and religious exercises in general, by the cold, spiritless, insipid, canting manner in which he hears them read and performed. He knows by instinct that this is not the way people go through things in which their hearts are deeply concerned. He hears his father and mother and friends talk in a natural, easy, interesting manner on business and family matters, and consequently he listens with interest, but the moment they begin with religion he feels there is no heart in it, he feels that it is because they must, and not because they like.

If you want your child to love and enjoy the Sabbath you must make it the most interesting day of the week. If you want him to love and read his Bible you must so tell him its stories as to make it interest him. If you want him to love prayer you must so pray as to interest and draw out his mind and heart with your own, and teach him to go to God, as he comes to you, in his own natural voice and manner to tell Him his wants and to express his joys or sorrows. The themes of religion are of all themes most interesting to children when dealt with naturally and interestingly.

You must make your teaching not only interesting, but also practical in the highest degree. It is to be feared that a deal of so-called teaching is right away above the children's heads, dealing with abstract truths and far-off illustrations, instead of coming down to such matters as are embraced in their daily life. The great end of Christian training is to lead children to realize that they belong to God, and are under obligation to do everything in a way which they think will please Him.

If you want your children to be the Lord's when they grow up, if you want your boy to withstand the unknown temptations of the future, to become a man of righteous principle and honour, superior to all the doubleness, chicanery and deviltry of the world, you must train him to look upon the world's prizes as dross compared with the joy of a pure conscience and a life of usefulness to his fellows.

If you want your daughter to be a true woman, willing to sacrifice and to suffer in the interests of humanity and truth, you must inspire her now with a contempt for the baubles for which so many women barter their lives and their souls--you must teach her that she is an independent, responsible being whom God will call to account for the use or abuse of her talents.

Day by day you must labour to wake up your children to the realization that they belong to God, and that He has sent them into the world, not to look after their own little petty, personal interests, but to devote themselves to the promotion of His, and that in doing this they will find happiness, usefulness and glory.

CHAPTER THREE:

Christianity and the Drink Traffic

A SUBJECT upon which I have been requested to write is: The value of temperance in connection with religious aggressive effort. It may be well to explain that we understand religious aggressive effort to be that interference on the part of Christians with the thoughts and actions of ungodly men which the Bible shows to be necessary in order to secure their present and eternal well-being.

We Christians see around us everywhere men and women under the influence of false ideas, given up to selfish indulgences and evil practices which enslave their faculties and render real happiness impossible. Religious aggressive effort implies measures taken for their deliverance from these evil habits into the liberty, power and blessedness of the family of God. It is, in short, a holy warfare, prosecuted under the direction and power of the Holy Spirit, to bring men from darkness to light, from the power of Satan unto God.

The very nature of Christianity renders this aggressive effort incumbent on all Christians. A fundamental principle underlying the whole economy of grace is that the truly regenerate will be benevolently active for the good of others. I am aware that there is a great deal of professed Christianity which lacks this lineament of the divine likeness. An inspired apostle, however, declares that there is something greater even than faith, which is charity. The faith which is of the operation of the Spirit 'worketh by love', and ever leads its possessor to follow Him who went about doing good.

The cause and strength of a large proportion of the wickedness, crime, vice and misery which exist is the use of intoxicating drink as a beverage.

With this proposition many of us are sadly too familiar. The baneful harvest of crime and misery which its consumption has entailed has opened the eyes of almost every thinking and patriotic mind to the fact that the drink, not the abuse of it alone, but the drink itself, is an evil thing, and there is overwhelming evidence that it is the natural ally of all wickedness. The gambler seeks it to aid him in the craft and cunning by which he lures his victim on to financial ruin. The seducer has recourse to its deceptive power to pave the way for his cruel licentiousness. The burglar braces his courage and hardens his conscience by its exhilarating fumes. The harlot drowns in the intoxicating cup her sense of shame, and from it gathers strength to trample out the deepest, tenderest instincts of womanhood.

Christians are bound to aggress on the kingdom of Satan, and if strong drink constitutes one of the mightiest forces of that kingdom then it follows that to be successful in aggressive effort Christians must deal with the drink. Doubtless one reason for the Church's failure in aggressive measures has been her ignoring of the power of this great adversary. Alas! That Christians have been so slow to learn its power as a mitrailleuse of Hell. Thank God, some of them are beginning to appreciate it and are crying, 'How shall we deal with the drink?' In the name of Christ and humanity deal with it as you do with all other soul-ruining abominations. Wash your hands of it once and for ever. All other ways that have been tried have come to nought. The time has come for Christians to denounce the use of intoxicating drinks as irreligious and immoral.

The attempt to make what is termed the moderate use of strong drink consistent with a profession of religion has signally and ignominiously failed; and the common sense of mankind is turning upon those who have made it with these most pertinent questions. How can that which produces all this crime and misery be a good thing, and if it be an evil thing, how can it be moderately used? This question comes with overwhelming force to those who labour for the spiritual benefit of mankind. At every step the drink difficulty meets them, and it must be met and grappled with.

Abstinence is valuable as a source of strength to those who are called to make aggressive religious effort. No man constrained by divine love for the good of others can deny himself without improving his own moral nature and giving increased scope for the operation of the divine Spirit within him.

Abstinence is valuable to the Christian labourer as a safeguard against temptation. The man who never uses it can never fall through its influence. He is safe thus far because he goes not into temptation.

Abstinence is valuable to the labourer, because it helps to beget in the minds of those whom he seeks to benefit a conviction of his disinterestedness which is indispensable to his success. Doubtless the unwillingness of religious teachers to forgo their own indulgence in the use of wine and spirits has greatly diminished their influence with numbers of the common people. If the gospel is to make any great advance on the masses, those who seek to propagate it must abandon the use of drink. As Dr. Guthrie remarks, 'I am convinced that it is the duty of every man who would do his utmost for the glory of God and the good of his fellow-creatures, to discountenance by his example the use of intoxicating stimulants.' Consider further the value of abstinence to those on whom the Christian has to aggress. It is indispensable as a pioneer in reaching the drunkard. The motives, arguments and persuasions of the gospel are addressed to the reason, conscience and feelings of men, and presuppose a sane mind. Everybody knows that it is useless to present these to a man when he is intoxicated; therefore with thousands who live in a perpetual state of intoxication the only chance of salvation is to rescue them from the drink. Drunkenness is a physical as well as a moral disease, and if we would remove it we must proceed on the same principle as we do with the insane--restore the reason before we can sanctify the heart. Some of our Christian friends object to this and say, 'Then it is the gospel and total abstinence.' Emphatically yes, just as in the case of a lunatic or a man raving in a fever, it is the gospel and the physician.

We would ask those who object to the use of abstinence as instrumental in saving the drunkard what plan they would suggest for his restoration. The plan hitherto adopted has been simply to leave him to his fate. While giving countenance and patronage to the drink which has made him what he is, they have left him in his helplessness and misery to sink into a drunkard's hell. It is significant that rarely do non-abstainers care for the drunkard. We believe that pioneering work to reach the drunkard and bring him under the influence of the gospel ought to be done by Christians, but until Christian ministers and people will forgo their own indulgence and undertake the labour of hunting down the drunkard, let those do it who will, for any man has a better chance of salvation when sober than he has when drunk.

Total abstinence is valuable in separating men from those associations and habits which prevent them from hearing the gospel. It is also an ally of the gospel because it tends to keep the intellect and conscience awake to the perception of divine truth. Again, abstinence is an ally of the gospel as a conserving power. We must not only aggress on the kingdom of darkness, but must use every means to keep the spoils. When the evil spirit is cast out we must do our utmost to keep him out, or the last state of our convert will be worse than the first.

When a man under the influence of the Holy Spirit is brought to see himself a sinner and led to embrace the Saviour, he should be taught that he has only just entered on his heavenward course and must cast aside every hinderance, keep his body under, watch and pray, and avoid temptation. With those who have been addicted to intemperance there is no hope of their standing fast without the entire abandonment of the drink. Our Lord taught his disciples to pray to be kept out of temptation. Again and again we are warned and enjoined to keep ourselves out, and on this condition all His promises of grace and deliverance are suspended. God has nowhere promised to keep the man who needlessly and for his own indulgence runs into temptation.

Not only is abstinence indispensable to preserve those who have been rescued out of the power of this great destroyer, but it is equally valuable to prevent others from falling into it. We all profess to believe that prevention is better than cure. Seeing then that strong drink is a most dangerous foe to perseverance in righteousness, and a most potent cause of declension, inconsistency and apostasy, ought not Christians to strive by example and precept to warn the young, the weak and the inexperienced against touching it? Can any man answer for the consequences of putting a bottle to his neighbour's mouth, be it ever such a small one, or ever such a genteel one?

God has recorded His curse against the man who does this, and thousands of hoary-headed parents, brokenhearted wives and weeping, blighted children groan their amens to the dreadful sentence.

But suppose some people could take drinks without hurting themselves; will they dare answer for their children? Thousands of parents connected with the various churches are sinking in sorrow to the grave through the intemperance of sons and daughters who first acquired a taste for drink by sipping out of their own glasses, never used but in moderation! I ask, Was not the curse of God on the liquor rather than on the size of the glass which contained it? And might not these parents have known that if they sowed the wind they must reap the whirlwind? I would say to Christian parents as you value your children's happiness and chastity, their godliness in this life and their felicity in the next, save them from acquiring a taste for drink. Christian ministers, deacons, elders, members, warn your young people not to look on drink, nor enter the outermost circle of this eddying maelstrom of perdition, crimsoned already with the blood of myriads once as fair and pure, as virtuous and true, as they are themselves.

By your peace of conscience on a dying bed; by the eternal destinies of your children; by your concern for the glory of God; by your care for never-dying souls; by the love you owe your Saviour; I beseech you, banish the drink. Banish it from your tables, banish it from your houses.

Have no fellowship with those who get rich by robbing man of his reason, woman of her virtue, and children of their patrimony and their bread. Cease to recognize not only as Christians, but as men, those who fatten on the weakness, wickedness and suffering of their fellow-men. Hoist the flag of death over their breweries, distilleries and dram-shops, warning the unwary that death and damnation lurk behind their finely-decorated bars, and run like the lurid fires of perdition through their brightly-polished taps. To trim on this drink question is the highest treason to the cause of Christ, and the grossest inhumanity to suffering, perishing millions.

But, say some of our Christian friends, we must have patience. We answer, we have had long patience.

The times of ignorance both God and man were willing to wink at, but we declare that the time for patience has passed. Arise, Christians, and fight this foe! You, and you alone, are able, for your God will fight for you! Come to His help against this mighty champion of Hell, and He will empower you to lay him low, and take all his armour wherein he has trusted.

CHAPTER FOUR:

Women and the Ministry

THE first and most common objection urged against the public exercises of women is that they are unnatural and unfeminine. Many labour under the very great but common mistake of confounding nature with custom. Use, or custom, makes things appear to us natural which in reality are very unnatural, while on the other hand novelty and rarity make very natural things appear strange and contrary to nature. So universally has this power of custom been felt and admitted that it has given birth to the proverb, 'Use is second nature.'

Making allowance for the novelty of the thing, we cannot discover anything either unnatural or immodest in a Christian woman, becomingly attired, appearing on a platform or in a pulpit. By nature she seems fitted to grace either. God has given to woman a graceful form and attitude, winning manners, persuasive speech and, above all, a finely-toned emotional nature, all of which appear to us eminent natural qualifications for public speaking.

We admit that want of mental culture, the trammels of custom, the force of prejudice and one-sided interpretations of Scripture have hitherto almost excluded her from this sphere, but before such a sphere is pronounced to be unnatural it must be proved either that woman has not the ability to teach or to preach, or that the possession and exercise of this ability unnaturalizes her in other respects; that so soon as she presumes to step on to the platform or into the pulpit she loses the delicacy and grace of the female character. We have numerous instances of her retaining all that is most esteemed in her sex, faithfully discharging the duties peculiar to her own sphere, and at the same time of her taking her place with many of our most useful speakers and writers.

Why should woman be confined exclusively to the kitchen and the distaff, any more than man to the field and the workshop? And if exemption is claimed from this kind of toil for a portion of the male sex on the ground of their possessing ability for intellectual and moral pursuits, we must be allowed to claim the same privilege for women; nor can we see the exception more unnatural in the one case than in the other, or why God in this solitary instance has endowed a being with powers which He never intended her to employ.

As a labourer in the gospel her position is much higher than in any other public capacity. She is at once shielded from all coarse and unrefined influences and associations, her very vocation tending to exalt and refine all the tenderest and most womanly instincts of her nature. As a matter of fact, it is well known to those who have had opportunities of observing the private character and deportment of women engaged in preaching the gospel, that they have been amongst the most amiable, self-sacrificing and unobtrusive of their sex.

'We well know,' says the late Mr. Gurney, a minister of the Society of Friends,

'that there are no women among us more generally distinguished from modesty, gentleness, order, and right submission to their brethren, than those who have been called by their divine Master into the exercise of the Christian ministry.'

But, say our objecting friends, how is it that women should venture to preach when female ministry is forbidden in the word of God? This is by far the most serious objection which we have to consider and, if capable of substantiation, should receive our immediate and cheerful acquiescence; but we think that we shall be able to show, by a fair and consistent interpretation, that the very opposite view is the truth; that not only is the public ministry of women unforbidden, but absolutely enjoined by both precept and example in the word of God.

First, we will select the most prominent and explicit passages of the New Testament referring to the subject, beginning with 1 Corinthians 11:4, 5:

'Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonoureth his head. But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered, dishonoureth her head: for that is even all one as if she were shaven.'

Says a talented writer, 'The character of the prophesying here referred to by the Apostle is defined in 1 Corinthians 14:3, 4 and 31. The reader will see that it was directed to the edification, exhortation and comfort of believers, and the result anticipated was the conviction of unbelievers and unlearned persons. Such were the public services of women which the Apostle allowed, and such was the ministry of females predicted by the prophet Joel and described as a leading feature of the gospel dispensation. Women who speak in assemblies for worship under the influence of the Holy Spirit assume thereby no personal authority over others; they simply deliver the messages of the gospel, which imply obedience, subjection and responsibility, rather than authority and power.'

Dr. A. Clarke on this verse says, 'Whatever may be the meaning of praying and prophesying in respect to the man, they have precisely the same meaning in respect to the woman. So that some women at least, as well as some men, might speak to others to edification, exhortation and comfort. And this kind of prophesying of teaching was predicted by Joel (2:28) and referred to by Peter (Acts 2:17). And had there not been such gifts bestowed on woman, the prophecy could not have had its fulfillment. The only difference marked by the Apostle was that the man had his head uncovered, because he was the representative of Christ; the woman had hers covered, because she was placed by the order of God in subjection to the man and because it was the custom among both Greeks and Romans, and an express law among the Jews, that no woman should be seen abroad without a veil.'

We think that this view is the only fair and common sense interpretation of this passage. If Paul does not here recognize the fact that women did actually pray and prophesy in the Primitive Church, his language has no meaning at all; and if he does not recognize their right to do so by dictating the proprieties of their appearance while so engaged, we leave to objectors the task of educing any sense whatever from his language.

If, according to the logic of Dr. Barnes, the Apostle here, in arguing against an improper and indecorous mode of performance, forbids the performance itself, the prohibition extends to the men as well as to the women; for Paul as expressly reprehends a man's praying with his head covered, as he does a woman's praying with hers uncovered.

With as much force might the doctor assert that, in reproving the same church for their improper celebration of the Lord's Supper (1 Corinthians 11:20, 21), Paul prohibits all Christians, in every age, celebrating it at all. The question with the Corinthians was not whether or not the woman should pray or prophesy at all (that question had been settled on the day of Pentecost), but whether, as a matter of convenience, they might do so without their veils. The Apostle kindly and clearly explains that by the law of nature and of society it would be improper to uncover her head while engaged in acts of public worship.

A barrister writing on the above passage says, 'Paul here takes for granted that women were in the habit of praying and prophesying; he expresses no surprise nor utters a syllable of censure; he was only anxious that they should not provoke unnecessary obloquy by laying aside their customary head-dress or departing from the dress which was indicative of modesty in the country in which they lived. This passage seems to prove beyond the possibility of dispute that in the early times women were permitted to speak to the

"edification and comfort of Christians," and that the Lord graciously endowed them with grace and gifts for this service. What He did then, may He not be doing now? It seems truly astonishing that Bible students, with the second chapter of the Acts before them, should not see that an imperative decree has gone forth from God, the execution of which women cannot escape; whether they like or not, they "shall" prophesy throughout the whole course of this dispensation; and they have been doing so, though they and their blessed labours are not much noticed.'

Well, but say our objecting friends, hear what Paul says in another place: 'Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.' (1 Corinthians 14:34, 35).

Now let it be borne in mind that this is the same Apostle, writing to the same church, as in the above instance. Will anyone maintain that Paul here refers to the same kind of speaking as before? If so, we insist on his supplying us with some rule of interpretation which will harmonize this unparalleled contradiction and absurdity. Taking the simple and common-sense view of the two passages--that one refers to the devotional and religious exercises in the church, and the other to inconvenient asking of questions and imprudent or ignorant talking--there is no contradiction or discrepancy, no straining or twisting of either.

If on the other hand we assume that the Apostle refers in both instances to the same thing, we make him in one page give the most explicit directions how a thing shall be performed, and in a page or two further on, and writing to the same church, expressly forbid its being performed at all. We admit that 'it is a shame for women to speak in the church,' in the sense here intended by the Apostle; but before the argument based on these words can be deemed of any worth, objectors must prove that the 'speaking' here is synonymous with that concerning the manner of which the Apostle legislates in 1 Corinthians 11.

Dr. A. Clarke on this passage says, 'According to the prediction of Joel, the Spirit of God was to be poured out on the women as well as the men, that they might prophesy, that is, teach. And that they did prophesy or teach is evident from what the Apostle says (1 Corinthians 11) where he lays down rules to regulate this part of their conduct while ministering in the church. All that the Apostle opposes here is their questioning, finding fault, disputing, etc., in the Christian church, as the Jewish men were permitted to do in their synagogues (see Luke 2:46); together with attempts to usurp authority over men by setting up their judgment in opposition to them; for the Apostle has reference to acts of disobedience and arrogance of which no woman would be guilty who was under the influence of the Spirit of God.'

If anyone still insists on a literal application of this text we beg to ask how he disposes of the preceding part of the chapter where it occurs. Surely, if one verse be so authoritative and binding the whole chapter (1 Corinthians 14) is equally so, therefore those who insist on a literal application of the words of Paul, under all circumstances and through all time, will be careful to observe the Apostle's order of worship in their own congregation.

But, we ask, where is the minister who lets his whole church prophesy one by one, and he himself sits still and listens while they are speaking, so that all things may be done decently and in order? But Paul as expressly lays down this order as he does the rule for women, and he adds, 'The things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord '(verse 37). Why then do not ministers abide by these directions? We anticipate their reply: 'Because these directions were given to the Corinthians as temporary arrangements, and though they were the commandments of the Lord to them at that time they do not apply to all Christians in all times.'

Indeed; but unfortunately for their argument the prohibition of women speaking even if it meant what they wish, was given amongst those very directions, and to the Corinthians only, for it reads, 'Let your women keep silence . . .' and for aught this passage teaches to the contrary, Christian women of all other churches might do what these women were forbidden to do. Until, therefore, learned divines make a personal application of the rest of the chapter they must excuse us for declining to do so of the twenty-fourth verse, and we challenge them to show any breach of the divine law in one case more than in the other.

Another passage frequently cited as prohibitory of female labour in the church, is 1 Timothy 2:12, 13. Though we have never met with the slightest proof that this text has any reference to the public exercises of women, nevertheless, as it is often quoted, we will give it fair examination. 'It is primarily an injunction respecting her personal behaviour at home,' says the Rev. J. H. Robinson. 'It stands in connection with precepts respecting her apparel and her domestic position; especially her relation to her husband. No one will suppose that the Apostle forbids a woman to "teach" absolutely and universally. Even objectors would allow her to teach her own sex in private; they would let her teach her servants and children and, perhaps, her husband too. If he were ignorant of the Saviour, might she not teach him the way of Christ? If she were acquainted with languages, arts or sciences, which he did not know, might she not teach him these things? Certainly she might! The

"teaching", therefore, which is forbidden by the Apostle is not every kind of teaching any more than, in the previous instance, his prohibition of speaking applied to every kind of speaking in the church; but it is such teaching as is domineering, and as involves the usurpation of authority over the man. This is the only teaching forbidden by St. Paul in the passage under consideration.'

'This prohibition refers exclusively to the private life and domestic character of woman,' says a barrister writing on the same subject, 'and simply means that an ignorant or unruly woman is not to force her opinions on the man whether he will or no. It has no reference whatever to good women living in obedience to God and their husbands, or to women sent out to preach the gospel by the call of the Holy Spirit.'

If the context is allowed to fix the meaning of this text, as it would be in any other, there can be no doubt that the above is the only consistent interpretation; and if it be, then this prohibition has no bearing whatever on the religious exercises of women led and taught by the Spirit of God.

Whether the Church will allow women to speak in her assemblies can only be a question of time; common sense, public opinion and the blessed results of female agency will force her to give us an honest and impartial rendering of the solitary text on which she grounds her prohibitions. Then, when the true light shines and God's works take the place of man's traditions, the doctor of divinity who shall teach that Paul commands woman to be silent when God's Spirit urges her to speak, will be regarded much the same as we should regard an astronomer who should teach that the sun is the earth's satellite.

Another argument urged against female preaching is that it is unnecessary; that there is plenty of scope for her efforts in private, in visiting the sick and poor and working for the temporalities of the Church. Doubtless woman ought to be thankful for any sphere for benefiting her race and glorifying God. But we cannot be blind to the supreme selfishness of making her so welcome to the hidden toil and self-sacrifice, the hewing of wood and the drawing of water, the watching and waiting, the reproach and persecution attaching to her Master's service, without allowing her a title of the honour which He has attached to the ministration of His gospel.

Nor did our Lord manifest any such horror at female publicity in His cause as many of His professed people appear to entertain. We have no intimation of His reproving the Samaritan woman for her public proclamation of Him to her countrymen, nor of His rebuking the women who followed Him amidst a taunting mob on His way to the Cross. And yet, surely, privacy was their proper sphere!

As to the obligation devolving on woman to labour for her Master, I presume there will be no controversy. The particular sphere in which each individual shall do this must be dictated by the teachings of the Holy Spirit and the gifts with which God has endowed her. If she has the necessary gifts, and feels herself called by the Spirit to preach, there is not a single word in the whole book of God to restrain her, but very many to urge and encourage her. God says she shall do so. Paul prescribed the manner in which she shall do it, and Phoebe, Philip's four daughters, and many other women, actually did preach and speak in the Primitive Church. If this had not been the case there would have been less freedom under the new than under the old dispensation, a greater paucity of gifts and agencies under the Spirit than under the law, few labourers when more work required to be done.

Who will dare to dispute the fact that God did under the old dispensation endue his handmaidens with the gifts and calling of prophets answering to our present idea of preachers. Strange indeed would it be if under the fullness of the gospel dispensation there were nothing analogous to this, but 'positive and explicit rules' to prevent any approximation thereto. In the New Testament we read of Anna that 'she was a widow of about fourscore and four years, which departed not from the Temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day. And she coming in at that instant gave thanks likewise unto the Lord, and spake of Him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem' (Luke 2:37, 38). Can anyone explain wherein this exercise of Anna's differed from that of Simeon, recorded just before? It was in the same public place, the Temple. It was during the same service. It was equally public, for she 'spake of Him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem.'

After the Resurrection, 'as they (the two Marys) went to tell His disciples, behold Jesus met them, saying, All hail. And they came and held Him by the feet, and worshipped Him. Then said Jesus unto them, Be not afraid: go tell My brethren that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see Me' (Matthew 28:9, 10). There are two or three points in this beautiful narrative to which we wish to call the attention of our readers.

It was the first announcement of the glorious news to a lost world and a company of forsaking disciples, and it was as public as the nature of the case demanded, and intended ultimately to be published to the ends of the earth. Mary was expressly commissioned to reveal the fact to the apostles, and thus she literally became their teacher on that memorable occasion. How could it be that our Lord chose a woman for this honour? One reason might be that the male disciples were all missing at the time. They all forsook Him and fled. But woman was there, as she had ever been, ready to minister to her risen, as to her dying, Lord.

As if intent on doing woman honour and rewarding her unwavering fidelity, He reveals Himself first to her and as an evidence that He had taken out of the way the curse under which she had so long groaned, nailing it to his Cross. He makes her who had been first in the transgression first also in the glorious knowledge of complete redemption.

We are expressly told in the Acts of the Apostles that the women were assembled with the disciples on the day of Pentecost, that the cloven tongues sat upon them each and the Holy Ghost filled them all, and that they spake as the Spirit gave them utterance. The Spirit was given alike to the female as to the male disciples, and this is cited by Peter as a peculiar specialty of the latter dispensation. What a remarkable device it is of the devil that he has so long succeeded in hiding this characteristic of the latter day glory! He knows, whether the Church does or not, how eminently detrimental to the interests of his kingdom have been the religious labours of woman, and while her Seed has mortally bruised his head he ceases not to bruise her heel; but the time of her deliverance draweth nigh.

As we have before observed, the text, 1 Corinthians 14:34, 35, is the only one in the whole book of God which even by a false translation can be made prohibitory of female speaking in the church. How comes it then that by this one isolated passage, which according to our best Greek authorities is wrongly rendered and wrongly applied, woman's lips have been sealed for centuries, and 'the testimony of Jesus' which 'is the spirit of prophecy'

silenced when bestowed on her? How is it that this solitary text has been allowed to stand unexamined and unexplained, nay, that learned commentators who have known its true meaning have upheld the delusion, and enforced it as a divine precept binding on all female disciples through all time?

By this course divines and commentators have involved themselves in all sorts of inconsistencies and contradictions, and worse, they have nullified some of the most precious promises of God's word. They have set the most explicit predictions of prophecy at variance with apostolic injunctions.

If the word of God forbids female ministry we would ask how it happens that so many of the most devoted handmaidens of the Lord have felt themselves constrained by the Holy Ghost to exercise it? Surely there must be some mistake somewhere, for the word and the Spirit cannot contradict each other. Either the word does not condemn women preaching, or these confessedly holy women have been deceived.

Further, it is a significant fact that the public ministry of women has been eminently owned of God in the salvation of souls and the edification of His people. Paul refers to the fruits of his labours as evidence of his divine commission (1 Corinthians 9:2). If this criterion, be allowed to settle the question respecting woman's call to preach, there can be no fear as to the result.

We have endeavoured to establish, what we sincerely believe, that woman has a right to teach. Here the whole question hinges. If she has the right she has it independently of any man-made restrictions which do not equally refer to the opposite sex. If she has the right and possesses the necessary qualifications we maintain that, where the law of expediency does not prevent, she is at liberty to exercise it without any further pretensions to inspiration than those put forth by the male sex. If, on the other hand, it can be proved that she has not the right, but that imperative silence is imposed upon her by the word of God, we cannot see who has authority to relax or make exceptions to the law.

Judging from the blessed results which have almost invariably followed the ministrations of women in the cause of Christ, we fear it will be found, in the great day of account, that a mistaken and unjustifiable application of the passage, 'Let your women keep silence in the churches,' has resulted in more loss to the Church, evil to the world and dishonour to God than any of the errors we have already referred to. We think it a matter worthy of consideration whether the circumscribed sphere of woman's religious labours may not have something to do with the comparative non-success of the gospel in these latter days.

CHAPTER FIVE:

The Christian Facing Trial

AFFLICTION occupies a large place in the economy of salvation for, though suffering is the result of sin, God transmutes it into one of the richest blessings to his own people. From whatever secondary causes the afflictions of the righteous may arise, whether from the sins of their forefathers, the cruelty of their enemies, their own mistakes, or the mistakes of their friends, or the malice of Satan, their blessed privilege is to realize that God permits and overrules all, and that in every sorrow He has a gracious end. Happy the Christian who, though he cannot see this 'end' at present, is able to trust in the goodness which chastens, and cleave to the hand that smites.

It may help us, however, to 'endure chastening' if we consider two or three of the gracious ends, or uses, of our trials.

There is a sense in which trial reveals us to God; makes manifest to Him what is in our heart. Perhaps someone may object, and say, 'No, no; we need nothing to make manifest to God what we are. He understands us perfectly. He knows what is in man, and needs not anything to tell Him.' True; yet He said to Abraham, 'Now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from Me.' And Moses said to the Israelites,

'And thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep His commandments, or no.'

Now God knew that Abraham feared Him, and He also knew how far Israel would keep His commandments, but He did not know as a matter of actual fact until the fact transpired. Thus Abraham, by his willingness to sacrifice Isaac, made his love manifest to God. In your various afflictions, the Lord is leading you about in the wilderness to prove you, and to see (to make manifest to Himself) what is in your heart, and whether you will keep his commandments or not. Remember also that in nothing is love made so manifest as in willing, cheerful suffering for the sake of its object. It is easy, nay, joyful to labour, but patient, cheerful suffering requires a deeper love, a more perfect self-abandonment. 'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.' 'We glory in tribulations also.'

Trial also reveals us to ourselves. Although we do not agree with the adage that untried grace is no grace at all, yet unquestionably much fancied grace has proved itself, in the hour of trial, to be but as the early cloud and the morning dew. Many who have received the word with joy and for a while have believed, in time of temptation have fallen away. Many professing Christians, if they could have had predicted to them the effect of adversity upon the heart and life, would have said with Hazael, 'Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this?' Yet, when the true test of character was applied, he fell. When he had eaten and was full then his heart rebelled, or when he was chastened by the Lord he became weary and said, 'Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency.' For the Christian, there is no surer test of the state of his heart than the way in which he receives affliction. Often, when all has appeared prosperous and peaceful, and the child of God has been congratulating himself on spiritual growth and increased power over inward corruption, some fiery trial has overtaken him, which, instead of being met with perfect submission and cheerful acquiescence, has produced sudden confusion, dismay, and perhaps rebellion, revealing to him that his heart was far from that state of divine conformity which he had hoped and supposed.

Thus the Christian often suffers more from a consciousness of insubordination under affliction than from the affliction itself. When trials overtake you, are you able to say, 'It is the Lord: let Him do what seemeth Him good,' and 'I know . .

. that Thou in faithfulness hast afflicted me?' Are you able to realize that

'whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth,' and that these light afflictions are working a future increase of glory? If so, happy are you. This is the best of all evidence to yourself that the divine Spirit is working in you to will and to do of your Father's good pleasure. This fruit does not grow on the corrupt soil of unregenerate nature; it springs only from a heart renewed by the Holy Ghost and baptized into fellowship with Christ in His sufferings. But is it otherwise with you? Does your heart chafe, and fret, and rebel? Are you saying, 'All these things are against me?' If so, this is proof that the work of grace is at a low ebb in your soul, that your faith is weak, and your spiritual perceptions dim. It is high time for you to awake out of sleep and cry mightily unto God for a revival of His work in your heart and for a sanctified use of the affliction which has overtaken you. 'If God dries up the water on the lake, it is to lead you to the unfailing fountain. If He blights the ground, it is to drive you to the tree of life. If He sends the cross, it is to brighten the crown. Nothing is so hard as man's heart. And as copper is laid, in acquæ fortis before it is engraved, so the searching, softening discipline of affliction prepares for the Lord's deep, lasting impression upon our hearts.'

The fire our graces shall refine Till, moulded from above, We bear the character divine, The stamp of perfect love.

Trial reveals us to the world. As the greatest manifestation of God to the world was by suffering, so the most influential revelation of His people to the world has been by suffering. They are seen to the best advantage in the furnace. The blood of martyrs has ever been the seed of the Church. The patience, meekness, firmness and happiness of God's people in circumstances of suffering, persecution and death have paved the way for the gospel in almost all lands and all ages. A baptism of blood has prepared the hard sterile soil of humanity for the good seed of the Kingdom, and made it doubly fruitful. The exhibition of the meek and loving spirit of Christianity under suffering has doubtless won thousands of hearts to its divine Author, and tamed and awed many a savage persecutor, besides Saul of Tarsus. When men see their fellow-men enduring with patience and meekness what they know would fill them with hatred, anger and revenge, they naturally conclude that there must be a different spirit in them. When they see Christians suffering the loss of all things, and cheerfully resigning themselves to bonds, imprisonment and death, they cannot help feeling that they have sources of strength and springs of consolation all unknown to themselves.

Patient suffering, cheerful acquiescence in affliction and anguish, mental or physical, is the most convincing proof of the divine in man which it is possible for humanity to give. 'Truly this was the Son of God,' said he who stood by the Cross when he saw how Jesus suffered. And how many who have been thoroughly skeptical as to the professions of their converted kindred, and have most bitterly persecuted them, and withstood every argument and entreaty advanced in health and activity, have yielded almost without a word before the patience and peace with which the billows of suffering and death have been braved, nay, welcomed such evidence as too mighty, such proof too positive to be resisted, even by persecutors and blasphemers.

Abraham might have written a book and preached all his life long, as doubtless he did, but the whole, ten times told, would not have convinced his family, his contemporaries and posterity, of the depth and fervency of his love to God, as did that holy, calm willingness to surrender of his best beloved. Job might have been the upright, benevolent, righteous man he was, but probably we should never have heard of him but for his wonderful submission, patience and faith under suffering. This lifts him up as an example and a teacher to all succeeding generations. It was when sitting on the dunghill, apparently forsaken of God and man, and suffering the direct physical agony which Satan could inflict, that job attained his greatest victory and made that wonderful exhibition of trust in God which has been the comfort and admiration of God's people from that day to this.

It was in the fiery furnace that Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego won such glory to the God of Israel, that even a heathen king proclaimed His majesty and dominion, and commended his subjects to worship Him who could deliver after this manner. It was in the furnace of their persecution that Stephen, Peter, James, John and Paul proved the divinity in them, and the genuineness of their faith. Without suffering the world could never have known the strength of their faith, the fervency of their love, or the purity of their lives. Their trials made them 'spectacles unto the world, to the angels and to men,' and won for their Master the ears and hearts of thousands.

When the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews would present to us the mightiest achievements of faith and the most wonderful exhibitions of the power of divine grace (Hebrews 11), he refers not so much to the doings of God's people as to their sufferings.

Are you adding your testimony to that of the cloud of witnesses who are gone before, to the sufficiency of divine grace to sustain and comfort in the hour of sorrow and suffering? Is your patient endurance saying to those who are watching you, 'I can do (and suffer) all things through Christ which strengtheneth me?'

CHAPTER SIX:

Christianity and the Real Warfare

CHRIST'S soldiers must be imbued with the spirit of the war. Love to the King and concern for His interests must be the master passion of the soul. Without this, all outward effort, even that which springs from a sense of duty, will fail. The hardship and suffering involved in spiritual warfare are too great for any motive but that of love. It is said that one of the soldiers of Napoleon, when being operated upon for the extraction of a bullet, exclaimed, 'Cut a little deeper and you will find my general's name'--it was engraven on his heart. So must the image and glory of Christ be engraven on the heart of every faithful soldier of Christ. It must be the all-subduing passion of his life to bring the reign of Jesus Christ over the hearts and souls of men. A little child who has this spirit will subjugate others to his King, while the most talented and learned and active, without it, will accomplish comparatively little. If the hearts of the Christians of this generation were inspired with this spirit, and set on winning the world for God, we should soon see nations shaken to their centre, and millions of souls translated into the Kingdom.

Soldiers of Christ must be abandoned to the war. They must be thoroughly committed to God's side; there can be no neutrals in this warfare. When the soldier enlists and takes the queen's shilling, he ceases to be His own property, becoming the property of his country, going where he is sent, standing at any post to which he is assigned, even if it be at the cannon's mouth. He gives up the ways and comforts of civilians, and goes forth with his life in his hand, in obedience to the will of his sovereign.

If I understand it, that is just what Jesus Christ demands of every one of his soldiers, and nothing less.

Someone may ask, 'But we cannot all be ministers, or missionaries, or officers in The Salvation Army; must we not attend to the avocations of this life, and work for the bread that perisheth for ourselves and our families?' Certainly, but the great end in all we do must be the promotion of the Kingdom. A man may work in order that he may eat, but he must eat to live, not to himself or for the promotion of his own purposes, but for his King, and for the advancement of His interest; and if his heart is really set on this, he will, when work is done, gladly lay aside his implements of husbandry or handicraft for the sword of the Spirit, and for the conflict with ignorance, vice and misery. Instead of spending his evenings in ease and self-indulgence, he will betake himself to the streets or other places of resort for the people, and will spend what would have been his leisure hours in pressing on them the claims of God and of His truth. There will be no running away, no forsaking the cross, no shrinking from the hard places of the field; but a determined pushing of the battle to the gate, even amid weariness, opposition, and sometimes in the face of dire defeat. I ask, Was it a devotion any less than this which actuated the martyrs and confessors of old? Have I depicted an abandonment greater than that which they understood to be their duty and privilege? If they might have drawn back, why did they persevere, many of them through long years of conflict and persecution, culminating in stripes, imprisonment and death? It is evident that they understood fidelity to Christ to involve the most perfect selfabandonment, in life and in death.

Christ's soldiers must understand the tactics of war. In order to do this, they must make a subject of earnest and prayerful study how to make the most of their time, talents money, or any other resources which God may have placed at their command for the advancement of the Kingdom. They must think and scheme how best to attack the enemy. Only think of the time, trouble, skill and money that are expended by great killing armies in planning for stratagem and manoeuvre in order to surprise and overcome their enemies. Some of you will remember reading, in the records of the German and French war, that the German officers were better acquainted with the geography of France than the French themselves; they knew every road, by-way and field likely to be available for their purposes. Think of the time and trouble that must have been expended in becoming thus familiar with a foreign country, and compare this with the haphazard, rule-of-thumb kind of way in which spiritual warfare is for the most part conducted. Think of the undigested schemes and abortive plans throwing away both labour and money, embarked in by professed Christian soldiers, who have never, in their lives, spent a day's anxious thought and prayer over them.

Is it not time that the professed children of light should learn, as the great Captain of our salvation exhorted them, wisdom by contrast with the children of darkness?

As I heard some friends talking about the rescue of Gordon, and listened to their calculations as to the probable cost being some millions of money, and perhaps thousands of lives, I could not help thinking, yes, and I suppose all England (the Christians included) will think, this quite a legitimate expenditure of both money and life to rescue this one man and the little band which is with him. Yet, if we were to ask for a few millions of money, and propose to sacrifice a few hundreds of lives in the rescue of millions of the human race from a bondage of misery and destruction ten thousand times more appalling than that which threatened General Gordon, they would call us mad enthusiasts and senseless fanatics. Alas! We may well ask, 'where is the zeal of the Christians of this generation for the Lord of hosts?' How much do they care about his reign over the hearts of their fellow-men? What is their appreciation of the present and eternal benefits embraced in his salvation; or what is their estimate of the 'crown of life' which He promises to give to every one of His conquering soldiers?

Soldiers of Christ must believe in victory. Faith in victory is an indispensable condition to successful warfare of any kind. It is universally recognized by generals of killing armies that, if the enthusiasm of expected conquest be destroyed, and their troops imbued with fear and doubt as to the ultimate result, defeat is all but certain. This is equally true with respect to spiritual warfare, hence the repeated and comprehensive assurance and promises of victory from the great Captain of our salvation.

The true soldier of Christ, who has the spirit of the war and who is abandoned to its interests, has in his soul an earnest of coming victory. He knows it is only a question of time, and time is nothing to love. As he is lying in the trenches, or taking long marches, or suffering the want of common necessities, or enduring the thrust of sharpest bayonets or the heaviest fire of the enemy, or lying wounded, overcome by fatigue, pressed by discouragement, realizing the greatness of the conflict in contrast with his own weakness-in the very darkest hours and severest straits, he has the herald of coming victory sounding in his ears. The faithful soldier knows that he shall win, and that his King will ultimately reign, not only over a few, but over all the kingdoms of this earth, and that He must reign till He has put all enemies under his feet. This faith inspires him to endure hardship and to suffer loss, to hold on. He never thinks of turning his back to the foe, or shirking his cross, of turning stones into bread, or trying to shorten the march. He never thinks of withdrawing from the thick of the fight, he goes on through perils by land, by sea, by his own countrymen, by the heathen, by false brethren at home and abroad. He looks onward through the dark clouds to the proud moment when the King will say, 'Well done, good and faithful servant!' He listens, and above the din of earthly conflict he hears the words, 'Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.'

Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE